Chapter One
This is taking forever.
It doesn’t matter how selective you are, how tight you squeeze, or how fast you go. There’s always one that’ll take longer to come than everyone else you know. It doesn’t happen often and they definitely don’t go on my regular client list. I get paid for this but I sure as shit don’t have the patience to bounce on some guy until he decides he wants to shoot his load.
He grunts and groans beneath me, his lazy thrusts no match for my desperate ones. Jesus f**king Christ, will you come already?
I steal a look at the clock on the hotel nightstand. Five minutes left. Time to end this. I cringe and creep my hand around his thigh to his backside. God, I hate this part. I squeeze his c**k at the same time I slip my finger in his ass**le—
“Oh god!”
And there it is.
I give him a saucy wink and get off of him. Finally. I’ve been on top of him so long my legs have forgotten how to work, but he paid for an hour so an hour is all he’s gonna get.
There are four golden rules in this business. Every escort I know abides by them. At all times. They’re 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 is one no one bothered to tell this guy. I’d barely tucked the envelope full of his money into my purse before he started telling me about his pregnant wife who isn’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’s a reason I don’t ask personal questions, and that’s it. Getting names and shit is what I pay my agent twenty percent for.
I button my coat and leave the hotel room as quickly as I entered it. There’s only one hotel I’ll work in in this city and that’s because I know the concierge. Connor is a darling, and despite my constant refusal to sleep with him, he always covers my back.
“Busy?” I sidle up to his counter and prop my chin up on my elbow.
His glittering blue eyes look down at me. “Busy keeping you off my boss’s radar.”
I grin and slip a fifty-dollar bill into his hand. “You’re a doll, Con.”
“You know you don’t have to do that every time.”
“Just keeping you sweet.”
“There are plenty of ways you can do that, Mia.”
“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 straighten and touch 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 laugh and peck his cheek. “I’m sure you will.”
He grins, that exact boyish charm glinting in his eyes. “Marc has your cab outside.”
“Thanks, hon. I’ll see you soon,” I say. I throw a casual wave over my shoulder as I step outside. Evening is falling across Seattle, the lights from the buildings illuminating the darkening sky and drowning out the stars.
“Ms. Lopez.” Marc tips his hat and opens the cab door for me.
“Marc.” I shoot a dazzling smile his way and get into the car, smoothly passing him a ten-dollar bill as I do so. He returns my smile as the cab pulls away, and I relax back in the chair, breathing deeply.
The ride home is when Mia Lopez becomes Dayton Black, 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 swallow my sigh.
“Monique.”
“You’re late, Dayton.”
Fuck.
“I had to wait for the cab,” I lie, mouthing, “Sorry,” when the driver glances at me in his mirror. “I’m on my way now.”
“Five minutes.” The line goes dead.
I let out that sigh and lean forward. “Hey, can we go to 2440 Cascade Way in Bellevue instead?”
“Sure thing, lady.”
“Thanks.”
I stare out the window and stay in my state of limbo between the two versions of me. How could I forget to go to Monique’s after Mr. Can’t Come? It’s a Friday, and she takes her share of our earnings every Friday. Her share. Shit. Do I even have that?
I rifle through my purse, barely breathing, until I feel the envelope hidden in the lining. At least I was thinking this morning… Discreetly, I count out her share from today’s earnings and tuck it into the envelope as we pull up outside. Thirty of my hard-earned dollars fall on the driver’s lap with a, “Keep the change,” and I run—as well as someone can run in four-inch heels—up the path to Monique’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 knock twice and let myself in. I’ve been in this house more times than I can count in the last five years. It’s comfortable here—from the white walls with an accent wall in each room to the endless photographs wherever you walk. The pictures are all of Monique with her girls in various cities around the country, from Vegas to Miami to New York.
“You’re late,” Monique repeats her earlier words, and I sit in the only empty seat around the table. “If you tell me you went over the time, shit’s gonna hit the f**king fan, Dayton.”
“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 cocks her head to the side, her lips quirked. “Hot date tonight?”
“If you can call my slippers, ice cream, and Liv a hot date, then yeah. Smokin’.”
“Funny. All right, girls. Show me what you got.” She makes a ‘gimme’ motion with her hands, and one by one, brown envelopes rustle out of purses and onto the table.
“One and a half.”
“Seven hundred.”
“Seven f**king hundred? You on your period?” Monique snaps at Lori. “Get a damn implant. I don’t have the time for you to have a week off. Robyn, you better have better than that shit.”