“Come home with me.” His husky voice against my cheek caressed me like the whiskers of a beard on my most sensitive area. My eyes shifted to his face, and I almost groaned at the slight blond stubble I saw there. I pressed my legs closer together and tried to stop my reaction to him.
If we had met somewhere else, my response might be different. I might let this very successful, hot man take me home with him. But I don’t know if I really want this.
I thought of Emma and the two nights she spent with her latest client. I didn’t know if he paid her extra or she just did it because she wanted to. I absolutely would not let anyone pay me for sex. I wouldn’t be that woman.
Just because he’s a client doesn’t mean you can’t find him attractive and go the extra step. No strings. Just fun.
There was no doubt in my mind that he’d be the most amazing sex of my life. My experiences with men like him were zero. Zilch. Nada. He was smooth, professional, and knew exactly what he wanted. All I was used to were horny teenagers and college boys with an itch to scratch. I had the feeling he would be a more attentive—and talented—lover.
“We can be out of here in an hour, tops. If you want to come home with me, meet me next to my Maserati. If you don’t, just go on home. The ball is totally in your court, Janie.” He cleared his throat. “Just so you know, I don’t do this. I’ve never—” He peered around to see if anyone listened. “Hired anyone to come to an event with me. My friend uses Penny all the time, and I was complaining one day about needing a date, but I didn't want to bring someone I work with, and he told me about her. I work a hundred hours a week. I don’t have time to meet people outside of my job, and getting involved with the nurses complicates things. So don’t think I hired you just to sleep with you. I promise that’s not me.” He quirked his lip. “I love a good romp in the sack, but trust me when I say I don’t intend to use someone for it. It’s consensual and mutual or it doesn’t happen.”
When I shifted my head just enough to be able to stare into his eyes, a small gasp escaped my lips. He was so close I could count a few small freckles on his nose. I believed him. Maybe it was stupid of me to, but for some reason, I didn’t think he’d lied.
I thought about the last time I spent the night with someone. Actually, I hadn’t ever “spent the night.” I had sex and left, and rarely was it someone I wanted to continue to date. Porter was my first client. I wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea for me to do this, but my body betrayed me.
It wanted me to.
And I felt like a hooker, even though he told me it would be mutual.
If he tried to give me extra money after this, I would officially be too disgusted to look at myself in a mirror.
Ever again.
Porter opened the car door and helped me step out. I barely registered the beautiful house or the sound of water lapping the shore behind it, because Porter shut the door and pushed me gently against the expensive machine, knocking the breath from my lungs.
I could barely believe I was here, at his home. The entire time he drove, his fingers traced my upper thigh. To the point I thought I might spontaneously combust before we reached our destination.
I warred with myself for the last hour we were at the benefit, but when I went to the parking garage, my feet refused to take me to my car. The entire ride here, I chastised myself for being weak. I fell prey to the intense attraction of Doctor Kingsley. And I alternated between feeling like a hooker and like the most wanton woman on Earth.
So here I was. Pressed against an expensive car while a man I just met kissed me like I was the only woman left on Earth.
Holy shit, the man can kiss. His hands held my face while he slid his tongue inside my mouth, and I whimpered as he twisted it with mine. He moved his hands down and skimmed my curves, stopping on my hips. Pressing himself against me harder, I could feel how turned on he was. It took everything I had in me not to grind against his leg, but despite how much I wanted to, I forced myself to cling to a tiny shred of decency.
My knees were weak, and I shook from adrenaline. I’m going to do this.
“Janie,” he murmured, moving his lips from mine to trail down my neck. Just like that, reality crashed back down on me like a bucket of ice water. He didn’t even know my actual name. He knew nothing about me. He was totally out of my league, and I shouldn’t do this with this stranger.
Even if I knew already it would be a life-altering experience.
Just as I was about to pull away from his very intoxicating touch, his phone began to ring loudly in his jacket pocket. He continued kissing down my neck to my cleavage for a moment before he realized what the sound was and stepped back. It gave me just enough room to suck in a breath and get my head back on straight.
Saved by the phone. I chastised myself silently for my out-of-character behavior.
Lust-filled eyes met mine as he took his hands from my hips and reached into his jacket pocket, a string of expletives flinging from his mouth. He glanced at the screen for just a split second before answering.
“Doctor Kingsley.” He paused, listening to a voice on the other end of the line. His face instantly changed, and he stood straighter before he began pacing back and forth, spewing medical jargon I couldn’t even repeat, much less understand. “Yes. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Get the team assembled and ready. Time is of the essence.”
He turned back to me. “I have to go. Major trauma just came in to the hospital, and they need all hands on deck.” Porter ran his hand through his short hair. “Can I call you a cab, or do you want to ride to the hospital with me and get one from there? I’m so sorry, Janie.”
“Go. I’m fine. I can call my roommate, and she’ll take me to get my car at the hotel. Don’t worry about me.”
Porter opened his car door and then turned back to me. “I want to make it up to you, if you’ll let me. I had a great time tonight. Can I call you?”
