We had a couple more drinks and a lot more dances, the heat turning up each time we hit the dance floor. Her sensuous curves fit perfectly in my hands, and I was dying to show her what I could do to her…and for her. Her hot breath on my neck was driving me mad, her soft breasts pressed against my chest ignited a savage thirst in me. Keep cool, Nick. She’ll make the move. She’s dying for it just as much as you are.
The bar started to fill up, waves of college kids crushing us toward the back door. She shrugged at me and laughed, then pulled me through, out into the alleyway.
“I thought we were going to die in there,” she laughed. “It was getting too hot anyway. Do you want to walk with me?”
“I would like nothing better,” I said honestly. I took her arm and let her choose the direction. I might not have been working, but my rules were the same; her comfort came first, before either of us did.
“It’s such a beautiful night,” she sighed, gazing up at what few stars we could see beyond the city lights. “Perfectly clear, perfect temperature.” She glanced over at my face and grinned. “Perfect escort.”
“Ah, ah, watch your wording,” I teased. “No escort tonight. Just your devoted spontaneous bar date.”
She looked up at me with a smile, but her eyes were deep and thoughtful. She didn’t say anything for a while, and I found that I didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. She was comfortable; and, for the first time since returning to civilian life, I was beginning to remember what that felt like.
“Why do you do what you do?” she asked suddenly.
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific, darlin’,” I said absently. I was still lost in a twilight memory, waiting for my mind to return to the present.
“The escorting. You’re handsome and skilled. I can’t imagine that you need the money particularly badly, or that you couldn’t find another way to get it if you do.” She paused for a moment, but she still seemed to have something to say. I waited.
“That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with what you do for a living,” she continued in a rush. “I just—I’m trying to understand.”
I smiled at her, and the worried little crease between her brows smoothed away.
“I enjoy it,” I told her frankly. “I enjoy making women feel good. I enjoy opening up worlds of pleasure for people who might not have had enough of it.”
“That’s a pretty sharp contrast from the Marines, I imagine.”
Startled, I looked down at her. “Your mouth doesn’t pull any punches, does it?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, turning away.
“Don’t be,” I said gently, squeezing her arm affectionately. “You just surprised me, that’s all. Most people I meet hear ‘former Marine’ and either go fishing for heroic war stories or ignore it entirely.”
“I like patterns,” she said with a shrug. “You have interesting ones. Military—structure, orders, the idea of justice, war, pain. Then bartending—making people feel good. Escorting—making people feel good in a different kind of way. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I want to understand.” She shut her mouth with a snap and looked up at me, as if startled by her own words. “I’m sorry. No filter.”
“Four drinks will have that effect on most people,” I assured her. I never counted myself among those before, but now, her straightforward analysis spoken in her soft, gentle voice was making my walls turn to marshmallows. I found myself wanting to explain my life for the first time in…well, ever.
I breathed deeply and looked up at the stars, which were shining more brightly now as we moved away from the wash of lights of downtown, farther into the quiet, dark neighborhood surrounding it.
“Honestly, it’s all been about helping people,” I confessed on a sigh. “I didn’t join the military for the rules, the structure, the justice… I joined because I thought I would be saving the world.” I had never told any of this to anybody before, but now that I’d started, the dam was broken. “It was only after six months of deployment that I realized that wasn’t going to happen.”
I shrugged, battling the sudden tightness in my throat.
“Why did you decide to stop?” she asked gently.
An innocent question shouldn’t have been so jarring. I had never had to put the answer to that into words before; it was something I had known, something I couldn’t run away from. Just as I couldn’t have done anything but enlist, I couldn’t have done anything but allow my contract to run out and not renew it.
“What happened when you got back?” Carmen asked quietly. I realized that I had fallen silent for several minutes in the wake of her question, and I was grateful that she wasn’t going to push me on the subject.
“It wasn’t easy,” I admitted. “One thing they don’t tell you when you join up is that when you come back, the clock pretty much resets. I didn’t have a college degree or a job waiting for me. My parents were older and needed more than they could give. Time froze stateside, and I was expected to pick up where I left off. Only I hadn’t left anything behind to pick up.”
