Escort Page 4

  Then she takes a deep breath as if steeling herself.

  Her small fingers brush against my chest through linen, uncertain with the stiff fabric. She pushes the button through the hole, tugging the fabric apart no more than a centimeter.

  Another button and another.

  She opens my shirt down to my navel before spreading it apart.

  I glance down, trying to imagine what I look like for her, dark hair and tanned skin. My body is acceptable. I work out enough to keep myself trim, to bulge a few muscles for the clients who like such things, but that is not my strong suit. There are weight lifters and ballplayers on the payroll for women who prefer men like that. Myself, I am tall and somewhat spare. It is my smile that makes them choose me, not my body, but Bea looks at me with awe.

  “Do you like what you see?” I ask, my voice pure gravel.

  I expect her to be demure, to shake her head and avert her eyes, what any well-behaved ingenue would do. Instead she meets my gaze with an impish smile. “Feeling insecure, are you?”

  My laugh comes out full-bodied. It takes me by surprise. “A man does like to feel wanted.”

  “I do want you,” she says with a candor I’ve come to admire from her. An eagerness I’ve already learned to crave. “But I’m not sure I should have you.”

  “Do you think I’ll hurt you?” I don’t think that’s her worry, but I have to be certain. It would break me if she thought I would force her to do anything she didn’t want to. “We can call the service right now. They can send someone else.”

  “No,” she says, a little too loud, turning pink. “No, not that. It’s just that I’ve spent so long here in these four walls. Seeing the same group of people. Doing the same things.”

  I hear the starvation in her words, the darkness that closes in on her. “You’re afraid because I’m new. Because what we’re doing is new. So we will only do what you’ve already done.”

  “Do you mean watch me…”

  “Masturbate? Oui, I could watch that. I would gladly, but I would also love to make you come. It would be a feeling you’ve had before, only with my fingers instead of yours.”

  She likes that, I see the excitement brighten her eyes. Her fear recedes into the night. “Here?”

  I look around at the small bar and the sofa beyond. “Where do you usually do it?”

  “In bed.”

  My hand links with hers, and we go there together. This is the room where I began this journey, the dresser still slightly ajar from the wall. The mismatched furniture at odds with the sleekness of the penthouse suite. The bed neatly made in anticipation of what’s to come, white ruffles in neat alignment. The thought of her wet and horny under this spread is enough to dampen a spot of precum on my boxers. Already my cock hurts with how long I’ve been hard, but I will wait as long as she needs. Forever, if that’s what it takes to make her comfortable.

  She turns off the lamp, and I let her, but only because she would normally do this in the dark. There is only the light spilling in from the doorway, barely enough to see her by.

  I pull back the bedspread, messing up her ordered work. The sheets are cool beneath my palm, and I smooth them, smooth them, making them warm and ready.

  When I turn back to face her, she looks up at me with luminescent eyes.

  Every thought of teaching her, of tutoring her, of remaining aloof from her disappears from my head. There’s only the need to kiss her and the physical movement to make it happen. Her lips yield under mine, softer now, quicksand, and I’m sinking.

  This time when I touch her, she sighs into my mouth, a sound of infinite relief. I give in to my baser impulses and touch her plump ass, knead and mold her, and then it’s my turn to sigh in relief. She is everything warm and vibrant in my arms.

  I know a move for every situation, practiced and choreographed to maximize her pleasure, but it’s clumsy hands that press her back to the bed, that lift her heavy lace dress in pursuit of ecstasy. I slide my palm up the inside of her thigh, and her hips lift, shocked and seeking.

  “Spread for me, Bea.”

  She does, wordless, her eyes wide moons. There is enough mystery there to make me uncertain about my reception, but then I touch her—ah, there. And she’s wet for me, drenched and swollen for my cock. It isn’t my cock that she’ll get though, only the stroke of my forefinger making her cry out.

  “Tell me what you feel.”

