No commitment. No strings attached. Your plane ticket is attached.
Luca
Under his name is his phone number. I mean, there are worse things than being invited to Bora Bora by a stranger who looks like a model when you’re unemployed and super single. Shay did say it’s my funeral. Dying in a tropical paradise might be a good life decision.
Chapter Two
The deal
WALKING OUTSIDE WITHmy cell phone shaking in my hand, I try to justify not waking up Shay to tell her about Luca. If that’s his real name. I did do a reverse photo search on the internet to make sure I wasn’t getting catfished. The photo wasn’t anywhere else, which means very little. People are slick these days. Someone using the dark web to solicit women for a vacation with no strings probably isn’t the most upstanding citizen. Look at me, though, I’m pretty awesome and I’m on there. Maybe he’s decent too.Maybe he’s not,my intuition rages at me.
I tap the phone number from his email into my phone and decide to send a text instead of calling. It seems safer. “It’s Lizzy,” I type, then delete it. “It’s Elizabeth. Just received your email.” I hit send as the knot in my stomach swells and makes me nauseous. “Calm down, Lizzy. You’ve done things way worse than texting a stranger.” I chide myself.
The gray bubbles appear as he texts back and I’m surprised that I’m shocked. Of course he’s going to reply. “What’s your last name, Elizabeth?”
The knot in my stomach flips and a lump forms in my throat. “I’m not giving my last name to an absolute stranger. I’m not an idiot.” I send the message and sit down in a lawn chair in Shay’s back yard—the moon and a stray owl hooting my only company.
More gray bubbles pop up and then disappear. My phone rings instead, a FaceTime call. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.” I drop the phone like it might bite me. “I need to see if he’s real. This makes sense. He’d want to see me, too.”
Except I’m wearing a pajama shirt and my hair is dirty, piled high on my head in a bun. This isn’t ideal. Not at all. I answer the call, though. Nerves reverberate through my entire body as the adrenaline hits. “Hello,” I say, voice shaky.
“Elizabeth, it’s Luca,” the suave, slightly accented voice on the other end coos. The dark phone lights up when he clicks on a light. It looks like he’s in a hotel room. I humongous fucking hotel room. Lots of marble and glitzy décor. “Where are you?”
“I’m outside,” I choke out. The man is shirtless and looks like sex wrapped in human skin. His skin is dark and his chest muscles are bulging delicious mounds. His face is take-my-breath-away-beautiful. “It’s night here in New York.”
“While you might not be an idiot, I still need your last name for the flight if you’re joining me tomorrow.” I cough to cover a gasp. I didn’t notice the date. “Step into the light.”
I walk up the stairs of the deck and into the low light from the outside light. Luckily it does good things for me and I don’t look quite so haggard. “Oh, yes. You’ll do quite nicely,” Luca growls, and I swear to God he licks his lips and it’s aggressively sexual. I feel it all over my body. Especially between my legs.
“Do quite nicely for what?” I fire back, feeling tingles rise up my spine.
He grins. Dimples. Of course. “Don’t play coy. You said you were looking for no strings and no commitments. Do I not meet those qualifications?”
“It’s, ah, mostly that you want me to fly to another country. I don’t know anything about you.”
“What do you need to know about me?” Luca says, then his eyes wide. “Oh, right. I forgot.” He aims his phone down to his enormous dick. It’s soft and hangs down his thigh. He wraps his hand around it and strokes softly. “I promise it will be worth your while,” he says as the damn thing grows effortlessly as I watch. “I’ve never had any complaints.”
“That is not what I meant,” I finally choke out. “What’s your last name? What do you do? Are you going to kill me after you ravage me with that thing? I said no strings, yes, but I kind of meant dating in New York. Not in Bora Bora. That’s a huge leap for me.” He lifts the camera back to his face and his eyes are narrowed and his cheeks are flushed. Not from embarrassment, because he’s turned-on. It’s so fucking hot. I haven’t had sex in a long time. Like that’s something I’m embarrassed of. I wouldn’t know what to do with a man like this without lessons.
The camera shakes as he walks onto a balcony and turns so I can see the stunning blue water and the stark white sand. It’s a private beach, and I realize it’s not a hotel room, it’s a massive house. “It’s yours for the taking, Elizabeth.”
My mind spins. “You are gorgeous and you could have any woman you wanted. Why are you trolling online for women when you could probably go to the front desk and ask for one? Forgive me for not falling onto an airplane.”
He turns his phone to aim it back to his face. Now that I know he’s naked, it’s all I can think about. I sit down on the step in front of her back door. Luca bites his bottom lip. “It’s complicated. I’m really not concerned with you falling onto an airplane. I need you to fall on my dick. It’s easier this way. With strangers like you, for me. That’s what I can say.”
“Are you famous or something?” I nearly screech. While I’m obsessed with social media, I don’t really keep up with Hollywood or tabloids or anything like that.
He smiles. “Depends on who you ask. It’s just hard for me to meet women.”
“How?” I scoff.
“I should be asking you the same question, Elizabeth. Why are you searching a place typically reserved for criminals to find a date?”
I think of my grandma’s face when I tell her I’m single on Christmas… again. “It’s sort of complicated on my end, too.”
He shakes his head and a lock of brown hair falls into his one eye. He brushes it away. “See? No strings attached. What’s your last name, Elizabeth? Let’s make this official.”
This is quickly snowballing into the craziest thing I’ve ever done. “Where do you live when you’re not in Bora Bora?” I ask.
