Around the World in 80 Men (2 page)

Morgan paced in the small space between her
couch and stove. The kitchen and living room were the only two
rooms in her small apartment. The fold out couch was the closest
thing to a bedroom she'd had since leaving home three years
prior.

She was twenty-one years
old, and she knew that she had nothing to look forward to outside
of waiting tables, and possibly taking out student loans for
college.
For what?
She asked herself that question hundreds of times, and the
only answer she ever gave herself was to land a job that she would
hate, and spend years of her life staring out a window wishing for
more.

Travel the world, those were the words that
Julianne used. Morgan heard those words roll over her mind as she
pictured the places that she could go. Cairo? Brazil? The French
Riviera?

The microwave beeped, alerting her that her
oatmeal was finished, the smell of strawberries filling her small
kitchen. She ran a hand through her long blonde hair and sat down
at the table with her breakfast and the local paper. She had never
ordered a paper to be delivered, but she was sure apartment 4D
didn't mind her reading it as they had moved out three weeks
earlier.

Out of curiosity, she opened the paper to
the classified section, jobs specifically, and began to browse
around. She read about the secretary position at a local law
office, veterinary assistant, class A CDL driver, dog groomer,
volleyball coach and a caretaker at the old folks home before she
realized that none of those would ever be right for her.

“If I hate it, I could quit.” The words
spoken out loud helped her move closer to a decision. “Yeah, I
could totally quit, what could it hurt?”

Morgan took a deep breath, and made the
first of her big decisions. “I'll practice first. See if I like it,
or if I can even do it.”

She didn't plan on charging anyone, but she
wanted to know if she could offer great sex to a man with the
mindset that she would walk away afterward.

Who would be the best man to use for the
experiment? Jack Dalon, the asshole that stood her up the night
before. Yes, she would call him and make him believe that she was
more than alright with the way he had treated her. She would smooth
things over, and tell him that all she wanted anyway was a night
with him, in bed. It would be perfect! He'll fall for it, and
Morgan would see if she could remove true emotion from the act.
Because if she could do that with someone she wanted a relationship
with, she could do it with a stranger.

“Could I?” She chewed her bottom lip again,
her mind going back and forth.

She wanted a life of freedom. The life she
currently had consisted of grumpy old women informing her that they
didn't want tomatoes on their salad, or that she had put too much
ice in their soda.

Morgan imagined herself twenty years down
the road, maybe she would have scrounged up enough money by then to
buy a house, or finally get around to paying off student loans from
the schooling she'd need to land a job she didn't even like. She
pushed her empty bowl of oatmeal aside and laid her head in her
hands.

“What am I going to do?” It was a rhetorical
question. She already knew what she had to do, just conjuring up
the nerve to do it was going to be the hard part. Her mind went
back to Jack and she remembered her brilliant plan. “Okay, let's do
this,” she reassured herself.

She looked at the time, ten-thirty AM, Jack
was on his lunch break and it would be a perfect time to call.
She'd catch him off guard and he'd have no choice but to agree.
Morgan retreated to the bathroom and splashed herself with cold
water, hoping to wake herself up a bit more for the conversation
she was going to have. She knew she had to be smooth, and seem
completely uninterested in anything but having him in her bed.

After putting her dirty bowl in the sink,
and pulling her hair into a suitable, yet messy, bun, she grabbed
her cell phone and made her way to her fold out couch, that was
still in the fold-out position, and perched herself atop a stack of
pillows. She crossed her legs in front of her and clicked the
contacts button, after scrolling to the J's, she found him.

His picture smiled up at her as she clicked
Jack's name and it made her all the more nervous. She had rehearsed
the conversation in her head a dozen times already and was hoping
it would go as planned.

Her thumb would hover over the call button
for a few seconds, but she would pull it back in, capturing it
between her other fingers. A minute later, it would hover over the
green button again. She played hide and go seek with her finger for
a few minutes before she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and
finally pushed the damn button.

Ring.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
Ring.
Thump, thump. Thump,
thump.
Ring.

Her heart pounded louder in
her ears than the ringing of Jack's phone.
C'mon, answer it!

Voice mail.
Shit!
She only had a few
seconds of his voice, telling the missed caller to leave a message,
to think of what to say. She considered just hanging up, but
thought of the secretary position in the paper and pressed forward,
allowing Jack's voice to come to an end.

“Uh, hi, Jack,”
hi Jack? God, I'm so stupid!
She paused for a second, reprimanding herself for her horrible
intro. “This is Morgan,”
of course it is!
He has caller-ID!
She pressed her palm to
her forehead and continued, “about last night, I had something come
up, sorry I couldn't be there,”
oooh,
that's good.
Real
good.
“I want to make it up to
you...tonight. Be here at eight o'clock and I'll give you a night
you'll never forget.”

Morgan hung up the phone, “Oh my God!” She
couldn't even remember what she had just said, but she already
wished she could take it back.

“Shit, shit, shit! Alright, I got
this...I've had sex, lots of sex, this won't be any different than
that.” She nodded to herself, then ran to the tiny bathroom to get
a shower. She could always think better in the shower.

As the hot water beat down on her long
blonde hair, she wondered what her new life would be like. Would
men just buy her things that she wanted? Would it be like a
paycheck? Where would she live? That thought stuck around.

Hotels, that's where I'll live. And I'll be
waited on and served like all the other rich people that stay
there.

She smiled as she turned under the shower
head, facing the heated waterfall. Her mind floated over every
detail in her imaginary room; satin sheets, jet tub, gourmet food
delivered to her door, and those little chocolates that they put on
the bed each day. Yes, that's the life that she wanted.

