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  “Shall we call down for dinner?” I offer, mostly because the opportunity to eat and drink and breathe will help soothe her. But also because it will give me more time with her, this woman who may hold the answers to my long-held questions.

  “No, thank you.”

  “We could go out. I know a lovely bistro not two blocks away.”

  She shakes her head, almost stricken. “No.”

  Such refusal, this one has. Such determination.

  Her eyes are wary, watching as I stroke the brocade fabric of the sofa leisurely. It’s almost like she expects me to lunge at her, to rip her clothes away without any discussion. Of course I would most enjoy that, if I thought she wanted me to do it.

  My curiosity is a living, breathing presence in the room. I want to unravel her secrets. Why does the idea of leaving make her anxiety spike like a tangible blaze in the air?

  I decide to go for frankness. “You’re a lovely woman, Bea. It would be an honor to spend the evening with you, but I have to be honest. I don’t usually work for clients as young as you.”

  A blink. “You don’t?”

  One shoulder lifts. “The CEO of a multinational corporation who realizes she’s spent more time on work than building a social life. A divorcee who wants to experience pleasure without resentment. They are the usual, but I have a feeling those don’t quite apply to you.”

  “Not exactly,” she says, cheeks almost cherry pink.

  The cat has found a perch on top of an old rolltop desk, her yellow eyes trained on me. I don’t mind one female looking at me. Don’t mind two. To be honest I have a bit of the exhibitionist in me, one of the many reasons I’m in the perfect profession. I know without looking that my shoes are perfectly shined, my bespoke suit conforming effortlessly to my body. Bea’s green gaze, both nervous and curious, is the best foreplay I could want.

  “I don’t need to know what led you to call me, certainly not the details of your circumstances, but it would help if I knew what you expect out of our evening.”

  “Oh God,” she says on a groan. “I’m screwing this up, aren’t I? There’s probably a secret handshake or something and I don’t know it. You must think I’m insane.”

  I shake my head, slow and slight. “No secret handshake, I promise. There’s only you and me, having a conversation about pleasure.”

  The word seems to take her aback. “Pleasure?”

  “That’s the nature of my business, yes.” My body tightens, because it would be pleasure indeed to touch this woman. To kiss her. To make her moan for me.

  Although I might have to rethink that plan, because the word pleasure might as well have been medieval torture based on the way Bea looks at me. “I thought we were going to have sex.”

  She sounds so forlorn it could break my heart.

  Instead I laugh, a small huff of breath, because I can’t afford to have a heart.

  “Sex,” I say, standing to full height, circling the scuffed oriental coffee table, standing behind her chair. “And pleasure. Pleasure and sex. They’re interchangeable.”

  I brush my knuckles over the side of her neck, a demonstration. Her wild curls tickle my skin.

  It’s provocative, this. If she had agreed to dinner, I would have started with small touches—a glance of my palm against the small of her back as I pulled out her chair, holding her hand while we talked over a glass of wine. Perhaps being so bold as to run a finger along the inside of hers, where it’s more sensitive. She would shiver; her gaze would meet mine.

  There’s an order to these things. You can move fast or slow, but there’s still an order.

  “We can skip the pleasure part,” she says, her voice high, her breathing faster. Her chest rises and falls in the black dress, made all the more alluring by how much it covers. She’s a mystery. The black sky in the city. I have to work to see her secrets.

  “No,” I chide gently. “We focus on the pleasure. That’s the point.”

  “What if—” Her breath catches as I drop the back of my hand over her collarbone, a reverse caress. That’s what one does for a skittish creature like her. “What if I have a different point?”

  “And what point would that be, my sweet Bea?”

  “I want to lose my virginity,” she says, so fast it comes out as a single word.

  IWANTTOLOSEMYVIRGINITY. It takes my lust-warmed brain a full minute to comprehend. She’s not only nervous, this woman. She’s a virgin.

  My hand freezes. I yank it away. “Pardon me?”

