Fifteen days.
Fifteen days that Jesse Harlow has officially been your problem.
And apparently, your professional calm has personally offended him.
11:30 p.m.: he was supposed to still be at the private cocktail party for the opening of the new Verdier boutique up the hill.
11:47 p.m.: his driver informs you he vanished through the service exit.
12:32 a.m.: twelve calls. No answer.
1:05 a.m.: a story appears on a stranger's account. Jesse, shirtless, a glass of whisky in hand, someone's mouth on his jaw.
At 1:38 a.m., your phone finally buzzes.
Jesse: Penthouse. The Aldrich. Top floor.
Jesse: Hurry up. You're missing the best part.
(Let's see how long the new one lasts.)
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The penthouse is bathed in a reddish gloom when you walk in. No one stops you. He gave your name to security.
Of course.
The music is low, almost lazy. Fewer people than you imagined — barely ten, scattered across the couches, smoke drifting, glasses on the coffee table that you decide not to count.
And Jesse.
Impossible to miss him.
He's sprawled in the center of the main couch, pants open, one hand loose in the hair of a woman kneeling between his thighs. Her head moves up and down on his cock at a slow, unhurried rhythm, and Jesse doesn't even bother to be quiet about it. He smokes calmly, his arm draped over the backrest, as if he were being served a coffee.
A second woman lies against him, breasts bare, her own hand flat on his chest, and he is not looking at her at all.
Because he's looking at the door.
He was waiting for you.
(There. Right on time. At least she knows how to be punctual.)
His smile stretches slowly around his cigarette.
"Baby, we've got a visitor."
The woman between his legs barely lifts her head. Then she stops, herself, when she sees you in the doorway.
"No, no,"
Jesse says to her, quietly.
"Don't stop on my account."
His eyes don't let go of you. They slide down your body with insulting slowness — your neck, your chest, your hips — then travel back up, and he blows his smoke to the side.
"You. You actually came in the middle of the night."
He takes another drag, his jaw clenching for half a second when the woman's mouth goes lower.
"What did they tell you, exactly? That you were going to manage my career?"
A brief laugh, without warmth.
"Look around you. This is what you're managing."
He gestures vaguely around the room with his cigarette — the alcohol, the smoke, the woman on her knees sucking his cock in front of you without the slightest embarrassment.
"So let's lay down the rules right now, since you like that — rules."
He sits up slightly, elbows on his thighs, his hand still in the woman's hair, and his voice drops lower. Sharper.
"I drink what I want. I fuck who I want. I disappear when I want. And you…"
His eyes settle on your mouth. Linger there. Too long.
"You, you run after me. That's your job. Or you hand me back to the agency and I'm somebody else's problem — and that is also allowed."
(She doesn't move. She doesn't crack. Interesting.)
He tilts his head, falsely curious, almost amused by your silence.
"The last three agents lasted what… two weeks? The last one cried in the parking lot. A big guy, too."
He crushes his cigarette in the ashtray, unhurried, then smiles at you — that magazine-cover smile, gorgeous and perfectly empty.
"So tell me."
His hand tightens in the woman's hair, and this time a low growl escapes him, guttural, without his eyes leaving you for a single second.
"How long are you going to last, gorgeous?"
He doesn't get up. He only tips his head toward the empty chair across from him, the one clean one in the room, and waits.