July (Calendar Girl #7) (2 page)

You can do this Mia.

Just over a month ago you were traipsing around in a bikini with Tai and the modeling team. This is actually more clothing than that. Plus, you’re not here for your stellar morals in decency, you’re here to look hot and be a love interest in a rock video. Er, a hip-hop video. A groan slipped out of my mouth as I pulled my hair up into a ponytail. It felt like a million degrees, or maybe my own internal temperature had hit a hundred.

Breathing slowly through my nose and out my mouth I stood and walked out to the living space. Heather was there taking a call. Her eyes took in my outfit from the tip of my toes to my hair. When she got to my head an ugly frown marred her face. Never taking her ear off the phone she moved to me, tugged on the hair tie and let the thick strands tumble around my shoulders. “Better,” she whispered while fluffing it this way and that. Then she snapped her fingers and walked to the door.

“Did you just fucking snap at me?” The easy comradery that we’d had in the car ride from the airport was blown to bits.

Heather had the good grace to look chagrinned. “Sorry,” she mouthed. “Yes Anton, I’ve got her now.” The words held irritation as if it was a physical thing you could toss up in the air and catch on a whim. “We’ll meet you in the dance room. Yes, five minutes.”

“Mia, I’m sorry. He gets me all twisted in a knot. Unfortunately, he’s on a bit of a tear. Didn’t mean to be rude. Apparently the backup dancers sucked, couldn’t move if they had bees in their underpants.”

I tried to chuckle with her but couldn’t really pull it off. Dread ricocheted down each rib to land heavily in my gut. He would most certainly not be happy when he found out this white girl could not dance. At least I was safe in the knowledge that there were no take-backs. He paid the fee regardless of whether or not I could dance. That was not part of my portfolio, and I’d never claimed it to be.

The elevator opened to a hallway where glass walls spanned the entire length from wall to wall. The regular lights were off in the room, black lights were flickering, and spotlights shone down on several figures, bodies writhing to the obscenely loud beat. A man in jogging shorts and a t-shirt clapped out beats and called numbers to the dancers in what I thought were placements for their feet or hands, but I couldn’t be sure.

Heather brought me in to stand to the side. That’s when I got my first good look at Anton Santiago. Taking in his sleek, muscled form, my mouth went dry; the room around me seemed to throb like a heartbeat as he slowly walked forward. Each beat of the music accentuated the movement of his shoulders, one in front of the other, and twisted his hips along to each hit. His body was covered in slick sweat, from the protruding collar bone, over square pecks and down the highway that was one helluva toned abdomen. Not only was he cut, his body just screamed, “Hold me, touch me, put your naked form all over me.”

He spun around, the back-up dancers mimicking the move, and then he hit the floor…with his body. He did a series of pushups to the beat, then one-handed, the muscles in his forearms bulging delectably. He did another but with an added roll of his hips as if he was humping the ground. Sweet mother…I wanted to shimmy over there and lay down so he could practice that move on a living, breathing, hot-blooded woman. And I was hot. So fucking hot. I fanned myself as I watched his body twist, turn, and catapult into the air onto his feet where he repeated the hip rolling pelvic thrust to the sexiest lyrics.

“Ride it baby, ride… **body roll**

“With me, I’ll go all night…” **thrust**

“Let me do you right…” **body roll**

“And ride it baby, ride…” **thrust**

His large hand cupped his package, tugging up while his body arched into the air. He looked like a golden-brown god who’d just finished pounding his dream girl and was checking the status of his weapon before going back into a sex-driven battle.

The music came to an abrupt halt. “Okay guys, that’s enough for the day. Anton, we good,” the guy in shorts called out.

Anton didn’t say a word, just offered one cool as a cucumber chin lift. A gaggle of girls clamored up to him with water and a towel. “Oh Anton, you were amazing. So sexy.”

He stopped a few feet in front of me, eyes never leaving mine. Green to green. His blazing, mine turned way the fuck on. “Leave me.”

“But, I thought after rehearsal we were going to have fun?” The two girls clamored for his attention.

