“He isn’t,” Shannon said. The corners of her lips quivered as she met my gaze, and she reached for the ponytail that wasn’t there. “I changed my mind. Let’s get a drink, Zach.”
10
Shannon
I picked a place in full view of Jagger’s gallery. It wasn’t for my safety; it was for Zach’s. Leah was still stewing in her juices when we left together, and every time I glanced over, her blonde curls were visible in the window.
“So, you came to the gallery because you thought you were gonna get lucky?” I asked.
Zach couldn’t reply right away because the waitress came to take our order. He got some vodka thing, but I stuck with beer. Hard liquor tended to lie to me, but beer never did.
“My plan was to go talk to Jagger. But I did get lucky. I found you instead.” He glanced in the direction of the studio, narrowing his eyes when he saw the same thing I did. Our Leah surveillance system.
It was easy to forget I was mad at him. “I was getting ready to send your bill to collection.”
He scoffed. “It’s been a week. You don’t have a legit claim yet.” The waitress brought our drinks, letting her gaze linger on Zach a little too long. “Plus, I came to negotiate my payment,” he said.
I took a long sip of beer. After working all day in the heat, it went straight to my head. “Do tell.”
“I like that you drink straight from the bottle.”
“Why’s that?” If he said it looked like I was sucking dick, I was so out of here.
“Because it’s no frills, bullshit free.” He smirked. “And women who drink beer are hot. They’re not afraid to get what they want.”
I took another sip. “Hard liquor gets me in trouble.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said, like there was going to be a next time, but all the things we needed to say hung heavily between us. “So, I want to talk about my bill.”
I was mid-sip and almost choked. Numbness spread over my body in a wave, and I put the bottle down before I dropped it. Chances were he didn’t plan on writing me a check, and I didn’t want him to change his mind because I spilled beer all over him.
“I wasn’t planning on giving you a discount,” I said.
“No. I plan to pay in full.” He sipped his drink and licked the vodka off his lips.
I wondered if he did it to draw my attention. To make me remember that kiss. Like I could forget it. My mouth watered, and I craved the taste of him. His strong grip on my hair. I crossed my legs to make the pulsing between them stop.
“Tell me what the terms of your payment are,” he said. His voice was lower than usual, and it made my skin tingle.
I took another sip of my beer, praying it wouldn’t lie to me. “I take it you don’t plan on giving me money.”
Zach shook his head. “You didn’t ask for my money. What do you want out of this, Shannon? If you’re looking to get laid, any guy in this bar would take you home.”
“Any guy but you,” I said. He was trying to back out of this by making me think it was a bad idea.
He leaned forward. “Let me finish. It would take all of five minutes for some guy to try to hook up with you on a dating site. Or anywhere else. What I want to know is why me. So I make sure you get exactly what you want.”
“Should we be talking about this here?” Mapping it out took the romance out of it, which was scary but good.
“It’s the best place to do it. Neutral ground, in public, your boss across the street watching me like a hawk.” He tipped his head in the direction of the gallery.
“Her mommy radar is on overdrive because she’s pregnant.” And I appreciated it, up to a point. She couldn’t follow us into the bedroom. Holy shit—we were going into the bedroom. As long as Zach didn’t say something to make me come to my senses, or I didn’t otherwise chicken out of the arrangement, this was a straight-up negotiation for sex.
“She hates me. It’s got nothing to do with the baby.” He waved at her. No reaction. “We’ve only come to an understanding because we care about the same person. People, now.”
It wasn’t the beer making my head fuzzy. It was Zach. This was only the third time we’d spent any time together. I was more comfortable when we talked about sex as if it were a chess game, so I steered the conversation back to the safe zone.
“I want to do this with you so you can show me what I’ve been missing.” My words barely had volume, and Zach leaned closer to hear me over the music. “My ex… He wasn’t a jerk. But he was selfish. He had a way he thought things should be. I was happy to play along, until I wasn’t. He didn’t give me what I wanted, because I intimidated him. Our relationship didn’t end with a bang, but with a whimper.”
“You never use his name,” Zach said.
“It’s John.” I hadn’t said it out loud in a while, either. “But it was always John and Shannon, and now I’m just Shannon.”
“I like you as Shannon.” Zach drummed his fingers on the side of his vodka glass. “So, you’re looking for a sexual adventure.”
My mouth was so dry. No amount of beer would fix it. “Exactly.”
“Do you know what your limits are?”
I didn’t. “It all scares me.” If I could really do this—sex only. If I was lying to myself. Zach was a little dangerous, and I liked it. I liked him. He was honest about who he was and what he had to offer. But we hadn’t taken off our clothes yet. I wondered if everything would change when our hearts beat in tandem with nothing to protect them from harm. He did this for a living, but I had zero experience with it. “Do I have to answer now?”
He shook his head. “No. Take your time.”
I hated being such a novice. I was trying too hard, playing like I knew the rules. And he saw right through me. “You probably think I’m ridiculous. Ooh, I want to have the big scary sex, but I have no idea what that means.”
No more beer for me tonight.
