Chapter 2
JACK
I raised my hand to knock—a third time, jeez, had the guy changed his mind or something?
—but then I froze when I realized my hand was actually trembling.
Worse, I couldn’t seem to stop it, and that probably wouldn’t go over well.
Or… or if it did, I wasn’t sure I was up for being with the kind of man who would get off on how terrified I was.
Not that I had much of a choice about that, since I was already here.
I dropped my hand without knocking again and bit my lip, almost sick from the sudden swirl of dread in my stomach. What if the guy tonight—the client, Greg had said to call him—was like Max?
I plucked the too-small shorts Greg had loaned me out of my butt crack (again) and let my eyes dart down the long hallway toward the elevators, because technically, I did have a choice… and as my panic crested, I was really, really tempted to bolt for the exit and make a dumb one.
I hadn’t actually knocked on the door that loudly, had I?
I leaned in a little closer, but I didn’t hear anyone coming yet, so the… the client probably hadn’t even heard me, right?
But even if he had, it wasn’t actually that far back to the elevators, so if I did bolt for it before he opened the door—
Well, if I did, then what?
My shoulders slumped in hopeless resignation. I’d just be screwed in a whole different way, that was what.
I couldn’t be dumb about this. Greg had done me a favor, and I… well, I literally had no other options.
“You’ve got this, Jack,” I whispered to myself, forcing my eyes away from escape and back to the huge door looming in front of me. “In and out. Easy peasy. Grin and bear it. Just close your eyes and think of England—eep.”
My mini pep talk ended in an embarrassing squeak, my throat closing up completely at the sound of a murmuring voice on the other side of the door. A deep-as-sin voice, coming closer.
My heart rate spiked. I guess the client had heard me.
In other circumstances—like the kind of circumstances that never happened in real life but that sometimes, secretly, I kind of wished were real—I might have called the sound of that low, rumbling voice soothing…
or even sexy. But now? My stomach took one of those nauseating nosedives that happened when you tipped over the top of a roller coaster, because all of a sudden, this felt way, way more real than it had five seconds ago.
“Oh God,” I whispered, feeling all sorts of wobbly.
This was really happening. There was an actual man on the other side of the door who would expect…
things. And even though I wasn’t a virgin anymore and had done plenty of things once Max had given me a place to live—and had had lots more done to me, mostly by him, but a few times (memories that still made my stomach roil), by his friends, too—for some reason, this felt just as terrifying as that first time with Max, back when I hadn’t had any experience at all.
I tried to wipe my sweaty palms on my shorts but jeez, they were really short.
Not very absorbent, either. The tight, sleeveless crop top Greg had loaned me was a little better, though…
but dang it, now I was flushing with a whole different kind of shame, thinking of how some of the people in the lobby had looked at me when I’d walked through it on my way up here.
Best not to think about that, I guess.
“Okay,” I whispered, even more softly this time, in case the, uh, the client could hear me through the door, too. “Okay okay okay okay. I can do this. I c-c-can.”
I clamped my lips closed, not even believing myself when I stuttered like that.
I checked my hands. Still trembling. Took a deep breath... and couldn’t, not with my throat still feeling so tight.
Pep talk: zero; debilitating fear: one.
I could still do this, though. I had to.
The door suddenly swung open, and adrenaline slammed through me so hard it made my stomach hurt.
I tried to smile anyway. Failed. Tried to pay attention to what the man—the client, twice my size and dressed way better than me—was actually saying.
Couldn’t do that either. Not with my heart pounding so dang loud and my brain fuzzing up as my chest got tighter and tighter, making it hard to even breathe.
I nodded in response to whatever it was he’d said, hoping it would do for an answer and knowing all my answers had to be “yes” anyway, because the client was always right, right? Wasn’t that a thing? But a frown of epic proportions was growing on his unfairly handsome face, so… so maybe not.
Oh God. We hadn’t even started yet, and he was already mad at me.
I squeezed my eyes closed out of self-preservation, an ice-cold spike of total terror stabbing through me. It stole my ability to breathe completely and locked me in place like I was frozen, so no bolting for me now, I guess. That option was definitely off the table.
