These questions weren’t meant to be insulting or obtrusive to the Client. We needed to dive down the rabbit hole of sex because that was how I finished my job and finished it quickly. When I knew a man’s turn-ons, turn-offs, and everything in between, my job was a hundred times easier. If Mr. Silva didn’t have any noteworthy fetishes, then fine. I’d close out the job and realize I still had a thing or two to learn. But if Mrs. Silva had purposefully left the space blank out of embarrassment, a desire for privacy, or because she just didn’t want to give me the nitty-gritty details, I would be pissed.
When I’d asked her if everything I needed was in the file and she said yes, she’d better have damn well meant it. I didn’t like to flounder my way through an Errand because the Client hadn’t done their simple assignment.
A few hours and a second round of extra-cherries cherry Coke later, I slammed the file closed. I’d read every note, pondered over every little clue I could use, and was exhausted.
I knew what kind of clothes to pick up; I knew what kind of makeup to wear. I knew what kind of smile caught his attention and how to shape my mouth to make him hard. I had it all.
Tomorrow I would transform into the blonde, bronze goddess Mr. Silva would come to know as Sienna Stevens. Tonight, though, I would go to bed and fall asleep as myself.
Whoever that person now was.
The Greet
CHAMELEON DAY IS exactly what one would expect. It’s the day I pull out my credit card and didn’t stop swiping until I’d been dyed, tanned, styled, and primped into the ideal future MRTS. (mistress) of Mr. Silva.
It took most of the morning to get my canvas prepped and ready and most of the afternoon to paint it. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the streaking and plucking. It was a necessary evil of the job though. But once my canvas was ready to be painted, I savored the shopping. G gave us a generous stipend at the start of every Errand and let us use it as we saw fit. I used a good chunk of it on Chameleon Day.
After paying the salon—the bill had been in the four digits—I set myself loose on an open air mall in South Beach. After a few hours and few thousand dollars, I had a good Mr. Silva/Miami wardrobe. Mr. Silva’s proclivity in the woman’s clothing department didn’t have any real surprises. Snug-fitting cocktail dresses and stilettos were most men’s catnip. I just made sure the dresses were tailored to his specific tastes: short dresses in shades of red that showed off a liberal amount of cl**vage. Mr. Silva really was the stereotypical rich womanizer.
Most of the men I worked with were “stereotypical.”
By ten o’clock that night, I’d been up for sixteen hours. My day should have been done, but it was really just getting started.
I handed the BMW keys off to the valet outside of The Pleasure Room, the club in Miami to be seen at on a Friday or Saturday night. The burlesque club was known for giving the audience “The Full Tease,” served innovative libations, and was the hangout for at least one A-lister every weekend of the year.
It was the kind of place I’d avoid when I wasn’t working. Tonight though, I was making the Greet, and since Mr. Silva owned The Pleasure Room, it was the place to be for Sienna Stevens.
Like all the top clubs in South Beach, The Pleasure Room had a line of bodies wrapped around the building, waiting for their chance to witness the full tease on stage or to bump into whatever Hollywood heart-throb or darling was in there. Me, though? I didn’t do lines. Not because I had an over-inflated sense of self, but because time was one of my most precious commodities.
I couldn’t afford to wait in a line for hours when I had an Eight’s attention to catch. The sooner I finished with Mr. Silva, the sooner I could move on to the next job, the sooner I could reach the magic number in my bank account, hang up my Eve hat, and start enjoying that whole freedom thing.
After finishing my homework the night before, I’d called G to give her the heads up that she might get a call from an unhappy wife to an Eight or a Nine in the next few days. I told her if she did call G, I expected her to assign the job to me since I’d drummed up the business. She told me to focus on Mr. Silva and she would focus on running her business. I might have lost the battle, but I wouldn’t lose the war. I wanted that Errand if the Eves got it.
But G was right. I did need to focus on Mr. Silva. He was the Errand. Thinking of previous or future Errands did no good, so I shoved aside everything but why I was there. I couldn’t leave until I’d ingratiated my way into Mr. Silva’s head. I had to be the itch he couldn’t scratch. That would make me the woman he had to have, at all costs.
I put on my game face and walk as I approached the entrance where a couple of men with chests as wide as a Hummer guarded it. One had a checklist, and the other was obviously there just to kick ass if needed. I had their attention, both of their attentions, when I was still fifty feet away.
Those kinds of men—young, invincible, virile ones—could be read like a book. I didn’t need a thick manila folder to figure out their individual wants and needs. Men in their twenties were simple. They all wanted and needed the same thing: to stick their dicks in as many women as often as they could.
My job was easy when young men were the gatekeepers to something I needed, specifically to skip the line and saunter inside of those doors in this instance. So, knowing what I did of their many/often needs, my job was to let them assume they could have me. I had to provide exactly the right amount of flirt, say just the right thing to lead them to believe they had a chance in this life and their next to bang me. It was an exact science.
