The following afternoon, Willow came back into Raina’s office and walked over to the edge of her desk. Raina looked up and Willow reached out to her and handed her a business card.
“This is from my friend. It’s the escort company I was telling you about. We’ll see if it works out like you hope that it will. Let me know if there’s anything else that I can do for you, and good luck.” She gave a nod, and then turned and walked from the room, leaving Raina alone to sit and gaze at the card in her hand, wondering how it would go.
She bit at her lower lip as her heart began to beat a little faster. It was one thing, she thought, to fantasize about what it might be like to have a stranger as a lover, but it was another thing altogether to be holding the reality of that fantasy in her fingertips, knowing that she was only as far away from it becoming a reality as the next step of contacting the company.
Raina thought about it for a little while and then tucked the card into her purse and turned her attention fully back to her work. Her mind did not allow her to continue to focus on the work before her, however, and she found herself glancing at her purse every once in a while, which was on a table near her desk.
She tried to ignore it, but it felt almost as if the bag with the escort service card in it called out quietly to her, drawing her attention every time she tried harder to ignore it and turn away. Finally, Willow came in and said goodnight to her, leaving her alone in their office as evening silently stole away the day.
With a sigh, Raina finally turned from the work at her desk and reached for her purse, pulling out the card and giving it her undivided attention. The card looked as if it was a reputable place, rather than some racy back-alley unmentionable trade. She saw that there was a website, and she set the card down on the desk in front of her and pulled the website up on her browser to see what it looked like.
The website showed her the same dignified sort of look that the business card had, and she was at least a little encouraged by that. There was an area for members, and an area for non-members. She decided to read a little about the company before finding out anything about the escorts they offered.
Fifteen minutes later, she had read enough to be satisfied that the place was on the up and up, and that it would only be her shyness and her uncertainty that she would be relinquishing by using the site. She clicked through to the gallery of available escorts and was surprised to see so many good looking young men who were working as escorts. She couldn’t believe that every one of them was single.
A few of them caught her eye as she scrolled through their images and the summaries of their profiles. She was about halfway in through all of them, when she stopped suddenly as one of them caught her eye and made her gasp softly.
He was quite handsome, almost in a too-perfect sort of way. He had collar length black hair that was combed to one side of his head from a part, letting one thick lock hang gracefully down over his forehead and carefully sculpted black eyebrows that were leveled over dark brown eyes. His nose was straight and his lips were narrow, but not thin. He had light skin and wore no facial hair. His jaw was perfectly squared and his cheeks were high; it was as if he had been chiseled from marble by a renaissance master.
She found herself staring at him, unable to look away, and she discovered that she was unwilling to look further. His eyes almost seemed to peer into her from the image, and she slowly drew in a deep breath and moved her mouse to click on his name.
Michael Ryan. He was practically Prince Charming in a stylish gray suit and tie. His bio stated that he was working as an actor and that he wanted to focus on his career rather than on relationships, and he found the escort service he worked for to be perfect for that kind of a lifestyle. He enjoyed many different things from sports to reading and entertainment media. His list of interests was long, but it centered mostly around acting and being in costume and in character. He had an athletic build, and he seemed to be active in different groups in his community.
The more she read about him, the more interesting he became to her, and the more she wondered if he could be the one that she might be able to have her unusual relationship with. When she had read his full bio twice, she took another deep breath and decided to take the plunge and make him the first effort at her new lifestyle.
Raina filled out the information requested by the site. She filled out a bio about herself and added a photograph, and then she sent it in and was informed that her proposition to meet him would be answered within one day.
She left her office and tried to stay nonchalant, but though she was doing mundane tasks, chores, and routine evening activities, she felt as though she was on pins and needles the entire time. When she finally went to bed, she tried to rest her mind at ease, but every thought strayed to him.
All that she could see was his face in her mind and in her dreams when she finally fell asleep. She listened for his voice, and wondered at the touch of his hand as he reached out to her in her slumber. When she awoke the next morning, she was not rested; she had tossed and turned all night thinking of him, and his face was the first thing on her mind when she opened her eyes.
Raina felt annoyed with herself for letting some man she had never even met have so much of her attention and thought, and she consciously pushed him as far from her as she could. She listened more intently to the morning news and concentrated intensely on the morning traffic. She made light conversation with Willow and escaped to her office where she tried to read one of the files on her desk.
She had read the pages in front of her four times and not retained a single word of them when Willow came in and closed the door behind her. She walked to the desk and sat before Raina, looking at her expectantly.
“Well? Did you contact the company yet?” Willow asked hopefully; her eyes steady on Raina.
Raina sighed and closed the file before her. It was no use; she could not distract herself enough to keep Michael from her mind.
