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 clienthadheard 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,waymore 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 donetome, 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 butjeez, 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 okayokay. I candothis. 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. Ihadto.
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—theclient, twice my size and dressedwaybetter 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 actuallylookedat him.
He wasn’t what I’d been expecting.
He was old-ish, which Ihadexpected, 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.
