Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Bastien grabbed another piece and took a bite. “If that’s his prerogative, I’ll hire someone else. But I doubt he will. I’m pretty easy to work for.”
“That’s what you think.”
He chuckled before he downed the rest of his slice. “He’s never complained.”
“Because he’ll get fired.”
“I’d only fire him if he betrayed me to my enemies or tried to fuck you. If the laundry isn’t done or there’s dust on the counter, I don’t give a shit.”
“Then maybe I should have taken you up on that offer to be your whore a long time ago.”
He gave me a long stare, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “It’s got a lot of perks. Great pay and a free place to live. But the job itself is a little challenging…”
“Isn’t it what I do now?”
He gave a slight shrug. “Close, but not quite.”
The conversation took my focus off the past entirely. Now, I didn’t associate the tub with the coffin at all. “Is there something you’d like to do that I’m not doing?” I thought our sex life was pretty great. I’d slept with a lot of men during my ho era, but I wasn’t exactly kinky. Bastien, on the other hand, seemed like he’d be down for anything.
“That’s not what I said.”
“But you just said it would be different.”
“It would be different,” he said. “But I don’t want it to be different.”
He said what he meant, but I was lost. “I’m having a hard time following this.”
“It doesn’t matter, so we should just forget it.”
“I want to know. Say what you mean.”
He smirked slightly, his own words thrown back at him. “Alright, sweetheart.” He grabbed his glass and took a drink. “If you were my whore, we’d have a very different relationship. I’d boss you around, tell you what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. But I don’t want that kind of relationship with you because I’m in love with you.”
My insecurity started to slip away.
“I wouldn’t pay a whore to do vanilla. But I’ll gladly do that with you. I’d fuck a woman in the ass, but I wouldn’t do that with you. That’s the difference.”
A surge of jealousy suddenly filled me but I wasn’t sure why. He didn’t care about all the guys I fucked around with, so it seemed immature to care about his past. But he spoke about prostitution like he was well-acquainted with it. “It sounds like you’ve paid for sex a lot.”
He responded honestly, like he always did. “A lot isn’t accurate. Some would be more appropriate.”
“But you’re so hot. Why would you need to pay someone?”
He would normally have smiled at the comment, but he didn’t this time. “Sometimes it’s nice to get down to business with no bullshit. And you can do things that you wouldn’t do with a woman you met at a bar or whatever.”
“Like?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“So…you wouldn’t fuck me in the ass?” I was almost offended by it, that he would do stuff with strangers but not with me.
He looked me dead in the eye. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Trust me, you wouldn’t like it.”
“You don’t know—”
“I do,” he said firmly. “It hurts like hell. I don’t mind hurting a woman who’s being paid to be hurt, but I don’t have any desire to do something like that to you. You’re taking this offensively when it should be the opposite.”
“I just didn’t realize you were into…other things.”
“I’m a man. Of course I am.”
“But if you won’t do those things with me—”
“What we have is so much better than anything I’ve ever paid for. You can’t put a price on this.”
He smacked my insecurity away like a buzzing gnat.
I felt better, but unease still lingered in my chest.
He saw it on the surface of my eyes. “What’s bothering you, sweetheart?”
I wanted to hide from the truth, lie and say everything was fine, but he didn’t lie to me, so I didn’t want to lie to him. “I guess…I’m jealous. Knowing you were paying whores to do whatever you wanted… I don’t know.”
“There were far more women I didn’t pay, if that makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t,” I said with a sarcastic laugh. “Just hard to wrap my mind around it.”
He stared at me for a while. “You said you’ve been with a lot of guys. It doesn’t bother me.”
“But I didn’t pay them.”
“Why does the exchange of money matter?”
“I don’t know…it just bothers me.”
“Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. You don’t strike me as the kind of woman to look down on it.”
“I don’t look down on it. I just don’t like the fact that you turn to other women for something that you’d never want from me. Makes me feel…like I’m not enough or something.”
“That couldn’t be further from the truth, sweetheart,” he said. “And this was before you, before I met you, before I walked into that bar and you set my heart on fire.” He stared me down with that intense expression, like he could grip me without even touching me. “Before I became insanely and dangerously obsessed with one woman.”