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put her in. If I ever found her again, I swore to
myself that I’d make it up to her. Maybe she didn’t feel the same way about me
that I felt about her, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.
    If I tracked her
down and she still didn’t want to give me the time of day, fine.   Understandable, even, given the fact that I’d
been too drunk to even say goodbye to her properly last night.
    Hell, she was
probably halfway to convincing herself that whoever she was currently disrobing
for was a better option than the alcoholic asshole from the bar.
    And would she be
right?
    I tried not to
answer that. I was supposed to be in training, which meant that binges like the
one I’d been in the middle of when I’d first met Sloane were a no-no.
    I wasn’t far from
the hotel. I gunned the engine and zoomed through another red light. It was
late enough that the traffic had all gone away, at least. The Jaguar purred as
I gave it the gas, and by the time I rolled up to the valet and tossed the guy
my keys I was feeling pretty good about being able to get to Sloane in time.
    The elevator ride
was slow, though, which gave me time to think. How does one sign up for these
things? I looked at my phone. Cole had sent me the address.
    “How hard can it
possibly be?” I asked myself out loud. I mean, these things had to be simple
enough that just about anyone could work out how to log on and put their credit
card numbers in, right?
    After all, I
couldn’t imagine the owners of the site getting in the way of its users
spending money any more than they had to.
    The elevator
dinged and I stepped out into my suite, hurrying to the computer desk and
typing in the web address.
    When the site came
up, I caught myself making a face. Girls I’d have considered hot up until now
were splashed across the screen, caught in the act of lifting up their shirt or
stepping out of a dress or sliding their hand into their panties.
    Even though I was
in a hurry, I caught myself just sitting there, staring at these women.
    Sloane had already
changed me. I looked at these wanton creatures now with no lust in my heart.
    If a bartender I’d
seen across a crowded nightclub in a haze of alcohol fueled blurriness had
somehow had somehow already had this kind of effect on me, I knew I was in
trouble.
    I made a user name
and plugged in my credit card numbers.
    Now, how was I
going to find her? There were hundreds of girls on there, each of them with
silly names like Roxxxy and Starr and Miss_Double_D.
    I scanned the
list, hoping to find something that jumped out at me.
    Frustrated, I
realized exactly how little I knew about her. I was sure she’d want to conceal
her identity, but I also knew that when people did things they thought of as
‘wrong’, they usually left a little clue, a hidden arrow that points at
themselves.
    It was human
nature, the desire to show off ever so slightly, to say ‘look at me, I did
this, I was here and if you were as smart as me you’d have worked it out!’
    But I couldn’t
find her…

Sloane

 
 
 
    I sat there like
an idiot, both waiting and dreading the time when someone would log into my
room for an hour before I started to lose hope.
    Thinking about
giving up brought a strange sort of joy to me. I didn’t want to be doing this. I felt like I had to, like if I didn’t try
every option I was physically or mentally able to I’d be nothing more than a
quitter.
    At least I had my
mask. It was the one thing that made me able to do this, not that I was turning
out to be any good at it…
    Finally, I decided
I had to get a little bit more daring. Instead of sitting on my bed like I was
watching TV, I copied what I’d seen some of the other girls do when I’d
previewed their rooms.
    Even though I felt
like a fool, I lay down on the bed, pulled the hem of my slinky teddy up my
long legs until they revealed just a hint of the pink lace underwear I had on,
and gave the invisible world beyond my web came my best come hither