I needed a lot of things. Needing to help someone else was not one of them. In fact, that was probably the last thing I needed, on a long list of last things. I was going to have to watch my back with him. Not let him get under my skin. I had enough people to take care of.
We were both watching the numbers on the dial go up, not saying a word. I wondered what he was thinking, and whether or not he felt the same heat between us that I felt.
I wanted to un-feel it. It would just be so much easier, all things considered.
We reached the top floor, and James punched the code in for his unit.
“Holy shit,” I said, knocked out of my inner monologue by the stark beauty of James’s apartment. “This is gorgeous.”
The space was massive, with enormous floor-to-ceiling windows letting in a flood of warm sunlight. Dark hardwood floors gleamed beneath a huge couch packed with colorful throw pillows, and colored clay vases dotted the various tables in the room. It was a stunning but comfortable space, a place where you wanted to pick up a huge book and curl up on the couch.
Given James’s intense attitude, comfortable was not what I was expecting.
“I’m glad you like it.” He released my hand and motioned for me to follow him in. “Thank you. I don’t like being back up here, so I wanted the space to feel like my house in California. Lots of light. Comfortable.”
“It’s definitely not classic Boston,” I said, “but I love it.”
“Where do you live?” he asked, and I could tell he almost didn’t want to.
“New England School of Design campus housing,” I lied, easily.
He smiled at me again. “Where do you really live, Audrey?”
“Southie,” I said, and he nodded, not surprised. “It’s getting really yuppie, though.”
“I bet.” He paused for a beat, and we stood there, awkwardly. The escort and the billionaire, all chatted out. He looked at his watch. “I’ll show you your room,” he said, heading down a hallway. I followed close behind, marveling at how enormous the apartment was, wanting to stop and ogle at the view of the city and the Commons below.
James threw open a door, and I stepped into a beautiful bedroom with a king-sized bed. I went and sat on the bed and looked up at James.
“Thank you. It’s lovely,” I said.
He nodded at me, and a flicker of something—I didn’t know him well enough to recognize it—crossed his face. He started backing out the door.
“You don’t have to go, James,” I said in a low voice. “If you want, we can just do this now. So we seem natural around your family.” I patted the bed.
What are you doing? I asked myself. He told Elena no sex. You were happy about that. So what the hell, Audrey?
The thing was, I only sort of wanted to fuck him. It was more that I wanted to get it out of the way. It was more that I wanted this just to be a regular job, a regular exchange—money for sex.
Not money for I wasn’t sure what.
I wanted to make him a John.
James smiled at me and held up his hand. “I’m sure it would be…a pleasure,” he said. His eyes took me in hungrily but only for a moment. “But I already told Elena. That’s not what you’re for. You’re here to play a public role. So try to keep your legs crossed, and keep your eye on the ball. The ball, Audrey. Not my balls.”
He closed the door, hard, and I tried to ignore the inexplicable fact that I wanted to cry once I was alone.
James
Fucking women, I thought as I marched down to my bedroom and slammed the door.
You never knew what they wanted. First, it was sex, then it was money. Right now it was sex for money. Or something.
I couldn’t figure this Audrey out, and I didn’t want to.
My cock was hard and throbbing; it didn’t want to figure her out, either, but it wanted to get in there and pound her, hard. I didn’t blame it.
I went into the bathroom and locked the door. Go back in there and get it over with, I thought. I wanted to. I wanted to fuck her, to watch that long brown hair spill down her back. Grab her breasts and suck on them, greedily claiming her body as mine.
So. Fucking. Inconvenient.
I unzipped my pants and grabbed myself, a little roughly, imagining her writhing beneath me, arching her back, and calling my name.
It only took a couple more images like that to make me come, hot, stupid liquid spurting out of me. It was easy.
Too easy.
I groaned, spent but still unsatisfied, and leaned against the counter. Clearly, I wanted to fuck her. She was beautiful, sexy, and she actually seemed smart. I was surprised by that and angry at myself for being surprised—I prided myself on not underestimating people. Underestimating people was how you got stabbed in the back, or got an ice pick to the back of the head, Trotsky-style.
So you should just do it, I thought, cleaning up the mess I’d made. But that was just it. I didn’t want to clean up another mess. When I’d gone to Elena, I’d said no sex because I just wanted this to be a business transaction. I wanted it to be another item on a list that I could control and check off.
Attend Todd’s wedding. Check.
Appear to be successful personally as well as professionally. Check.
Not have to deal with so many questions and nagging about having an heir that I want to kill everybody in my family. Check.
If Audrey hadn’t been nice, and smart and funny, I’d be back there banging her right now, as soon as she’d asked. I was very particular, but I was not a man that said no to sex with a beautiful woman easily. I was not that controlled, even though I desperately wished I was. It would make the messiness of life a lot easier.
But she was nice. And smart and funny. I didn’t need this to be any more complicated than it already was. I didn’t need to like her. In fact, liking her would work against me in the long run.
So no sex was going to stay no sex, but for a different reason than I’d planned.
I grabbed my phone, thinking about calling Elena. I could return Audrey and ask for a different girl, I reasoned, someone more like that Jenny. Someone more obvious. She wouldn’t work as well with my family, but I wouldn’t need to pay any attention to her, either. She would literally be a no-brainer, ha ha.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on my door.
“What,” I said as Audrey came through the threshold. She looked twitchy and troubled.
“I’m sorry about before,” she said nervously. “It’s the escort in me. I guess I thought you didn’t mean it. What you told Elena.”
I raised my eyebrows at her.
“About the no sex thing,” she said, explaining. “So I figured I’d be the one to break the ice.”
“I appreciate that, Audrey,” I said and smiled at her. “You thinking of me.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be sarcastic. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I crossed a line. Now that I know how you really feel, it won’t happen again.”
She looked at the phone in my hand. “Please don’t fire me,” she said, and I could hear real worry in her voice.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said. I dropped the phone onto my bed, secretly guilty as charged. Once again, I’d underestimated her. I didn’t know why she needed the job so badly, and it was a failure on my part not to have considered it. “I told Elena I didn’t want to sleep with who I hired. That’s mainly because I’m trying to keep my distance from these two weeks. I don’t want it to get complicated—I want to be on auto-pilot,” I said. I figured I could be honest with her, at least partially. What did I have to lose?