by Blythe Reid
***
I ended up having to call James a cab after he got drunk and was pawing at my breasts like an overgrown baby desperate for milk. As soon as I was in my apartment, I stripped out of the dress, put on some sweats, and sat by the blue orchids. I listened to Chris’s recorded message.
“Hey. This is Chris. From last night. I thought last night was amazing, and I was hoping we could see each other again—just not as a business transaction. Call me back sometime.”
I replayed it again. I thought last night was amazing. Because it was.
I dialed his number. It rang three times before his voice mail picked up.
“Hey, this is Chris. I can’t take your call right now. If it’s urgent, leave a voice mail, and I’ll get back to you soon. If it’s not urgent—” I heard a scuffle of noise and what sounded like Stacia saying something. “If it’s not urgent, you can call Stacia Cruz, and she will take your message. Thanks. Bye.”
I snuggle deeper into my recliner. I heard Chris’s voice rolling in my mind. Slowly, I felt my mind try to turn tonight into something better, something where I wouldn’t be bound by a contract to do anything.
I was on Chris’s lap. I moved my body, so I was straddling him. I could feel his arousal against my clit, and I couldn’t get him close enough. Our faces were so close together, I could feel his breath, and I couldn’t stop my hands from moving over his abs. I slid my hand into his pants, finding his cock. I lifted up my dress. When he was inside me, my hips pressed against his, I could feel elation like it was part of who I was. Like I deserved to be happy.
And then I woke up.
Chapter 9
Christopher
I slammed the door shut to my apartment at nearly midnight. There was this constant anxiety under my skin as I tried to dissect every single thing Sarah had said, everything she’d done, to figure out if she was being forced to be an escort. I had passed by Linc Platinum Company a dozen times, contemplating walking in and demanding answers, but I knew if I confronted Linc without any evidence, he could later take it out on Sarah, and that was the last thing I wanted, especially if she was an escort voluntarily. Maybe she loved the job.
I took off my laptop bag and laid it on my kitchen counter. I pulled out my cell phone. One voice mail and the number seemed familiar.
Sarah.
I played the message.
“Hey, Chris. It’s Sarah. I agree we should talk. Um, you should come by my apartment tomorrow. I’m on Watchtower Street. The apartment building is 7459 and the apartment number is thirty-three. Wait. I guess you already knew that if you sent the flowers. Sorry. Um, but if you don’t want to come by, that’s okay too. We can just talk, but I think it’s better if we talk face-to-face. All right. Text or call before you come over. Good night. Bye.”
I selected call back on my phone. It rang twice.
“Hello?” Sarah mumbled. Her voice was groggy. I remembered that it was almost midnight.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Should I call back in the morning?”
“No, no. It’s fine.” Her voice became clearer. “I was a little tired. Um, how are you?”
“Great,” I said. There was a pause. “How are you?”
“Great,” she echoed, though she didn’t sound completely honest to me. There was something vulnerable in her voice, and it called to me like a siren song.
“Can I come over now?”
“Yes.”
I felt a jump in my chest. I hadn’t expected her to agree so quickly.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Good.”
I hung up, put my phone in my pocket, and grabbed my keys before leaving my apartment,
***
The elevator was broken in Sarah’s apartment building. I bounded up the stairs. It occurred to me why they used the word drive when they said sex drive. I knocked on her door, a little eager for being past midnight, so I slowed down my knocking but kept it just as firm.
She opened the door. She wore a silk pajama camisole and pants. It was even sexier than a nightgown. She grabbed me by the shirt, pulling me into her apartment before closing the door.
Her apartment was small, a studio apartment containing a bed and a recliner in the central room. Nothing matched, but the quirkiness made it more real. It made it feel like someone genuinely lived there with no concern about how it would be seen or what other people would think looked good.
“Were you sleeping?” I asked.
“Yeah. I was dreaming of you.” She kissed me. She kissed me like a woman underwater, and I was her oxygen. She kissed me, her hands moving under my shirt while my hands roamed over her whole body like I was checking for injuries when I truly only wanted to make damn sure this was real because this moment was like a wildest dream.
This wasn’t the only reason I wanted to see her, but I wasn’t about to interrupt her.
She grabbed onto my shirt that was half unbuttoned now and led me to the bed. She collapsed onto it, her legs splayed open. I crawled onto the bed between her legs, leaned over her, and kissed her.
She didn’t smell like vanilla and cinnamon now, just soap and yearning.
My hands moved to her hair, the smooth strands sliding between my fingers like water. The silk of her pajamas was rubbing against me in the most pleasurable way, but I absolutely needed to take them off her.
She raised her hips up as I slid her pants off. I felt her legs underneath me as she kicked them off her feet. We kissed again, her tongue gliding out enough that I could feel it slip between my lips.
I hooked my thumbs on her underwear and helped her slide them off, relishing the way my hand slid over her skin. When her arms wrapped around my neck, pulling me back to her, I don’t protest. There was so much I wanted her to do to me. There was so much I wanted to do to her.
