Chapter 50

Author’s Note: We’ve got some exciting things happening in the Hooker House world, as well as a new frontier for our foursome. A bit more groundwork here, but some essential groundwork to get where we need to go. Thanks for reading!

“Okay, girls,” Jess began, “I wanted to start these weekly meetings so we can talk about clients, bring up issues, and also ensure open dialogue here within the agency. I want everyone to feel invested in what we’re doing.”

She stood in the center of the living room, Alix off to the side of her, while Gloria, Serena, Crystal, Katie, Bianka, and Julie sat on the couches. The meeting was for the core Hooker House group and newbies. I leaned against the doorframe at the back of the room, adjacent to the kitchen, watching with my arms crossed.

“Do you want to tell them the other thing, boss?” Alix asked.

“I do,” Jess said, a touch of reticence in her voice. “So, I’m going to be pulling back a bit from front-line work. I’m going to take a lot fewer appointments.”

There was a murmur and unsure glances around the room.

“My commitment to Infinity isn’t reducing,” she assured them. “I’m actually doubling down on the agency. And I’m doubling down on all of you. With the Vegas house becoming a reality and more cooperation with Kelly in LA, I need to focus on running this business. I can’t do that if I’m taking a half-dozen appointments a week. As much as I like the dick.”

The room erupted in laughter.

“That means more opportunities for you sluts,” Alix said, and a ripple of laughter punctured the room.

“It does,” Jess said enthusiastically. “And there’s something else as a result of that.”

Eyebrows raised across the room, including Alix’s. Jess had a surprise for them.

“I’m setting up a bonus program,” Jess announced. “And I’ve thought about the best way to do it. Kelly and I both have. We don’t want our girls to be competing with each other, but we want to reward you for providing a high level of service. So we’ve decided that if you get four appointments per week? That’s a $1,000 bonus. You get another $1,000 for your fifth. And another $1,000 for your sixth. After that, the weekly bonus is capped. We’ll call these the bronze, silver, and gold tiers.”

“Sweet,” someone in the audience said.

“So that’s an extra $3,000 per week you can access just from having clients want to come back,” Jess continued. “I think that’s readily attainable for everyone, given our client base. We are also going to do a year-end bonus program. It’ll be based on the percentage of weeks that you earn a bonus and what tier of bonus you earned. At the end of the year, we’ll have a profit-sharing pool, and your bonus will be based on how frequently and what tier of weekly bonus you reached.”

“Damn,” Alix said.

“I know that’s a lot to take in,” Jess said, “and we’ll go into a lot more detail at the end of the year, but I think you’ll see this is a commitment by Infinity to making this lifestyle sustainable for our girls.”

The room broke into applause. Jess smiled and looked over at me. I nodded at her. She hadn’t expected that kind of reception, and pride swelled in my chest for her.

“Okay, okay,” Jess said, waving her hands to calm them down. “There’s one more thing on my agenda. If I’m scaling back to focus on running the business, we are going to need to add a girl or two. I know we’ve talked about recruiting before, but does anyone have someone in mind who would actually be interested in joining us?”

“I do,” Katie said, raising her hand immediately. She stood up, her golden thighs standing out in a pair of short white shorts and tits barely contained in a purple tank top.

“Katie,” Jess said, giving her the floor.

“So a nurse I work with and also went to school with – she’s two years older than I am – has been running a naughty nurse OnlyFans for the last year or so,” Katie said. “We’ve become really good friends, and we’ve had some general conversations about what I do on the side. She’s super interested.”

“Do you think she’d be a good fit?” Jess asked.

“I’ll send you her OnlyFans,” Katie said. “She’s really hot. She was a cheerleader at TCU, and we were in the same sorority. She had a serious boyfriend in college, so I never knew her to be very slutty, but they broke up a couple years ago, I guess. We had lost touch until she started working with me.”

“How long has that been?” Jess asked.

“About six months,” Katie said. “We’ve had a few nights where we’ve gone out and partied and hooked up with guys.”

“Put me in touch with her,” Jess said. “Let’s bring her in for an interview after you and I talk a little more.”

“Sounds good!” Katie said, beaming as she sat back down.

“Anyone else?” Jess asked.

The room was quiet, but I could see Crystal whispering something to Bianka, who whispered back animatedly. Then Crystal’s hand went up.

“Crystal,” Jess said.

“Well, like,” Crystal stood up and stammered. “Julie and I have someone maybe.”

“Tell us about her!” Jess said enthusiastically.

“So, like,” Crystal fidgeted. She was nervous. Her gum smacked loudly as everyone waited to hear what she had to say. My interest was piqued. I was deeply curious about another Baptist housewife being brought into the fold. “We know this girl,” she said, gesturing at Bianka and Julie on either side of her, “and she’s married to one of the ministers at our church.”

Jess and I made eye contact. Her eyes were as eager as mine.

“Like, she’s super into the church,” Crystal said. “And last Wednesday night. Well, Julie, why don’t you tell everyone about what happened.”

“Okay,” Julie said timidly, standing up and looking cute in a jeans skirt. “I probably know her the best. She’s my neighbor, and for a couple years I’ve noticed that she smokes cigarettes occasionally when her husband isn’t home. I thought that was her big secret, but last Wednesday at Bible study before church?”

There were some snickers of laughter that rippled across the room.

“I was in the bathroom doing a bump from my coke bullet and didn’t hear Nikki come in,” Julie explained. “I guess she was quiet because she was just fixing her makeup. Anyway, when I came out of the stall, she was just standing there, staring at me from the sink. And she said, ‘I never figured you for the type, Julie.’”

Crystal wrestled the narrative away from her.

“So, like, Nikki took Julie’s coke bullet from her!” she exclaimed.

“And, I thought, oh shit,” Julie said, chiming back in. “I’m so totally busted. But Nikki was like, hey, is that cocaine? And started asking questions about what the bullet was and how it works.”

Julie talked very fast. The long and short of it, however, was that Nikki had been a wild child in college, breaking free from the constraints of her family, which was headed up by her minister father. After college, drifting without direction, she had settled down with the minister son of one of her father’s minister friends. She and Julie had grown close over the past few years, but Julie had no idea that Nikki had kept that wild side of her alive, if only barely. Nikki liked pills because they were the thing most readily available to her. She loved, Julie learned, to spend all day masturbating and watching porn while her husband worked at the church.

And then Julie dropped a bomb no one saw coming.

“Sorry, I just tell such long stories,” Julie said, still talking fast. “The long and short of it is that Nikki and I ended up making out in the bathroom, and got together the next day and did some coke and had sex, and neither of us had ever been with a girl before, and anyway, I told her that if she really wanted to explore having some real fun outside of the church circle, I might know the way to do that.”

Silence fell over the room as we all digested what Julie had spit out. A minister’s wife? Jess and I made eye contact again. There was an excitement dancing across her face I hadn’t seen in a long time. I knew she was reading my mind.

“Well that was a mouthful,” Bianka said, and broke the tension in the room as everyone laughed.