9
CASSANDRA
I slept like shit.
There was a pain in my chest, which at first I thought was indigestion from the microwaved fried rice I had for dinner. But then I was sweating, which made my sheets stick to my skin uncomfortably, and I tossed and turned and nothing felt comfortable.
I woke up with a headache before sunrise, and then couldn’t get back to sleep.
Coffee helped a tiny degree. I checked my normal email, and then my secret email account; my recruiter had sent a long apology, insisting she would go through Orlando’s background check again to look for any red flags to avoid such a situation in the future. I emailed her back and said that was kind of her, but probably useless. Some sickos were just good at covering it up.
I heard a cough in the hallway. Only a cough; no footsteps or anything else. Frowning, I tip-toed to the peep hole, afraid that I would find Orlando sleeping outside my door like a stalker.
What I saw instead was even weirder.
I unlocked the door and opened it. “Who are you?” I asked.
The man was big, but there was mostly muscle underneath his bulk, and he sat on a tiny folding chair next to my door. He turned his bald head toward me.
“Mrs. Turkina hired me to watch this door all night. Make sure nobody suspicious came snoopin’ around.”
That was one of the many fake names my recruiter used. I relaxed.
“She didn’t need to send a bodyguard to protect me.”
He shrugged his huge shoulders. “That’s not what she said.”
“She says a lot of things. Want some coffee?”
He refused to leave his spot until the end of his contracted time (8:00) so I brought him a mug before returning inside. I began to send my recruiter a new email telling her she worried too much about me… but then I deleted it, replaced it with the single sentence: “Thanks for the guard,” and then sent it off.
I was the kind of person who needed to stay busy. I couldn’t just turn on the TV and veg; that sort of thing made me stir crazy. I had to be active. And I didn’t have hobbies. My jobs were what I did for fun.
Both of them.
And if I couldn’t do one…
I got dressed and waited for the guard to fold up his chair and leave, and then made the commute to my office. If I couldn’t have my weekend fun, I was going to feed my workplace addiction by putting in some extra hours.
The office was deserted on a Saturday, the silence almost eerie. I hated when it was this quiet. I needed social stimulation to work well: the sound of phones ringing and keyboards clacking and a dozen different conversations, a soundtrack to my career.
I made a cup of coffee and got to work. I had a few big tasks that I’d let linger yesterday while I was busy daydreaming about my weekend date, so I started on those first. A PowerPoint Presentation detailing the number of clients we had, and how many proposals we created before they were satisfied. Budget analysis and graphs. The kind of stuff I normally would have passed onto one of the Finance majors we had interning out of U of C.
The sun rose slowly over the lake while I worked. I fell into a groove, and even started feeling better. It was like my headache magically went away, even though I hadn’t taken anything for it. The caffeine must have helped.
And then he was there. Ducking his head into the doorway of my office, smiling with embarrassment.
It honestly took a solid four or five seconds before the nerves in my brain made the connection. I kept my separate work lives segmented nicely; aside from Selection Fridays, I never thought about my escort job while I was in this office, and vice versa. So I stared at Orlando, not really seeing him, until he spoke.
“Cassie. Don’t freak out.”
“What the fuck!” I shouted, jumping out of my swivel chair. “How did you get up here?”
Orlando jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Funny story. I actually know the lobby guard. We go to the same salsa club on Fridays. Most Fridays. Not last night, obviously. He’s not a very good dancer, but he’s trying hard. Oh!” He pulled one hand from behind his back, where he held a bouquet of flowers. “These are for you. If that wasn’t obvious.”
This guy. This fucking guy right here. He’d waltzed right into my office, where I did my normal work, and had the nerve to act like nothing was wrong.
And with the office deserted, I had free reign to be as loud as I wanted. To let out everything I felt last night but couldn’t.
“You asshole!” I shouted. “How fucking stupid do you have to be? Coming to my office? Where I work?”
“Oh.” He looked around as if seeing the place for the first time. “I didn’t know where I was going, actually.”
“What fucking sense does that make?” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air. “And how did you find me? I assumed last night was because I had your phone, but that doesn’t explain this shit. Did you wait outside my apartment and follow me here?”
