“Fine. Four days. We can discuss more at my place.”
Again, I’m taken aback. Never before have I met directly with Bentley when being handed an assignment. But something is different about this one, I’m sensing. Something in his voice tells me that it’s more urgent than usual. “I’ll contact you with arrival particulars.” I don’t wait for his answer before I hang up. Our calls are never very long or detail heavy. Just enough for me to know that I’m about to get my hands dirty again, all for the greater good.
A soft meow catches my ear. The resident tabby cat—a whore who hops from one villa to the next, sharing her affections without discrimination—struts across the thick balcony wall to me, her tail curling in the air as she approaches. I stroke the soft patch of fur beneath her chin and listen to her purr while I begin to mentally prepare myself for my return to California.
It’s been almost five years since I last stepped foot on American soil. Soil that once brought me purpose, love, and determination. Then pain, weakness.
Disgrace.
What will it bring me now?
My hand drops from the cat’s chin, deciding I’ve given her more than enough. She leans forward, head-butts my arm—allowing me a chance to reconsider, to show her the kind of love that I am no longer capable of—before giving up and scuttling away.
With a sigh and one last glance over the peaceful blue waters, I flick the cigarette butt that sits mashed up on the railing and venture back inside to where an olive-skinned Grecian beauty is sprawled across my bed. She’s the smoker, and an unexpected outcome of last night, while I enjoyed a quiet solo meal by the water. A curvy, sensual woman, much like the tabby cat, stalking in to impose herself on my life. Except her affections weren’t as easily dismissed, wearing away at my defenses over the hours with throaty laughs and wandering fingertips.
Manipulating my loneliness.
I rarely succumb to it, but last night, I did.
I also must have had too many glasses of that pricey Limnio, because I don’t usually end up in my own bed with a prostitute.
I slide a hand back and forth over the smooth skin of her hip until she stirs with a small groan. Eyes as blue as the Aegean Sea below us flutter open to meet mine. Her plump natural lips—that were wrapped around my cock with such expertise last night—curl into a smile. “Good morning, American,” she purrs in her thick accent, reaching for me. “You want more, don’t you?”
Had I not just received that call from Bentley, I probably would have taken her again. But minutes within getting news of my next assignment, my mind is already shifting focus, shutting down my weak human urges, preparing the rest of me for what is to come.
I quash her efforts for a repeat by filling her groping fingers with her crimson dress. “You can let yourself out.”
“But . . . last night was . . .” She stumbles over her own surprise. “Will I see you again?”
There’s no use pretending that either of us is something we’re not, that we will be more to each other than we were for a few paid hours last night. So I don’t bother answering, leaving her on my bed to head to the bathroom, feeling her anger blazing into my back.
“You will pay me!” she suddenly demands.
That catches me off guard and I stop to face her again, to search for the joke in her words. “I already paid you, last night.” She was quite adamant that she got her cash before her dress came off. I haven’t forgotten. I didn’t have that much to drink.
The bed creaks as she climbs from it, her naked curves swaying with her naturally seductive strut toward me. “That was my fee for two hours. For the whole night, you will pay me five hundred euro.”
I burst out in a rare fit of laughter. “You want me to pay you because you fell asleep next to me?”