Sex, Lies & Secret Lives [Paperback]

The text message came at 3:00—“just in time”—the fail-safe code Justine and her twin, Jillian Durant, devised to survive their traumatic childhood. Now Jillian’s missing and Justine immediately leaves her research job, frantic to discover what happened to her globe-trotting model sister. Inside Jillian’s apartment, Justine uncovers a computer file that reveals that her sister is really Jillian Dare, escort to the richest, most powerful, and most insatiable men on the international corporate scene. And it’s clear that Jillian loved—no, lived for—everything about the lifestyle: the fortune she made nightly, the luxurious gifts, the touch of a man anywhere, anytime, with no limits.

Searching for clues to her sister’s disappearance, Justine masquerades as Jillian, plunging into a world of paid carnal extravagance and unleashing a side of herself she never knew existed. It’s a thrillingly daring gamble to take, and the stakes are raised when Justine becomes locked in a sexual power struggle with a man who could be her ally or her most ruthless enemy; a man who can bring her to endless ecstasy or drive her to madness. And Justine must play this dangerous game to perfection and win . . . if she and Jillian are to survive.

Jillian Durant didn’t wake up one morning and decide to become an elite traveling companion. If she had to re-create how it happened, she’d have pointed to her first job in the ad agency, her first boss on whom she’d had a massive crush, and that first furtive, forbidden kiss and grope behind his closed office door just before Christmas that first year.

And then the idea that he’d subtly planted with his creative director, that he needed an executive assistant in his entourage of art director, account executive, and producer when he went to pitch to clients outside Manhattan.

Which led to that first trip, that first flirtation, that first why don’t you—join me for a drink, have dinner with me tonight, have sex with me now. And the conscience-suppressing rationalization: we’re so far from home, who would know? Why shouldn’t I?

Why shouldn’t I was the philosophy she’d lived by ever since her impoverished childhood, with nothing except her twin sister, Justine, between her and their alcoholic father, the meager welfare and disability checks that barely supported them, their pregnant mother, and Jillian’s determination to never be poor again. Ever.

And now, as Jillian slowly awakened in an exclusive London hotel in Cadogan Square and saw her lover’s Centurion Card propped up on the nightstand for her, she didn’t have a single regret.

She ran one hand through her tumbling midnight black curls, then positioned herself so that her hip curved provocatively under the luxurious 800-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheet and her left nipple peeked out enticingly over the silk duvet.

The trick was to make it all seem natural—the bed head, the sinuous movements, the erect, naked nipple—rather than deliberately choreographed to arouse him, though it was. And it worked: his penis shot to attention under his elegant five-hundred-dollar Burberry trousers, and his hands clenched.

“I have a meeting this morning,” he told her.

“Let’s you and me have a meeting first,” she countered huskily.

“We can meet later, and you can model all the flimsy lingerie you’ll buy today that I’ll tear off your body tonight.”

“I don’t need lingerie, do I? When I have this?” She stroked her nipple tip, licked her lower lip, and gave him a kittenish look from under her lashes.

“Damn,” he muttered, climbing into bed with her. “You do this all the time.”

“It’s not me—it’s you,” she whispered, pulling his head down to her nipple. “I can’t buy what you make me feel when you”—gasping as his tongue swiped her nipple and his lips surrounded the hard tip and sucked—“do that.”

“I could do that all day,” he grunted, pushing her onto her back, tearing away the sheets and the cover, and pulling out his penis as he swiftly spread her legs. “But I only have time for this.” He shoved between her legs, and she lifted her hips to pull him in deep, hard and fast. He spurted in an instant, totally beguiled by her manipulative morning seduction.

It didn’t take much with men like him. They didn’t have time for foreplay and could barely spare ten minutes for sex. She had learned early that she would have to do the work and take whatever she could get.

“And now,” she whispered as he pumped himself into her, “you’ll have my scent all over your penis during this very important meeting, and you’ll only be thinking how soon you can fuck me again.”

He wouldn’t; Clive Ellicott was an expert at compartmentalizing. He had to be, to keep all his lives separate—the business, the competition, the marriage, the mistress, the traveling companion.

“How about now?” Without pausing a beat, he rolled her over onto her stomach, lifted her onto her knees, and drove into her from behind.

She knew to hold still, to let him go at her with the primitive zeal of a caveman while he fondled her. Now he felt totally in control, in a position where she couldn’t seduce him with her feminine wiles and it was just his penis dominating her sex, the way he fully believed it should be.

