Daddy's Boy (10 page)

I rushed after them. They
needed to know. They had to know before they started working on
him. Reaching the doorway to my bedroom, out of breath and panting,
I gripped the doorway in my hands and looked down at the
paramedics, both men looking up at me in confusion as they pulled
out the medical supplies they would need.

“
He has AIDS.”

****

I’d barely remembered to give them his
wallet and shoes when they’d left to take him to the hospital after
getting him stabilized. He’d had a seizure and had gone into the
hospital and never come back out. His pants had apparently been
left behind in all the confusion. Tears filled my eyes, and I knelt
in front of the discarded clothing. I wasn’t sentimental, so I
wasn’t going to do something like lifting the pants up to my nose
and sniffing them, but I did pick them up and begin to fold them
gently.

I stopped when something fell out of
the pocket as I looked down. Picking it up, my eyebrows lifted when
I saw the white box, with a red ribbon tied around it, my name
written on a small card.

I smoothed my hand over the top of the
box and placed it on top of the dresser in front of me. It was no
doubt another bracelet or necklace from Jack. He was always buying
me things like that. I sniffled and wiped my eyes. I didn’t want to
open the box right then. Maybe later.

In that moment, I had to get my
emotional walls back up and get on with my day.

Chapter Seven

I stared at myself in the mirror and
grimaced. I wondered, for the fortieth time, if it was too late to
cancel. I’d found out all of Dodger’s contact information thanks to
Juliet, a friend of mine who knew his personal assistant, Lisette.
I could easily place a call to his cell phone and tell him I’d
gotten sick and couldn’t make dinner. Or even better, that I had
another client with a better offer.

I sighed in disgust with myself. What
the fuck was wrong with me? He was just a man. A man like any other
man. There was nothing special about him. Nothing that made him
scarier or more intimidating than the others. I was being
ridiculous.

So what if the thought of sitting
across from him while we ate, filled my stomach with a knot, the
likes of which I hadn’t experienced since I was sixteen?

And so what if my palms got a little
sweaty, when I thought of his hand on my lower back, as he escorted
me to his car?

And if my lips tingled and
my cock got hard at the very thought of him kissing me again? Well
that was to be expected, right? He was the first client I’d had who
wasn’t old, overweight, married, or disgusting, or a frightening
mixture of all four. That’s all it was. It was just the fact he was
gorgeous and single and just a little older than me and gorgeous,
and from the rumor mill, openly gay and richer than Midas himself
and gorgeous and in shape;
god
was he in shape.

I thought of him pressing me up
against my wall, his hands on my ass, his mouth on my neck, and I
groaned as my already hard dick thickened and pressed against the
zipper of my white slacks.

Holy. Fuck.
That was what an erection was supposed to feel
like. I hadn’t felt one like this in so long, I’d almost
forgotten.

I pressed the palm of my hand against
the front of my pants and rubbed my erection up and down once
through the fabric, shuddering at the delicious sensation before I
roughly jerked my hand away. This wasn’t the time for me to be
enjoying the thrill of lust and desire. If things went as I
expected them to go, then I would have another chance this evening
to delight in my rediscovered erection, one obtained without the
use of Viagra.

I bit my lower lip, glancing around,
wondering if I had time to go to the bathroom, or even to the
couch, and ignore my own reprimand for the amazing orgasm that
awaited me when there was a knock on my front door. Sighing,
because time always seemed to be against me, I rubbed a hand over
the back of my hair and walked to the door to open it.

I knew I should have looked through
the peephole, before I opened the door, especially with KuJoe
coming around as frequently as he had been, but I didn’t, which was
why I didn’t have the time to compose myself or prepare myself for
the sight of Dodger in full semi-formal dress. He was resplendent
in a black suit with a light blue button-down shirt and slim, black
tie, and he smiled down into my face.

I swallowed the lump that
had risen into my throat, while a ball of nervousness clenched in
my gut, as the words of greeting died on my lips. All of my years
of perfecting an attitude of apathetic sensuality, an air of
unattainable beauty, and an atmosphere of lust completely deserted
me as I looked up into Dodger’s eyes. I felt entirely exposed to
him. Vulnerable. I didn’t feel as if I were a professional
companion. I didn’t feel like Tyler in that moment. I felt like…
like… Ti—I shook my head mentally, no. I would
not
allow myself to feel like that
person. Not ever again. I’d long ago buried that part of myself. It
had taken years, lots of money, surgeries, and years of being with
KuJoe for me to finally get rid of that person. I wouldn’t let this
man, this gorgeous man, make me go back.

“
Good evening, Tyler.”
Dodger’s voice flowed down over my skin like a refreshing rain, my
skin soaking up the tone and the words as if it were thirsty for
any acknowledgement from him. I wanted to flay my skin into some
semblance of submission, but I knew I couldn’t. So instead, I
tilted my head to the side, and I smiled coyly up at Dodger. It was
a look I’d adopted many times over the years. It always worked to
arouse the client, while reminding me I was not someone special to
them; I was a POA (piece of ass) and at the end of the night, money
would exchange hands, they would go on their way, and I would go on
to the next client.

“
Hello, Dodger,” I said,
making my voice breathless. “I’m looking forward to
dinner.”

Dodger frowned at me, taking a small
step back, shaking his head at me. “Don’t do that.”

I frowned as well, straightening and
looking at him in confusion, wondering what I had done to make him
react in such a way. “Don’t do what?” I asked.

“
Don’t treat me like you
treat your other clients,” he told me. “I’m not a client.” He shook
his head and ran his fingers through his sleek, black hair in an
agitated manner. My eyes watched the movement of his hand greedily
as I wondered if his hair was still as thick and soft tonight as it
had been the night we first met or if I’d imagined the whole thing.
“Maybe this was a mistake.” He turned, as if he were going to
leave, and while I would have normally just let him go, something
compelled me to reach out and grab his arm.