“But you had new skills and experience. Didn’t that count for anything?”
I smiled into the dark. “Ninety percent of my new skills were not exactly applicable to a nine-to-five, darlin’. When I got back, I was lost. Couldn’t figure out how to reintegrate. My parents had lost their house in ’08, so I couldn’t even go home to catch my bearings. I sort of fell into a bar and never came back out.”
“Is that why you’re a bartender? So you can drink?” There was no judgment in her tone, just curiosity. A pure curiosity which washed the last of my reservations away over the broken dam.
“No,” I told her firmly. “I bartend so that I don’t drink. I like the atmosphere. I’d be there one way or another, and it’s better on my liver to be serving the drinks than buying. Watching people go about their daily lives, drowning their mundane troubles, makes me feel like I’ve found a place. Not in it—I don’t think I’ll ever be able to just exist in the world like that—but observing it. Helping to heal it, even if it’s not the best kind of healing.”
“Ah, that makes sense. So the other thing you do, that’s a sort of healing too?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, a little surprised. “I’ll be honest, though, I never thought of it that way.”
“What got you started?”
“A woman. She showed up at the bar one night and started flirting pretty heavily. I’m no saint, darlin’, and I went for it. When I woke up the next morning, she was gone. But she left her card. She was a talent scout for EscortGo, and decided that I made the cut.” I shrugged. “I figured it couldn’t hurt. I did pretty well with the ladies, but I didn’t want anybody catching feelings on me. Didn’t have the brain space for it. I figured this was a foolproof way to get mine, give back, and keep my freedom locked down.”
“Mm.” Carmen fell silent beside me. The energy between us was still comfortable, and I could almost hear her mind working. Her intelligent, analytical mind couldn’t be shut down by a few drinks, and I found that unreasonably attractive.
“I can kind of relate,” she said after a while.
“Oh?”
“Well, it’s not exactly the same thing. My whole sexual salvation complex is a lot closer to the surface.” She laughed a little, making me smile.
“Tell me about it.”
“I guess I told you about my dating troubles in that awful email.”
“It wasn’t awful, but yes, you touched on it.”
“I took a break from dating about a year ago, trying to figure out why it was I kept ending up with these terribly apathetic guys, and I finally got it. It took me a few months, but I figured it out.”
“Trying to save them from themselves with some good old-fashioned sex magic?” I teased.
She laughed. “Well, yeah, kind of. I saw potential in them. One was so artistic… He would draw and paint these amazing pictures, things you would see in a graphic novel or in a modern art museum. He
could have made waves in the art world in no time at all, just blown it out of the water. The thing was…” She shrugged as if heaving a heavy weight off of her shoulders. “He just didn’t care.”
“About you?”
“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you for certain whether he cared about me or not, but I know that he didn’t care about his work. And it killed it for me, you know? I just wanted the best for him.”
“Did you love him?” I don’t know why I asked. Love was still a four-letter word for me, and I bit my tongue as soon as the words left my mouth. I didn’t want her thinking that I had those intentions with her; at the same time, I felt I needed to know.
“No,” she said sadly, shaking her head. “Not any more than I love everybody. I’ve read the books and watched the movies, and that sort of life-changing different kind of love, it isn’t something I’ve ever experienced. Not really. It’s like…” She rotated a hand, as if she were pulling the air through her thoughts to filter them.
“It’s like sex,” she said finally. “I’ve had sex. I’ve even had good sex. But the orgasm part…it’s never happened for me. It’s not that I’m not open to it, or I don’t try. It just hasn’t happened. Love is like that. I’ve had it. I’ve experienced good love, but I’ve never reached that climax. Does that make sense?”
“I’ve heard that from my clients before,” I told her. Hell, I’d heard it from my own head before, but I wasn’t going to admit that. She had drifted past my first line of defense without breaking a sweat, but there were some things that even an intimate moonlit walk wouldn’t bring to the surface.
“I bet you’ve heard a lot of things,” she said wistfully. “You kind of have a front row seat to people’s most vulnerable moments, don’t you? Between bartending and the other.”
“Does it bother you?” I asked. “The other, I mean.”
