The Club

by Lauren Rowe

  So what is sex all about for a woman like that? It’s all about getting the guy off, right? Getting him off gets her off, I’m sure—but that can only take her so far for so long when there’s no payoff for her at the end of it all, time after time. I mean, yes, I love making a woman come, but isn’t that because, ultimately, it makes me come so hard I almost pass out? Huh. What if making a woman come was all there ever was for me, and it never led to my own satisfaction, ever? Huh. Something to think about. That puts things in a whole new perspective.

  Who are these guys she’s been with in the past, for Chrissakes? Do they not even notice she’s not getting off—or do they just not care? Or does she fake it so well they don’t know the difference? And didn’t I used to be just like them, not too long ago? I have a pit in my stomach. Yeah, I was. I most definitely was. Hell, maybe I still am. Shit. It’s suddenly hitting me like a ton of bricks. I’m no different than any of the guys she’s been with. I just proved that in spades on the phone. Damn. I never should have jerked myself off—I should have kept my hand out of my pants and just talked to her.

  But, hang on a second, she told me to touch myself, she wanted me to do it—oh God—her gravelly voice when she said, “Touch yourself and tell me how you licked her” was so hot, so fucking hot, how was I supposed to resist? No mortal man could have resisted. It was the most incredible thing a woman’s ever said to me, hands down. Oh God, it brought me to my knees.

  But I should have resisted, no matter how impossible. I should have had the presence of mind to say, “What’s the rush? Let’s just talk. Let me take you out for coffee.” But when she ordered me to touch myself in that gravelly voice of hers—when she was turned on by the idea of me licking another woman’s pussy and wishing it was hers—when she asked me for details about it and started moaning and saying my name as I told her—it was so hot, I almost came right then and there. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing, couldn’t believe how hot she made me, couldn’t believe she understood what I was trying to explain to her. She didn’t pull the predictable “shocked and indignant” bullshit reaction on me. Nope. She understood what I was trying to tell her; it turned her on, and she admitted it.

  Epic.

  No one would even believe me if I told them what just happened (which, of course, I’d never do). I can barely believe it myself. When she told me to touch myself and tell her everything, that was when I knew this woman gets me like nobody ever has.

  And now I’ve blown it. Was that one orgasm during a fucking phone call worth it, Jonas? Fuck! I never would have guessed I could lose control of myself so completely. I don’t understand why she affects me like this. She thinks there’s no upside to me, and I just proved it. Never mind I let a wire transfer for a quarter-million dollars go through just so she wouldn’t lose her part-time desk job. When it comes to you, I don’t see any upside at all, she said. None at all?

  Well, what the fuck does she expect from me? I’ve never even laid eyes on this woman. What am I supposed to do—profess my undying love to her? Ride in on a white horse and swoop her up into my saddle and ride off into the sunset? Send her roses and candy and Hallmark cards? Hey, how about a teddy bear, too? That’s such total and complete bullshit, all of it. Even if I were “normal,” even if I were brainwashed into believing in happily ever afters like the rest of world, I wouldn’t be able to make her any promises. Even normal people go out on a date or two or three before they run off to elope in Las Vegas, don’t they? For Christ’s sake, am I supposed to swear she’s my soul mate—wear a vial of her blood around my neck—before she’ll grab a cup of coffee with me?

  I mean, yes, of course, I don’t want to just grab coffee with her—I’m not saying that—yes, of course, I want to take her to my bed and lay her down on my white sheets and lick every inch of her olive skin and suck her hard nipples and kiss her everywhere and bury my face between her legs and look up and see her big brown eyes looking back at me and fuck her ‘til she’s screaming my name. Yes, of course, I want to do all that. But to get to do all that, I’m supposed to sign some contract that I’ll never make one wrong move? That I’ll never be an asshole? That I’ll never hurt her feelings? Well, I can’t guarantee that. Who can? Can normal people guarantee that? I don’t think so.