“
Wait!”

He turned to look at me, one sable
eyebrow raised as he gazed at my face. I shook my head, confused at
my own actions as I shrugged. “Don’t leave. Tell me why you don’t
think you’re a client. You said you were going to pay me for
dinner.” I sighed and looked away for a minute, swallowing the lump
in my throat, and for the first time in a long time, feeling cheap
at the thought of being paid to go to dinner with an attractive
man. “That makes you a client.”

I shivered at the feel of Dodger’s
index finger and thumb lightly gripping my chin and turning my face
back to face him. I found myself looking up into his soft gaze, his
eyes compassionate, a small smile on his face. “I offered to pay
you because I knew you wouldn’t see me any other way. Besides, this
is your job, and I know… I know you probably need the money. I
don’t want you getting it from anyone else.” He swallowed, and I
could hear the click from the deep gulp he’d taken. “For some
reason, the thought of you sleeping with anyone else makes me
uncomfortable. So I offered to pay you for dinner, but I don’t want
you to think of me as just another client. I want to get to know
you better. And if that means I pay you so you won’t need to see
anyone else so we can do that, then that’s what I’ll do.” He
shrugged, and my eyes widened.

A sliver of fear curled in my stomach.
I had heard about clients who fell for companions they’d just met
and wanted to stake a claim on them, monopolizing their time, and
cutting them off from their other clients. Those companions usually
ended up dead. I couldn’t afford to let that happen to me. I had to
worry about Stella. She was the most important thing in my life. I
had to make sure she was all right.

“
You just met me,” I
pointed out. “How could you feel that way?”

Dodger shook his head.
“No.
You
just
met
me
. I
met
you
last
year.”

My eyebrows rose at his words.
“What?”

He chuckled. “I’ll tell you over
dinner. Can we go?”

I stared at him for another moment
before I nodded and turned to grab my keys and wallet before I
stepped out of the door. Even though Dodger would be paying for
dinner, I never went anywhere without my wallet.

I’d learned the hard way to never
leave home without it. I had been out on a date with Warner
Carmichael, heir to the Carmichael fortune. They dealt in stocks,
imports, and exports. Sounds legitimate, right? Not so much. The
Carmichaels were a family that made their fortune in human
trafficking. Unwilling foreign children were their imports, which
they then exported to other homes, and businessmen, and women who
paid an exorbitant amount of money for them. While their stock did,
in fact, trade in the stock market, when I’d gone out to dinner
with Warner one night, sans wallet, I’d been shocked to be grabbed
and tossed to the ground by the FBI who had frisked me and taken me
in for questioning. When they’d returned me to the restaurant, I’d
been stuck with the bill since Warner had been carted off to
federal prison.

A $300 dinner bill. And I hadn’t had
my wallet. It was horrible. Humiliating. Even more so when the
owner, a two-hundred and fifty pound, five-foot-nine man, had told
me I could work it off. I’d rolled up my sleeves, thinking I would
be washing dishes and waiting tables, but instead, he’d had me on
my knees and bent over his desk while he pounded his surprisingly
large and fat cock into my tender hole.

I hadn’t cried then, though I could
feel the inky blackness grow in my soul. When he was done, I’d
merely taken the tissues he’d handed me, wiped his seed from my
ass, pulled up my pants, righted my clothes, and left the
restaurant. I’d headed to a twenty-four hour free clinic to get a
HIV test and had gone back every few months for two years until
they’d told me I was absolutely clean. After that, I only went back
every six months.

It was something I still did
religiously. You couldn’t be too careful in my line of
business.

I locked the door behind me and turned
to find Dodger standing in the middle of the hallway, his elbow
held out to me in a gesture of gentlemanly chivalry. I raised an
eyebrow at him and barely contained the giggle that wanted to come
out. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d giggled. Well, truly
giggled. I gave my clients those fake, breathless giggles all the
time, but this one would have been genuine. Shaking my head at him,
I slipped my hand through his arm and placed it on the inside of
his elbow.

“
Shall we?” he
asked.

I nodded, a sense of playfulness
coming over me. “We shall.”

Dodger led me down the
hallway that would take us to the elevator, and I kept my eyes
straight forward, making sure not to look in his direction. I
wanted to caress every muscle and line of his body with my gaze. I
wanted to figure him out. Figure out why he had my mind all in
knots. It wasn’t just his looks—I’d seen men who were much more
attractive. And yes, he was rich, but I was willing to be with
him
without
the
money—and that was insane for me, someone who made a living from
sleeping with the richest man in a room. It wasn’t his scent.
Dodger reminded me of… someone. There was a connection between us.
I felt as if I knew Dodger. But how was that possible? I didn’t
know him. Did I? This was another puzzle I needed to
solve.

There was also the puzzle of why he’d
said he’d met me a year before, but I could recall only recently
meeting him. I wanted to confront Dodger about his lies or see what
he knew about me. But I did neither of those things. I walked down
the plush, light-gray carpeted hallway. I could hear doors opening
and quickly shutting, as we passed them— my neighbors, my fucking
nosy neighbors, checking to see who my new client was. For them to
all be so wealthy, kings and queens of industry, owning Fortune 500
companies, none of them had any goddamn lives. And I wanted to do
something especially scandalous, like pulling Dodger to me near the
elevator and giving him a blowjob right there in the hallway, but I
didn’t do that. I maintained my dignity, and when we stepped into
the elevator, I let out a sigh of relief.

“
Wow, that was tense. It
was like facing the Spanish Inquisition,” Dodger
muttered.

I snickered. “Yes, sorry about that.
My neighbors know about my… business. Not all of them
approve.”