“Yes. I did. I went to their website last night and checked it all out.”
She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to share with her assistant right away. Somehow she felt a little vulnerable in discussing all of it, even though it was Willow who had sent her in the direction of the company to begin with.
“Well? What happened?” Willow asked, looking excited and leaning forward slightly as she placed her hands on the desk between them.
Raina hesitated a moment and then turned to her computer and pulled the website up. She went to her profile and there was the single inquiry she had made. She clicked on his name and the thumbnail of his photograph.
Michael Ryan’s profile opened before their eyes, and Willow whistled long and low. “My god… he’s beautiful!”
“Yeah, he is. I sent in a request to meet him. Let’s hope he accepts it, and that his personality is as beautiful as the outside of him.”
Raina found herself staring at his photo, and she made herself look away, back to Willow, who was still staring at him.
“Do all of the guys on this site look like him?” Willow asked with a note of interest.
Raina laughed. “There are some good looking ones here, but he’s definitely the only one I saw who looks that incredible. It’s almost enough to make me not want to try with him…” she raised one eyebrow and looked at Willow.
Willow finally tore her eyes from the computer monitor and looked back at Raina. “But…” she teased with a grin.
“But,” Raina answered in reply, “I really want to see if he’d work out. He’s something, isn’t he?”
“Yes he is,” Willow answered with a laugh. “Well, how long does it take to hear back from them?”
“I’m not sure. I guess they contact him to let him know that I’ve inquired, and we go from there,” Raina said, closing the window for the website.
She didn’t want to spend any more time looking at him than she had, because it was already all that she could do to keep him out of her mind, and having his photograph that readily accessible wasn’t going to help at all.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll hear from him, and I hope he’s as nice on the inside as he is on the outside.” Willow grinned, and stood up to leave. “Let me know how it goes. I’d be interested to see what happens; especially with that guy!”
Raina nodded and chuckled as she turned back to the file she’d read several times. She was interested, too, but she wasn’t sure how much stock to put into it until something happened. She wasn’t the most patient woman in the world, though, and she hoped that she wouldn’t have to wait too long to hear from him; one way or the other.
As it happened, she didn’t have to wait too long at all. She was sitting at her desk on a phone call to one of the startup companies that she had recently funded when she saw a notification pop up on her computer that she had received a personal email from the escort website.
It took all of her willpower not to get off of the phone call that she was on too early, and to finish it up before turning to the computer on her desk and opening up the email. She hadn’t been sure what to expect, but she was relieved and happy to see that the email was directly from Michael himself.
He said that he was pleased to hear from her and that she seemed really interesting. He asked if they could meet for coffee, and she found her heart racing as she grew short of breath, realizing that it was really going to happen.
She answered him back and told him that she would be glad to meet him, offering him a few different times and dates in the coming week, and she gave him the address of a café not far from where her office was. After reading her email in answer to him a few times before she hit ‘send’, she leaned back in her chair and let her head fall back a little, closing her eyes as she sighed in relief.
It was done. She wasn’t certain if she felt more nervous about meeting him than she did contacting him, but she was already past the most difficult part, she thought. The rest would depend entirely on how they did at coffee; whether or not they clicked, and whether or not there was anything about him that would make her want more of him. She was going to have to wait and see, but she was thrilled about the prospect of it, and she let herself enjoy the excitement that coursed through her at the very possibility of it all.
True to her word, Raina told Willow about it before they both left for the afternoon, and she was surprised at how much she enjoyed sharing the excitement about what may come when she met Michael.
The next morning, even though she tried to tell herself to wait, she checked her email before she did anything else, and she was blissful to see that one of the first unread emails in the list was an answer from Michael. He had agreed to the earliest coffee date that she had suggested. As she read his answer and the polite and thoughtful message that he had sent to her, she felt a surge of anticipation rise up in her, and she caught her breath and turned away from the computer for a moment.
She was going to meet a man she did not know, a perfect stranger, to see if he would make a good lover. She blinked in surprise at the realization of what she was actually doing. For a moment she wondered at her presumptiveness and sanity, but then those dark eyes that stared back at her from his photograph pulled at her, and she turned and looked back at him gazing at her from her monitor, and she didn’t second guess herself again. Instead, she answered him back and confirmed the date, giving him her cell phone number.
It was then that she was able to turn her attention to her work and think less on what was coming ahead in two days’ time. She wondered if part of the reason she was able to put it from her mind was because it was really going to happen, and she had thought about it so much that it was a little unnerving, or if she was finally coming to terms with it. Whatever it was, she was grateful for the reprieve of getting some semblance of herself back before the changes in her life took place – if they were going to at all.