  I can’t have heard her correctly. There is no chance in hell that this beautiful young woman, as strange and interesting as she is, is a virgin. No chance in hell that I was the one tasked to be her first. I could not possibly spread her legs and thrust inside her, knowing that no one’s ever been there. It would be a physical impossibility. Never. No possible way.

  “It doesn’t have to take long,” she says, suddenly earnest. Almost begging me. “I don’t need…you know…whatever you do for other women. I only want the sex.”

  My God. “You are insane.”

  A scrunch of her nose. “Well, you don’t have to sound too surprised. It is what I requested when I called. The woman said that’s what you do.”

  “I’m not taking your virginity.” On some level I might have guessed this about her. If I had considered it even possible, I might have. Virgins don’t hire me. They stammer and giggle and turn away from me, their protective instincts strong enough to send them in the opposite direction. So perhaps I can be forgiven for not recognizing this one, so forthright.

  Bea frowns. “Is that a different department or something?”

  She’s mocking me. She’s mocking me for being, well, prudish, and I feel strangely buoyant. I could float away with the absurdity of it. “Yes, it’s a different department. The department of a frat boy who fumbles around in the dark.”

  “Are you seriously not going to do it?”

  The irony is enough to flatten me, that this is a woman I might have pursued outside this job. She would have been too young for me, even if I weren’t an escort and she wasn’t my client. That wouldn’t have stopped me from wanting her.

  But in another incarnation, if I had been one of those fumbling frat boys, I would have followed this woman to the ends of the earth. That’s a hypothetical scenario on multiple levels, but I’m good at hypotheticals, which is another reason I’m good at my job.

  So good that I please every single client I’ve ever had.

  Until this one, apparently.

  “I’m seriously not going to do it.”

  A small line forms between her eyes. “Is it because I’m, you know. Not pretty enough?”

  There are about a thousand ways that I’m beneath the woman in front of me. The fact that she might think I’m turning her down makes me want to flay my skin off.

  Well, technically I am turning her down. “It’s for your own good.”

  And then she makes a sound. Kind of like ugh but more annoyed.

  “Look, I don’t know what made you call to the agency, what made you think your first time should be a transaction instead of a meaningful experience, but I will not help you do it.”

  “Is this because I said no pleasure?”

  I glare at her. “You must insist on pleasure. Regardless of who you’re with.”

  “From a fumbling frat boy?” She sounds dubious. “It seems to me that if you were really concerned with making my first time pleasurable, you would be the one to do it.”

  There’s only one thing I find sexier than freckles, and it’s a sharp wit. I am ready to get on my knees for this woman, even as I know I should walk away. In short, I am screwed.

  Chapter Three

  This is how we end up at the hotel restaurant downstairs. I offered to take her out, would have preferred it, after the strangeness of our meeting. To text a friend of mine at the hottest restaurant in Tanglewood and secure a table for us.

  It would have given me a sense of normalcy. Most of the w
omen I see prefer to be courted before I take them to bed. And I enjoy courting them.

  Beau Ciel has, predictably, a pretentious matre d’. Less predictably, Bea greets him with the smile of an old friend. “I’m sorry I didn’t make reservations, Pierre.”

  Of course not, he tells her. She needn’t ever, he tells her.

  Then we are led to a private table, tucked behind heavy velvet curtains. The ceiling has been painted with a thousand stars on a dark background. It feels like looking up in a dream.

  “You come here often?” I ask, keeping my voice casual.

  She studies the menu like it holds the answer if she can only find it. I would bet that she knows every single item listed there. That she’s tried them all. “Mostly by room service. I don’t usually come down.”

  I warn myself not to ask how long she’s lived in the hotel. It’s too personal of a question, even for two individuals who are going to have sex. The only purpose would be to assuage my curiosity. It would not set her at ease. It would not seduce her. I must not ask.

  “How long have you lived in L’Etoile?”

  Damn.

