Candidate Four (8 page)

He grabbed her face and forced her eyes open to look at him. “James,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “My name is James.”

She kissed him, open mouth to open mouth, tongue to tongue, before kissing at his cheek, over the sideburn stubble, and finally to his ear, biting at the skin beneath it.

“
Oh, James
,” she breathed, delirious at the simple triumph of having finally learned his name. “Come with me, James.”

She couldn’t hold on any longer, so she let herself fall. It was an incoherent pleasure and acute pain that ravaged her exhausted body, draining whatever was left from her until she was nothing more solid than putty. The twelfth man followed, grunting softly into her chest as her body hung backwards, limp and drained. She felt him release, smiled at the sudden deluge of his fluid inside her body. As he came he fell into her, driving her body back down into the bed until she was buried beneath him. Buried, but sated beyond comprehension.

“James,” she whispered through a smile as her mind forced her body into temporary sleep.

“Natalie,” he whispered in her ear.
James
. The twelfth man had a name. She opened her eyes and found him in bed next to her, fully clothed against her still very naked body.

“Hi.” She grinned and stretched out next to him, feeling more relaxed and unfettered than she had before their last joining.

“Hi yourself,” he smiled, and then leaned in to kiss her sweetly on the mouth. “I’m afraid our time is almost over. It’s just past 11:30.”

“Oh.” Her face fell and she swallowed back a lump of disappointment in her throat. All the time she’d spent trying to leave or thinking about what would happen when she would
have to
leave, and now the time had actually arrived. The Announcer had instructed the Gentlemen that Candidates were to stay no longer than noontime. Their time was nearly up.

Natalie got up from the bed, leaving his side, and walked to an overstuffed chair where her dress was hanging. She’d nearly forgotten about the beautiful black lace that had been loaned to her, and the expensive footwear that went with it. The dress with its back zipper from top to bottom was undone, ready to be put back on and returned home to its owner. As Natalie picked up the gorgeous garment she wondered what Quinn was doing, what she would be doing if she were there in her place.

Natalie looked out onto the cityscape again, the view different in the daytime than it was at night. More smog and palm trees under the glaring sun than there were under the glittering moon and stars. Her eyes refocused until it was her own reflection in the window pane, the milky white of her nude skin reflecting like bright light against the glass. Just over twelve hours prior she had clung to her body, shy about her nakedness, and now she barely noticed it.

She slipped the front of the dress over her arms and towards her shoulders, bringing the opening of the two sides behind her. The twelfth man – James – stood behind her and held the two sides before reaching down to zip them together. He made it halfway, stopping just below her waistline before his hands came to her sides and slid in beneath the fabric and across her stomach.

“Do me a favor?” he whispered. Her heartbeat quickened, her breath catching in her throat as she waited for him to continue. “Don’t come back here.”

Natalie turned, his arms coming out from behind her dress and resting on her exposed back. “What do you mean?”

“I mean don’t come back
here
. Don’t be a Candidate again.” His features had gone rigid to match the seriousness in his tone.

“Why?” She hadn’t even thought about whether or not she would return. She figured at the outset this was a one-time only event, a one-night stand. But she was curious as to why he was so adamant about it.

“This isn’t a place for someone like you.”

“
Someone like me
?” she reiterated. “Because I’m… what?”

His hands held her face, his eyes imploring her to listen. “You’re too good to be here, Natalie.”

“But what-“ she stopped herself from finishing the question.
But what if I want to see you again?

“But nothing. Promise me.” He kissed her before she could answer. Chaste, kind, and a bit romantic, the kiss was an unfair goodbye, a different kind of promise she knew would never be followed-up. When he pulled away he went to her back and finished zipping the dress up until it was closed completely at her back. He picked up the black Louboutins and set them at her feet, letting her hold on to his shoulder as she slipped each foot into the shoes. Apart from her clutch she was as put together as she was when she arrived. With the addition of the envelope, and the experience of having spent a night with the twelfth man, she felt like she was walking out a slightly different Natalie.

Was this the hardest part? Or was she the only one to want to see her bidder again? How were the other Candidates able to disengage themselves from an intimate night spent with a stranger and just leave? Was it just about the money? Maybe for Quinn it was; the money and the fun of it. Maybe in that case the twelfth man was right about her. This wasn’t a place for her to be, and even she knew she’d lucked out with her bidder, had told him so herself.