By the time she was finished with her
shower, she began to believe that her new life was within reach.
She started to wrap her maroon bath towel around her slender body,
but stopped in mid-wrap. She dropped the towel, and turned to the
full length mirror on the back of her bathroom door.

Her breasts were first to be acknowledged.
Large, but not obnoxious. They were also firm, something that large
breasts typically were not. She put her hands under them, and
pushed them up to simulate the effects of a very expensive push up
bra. Not that she had ever owned one, there was no need. Morgan
never wore low cut shirts, and her girls were always safely tucked
away in a sensible, and quite cheap, white bra.

Then she turned to the side, seeing that her
ass stuck out just enough to make a pair of jeans look good. That
was her favorite feature, but she rarely tried to bring attention
to it. Back to the front, she looked at her stomach. It was fairly
flat, but lacked the definition that she envied on some of the
girls that she would see on the beach.

“I suppose I'm no better or worse than the
other women who do this.” Do this? She spoke the words as if her
mind was already made up. But that couldn't be, she thought,
because she hadn't even passed the test yet. Her thoughts went to
Jack, and her heart started racing all over again.

She pictured the ass in her mind.
Six-feet-two-inches of hunk. He was exactly her type, the dick
type. She chased guys like Jack and longed for them when she wasn't
chasing one. Jack; a guy that was gorgeous, self centered,
borderline rude in public, and great in bed. She'll never
understand what she saw in guys like him. Guys that had no regard
for her whatsoever. She used to wonder if she just wanted to change
them, or if it was just the challenge of a guy like that taking
notice of her. But she gave up trying to figure it out, and
resigned herself to the fact that she liked asshole men.

With her history, she really didn't know if
she could get his attention, then walk away from him. If she was
good enough, and he wanted more, could she say no? She had no idea,
but she would soon find out.

As she got dressed, choosing a pair of
straight leg distressed jeans and an Ohio State sweatshirt, she
began to realize that it would take more than just having sex. Much
more. She would need to play the part, and make him believe that
she wanted him. That's what they would be paying her for. Both her
acting and sexual abilities.

When she was dressed, she brushed out her
long hair as she stared into the mirror. “I should have joined the
drama club in school.” Acting, that's what she would have to do.
Obviously, her normal self didn't bring millionaires to her front
door. She couldn't even give it away at that point.

Morgan spent the rest of the afternoon
trying her best not to think of the future. She decided that she
would either have the ability to do it, or she wouldn't. She
watched four movies, back to back, of bone-crushing horror flicks.
They always took the edge off when she needed a distraction. For
the most part, it had worked, but it was nearing nightfall and Mr.
Experiment would possibly arrive shortly.

She had put the final touches on her
appearance by eight o'clock. She wore a short black cocktail dress,
normally reserved for her second date, that was held at the
shoulders by narrow black strings that were attached with dark pink
roses at the chest. She wore her hair down, as Jack had mentioned
once that he liked it that way, and she had put a few large spiral
curls throughout. Her light green eyes were brought to the
forefront by a touch of sable eye color, and a thin line of brown
eyeliner. Her lips were lined with a deep mauve, and the fullness
of her lips filled with a color one step lighter. She applied only
a hint of blush on her high cheek bones, and topped it all off with
a shiny gloss that was guaranteed to last through the night.

“Not this night, I hope.” She put the gloss
down, and walked with confidence to her kitchen. Once there,
another bottle of Moscato had just met its maker.

Two servings in, Morgan nearly dropped her
glass when she heard the beginning to her new life. The
doorbell.

Chapter Three

“
Oh god, he came! He
actually came!” Morgan continued expressing her surprise as she
frantically scanned her little apartment for anything out of place.
She had never
really
expected him to show up. Sure, it had been a subconscious
hopeful thought, but consciously, she was hoping he wouldn't show,
or perhaps get hit by a car along the way. Not seriously injured,
of course, just enough to postpone the rendezvous.

She wrapped her fingers around the silver
knob on the door, just as the doorbell sounded again, causing her
to jump back and nearly fall as her four inch heel twisted against
the carpet.

Once again, she grabbed the knob, this time
accomplishing a full turn, and slowly opened the door. She couldn't
help the butterflies that instantly swarmed in her stomach, and
certainly couldn't avoid the smile that spread across her face.

There he was, standing in
her hallway. On one hand, she wanted to ravish him right then and
there, on the other, she wanted to punch him right in that
prominent jaw...caress her fingers across that neatly shaven
goatee, kiss those luscious lips, don't even get her started on
those icy blue...
shit.

Morgan halted her daydreaming in time for
him to barge through her arm that had been propped against the
doorway. Morgan kept her huff to herself and watched him, well, his
ass, walk into her kitchen and find its place at her little
two-person table.

He grabbed an apple from the blue bowl in
the center of the white table and lifted his hips to reach a pocket
knife from his back pocket. “So, what's this about?” he asked,
beginning to whittle away at the apple's skin, flaking little red
strips across the table and floor.

Are you kidding me right now? You fuckin'
prick. Breathe, Morgan, breathe.

“Something about you making
it up to me for leavin' me high and dry last night?
That
was bullshit, by the
way,” he continued. He was just as good of an actor as she was
trying to be.

Morgan watched a few more
pieces fall to the table. She clenched her jaw before letting words
fly out of her mouth that she'd likely regret. She inhaled deeply,
and conjured the most seductive smile she could and walked toward
him.
This is just a test, c'mon, I can do
this,
she told herself.

He stopped picking away at the apple and
finally looked up when she was right in front of him. Morgan
grabbed the naked fruit from his hand, then the knife, and set them
on the table in front of him before she grabbed his broad shoulders
for support and made her next move.