He held the flowers out a pathetic moment longer, then let them drop to his side. “Well. The answer to that goes along with everything else I need to tell you. So how about I talk, and you stay right there, and not point a gun at me this time? I really don’t like guns.”
My gun was in my purse, which was on the ground behind my desk. I was ready to grab it if he made any sudden movements, but I didn’t think he would.
“I’ve had stalkers before, but you’re quickly rising to the All Star team.” I put on hand on my hip and gestured with the other. “Fine. Talk.”
He flashed white teeth with his smile, that same disarming smile that made me want to listen to what he had to say.
Except what he said ended up being nonsense.
“This is a totem,” he said, pulling out the little gryphon figurine with the dark gem in the neck. “I found it in Belize. So did my friends. Five of us, though I guess there’s a sixth somewhere? We’re still trying to—”
“You’re rambling.”
“Sorry. So, this totem is… special. It gives us unbelievable powers. What happened last night, on the roof, was as new to me as it was to you.”
The image of him flashed into my head: standing with his legs spread and screaming in pain, body morphing into a creature that didn’t exist. Flying into the sky on dark wings.
“I hallucinated that,” I said softly.
“No, you didn’t.” Orlando’s eyes held an intense truth in them. “It was real, Cassie.”
“Don’t say my name.”
“All of it was real.”
I wanted to turn away, but I needed to keep him in my vision for safety. I held my hands at my side like stiff wooden boards.
“Next you’re going to tell me about dragons, I suspect?”
His face grew serious. “How did you know? Has he come here already?”
“No, you idiot! I read your texts last night. Your buddy mentioned a dragon.”
“Oh. Yeah, he’s one of the others I mentioned. His totem has a ruby, though.”
“Oh, okay,” I said with mockery. “His totem has a ruby. Yours has an onyx stone. I was confused before, but now it all makes perfect sense!”
“You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”
“Actually, Orlando, I do I have to be a jerk about it. Because everything you’ve done has been worthy of jerk treatment.” The fear of two years of escort service that I’d been bottling up boiled to the surface, all the risks I’d taken that Orlando was now exacerbating with his presence. “I have a career here, one I’ve poured my sweat and tears into for a decade to get where I am. To get to this office.” I gestured around me. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call my recruiter and have her send large men to beat the living shit out of you.”
Somehow, just saying the words caused me physical pain: my chest tightened, and my headache returned for a flash. But I had to get him to leave. He was going to ruin everything.
“Because,” he said, holding the totem out. “You and I have a connection, now. The totem has chosen you, the same way it chose me a week ago in that cave. We’re connected now. I know you can feel it, Cassie. I found you here because I could feel you, like a distant firefly that grew larger the closer I came. I can still feel you, right now, in this room. And I know you can feel me too.”
He closed his eyes, and then opened them again. “We belong together, Cassie. I know we just met, but I care deeply about you.”
Ohh, it felt good to hear him say the words. They rang true in my head, and I wanted to believe it so badly that for several heartbeats I did. It would be so easy to round my desk and fall into Orlando’s arms, taste his kiss and feel the warmth of his embrace, to let it envelope me like a blanket of his spicy musk. It would have been so easy to remove my blouse and pants, to demand that he take me right there on the desk, spreading my legs while he pumped into me steadily, making it last and keeping me on the edge while he ran his hands over my chest, and I could stick his finger in my mouth and suck on it, the way I’d done to his throbbing cock last night in the hotel room, pleasing him and then letting him please me…
I shivered at the thought, and then it was gone.
Orlando gave a mischievous smile like he knew what I was thinking.
I had a hundred questions for him. What cave? What connection? Why did you choose me? Do you honestly expect me to believe this bullshit?
But my chest remained tight, and I couldn’t make the words leave my lips.
“Get out,” I finally managed to say. “Or I make that phone call. And then I’ll make a call to the building manager to let him know the security guard let a stalker into the building because he went to the same salsa club. Your choice.”
Orlando nodded with resignation. “I’ll go, for now. But think about what I said. And think of me.” That same half-smile came to his lips. “Because Cassie: I know I’ll be thinking about you.”
I waited until he was gone before going to the doorway and breathing deep of the air he had occupied, savoring what scent of his remained. I couldn’t stop myself. It was intoxicating.
I stood there long after he was gone.