Paying For It

Two years ago…

"Are you Timothy James?"

I set my martini down. Placing my palms against the hotel bar, I pushed off, swiveling on the stool to face the speaker of those husky notes. The woman was stunning. My mouth fell open at her beauty and the olive I had just been about to shift to my molars, fell from my tongue, bumped off my jeans, and landed on the bamboo floor.

Hope I don't slip in that shit.

She moved closer and her perfume hit me—a bouquet full of sweet notes, like a botanical garden in the spring. I stopped contemplating the olive and started sizing up the woman before me. Smooth sepia skin, filled with rich red undertones. Dark natural hair hung in tight curls down her back. Upturned hazel eyes gave her a feline effect...

My scrutiny must have unnerved her. She frowned, backing away. "I'm sorry. I must have the wrong person."

"Wait! Yes." I halted her with a hand to her shoulder. "I'm, um, Timothy James."

Her smile at the news was unbelievable—rainbows and sunshine. A far cry from my wife's—ex-wife's—pinched grimace. Her beam captivated me with its winsomeness, and for the first time in over a year, I seriously considered having sex.

"Nice to meet you, Timothy. I'm Vegas. Vegas Shipley."

Vegas? The name suited her. A sizzling lucky seven with long legs, small waist, and tits I'd love to get my mouth on. She is...

"Sin and Sugar."

Heat crept from my neck up. Way to go... Timothy.

Her laughter, a sweet tinkling sound, stirred me south of the border. I crossed my legs at the ankle, shifting in my chair. 

"You're not the first one to equate the two, but you are the first one to say it so..." Vegas lowered her eyes, scanning me from bottom to top, "so deliciously." Her tongue hovered between her teeth and a slight smile, seductive... sensual, played around her lips.

There was no mistaking her vibe. She was into me.

Now, if I can just dust off my lines, maybe I'll get lucky tonight.

She spoke first, saving me from an embarrassing attempt to get her upstairs. "I have a room if you are ready?"

"Ready?"

 "Well... um, yes, um, if you are ready to... you know." She shuttered her eyes in a slow blink and traveling her tongue over her top lip and halfway over her bottom before it disappeared like a rabbit in its hole.

 I'd have to have an IQ the same as my shoe size to misinterpret her look. She is ready to...

"Have sex?"

What's with my mouth today?

Vegas let out a girlish giggle, fluttering her hands. Embarrassment cast her eyes down and her lips curled in amusement.

I couldn't believe my luck at the surreal moment.

A beautiful woman is propositioning... me?

Propositioning?

Was she a prostitute?

"Do you do this a lot?" I asked, lifting a brow.

Her eyelashes, naturally long and thick, blinked double time in surprise. She shook her head in staccato jerks, clutching her thin bag under her arm so hard something cracked, and she fiddled with the strap on her shoulder, her hand slightly trembling. "No, no. This is the first time, ever." 

Running over everything she said, I was quick to figure out the situation.

This woman thinks I'm a... gigolo.

Why not if it gets you laid?

This had to be a joke. Axel had played them on me before. Albeit nothing like this.

"Are you sure you want to go through with it?" There was a price to pay if she said 'yes' and I would gladly accept the cost, but in doing so, I wouldn't allow harm to come to her.

Vegas threw back her shoulders and lifting her head high, her body language told me, and the world, she was a grown woman... with a grown woman's desires. 

"Yes, I do." A pause and then a sheepish grin. "My friend paid the agency directly. She knows I would try to weasel out otherwise." 

Her accompanying giggle thawed my insides, giving me the courage to move ahead. "She must be a wonderful friend."

Her eyes clouded over, and her words dripped with thanks. "She is the best."

I downed the rest of the martini in one gulp—moral fortitude in a glass. "Well, let's not waste her money." I slid off the stool and Vegas took in my height, looking up at me in awe. "Time is ticking."

JAMESON:

Present day…

Vegas?

That's not her, right?

Here, of all places.

Vegas Shipley. That sexy siren who had ended my yearlong drought. The woman who had turned me out, leaving me sated like a fat man with a belly full of smokehouse ribs.

Vegas.

She was the best sex I ever had.

Not a day went by when I didn't think of her. How her beautiful face transformed into something ethereal when she shuddered around me. The way her jazz-infused voice called my name each time she came undone. Walls so warm and tight, she had wrung completely dry. With each position we explored, she took in all of me, begging for more. Unlike—

"Shelia!" A petite woman with the body of a ten-year-old boy flung herself into the toned, tanned arms of my ex-wife.

"Gertrude!" My ex said, peeling herself out of the woman-boy's embrace. "It's been too long, really."

Even as I watched Vegas and the hulk of a man she was with, I had to laugh at Shelia's tone. In Shelia speak, too long, wasn't long enough.

I listened to their catch-up chatter with half an ear while surreptitiously watching Vegas from across the room. The guy by her side had to come from football stock. He either played professionally or it was in his past. He had a thick neck, bald head, and his hands were the size of Christmas hams.

His tanned skin was a perfect foil for the expensive charcoal Frey suit he wore. Armani, by the looks of it. His size twelve's, encased in black Italian leather and shinier than a newly minted penny, seemed to shudder the ground on which he walked. He was somebody, this guy. Already his impressive figure had several pairs of female eyes following his every move.

Vegas lifted a canape to his mouth, feeding him from her hand. The bitter jealousy that coursed through me like a tsunami had me nearly biting through the glass of my Champagne flute. He smiled down at her, and holding her hand up, he licked her fingers. I turned away with a curse on my lips and my chest tightening with a sharp knife-like pain.

My refusal to ogle Vegas didn't last long. Her bell tinkle giggle had me staring like a stalker once again.

So beautiful.

The jeweled-toned pink, slightly above the knee cocktail dress she wore, flared out, accentuating her small waist. The dress's halter top, studded with crystals, left her smooth back bare.

I knew it was smooth. I had kissed and suckled every inch of her body—at least twice.

"Jameson?" Shelia's call to attention had me nearly clicking my heels and bowing. "This is Gertrude Ehrenberg. You remember her? Her family donated a wing to St. Vincent's."

Shelia was an ER doctor at St. Vincent's. That meant long days and even longer nights. Her work had contributed to our marriage's demise. 

No, not her work. 

It was her many, many extra-marital affairs, including the one I had witnessed with a resident doctor on her staff. 

I nodded my greeting at the diminutive woman. "Yes, Mrs. Ehrenberg. So nice to see you again."

Mrs. Ehrenberg latched onto my arm, exerting enough pressure to raise my diastolic reading by twenty points. "I hope you know your wife is a gift from heaven. She saved my little grandson, Axel." Gertrude's watery blue eyes grew even mistier and her gravelly voice faltered, "Our family will always be in her debt."

If that was a thin GOT reference...

As things turned out, I wasn't too far wrong.