Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (44 page)

I
keep forgetting that she actually knows Irene.

Her
phone beeps and she checks it.

“Right,”
I tell her. “I must be thinking of my place.”

What
the hell kind of excuse was that?

“Oh
yeah, fuck me, baby!” Irene shouts from behind the closed door at the end of
the hall.

“Well,
okay,” Jessica says laughing.

“What
are you doing?” I ask.

“I
was going to give you and your—ahem—friends a little privacy,” she answers as
her eyes plead for me to let her leave the hallway.

“It’s
really not like that,” I tell her. “I just wanted to get a little bit of
privacy so I could make a phone call, but it sounds like this really isn’t the
best place to do that.”

“I
thought you said you were waiting for the bathroom,” she says.

“Yeah,
I guess
I
…” my brain utterly fails me right in this
moment where I need it the most. “To be honest, I don’t really know why I said
that. I guess I was just looking for a plausible excuse so you wouldn’t think I
was just back here to get an earful of whatever it is they do to each other in
there.”

“Next
time,” she says, “maybe just go for the ‘wanting to make a call’ thing first.
That might make it a lot more plausible.”

I’m
humiliated, but Jessica gives me a slight, but sincere smile.

“Why
did you come back here?” I ask as she turns again to leave the hallway.

“Oh,”
she says, “no reason.”

“Well,”
I tell her, “you seem to know this house as well as I do and, with what I
started to tell you about Irene’s post-keg-stand ritual, I think you knew what
you might be walking into if you came down this hallway.”

“No!
It’s not that, I was just—you know, I sent a text to that guy and, well, I
wanted to be able to hear it when he texted me back, that’s all,” she stammers.

“Uh
huh,” I tell her, “and I just wanted to come back here to find a bathroom.”

“I
thought you said you were here so you could make a phone call,” she retorts.

“You,
my dear, are blushing,” I tell her.

“Oh,
I am not,” she says, crossing her arms.

She
wasn’t blushing when I said that, but I didn’t really want to answer her
question and, in my experience, telling someone that they’re blushing is about
the quickest way to get them to blush.

“Really?”
I ask. “So, why are you really here in the hallway?”

“Right
now, I’m here because you keep stopping me to talk to you,” she says.

“Oh
yeah!” Alec shouts in the bedroom and Jessica and I can’t stop ourselves from
laughing out loud.

“It
was the morbid curiosity, wasn’t it?” I ask her.

She
turns her head, but shifts her eyes back toward me. “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t
know. I guess it’s just been a while, and I wanted to try to convince myself
that it’s really not that big of a thing.”

“What
a weird justification,” I smile. “Do you want to place a bet?”

“A
bet?” she asks. “What are we betting on?”

“How
do I put this delicately?” I start. “I was thinking we could bet on who
finishes first.”

“Ten
bucks says it’s Alec,” Jessica says without any further encouragement.

It’s
a reasonable bet.

In
a regrettably large portion of sexual relationships, you can bet that the man’s
going to come first and most of the time, you’re going to be right.

What
Jessica doesn’t know is that Irene won’t
let
Alec come until she’s gotten hers at least twice.

I
take a moment to reflect on how unsettling it is that I know that, but today
wasn’t the first time that Irene and I have had a conversation after she’s
gotten a few drinks in her.

“Deal,”
I tell her and put my hand out to shake it.

“Wait,”
Jessica says. “You seem too confident.”

“What
do you mean?” I ask.

“I
made a bet and you’re just ready to go for it? No haggling, no pressing for
odds or anything. You obviously know something that I don’t,” she says. “He’s
one of those tantric guys who can have sex for hours, like Sting, isn’t he?”

“I
really don’t think that there are any similarities between Alec and Sting,” I
tell her. “I can promise you that to the best of my knowledge, Alec doesn’t
even know the definition of the word Tantra.”

Jessica
peers at me, but she slowly, cautiously extends her hand and shakes mine.

“How
are we going to tell who comes when?” she asks.

As
if she’d heard the question, Irene starts shouting, “Oh yeah, baby. I’m going
to come. Oh fuck! Oh, fuck! Oh, fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-uck!”

“I’d
say that’s a pretty good sign,” I laugh.

“Shit,”
Jessica says and reaches into her pocket.

“Double
or nothing says she goes again before he does,” I tell her.

“You’re
on,” she says, putting the cash back in her pocket.

This
really isn’t how I saw things going today, but it’s something.

“How
long do you think it’s going to take them?” she asks.

“I
have no idea,” I tell her.

She
pulls out her phone and starts writing a text, and it occurs to me that the
whole reason I came over here was to turn the volume down on my notifications,
something I didn’t quite get the chance to do.

“Who
are you texting?” I ask.

“My
sister,” she says. “If I’m going to sit here and listen to other people have
all the fun, I’m going to need a drink.”

“Fair
enough,” I laugh.

The
hornier part of me wants to suggest that we could always throw caution to the
wind and see if we can out-volume Irene and Alec, but the more rational part of
my brain insists that it might be a bit soon for such a declaration.

“Did
you get anything from your friend?” I ask.

“Yeah,”
Jessica answers. “He’s caught up with some family thing, but he’s still going
to try to make it.”

“Well,”
I tell her, “I hope he does.”

“What
are you guys doing?” the sister asks, coming around the corner, somehow
managing four sixteen-ounce plastic cups of beer.

“We
made a wager, and I’m trying to win my money back,” Jessica says. “Oh, Kristin,
this is Eric. Eric, this is Kristin, my sister.”

“Nice
to meet you,” Kristin says. “I’d shake hands, but they’re kind of full at the
moment.”