  The words are out before I can even comprehend them. I have only ever been charming with women. It is my one skill in life, discovered before I knew what I was doing, honed over the years. How has this one slip of a woman reduced me to a bumbling first date?

  A faint flush touches her cheeks.

  “You don’t have to answer,” I tell her because she shouldn’t answer.

  “Twelve years,” she says so softly I barely hear it. Then her eyes meet mine, the soft green of them like a fog I don’t want to clear. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”

  It’s very, very weird. “Of course not. You must love it here.”

  She lifts one slender shoulder in a shrug. “It’s safe,” she says.

  I swallow down every other question that comes to mind. She can’t be much older than twenty. Twenty-one, perhaps. Twelve years means she’s lived here since she was a child. There was no sign of a parent in that hotel suite. So who raised her there?

  An image flashes through my mind, of the princess locked in a tower, her hair dropped out of the window for a prince to climb up. I have always been dramatic, mind. This isn’t anything new. Un rêveur, my mother called me. Anyway, this girl could never be the princess from the story. Her hair is a wild mass of curls, completely unsuitable for climbing rope.

  “Where do you live?” she asks, a challenge in her voice.

  I understand that she’s turning the tables, attempting to make me feel uncomfortable the way that she is uncomfortable. There is nothing personal about my living space, however. “A loft in a recent development on the east side. Beige carpet. Granite counters. It is also safe.”

  Her lips twist as if she’s fighting a smile. “That sounds very…”

  “Boring?”

  “I was going to say normal.”

  I lean back in the chair, crossing one ankle over my knee. This is a conversation I’m comfortable with. The woman’s curiosity about the life of a high-priced male escort. It doesn’t bother me. It isn’t even about me. They aren’t asking about Hugo Bellmont, the man. They want the persona. That’s all I have to give them, anyway.

  “Did you expect me to have shag carpets and a mirror on the ceiling?”

  She pauses as if fighting with herself. In the end her curiosity must get the better of her because she blurts out, “Why would you have a mirror on the ceiling?”

  “To watch you,” I tell her, my voice low and blunt. “While you ride me. To see your beautiful ass move as you make yourself come. To turn you over so that you can see mine.”

  Her mouth is open, eyes wide. I’ve shocked her. “Oh.”

  “But we aren’t going to have sex in my boring loft with its boring walls. After we’ve eaten and enjoyed each other’s company, I’m going to ask you to take me upstairs.”

  She makes a sound, like a squeak. I want her to make it again when I’m inside her.

  “And you will say yes, Bea, won’t you?”

  “Maybe not,” she says, but it’s a thin rebellion. I can hear the arousal in her voice.

  “You will, because you were curious about the pleasure. You didn’t want it, which is interesting. Maybe sex without orgasms seems to you like your penthouse—safe. But I won’t be safe, sweetheart. I will make you come so hard you cannot breathe.”

  Her pretty breasts rise and fall under the black dress. “That is—that is—”

  Before she can tell me what that is, the waiter arrives. He unveils an expensive Bordeaux, which is on the house. I order the steak au poivre, medium rare, to give her time to get her bearings. She does not even glance at the menu as she orders for herself a blanquette de veau, in an accent more Parisian than my own. Interesting.

  When the waiter takes our menus away, I busy myself with my cuff link. I have learned the art of foreplay, which extends outside of the bedroom. It starts right now, when I make her feel something only to retreat. The absence makes it sweeter.

  Except she takes me by surprise. “Hugo,” she says, almost tasting the name.

  I look up at her, this fairy creature, at her wildfire hair and sea-moss eyes. Her smile is all the more devastating because it’s pointed at herself.

  “You aren’t even hungry, are you?”

  My eyebrows go up. That isn’t what I expected her to say. “Hungry? No. But I’m always willing to eat, especially food that is delicious and rare.”

  We aren’t talking about food. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?” she asks.

  “Well, if you hadn’t already told me, I would know now that you haven’t had sex by the question alone. At least not good sex. If you had, you would know the answer to that. We could eat all night, and I would never tire.”

