Chapter 7
June
“Here.” A stack of cards landed next to June, breakfast cooling before her. “I had these made up for you. Luckily, we still had the template from Holly’s cards.”
She coolly looked at the pretty cards littering the dining table.
Monique sank into the chair next to June, one hand on her stomach and the other snatching a banana out of the fruit bowl.
She’s looking to get sugar wherever she can now.
Those first few weeks of being told to cool it on the sugar were a trial around the Manoir.
At least Monique seemed to be over the worst of her pregnancy tantrums now.
If she could look menacing when she wasn’t pregnant?
Yikes. June was only a couple of years younger than her boss, but Monique could look like someone’s mother the moment she put her mind to it.
“I’m sure they’re great.” June stared at her oatmeal again. Blueberries and cinnamon, her favorite. She didn’t want it. “I’d rather hack Mitchell’s dick off.”
“Let him go.” Monique peeled that banana like it was going to disappear if she didn’t do it fast enough. “I’ve already terminated his contract with you. You’re a free woman, June. As free as we can call it.”
“Free and poor starting next month when his last check runs out.”
Monique narrowed her eyes. “I’m as invested as you are in getting you a new patron. We’re going to start putting word out tonight. Anyone you fancy who seems like the type – and has the money to afford to be your patron – should get a card.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know how it works.” June stabbed her oatmeal.
The silk wrap around her head faltered. That ass Grace had told her to try sleeping with a silk towel on her head to keep her hair from getting tangled at night.
June was tired of spending an hour a day trying to make it presentable for their million-dollar clients.
If I’m charging fifteen grand, I better look like fifteen grand. “I got Mitchell, somehow.”
“Yes, and we had inquiries about you after that. Hopefully, some of them are still interested. I looked at the reservations for tonight and saw Nicholas Mills on there. He comes around here enough.”
“If they’ve got the cash and don’t bring their drama here, I’ll do it.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” Monique was halfway through her banana and slipping farther down her chair. Her stomach would soon eclipse her face.
“You do that.”
“Anyway, Mr. Mills has asked for you more than once. He fancies you, but you’re usually busy with other clients when he gets here. You’re working the party tonight, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Charm him, would you? Who knows, he might be interested.”
“Will do.” Nicholas Mills was old and homely looking, but yeah, he was loaded.
“Also, if you have time this afternoon, I need you to help me with a soft audit.”
June was about to agree until she remembered Sette’s promise to be there at two. “Wait, I can’t. I have an appointment.”
“An appointment? Who?”
“You must not have checked our afternoon schedules yet.” June rather enjoyed this. Now, if only she could get her appetite back.
“Not since earlier this week. When did this appointment happen?”
On one hand, Monique was acting silly, but on the other, June got it: afternoon appointments were weird, unless someone had a specific schedule to keep. Few wanted to rendezvous with a girl right after lunch, let alone all the way up here. “You remember that doctor from the other day?”
“Yes…”
“She booked an appointment for this afternoon.”
“Really? I didn’t think she was interested and was tagging along with that other woman.”
“Your pregnancy is making you lose your analytical edge. That gal wanted me so badly she practically lifted her skirt every time she looked at me.”
“Good job.”
“I don’t know if she wants sex today, though. She hired me to be her nude model.”
“What?”
June briefly explained. Something about Sette being an artist in a funk, June was a beautiful woman who inspired her, and now Sette wanted to drop money on her to take off her clothes and be painted. On canvas, that was. “It will be some of the easiest money ever.”
“Interesting.” Monique’s mind was on a tear.
She was always scheming, analyzing, and reading people.
There was a reason her business had grown into a multi-million dollar enterprise in as little as a year.
She knew what people wanted, and who they wanted it with.
To be fair, Sette was hard for me to read at first, too.
As soon as she told June to eat her out, though, everything had fallen into place.
She had tasted good. Too good. Most clients didn’t even register on June’s tongue.
In one week, she had encountered two women who tasted as good as they screwed.
She assumed the latter about Sette. She came off soft, but in those eyes was a reserved passion waiting to explode.
Maybe she’ll explode on me today. June could say she had tasted an artist recently, but not fucked one.