  What the fuck does she want from me? I’ve already hacked into a major university’s server to find her, and it wasn’t cheap. I called her sight unseen and poured my heart out to her. I knew full well a normal woman would bolt when I told her about fucking Stacy, and I told her anyway—because I promised to tell her the truth, no matter what. Fuck, I’ve already told her more than I’ve ever told any other woman, ever—which, by the way, she’s using against me in the most fucked up way, considering how she acquired the information. And, worst of all, thanks to her, I’ve already gagged and quite sloppily banged my way through fucking a very hot woman, all the while thinking of her. What more does she want?

  I’m done.

  She doesn’t want me? There’s no upside when it comes to me?

  Fine.

  Guess what? There’s no upside to her. That woman has been all downside from day one. I was happy before she replied to my note. I was looking forward to my membership in The Club. I was ready to have the best year of my life in that stupid club. She doesn’t want me? Fine. I can have any woman I want—other than her, apparently—so I guess it’s time for me to get out there and fuck them all. I’ve spent two hundred fifty thousand dollars on my Club membership, this supposedly mind-blowing, best-money-I-ever-spent-in-my-life-hands-down membership, so I’m going to start getting the most out of it. Or, hell, I could just go down to Whole Foods right now, crook my finger at that cashier with the piercings, and she’d come running to my bed like I was pulling her on a fucking string.

  Fuck!

  I get up and pace around my room like a leopard.

  No upside.

  Fuck.

  I want her. Not whoever’s next in the purple parade. Not the girl with the piercings at Whole Foods. I want Sarah.

  Fuck.

  I don’t give two shits about The Club right now.

  How am I supposed to know if I’d want to spend more than two to seven hours with her, anyway? I’ve never even seen her. Can she honestly expect me to know how much time I’m willing to give her, sight unseen? Yes, she turns me on now, of course, but seeing her might make a difference. A huge difference. All I’ve seen of her are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—a breast, a nipple, a thigh. Some hair over the top of a menu. Smooth olive skin. Big brown eyes. Beautiful, soul-stirring, brown eyes. A ring on her thumb. That voice.

  I close my eyes. Shit. I just gave myself a woody.

  I’m losing control of myself. No, I’ve already lost it. It’s long gone. Joining The Club in the first place—for a fucking year, no less!— proved it. What was I thinking? I can’t act on every single urge and whim. I need to reel it back in, take control.

  From now on, I’ll focus on two things: climbing and work. Yeah, Josh and I will climb Mount Everest next year when they reopen it. I know we said we’d do a bunch of other mountains first, but why wait? We can use this coming year to train like madmen. I’ll put my head down and train and get in the best shape of my life. And I’ll refocus on work, too. There’s plenty of it. Business is through the roof.

  When I need the kind of relaxation only a beautiful woman can bring, I’ll check in on my Club app and meet some lonely, all-too willing Purple. No feelings involved. Especially not mine. But I won’t do it every day. It won’t be an addiction. I’ll just do it occasionally, when I need to blow off steam. And by the time the year has passed, I’ll be standing on top of the world, at the pinnacle of Mount Everest, as close to God as a human can get while still standing on planet earth—and, by then, I will have forgotten all about her.

  Yes. That’s the plan. And it’s a good one.

  I sit down at my desk and open my laptop. I’ve got a mountain of acquisition prospect reports to analyze and email
s to send out. It’s time to get back to work and get over myself. And get over her. I’ve never even seen her, for fuck’s sake, it shouldn’t be hard to forget her.

  I’ve barreled through two acquisition reports in ninety minutes and sent out at least fifteen emails to my uncle in New York and Josh in L.A. and various members of my team here in Seattle regarding some due diligence action items. Being productive is calming me down. With each passing minute, I like my plan of action for the next year more and more. Train for Mount Everest, fuck purples in The Club, as needed (no feelings involved), climb to the tippy-top of the world, forget she ever existed. Everything back to normal.

  It’s foolproof.

