Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 80699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
And then, while I still sat at the table in my pretty little kitchen, my head turned toward the door of the bedroom, through which lay the bathroom and my phone, I remembered what I had read on Christian G’s profile.
That probably sounds really arrogant, and I suppose that’s fair. But… you know… fuck around and find out.
Subtle, but unmistakable—for me, anyway. A man who liked to take charge, and didn’t hesitate to set boundaries and to impose consequences on people who crossed them. A new wave of heat came into my cheeks, but this one felt very different, because Mary the photographer’s story, and its humiliating effect on me, lurked at the back of my mind.
Fuck around and find out.
To my dismay, the latest blush seemed to affect my whole body, and not in the straightforward, ohmygod please let the earth swallow me up way. A man who knew how to take charge of a situation would surely know how to take care of a girl who had just arrived in a new city and a new life—a girl in need of guidance.
A virgin who’s shown just how naughty she can be… how naughty, and how needy.
I noticed with a guilty start that my right hand had risen from the table, and crossed my upper body, and that my fingers by sheer instinct had started to toy with my left nipple. I pulled the hand away from the stiff little peak that pressed so hard into the fabric of my cheap cotton bra that it tented my pink t-shirt.
I got up. I needed my phone, if only to check my bank balance and see whether I could go shopping. I didn’t have to think about Selecta Arrangements, or the photos, or Christian G.
That resolution lasted all of a minute. My bank balance, with the first Selecta subsidy in it—twice as much as my New Modesty one, I noted—begged me to go shopping. I needed new clothes, of course. I needed new jeans, and maybe even a romper. I needed underwear, too.
Not underwear, though, as much as… lingerie.
I’d never bought real lingerie before. Every time I glanced over at those racks in a department store, I turned back to the everyday stuff, with a little warmth in my cheeks at the thought that a salesperson might have seen me looking. But here in LA, as a platinum-level associate member, with a wealthy man asking to have a drink with me…
I walked over to the big picture window in the living room and pulled up the blackout curtain, to reveal a stunning California day. I hadn’t imagined it: the Pacific lay there on the horizon, past the skyscrapers of what must be downtown Los Angeles. I looked down at my phone, and saw the bank balance. It didn’t look as big this time, as I thought about the shopping, and how much of it I needed to do, and the prices in Beverly Hills as opposed to the ones in Harristown.
A sponsor in the movie business would help with that. The kind of man who likes to unwrap a girl’s body like a present in pretty paper.
I swallowed hard, and tapped over to the Selecta Arrangements app. My notifications popped up immediately.
Three to-do’s, Leah: private message from Christian G, select profile photos, schedule aesthetician.
Frowning, I tapped schedule aesthetician.
Hi Leah! Our photo bot noticed that you might be interested in a subsidized session with an aesthetician. It’s highly recommended that platinum-level associate members have a full Brazilian wax every two weeks, in order to ensure that intimacy goes smoothly and in line with members’ expectations.
I blew out a long breath through half-parted lips. My treasonous right hand had crept to my hip, and it started to slide even further. I tapped on the link to the scheduling tool and chose a timeslot that started in an hour, in the day spa that was, just as Mary had told me, downstairs in my building.
Then I tapped back into my PMs. I took a deep breath and started to type.
Hi Christian! Thanks so much for messaging. Are you free this evening?
CHAPTER 8
Leah
Christian replied twenty minutes later, as I walked down Rodeo Drive in a daze, wondering if I was awake or dreaming. I’d gone into two stores and quickly discovered that my bank balance—as I’d half suspected—didn’t represent the cushiony lifestyle I had thought it might, looking through my Midwestern eyes. Beverly Hills didn’t seem to know that the world economy had collapsed.
That made all the sense in the world, I supposed: the news kept telling me that the collapse had just made the rich richer—by comparison to the rest of us struggling regular folks. They said that fewer places like Beverly Hills could survive in this crappy new world the way they had in the past, but that only made this one more special.