Primal: Part One (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

GIGOLO

Licking, sucking, fucking

Pay me

You dripping

I sop it up like gravy

Pay me

Foaming at the mouth

Like I got rabies

Pay me

We can make love

Not babies

Pay me

Smack it up, flip it, touch it

Pay me

I’m licking, I’m sucking, I’m fucking

Pay me

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there staring at him.  Despite the serious look in his eyes, he was smiling, so she held out hope that he was kidding.  An escort?  Jovan?  As outgoing as he’d always been, she couldn’t imagine him taking that route.  Sex for money?  No, not him.

She thought back to their sexual relationship, which was nonexistent – thankfully.  Or maybe she had slighted herself by not giving in to temptation when they were teens.  Was Jovan
that
good in bed?  Good enough to charge for it?  This was surreal.  But as the seconds ticked on, and Monica began to blink and breathe again, he didn’t tell her this was all a ruse; a silly joke he played on long lost friends.

“You’re serious aren’t you?”

He nodded.  “I haven’t been doing it that long.”

“How…
Why
?”  She shook her head in exasperation.  “How did this happen.”

He laughed.  Monica became more aware of his perfectly straight teeth, his strong jaw line, his Adam’s apple.  How many women had kissed those lips?  Where had life taken the boy she dated for the first four months of their senior year?  Jovan took her to Finley High’s homecoming game.  They made out long and hard that night, but she never reached into his lap, and he didn’t slip a hand inside her panties.

When he was done laughing, he asked, “Are you hungry?  Wanna get something to eat?”

She did, but she didn’t know if she wanted to hang out with the likes of him.  She chuckled, catching herself.  The club business was filled with shady characters.  She knew a lot of drug dealers.  She brought in a few
women of ill repute
to keep the VIP happy on multiple occasions.  But she never thought about managing them.  What would that make her, a pimp?

This was too much.

“Are you gonna be okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, struggling to get her thoughts together.  “Sure.”

“So, you wanna get something to eat?” he asked again.  As she checked the time on her phone, he said, “There’s an I HOP not too far from here.”

As far as late night dining went, that wasn’t a bad choice.  It was better than the Waffle House, where club-hoppers loved to settle their late night beefs.  But if she agreed to go with him, she would also be agreeing to entertain his indecent proposal.

She sighed and convinced herself there was nothing wrong with hearing him out.  If anything, she had to know how a boy she went to school with got himself involved in the world’s oldest profession.

“Alright,” she told him.  “I can meet you there in forty-five minutes.  I have to take care of some things here first.”

He smiled graciously.  “Great.  Me too!  Your boyfriend will be okay with you being out so late?”

Monica forgot she had told him that.  “Oh, yeah, he’ll be fine.  This is business, right?”

He nodded.  “Of course.  I’ll see you there.”

He stood and helped her to her feet.  As she stepped away, she wondered about his
Me too
, comment.  Did Jovan have business with someone at the club?  There were a lot of eyes on him tonight.  If one of the ladies he met wanted to hook up, how would he talk them into paying for it?  Surely he wasn’t that bold.

She couldn’t have been more intrigued.

● ● ● ● ● ●

She arrived at the restaurant first.  Before she got out of her car, she saw Jovan pull up in a pearl white BMW.  The car looked to be no more than two years old.  She met up with him as he exited the vehicle.

“Whatever you’re doing seems to be paying well,” she commented.

“Not whatever –
whoever
,” he said and chirped the alarm.

It was after two a.m. when they were seated in a booth near the front of the restaurant.  Jovan ordered waffles, while Monica opted for chicken Florentine crepes.  While they waited for their food, she thought back to their first date in 1994.  Jovan took her to a burger joint, which she considered fine dining at the time.  He picked her up in a T-top Camaro.  Monica’s sister warned her that any boy who drove a car like that was sure to be moving way too fast for her, but that wasn’t the case with Jovan.

He was smart, witty and funny.  Monica didn’t run him off when she wouldn’t kiss on the first date or when she wouldn’t have sex after the fifth.  Jovan said he liked that she was different, and he’d be respectful of her decision to wait – not that it stopped him from trying.  There were many instances when their kissing and touching transitioned well past second base, but Monica would always catch herself.

As far as she could tell, Jovan was never resentful when he repositioned his boner, so it wouldn’t bump the steering wheel as he drove her home.  But then again, they did break up after only four months of dating.  Monica knew that Jovan went on to enjoy several fruitful and sexual relationships after her.

By the time they graduated, he had solidified his role as one of the smoothest brothers to ever walk the halls of Finley High.  Monica’s accomplishment of being the one girl who
didn’t
give it up to him was mostly forgotten.

Their food was delivered after a rather long wait.  Jovan thanked their waitress and dove into the meal, as if he hadn’t eaten anything all day.

“Damn,” Monica commented.  “Are you starving, or is it that good?”

He swallowed before saying, “Both.  I didn’t make it to the mixer in time for dinner, remember?”

“Yes.  You were fashionably late – which worked out perfectly, because all eyes were on you when you got there.”

He looked up from his plate and smiled.  “Were they?”

“You made quite an entrance,” Monica acknowledged.  “The ladies at my table, you were all they cared about from the moment they saw you.”

He chuckled at that.

Monica raised an eyebrow.  “Don’t tell me you’re modest.”

He shook his head.  “No.  It comes with the business.  Getting women’s attention is half the battle.”

Monica cut into her crepes.  “You mean the modeling business or your
other
business?”

“I don’t really model anymore,” he stated.  “I mean my other business.”

“Were you working tonight?” she wondered.

