by Blythe Reid
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Table of Contents
Stoke My Fire
Description
Introduction
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Want More?
About the Author
Stoke My Fire
By
Blythe Reid
Description
Set in Chicago, IL — He needs a date for his company Christmas party, but hates the idea of finding someone. He hires an escort, and they clash like hell at first, but soon the holiday spirit turns that fire into lust.
Introduction
Checkout the other 12 Days of Christmas Novellas
Find them all HERE
Stoke My Fire
Copyright © 2017 by Blythe Reid
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and plot are all either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons – living or dead – is purely coincidental.
First Edition.
Editor: Mary Wolney
Designer: Kellie Dennis, Book Covers By Design
Chapter 1
Christopher
I never wanted to be the marketing communications advisor of Synthesis Spirits. It was a complete and utter fluke involving me rapping in a bar about their spiced rum and a viral video. If I hadn’t forsaken my parents’ money, I wouldn’t have taken the job offer because sitting in an office made me want to tear out my eyes and someone else’s throat half the time. But I had bills to pay, so I let my temper slowly rise as glue dripped near my keyboard and a strip of garland drooped near my hand.
Stacia rolled her chair by my desk, her wavy topaz hair swaying over her shoulder.
“Did you get the Christmas party invite?” she asked.
“I got two of them,” I said, taking several deep breaths. Stacia had a calming effect about her. She rarely let anything faze her, and she always had this small smirk on her face that made people think she was about to pull a prank on them. I admired anybody who could get people to leave them alone without being a total asshole. “Mitchell must have thought I’d lose the first one.”
“Or he knew you’d throw it out,” she said. “You know he loves Christmas. If you don’t go, you’ll be on his shit list for at least the next six months. Come on, Chris. We’re a hard liquor company. You know there’s going to be enough alcohol flowing to forget anything that happens.”
“That’s half the reason I hate these parties. Everyone drinks too much, which would be fine if they could handle their liquor. Remember last year? Three different people ended up stepping in vomit.”
“So, just come and leave before everyone gets drunk.”
“There’s also Cheryl.”
“Is she going to finally make her move on you?” Stacia teased. “I would say at least she has a nice personality, but I used to get my ass whooped if I lied. Your problem is she thinks anytime you glance in her direction, you’re flirting with her. If you had a girlfriend, she’d leave you alone.”
“I don’t have time for a girlfriend.”
“Well, you know what they say. If you can’t find Mrs. Right, you buy one for the night.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Did you just make that up?”
“I used to have a lifelong dream of having a rap career,” she said. I wasn’t quite sure if she was serious or mocking the way I’d gotten this job in the first place.
“That could work, though. A hooker is used to pretending she’s into someone. She could convince Cheryl we’re together.”
“If you get a good one. Otherwise, she’s going to convince Cheryl you have herpes.”
“Which would still work.”
“True.”
“Chris,” Stacia said. She rested her hand on my shoulder. “If you were anyone else, I’d convince you that you could handle this situation with the grace and resilience of a gentleman. But I’m honestly dying to see where this leads, so bring up an incognito page on your computer.”
I pulled up an incognito page as she rolled her chair into my cubicle. I searched escorts in Chicago.
“I didn’t know there would be so many sites for this,” I muttered.
“Technically, being a literal escort is not illegal,” she said. “Go to that site—Linc Platinum Company. Oh, look at her. She is hot, but if she came to the party, everyone would know she wasn’t your girlfriend.”
“Because you don’t think I could get a woman that hot?”
“Because you couldn’t have afforded that Botox in her face. Click on the escort’s link.”
I clicked on the link. A dozen women’s photos popped up onto the screen.
“Let’s see, lots of blondes, some brunettes, and one redhead, though the hair looks dyed,” Stacia mused. “Do you have a prefer—oh, she’s cute. I like her.”
Stacia pointed to one of the photos near the bottom of the page. She was very cute. She had long pitch-black hair that cascaded down her shoulders, jade green eyes, and a smile that seemed a little hesitant, but with a glint of something that made me think of optimism.
Or maybe that was how I was feeling.
I clicked on her photo. It simply said her name was Sarah and gave a link to contact the agency. When I clicked on the link, it had me set up a time to meet an agency member to confirm payment and sign a contract.
As I started filling out the information, Stacia raised her eyebrow at me.
“If I knew this was the way to your heart, I would have gotten you a different Christmas present.”