He crammed himself tight against her bottom for a long, grinding ejaculation and then collapsed on top of her, his expensive trousers down around his knees.

“God,” he muttered. “I want to root in you all day.”

“We should plan such a day.” But there never was time for that. He was too tightly scheduled, and running late now because she had enticed him with her brazen seduction.

That was her job, after all. That, and to make him look good when they went out in public.

“Tomorrow.” It wouldn’t happen. Tomorrow they’d be jetting to France for another meeting, first class, with every amenity, even on the short forty-five-minute hop to Orly.

But tomorrow she could suggest some quick mile-high mischief, encouraging his sense of being above all others at twenty thousand feet. He’d like that idea. And the privacy. And all the hot, kinky sex she could tease out of him.

She’d suggest it obliquely, let it be his idea. Get him revved up thinking about all the deliciously naughty things they could do.

He hadn’t moved yet. “God, you’re so tight and hot.”

“For you,” she whispered. “Do me again.”

“No time.” But he didn’t move.

She undulated her hips and felt his penis elongate. “I felt that,” she teased.

“Tomorrow.” He started withdrawing, but then thrust back into her with a rough possessiveness that was almost obsessive. “God, I can’t get enough.”

His hands were all over her buttocks, his vigor heightened by the fact that he was dressed and she was naked and open, wholly his for the taking whenever and wherever he wanted to fuck her. There was a third quick, hard fuck, and he came again. “God, no more. I won’t be able to think.”

“You’ll be such a hard-ass today,” she contradicted playfully as he reluctantly pulled out of her. “Because you know my soft ass will be waiting for you later. Don’t take too long—I’m missing your penis already.”

She watched him from the bed, her legs tangled in the sheets but spread to reveal her naked cleft, her nipples hard and prominent, a tableau she’d perfected for her clients and one that worked every time.

A moment later his face burrowed between her legs, his mouth seeking her muff, his tongue probing her irresistible clit. She came in an instant, her orgasm explosive from repressed arousal. It was another good trick, and he hardened up like cement.

“God, I can’t,” he groaned.

“Hurry back, then,” she whispered, stroking her nipple.

“Shit. Fuck.” He wrenched away and hurriedly pulled up his pants, then stood looking at her. “I don’t want to leave.”

“We’ll have all night.”

“No, we have a dinner.”

“True. And the flight tomorrow,” she added with a tinge of regret. “A whole hour wasted just sitting on a commercial flight, when we could be—” She shook her head. “But of course, there’s always Paris.”

“Be ready at five,” he ordered abruptly. “And cover your tits and ass now. I need to make some money today so I can afford your voracious cunt.”

He didn’t see her little smile as he stalked out the door. She’d played this and similar scenes dozens of times in dozens of luxury hotels all over the world.

Now he would think about that wasted hour tomorrow. He didn’t like to waste time, especially when he could be fucking her. He’d come up with a way they could be deliciously alone. He’d think of a private jet.

Why shouldn’t I?

For some reason, her lover made her think about her first boss, a married guy she was crazy about, with whom she had sex whenever they were on a business trip, or after hours on his office floor, or at lunch, when he’d pin her against his office wall.

It was always on the edge and mind-blowingly exciting.

But she’d been naive to think that no one in the office was aware of what they were doing. People watched. People gossiped. Especially the assistant art directors. Particularly Zach Leshan.

“You two are cozy. Your conversation sounds like forties movie dialogue.”

“He’s a great guy,” she’d said, keeping her tone neutral while her stomach knotted. Zach wasn’t a friend, exactly. He was a source of great gossip—if he liked you and felt like telling. She didn’t like what he was telling her now.

“He’s a great boss. How many trips has he taken you on now?”

“I am his executive assistant.”

“And the question everyone wants answered is, what are you assisting him with?”

“Company business,” she’d said sharply. “Read the new-clients list. Check the new accounts he’s brought into the shop in the past year.”

“And how many orgasms has he brought in?” Zach had asked slyly. “And why isn’t he paying you for your time?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Okay, here’s the deal. I like you and I like him. But he’s married, you’re not, and you’re giving it all up for nothing. He gets a gorgeous hottie on his arm, he gets to play outside the school yard, and he gets to relive his youth and vigor, which he then brings home to wifey, whom he can fuck to oblivion with impunity every night. But what do you get out of it, besides a long wait between trips to get fucked?”

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