His brows furrowed. “Anton don’t do repeats.
Vete al carajo
,” he said and with a sweep of his hand shooed them away. By the grimace and sadness on their faces, whatever he said could not have been good. Later I found out it meant “fuck off”.

“
Lucita
,” he licked his lips in the way a man does that literally makes your spine tingle and your core
clench
. Yes, he made my pussy clench with a single lip lick. “Now that you’re here, whatever shall we do with you?” His Puerto Rican accent did crazy things to my senses as his eyes scanned me from head to toe again. He may as well have reached out a hand and trailed it all along my skin for how much I felt that look.

Those green orbs glazed over with what could only be seen as pure, carnal lust. We stood there, eyes locked on one another as we had a visual silent war with one another. Nostrils flared, eyes squinted, and finally I spoke.

“You could feed me. I’m starved,” I said. Heather, standing a lot closer than I thought, snorted with laughter, breaking the tension between me and the Latin Lov-ah. Now, seeing him in front of me, it made all kinds of sense where he got that name.

His head cut to hers. “Sorry, Anton,” she said and looked away, failing to hide the smile on her face.

Anton held his hand out to me. “Mia, let’s fill you up.” The way he said those words literally made me think of a hundred other completely inappropriate things besides food. I licked my lips and smacked my chops.

“Yes, let’s.”

Anton led the three of us to the elevator and up to the penthouse, his private residence. The moment the doors opened Anton walked through them leaving the two of us behind. “You know what to do, H.” He hollered over his shoulder, not even sparing a glance in his wake.

Heather led me in the opposite direction. “Come on girl, I think we’ll be needing a drink. A big one.”

We entered an open floor plan kitchen; white cabinets spanned an entire wall, each with a unique black scrollwork handle, as if each one was individually made. An obscenely long counter stretched in front of the cabinetry and top notch appliances. Ten stools with rounded tops sat in a perfect line under the black granite slab counter. I pulled one out and sat, tugging down the itty bitty shorts as much as possible to make sure portions of my ass weren’t hanging over the bull-nosed edge of the stool. Not a good look for anybody.

“Do you like pomegranate?” Heather pulled out two crystal martini glasses.

I nodded. “Very much.”

She proceeded to pull out a giant bottle of Grey Goose Vodka, a metal shaker, and the juice.

“So what does Anton have planned for me?” I asked while she dropped the cubes into the shaker, then with a heavy hand, poured the vodka, adding just a splash of the pomegranate concentrate.

Heather smirked and smiled. “You mean aside from fucking you?” The statement was more an accusation than a question. I balked, unable to believe the audacity of what she just said.

“Don’t act all coy. I saw the way the two of you were eye-fucking each other in the studio earlier. I give it until evening before he has you laid out underneath him.”

She pushed the martini filled to the brim with burgundy liquid over to me. “Bottoms up?” She said and took a healthy swig.

I did the same needing the liquid courage to set her straight. “You really don’t think that highly of me, do you?” The words came out as venomous as a rattle snake’s bite.

Her eyebrows scrunched together. “Don’t you fuck all your clients? You are an
escort
.” That one word carried an enormous amount of scorn.

On that note, I smacked the glass down, red liquid sloshing all over the counter. “I fuck who I want, when I want to. It’s not part of my contract. I’m an escort not a
whore
.” I blew out a harsh breath and continued. “I offer companionship or fill a need, but that need doesn’t necessarily include fucking my clients.” My tone was rife with indignation although, technically, I had fucked some of my clients, but not all of them.

I say who and I say when. Period.

Thoughts of the man who wanted to push the physical
who
and the
when
onto me, creeped their sinister way into my subconscious. If I could, I’d bat the disgusting reminders back with a sledgehammer. lock them in a very dark closet, and throw away the key.
You will not control me.

Instead of letting Heather speak, revenge scaled along my chest and up through my throat, fueled by my lingering fear of what had recently occurred with Aaron. “Now I know why you don’t have any friends. You’re judgmental, pissy, and downright rude!”

Heather backed up a few steps until she hit the opposite counter where the stainless steel, double-wide Sub Zero fridge shook. If I hadn’t been paying close attention I wouldn’t have recognized the shimmery blue of her eyes. She cleared her throat, raised a delicate, long-fingered hand to her chest and spoke. “I’m sorry, Mia. That was rude of me.”

