I grazed the walls of her wet pussy, fingering her old-school, thrusting two fingers into her and making sure her clit and pussy were thoroughly wet. My hand teased her with a come-hither motion that slammed into her G-spot again and again and a-fucking-gain, slowly enough to build her orgasm gradually, like never-ending foreplay. Her head rolled from side to side on the wall, and I had to chase her for every kiss and bite.

“Touch my clit,” she begged, hooking her finger in the titanium ring and tugging. I was so close I could feel the cum rushing through my dick. I laughed into our kiss, because it was such a trip, having Jesse talk like that. The old or the new or anything in between.

“Ask nicely.”

“Please touch my clit.”

“Will you go surfing with me tomorrow morning?”

“Maybe.”

I dragged two fingers below her clit and pressed them to her core. She chased my touch with her pussy, but I withdrew quickly. She groaned.

“Will Edie be there?”

“Who the fuck cares about Edie? Maybe she will. Maybe she won’t. She’s married. And irrelevant. You’re my girl.”

My girl.

My girl.

My girl.

The sentence echoed in my apparently otherwise empty head. I didn’t know what made me say that. Maybe the crazy need for it to be real. Truth was, it drove me crazy that Hale had even looked at her. I wanted to tear his eyeballs out and make a smoothie with them for even noticing she existed.

She squeezed me harder, and I bit down on her lip out of instinct, reopening a recent small cut that made her bleed. I sucked her pain into my mouth.

“I’m your girl?” she asked. My heart raced like a wild horse, galloping straight into her little fists. Break it and I’ll fuck you up, I wanted to warn. But that was bullshit, and I knew it.

“Not to be messed with, not to be touched. So what’s it going to be?”

Pause. “I’ll surf with you tomorrow.”

“That’s my girl.” I pushed my fingers into her clit and rubbed until she choked on her breath. She pumped me until her hand began to shake and her legs gave out. Her orgasm was like a domino, the fall long and steady and epic.

She dropped to her knees, writhing and panting, just as I said, “I’m coming, too.”

She wrapped her lips around my cock and looked up to me, her blue eyes shining. I fisted her hair, realizing what needed to be done to save both of us.

Giving up my dream.

“I want you to swallow every drop, Snowflake,” I said as I shot my load into her mouth. I made it messy, not going straight for her throat, but pulling out halfway through so she could taste me on her tongue. Marking her in all the ways I could.

She swallowed. I tucked myself back in.

“What did you want to talk to me about in the text message?” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, looking up at me. I took her hand and helped her get to her feet. What I wanted to tell her was that we needed to stop doing this couple bullshit. But now I had a solution. It was going to make me hate myself forever, but I would also get to keep Jesse.

“I wanted to tell you that you snore.”

She punched my arm.

I smiled.

She bought it.

“Bane?” a soft voice probed, forcing me to open my eyes.

It took me a second to figure out where I was. Flung over my messy bed, catching up on some sleep. I looked up and saw Grier pulling an elastic off of her hair, letting her blonde locks fall down all the way to her ass. She was wearing a summer dress I’d once told her made me want to eat her ass. Yellow with cornflower blue daisies. It did nothing for me now.

“Shit,” I croaked, jerking up to my forearms and rubbing a hand over my face. “What’s the time?”

“Eight o’clock. You didn’t open the door so I let myself in.” Her fingers grazed the strap of her bra. Eight o’clock. I was supposed to be meeting Darren at six at his Newport Beach office. I’d even set my alarm, not wanting to miss the meeting for obvious reasons, but I must’ve crashed. I looked down and saw the nightstand clock broken into pieces on the floor. Shit. Goddamn Beck was going to be the end of me with those long surfing sessions. Asshole better get third place or above, otherwise I was going to kick his ass all the way back to Hermosa Beach.

I jerked upright, tossing a shirt on, when a shriek left Grier’s mouth.

“Oh my God, you shaved! Roman, you are gorgeous!”

I wished people would stop saying that. No real man wanted to be described as gorgeous or beautiful. I wasn’t a fucking cocktail dress. But seeing the look on Jesse’s face last night when I’d climbed through her window was enough to make me stand by my decision. She’d looked at me with soft eyes, and her sudden submission was worth waxing the rest of my body, too.

Without sparing Grier an answer, I flung my sheet back and darted to the kitchenette, where I charged my phone. I had a few text messages, and I dreaded almost all of them.

Darren

Are you here?