“No. I think you’re smart and brave to ask for what you want. So many people are too afraid to do what you’re doing. I don’t get why people deny themselves pleasure.”
“Maybe it’s like the fear of success.” Which I never understood.
He grinned. “You don’t have that.”
“Not even for a second.”
“The first thing we have to do is figure out the trade,” he said. It blew my mind that he could talk about numbers in such cold terms, but he was a professional, and that was why I wanted him. “I’m thinking, for every four hours of work you put into my business, we spend four hours together. And by that, I don’t mean we actually sleep together. We do as you ask, and you wake up in your own bed.”
But what about Zach? Night after night—or appointment after appointment—he satisfied the needs of whoever he was with, but who did the same for him? He went home to an empty bed and woke up alone.
“Shannon.” My name rolled off his lips like a crack of thunder. “Are you still with me?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I had in mind.” I scanned his face, looking for some flicker of emotion. Disappointment, relief—something. I got nothing.
“When should we start? I owe you four hours,” he said.
Just like that. I couldn’t be hard on him for being aloof about this. I started it. I negotiated the terms, and he was executing the plan. “How about tonight?” I asked.
Before I lost my nerve.
“No way.” He ran his hand through his hair, but he was grinning. “Not tonight. Right now, you have no idea what you want. Think about it, because you’re doing a lot for me. I’ve never had an unsatisfied client, and I don’t plan to start now.”
I swallowed hard, unsure if he was calling my bluff or trying to scare me away. “I have to give you a play by play?”
“You don’t. But you call the shots.” Zach took his wallet out of his jeans and put money on the table for the drinks. He got out his chair and stopped in front of me. If he kissed me again, the arrangement was doomed. “Text me when you’re ready,” he said
.
* * *
Laughter rang out in the courtyard in front of my little bungalow. A woman I’d never seen before nuzzled against the man she brought inside her unit. I wondered if this was their first encounter or if they’d been together for years. What brought them to Miami, and what would ultimately make her cry out in ecstasy, waking me from a sound sleep in the middle of the night.
I’d been fascinated by the fairy tale of love since I was a little girl, and what I saw around me—broken families with one parent or maybe another family member like my grandma who stepped up to do the hard work of raising a kid that wasn’t their own—didn’t match what I read in books or saw on TV. That was real love, the stuff that happened when no one was watching. The selfless acts that couldn’t be reciprocated. Pure sacrifice. When I was given the opportunity to be in one of those coveted relationships, which along with my college degree was my ticket out of the ghetto, I gave my ex those things that meant the most to me. I took on debt with both my degree and my relationship, believing hard work and sacrifice would fix everything. That philosophy, the work ethic I believed was behind pure love, opened doors to me in my career, but it slammed others shut in my personal life.
Zach’s homework assignment required me to do the thing that scared me the most. I had to look deep inside myself and figure out why, when I got my turn at a happily ever after, it wasn’t enough for me. The woman laughed again. The sound left me with nothing but the bitter aftertaste of pure envy.
I opened my laptop and went straight to the blog page I abandoned when Zach walked into the gallery last week. Not earlier tonight, when I didn’t expect him, but when I invited him there. It was like I wanted to get caught.
I wasn’t looking for love in this arrangement. I wanted to understand the things I was missing that gave people permission to walk away. Zach would fulfill a need I hadn’t been able to satisfy anywhere else.
Money was the thing that scared me the most. I knew what it was like not to have enough of it. Grandma tried to hide her struggles from me, but she could only keep up the act for so long. Too many nights I found her sobbing at the kitchen table, bills with angry things like PAST DUE and FINAL NOTICE stamped on them surrounding her. When the electricity company decided they’d given her enough chances to come up with the money, and she told me we were camping in the living room. Nights she swore she wasn’t hungry as I ate dinner. And when we got our food from the church.
I didn’t want Zach’s money, but there were ways to make this arrangement—as he kept calling it—profitable. Insight magazine had an open call for their True Confessions blog for sexual awakenings. I hadn’t had my awakening yet, but I had a feeling a few thousand people would want to read along while I anonymously went on this journey. Not only with Zach, but with myself. I tingled with excitement at the thought of putting it all out there. Someone could be sitting next to me at a coffee shop and reading about the super-hot sex I bought and paid for the night before, and neither of us would ever know. If the magazine accepted my pitch, the pay would ensure Grandma’s utilities stayed on, and maybe the air of mystery would drum up a little business for Zach, too. I had to be careful, not to make it too easy to tie my stories back to him. I was treading on broken ice, hoping I floated.
Escort Lessons, my blog promised in bold letters. Underneath, in smaller script, I added, it’s not sin; it’s survival.
This was my passion project, body and soul. Everything but my heart. Even if Insight didn’t accept it and no one but me ever read it, I needed a place to pour my thoughts and make sense of what I’d done. I was doing what everyone begged me to do, and working on me.
Episode One: The Proposal
I’m helping a friend of a friend start his escort business. I’ve got the skills he needs—I can build a website and help him with marketing. It’s easy stuff to me, but his face lights up when I suggest a quick fix. He gets excited. It makes me want more. I have what he needs, but the same can be said for him. I don’t want his money in return for my work. I’ve asked him to pay me in sin. Sex.
