Full Release by Marshall Thornton (free novel 24 TXT) 📗

My house is on Mariposa Drive, a tiny slip of a street with just room enough for ten small houses. It sits at the bottom of a dip in the hills between the Hollywood Freeway and Cahuenga Boulevard. Fifties modern, the house has a large living room/dining room area, two reasonably-sized bedrooms, and a small kitchen. There are cathedral ceilings throughout and sliding glass doors in the living room and master bedroom that open out onto a cement patio and a small backyard.

I cleaned up as best I could before Eddie arrived, but it was pointless. My house was a half-rehabbed disaster. The wall between the kitchen and living/dining area had been taken down to create a great room and the kitchen had been demolished. When Jeremy left, he took the money we’d borrowed for the rehab with him, something we continued to argue over. I was embarrassed that my house was a mess, but I didn’t think Eddie would turn down my money because I was a bad housekeeper.

I switched my focus to cleaning myself up. Even though Jeremy had also taken the money for the new bathroom, it hadn’t yet been demoed. Last updated in the ‘80s, it had ugly yellow tile and a glass shower enclosure with mineral deposits so deep I sometimes expected to find fossils, but thankfully it worked.

Slipping off the jeans and T-shirt I wore, I messed with hot and cold until I got the shower warm enough to step into. Through the glass enclosure, I could just barely see my reflection in the mirror over the sink. For being in my early thirties, I’m not doing too badly. My waist is still a tight thirty-three inches, only an inch or so thicker than it had been in my twenties. I have a thick head of sandy brown hair, but other than that I’m pretty hairless; a tiny sprouting of hair in the middle of my chest, a couple of tufts under my arms, and pubes that don’t require much in the way of manscaping. I’m an inch or so under six feet.

As I soaped my occasionally worked out muscles, I figured I might be a treat for Eddie. I imagined he had to deal with a steady diet of geriatric clients, so anyone under the age of forty had to be a relief. I could feel my adrenaline pumping, and just thinking about what would be happening in less than an hour made my prick perk up. Soaping it a few extra times didn’t hurt, either.

Part of me wondered what the hell I was doing. I should be meeting available guys, joining clubs, going on dates. Those were the so-called healthy ways to meet guys. But lately, they hadn’t been working for me. After Jeremy and I broke up, I dated a little, hooked up here and there, but it was all too full of emotion and possibility and questions about who felt what. Especially me.

It was too complicated. Eventually, I stopped dating, or whatever you want to call it, and instead focused on my job, working as much overtime as I could stand in order to impress my boss in hopes of a long-promised promotion. Life was easier when it was all about box office receipts and DVDs sold per market. Burying myself in work kept me from thinking about guys. And that would have worked out just fine if it weren’t for this annoying little thing called a libido. It had been a long while since I’d been laid, and I was getting damned horny.

Hiring someone for a little sex was nothing more than a practical decision. It was a transaction, pure and simple -- the ultimate in no-strings-attached sex. I’d have a good time, and then I could forget about it. Messy feelings wouldn’t have anything to do with it. It would be completely uncomplicated.

And if it was a disaster, I could blame it on Peter.

After I put on my best underwear, a pair of low-rise trunks with the designer’s name emblazoned on the waistband, a pair of cargo shorts and a T-shirt chosen mostly for ease of removal, I went to wait at the front of the house. Eddie was five minutes late. Then ten. I paced nervously between my living room and the gutted kitchen.

I was staring out the window over the sink -- well, where the sink used to be -- when a battered old Lincoln Town Car pulled up across the street. Its shocks were shot, leaving the chassis sitting close to the ground. The sun had burned a large scab onto the car’s hood. Once black, the car was now a kind of flat pinkish-gray. A guy got out and walked around to the trunk. I couldn’t help but think about how expensive the car was to run. Sure, he probably hadn’t paid much for it, but it had to be nearly a hundred bucks to fill the tank. No wonder he charged extra for outcalls.

He pulled a portable massage table out of the trunk. It was a large, thick rectangle in a black nylon carrying case with a sturdy-looking handle on one side. He lifted it with ease and closed the trunk. Obviously, this was Eddie. He was shorter than I expected and not as tight as he’d been in his pictures. And I seriously doubted he was twenty-two. But I wasn’t disappointed. If anything, I liked that Eddie was less perfect than his photos had made him seem. I watched as he came up my slate walkway. I opened the door before he knocked. For a moment he was surprised, then he gave me the crooked, sexy smile from his photo. “Anxious?”

I laughed nervously, “I guess, yeah.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Are you going to invite me in?”

Clumsily, I backed up so he could step into my house. “I’m Matt, Matt Latowski.” I immediately blushed. There was no reason in the world to give him my last name. This