The Billionaires Club (2 page)

His voice becomes more distant, and
then I hear a door open and shut. I wait for him. And I wait and I
wait and I wait. Five minutes pass. A few more minutes later and I
hear a door open again. My body instantly tenses, nervous
anticipation taking over me. He's back. We're going to continue
where we left off. Should I have gotten undressed while he was
gone?

There's a knock on the wall, and then
an unfamiliar voice. “Miss Murphy?”

“
Yes?” I reply
hesitantly.

“
Anders had to leave. He
apologizes, but he won't be able to spend time with you
tonight.”

CHAPTER TWO

Deflated. Embarrassed. Humiliated.
Those are the best words to describe how I feel. I can't even get
my pretend boyfriend to spend the night with me. How pathetic.
Maybe Evelyn can get a refund.

“
So, how is it?” she asks on
the other end of the line, her voice almost shrill with
excitement.

“
It's great,” I reply,
though I've never been very good at hiding my
disappointment.

“
Tell me all about
it.”

“
There's not much to tell
yet.” I lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “I mean,
I've only been here for one night.”

“
Still, I want to know
everything.”

“
Well, I checked in, and
they showed me to my room. It's really big and nice. Luxurious. I
kind of just chilled out in here until dinner.”

“
How's the food?”

“
Awesome, as to be expected.
I had Chilean sea bass if that tells you anything.” I enunciate
'Chilean', trying to make it sound haughty.

“
And then what
happened?”

“
Then I came back to my room
until it was time to go to the dressing rooms.”

“
Oh, Tess, don't tell me
you're going to spend your entire time there in your room,” she
groans at me.

“
I'm not,” my tone twists in
offense. “I just got here. I'm getting a feel for the place.
Tomorrow I'll venture out to the spa and maybe the
pool.”

“
Good. The whole point of
you being there is to get pampered. You deserve to be
pampered.”

“
I really appreciate you
doing this for me,” I say, feeling somewhat guilty.

When Evelyn won the lottery, she didn't
have to spend any money on me. We've been best friends since
Kindergarten. Her friendship is enough of a gift. But she insisted
that I deserve something for sticking by her side for all these
years, and spending ten grand to send me to The Billionaires Club
for a month wasn't a huge hit to her seven million dollar winnings.
If I had a choice in the matter, I would have rather had that money
go towards a new car, but I didn't have a choice.

Since junior high, I almost always had
my nose tucked away in a romance novel. My favorite stories were
the ones about wealthy powerful men sweeping ordinary girls off
their feet. Evelyn loved to tease me for reading them. She was more
into watching television. To each her own.

Neither of us had ever even heard of
The Billionaires Club until Evelyn won the lottery and was putting
in her two weeks notice at her job. It was then that her boss
mentioned it in a joke. Evelyn took the liberty of researching it
further. She got the address from her now ex-boss and drove over to
the facility. The place was very discrete. No online information.
No take-home brochures. They made her go through a consultation,
and she decided to enroll me on the spot.

When she first told me about it, I
wasn't sure if I was happy or mortified. The way she described it,
it sounded like a brothel for gorgeous rich men. All the profits
were donated to charity though, so The Billionaires Club managed to
slip through some legal loophole that would have otherwise made it
a prostitution ring. The wealthy men there, the hosts, pretty much
just volunteered their sexual services to women. The whole concept
was a bit strange to me.

“
Tell me about your
billionaire,” she says, and I can practically hear her
wiggling.

My face sulks into a frown, thinking
about how he ditched me. I don't want to tell her that though. I
want her to think I had the time of my life. That's what she paid
for, after all. “He's gorgeous.”

“
Of course, he is. They all
are. The consultant showed me their pictures. Did you get the
dreamy blonde one I was telling you about?”

“
No.”

“
Oh darn. I was really
hoping you'd get that one.”

I can't help but laugh at the sound of
disappointment in her voice. “I assure you, the guy they gave me
was every bit as gorgeous as any of the others they could have
paired me with.”

“
They were all hot. Too bad
they wouldn't let me pick one out for you.”

From what Evelyn told me about the
consultation, the billionaires chose clients based on responses to
a survey we were forced to fill out about our personal and sexual
interests. We were also required to take a photo for the
billionaires to look at. Even though it was the clients who paid to
be with the billionaires, it was the billionaires who picked which
clients they wanted to work with. That meant Anders hand-selected
me out of a pool of other women he could have been with instead.
The thought was almost romantic, though I was probably
over-glamorizing it. Judging by the way that he fled, he likely
regrets choosing me. My mouth sank back into a frown at the
thought.

“
Anders is fine,” I say with
a sigh.

“
Anders,” she laughs. “Cute
stage name.”

“
Stage name?”

“
Yeah. You don't think those
guys actually give their real names out, do you? They have to
protect their identities.”

“
Of course, they don't,” I
reply, feeling stupid.

“
So, how was
Anders?”

Now is the moment I've been dreading.
Do I tell her the truth or do I lie? She'll probably be mad if I
tell her what really happened. Still, she's my best friend, and I
kind of do want to unload about it.

“
Anders was busy,” I say
finally.

“
I bet he was,” she
quips.

“
No. I mean that he had to
leave on business, so we didn't get to spend the night
together.”

“
Oh.” The chipper tone
leaves her voice. This is what I was dreading. “But you said that
he's gorgeous.”

“
He is gorgeous.”

“
So, you did get to see
him?”

“
Yes. I mean that he kind of
left before things even got really started.”

“
What do you mean he
left?”

