She, the Kingdom (She #1)(6)

He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid this conversation is lengthy, and I have to return to my wife by six. She gets quite testy over my whereabouts.”

“I’m reading the document, first,” I said, returning to trying to decipher the legal jargon. For the most part, it seemed fairly black and white. Part of me wanted to wad up the paper and throw it in his face, but making twice what I was before when ten minutes earlier I had nothing? I had to know what job he was about to offer.

I signed on the line and handed it back to him. He stared at my signature for a moment, seeming to approve, and then placed it inside the file folder.

“Thank you, Ms. Clarke. What I’m about to offer might be startling to you. Possibly a bit crass, but I assure you it’s a serious offer, one that could solve your financial problems today.”

“Today?” I said, surprised. “How?”

He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a money clip. It was thick with hundred dollar bills. “Three-thousand as an agreement bonus. The rest will come every Friday. Two-thousand a week. You’ll have full coverage medical and life insurance for your children. You’ll have a new company car, and you’ll work five days a week, possibly less.”

“Doing what?” I said, suspicious.

Max sat back, unbuttoning the top button of his vest, and pulled out his tie, running his thumb and index finger from just below the knot to the tip. He seemed to be deciding on how best to tell me, only making me more uncomfortable. “I’m embarrassed to say that I overheard your conversation in the cafeteria today, and I feel you might just be the perfect candidate.”

“To do what?” I insisted.

“You have children, Ms. Clarke, so I’m sure you’re aware children cope with stress in different ways. Some have security blankets, some suck their thumbs, some take pacifiers or bottles. It’s a soothing mechanism. I happened to be an incurable thumb-sucker, much to my father’s dismay. I hid it, and that seemed to only heighten the compulsion. As an adult, I traded my soothing to something else.”

“Firing hard-working employees?” I asked.

He chuckled. “No. No, Ms. Clarke. I don’t sleep. I go days, sometimes a week without sleeping, unless I can relax enough to do so, and the only way I’ve found that works is to suckle.”

“Suckle?” I said, feeling squeamish.

“Not at the breast, Ms. Clarke.”

My mind was racing. Toes? His wife’s thumb? I couldn’t imagine where this conversation was headed.

“You mentioned at lunch today that you’re unable to orgasm during oral sex. Is that true?”

I swallowed, sinking back into myself. Max was so comfortable speaking about all of this. I wanted to scream at him to leave, and then lock the doors. He had access to all of my information, my address, my social security, and I had signed that NDA. I looked down at the wad of money on the table. Three-thousand dollars, and that was just a bonus. “Did I hear you correctly? Twice what I made at Mercy?”

He didn’t flinch. “Answer my question.”

“Yes, it’s true.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

Max seemed relieved. “That’s great news. A bit more, actually. Eight-thousand a month, minus taxes, of course.”

I swallowed, wondering what he wanted that he was willing to pay so much for.

“My wife, Sophie, and I have been married for eight years now, and she’s expressed interest in hiring someone else to help. We agree boundaries should be set, which would be outlined in the agreement,” he paused, “should you agree.”

“Wait a second,” I said, holding up a hand. “Am I understanding you correctly? You use oral sex to fall asleep?”

“Yes,” Max said, matter-of-fact.

“Haven’t you tried medication?”

“All of them, in every variant. They have an opposite effect on me. Restless legs, anxiety, my thoughts running at a hundred miles per hour. That was the fourth year of our marriage, and the worst year of my life. I won’t put myself through that again—or Sophie. This is the only form of relaxation the works for me.”

“What you’re hoping to pay me to do is allow you to perform oral sex on me until you fall asleep?”

“There are rules to abide by, but yes.”

I breathed out a laugh, in total disbelief for the second time that day. “Your wife knows you’re asking me to do this?”

“It was her idea to seek outside help.”

“As in a therapist?”

“I guess you could call it that.”

I glanced down at the money again. “What else?”

“It will require an eight-hour stay in your home. You’re a single mother, so that could mean shorter hours during the school year, but—”

My mouth fell open. “Your proposal is to stay here, your head between my legs, while my children are here?”

“My wife is understanding, Ms. Clarke, but she’s not without emotion. We agree it would be disrespectful to complete a session in our home.”

“A session?”

“Yes.”

“That has to be illegal. You can’t do that.”

“I do. I can. And I will.”

Just as the reality of what he was asking began to set in, so did the creepiness of his offer. He was undeniably good-looking, clean, and soft-spoken. He could end up being an axe murderer, or worse, a pedophile.