  “I feel wild,” she whispers. “And so good. And it hurts. Why does it hurt?”

  Beautiful. She’s goddamn beautiful. “Because your body knows what it needs.” I press my thumb in front of her clit, hovering there in the slickness. “Reach for it.”

  And then she does, lifting her body in a timeless rhythm. She doesn’t need my lessons, that much is clear, not the way she writhes in relentless pursuit, pressing her clit against me.

  She could come this way, but I want more. Not only for her.

  For me.

  I slip my finger inside her. God, she’s tight. She would be a vise around my cock, and I feel myself flex inside my pants. I have one knee on the bed, the other leg still planted on the floor. I’m bent over one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, but I’m still fully dressed.

  Part of me wants to open my pants and release myself. To slip inside her heat and take what she’s already paid for. But something holds me back.

  “Please,” she whispers.

  Then I’m helpless except to kiss her, to thrust my tongue into her mouth with the same steady gait as I slip my finger inside her. And still she fucks her body against my thumb, the friction making her gasp against my lips.

  There is no longer a spiral to the top; she’s hovering there, trapped in suspended agony.

  Afraid, I realize with a terrible dread.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever wondered if I might not make a woman come. Her body is with me, but her mind is afraid. I bite her lip once more, and her attention focuses on me. “Nothing will happen to you,” I tell her, even though I have no ability to protect her. No right. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Let go for me, Bea. Let go.”

  She comes with a glorious rush of arousal, her body jerking in wild abandon. I pet her clit with firm strokes of my thumb through her orgasm, and then stroke her sex softly as she comes down, pressing kisses over her nose and across her forehead, telling her how beautiful she is, how sweet. My brave girl.

  Everything is perfect in this moment. Her body and its response to me. Even the fact that I’m rock-hard and suffering beneath my suit cannot mar this.

  Until her gaze snaps to mine, and everything changes.

  All the fear rushes back, tenfold. I see it march in like a thousand pinpoints of darkness, blotting out her bright arousal. And then she bursts into tears.

  Chapter Seven

  Like most boys in Tangier I ran wild in the streets while my mother worked twelve-hour shifts. I swiped fruit from the backs of donkeys on their way into the market and learned to pick pockets from the men with glittering women. Almost a million people live between the city walls, speaking ten languages as commonly as the national Arabic, but for the poor son of a hotel maid, there was only the dust and the clamor and the dry burn of the sun. It was a rough existence but also a joyful one. I didn’t know anything else.

  I knew early not to cry. There was no time with the caregiver with ten babies in the other room. And when I was older, there was always another boy to lash out. And so tears dried before they came out, even when my favorite street dog was run over in front of me, her leg twisted away, held to her only by flesh and tendon, part of her belly exposed. She lay whimpering in my arms until I used my pocketknife to end her suffering. And still I did not cry.

  I don’t know what to do with the sobbing young woman on the bed.

  My throat feels tight. I’ve made women moan and scream and beg. Never this. “Did I hurt you? Was I too rough? Forgive me, Bea. I never meant to—”

  “It wasn’t that.” She shakes he
r head, glancing at me with tearstained eyes, pleading. She wants me to understand, but I don’t. Somehow my experience is failing me. My charm is failing me. If she wanted me to whisper to her in Italian on the rooftop, I could do that. If she wanted me to lick her pussy until her body went limp, I could do that. What is it she wants from me?

  She buries her face in her hands, shoulders shaking, trying to muffle the sounds of her distress. “Just go. I’m okay. You can go.”

  There is no way that I can leave her like this. For a moment I stand there, helpless, still fully dressed, my arms outstretched as if to hold her, my cock still uselessly hard in my slacks.

  There’s a hard pit in my stomach that reminds me of that hot afternoon with the dog limp in my arms, frozen, frozen, the horror of knowing I could do nothing to help.

  Except this isn’t a packed dirt street in Tangier.

  And I’m not a powerless little boy.