“
Like we went up to his
suite, and he got a phone call and had to leave.” Even explaining
this to her is painful. The memory plays through my mind. The
passionate kisses. The tender caresses. His sensual touch. And then
it was all gone.

“
That's lame. So you two
didn't do anything at all?”

“
Well.” I twirl a strand of
my hair in my finger. “We kind of made out.”

“
Kind of? How do you kind of
make out with someone?”

“
We made out, alright. I
mean we kissed and stuff and he did a few other things, but there
was no sex.”

“
Details. I'm married,
remember? I have to live vicariously through you.” The happiness
returns to her voice, and I'm relieved. The last thing I want is
for her to be upset about this.

“
Do I have to say it?” I
squirm uncomfortably. For as much as I love reading about sex,
talking about it makes me feel off.

“
Did he eat you
out?”

“
No.” I blush at the
mention.

“
Did you blow
him?”

“
No.” I squeak.

“
Did he finger
you?”

“
Kinda?” It sounds more like
a question than an answer.

“
He kinda fingered
you?”

“
It wasn't penetrative,” I
confess, feeling flustered from the conversation. I can't wait to
get off the phone.

“
Well, at least it's
something.” She sounds unimpressed. “You have a whole month to get
used to each other. Make the best of it.”

“
I will. I'm tired. It's
bedtime for me.”

“
Me too. Work tomorrow and
all.”

“
Yeah. Sleep
well.”

“
You too.”

I hang up the phone and stare at the
ceiling, wondering what tomorrow will bring. I won't see Anders for
three more nights. I get him twice a week, on Mondays and
Thursdays. The rest of the time, he's with other women. The thought
makes me sick to my stomach, though I don't know why. This was
explained to me already. He's not really mine. I'm just renting
him.

***

I wake up feeling refreshed. After
breakfast, I go to the spa for a facial, and then I decide to spend
the remainder of the day lazying around the pool. There's no reason
why I should let one disappointing night ruin my time.

My mind has been made up. I've read
enough romance novels to fabricate a few amazingly great sex
scenes. The thought of being with a man whom I don't know, albeit a
gorgeous man, is a lot less appealing now that I've put so much
thought into the fact that I'm just another name on his to-fuck
list. Will I ever have a chance to sleep with someone like him
again? Probably not. But if I were to have such a chance, I would
want it to be because of genuine mutual interest, not because he
had been paid-off to sleep with me.

I plan the entire thing out in my head.
When I see Anders on Thursday, I'll tell him that his services
aren't needed. He can have my month off or pick up another girl,
whatever he usually does when clients fall through. No hard
feelings.

I slip into my bikini and head
downstairs to the pool. A few other women are already sitting out
and sunning themselves in the California heat. There's really a
diverse mix of women here. Fat, skinny, old, young. Though I'm
pretty sure that I'm the youngest.

I take a lounger next to a woman who is
easily in her late sixties. She stares intently at a man less than
half her age who is scooping leaves out of the pool. The infamous
pool boy. The entire staff here is male and all for our pleasure.
The cooks, the maintenance, the cleaning crew. They're all readily
available for a romp between the sheets with any one of the
clients. And they're all gorgeous.

These guys aren't billionaires. They're
just blue-collar workers, college guys, and guys who enjoy getting
paid to sleep with women. While I'm sure that's not drawn up in
their employment contract, you know that's what they were really
hired for.

Mister Pool Boy is casting a glance
across the pool to Late Sixties. He burns into her with a seductive
gaze, and she throws it right back at him. Her confidence makes me
a bit jealous. If he was giving me that look, I would be a
blushing, blubbering mess.

But then he does notice me, and his
gaze shifts. I instantly lower my eyes. Late Sixties huffs in my
direction, though I can't tell if it's from anger or amusement. By
the time I look back up, a tall shadow is being cast across my
body. Mister Pool Boy is standing at the edge of my lounger, and
then he kneels beside me, taking my hand into his in a way that
makes my heart skip a beat from nervousness.

“
You look like you need
something,” he says, his accent thick and exotic. Spanish
perhaps.

“
I-I'm fine,” I stutter. I
just want him to go away. He's hot, but I'm not interested in what
he's offering. I just want to sit by the pool and read.

“
I don't bite, unless you
want me to.”

A hard lump forms in my throat, and I
quickly lose focus of everything. His voice is so sensual,
practically beckoning to me. I won't fall for it though. I
can't.

“
Tessa. There you are,”
another man's voice says, this one behind me. My entire body tenses
as I recognize it. I feel like I'm being tag-teamed by two
predators, though it's quickly apparent which one is the
alpha.

Mister Pool Boy pulls himself to his
feet and returns to his duties, backing down from the prey. The
impending presence behind me stands firm, and I don't understand
what he's doing there. We're not supposed to see each other again
until Thursday.

“
Anders.” I turn toward him,
but the sun almost instantly blinds me.

“
I hope you weren't having
too much fun with Vernon.”

Vernon. That's not a Spanish name. I
can't help but wonder if the accent was fake or if the name is a
moniker.

“
He just asked if I needed
anything.”

“
I'm sure he was willing to
take care of all your needs,” his tone sounds almost bitter. He
extends a hand to me, and since I'm confused, I take it. “Shall
we?”

He pulls me to my feet, and I realize
he's leading me inside. I cast a nervous glance back at Late
Sixties and Mister Pool Boy, who are already locked into another
lecherous staring match. Maybe he'll show her a good time instead.
The thought oddly doesn't bother me at all.