“You need to get laid, bro, we all know how miserable you get when you haven’t—”

Tobias’s hand stilled as his whiskey glass touched his lips. His brother stopped mid-sentence. Xavier could be tactless, that was a given, but this was going too far.

Their friend, Luke, stepped in. “You’ve had too much to drink, buddy.”

Xavier blanched as he lowered his face and gazed at the table. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Maybe get a handle on the beers,” Tobias threw back.

His brother nodded, as if agreeing. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Most times you don’t.” Tobias lifted his glass to his lips. His words were harsh but they were true. Most of the time Xavier didn’t think before he opened his mouth.

Luke looked uncomfortable, as if he was caught in a dilemma and wasn’t sure whether to stay or leave.

Tobias set down his glass as the awkward silence lengthened, but it was soon broken by the sound of Tobias’s cell phone ringing.

Fishing it out of his jacket pocket, he saw that it was Naomi.

This was awkward. He had no desire to take that call here, so he declined it. In a moment of weakness, he had called and left her a message earlier today. Throughout the day he had been surprised that the high-class escort he had split up with a few months ago hadn’t called him back immediately. ‘Split up’ didn’t seem the right phrase, even though his friends and family believed that she was his girlfriend. Why would they think otherwise?

Maybe she had been busy with a client.

He didn’t like to think about that.

“What did mom say to you?” he asked Xavier.

“She said she’d call us.”

Tobias huffed out a breath. He and Xavier were waiting to hear from their parents who were supposed to call them when they had finished having cocktails with their friends. It was the only reason he was here, at The Oasis, with Xavier and Luke, otherwise he had plenty of work to get on with back at the office.

His mother could socialize like a Hollywood A-lister, but he didn’t have the time to sit around waiting for her to let him know, last minute, where they were going for dinner. Nobody had made a dinner reservation, but a man like Tobias Stone never had a problem with getting a reservation anywhere.

“I need to make a call,” he said gruffly, getting up from the table. Xavier was right. He was moody when he didn’t have sex.

He walked past the tables of people laughing and flirting and went out onto the rooftop terrace, away from inquisitive ears. He called Naomi.

“Are you alright?” Her first question to him was laced with concern.

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I didn’t expect to hear from you again,” she replied.

He swallowed. This was beyond awkward, and it shouldn’t have been. He’d used her services for a couple of years now, but it had been the Christmas vacation that had done it.

He always needed to get away from the city at that time of the year. Last year he’d taken Naomi to North Island. With their agreement set in stone, and a contract having been drawn up between them, he assumed it would have been straightforward enough for her to understand what he needed from her.

Sex.

Nothing more.

No emotional attachment.

No future.

But going on vacation had made it feel like more than the seedy sex it was back in the city, when he could summon her on demand. On vacation he’d felt the shift and it had disturbed him; seeing her all the time, night and day.

As if they were a couple.

Maybe it was his paranoia about the future, or guilt about the past, but he wondered if she had started to imagine a future with him. She had become needy, wanting more from him than just the sex for which he had hired her.

Wrestling with his emotions, with the guilt, with the anger and the regret, he had ended things with her, telling her that he no longer needed her services. He hadn’t bothered to give her a reason.

No wonder she was surprised when he had called her earlier, almost seven months later.

But he still had needs, and Naomi took care of them.

“I want you back.”

“Back?” He heard her faint gasp.

“In the same capacity. Exclusive, the same rate, everything.”

“If you want me back, I want more.”

He grimaced. She’d learned a thing or two from him. “How much more?”

“Six hundred and sixty six dollars per day.”

Fuck.

She wanted twenty thousand dollars a month, to be at his beck and call? “You drive a hard bargain.”

“I’ve learned a lot from your business calls from the bed.”

He breathed out, contemplating.

“You said I was worth it, the first time we negotiated,” she countered, filling the silence with her breathless voice.

“That’s not exactly what I said.” He remembered that first time he’d called the discreet dating agency, a recommendation from one of his billionaire friends. After years of abstaining, years of feeling guilty, trying to forget all that he had lost, he realized that he needed to get back into the land of the living, otherwise the guilt would eat away at him, if the alcohol didn’t finish him off sooner.

He’d become a workaholic. Burying himself away in his office, dealing with numbers, and making even more money, was easy.

Connecting with people, was not.

Yet even he had realized that he needed to put some of the more pleasurable things back into his life again.

Sex, only without the emotional commitment. Sex he could pay for, so that he didn’t need to make small talk. Paying for it was fine, but he also wanted exclusivity. She had asked for fifteen thousand dollars a month for it, back then. After a few meetings and conversations—nothing physical—he had decided she was the one. He’d suggested a lesser figure, because that’s what he did. Negotiate.  Four hundred a day, he’d told her, twelve thousand dollars a month. He had expected her to negotiate up and it had surprised him when she’d settled at four hundred.

Now she was asking for twenty thousand a month. Who knew that such a career could be so lucrative?

He had the money. What she was asking for was a mere drop in the ocean for him. Her hourly rate was three hundred. She’d more than doubled it. Smart. But he wasn’t going to use her every day. If anything, making her exclusive meant he made things easier for her because she didn’t have to seek other clients.

He could have easily found another call-girl, but he didn’t want the headache of looking again. Having Naomi again meant that he just had to restate the rules and reconfirm the boundaries. “Done.”

“Six hundred and sixty-six?” she asked, as if she didn’t believe him.

“That’s what you asked for.”

“I asked you for more last time, but you didn’t agree to it,” she protested.

“It was up to you to persevere.” When he knew he was onto a good thing, he was like a pit bull, never letting go until he had the thing he wanted. It often surprised him how quickly some people gave up.

“You missed me,” she said, her voice dropping an octave.

“I miss the sex,” he clarified. She had a good body, and she gave good head.

“When do you want me to start?”

Tonight. Now. Talking to her brought back the memory of her in his bed. Blood rushed south, and his cock hardened.

“I’ll call you.”

“I’ll need the key back.”

The key to the penthouse. He liked to fuck her there more than he did at his apartment. That place was still sacred. It felt as if he was cheating on Ivy if he took Naomi home to his bed.

“I’ll give it to you when we meet.” He hung up and looked out over the balcony, at the people down below, at the lights in all the offices, blinking like thousands of tiny fireflies. Behind him he could hear the bubbling chatter, like a gentle stream, of people talking and laughing. Happy people, many of whom would go home together and wind up in bed.

He lay awake at night, tossing, and turning, but his reliable bottle of whiskey by his bedside made for a good bed partner even though he was much better now than before. Those early days—when his parents, Xavier, and Matthias, one of his closest friends, would find him lying on the floor of his apartment, curled up with bottles of whiskey scattered all over the place—those days were long gone, but even now, years later, there remained feelings, emotions, and memories, which no amount of alcohol could numb, or lessen, or deaden.

He wanted that back, the life he had before, but he could never have it, and owning up to that fact still proved harder than ever. Having turned Naomi away, he had now realized that he needed her. At least, he thought he needed her. There was still a monumental hole in his life, and it didn’t seem to be getting any smaller. He needed something, and using Naomi for sex was his only way forward because the loneliness was crippling.

Working all kinds of hours could only kill so many hours in the day.