  I’m about to start on a third acquisition prospect report when my cell rings with a call from Josh.

  “Hey,” I answer, and launch right in as if we’ve already been talking for ten minutes. “I’m thinking we climb Everest next year. I know we projected ten years, but I don’t want to wait.” It’s pretty much how phone calls with Josh always go—we don’t have individualized conversations so much as one continuous conversation that’s sporadically interrupted by life.

  “Whoa, slow down, high-speed. What happened to us climbing Kilimanjaro next year? And K2 after that?”

  “Scratch all that. Everest is the highest. Why bother with anything else?”

  “Um, because we both agreed we need more experience before we tackle Everest. What’s going on?”

  I grunt, but I don’t answer him.

  “Jonas, you’re freaking me out. I’m the reckless one. You’re the look-before-you-leap twin. Stop trying to steal my thing.”

  There’s another brief silence.

  “You do realize I called you, right?” Josh finally says. “You don’t even want to know why?”

  “The EBITDA on the Jackson deal? I just emailed you about it.”

  “No, dummy, why would I call you about that? I don’t give a shit about the EBITDA on the Jackson deal. No, bro, I got the photos.” I can hear his shit-eating grin across the phone line. “I wanted to make sure you check your email.”

  My breath stops short. “I’ve been working.”

  “Do you know for sure which of the Sarahs is yours yet?”

  I pause. I don’t want to talk about her. “Cruz,” I finally mutter.

  Josh hoots like I just gave the right answer on Jeopardy.

  “But she’s not my Sarah, as it turns out.”

  “What?”

  “I just talked to her.”

  “You talked to her? What the fuck! When were you planning to tell me this little nugget—”

  “She’s not interested in me. Doesn’t even want to meet me for coffee.”

  He pauses. “You hacked into U Dub’s server to find her, without knowing what she looks like, and she’s not interested? How the hell did you fuck that up? Is she married or something?”

  “No, she’s just not interested.”

  “I can’t ... She knows you hacked into U Dub’s server to find her, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she didn’t go all weak in the knees over that?”

  I’m silent.

  “Well, has she seen you, at least? I mean, does she know what you look like?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really? Wow.” He pauses, considering. “I’m shocked.” He sighs. “Oh man, that sucks. Wow.” He exhales loudly, totally deflated. “I was kind of excited for you—especially after seeing her picture. I was really hoping your Sarah was gonna be Cruz.”

  “You saw her photo?” My heart’s suddenly racing, despite myself.

  “Yeah, and she’s—”

  “No, don’t tell me. Please. If she looks good, I’ll just be even more bummed. And if she’s the Bride of Frankenstein, I don’t want to know that, either. I’d rather hold onto the fantasy I’ve created in my head.”

  “Bro.”

  There’s a long pause. With just that word, he’s chastising me—telling me I’m an idiot. I don’t reply.

  “Check your email,” he says slowly, condescendingly.

  I grunt.

  “Bro.”

  I’m dying of curiosity, I must admit.

  “Trust me.”

  My stomach is lurching. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Really good or really bad?”

  “Really, really, really good.”

  Holy shit, she’s a knockout. I can’t stop staring at her. It’s just a snapshot for her school I.D. and she looks like a fucking model. Her dark hair is swept back into a ponytail and she’s not wearing a stitch of makeup (the way I prefer most women, actually), and she’s still an absolute head turner—distinctive, not a cookie-cutter beauty, by any means, faintly exotic—but fucking gorgeous. She’d definitely stand out in any crowd. There’s something about her face—the way her features all come together—she slays me. Her eyes are the best part. They’re big and brown and brimming with intelligence and humor and warmth and take-no-bullshit confidence. There’s depth in those eyes. But, wow, her lips are a close second. Good God, I keep thinking of those lips moaning and saying my name and asking me about how I fucked Stacy—and all with that gravelly voice of hers, too.