She turned from him and eyed the bedroom as she walked to the door. The bed was rumpled, disheveled from their lovemaking, pillows and sheets strewn about within a five-foot radius. In the main room she collected her clutch and – with a flush in her cheeks – the envelope with her payment. Transaction finally complete.

The main door in the foyer opened and her Concierge stepped through, smiling politely but blankly at her and nodding at Gentleman Twelve who had followed behind her.

“Miss Harlow,” the Concierge greeted. “The car is waiting to take you home. When you’re ready.”

Natalie turned for one final look at
him
. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his blue-green eyes cast in the same degree of intensity as when she first laid eyes on him. The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile, one that did reach his eyes, and in that smile she saw a sense of contentment she hadn’t seen in him before.

“Goodbye, Natalie.”

“Goodbye, James.”

When the Concierge pulled the car up to her apartment Natalie was surprised to see Quinn waiting outside, pacing back and forth with a very large cup of coffee in her hands. She nearly jumped when she saw the car come to a stop and eagerly opened the door to let Natalie out.

“Oh, my God it’s after noon! I’ve been waiting here since eight!” Quinn shrilled, clearly high on caffeine.

“Since eight? I don’t believe that for a minute,” Natalie teased. She grabbed for her clutch and envelope and waved at the Concierge as he drove off and away, back to wherever Concierges came from.

“Okay so I texted you at eight, had breakfast at nine and I’ve been here since like ten-thirty
ish
. But still! You stayed the whole time! So how was it? Which Gentleman did you get? What was his name? Have you checked your envelope yet?”

“Okay, okay,” Natalie put her hands on Quinn’s shoulders to calm her. “Maybe less coffee for you, yeah? Come inside. I don’t want everyone in the neighborhood to hear.” Fortunately for her she knew her parents would be out at the Farmer’s Market, meaning the entire apartment would be hers for the dishing.

She plucked her set of keys from inside the clutch and led the way, Quinn bouncing in excitedly behind her. Once inside Natalie headed straight to the kitchen and popped a K-cup into a single-cup coffee maker. She wouldn’t be offering any to Quinn.

“Open it. I’m dying to see how much you got. Do you think we should take Monday off to go shopping?”

“Oh no you don’t! However much is in that envelope is going straight into an account to help pay off my student loans and nothing else!”

“Right. I forgot. Well maybe just lunch then.” Quinn passed the envelope to Natalie just as the coffee machine began to pour steaming brown liquid into a cup. “Open it.”

“Fine!” In truth the curiosity had been rather awful. She could have looked at it hours ago. Hell, she could have taken the money and run without having so much laid a finger on the twelfth man. She was glad she hadn’t.

She sliced her house key through the thick paper envelope as Quinn investigated the single cup coffee maker,
oohing
and
ahhing
at it and threatening to make a fresh cup for herself, as if she needed any more. Natalie retrieved a piece of equally thick paper from inside the envelope and glanced over its contents.
‘The Golden Palm Club’ – that’s what they call their secret society? – ‘Payee: Natalie Harlow in the amount...’

“I think there’s something wrong with my check,” she blurted out. She couldn’t believe her eyes or her ability to read.

“Let me see.” Quinn peeked over at the paper and let out a long, low whistle. “Goddamn, Natalie. What the hell did you do? You can have the dress. Clearly it has worked for you. That’s enough to pay off your loans right now!”

“
Much
more than enough. I need to sit down.” Envelope and check in hand, Natalie found the closest surface to sit on and braced herself.

“Just think, on Monday you can send in a check and be done with student loans for good! And then we can
really
go shopping,” Quinn quipped, taking a sip from Natalie’s abandoned coffee. “Or move!”

“Actually it’s better if you pay them off over time rather than all at once. Looks good on your credit score.” She shrugged at the nugget of information she was forced to memorize thanks to entrance and exit counseling for college students accepting financial aid. She knew Quinn didn’t care but she needed to recite some form of fact to keep from going agog at the absolutely fictitious number printed on her check.

“So tell me about your bidder!” Quinn sat on the couch and sipped Natalie’s coffee, staring at her expectantly. “Was he good looking? Did he have a strange fetish? Who bid on you?”

