This was the very reason call girls don’t love. We don’t love, we don’t lust, and we don’t spend our days thinking, What if? Being a call girl is taking and giving without really giving any of yourself at all.
I don’t give my name, my age, my likes or dislikes. I don’t give anything except what the client pays for, and there’s only one part of me they’re paying for. They don’t pay for the story of my parents’ deaths, of how I took this life because it was a quick and easy fix for me financially, or of how I dropped out of college and a chance at my dream career because this was so much higher paid.
And isn’t everything about money?
You pay me it,s to fuck you, and I take it. That money gives me pretty things—a house full of beautiful clothes and shoes—and that money gives you the time of your fucking life. The same money keeps our tryst hidden from prying eyes and silent from oversensitive ears.
It also guarantees that you’ll be back again and again.
Usually that’s a good thing. Usually clients know nothing about you. They don’t know your bra size or how you gasp when lips brush a certain spot on your neck, and they definitely don’t know what it feels like to be truly inside of you, connected in every way.
Usually clients weren’t George Stone.
“Thanks,” I mumbled as Brenda filled my glass.
“Looks like you’ve had a shitty day.” She sat opposite me with her own drink, her eyes soft and nonjudgmental. Thank fucking gods I have a best friend who gets me.
“Apart from my aunt pointing out my latest client knows exactly where to find me followed by reminding me we don’t fall in love, it’s hunky-fucking-dory.”
“Back up. I missed something.”
“I had a late call last night—a function for some guy taking over Daddy’s company. Just a date.”
“And? The big deal is?”
I buried my face in my arms on the table. “The guy was George.”
My best friend said nothing, and I knew I’d truly shocked her. Brenda always had ten words where two will do. “As in?”
“Paris George. Summer-fling George. Love-of-my-motherfucking-life George!”
“Well, shit.”
“Shit? Shit? That’s all you have? Because I have some words that are several letters stronger than damn shit!”
Her shoe came into contact with my shin.
“Ouch!” I sat up and glared at her.
“Pull it together, Gina,” she ordered. “You don’t lose your shit over a guy. Ever.”
“This… This shocked the ever-loving life out of me, Brenda. I had no idea it was him. He was an anon and he thought he’d hired Christy McCartney. The girl he got was little old me.”
“I can’t see how it’s such a bad thing.”
Jesus Christ. Every brunette might need a blond best friend, but next time I’ll have a switched-on one, please.
“Do I need to spell it out for you?”
She nodded.
“One”—I held up a finger—“personal relationships are off-limits with clients. Pretending to be a girlfriend is different, but you never, ever fall in love with them. Two, Christy McCartney is that for a reason. She separates the pretend from the real, the working from the playing. And three, George Stone knows my name. He knows who I am. There are a handful of people in this city who really know who Christy McCartney is, and he’s now one of them.”
“Okay, but it’s not your fault you have a personal relationship with him. If you’d known it was him when Monica called, you wouldn’t have done it, right?”
“Obviously not. You don’t mix business with pleasure in my life.”
“So you don’t even...” She raised her eyebrows.
“Brenda.”
“Sorry. Sorry. I’m just sayin’…”
“No. I don’t. Can we get back to the problem now?”
She shrugged one shoulder and leaned back, tilting her glass side to side. “I get everything you said, babe, but I just don’t see the problem. He needed a date for one night and you did it. It’s not like you’re going to see each other again, is it?”
***** ***** ****** ****** ****** ******* **
“See you again soon, Mr. Mike.” I shut the door to the extension and leaned against it. God. He was always a tiring one. There were only so many ways you can have sex with a fifty-year-old man before you’re afraid you’ll break his back—a memo he didn’t get, because he thought taking Viagra before he gets here will make it nice for us both.
Thank God my fake orgasm would show up a pornn star’s.
I left Monica’s twenty percent in the envelope, and tucked my share into my purse, ready to deposit it in the bank the next day. The only thing on my mind right then was a hot shower to scrub old man off me and then sinking into a bubble bath until I turned into a prune.
The water practically burnt my skin as I stood beneath the spray, but I definitely felt cleaner when I got out. If I lived anywhere other than Seattle, the water bill would kill me, even with my higher-than-average earnings. As it was, it costed me more to heat the water than it did to use it, and my water tank barely held enough to wash a freaking bunny rabbit.
This job required shower after shower after shower to scrub old man and sneaky husbands off my body—something that would be slightly more bearable if there was the chance of an orgasm once in a while. But no. No orgasm. Not even a tremble of one.
That was why I had Mr. Jack Rabbit under my bed.
Yep, that’s me. Gina Lopez, high-class escort and responsible for my own orgasm since 2006.
I was about to dip my toe into my corner tub when my cell shrilled. Fuck that. Monica won’t call when she knows I’ve just finished with a client, and anyone else can just wait. I let it go to voicemail, and I was about to sit down when her voice rung through my house.
“Gina, get your ass to my house now. We need to talk.”
Aw, shit.
What was that about her not calling?
I threw on some sweatpants, a tank, and Ugg boots and shoved my still-wet hair into a ponytail. She wanted me now? She took me as I was then.
The drive across Seattle to her suburban dream was surprisingly stress free, and when I pulled up, she sas standing with her hands on her hips in her doorway. Her lips were pursed and her brows furrowed in a look I knew too well. It was a look that said only one thing—my agent was pissed. Incredibly so.
“Inside,” she barked.
I looked to the sky and followed her in. Monica in a bad mood was never fun. For anyone.