For two days, she concentrated on work and life, and tried to ignore the coffee date that was coming up, and finally, it came. It was a Saturday. She had the weekend away from her office, and though she tried to sleep in to give herself a little more rest, she opened her eyes at seven in the morning, and could not make herself go back to sleep. After trying to persuade herself that she didn’t want to get out of bed, she gave a great sigh, and pushed herself up and into her day with a strange mixture of excitement and trepidation.
After a shower and breakfast, and some morning yoga, she looked at the clock and the hours that stretched out between that moment and noon when she would be meeting Michael felt as if they were on par with eternity. She went through her email. She watched the news. She hopped onto some of her social media pages. She watered the plants all over her house. She cleaned out her refrigerator and wiped it down. It still seemed like forever, and nothing she did managed to fill the time.
Raina changed her clothes twice, finally deciding on a form fitting black skirt and a sweater that would keep her cozy as she was putting herself into a situation that was ultimately quite exposing. Slipping on a pair of heels, she took a look in the mirror. She liked her hair; she had tied it into a loose braid and pulled it over one shoulder. Her jewelry was modest and simple, and her makeup was carefully done in lighter tones, so as to enhance her natural beauty, rather than to look more painted.
At eleven thirty, she finally allowed herself to get into the car and drive to the coffee shop. She took a real book with her so that she would have something to read, as well as having something tangible in her hands that wasn’t electronic. She ordered a coffee and sat down outside at a table under an umbrella in the bright sunlight. She tried to read, and as had happened nearly every time she had tried to read anything since finding the escort website, she read the page that she was on three times before she gave up on it and turned to the next page of her book.
She was trying to focus on her book with such intensity that she didn’t notice the man walk up to her. He reached out and touched her shoulder lightly with his fingertip.
“Excuse me, are you Raina King?” he asked.
His voice was even and soft spoken; his tone was friendly and polite. She started and looked up at him with wide eyes as she drew in a breath.
“Yes, I am… you must be Michael.” She recovered quickly and gave him a smile, wondering if she should stand up.
He reached for her hand and took it in his, giving it a gentle shake before he sat near her, setting his large cup of coffee down on the table.
“Good afternoon, and thank you for meeting me here.” He looked at her confidently, giving her the same sort of smile that she had seen on his face in his photograph.
He set several yellow packets of sugar substitute on the table beside his coffee, and began to open three to four packets at a time, dumping their white powdery contents into his coffee.
Raina blinked as she watched him, astounded that he was using so much of the product, and she wondered if she should tell him that the product he was using so liberally was going to destroy his liver, but she decided against it. She had just met him. It was no time to get into conversations like that. She looked at his face instead, and tried not to stare.
He was more handsome in person than he appeared to be in his pictures, though he appeared to have tried to tone his looks down and simplify his appearance a bit. He was dressed in pants and a button up shirt and tie, his hair was combed pristinely, and she caught the faint scent of cologne on the air. He was clean shaven, as he had been in his profile picture. He looked as if he might have just stepped off of the cover of some men’s dress wear magazine.
“Thank you for meeting me here. I’m sorry if this isn’t how you usually do… this sort of thing,” she told him honestly.
When he looked at her, she felt as if there was no way that she could hide anything from him, though it also felt to her as if she might not need to hide anything from him. He gave her the sense that he could be trusted, and she was relieved by that.
“Oh, this is fine. There is no real ‘usual’ way; when I have a client I’m meeting for the first time, it really depends on where they want to meet and how they want our business to go,” he answered, sounding completely confident.
His chest, which looked to be built of a solid wall of muscle, seemed a little more puffed out, as did his arms, and she realized by his posture that he was subconsciously making himself appear to be a little larger than he normally would be if he was relaxed, and she realized that he was as nervous as she was. The realization of it put her at ease a little more, and she was grateful for it.
Raina had a thousand questions to ask him, but none of them had stayed in her mind. She couldn’t believe that she was looking at him in person, and she couldn’t believe that he was even better looking in person; it was almost surreal and she wanted to look away from him and stare at him all at the same time.
He seemed to sense her hesitation and he gave her an easy smile and leaned toward her a little bit. “This is the first time you’ve done this, isn’t it?” he asked in a kind way.
She took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, it is… I guess it must show.”
He shrugged and reached for his coffee cup. “It’s something I’m used to, so I can see when it’s unfamiliar to someone else.”
Raina had a thought that she hadn’t had at all until that point. “Do you… do you do this very often? Do you have many clients?” She hadn’t even considered the fact that he may very well have other women he was seeing, and from the looks of him and his genteel manner, it might easily be several. The concept did not appeal to her in the least. She didn’t want anything with him but an affair, but at the same time, she didn’t want him seeing a bunch of other women as well.