“Yeah,
let me help you with that,” I tell her. “How many am I taking?”

“All
of them,” Kristin sighs. “I’m hoping that at least one of them is for you,
otherwise, I think my sister might have just breezed past rude and entered lush
territory.”

“Two
are for him, two are for me,” Jessica explains.

I
hand her two cups and offer one of mine to Kristin.

“That’s
all right,” Kristin says. “I’m more of a liquor or daiquiri girl.”

“Oh
my god, baby, that feels so fucking
good
!” Irene
shouts from inside the bedroom down the hall.

Kristin
looks back at her sister, saying, “Tell me again what you two are doing here?”

“We
made a bet on the
sexcapades
going on in the next
room,” Jessica explains. “I’m down one orgasm, but I’m feeling really confident
about the next one.”

“You’re
betting on who gets off first?” Kristin asks. “I want in. What are the stakes?”

“Well,”
Jessica says, “it’s a ten-dollar buy in. I say that Alec blows his load next,
but Eric here thinks that Irene’s got another one coming before that happens.”

“All
right then,” Kristin says, “ten bucks on Irene hitting number two before Alec
gets his first.”

Jessica
looks at me and I can’t not smile at her. She asks, “Why am I getting the
feeling that the two of you know something that I don’t?”

“When
I first met Irene, she was always complaining about how Alec couldn’t hold his
pudding—”

“Oh,
good lord, is there any way we can call it something else?” Jessica interrupts.

“Fine,”
Kristin says. She starts over, “When Irene and I first met,
she
told me that Alec had a bit of trouble staying in the game. I told her to start
edging him.”

“Edging?”
Jessica asks.

“Yeah,”
Kristin continues. “It’s when a person gets close to having an orgasm, but
before that final moment, they ease back and let the feeling dissipate. Once I
convinced her that Alec would be more than okay with having sex longer, she
implemented the two-bump rule.”

“The
two bump rule?” Jessica asks.

“I
guess that’s their word for climax,” Kristin says. “It just means that she
doesn’t let him toss the dice until she’s gotten at least two.”

“You
cheated me!” Jessica accuses me.

“Oh,
I did not,” I retort, although I have no rationale behind the defense.

“And
you,” she says, turning to her sister. “You just jumped right in there, didn’t
you? Well, this sucks,” she concludes and takes an impressively long drink of
beer.

A
few more minutes go by and, other than the continued sounds of bedsprings
creaking and the occasional appeal to a deity, there’s no sign of who’s going
to go first.

What
has happened, however, is that we’ve attracted quite the crowd of eager
gambling
enthusiasts.
They’re split almost completely
down the middle between those who know about the two-bump rule—all of whom are
betting that Irene’s got another one coming before Alec—and those who are only
betting based on the stereotype who are betting that Alec’s going to blow at
any minute.

On
top of that, we’ve all created a drinking game where the men drink every time
Alec says, “fuck” and the women all drink whenever Irene says, “baby.”

It
doesn’t take long for pretty much everyone in the now-crowded hallway to cop a
buzz.

What’s
most surprising is that this group, made up of at least a dozen people, all of
whom—Jessica’s sister excluded—are drinking and betting, manage to stay quiet
enough that we don’t reveal our presence to Alec and Irene.

Alec
tells Irene that she feels, “so fucking great,” so I, along with the rest of
the men in the hallway, take a drink, and I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or
the close attention being paid to the copulation down the hall, but I could
swear that Jessica is giving me the eye.

“Having
fun?” I ask her quietly.

She
takes a quick drink and nods her head.

The
moment of truth arrives as we can hear both Alex and Irene breathing and
moaning with increasing volume.

The
hallway goes silent.

All
eyes are focused on the door through which none of us can see, but all of us
have a vested interest.

“Oh
my god, oh my god,” Irene pants, and I’m wondering what happens if they come at
the same time.

“Oh
fuck,” Alec says (and I drink.) “Oh my god.”

The
creaking of the bedsprings increases in frequency and everyone in the hallway,
myself included, starts leaning in the direction of the door, hoping to be the
first to make out the sound that means victory or defeat.

“Oh,
I’m going to come,” Irene says and a grin covers my face. “I’m almost there!”

Alec’s
gotten quiet which could be a good sign or a bad sign for my cause.

“Oh
fuck!” Irene shouts and, even though the game only states that I drink when
Alec says it, I take a few gulps anyway.

The
suspense is killing me.

“Oh
yeah, baby!” Irene shouts and all the women drink. “Oh shit. Right there, make
me come. Make me—”

Everything
goes quiet.

Someone
I’ve never met puts a hand on my shoulder to steady himself for the coming
revelation.

That’s
when we get confirmation.

“God
damn it, Alec!” Irene scolds and half the hallway erupts into roaring applause,
the other in jeers.

Irene
comes out of the bedroom a few seconds later, naked, except for a bed sheet.
When she sees the crowd, which has only grown since Alec’s bad planning cost me
my winnings, she almost drops the covers.

The
door still cracked behind her, I shout, “Alec, you let down the team, you
fucker!”

Chapter Thirteen

The After-Party Party

Jessica

I
still haven’t heard from my friend, but I’m actually having a great time here
with Irene, Eric and Kristin.

Even
though Eric didn’t owe me any money for his loss, it was double or nothing, I
still got a decent payoff from being on the right side of the bet.

It’s
been about an hour since Alec—I’m sorry, I have to—blew it, but he’s still in
the room, refusing to come out.

Irene
couldn’t give a fuck.

The
party’s thinned out a bit as it’s a little difficult to top the sheer
adrenaline of that hallway, but there are still a few people milling around,
mingling.