Natalie turned to face her friend, folding the six-figure check securely in the palm of her hand. James’ smoldering blue-green eyes came to mind immediately, followed by the arrogant, twisted smile she’d become familiar with, and the feel of his hands on her body…

“My bidder was Gentleman Twelve.”

* * * * *

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Natalie couldn’t get the door opened fast enough. The masked man’s hands were everywhere – her hips, her back, and her breasts. She was eager to get him inside and let him strip her of her dress, to feel his body on, against and inside hers. As soon as the hotel door lock lit green and opened he picked her up, her legs straddling his waist as he carried her towards her bedroom. She barely heard the door slam shut behind them.

“That way,” she murmured between kisses, pointing haphazardly at the direction she thought her room was in. He burst through the door and kept walking until he reached the bed, dropping Natalie on her back and climbing on top of her, kissing greedily at her lips. She moaned into his mouth when she felt his erection pressed against her as he arched his hips. Her lust was like fire fueled by the alcohol, all she wanted was sensation.

“Take off the mask,” she breathed into him between kisses at his ear and neck. He pulled the mask off and her heart flipped at the trick her drunk mind was playing on her. “God, you look just like him.”

“Whom do I look like?” he asked.

“Mmm,” she murmured as her fingers found their way beneath his shirt and to his muscled abdomen. “Like the man I wish was you right now.”

He smiled, an arrogant, brooding smile that made her want him even more. “Maybe I am that man?” He pushed her dress up over her breasts and kissed over the fabric of her bra, his tongue searching along the edge for skin. “But you’re too drunk to see it?”

“If only that were true,” she sighed tiredly.

“Then maybe I’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll find out?”

“If only that were true,” she mumbled again, induced into sleep from too much alcohol before she could finish the sentence.
If only you really were him
.

Natalie Harlow could hardly believe her luck. It couldn’t have been happening to her. There was a mistake, a miscalculation or a typo by a severely dyslexic person. Not
her
.

“We’ll be going over performance reviews this week and will have a decision announced on Friday. The person we select to fill this position will begin Monday, bright and early. Are you up for the task, Miss Harlow?”

Natalie nodded, a smile widening her mouth into her cheeks until she was grinning like an idiot. “Yes, I am. Thank you!”

Graham Martin, the Vice President of Marketing and technically her boss’ boss, had just informed her she was being considered for a promotion. If she got it, Graham Martin would be her boss. It was Monday and the wait would be agonizing, but if she got it… more opportunity, more freedom, more responsibility! Not to mention more income.

She’d worked and saved and had finally moved out of her parents’ apartment and into one of her very own. It was tiny but affordable, and thanks to the extra money left over from the one previous side job she’d acquired in order to help pay for her student loans, she was set.

That was nearly five months ago, though time had done nothing to erase or fade the memories that had been burned so deeply in her mind, to her body, by Gentleman Twelve. Every Friday at 9:30PM since she’d looked outside her apartment window expecting a Concierge to drive up in a fancy car and transport her to The Golden Palm Club – a secret society-type of club in a luxurious private residence up in the hills where rich men bought a woman for the night for the pleasure of her company. Or at least, that’s how it had been described to her by her friend and frequent Golden Palm Club attendee, Quinn. It was, for all intents and purposes, an auction. A girl – a Candidate – would offer herself for bidding, the highest of which paid for the right to spend the next thirteen hours doing whatever the bidder – the Gentleman – wanted.

Natalie had only gone once and was bought by a bidder she came to know as the twelfth man, or Gentleman Twelve. He was a roguishly handsome man with deep blue-green eyes that bore holes into the sockets of anyone he looked at, and he had looked at her and only her. After a few rough beginnings, one which led to her walking out on him completely and without payment, they spent an unforgettable night together. He claimed he would ruin a girl like her, and it wasn’t until the next day she began to truly understand his meaning.

In truth she wanted to return to the house and become
Candidate Four
again just on the off-chance he was there, too. She craved for his touch the way any addict jonesed for a hit of their drug of choice. Until her night with him she’d only ever known good sex. Gentleman Twelve introduced her to the world of the amazing, toe-curling, world collapsing sex that in retrospect scared her. The vulnerability inherent in giving one’s body to another, to allow them total control of sense and perception was dangerous. But she wanted it, and no amount of fantasy alone in her bed at night, fingers between her legs, could replicate the twelfth man and the high he gave her.