She unbuttoned the last of my shirt, pulling it off my back, and throwing it off the side of the bed. She must have been wearing lipstick because I could see the faint smear on the edge of her lips, and I wanted to kiss her until there was only bare skin left.
She pulled her camisole off. Her breasts were perfect. I brushed my thumb over her nipple, and her body quivered under me. She was a goddess, and I wanted to worship her until she believed in herself.
Our bodies were two vessels of passion, and when I sank into her, I felt whole and revived. I kept my hands on either side of her arms while her hands pressed against my ribs. I moved slowly inside her, each small movement pushing me closer to an edge I didn’t want to jump off until Sarah was ready to jump off too.
Her hands moved up toward my back, and her nails sank into me. I increased my pace, rising up a little higher. Our breathing was both labored but in sync. I wanted to get her breathing faster. I wanted to fill her lungs with so much air that she could float.
I placed my mouth over her throat, pressing our bodies so tightly together, I could feel her chest rising and falling. As I rubbed her clit, her body went rigid, a soft, low moan escaping from her lips, and her fingernails sank so deeply into my back, it triggered something in me. I drove into her one more time and felt myself go over the edge, pleasure exploding in me with a force that nearly knocked me out.
I dropped down beside her. I could have told her I loved her in that moment. I could have told her anything she wanted me to tell her, that she owned me, that I would never forget her, that I didn’t even want a chance to forget her because I wanted to be in the same bed as her for the rest of my life.
But the silence was comfortable, so I immersed myself in it.
After a few minutes, she moved closer to me.
“How did you know where I lived?” she asked. I kissed her. We kissed and kissed and kissed until the only sounds she could make were nonsensical, and I couldn’t say I was doing much better.
Chapter 10
Sarah
I had never woken up in bed with somebody else.
I hadn’t been a virgin before I met Chris, but every guy I’d dated ended u
p being an echo of my mother’s relationships with men, fleeting, and I always ended up finding out I was the other woman or there was another woman. At first, it was difficult to find out I wasn’t enough for these men. It was a lesson to realize that after having sex, they didn’t want to make me think I was worthy of taking up half the bed. I learned to sleep in a twin-sized bed alone and find the joy of never having to share my blankets.
But as I felt Chris’s body spooned around me, I felt a tear in my chest because I knew I had fooled myself for years into thinking it was better to be alone. All the blankets and space in the world didn’t make up for the presence of another person’s body heat. It didn’t make up for the feeling of security or knowing someone was willing to risk any snoring or grumpy morning attitude just to sleep beside me.
I rested my hand on his shoulder. He slowly rolled over, his eyes opening, and smiled at me.
“Good morning.”
“How did you know where I lived? And my number? My number isn’t in the phone book. I’ve moved too much for people to put it in there.”
He laughed. “Okay. I guess you’re a morning person. Could we get some coffee before you interrogate me?”
“How about you answer my question, and if the answer is satisfactory, I’ll get you some coffee?”
He smiled, cupping my cheek before letting his hand fall to my shoulder and then slide down my arm. “That’s what I like about you. You know how to set your own terms.”
“I thought you liked me because of my sexual prowess.”
“That too.”
He rubbed his eyes. “So, you met Stacia.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“She’s the computer geek at Synthesis Spirits. She once hacked into one of our competitor’s sites and changed it, so it looked like they were selling baby formula.”
“I remember that. It was, uh, the company that sells Velociraptor Whiskey, right?”
“Yeah. Chamber Distillery.”
“So…what? Did she hack the police?” I asked.
“Uh, no, she hacked Linc’s computers.”
“What?” I sat straight up. “Are you kidding me?”
“No,” he said. “I figured his computers would be the easiest to break into. I don’t completely understand it, something about IP address and being on the same network.”
“I can’t believe you’d do that for me. Why would you do that for me?”
He shrugged. “I’ve slept with a good number of women, but with you, it was like it was Christmas Day. It was this very innocent sense of joy being around you, but also this criminally, less innocent, insistent need to touch you and make you feel every kind of thrill I could get you to feel.”
I swung my legs off the bed and stood up. I left the bedroom, making sure he had a good look at my swaying ass.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“You wanted coffee, right? Your answers were good enough for me, so I think you deserve a little caffeine.”
I heard the bed squeak as he collapsed back onto it. “You’re a miracle.”
I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I made the best damn coffee I could with a cheap coffee maker. When I returned to the room, I set the mug on the nightstand, and I slid back into bed with him. By the time we finally got out of bed, the coffee was cold.
Chapter 11
Christopher
The window in her bedroom was showing a winter wonderland—if the wonderland had risky road conditions and people resembling colorful snowmen from their inordinate amount of winter clothes. I ran my hand through my hair, trying to put the strands back in some kind of order.