Good thing Sette had that doctor money to fall back on, though.
June had looked up Sette Christie and couldn’t find much about her art.
Either she has another name, or she isn’t that famous.
Starving artists were not a cute addition to the Manoir.
“I’ll leave you to get ready. Have fun with your artist.” Monique stood up, leading with her stomach. “Although… if she wants to do something with a recognizable piece of you…”
“I know. I’ll let her know.”
“Good. Be sure to take those cards.”
June had hoped for some peace while she attempted to eat her oatmeal, now accompanied by a grapefruit she snatched from the bowl.
Even though she was having a relatively late breakfast at ten, two other girls stumbled in with plates of eggs, bagels, and what looked like quinoa.
People here are weird. June was older than all of them – certainly older than Grace and Holly, who entered now – so she felt more like the older sister than a peer.
“There she is!” Grace slumped into Monique’s seat and plopped her bagel onto the table. “Finally, I’ve caught up to you. Tell me all about the other night.”
“Huh?”
Holly, with her smarmy, fake-as-shit smile, sat across from June. “She means when you were howling like a slut the other night, and not the paid kind.”
“Thanks.” Holly could go suck it. Whatever “it” was.
Ever since she moved into the Manoir two, three months ago, she had been nothing but an obnoxious thorn in June’s ass.
She was also twenty-two, which probably had something to do with it.
The older June got, the less she was able to handle these younger girls.
Crotchety old ho coming through. If they were younger than twenty-five, then June had little patience.
“I have no idea why you want to know, though. I was working.”
“Yeah, but you were loud. Either you found a new way to fake it, or that client took you to the moon and back.”
This wasn’t an unusual conversation at the breakfast table.
Breakfast (and lunch) was the only time most of them had to get together to gab and gripe about clients.
There was a level of commiseration they couldn’t get anywhere else, even if they didn’t get along most days.
I get along with everyone fine. Except Holly.
They never had fights at the Manoir, but the passive-aggression could fly off the charts if someone was particularly miffed.
They had to keep it professional lest they suffered Monique’s wrath – and nobody wanted to kiss this gravy train goodbye and go to whatever life they had last. For June, it wasn’t too bad, but for women like Grace…
well, one would say she was lucky to be spotted working a hotel lounge.
Lucky because Monique had recognized the cop she was trying to score some money from.
Everyone could hear everyone else having loud sex if they traveled the halls at night.
So, no surprise that gossip traveled about the sounds June made when Miquela “Big Strap” Bolivar rammed her pussy until she couldn’t walk right for a whole day.
Crossing my legs thinking about it. God, that had been the best lay since coming to the Manoir, and that was actually saying a lot.
“Yeah, well, you would’ve been shrieking for Aphrodite to spare you if the hottest Spaniard with a fake rig the size of Kansas came your way, too.”
“How big?” both girls asked in unison.
“Big.” June knew better than to throw out a number. That was all relative. “If I’m saying it’s big, then it was probably big.”
“You said she was a Spaniard?”
“Yes, technically. Though she was from Monaco, I think.”
“Monaco! Whoa!”
“Like Monte Carlo Monaco?”
“The same.”
“That is hot.” Holly snuffed into her quinoa. “Why can’t I get a client like that? This whole week has been people who smell.”
“I haven’t done too badly this week,” Grace said. “I had my patron the other night, and she always knows how to please me.”
“Show off.”
“Anyway, then there was that woman on Wednesday. Remember her, June? The artist?”
“I take it you mean the non-doctor one.”
“Um, yes. The other one you were with came off as such a stick in the mud. Like she couldn’t believe someone actually paid women for sex.” Grace laughed. “Let alone women paying other women for sex!”
June couldn’t help but smirk. “The doctor wasn’t so bad. Didn’t fuck me, but she also didn’t say no to me polishing her pearl. I think she could be fun. Seeing her this afternoon.”
“If you say so. You’re better with those types, anyway. I prefer her friend. Girl was hot with a tongue from Eden. Ended up with me bent over my couch, crying for mercy.”
“I hate you both right now.” Holly sniffed. “Grace with her attentive patron and June with her sexy daughter of Grace Kelly. I don’t even have a patron yet!”