But he’d asked her not to return. He said she was too good to put herself up for auction again, and while she understood and appreciated that modicum of respect he had for her, it quite frankly pissed her off. He might as well have said point blank he never wanted to see her again and that she should forget about him entirely. Like that could happen.

Natalie pushed the thoughts of him from her mind and made her way back to her cubicle, refusing to let the drama of her personal life interfere with the amazing direction her professional life was potentially about to take. By the end of the week she could be made Junior Vice President of Marketing at Brighton New Media. On paper she was qualified. She’d earned a Master’s degree in grad school, graduated with honors and had filled the spaces of her academic résumé with internships, student leadership and government, and social clubs which had helped make her personable, responsible, and affable.

She’d been with the company – which specialized in new media – for less than a year, but she’d worked hard during that time, volunteering for special committees and projects, finding ways to implement positive changes that saved the company money or made something more efficient. In fact it was in the last five months or so alone that she’d become even more devoted to her job, and nobody at work knew it was to keep her mind off a certain gentleman bidder who had completely upended life as she knew it. Regardless, this was the projection she had envisioned for her life post-graduation, and now she was days away from possibly making that vision a reality.

Quinn Potter – quite possibly the most attractive woman Natalie had ever seen in person – was sitting at Natalie’s desk, a brand new quilted leather Chanel bag the color of cotton candy dangling from her arm.

“Looks like you had a successful weekend,” Natalie smiled as she came around, setting her phone down on the cheap wood desk.

“Very successful. Though I don’t think anyone can match your Gentleman Twelve.” Natalie blushed as Quinn stood and relinquished the chair, taking her overly-expensive handbag with her. Quinn was referring, of course, to Natalie’s night at The Golden Palm and the amount her bidder had paid for her. Five months later she could hardly believe herself the six figures that had been written on the check. And that was
after
the club took its fees from the Gentleman. Quinn said the most she ever received was $20,000, but usually came home with anywhere between seven and ten thousand, more than enough to support her
well kept
lifestyle of designer clothes, fancy dinners and frequent vacations. Natalie had the majority of her bid money into an account and set up automatic payments each month for her student loans. As far as she was concerned, she was well kept.

“Did you have a nice time?” Natalie sat in her chair and tried not to laugh at the casual manner in which they talked about Quinn’s occasional foray into what was essentially prostitution, or
fancy prostitution
as Natalie once thought of it. Nor did she acknowledge so much as a crumb of her own jealousy for Quinn’s freedom to partake as she pleased.

“That’s a polite way of putting it,” Quinn smirked.

Natalie sighed thoughtfully. Yes,
polite
was exactly the word the twelfth man had used to describe her, and since their night together the word had taken on a whole new meaning.

“Anyway, I heard Graham Martin is considering you for the junior VP position. Congrats! We should celebrate! Drinks tonight? Ooh! If you get the job we should do something crazy this weekend.
Vegas
crazy!”

“Whoa there, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Natalie laughed. Quinn had an incurable positivity that was at times overwhelming, especially in the mornings when she was hopped up on caffeine. “Drinks, yes! Vegas? Won’t that be last minute?”

“Last minute?”

“If I don’t find out until Friday that will leave no time to plan everything properly-“

“What’s to plan?” Quinn interrupted, leaning against the cubicle desk. “We can get tickets on Southwest any time for dirt cheap, fly out of Burbank and be in Vegas in under an hour! I can book a hotel room and get us a reservation on OpenTable before the plane is taking off the runway. It’s easy!”

Natalie had to admit she was impressed. Quinn made her effervescent, flying by the seat of her custom-tailored and probably-too-expensive pants look like an effortless task hardly worthy of the time it took to consider it. But then again, Natalie was convinced Quinn’s life was a perpetual perfume ad of handsome men, glistening sunsets on the beach and mad, passionate lust.

“In fact we should go even if you
don’t
get the promotion. You’ve worked your butt off here for months and deserve a mini-vacay. Friday night we’ll eat, stay out late drinking, spend the day by the pool Saturday and do some shopping at Caesar’s, stay out and drink some more, then fly back Sunday, relax, detox and be pampered and refreshed in time for work Monday.”

“I don’t know. Vegas isn’t exactly my thing.”

“Vegas is everybody’s thing,” Quinn stated matter-of-factly. “And to sweeten the deal I’ll even pay for the hotel. Honestly, how could you refuse?”

* * * * *