I closed my eyes, telling myself I should help Sarah with the coffee but luxuriating in the image of her ass moving away from me. She was so gorgeous, and I wanted to press my body against hers and pray for her body to give me sustenance. If luck was a limited source, I had definitely run out by getting to sleep with Sarah twice. If the holiday season was always like this, I’d be a lot more interested in celebrating it.
I didn’t hear Sarah’s footsteps, so I didn’t see her until she was right beside the bed. She was holding two mugs, but they only looked like two bookends next to her breasts draped by her black hair and looking as magnificent as they had felt under my hands. I fully intended to not stare, but it wasn’t only her breasts. She had stopped at the edge of the bed, her thighs against the mattress and her pussy just high enough to be visible.
“Are you going to take this cup?” she asked. I realized she had been holding the coffee mug out to me for several seconds. I took it from her.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry. You look so incredibly sexy.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed. “You don’t need to say that to me.”
“It’s true.” I reached out, touching the small of her back. She turned to me, a partial smile on her face. “You’re a beautiful woman.”
She took my hand and kissed the top of it. Her thumb rubbed against the top of my hand for a second, and her eyes seemed to concentrate on my skin as she became lost in thought. After several seconds passed by, she looked back up at me.
“So, you found my address and number on Linc’s computer. What else was on there?” she asked, taking a sip from her mug.
“A lot.”
She moved her hand to my leg. “You don’t want to expand a little bit?”
“You always know how to get exactly what you want, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” She moved her hand up an inch higher. Her skin felt so smooth. I could feel my thoughts starting to get fuzzy. I brought the mug to my lips, taking a deep drink. It was hot enough that I understood why she was only taking sips of her coffee, but it was still good. I stared into the mug. “How did you know how much cream and sugar I would want?”
“I made it the same way I make mine. I figured if you hated it, I’d finish it for you.”
“You do seem like a pragmatist.”
“You’re avoiding the question. What did you find on Linc’s computer?”
“Well, Stacia found letters from some lawyers,” I started, watching her carefully. Her expression didn’t change. “From the lawyers’ letters, there were allegations that Linc was, well, I guess, trafficking women. Forcing them to be escorts.”
Her face remained impassive. I can’t imagine she would remain this calm if she hadn’t known, but I also can’t imagine she’d be this calm if she was being forced to be an escort.
“There was talk about cocaine and the Ouroboros, a gang. The police couldn’t find any proof of the allegations, but I guess they’re still investigating.”
I waited for her to react, but she kept looking at me, waiting for me to finish.
I cleared my throat. “Is any of this ringing a bell for you? You don’t seem surprised.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” she said. “So, no, I’m not surprised.”
“But you aren’t involved in that, right? You chose to be an escort?”
She took another sip of her coffee and then shook her head. I could feel the weight of a secret between us, but she didn’t want to divulge it. I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t exactly in her inner circle, and I imagined her inner circle was rather tiny. She could be the only one in it.
I set my coffee mug down on the nightstand. I kissed one of Sarah’s shoulders, but her hesitation around these questions still bothered me. “How did you get into the business?”
It was fragile ground to walk on, but if Linc was jerking her around, I needed to know. She didn’t need to spill her guts out to me, but I’d rather know the truth now than later.
She set her coffee mug down next to mine and leaned back, resting her head on my lap. She turned her head, her mouth dangerously close to my cock.
“What about you?” she asked, her warm breath hitting my groin. “Don’t you have to think about work?”
She was deviously good.
“I do have to go in about an hour,” I said. “But I can call them to say I’m not com
ing in.”
She rose up—disappointingly, away from my cock—and put her hands on either side of my face. “I think we could help stimulate your mind in some other ways than work.”
“You think I go to work to stimulate my mind?”
“I think that you only do things because you enjoy the stimulation.”
“That is true.”
She kissed me, and I could feel all my thoughts scattering. I would get my answers sometime, but this was enough for now.
Chapter 12
Sarah
I sat in the Linc Platinum Company building, waiting for Linc to step out of his office. I stretched out my legs. My body felt like it had gone through boot camp, but it was a good reminder of Chris.
I took out my phone, checking for any messages. None.
I glanced over at Linc's door. Chris had been treating me with kid gloves while talking about Linc's activities. I hadn't known about the other women, but there had been a lingering suspicion. He was not the kind of man who could figure out how to con one woman and then never do it again. He was a man who liked to tell people to jump and loved it when they did it without hesitation.
Still, I had to imagine I was one of the first people he caught in his web. He hadn't quite perfected his craft when he met me, which made me feel even worse that I had believed he was a decent guy.
I couldn't ever tell Chris any of this. I wanted to keep him separate from this part of my life. Our connection was a happy coincidence I could pretend didn’t come about because of this job.
Several minutes had passed since Linc had told me to meet him. I think he enjoyed keeping women waiting for him. Or maybe it was only me. Melody said she never had to wait for him. But he didn't have control over her. She came and went as she pleased, and I would never stop envying her for it.