Rationale took hold, and I knew for a fact this was a bad idea. It was time to put an end to this charade. Doctor Kingsley would move on and find someone else to warm his bed. It wouldn’t be me. “You can call Penny to hire me again, if you want.”
He rolled the window down as the engine purred. He read my dismissal, and as much as it pained me, I knew if I entertained this handsome doctor, I would be the one who ended up hurt when he moved on to another woman’s bed. This wasn’t the kind of guy I needed to get involved with outside of a professional realm. He was way out of my league, in so many ways. A look I couldn’t quite decipher crossed his handsome face. “You’re beautiful, Janie. Be careful out there. It was great to meet you. Take care.”
With that, he took off into the dark night, leaving me standing alone in front of his beautiful mansion like the hired help I was.
4
Brecken
I leaned back in my chair, blowing out a frustrated breath at the quality—or lack thereof—of my seniors’ essays. I taught them better than that. My freshmen write better than this! There was only a week left in the school year, and I had so much to do to get ready for summer. Between my English classes and my graduating seniors in JROTC, I had way too much on my plate to be distracted. But I was. Distracted. By a dark-haired woman with sleek curves sexier than my brother’s overpriced sports car that cost more than my house. I couldn’t get the image of her out of my head. I sat there, next to Camber, the entire night at dinner and stared at her. Watched her interact with my brother. Watched her fidget uneasily as my parents grilled her.
Watched as the two of them walked out of the benefit together.
Thought about what they were doing until it drove me right out of my mind.
She was Porter’s escort.
She wasn’t my kind of woman.
I couldn’t understand what would make someone do such a thing.
I couldn’t understand why Porter would go home with someone who did that for a living.
Then again, I stared at her all night.
He was probably jus
t as transfixed with her.
My phone buzzed in my desk drawer, and I lifted it out, hoping for a reprieve from grading and thinking about a woman I couldn’t and shouldn’t want. I could take the rest home, but I would try not to.
“Porter.” It was unusual for my brother to call me in the middle of the day. I hadn’t talked to him since the dinner a week ago. Despite Camber’s blatant offer to go home with me, I went home alone that night, visions of Porter and I sharing his escort plaguing me. We hadn’t done that in so many years, I would never bring it up now. We were adults, no longer dumb teenage boys.
But I couldn’t deny I wanted her.
Even if she slept with my brother.
Even if she was an escort and did this regularly.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but she made me want to break all of my self-imposed rules.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. You busy?”
“Just grading papers. What’s up?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I almost laughed because it was what I just thought to myself moments before.
“Uh, you’re the doctor. If you’re sick, go get one of your buddies and have them see you. That’s not my expertise.”
Porter laughed. “No. That’s not what I mean. I want to see Janie again, and that is totally messed up. I don’t do that, Breck.”
Janie was her name. My heart rate spiked as I thought of her. It was like Porter read my mind. Not that it was too far off to say that he could. He probably knew I wanted her. I hadn’t even spent a second with her, and he more than likely spent the night in her company. I could understand his wanting to see her again. I didn’t understand my reaction to her, but I long stopped trying to figure that out. She was much too young for us, along with a plethora of other things. The main one being that she was there with my brother and was an escort.
If her name was even Janie. I somehow doubted escorts used their real names. With that thought, my curiosity piqued even more. I needed to know her real name and everything else there was to learn about her.
“Did anything happen after dinner?” I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer, but he would tell me anyway. Porter had no qualms about sharing details of his conquests with me. He never quite read through his twin intuition that I didn’t care.
Porter groaned. “I had her, Breck. We were in my driveway, and then we had a trauma at the hospital. I ended up working almost fifty hours straight.”
“She was at your house?” I didn’t know why this surprised me. I didn’t know the woman at all, and the only thing I knew of her was that she was an escort who went to an event with my brother because he paid her to. Maybe sex at the end of the date was her norm.
Even as I had the thought, I knew it wasn’t true. Janie didn’t seem the type. Not that she didn’t ooze sex from every curve of her body, but I got the impression there was way more to her than what we knew. How I got that from just seeing her across the room, I didn’t know, but I knew it in my soul, anyway.
Not that it mattered. More than likely, Porter would never see her again, and I sure as shit couldn’t hire an escort to take me to a teacher meeting. As soon as I thought it, I began to smile. I didn’t have swanky dinners and speeches—unless it was for Porter, of course. But I did have something I could use a date for to keep the single teachers away from me.
The end of the year staff beach day and barbecue. You could bring her there. I almost laughed at the thought. Really, that was a terrible idea. Hire an escort to take me to a staff party. But now that it was in my head, I couldn’t stop myself from contemplating it. I also felt guilty for judging Porter when now it was all I could think about.
“Yeah. She met me at my car, which was what I told her to do if she was interested. I drove her to my house and were kissing in the driveway about to go in the house, and then my fucking phone went off. I mean—really. The trauma could’ve waited fifteen minutes until I got to put myself inside her.”
