She obviously already knew the question; perhaps the remark was her lead-in. “I work this beach, and others. Resort areas, tourist beaches, and especially conventions. I’m a tour guide. My name’s Carol. What’s yours?”
A tour guide? “Jake,” Flood answered her. “I’m a computer accessory salesman from Seattle.”
She giggled, a vocal gesture drenched in sex. She stopped, turned, and ran a hand down his white arm. “Believe me, I could tell you’re not from here. Be careful, you’ll burn fast.”
Honey, I’m already burning.
“So I won’t jack you around with the usual games. I’m a call-girl, Jake, one of the higher-priced kind.” She stood and coyly ran a toe across the sand, making squiggles. “I charge a lot by most standards but—”
“You’re worth it,” he said without thinking. He laughed to himself. “This sounds corny, and I’m sure you hear it all the time, but you’re absolutely the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Carol blushed. Now a finger made circles on his chest, through the V of his open shirt. Flood felt his own nipples instantly stand up, as his eyes struggled not to stare outright at hers. When she opened her hand and ran her palm inside his shirt, Flood’s penis began to drool, threatening to spring up to full hardness right in his trunks.
“You’re sweet, thank you. My rates are high, but because of what you did for me back there, I’ll give you a half-rate for anything, I mean, if you’re interested.”
“I—” was all Flood could say.
“No pressure, and if you don’t want to, that’s cool. Just think about it.”
“I—”
“Come on! Let’s get a drink!”
She was dragging him off again. The situation was so cliched: middle-aged workaholic walking arm in arm with a stunning bombshell, feeling like he was real again. It wasn’t real at all, but that didn’t matter.
Their hips bumped as they walked, each bump urging another drop of pre-ejaculant down his urethra. When the tanned skin of her thigh slid against his, he could’ve moaned.
“I love this bar. Wanna know why?”
“Good drink specials?”
“No! It’s outrageously overpriced! But I love it ‘cos it’s always empty!”
“That’s more my speed too,” Flood said for lack of an intelligent response.
“I’m supposed to meet my friend Therese here later.”
The name crackled in his head. Therese. From his eavesdrop on Leon and Jinny. Jesus, Jinny, Leon had complained, you’re gonna turn into a junkie like Ann and Therese. Oxycodone, they’d been talking about: needle-free heroin. But it was clear Carol couldn’t be into similar recreations, not with a body and glow like this. She didn’t really even look like a prostitute: she looked too grand for that, too perfect.
The bar sprawled before a long, massive swimming pool, before an even more massive pink hotel that looked more like a castle. The elegant edifice threw a football-field sized shadow onto the beach.
No customers at the bar, nor at any of the umbrella’d tables on the bar’s flank. This “worked” for Flood, indeed, for at any moment his arousal would be plain to see. An attractive fiftyish woman polished a glass and smiled at them.
“Tequila Moonrise, and whatever my friend’s having,” Carol said. Flood ordered a Beck’s draft.
“And I told you, this is on me,” Carol insisted. “I can’t afford to eat here, but I can always swing a few drinks.”
“I’d be more than happy to p—”
“Hush!”
The drinks arrived. A menu shaped like a scallop shell was placed before them, then the barmaid curtly walked away.
“Wow. Lobster Fritters,” Flood commented of the menu. Twenty-two bucks for four.
“They’re great but way overpriced. One time I had them, though, and they’re delicious. A j—” She stalled. “A client got them for me.”
She was going to say a john, Flood realized. “Let’s get some. I’m buying. I’m buying everything.”
“Jake, come on, I said this was my treat.”
“Won’t hear of it. And besides—” He looked at her and nearly rolled his eyes in awe. “Where on earth are you carrying money, anyway? I know it’s not stashed in that top.”
She giggled again, raised her other hand, which brandished a minuscule fleshtone wrist-purse. She zipped it open and slipped him a business card. “If you’re not interested now, maybe you will be later. But just so you know, I’m a grand for all night, and that’s anything you want, as many times as you can get off. Five hundred for an hour, and two for a blow. But for you, half off.”
Flood looked at the card. Because she’d mentioned Therese after Leon’s reference to her, he expected the card to be identical to the one Leon had given him, but instead, this one read: SUN ANGELS TOUR GUIDES - HENRY PHIPPS, MNGR. He remembered the Phipps’ name…
Leon’s competition…
The side of her calf touched his. She chatted her background, which sounded typical and very non-harrowing. It was small-talk, it was meaningless, and Flood knew that given her profession, he was meaningless. He was to her what a potential network buyer was to Flood. Once they said “no, thanks,” they were reduced to insignificance. But none of this mattered. She was doing her job with artistry, making him feel at ease and covertly stimulating him with her cheery voice, her giggles, her eye gestures and body language. Flood was enjoying her company, and she hadn’t been lying. There was never any pressure. “Those were delicious,” she said of the lobster fritters. Flood had also ordered satay, fresh-water shrimp skewers, and lastly, oysters on the half-shell.
“Oh, I love raw oysters. You read my mind!” A hot hand opened on his thigh when she whispered, “And it’s true what they say. They really do make me horny!”
Flood smiled. I’m sure they do. She’s working me, all right…and I don’t care.
His breath thinned when he watched her eat, daintily holding up the shell, the tip of her tongue slipping around the oyster. Then she sucked it all right into her mouth.
Oh, God…
And now her gestures became less covert: her hand smoothing over his thigh, her legs rubbing his more directly. “Relax,” she whispered next. “She’s way over there, and can’t see under the bar anyway…”
“What?” Flood began, then gritted his teeth. He tensed when her fingers slipped under his shirt and worked their way into the waistband of his trunks. His balls drew up at once, and even before her hand was on it, his penis shot fully hard. His first social instinct was to pull her hand out—Someone might see!—but why care?
“Relax, relax.” Her whisper was like hot liquid. “There’s no one here. Let me play with it…”
She knew how to play. Her fingers slipped all around, so lightly at first his nerves barely registered the tactility, then with a smooth firmness. Each beat of Flood’s heart forced more blood upward, to the extent that his already erect penis seemed to lengthen, by force.
“What do you think?” she whispered.
He could barely talk. “I-can’t. You don’t understand—it-it won’t work. I-I-I can never come. I can never keep it up…”
Her hand gripped the shaft like a flight-stick, the pad of her thumb twirling over the lubricated knob as though his glans were a bomb-release trigger. “Jake, it sure doesn’t feel to me like you have any problem.” She whispered more hotly, her breath sultry and sweet from the drink. “This is one big hard cock I’ve got here in my hand! Let me take care of it for you. I want to do something for you, you know…for earlier.”