Oooh, shit this is taking forever.
It didn’t matter how selective you are, how tight you squeeze, or how fast you go. There was always one that’ll take longer to come than everyone else you know. It didn’t happen often and they definitely didn’t go on my regular client list. I got paid for this but I sure as shit didn’t have the patience to bounce on some guy until he decides he wants to shoot his load.
He grunted and groaned beneath me, his lazy thrusts no match for my desperate ones. "Jesus fucking Christ, will you cum already?" I said to myself.
I stole a look at the clock on the hotel bed side clock. 'Five minutes left. Time to end this.' I cringed and crept my hand around his thigh to his backside. God, I hated this part. I squeezed his cock at the same time I slipped my finger in his asshole
“Oh god!”
And there it was.
I gave him a saucy wink and got off of him. Finally. I’ve been on top of him so long my legs had forgotten how to work, but he paid for an hour so an hour was all he was gonna get.
There were four golden rules in the business. Every escort I knew abided by them. At all times. They were non-negotiable. Ironclad. Set in friggin’ stone.
Get the money first.
Don’t go over the time.
Don’t fall for your client.
And no freaking sob stories.
Unfortunately for me, that last rule was one no one bothered to tell the guy. I’d barely tucked the envelope full of his money into my purse before he started telling me about his pregnant wife who wasn’t up for sex.
Hey—don’t judge me. This is my job, and if a guy chooses to cheat on his wife with me, then that’s his deal. There was a reason I didn’t ask personal questions, and that’s it. Getting names and shit was what I pay my agent twenty percent for.
I buttoned my coat and left the hotel room as quickly as I entered it. There was only one hotel I’d work in in the city and that’s because I knew the concierge. Ian was a darling, and despite my constant refusal to sleep with him, he always covered my back.
“Busy?” I sidled up to his counter and proped my chin up on my elbow.
His glittering blue eyes looked down at me. “Busy keeping you off my boss’s radar.”
I grinned and slipped a fifty-dollar bill into his hand. “You’re a doll, Ian.”
“You know you don’t have to do that every time.”
“Just keeping you sweet.”
“There are plenty of ways you can do that, Gina.”
“Oh, sweetie, you know where I stand there. I don’t do personal relationships. They just don’t work when you have my job.” I straightened and touched his arm. “When I stop to settle down with a white picket fence, a chocolate Lab, and two-point-five snotty kids, you’ll be the first person I call.”
“Better be. Until then, I’ll just stand here behind my little desk waiting for you to come to your senses and fall madly in love with my boyish charm.”
I laughed and pecked his cheek. “I’m sure you will.”
He grinned, that exact boyish charm glinting in his eyes. “Mark has your cab outside.”
“Thanks, hon. I’ll see you soon,” I said. I threw a casual wave over my shoulder as I stepped outside. Evening was falling across Seattle, the lights from the buildings illuminating the darkening sky and drowning out the stars.
“Ms. Christy.” Mark tipped his hat and opened the cab door for me.
“Mark.” I shot a dazzling smile his way and got into the car, smoothly passing him a ten-dollar bill as I did so. He returned my smile as the cab pulled away, and I relaxed back in the chair, breathing deeply.
The ride home was when Christy Lopez became Gina McCartney, when the call girl becomes the real girl.
Until my cell buzzes in my hand and my agent’s name flashes on the screen. I swallowed my sigh.
“Monica.”
“You’re late, Gina.”
Fuck.
“I had to wait for the cab,” I lied, mouthing, “Sorry,” when the driver glanced at me in his mirror. “I’m on my way now.”
“Five minutes.” The line went dead.
I let out that sigh and leaned forward. “Hey, can we go to 2840 Cascade Way in Bellevue instead?”
“Sure thing, lady.”
“Thanks.”
I stared out the window and stayed in my state of limbo between the two versions of me. How could I forget to go to Monica’s after Mr. Can’t Come? It was a Friday, and she takes her share of our earnings every Friday. Her share. Shit. Do I even have that?
I rifled through my purse, barely breathing, until I felt the envelope hidden in the lining. At least I was thinking this morning… Discreetly, I counted out her share from today’s earnings and tucked it into the envelope as we pulled up outside. Thirty of my hard-earned dollars fell on the driver’s lap with a, “Keep the change,” and I ran—as well as someone can run in four-inch heels—up the path to Monica’s idyllic suburban dream house.
You know, the kind usually reserved for families with two-point-five bubbly, screaming kids and a bouncing puppy. Not a woman with a hot tub and an escort agency who mothers a teen with a penchant for crashing his car.
I knocked twice and let myself in. I’d been in the house more times than I could count in the last five years. It was comfortable there—from the white walls with an accent wall in each room to the endless photographs wherever you walked. The pictures were all of Monica with her girls in various cities around the country, from Vegas to Miami to New York.
“You’re late,” Monica repeated her earlier words, and I sat in the only empty seat around the table. “If you tell me you went over the time, shit’s gonna hit the fucking fan, Gina.”
“I haven’t gone over the time since you took me on, Mon, and I’m not starting now. The cab was late. I’m here now. Can we get on with this?”
My agent cocked her head to the side, her lips quirked. “Hot date tonight?”
“If you can call my slippers, ice cream, and Brenda a hot date, then yeah. Smokin’.”
“Funny. All right, girls. Show me what you got.” She made a ‘gimme’ motion with her hands, and one by one, brown envelopes rustled out of purses and onto the table.
“One and a half.”
“Seven hundred.”
“Seven fucking hundred? You on your period?” Monica snaps at Lori. “Get a damn implant. I don’t have the time for you to have a week off. Lori, you better have better than that shit.”
