Liar by Kristina Weaver

could ever want or need, and I assumed there weren’t any unwanted strings attached.
    Because, let’s face it. Peter was great at sex — a savant, even — and we’d had some incredible trysts over the past few weeks.
    I just hated the idea that he’d hired me to work for his company for the sole purpose of being able to bend me over his desk at any moment he pleased. It pricked my ego, made me wish I’d never given up my shoebox apartment for a shot at my dreams.
    My dreams came with a sex worker contract. As horrible as that old apartment had been, at least it had been mine, earned and paid for through hard, honest work.
    If I’d thought turning tricks was a viable solution for my money problems, I would’ve done it far before right now.
    I made it to the elevator and across the lobby of the Bly Group building and pushed through the revolving door, before I realized Peter wasn’t even running after me. It was a testament to just how twisted up I was about this whole situation that I was actually even angrier that he hadn’t made an effort to come convince me I was wrong.
    It just proved me right. I had signed up to be his office sex toy. I was just too eager and too excited to start a real job in a real office to read the fine print. I was only there for his amusement. He probably had many more “secretaries” who were there only for the purpose of pleasing him throughout the day. That’s why he hadn’t come after me. His company owned many hotels in the city. I would’ve bet good money — his money, not mine — that he had a trollop set up in the penthouse suite in all of them.
    Not wanting anything to do with the chauffeured car Peter had set me up with, I marched down the sidewalk for as long as my sky-high heels would allow me to do so, then slipped them off and continued my angry walk barefooted. I’d gone to college. I had my degree. Why was I still so stupid? Hadn’t I learned anything about the way the world worked during my four years there? There was only one thing I could do now. I would have to admit my failure and go crawling back home to my mother.
    She would not be thrilled.
    She was busy preparing to get married — her second one, sure, but one she was much more excited over, one that would surely be happier than the first — and I would be slouching around, watching daytime television and eating ice cream out of the container. I could envision it now. By the time she did finally get around to walking down the aisle with Frank, I’d be blown up to the size of a zeppelin, bulging out of whatever heinous dress she picked out for me. Frank would probably choose his son, Peter, to be his best man, and as Peter walked me down the aisle to our places at the altar, he’d whisper to me that he was glad I’d stormed out of his office and out of his life. I was a wretched thing who would never amount to anything.
    I found myself panting, with blistered and filthy feet, at the entrance to the hotel where I was supposed to be staying, but I couldn’t get myself to go in. It had never truly felt like him. It had felt like some kind of fantasy I was living in, being in love — or lust — with Peter and embracing the lifestyle of being in a relationship with a billionaire.
    Now, even the hotel felt hostile, and I realized I didn’t have anywhere else to go. The penthouse held all my belongings, but it wasn’t home. I didn’t even know what it was that Peter and I had shared. It sure as hell wasn’t a relationship. People who loved each other didn’t sign contracts with sex rules.
    I guessed I was just stupid in life and love. I couldn’t get a good job, even with my degree, and I couldn’t get a good guy without there being some horrible monster lurking in the closet. Peter’s monster was that he demanded to have control of me — control over where I lived, what I wore, what I ate, what I spent, and what I did at work.
    I’d fallen into a hideously silly trap, and it had been all my