  I lift her body into my arms, hearing her startled gasp, and climb into the bed. With gentle determination I cradle her body in my arms. After a breathless moment she buries her face against my chest. Only then can I breathe fully, knowing she’s accepted my comfort, small though it is.

  My words are useless now; all I have to offer her is my body. That’s all I ever have, really. I rock her slowly, back and forth, holding her tight as her sobs slow and then stop.

  “This isn’t how you usually finish your dates?” she asks, her voice still thick from tears.

  My heart squeezes that she’s going for humor, that she’s trying to make this more comfortable for me. “We finish with whatever you need.”

  She shudders her way through a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. It tears a strip of skin from me when you do.”

  Her eyes meet mine, framed by damp lashes. “That makes me want to apologize more.”

  From somewhere I find the strength to laugh, a light thing, to let her know this is normal, even though it’s not, it’s not, it’s not. I’ve never made a woman cry. I’ve never been with a virgin before, either. This was a terrible idea. What made me think I could do this? That because I can make a woman come, her body clench and convulse, that I should be trusted with her first time?

  “Hey,” she says. “I see you blaming yourself. But it wasn’t you.”

  “I’m sure you cry also when room service arrives.”

  She gives a huff of laughter. “No, I’m sure that would freak Rene out.”

  “Consider me freaked out,” I tell her even though I’m relieved. Thirty seconds ago, she was bawling her eyes out. But this, a woman in need of laughter and reassurance, I can do.

  She bites her lip. “I just didn’t expect it to feel good.”

  “You must tell me where you learned these horrible ideas about sex.”

  “I mean, I knew about orgasms. I’ve seen them on movies and read about them in books. And I’ve given them to myself. But this was completely different. Like all my life I’ve been seeing water through thick glass, and then one day I dive in.”

  “It makes you sad, this?”

  “Yes,” she whispers. “It makes me sad, thinking of all those days I never dipped a toe in. Because I was too afraid. That’s the only reason.”

  “And you wonder what else you’re missing.”

  “I know what else I’m missing, but that doesn’t make the fear go away.”

  “Then what does?”

  Her green eyes meet mine, a little fearful, a little wry. “Apparently, you.”

  Chapter Eight

  “And you just left her there?”

  The question comes from Sutton Cooper, the roughneck of our little group. The censure in his voice leaves no doubt as to his opinion on the matter. He may be a hard-ass, with a background roping steer and raising hell, but he has a hard line about treating women well.

  Even if that only means making her breakfast after a night of no-strings sex.

  “She paid for the night,” I say blandly.

  Christopher leans forward in the leather armchair, his eyes dark. They always see right through me. They see through everything. “Have you ever made a girl cry before?”

  “But of course, that’s why I’m the highest-paid escort in Tanglewood. Because I say sharp and insulting things that make the women cry.”

  Blue takes a sip of whatever new beer he’s drinking. “Has Hugo been sarcastic before?”

  “Only when he’s upset,” says Christopher, the bastard.

  We’re sitting at the Den, like we do almost every week. At the beginning there was only Blue and Sutton and me, starting with a handful of dollars in our pockets, determined to make something of ourselves. The Thieves Club, we called it, only half joking—our own Den of thieves. We weren’t planning on robbing any banks, but every dollar we earn means taking one away from someone else.

  Christopher runs a hand through his blond curls, the ones that can make any woman swoon. Some of the women in the room glance at him as he does it, the light from the amber fixtures reflecting off the golden strands. He’s a veritable angel walking the earth—made hard from his fall.

  “She must be something,” he says, “for you to get shaken up.”

  “I’m not shaken up.”

  “So she wasn’t something?” Blue says, crossing one booted foot over his knee. He wears only jeans and T-shirts and dusty black boots, in direct violation of the dress code. He wears enough suits running his security company, he says, when he would much rather be in army fatigues.

  “She’s beautiful, of course. All women are beautiful.”