“I keep that aspect of my job private. I’m actually a very private person,” he answered truthfully, though with an easy tone. “I wouldn’t discuss you with anyone else, just the same way that I wouldn’t discuss anyone else with you. I will say that I have the time to give you what you are looking for, and I definitely have the inclination.” He gave her a flirty smile then and she felt warm butterflies begin to dance in her belly.
“You have the inclination?” she repeated back through a grin she couldn’t possibly hide from him. “And why is that?”
He stared into her eyes, holding them as if his were magnetized to them. “You’re quite a beautiful woman; you’re intelligent, you’re well spoken, you’ve got class and style, and those are all things that I find attractive in a woman.” He leaned back and lifted his coffee mug to his lips, watching her the whole time.
She felt the breath in her grow shallow as she absorbed his answer and the feel of being there with him. She decided as she sat there, that she liked the way she felt when she was with him, and it was a sensation she hadn’t expected. Usually, it took a while for her to make up her mind about whether or not she liked someone, unless she really didn’t like them right from the start.
Michael tipped his head with a curious look at her. “What was it that made you go to an escort service? You could have just about any man you wanted, I think. I’m flattered, of course, but I’m surprised to see you use the service.”
Raina regarded him for a long moment before she answered him. “Actually, most of the men my age are either settled down and having children now, or they are ready to, and that’s just not something that I’m interested in doing. I’ve lived outside of the box for a long time; I put my career first, and I think I probably won’t have children. I’m really focused on my own life. I’m not interested in marriage or kids, and that’s really off putting for most men, especially at my age.”
He looked at her with a serious expression. “You’re just looking for someone to have some fun with for a while? No strings attached?” He didn’t give away a single thought when he asked her the question; he only asked with no hint of what he might want the answer to be, if anything at all.
She nodded. “Yes, I’d say that’s it exactly. Someone to be… just a companion, I guess. No strings. Nothing but fun and enjoyment. That’s why I went to the escort service.”
Michael gave her a modest smile. “Then I’m your man. What did you have in mind for us?”
Raina felt a little caught off guard. “Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I have in mind for us specifically. I’d like someone to spend time with; you know, go on dates and things like that, and if the chemistry is right, someone to share an intimate relationship with.”
With a nod of understanding, he took another drink of his coffee. “Well then, what if we get to know each other a little and see if the chemistry is there? If it is, we go forward with it. I’m on board for what you have in mind. I’d be lucky to share something that good with someone like you.” He gazed at her again, and his eyes told her that he meant it.
Feeling the butterflies once more, she took a beat, enjoying a long drink of her coffee before she set it down. “You are a charmer…” she said with a smile as she looked up at him through the dark thick fringe of her lashes.
He gave her a wink. “I’m much more than that, and I hope you decide to find out exactly how much more than that.”
Her heart skipped a beat and she told herself that even if he was moving fast, it was what she wanted. It was why she had gone to the escort service in the first place.
“What is your life like outside of the escort business?” she asked, trying to cool things off between them just a little.
He leaned toward her and spoke with a soft voice as his eyes held hers. “It’s not nearly as exciting as what I intend to do with you. We should focus on you and me.”
It was clear to her then that he wasn’t going to let her in on his private life, as he had mentioned, and she was alright with that. Their arrangement didn’t need to bleed into either of their private lives. They just needed to focus on having fun with each other and that was it. That was all that she was after, and she was glad to see that it was all that he wanted as well.
They talked a little while longer and then he told her that he had to go. When they stood up to leave, he closed his arms gently around her in an embrace, and kissed her cheek near her ear. He let his lips linger there as he said a quiet ‘thank you’ to her, and then he let her go slowly, drawing his hands and arms away from her as if he didn’t want to let her go.
Everything inside of her rushed, and she held her breath tight in her chest for a moment and told herself that he was playing at his job; he was a professional escort and he was a master at making women feel the way he had made her feel. It was all part of what she had paid for when she hired him.
She tried not to look too long at him as she said goodbye, and when she walked away, she promised herself that she wasn’t going to look back over her shoulder at him, and she almost made it. Almost. She got as far as the edge of the sidewalk near the parking lot where her car was parked, and she couldn’t resist turning just a little to throw a glance over her shoulder back toward him.
He was watching her, looking at her as if there was nothing else in the universe except her. She smiled and waved, and he blew her a kiss. She gave him a nod and turned toward her car, patting her hand on her heart to try to calm herself down.
She wasn’t sure about anything that was headed in her direction, but she knew one thing for sure. There was definitely chemistry, and sparks were flying all over the place. She knew that if they went forward much further, they were going to wind up tangled in the sheets together, and as she thought about him while she drove away, she knew that that was going to be one of the most incredible experiences of her life, if she were lucky enough for it to happen.