Big, warm hands suddenly closed around my bare shoulders.
“Are you okay?” the client asked in that low, rumbling voice that probably should have ramped my terror up even more, no matter how nice it sounded, since it was coming from a man who would have total access to whatever he wanted from me for the rest of the night.
Instead, though, his question sent an unfamiliar flutter through my belly. He’d sounded like he really wanted to know.
I cracked one eye back open.
Then the other.
Because… dang. The client was still frowning at me, but he looked more concerned than pissed off. His hands felt really nice, too. Not like he was pinning me in place, but like he was stabilizing all that uncontrollable trembling inside me.
I blinked, drew in a shuddering breath now that I could actually breathe again, then actually looked at him.
He wasn’t what I’d been expecting.
He was old-ish, which I had expected, but he was also hot.
.. I mean, hot in an older-guy way that included bits of silver at his temples and crinkles around the corners of his eyes and what seemed to be a solid, non-six-pack kind of body under the designer clothes he was wearing, but still. Definitely hot.
But the part that caught me off guard was that he was also nice-looking, even under that epic frown he still wore.
Nice as in “kind,” not just attractive..
. which was probably a supremely dumb thing to assume.
Like, come on, I knew you couldn’t tell what someone was actually like just from looking, or else why would I ever have gone home with Max in the first place?
But still... maybe doing whatever it turned out he wanted from me tonight wouldn’t be quite as bad as I’d gotten myself all worked up worrying about.
Maybe.
I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to say… something. Some sort of verification phrase or whatever, to let him know what I was actually here for. (Even though, hello, booty shorts with no underwear and a crop top you could see my nipples through?)
But okay, I couldn’t afford to mess this up and he was starting to look at me funny for staying silent for so long, so—
“Hi,” I blurted, totally blanking on what the super special secret phrase was supposed to be.
Then I suddenly remembered, and heat flooded my cheeks.
Talk about making me feel just as worthless as Max had always said I was.
I went ahead and said it anyway, though, because I had to.
“I’m, um, your party favor for tonight?”
I clamped my hands together behind my back since they’d started trembling again, then tried to smile, hoping the client hadn’t noticed. Because even if he truly wasn’t like Max, nothing good could come of letting him see that I was scared, right?
Or at least... nervous.
Which was still stupid, though. I should be grateful.
I had zero money, Max hadn’t let me take anything with me when he’d kicked me out, and it wasn’t like Greg could let me stay with him forever.
Besides, I couldn’t imagine that sleeping with a stranger for one single night, especially one who looked nice, could be any worse than what I’d endured for the last three years with Max.
But—
“You’re my party favor?” the client repeated, dropping his hands from my shoulders like I was a hot potato and taking a big step back.
“Yes?” I said, which made him frown even harder than he had before.
I started to tremble even worse. Not just my hands this time, but all over.
Those first two nights after Max had kicked me out, before I’d gotten up the courage to ask Greg if I could stay with him for a bit, I’d heard stories about what some of the other guys on the streets—some of them kids younger than I’d been when Max had first taken me in—had done to get by when they’d had nowhere else to turn.
And they’d said some of those guys had looked nice, too.
But… but that had been on the streets. Not in a fancy hotel room like this.
My client gave me a slow once-over, his eyes flaring so hot for a second that I trembled in a whole different way, a way I didn’t understand at all but didn’t…
um, didn’t hate. But then he blinked, extinguishing the heat, and pinched the bridge of his nose while he mumbled something unhappy-sounding under his breath that I didn’t catch.
I swallowed. “Um, what?”
His jaw clenched, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t suppose you meant you’re here with a party favor for me.”
He didn’t say it like it was a question, but I shook my head anyway.
“So, you don’t have a delivery for me?” he asked testily. “Tucked away in a… pocket?”
I swallowed hard, shaking my head again. Pockets? I definitely didn’t have those… or anything else. Was I supposed to have brought something with me? Greg hadn’t mentioned it, and I could feel panic starting to swell up inside me again, because I didn’t know what to do.