Darren

Of course you are not here. You called me asking for an urgent meeting, which you didn’t even show up to. I waited for you. Now I’m going to be stuck in traffic for hours.

Darren

It better not be about Jesse. I know she has a new job with you and that she is making friends with a bald girl who came to pick her up for the mall today. But you still need to get her to meet more people, make more friends. The six months are not up yet.

I hadn’t even known about Gail and Jesse, but I was happy they’d hit it off. Gail was a solid chick. Then there was another message. One I didn’t dread.

Snowflake

At the mall with Gail. I thought I’d treat you to this beauty, because I know you like orange.

She sent me a picture of her with an orange onesie. Not only the color, but the fruit. I snort-laughed, shaking my head. I shot her a quick message before returning my gaze to a confused Grier.

Bane

Delicious to a fault, but we’re gonna do something about this orange onesie. For one thing: take it off of you once I see you. x

Yeah. I ended a message with an x. I really was a special kind of fucked.

Grier tapped her foot nervously, her arms crossed over her chest, glancing at her Cartier. She kept her clothes on, which told me that she already knew what was up. I’d bailed on our hookup last week, and frankly, I was about to ditch this one, too, and would have, if I hadn’t crashed like a goddamn meteor. I plucked two beers from the fridge and handed her one. It was time for an uncomfortable conversation.

She took a sip and looked down at her shoes. “Jesse Carter,” she said.

I walked over to the door leading to the deck, parking my forearms on the rusty railways. She mirrored my movements, doing the same. We both stared at the waves crashing on rocks by the shore.

“Brian said you asked for him to pull out her case file and sniffed around who worked on it.”

I had, a second after I’d cleaned my cum-coated dick the day Jesse and I had fooled around in the storage room. Maybe she didn’t want to retaliate, but I wasn’t going to go on pretending these assholes hadn’t done anything to her. They had. And they were going to pay. The fact that I had to chase two of them away not too long ago meant they did not understand the error of their ways. And nothing, and no one, was going to harm Jesse.

I shrugged. “This whole goddamn town knows what happened, but the little dipshits are still free. How is that okay?”

Grier’s eyes sparkled like the water underneath us. Even in my periphery, I saw that she was emotional, but not about Jesse.

“You know, I never thought you’d fall in love. That’s what made you such a safe bet,” she said, wiping the cold mist of her beer bottle on her dress. “There was something so detached about you when I met you. Like you were here, but not really. It made sleeping with you so easy. So…uncomplicated. And I know a lot of other women share this sentiment. Yes, you were paid. Yes, you were an escort. But you were decent. Discrete and cool and nice to talk to. You didn’t make us feel cheap or tacky, or like freaks. You were always a true gentleman, Bane.”

I didn’t really know how to respond to this. I noticed that she talked about me in past tense, and that was a relief. She knew that we were over. I swiveled my body to face her, resting my hip on the railway.

“You’ll find someone better. Someone who’ll give you more than a quickie once a week.”

“Maybe I can have a full-blown affair this time.” She smiled bitterly. “With feelings and all.”

I made a gagging sound. “Ugh. Feelings.”

“How would you know what they’re like?” she teased.

Because I’ve been ambushed by the fuckers and can’t seem to shake them off.

We shared one of the most awkward hugs in the history of embraces. It was only when she let go of me that I realized I was relieved. I was done with the bullshit, with or without Snowflake. Really, she was the kick in the ass I’d needed all this time. And what a fucking kick that was. My tailbone was still sore.

“I’m a little jealous of Jesse Carter,” she said to me when I walked her to my door. I rubbed the back of my neck.

Don’t worry. I’ll fuck it up at some point, I’m sure.

When Grier left, I walked over to my kitchen nook, took my phone out of my back pocket, and started going over every single client on my contact list. I decided to go for something laconic, firm, and polite. Thing was, I wasn’t much of a diplomat, so after much thinking, I came up with this:

Hi. It’s Bane. I’m writing to let you know that I’m hereby terminating our professional relationship. I’m officially retired and will not be making a comeback anytime soon. If you owe me money, consider it paid. If I owe you dick—I suggest you go look for it somewhere else.

So long and thanks for all the fish.—Bane.

I sent it to all forty-six women I had worked with at once, thinking in retrospect that the fish reference could probably have been omitted. All I knew was that I’d just killed the business that had helped me rise to power in this town, and that I was about to kill my dream next time I spoke to Darren.