“I’m always working.  Even if it’s only to make contact with a potential client, it’s working, flirting, whatever.”

She shook her head, smirking, as she devoured a bit of her food.  It was good, definitely worth the wait.  She said, “I was wondering how you go about that.  If you meet a woman who likes you, how do you break the news to her that you charge for…”  She looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping before she murmured the word, “
sex
?”

Jovan found her unease amusing.  “It’s not the easiest thing to do,” he confessed.  “It’s a feeling process.  If I get a sense they wouldn’t be down for it, I won’t tell them at all.”

“And you won’t go out with them?”

“Sometimes I will,” he said.  “I’m telling you, there’s no set of rules that works for every woman.  Maybe I can’t tell her I’m an escort, but I
can
tell her I’m between jobs, and I need things; groceries, bill money, rent…  But I’m hoping to streamline the process, to take the guess work out of it.  I don’t like to scout potential clients.  I need them to come to me, with no pretense in mind.  That’s what I’ve been working on.  That’s what I need you for.”

Monica was no longer shocked by what she was hearing, but every layer of Jovan’s story was fascinating.  She’d never met a full-time gigolo – or at least not one who was willing to admit it.

“Tell me how this started.”

“It was a gradual process,” Jovan said as he continued his dinner.  “It took twenty years of loafing and debauchery to get to this point.”

Monica laughed nervously.  She couldn’t take her eyes off him.  “You didn’t get a body like that from loafing…”

He shook his head, looking into her eyes.  “No.  I started working out real heavy when I got to Texas Lutheran.  My mom paid for me to live in the dorms my freshman year.  They paired me up with another freshman who was on the football team.  He was from Louisiana.  They gave him a full ride.  He was always complaining about how much the team sucked.  He thought I could make it as a redshirt, if I had any athletic skills at all.”

Jovan chuckled at the memory.  “I never made the team, but I hung around them long enough to get acquainted with the weight room.  The guys in there, the regulars, they knew all kinds of tricks for bulking up fast.  A dude named Shannon took me under his wing.  He was a hardcore lifter; shooting ’roids and everything.  I never got into that, but I did the vitamins, protein shakes and weight gainers.

“I put on twenty-five pounds by the end of my freshman year. 
All muscle
.  I got a girl named Allyson to buy my books the second semester, and I pocketed the money my mom sent me.”

Monica thought his smile was conniving now, as he reflected.

“If I had to pick the woman who started it all for me, I guess it would be Allyson,” he continued.  “I don’t know why she felt the need to pay for something she was already getting for free, but she did.  She liked to give.  After a while, I wanted to please her more and more, just to see how far she would go.  Every time she came, I wondered how much that was worth to her.  It got to the point where I didn’t even care about getting mine.  But she did.  She would please me and pay me.  It was the best thing in the world.”

Monica’s eyes were wide, partially due to the casual manner in which he reported this.  She realized her mouth was open, and she snapped it closed.

“Sorry, is this too much for you?” he asked.  Her embarrassment was cute.

“No.  It’s just, it’s not every day that one of your ex-boyfriends gets into… your line of work.  But go on.  I wanna hear your story.”

“So, you want the dirty details?”  His eyes were sinful.

Monica didn’t want to be the one to back down.  “What do you think I’m gonna do, whip out a bible and demand that everyone in the restaurant take part in stoning you?”

He laughed at that.  “You sure you won’t judge me?”

“You didn’t ask me out on a date,” she reminded him.  “This is business.  I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t willing to offer an open mind.”

He nodded.  “Alright.  So after I learned how to suck Allyson’s clit until it rained money…”

Monica assumed the pause was to assess her reaction to that.  She didn’t bat an eye.

“I’m just kidding.”  He snickered.  “I’d be rich by now, if I figured it out way back then.  Nah, I spent the past twenty years working, mostly legit.  I’ve done all kinds of things to make ends meet.”

“Like what?”

“Modeling.  Customer service.”  He rubbed his chin, thinking back.  “I was a personal trainer for a while.  I was a salesman.”

“What kind of salesman?”

“You name it.  I’ve sold everything from cars to washing machines.  I can be pretty persuasive, especially if my customer is female.”

Monica didn’t doubt that.  If his looks didn’t pull you in – which they would – you would be drawn to Jovan’s vernacular, his sense of humor and his confidence.  She wondered what sort of things he’d talk her into by the end of the night.

“I’ve basically been a swindler for a long time,” he revealed.  “I’ve been a gigolo since college.”

She shook her head.  “You like that word,
gigolo
?”

“Everything else sounds feminine,” he replied.  “I like gigolo.  It’s fitting.”

“Okay.”

“I haven’t worked much in the past couple of years,” he said.  “I think I made twenty thousand last year – legally.”

Monica knew he wasn’t pimping a BMW with those earnings.  “How much you making with your side project?”

He shrugged.  “Honestly I don’t know.  That’s part of the reason I need a manager.  I want to retire one day.  I need help strategizing.  Lately my life has been pretty carefree.  I’ll admit it.”

“Do you have another Allyson taking care of you?” she wondered.

He smiled broadly.  His pride was unmistakable.  “I have
several
Allysons.”

Wow
.  “You changed a lot.”  She didn’t mean to say that.  She didn’t want to sound judgmental.

He said, “You have too.  You’ve grown into a beautiful, mature woman.  It’s great to see you again, talk to you.”

She had to look away from his eyes.  They were enchanting.  She stared at his mane instead.  His dreads were perfect, no new growth at all.  And they were clean, which was not always a given for that hairstyle.  She wanted to see what his hair looked like when he let it down.