I knew how I looked to her. I could feel it. There was a hunger in me now. I had learned there were two kinds of beauty. There was the kind that exists in paintings and architecture, stunning but inanimate. They dull the senses, detracting the appreciation for the real world. The second kind of beauty was even more stunning as it added value to the real world, made everything seem so much better.
I had a gut feeling Sarah was the second kind of beautiful, but I had been duped before. Beauty, after all, is a disguise.
***
The Linc Platinum Company said to meet the owner at an office on Second Avenue. The moment I stepped into the office, I felt like I had stepped into a travel agency except instead of posters of exotic locations on the walls, there were photos of men with beautiful women. There was one with the man’s arm wrapped around a beautiful woman’s waist, another where the woman was sitting
on the man’s lap, and a third one where the woman was clinging onto the waist of the man as they rode a motorcycle.
There was a sleek desk curving around the back of the office. I stepped up to it. Nobody was behind the desk, but there was a door behind it. A tiny dashboard hula girl stood in the center of the desk. It appeared to have a broken leg. I touched it, trying to straighten it. Instead, it swayed back and forth, giving off a high-pitched ringing sound. I grabbed it, trying to get it to be silent, but it kept going.
The door swung open. The man who walked out reminded me of a middle-aged Babe Ruth if middle-aged Babe Ruth had done cocaine instead of drinking booze.
“Hey, bud, what’s up?” he asked. “You’re Mr. Day?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re Linc?”
“Linc Johansson.” He thrust his hand forward. I shook it. “So, you want to be escorted by Sarah on Friday?”
“Yeah. It’s an office party.”
“What company?”
“Synthesis Spirits.”
He let out a low whistle. “I do love their Sundial vodka.”
“Yeah, everyone seems to. I’m sorry, but it’s about a twenty-minute drive back to my job, so …”
“Right. All business. I love you already, bud.” Linc reached under the desk and pulled out a small stack of paper. “Here is the contract. It’s pretty standard. It says we’re a legit agency, that your escort is of legal age, you won’t commit any violence against your escort, you will allow the escort to call the agency at the end of the date, you won’t compel the escort to do anything illegal including drugs, you don’t have any diseases that could affect one of my escorts in a negative way, and we have zero liability if anybody finds out you hired an escort—”
“I get it,” I said. “I don’t plan on taking her to a drug-filled mosh pit. It’s an office party.”
“Then, sign at the bottom of the contract,” he said, holding out a pen. I took it. “You should also scribble the address of your office party at the bottom. Sarah will meet you there. It’s the safest way to handle this transaction.”
I signed the bottom of the contract and wrote down the address of Synthesis Spirits’ office building. Linc yanked the contract out from under my hand as soon as the pen lifted off the paper.
“Now, how are you paying? Credit? Cash?”
“Cash.”
“You understand it’s two hundred dollars an hour?”
“The website said a hundred fifty dollars.”
“Right. I apologize. Sarah is in higher demand, so she’s two hundred dollars an hour. If you want another girl, I could lower the price.”
“No. I’d like Sarah.”
“Great. How long is your office party?”
“It starts at seven, but I’ll be expected to stay there for a few hours. So, let’s say three hours.”
“That’s seven hundred dollars.”
“It’s six hundred dollars.”
There’s a flicker of annoyance on his face. “I should apologize again. It would be six hundred dollars normally, but considering Friday is in two days, there’s a hundred-dollar fee.”
I had met men like this in the business before. As a marketing communications advisor, I spent a lot of my time on data analysis, but I also spent a lot of time around advertisers, and they would always try to con their clients into spending more money than what was originally agreed upon. I would consider them snakes, but snakes at least had the decency to run you dry for the sake of their survival. These men did it solely so they could laugh at you behind your back later.
I could feel the old version of me getting riled up, ready to show this guy I couldn’t be pushed around, but I swallowed the fury, forced a smile, and handed him the cash. This was the man who could prevent me from meeting Sarah. If all I had to do was pretend to not hate him in order to get what I wanted, then that was what I would do.
Maybe I wasn’t who I should be yet, but until I became a better man, I was certain I could enjoy a night with a better woman.
Besides, if the seven hundred dollars was what it took for Cheryl to get off my back, I’d consider it one of the best investments of my life.
Chapter 2
Sarah
I touched the small hula girl figurine. She screeched. Maybe it was meant to sound like a doorbell, but something must have gone horribly wrong with the mechanism because it sounded like a dying fire alarm.
Linc stepped out of his office, strolling out to the desk like it was a bar. I just couldn’t be sure if he saw me as a bartender or a woman he wanted to seduce.
“Hey, Sarah,” he said. “Glad you could make it down. Took you a lot longer than I thought though.”