My gut clenched, and I checked myself. I shouldn’t care what happened—or almost happened—with them. Except, I wanted her. For some strange reason and without knowing her at all, I didn’t want her with my brother. Escort or not, I wanted her to look me in the eyes and want me.
I had seriously lost my mind.
“So then call her. What’s the big deal?”
“She kind of blew me off, said if I wanted to see her again, I could call the escort service and hire her. She didn’t give me her number before I left. Shit, she wanted to go home with me, and then suddenly, it was like I was a creeper or something.”
“Oooh.” I sat up in my chair, enjoying this a little too much. “So she shot you down, huh? Doctor Kingsley isn’t used to that, is he?”
“Shut up, asshole. It’s not that. It’s not even about sleeping with her, though I’m sure she would be amazing. I just can’t stop thinking about her.”
“So let me get this straight. You hire an escort to take you to a dinner to keep other women off you, and now, you can’t stop thinking about her. Porter, I think you need a life, too, bro.” I wouldn’t tell him I thought of doing the same damn thing. But then I wondered how I would find her if I didn’t ask Porter the name of the service, so I figured I better tone it down some.
He laughed. “When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous. But there’s just something about her, man. I know I hired her to be there, but she just seemed so…real, you know? So genuine.”
“And young,” I added. “How old is she, anyway?” I knew she couldn’t be in her thirties. She looked more like the kids I taught than anyone our age. Not that I was attracted to any of my students, because I wasn’t. Although some of them tried. It was tough being a guy in this profession. Between the female teachers and the female students, I needed a proverbial suit of armor every day to go to work.
“I don’t care how old she is as long as she’s legal, which she would have to be to work for that company,” Porter answered. “What should I do?”
I thought of her dark raven hair falling in waves behind her back, her wide eyes, and her amazing figure. “You hired her to go to that dinner. You and I both know you don’t have the time or the energy for a relationship. So you’re going to contact her for what reason? To sleep with her?”
Porter sighed. “Well, when you put it like that…”
“She’s not a prostitute, is she, Port?”
“No,” he said immediately. “And even if she was, that’s not me.”
“Well, thank the good Lord.” Laughter filled my words. “She was beautiful, Porter. I get that. But I think you should let it go. Unless you want to hire her to go somewhere else with you, I wouldn’t let yourself get involved in that situation.” Because I want to get involved in that “situation.”
“You’re right. See, this is why I called you. You’re always the voice of reason. I’ll just keep telling myself she was a beautiful woman I had a good time pretending with, and that’s all it was. Pretending. Keeping the women away from me that night. How’s your week been?”
I tapped my pen on my desk and observed the stack of essays that still awaited me. “Well, I’m grading essays and need to get the hell out of here. We have a week left with the students, and they’ve all checked out already. The seniors are done now, so I just have to finalize their grades before they walk.”
“Sounds fun, little bro. Any prospects in the co-worker pool?” He was always busting my balls about the teachers at school.
I thought about the many interested looks I got over the school year, as well as some that got a little braver and asked me out or made it very clear they were into me.
“Not really.”
“Come on, Breck. You’re a guy in the prime of your life. I’m not saying you should get married or any of that shit, but come on. You need to live a little. Go get someone to occupy your nights—and your bed. You’ve got the whole summer to do whatever you want. Now is the time to take advantage. Speaking of
that, what happened with Camber? You ditched our table to hang out with her the other night. What’s up with that?”
“Nothing happened with her, though she did try.”
Porter snorted. “She’s a freak in the sack, man. In the best of ways.”
Just as I assumed, she had slept with my brother at some point in the past. Also, why I didn’t continue to entertain her at dinner, because I refused to get his seconds. Which is also why you should not think about Janie. But he didn’t sleep with her, so technically, she wouldn’t be seconds if I had her first. “And this is why I didn’t take her home.”
“Brecken.” I knew a lecture would come from my brother. “You act like the biggest prude. Do you not remember our teen years?”
“Shut up, Port.”
“No, I won’t. What happened to that guy? The one who was all for a good time?”
“He went and fought for his country.” And got his heart broken by a woman he thought he loved, who slept with you while he was gone, trying to stay alive.
Porter quieted, and I knew I had him. He hated when I talked about those four years. It was the one time in our lives we weren’t part of each other’s daily life. It was the only thing that Porter couldn’t commiserate with. While I was overseas getting shot at and hiding in underground bunkers, he was in college sleeping his way through every sorority house and drinking until he passed out. Sleeping with the girl I loved, in the process. Well, I’d thought I loved her. I obviously misunderstood what love and devotion meant.
When I came back and went to college, he was in medical school and our lives were still as different as night and day.
I’d shared a lot with Porter about what had happened when I was deployed, because it helped me process it. Plus, he’d already known many times I was in danger or something terrible had happened—twin intuition. We were as close as two people could be. I often discounted how hard it was for him to have me out of the country.
“You’re an amazing man, Breck. I’m sorry for giving you shit, I just want you to be happy. I know the Army changed you, but I want to see you happy, bro.”
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