As I approached, I met each of their gazes, gave them a just-barely parted-mouth smile, and added a bit more sway to my step.
The rope was open for me before I’d set foot on the black and gold tile leading up to the club’s entrance.
Young men were so easy. Child’s play, really.
Once I was inside the club, I understood what all the fuss was about. It was like Disneyland for adults. The Pleasure Room had two floors. The stage was a large square in the center of the room, sectioned off into four individual stages where different dancers performed. A bar area was set up at each end of the room. The rest of the space on the first floor was dance floor, while the second floor looked to mainly be for seating.
Everyone had a smile on their face and a drink in their hand. Everyone was dancing and celebrating like it was the party to end all parties. Everyone was there for a good time. Everyone except for me—I was there to work.
I milled about the room searching for Mr. Silva. He’d be somewhere on the floor. I knew nightclub owners like him from two Errands I’d worked before. They were the kind of men who didn’t want to be locked up in an office when the party was happening a floor below them. They were the kind of men who liked to be seen and wanted to be recognized. They thrived off of it.
It was also what they expected, and the best way to get a man’s attention was to lead with the unexpected.
I finally saw him. As expected, he was in the middle of a little entourage. All of them were women, and most of them were dancers. He was laughing and touching and charming, just as I’d expected, decked out in a dark blue suit with just enough sheen that the dim light of the club made him stand out from the next guy in a suit. The wedding ring was missing from his left hand, just like every last one of my former Targets. His teeth were fake, as was his tan, but the gleam in his eyes—that predatory, I-take-what-I-want-when-I-want-it—was real. The most real thing about him.
I tipped my shoulders back a bit, arched my back ever so slightly, and started toward Mr. Silva and his female entourage. How would I stand out amongst the couple dozen beautiful women staggered around him?
I would be the only one ignoring him.
Ten more feet and I’d make eye contact for no more than a second or two. Just long enough for him to know I’d noticed him and would keep walking. All men loved the chase and wanted what they couldn’t have, but men like Mr. Silva were at the top of the food chain in that department.
I could tell he’d noticed me from the corner of his eyes, and his gaze was just shifting when someone stepped in front of me.
“Damn, now I understand why this is called The Pleasure Room,” the young man decked out in a cheap suit said, staring at me with a sideways smile as he fitted his hands to my hips. I knew the look he was giving me had done a job on plenty of women, but I had a built-in B.S. detector when it came to all things male.
I glowered up at him. “And you’re about to know it as The Punishment Room from tonight on if you don’t get your hands off of me.” The guy was big and built, just like ninety-nine percent of the meatheads wandering down Ocean Drive on South Beach, but G made sure to include self-defense training in our Eve education. I knew just where to punch, poke, and prod at a guy to bring him to his knees.
Captain Meathead obviously didn’t have a lot going on upstairs because his one-sided smile only shifted higher. He lowered his mouth to my ear. “I like when a girl talks dirty. It makes me imagine the filthy things she’ll be cursing up at me when I’m between her legs.”
All right. I wouldn’t even feel bad when I drove my knee into that dude’s nads. Maybe stumbling around for a week with ice strapped to his crotch would beat some sense into his thick-head.
Right before I could deliver knee-to-nads, a voluptuous little thing skidded up beside us. “What the hell, Chad?” she half-shrieked.
“Shea, calm down,” Chad instructed, lifting his hands.
Shea didn’t calm down. She pretty much went with the opposite. Lifting her blinged out hand, she slapped Chad across his cheek before turning my way. If the chick tried to slap me, she was going down. I didn’t do girl drama.
I gave her a warning look and prepared to grab her hand, but she did something I wasn’t expecting. She upended her glass of white wine on my chest.
“There,” she said, making sure the last drop of wine landed on my dress. “Now I’m calm.” Without another word, she flicked her hair and powered away.
“Shea!” Chad called out, flashing me an apologetic look before chasing her.
Muttering a string of curses, I worked my way back into the crowd before Mr. Silva’s gaze could drift my way again and find me a livid, wine-soaked mess. I went to every Greet prepared, but that snafu would take a little time to sort out.
I’d had a drink dumped on me before. Thankfully Shea’s was only white wine. Let’s just say that white linen spattered with bloody mary is beyond repair.
The women’s lounge and restroom was at the end of a long, dark hall and was mostly empty. Other than a girl adjusting her cl**vage at the long mirror, I was alone. I dug around in my small clutch until I found a mini-spritzer bottle of club soda. Some women didn’t leave home without their lipstick; I didn’t leave home with my spritzer of club soda. To date, save for the white linen/bloody mary fiasco, I hadn’t met a stain club soda couldn’t tackle.
After spritzing, dabbing, and drying my dress under the hand dryers, I was good to go. Next time, I would kick the offending meathead boyfriend in the balls first and dodge the girlfriend and her drink later.