  Damn, what a fantastic surprise this is. It’s Christmas morning right now. And to think I’d been bracing myself for disappointment—priming myself not to be overly critical when I saw her, telling myself I’d have to find one particularly attractive feature and focus on that to the exclusion of the not-so-great parts. But there’s not a single not-so-great part. Especially when I look at her features all put together. If I didn’t even know her, I’d beeline right to her in a bar. She’s gorgeous.

  Now that I know what she looks like, what just happened on the phone is even more catastrophic. If I’d only known she looked like this, I wouldn’t have called. I would have gone straight over to her apartment and beaten down her door and made her talk to me. And then what might have happened? She wouldn’t have been able to turn me down then.

  But I couldn’t wait to call her, could I? I just had to pick up the phone and call her, sight unseen. I thought calling her without seeing her first was some kind of proof of my good faith—some kind of romantic gesture of my unconditional attraction to her. I figured she’d get all swoony about it. Man, I calculated all wrong.

  If I’d just waited ‘til seeing this picture, I would have handled things differently. I wouldn’t have let her take control of the situation like I did. I would have been in charge. She wouldn’t have rejected me if I’d showed up on her doorstep, that’s for sure. No woman has ever been able to resist me when I bring my A game. Damn, I should have brought my A game—but, instead, I brought my dick. I didn’t even call her to talk dirty to her, I really didn’t. And what did I do? I had phone sex with her. Why couldn’t I control myself and talk to her like a lady and keep my pecker in my pants?

  I blew it.

  And now I’m drowning in regret.

  She’s stunning.

  I should have known my gut is always right when it comes to women. I could sniff out a hot woman blindfolded—and, actually, that’s exactly what I did, come to think about it—I sniffed her out blindfolded.

  Yeah, this is a game changer.

  She doesn’t get to dictate what happens between us anymore. I’m taking charge now. She’s not interested in rolling the dice with me? She doesn’t think there’s enough upside to me?

  Fuck that shit.

  I’m done being a pussy-ass, sentimental whiner. I’m done begging her to pretty-please give me the time of day. I want her and I’m going to have her and that’s all there is to it. Sarah Cruz is about to learn one of the immutable laws of nature, a principle as immovable and unavoidable as the theory of relativity or Boyle’s law of gases or motherfucking gravity. It’s called Faraday’s law of attraction and it goes a little something like this: When Jonas Faraday wants a particular woman, Jonas Faraday shall have her. And in this particular instance, Jonas Faraday wants the magnifi
cent Sarah Cruz. End of fucking story.

  Chapter 12

  Sarah

  “But why?” Kat asks. “I mean, jeez, he went to all that trouble to find you, and you won’t even go out to dinner with the guy?”

  We’re sitting at my little kitchen table eating Pasta Roni and Caesar salad for lunch after coming back from a yoga class.

  I sigh. “It’s complicated,” I say.

  “Even if he turns out to be a douchebag, worst case scenario you could just sit there and look at him and still have a spectacularly good time. Oh, and a free meal.”

  “We’re fundamentally incompatible,” I say evenly.

  “But how do you know that if you won’t even meet him?”

  “Because I know,” I say.

  “So you say. I wish you’d tell me what he said in his damned application that’s got you all aflutter.” She turns her head and glances at me sideways. “Is he some kind of freak?” She winks.

  I roll my eyes. “You know all that stuff is confidential.” I lower my voice. “But no.”

  “He’s into S and M, isn’t he?”

  “I can’t talk about it—but no. We’re just not compatible on a basic level, personality-wise, goal-wise, so it’s pointless to subject myself to disappointment and maybe even heartbreak.”

  “But what if you’re the one girl in the whole world who can change him?” She smirks.

  I know she’s kidding—mocking that clichéd impulse that attracts every girl to an irredeemable bad boy at least once in her life—but she’s hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what I keep hoping I am—the one girl in the whole world who can change him. It’s ludicrous. “Yeah. If he could just find The One, he’d be a changed man,” I say, trying to keep my voice light and bright. But I don’t feel light and bright. I feel miserable.