He seemed surprised by my offer. Maybe I insulted him, but it’s merely a trade of expertise. I grow his business, and he shows me how to push the limits of my body and mind.
At first, he walked away from the proposal, and I can’t lie. It hurt. But this isn’t about feelings. It’s a straight-up business transaction.
Tonight, he accepted. But to go forward, I have to tell him what I want.
It’s simple, really. I want to be the center of someone’s universe, if only for a four-hour appointment. The hard part is giving him instructions on how to make me feel that way.
11
Zach
I’m ready.
The clients were always in the driver’s seat. Nothing happened unless they said go. Didn’t matter what the scenario was, even if it was this fucked up arrangement with Shannon. If she was a client, I couldn’t treat her any different than anyone else.
So what’s it gonna be? I texted back.
Not telling. The answer came through right away. There should be an element of surprise.
Wrong answer, Shannon. I rubbed my face hard. I didn’t expect her to ask for anything out of bounds, but there was plenty of room for misunderstandings between where we were and where she wanted to go. She caught me off guard at every turn. Surprises would backfire. The agreement was a business transaction that had to be negotiated fully before either one of us set foot in the room, never mind take our clothes off. People forgot about rules and limits when the heat of the moment fogged reality.
I could do this. We’d go slowly, and I’d test her, inch by inch, step by step. I’d give her a chance to walk away.
Bullshit. Whether we kept up the arrangement or not, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to walk away.
When should we meet? I always let Barry take care of the formalities in the past. I used to give him shit—ask him what he did to earn his fifteen percent when I did all the work. I was such an asshole. This was the work. I broke into a sweat, typing things out and deleting them.
Does tomorrow work? She added the dreaded smiley face.
It does. My schedule was wide open. The guys were getting busier, but still not enough for me to schedule appointments for myself. I never planned to get out of the game; I meant to invest the commissions back into the business, not live off them. Maybe buy a place the guys could bring clients to. It would be more discreet than going to a hotel room.
Here was the part where things got awkward. More awkward. What’s your email address? You need to sign the contract and fill out an introductory survey before we meet.
Just another client. Yeah, right. I had to remember I wasn’t her pretend boyfriend, and more importantly, she wasn’t my pretend girlfriend. She was paying me to get what she wanted.
It took a long time for those little dots to show on the screen. Here you go.
Thanks. I hated texting. It was too easy to misunderstand what someone meant. I did better with people face to face. I wanted to hear her voice, so I’d know if it trembled with indecision. See if she was wrapping her hair around her wrist, or one of the other countless nervous habits she had. She was being too cool about this, and it went against everything I knew about her.
Where are we meeting up? I asked. There was a chance she’d back out when she saw the contract, or freak out at questions on the survey, but I expected her to get it right back to me. I hoped she read it. Shannon didn’t seem like someone who skipped over details. I almost forgot to add something very important. Don’t say your house.
Why not? It’s a short-term rental. Not my actual home.
It’s better if it’s neutral ground. And I didn’t want to see how she lived—the little quirks that would reveal themselves in the place she felt safe. I had to keep myself safe. I’ll book a hotel room once you send the contract back. Trust me, it’s better that way.
Does it come out of my tab? she asked.
Yeah. She wouldn’t like th
at. Not many of the clients did.
I’ll have to work harder to make up for it, she said.
Shit. I’d hoped it meant we’d do this less. Before we couldn’t distinguish our professional arrangement from our public obligations, where we had to pretend none of this ever happened. That was the part I couldn’t prepare her for. Or myself.
* * *
I’d never seen Shannon with her hair down before. It fell in soft, copper waves and filled the space when she opened the door. Blue light from the street illuminated the room behind her, and the strands framing the crown of her head glowed.
She didn’t say anything right away. Her eyes were unblinking, rimmed with dark makeup, and her glossy little mouth parted. She retreated into the dim room.
I assumed she wanted me to follow. I should have asked, but words would fail me tonight.
She sat at the foot of the bed, her long bare legs crossed, the satin robe parting at the top of her thighs to reveal so much skin. My heart thundered. I had many clients make me nervous before, in the good way—we screened out the scary ones—but none of them had captivated me like the woman who sat before me.
“Cutting right to the chase, huh?” It was better when I didn’t say anything.
“I am.” She trailed her fingers over her bare thigh. My cock was going to bust through my jeans. I wasn’t going to last five fucking minutes if she kept that up. “I sent back your paperwork. The survey and the contract. Did you read them?”
“Of course I did.” Reading over her answers turned me on. I was fucking doomed.
“Good. That means you’ll give me what I want.”
Her voice was huskier in the dark. She’d indicated she wanted an element of surprise, and my instinct had been to protect her. To keep her from walking away from this with a bitter taste in her mouth and my name like a curse on her lips. I laid it all on the line in my paperwork, but Shannon was the one with the surprises. She meant to seduce me.
Naked Love Page 184