Pearl (The Pearl Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Indira, the woman I was fucking. I’d be seeing her the following week in Mumbai. Her Indian accent was husky and breathy, laced with desperation and desire.
    “Baby, I can’t wait to see you. I’m going crazy. Crazy, I tell you. I can’t wait to lie with you. I’ve been dreaming of you every night. I need you so badly. See you next week.”
    Lie with you . What a quaint, polite way of saying, ‘fuck.’
    Indira was a movie star. A Bollywood legend, even though she was only thirty-three. She had long, dark, wavy hair and pale gray eyes, set against her caramel-colored skin. Stunning. She was a real beauty, gracing magazine covers and cherry-picking leading roles. She was also a widow. Her husband had died a few years before, leaving her a small fortune, not that she needed it—she was wealthy in her own right. He’d been a film producer, and was a good thirty years older than Indira. She had one grown-up teenager who was also making her name in movies. Women in India were generally treated like second-class citizens, except in two key areas where they really had clout: politics and cinema. Indira was a powerful woman, and used to getting what she wanted.
    And she wanted me. Or rather, she wanted my cock.
    I needed to end it with Indira but it was going to be tricky, because the grease-ball bastard with whom Sophie and I were signing our upcoming deal, was her first cousin. Indira was also investing a large chunk of her own money into HookedUp in India. Something I begged her not to do—I never mix business with pleasure—but she was insistent, and Sophie would have never forgiven me if I’d bungled the deal.
    Meanwhile, I had Pearl Robinson on my mind.
    Hmm … could get complicated . With Pearl Robinson now on the horizon, I wasn’t sure how I’d organize my time. It depended on Pearl, really. Would she want me as a full-time boyfriend? I assumed so. Another thing I’d learned about women over the years: the exclusivity factor. Even Laura, who was married to someone else, wanted exclusivity. Not that I was fucking Laura, but I got the feeling from her flirtatious demeanor, that she was keen for our old candle to be re-lit.
    The last voicemail was from Claudine. An ex from my teenage years. Uh oh. I’d be seeing her the next day. Now, Claudine was so fucked-up, that to not see her could be dangerous. I really didn’t want a suicide on my conscience.
    I listened to the message: “Alex? Mon amour?” She talked into the receiver as if she were speaking to a live person. As if voicemails had only been invented yesterday. “Alex, tu es là?” I heard her TV on, a cackling noise in the background, her heavy breathing, as if she was waiting for me to magically say something. Then she hung up.
    The last time I’d seen Claudine, she had gotten her hands on a Colt.45 and was threatening to shoot herself if I didn’t fuck her. She told me that no other man could give her an orgasm. Claudine, like Laura, was a model.
    Every man’s fantasy seems to be to date a model, but believe me, models can be psychotic. You’d think that by being so beautiful they’d be brimming with self-confidence, but no. They can be the most neurotic women in the world. No matter how gorgeous they are, they feel they’re too fat, or their forehead isn’t high enough, or their lips are too thin or…whatever—the list goes on.
    Claudine was like that. Very neurotic. Very high-maintenance. In order to get the gun away from her for good, I had to give her a mercy fuck. It wasn’t exactly a punishment for me, but I was trying so hard to limit the complications in my life—e.g. limit the amount of women. Hone it down to just one.
    I didn’t consider myself a ‘multi-tasker’ by nature—not even when it came to women.
    Quality, not quantity, was what I was aiming for.
    But it was proving to be a tough call.
    I was beginning to realize that my mantra of treating women well was backfiring on me.
    You see I have a code:
    • No woman is a