I laugh and scoop a bigger bite of nachos off the plate. “Let me assure that it hasn’t. Not yet.”
Jess curls her feet up on the couch and pulls her wine glass closer. “Tell me more.”
Taking a sip from my own glass, I tell her everything that happened. Everything. Her face gets more and more incredulous as I speak, and when I tell her about the letter at the hotel this morning, she doesn’t believe me until I retrieve it from my bag.
“Oh my god,” she says. “Oh, my god. Oh. My. God.”
I finish my wine. “I’m pretty sure you’ve exhausted every intonation of that sentiment.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I honestly have no idea.” I cover my face with my hands. “That’s why I texted you.”
She shakes her head. “My mind is definitely blown now.”
“Thought it might be.”
We’re quiet for a second, both of us thinking. “What do you know about him?”
I shrug. “Lily says he’s a good guy, but other than his name and the fact that he can give one hell of an orgasm, nothing.”
“This calls for research. Where’s your laptop?”
“Bedroom desk.”
She goes and grabs it, probably because she senses that I’ve turned into a human slug determined not to move for the rest of the night. “Okay, what’s his name?”
“Matthew Forester.”
“Matthew Forester,” she says quietly as she types. “OH MY GOT HE’S HOT!”
“I KNOW!”
She looks at me. “Emma, girl, you were holding back. The guy that you described did not look like a fucking Greek god in my head. This man should be made into statues. Preferably naked statues. You had his fingers inside you, and you hold back on just how attractive he is? Hell, I say you go just so that you can actually say you slept with someone that hot.”
I started laughing halfway through her tirade and now I can’t stop. “I promise next time I’ll try to paint a better picture of the hotness.”
“You fucking better.”
“Is there anything about him other than the fact that he’s been blessed by the beauty fairy?”
She squints at the screen. “Yep. He actually has his own Wikipedia page, so you’ve got a lot of info. Looks like he owns a giant pet food company.”
“Pet food?”
Jess giggles. “Not exactly sexy, but it also says that he has a huge property and that he rescues animals from slaughter houses and kill shelters. Especially exotic ones that people can’t adopt. He helps them get placed in zoos or special homes. Okay, that’s sexy.”
“Let me see?”
She passes me the laptop, and there he is. There’s a professional picture of him in a suit and it looks damn good on him. There’s basic biographical information—he’s thirty-three. Four years older than me is not a bad age difference. I thought he might be older than that, but I suppose the ‘Dom’ thing makes people more serious and seem a little older.
“These pages usually have some information about the person’s personal life. They don’t have anything for him past high school.”
Jess frowns. “Huh. Yeah, that’s weird. But some people are really private. Especially rich people. And if he’s into what you say, I would do everything in my power to keep that off the web. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it, but I can see it being awkward if it came up during like…a business deal or something.”
“That’s true…”
I feel like I’m being pulled in two different directions. On one hand—the normal and rational hand—it’s crazy to stay for three days at a house with a man who I don’t know. Like, that’s insane. But on the other hand, you get a feeling for someone when you’re with them, especially when you’re doing what we did. And even though he was playing the part of a Dom, I never felt unsafe. Plus, Lily vouched for him.
A little voice speaks in my head, that maybe it was the alcohol that made her recommendation sound so glowing. I hate to text her on her honeymoon, but she won’t be back by the time I have to make my decision. I pull out my phone, and Jess sees.
“You’re texting him?”
“Not yet,” I say. “I’m texting Lily again, just to make sure that he really is a good guy and it wasn’t my tipsy brain interpreting it wrong.”
“Good call.”
I send off the text, but there are nerves still churning in my gut.
“Honestly, I’d do it, Emma.”
“But you see how crazy this is, right?”
She shrugs. “So? I don’t know any girl who hasn’t had a fantasy about being tied up from time to time, and with a man that hot, I think any woman would say ‘yes, please.’ Besides, you’re not into this stuff like he is, so take the win. Go, have some amazing sex, and get paid for it.”
I laugh. “When you put it that way, it sounds like I’m a prostitute.”