“Ariel already has your number programmed into her phone in case anything goes wrong,” I remind him. “But nothing will go wrong.”
“What does she have me labeled as in her phone?” he suddenly asks.
After the first night we had sex, I made the mistake of telling him the next morning over breakfast all of the things Ariel called him when I was on the phone with her during our ride home from Charming’s. He thought it was hilarious when I told him all the names she made up for him while she screamed in my ear.
“Uh . . . I believe she has you labeled as Mother Fucking Ass Licking Dick Hole,” I inform him as he chuckles under his breath.
Shoving all of my toiletries into the drawer, I turn around and lift up on my toes to give him a quick kiss.
“Stop worrying so much.”
“Call me as soon as you finish. Not when you’re in the car, not when you’re on your way home, and not when you get home. As. Soon. As. You. Finish,” he orders in a clipped voice.
“Stop being so bossy.”
“I’ll show you bossy when I get home from work,” he tells me with a smirk.
“Promise?” I ask, already thinking about what he might do to me when I get home.
“Promise,” he says with a smile, kissing the tip of my nose before he turns and leaves the bathroom.
* * *
“Where are your notes?” Ariel asks as I connect my phone to the customer’s Bluetooth speaker and pull up my playlist.
“I don’t need notes, jackass,” I reply, setting my phone down on a side table.
When I turn to face her, she’s wiping an imaginary tear off her cheek.
“Our little girl is all grown up. She gets a good dicking, and now I don’t even recognize her,” Ariel says, adding a fake sniffle.
I roll my eyes at her as the woman who owns the house and booked the party starts leading a whole horde of loud, tipsy women into the living room from the kitchen. Everyone is wearing tiaras, and they have so many plastic items with penises on them, it’s shocking. Penis earrings, penis necklaces, penis water bottles that I’m sure are filled with alcohol, judging by the way they’re guzzling from the straws—which are, incidentally, also penises. They all come screaming and cheering into the living room in a gaggle of penis products, and I smile to myself, so excited to get this party started that I almost can’t stand it.
I’m actually kind of glad Cindy and Ariel decided this party should be my first one. It’s much more comforting having my first time being with a group of women instead of strange men.
When a straggler comes into the living room after everyone else, she looks at me and stops in her tracks.
Oh, no.
“Isabelle? Isabelle Reading?” the woman says, looking at me with wide eyes.
I try to remain professional and not completely freak out, but considering I’m wearing the tiniest dress Ariel could find at the store, and she demanded I wear it tonight to “show off the goods,” it’s a little difficult. The yellow cotton dress clings to every curve and stops just below my ass, with a very low-cut front showing a lot of cleavage. It has teeny, tiny little buttons all down the front, and after a lot of practice recently, I can easily tear it open with one tug and not rip all the buttons off.
Vincent made me test it out for him last night, which resulted in all of the supper dishes being shoved off the kitchen table and me tossed on top of it, but even that memory doesn’t stop me from wanting to run out of this room right now.
“Mrs. Anderson, how are you doing this evening?” I ask politely, clasping my hands together in front of me so tightly I might be cutting off the blood supply.
Of all people to be at this party tonight, it has to be MaryAnn Anderson, wife of the one of the library-board members. I’ve met her a few times at the annual Christmas party we have, and when she’s stopped by to check out books every now and again. She was always very nice, but a tad . . . how do I say this? Uptight? Maybe just a tiny bit snobby, always making it a point to show me the latest piece of jewelry her husband bought her or tell me about the new car she was driving. Which just irritates me right now, considering her tightwad of a husband is one of the people responsible for shutting down my library.
“What in the world are you doing here, dressed like . . . that?” she asks, looking me up and down with a curl of her lip.
I could ask her the very same thing, considering she currently has a penis-shot-glass necklace hanging around her neck, but I really don’t want to get into a fight with my first client’s friend.