“Damn right it was rude!” My mouth hurt from clenching my teeth. I sucked back the rest of my drink allowing the fiery burn to disguise the acid burn building in the pit of my stomach.

She licked her lips and her eyes moved from side to side. “Again, please, I’m sorry. I didn’t hire you to be his bedmate; he has plenty of those. You’re going to be the main woman in the new video. A woman he wants, a seductress that he can’t have.”

A seductress. Now there’s something I hadn’t been. It sounded so ridiculous, especially in light of the heated conversation we just had, that I tipped my head back and laughed. A full-bellied, snorting, hiccoughing guffaw, that rose in volume and hysterics.

Heather’s eyebrows drew up toward her hairline. “Um, okay...well, no more ‘tini’s for
you
!” She winked, effectively lightening the situation.

I placed my elbow on the counter and my chin into my hand. “Today has been odd. Hell, the past month was nuts. This just tops the crazy cake I call my life.” I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair. It was getting really long. Maybe I could swindle some time away from the Latin Lov-ah to score a haircut.

Regardless of what she’d said, Heather made us both another drink. “Can we call a truce? I really don’t want you hating me, and I did misunderstand the meaning of what you do.” Her blue eyes seemed round and big on her pretty face, innocent even.

I held out my hand. She glanced at it, a weariness making her movements slow when she clasped mine with her own. We shook. “Truce.” I smiled. She grinned back and repeated the word.

“Two ladies shaking hands over a couple of alcoholic beverages can be cause to make a man nervous. What are you two conspiring?” Anton entered wearing a flowing pair of white linen pants that had a drawstring hanging precariously close to his manhood. He paired the pants with a crisp mint green dress shirt that he left open, exposing his finely sculpted abdomen. Perfectly manicured toes peeked out past the loose fitting pants. Damn, even his feet were lickable. That right there said more than it should about the insanely beautiful specimen standing before me. I watched him move with the grace of a cougar even with the bulk of his muscles to weigh him down. Anton wasn’t short but he wasn’t extremely tall. I’d guess around five foot eleven, which was fine for me since I was only five foot eight, but I typically preferred my men taller like Wes and Alec.

Wes and Alec. Two men, two completely different feelings rushing through my system at the mere thought of them. One had lasting implications of a future together and the other, lasting desire.

Anton moved to Heather and placed an arm around her shoulders. “So, H,
Lucita
here is going to be the love interest that I cannot have in the video?” He squeezed Heather’s bicep pulling her into his side in a friendly hold, but his eyes never left mine. She nodded mutely and rolled her eyes. He brought his opposite hand up toward his face where he proceeded to pet the flesh of his bottom lip with the pad of his thumb as he assessed me. It was as if his fingertips were tracking all over my form the way his eyes moved over each new surface of skin.

Not gonna lie. I swooned. Hard. Damn, he had it going on in the looks department as well as the way he moved and spoke. The hint of his Puerto Rican accent, the way his words seemed to roll off his tongue like sex incarnate…did something to me. Something I
did not
want to feel after what I’d just gone through in June with Aaron. Nevertheless, low and behold, this guy, the Latin Lov-ah, must have had supercharged pheromones because I felt each and every one of them like a physical blow to my sex.

“You are
damn
fine, girl.” He tipped his chin up at me. “You got moves?”

“Er, as in what type of moves?” I asked.

He spun away from Heather, on the tips of his toes and moved in a series of fast circles until he made his way around the long counter and slid toward me on a clap, a shimmy of his hips, and a pop of his chest. Anton stopped a hair’s breadth from my face, smelling of soap and coconut, reminding me of lying out on a sunny beach in Hawaii. I wanted to be lying on a beach in Hawaii right now, preferably underneath this sex god.

“Moves,
muñeca
,” he whispered. I could feel the heat of his breath against my face, small puffs of air tantalizing my nerves and awakening lust receptors from their month long sleep.

I held his gaze with my own then leaned close, resting my cheek against his so I could whisper into his ear. “What does
muñeca
mean?” The words were soft, almost a caress against his skin.