“You know I had to work late with that one client yesterday,” I said. His lip curled up in a snarl. “I didn’t sleep with him. You don’t need to get worked up over it because you didn’t miss out on any profit. He said he’d wire you the money today for the extra hours.”
Linc nodded. “I got his money this morning. I just wasn’t sure if you slept with him or not. If you ever change your mind about that, I’m sure it would help you a lot with your situation.”
I flushed, knotting my hands in front of me. “I thought after last night my situation might have been solved. I thought that’s why you called me here.”
“Not quite,” he said. “I have a client who asked specifically for you for this Friday from seven to ten. It’s a Christmas office party for Synthesis Spirits. And he is willing to pay a lot for you. I’m going to need you to make sure he’s very, very happy because when he returns, I expect him to be so jacked up from being with you, he’ll want a girl who knows how to fuck. Got it?”
I stared at him. “You know I don’t have a choice.”
“That is absolutely, beautifully true,” he said. “And I love that about our employer-employee relationship. You should be grateful for it too. Smile for me, Sarah. It could always be worse. For you, at least.”
I forced a smile, though I could feel that little place where my hopes went getting smaller and smaller every day. I feared one day it would no longer exist, and I’d become a shell of a person, pretending to adore every man who could afford me.
And the worst part was, the person it cost the most was me.
***
My closet felt like it belonged to somebody who I would never quite understand. There was an endless line of dresses, many of them with a hemline above my knees and low-cut enough that a faint tan line could be seen on my chest when I wore them. It felt like it belonged to a very fashionable woman who was always hoping to seduce a man everywhere she went.
A very fashionable and seductive woman like Melody.
“What about the red dress?” Melody suggested, lounging on my bed. She was the exact opposite of me in more ways than our fashion sense—she was blond, tall, and completely in love with being an escort. I envied her for all of those characteristics. “That one looks great on you, but it’s subtle enough that you could wear it at a Christmas party.”
“You don’t think it’s too fancy? It’s mostly lace.”
“What company is the party for?”
“Um.” I turned toward the piece of paper that Linc had given me. “It’s Synthesis Spirits. They’re the company that makes that spiced rum that comes in the bottles shaped like a skyscraper. Do you think that means everyone will be dressed up?”
“You’re supposed to ask Linc these things.”
“I try to keep our conversations as short as possible.”
Melody stood up, stepping toward my closet. She had to take less than half a step since my apartment is so small. Even the twin-sized bed barely fit into this room. She pulled out a black, long-sleeved blouse that had a plunging neckline but a thin string zig-zagging at the front of it to obstruct the cleavage view. She threw it onto my bed. Then, she found a red skirt that was as short as all the other skirts and dresses, but there was a veil-like material over the skirt that swept to the middle of my calves.
; “That’s kind of perfect,” I said as she arranged the clothes on my bed. She flounced down beside them.
“That’s what I’m here for,” she said. “If I were going to some Christmas office party for an alcohol company, I wouldn’t care what I was wearing because I’d definitely be naked by the end of it, but I know you’re a different kind of woman.”
“Yeah, the naked part of your scenario is definitely not going to happen.”
She winced. “Does that mean the guy is really ugly?”
“I have no idea.”
“How can you not know?” she asked. “That’s the first thing I figure out when Linc tells me a client’s name. You did stick around long enough with Linc to figure out your client’s name, right?
“Yeah, it’s Christopher Day,” I said. “He’s involved in marketing communications at his job. It doesn’t really matter to me though. It’s not like I can act any differently as soon as I figure out who he is. I have to act like his girlfriend no matter what he looks like.”
“You should prepare yourself,” she said. “Let’s look him up.”
She reached under my bed, grabbing my laptop. While she waited for it to start up—it was nearly a decade old—I tried on the outfit. Linc said the guy wanted me to act like Christopher Day’s girlfriend. This seemed like a good outfit for that. It wasn’t sensual enough for anyone to think I was still trying to tempt a man, but it wasn’t dowdy, so everyone would assume I was trying to remain attractive to keep my boyfriend around.
It was a blessing I didn’t go on any actual, real dates because it sounded exhausting. With all the flaws of being an escort, at least I knew I didn’t legitimately care about any of these men.
As I picked up my hairbrush, I noticed a small photo underneath it. The photo showed a little girl and her mother hugging in front of an ice cream shop. My mother and I when I was eight years old. I kept intending to throw it out—maybe even turn it into confetti pieces—but I was weak. I couldn’t let her go, even after she damned me into this life.