  Christopher raises an eyebrow. “So she’s ordinary?”

  They’re baiting me. I know they’re baiting me, and still it works. “Non. She is perfection. Delicate and pale and covered in freckles. Everywhere, freckles.”

  “I do love freckles,” Sutton says with a wistful sigh.

  “And she has a smart mouth that presents itself at the most surprising times. When I think she will be most scared and cowering, that’s when she tells me what’s what.”

  Blue grunts because he enjoys a woman with attitude. “Nice.”

  “And there’s something about her—the strangeness of her staying in that hotel, for one thing. Her past. Her secrets. I want to unwrap them as much as I want to take off her clothes.”

  “Which is a lot,” Christopher observes, his voice dry, but I’m not fooled.

  He loves secrets as much as I do, with his neat suits and obsidian eyes. He was the last addition to the Thieves Club, one we never expected. But when he went into business with Sutton, he slid into our group as if there had always been a space waiting for him.

  With his cold ambition, there is no one better suited to join us.

  Plus he brings the most excellent brandy.

  I take a sip, savoring the spice. “Most likely she won’t call again. She will find some handsome traveler in the hotel bar, who will finally convince her to leave the safety of her little nest.”

  The thought turns the brandy sour in my mouth.

  “Or not.” Blue turns the amber beer bottle in his thick fingers, studying me. “If you really upset her that much she might be too afraid to try again. You might have fucked her up.”

  I choke on my next sip and set the crystal down. “Thank you for that.”

  “She’s going to call again,” Christopher says, raising his finger for the server. The Den has a full bar, of course, but we can bring our own liquor, especially if we have a special bottle. The brandy he brings for me. Obscure craft brews for Blue. His business partner, Sutton, prefers Patrón.

  He drinks only wine himself, the kind that must be purchased at auction.

  There is terrible hope inside me at that, because Christopher is usually correct.

  “Because she wishes to cry again?”

  “This is a woman who has spent her whole life behind bars, essentially. Even if they are bars of her own making. She wants to feel something. That’s why she called the first time.
It’s why she’ll call again.”

  I turn to stare into the fire as the server attends to refilling our drinks. Absolute privacy is assured in the Den, but I still would not speak of Bea in front of a stranger. In fact I do not usually tell the Thieves Club about any of the women I’m with, but she’s far from usual.

  And of course there’s the issue of L’Etoile, but I have no intention of telling anyone about that—not even these men. They don’t need to know that I have a darker purpose for wanting to go back to the hotel, to get closer to the woman who lives there.

  When we’re alone again, I lean forward. “I want to see her again, which is enough to convince me that I shouldn’t. I don’t have feelings for my clients. I pleasure them; they pleasure me. That’s all.”

  “It’s clear this has gone beyond that already,” Sutton says. He wears a white business shirt, rumpled from a day’s use, the sleeves rolled up. They dress alike, he and Christopher, in their high-rise real estate office, but they could not be more different.

  “And I’m worried that if I go again, I’ll have sex with her. Of course I will. But how can I do that, knowing she cried when I only made her come? How do you take someone’s virginity?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Blue says.

  He’s the only one of us in a committed relationship. He loves his wife, who had a very rough childhood. Enough that he didn’t take her virginity, even though they met as teenagers. I’ve met Hannah, and she’s impossibly sweet; it’s heartbreaking to think of her hurt.

  “No idea,” Christopher adds, but I happen to know he holds a deep fascination with his stepsister. She’s the reason he moved to Tanglewood, though he would not admit that.

  Even Sutton puts up his hands. “Who wants that kind of responsibility?”

  Mon Dieu.

  “I am in very big trouble,” I announce softly.

  The group drinks in silent agreement.

  Chapter Nine

  The next Saturday night I come prepared. The paper bag in my arms isn’t about seducing her, at least not about having sex. I already know she will do that with me, but I want to seduce her in other ways. Her mouth and her mind. Maybe then I will be comfortable taking her body.