  Chapter Four

  It’s when we get to the crème brûlée that I realize something has changed. The conversation is still foreplay, but we aren’t talking about sex. Even in veiled terms. We’re talking about childhood and dreams. We’re talking about intimacy, which is all the more disturbing.

  “It’s the cars,” I admit my weakness. “I would see them pull up night after night with rich men and beautiful women. These Porches and Bugattis. I knew that one day that would be me.”

  “And now that is you,” she says, pride in her voice, as if anyone would consider being a prostitute a success.

  “I suppose—” Suspicion narrows my eyes. “How do you know what I drive?”

  She flushes a deep crimson. “I may have seen you out the window.”

  “Really?” I ask, because it’s the right thing to say. It makes her feel charmed, but the truth is, I’m the one charmed by her. This sweet, mysterious creature.

  “I don’t usually use that window,” she says, the words rushing together. “It’s too bright from the lights on that street unless I keep the drapes shut. But this time… well, I was over there.”

  “And?” I prod gently because there’s clearly more.

  “And there was so much dust. I sneezed, and then the lamp fell over, and then Minette got so freaked out she ran behind the dresser and wouldn’t come out.”

  I don’t mean to laugh, but the image of this girl watching for me out the window like a nervous prom date is too adorable. “I’m sorry,” I tell the hands that are hiding her face. “I’m really not laughing at you.”

  “I think you are,” she says, her voice muffled.

  “Bea. Bea, look at me.”

  Her hands finally drop, revealing this wry twist on her lips that I’m coming to recognize. “Are you done now?”

  “Only getting started, darling. But I do have to ask, why do you live here? Besides the fact that it’s safe. You must have money to go anywhere.”

  At some point in the meal there was a bottle of wine. It hasn’t made me drunk, but there is a pleasant lightness to me. Any walls I might have had are gone.

  The same might be true for Bea, because she leans close as if to tell me a s
ecret. “Because I don’t leave. I can’t.”

  “Don’t leave where?”

  “L’Etoile.”

  “You mean you aren’t allowed to move?” I understand what she’s telling me, but I don’t want to understand. This woman is so young, so full of life. How can she be imprisoned?

  “No, I mean I don’t leave the hotel. Like, to go to the grocery store. Or the park. Or anywhere.”

  Jesus. “How long has it been since you left? I mean, you weren’t born here, were you?”

  “No, I wasn’t born here. I moved in when I was ten. I was… troubled, you know? The way only a rich kid can be.” She laughs at herself, the sound hollow. “So my guardian, he got me a tutor who came every day. A therapist who came every week, for all the good that did.”

  I blow out a breath. So many years in the tower. “That’s terrible.”

  She makes a face, self-deprecating. “Yes, it’s a hard life, living in the penthouse.”

  “‘I am a winged creature who is too rarely allowed to use its wings.’”

  With a strange look she replies, “‘Ecstasies do not occur often enough.’”

  “So you can quote the Diary of Anais Nin, but you do not believe in pleasure?”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe in pleasure,” she says, her voice painfully earnest. “I’m sure it’s very nice. But it isn’t necessary tonight. Only the act itself.”

  “The act?” I’m taunting her, and it’s only a little about foreplay.

  “Fine,” she says, speaking fast like she does when she’s nervous. “Fine. I want to have sex with you. I want you to have sex with me. You know, the whole thing.”

  There’s more she isn’t telling me, and it feels important. I have never asked a woman her motives for hiring me before. It’s never mattered. “Because you can’t leave?”

  “Yes, because I want to do this thing, and I need to do it here.”

  I glance behind her, at the many meals happening beyond the hanging curtain. There are women who look at me. And men. I am somewhat ostentatious with my suit and my assuredness. But even beside me, she shines. “And there has never been a man passing through the hotel that you have wanted? Someone sitting at the bar who bought you a drink?”