“Oh, no, not at all,” she said, a little too adamantly. “You’re a free spirit, and I admire that about you.”
I wasn’t sure how true that was, but I decided to accept it as a compliment. “I admire you as well, darlin’.”
“Really? Why?”
“For things like that,” I told her with a grin. “You have questions, and you just ask them. Without subtext. You analyze everything. It’s fascinating, but it also gives me some insight into your problem.”
“Which problem?”
“The one you contacted me about to begin with.”
“Oh.” She blushed deeply, and I fought a grin.
“Don’t feel bad,” I told her, nudging her shoulder gently. “All it means is that you need to find a way around that analysis.”
“Oh, gosh, I don’t know if I can do that.” She followed her demurring with a laugh. “The closest I ever came to turning my brain off was when I sent you that message last week.”
“I’m very glad you did.”
She gazed up at me, her eyes shining in the early morning light. “So am I,” she said. “Even if it was the most embarrassing moment of my life.”
“Sending the message, or realizing that you’d sent it?”
“The second one,” she said with a laugh. “I was absolutely mortified. I’ve never—well, I guess I’ve never had to look too hard for attention. Not that I have men falling on their swords for me or anything, but there’s always somebody…usually of the same caliber as the rest of them.”
“Shiftless layabouts?”
“That’s one way to put it,” she said with a grin. “You must read as much as I do.”
“I get in a book now and then.”
She shivered, and I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. The way her body molded to mine told me that she was ready; if I made a move now, the night would end exactly as I had imagined when it had begun. As the sky turned color and the night ended, I knew that my window of opportunity was beginning to close.
“We’re here,” she murmured, drawing to a stop outside of an apartment building.
“Where’s here?” I asked, moving around in front of her to encircle her in my arms.
She nodded at the building. “My place.”
“Ah, I see.”
She bit her lip lightly as she gazed up at me, and the urge to pick her up off of her feet and carry her to bed was nearly overwhelming. As I dipped my head to meet her lips, though, I knew that I wouldn’t. For the first time since making women’s pleasure my vocation, I didn’t want it to end here. Somehow I knew if I took her upstairs tonight, that would be the end of it. I always trusted my gut on these things.
Her kiss nearly changed my mind. Great sparks of electricity coursed through my veins, rattling me to my core. Her soft warmth pressed against me, her scent filling my head, her fingers curling delightfully on my shoulders; the perfect setup for a perfect ending. Only I didn’t want it to end. Not tonight. I pulled away, brushing her cheek with my thumb.
“Till next time, darlin’.” I winked at her and turned away, gratified by the need I saw shining in her eyes. Oh, yes. There would be a next time, all right.
Chapter 6
Carmen
“Till next time, darlin’.” His words echoed through my dreams, waking me up with a smile on my face. The late morning sun streamed hot through my windows, warming my messy hair as it tangled across my pillow. Stretching and yawning, I basked in the feeling.
“The man is good at what he does,” I murmured to myself.
I wondered just how good he was. In my dreams, he had been magical. But even in my own imagination, I couldn’t manage to reach that coveted pinnacle of pleasure. As I stepped into the shower, memories from the night before twined with fading dreams, leaving me with a thirst I had never felt before.
“Should have asked him where he tends bar,” I told my steam-blurred reflection in the mirror. “Might be time to try a new watering hole.”
The thought sent a guilt-tinted beat through my heart. I couldn’t pester the man at work, what was I thinking? Besides, it wasn’t as if I would have to stalk him. All I would have to do was hire him again, and then…
“Oh.” The emotions which had been awakening within me suddenly froze in their tracks. Of course he had made me feel good, and special, and almost beautiful; it was his job. There couldn’t have been anything real about last night. Could there?
“Analyze,” I muttered as I made coffee. “Can’t analyze information I don’t have.”
Impulsively, I picked up the phone and called Valeria.
“Carmen?” she asked, her voice still thick with sleep. It was Sunday, after all.
“Hey, you got a second?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
I sighed, searching for the words as I touched the cup of steaming coffee to my lips. “I’m curious about that guy you hired.”
“Who, Joey? When did I tell you about that? It was a mistake, for real. He can’t even collect the mail without tripping over his own feet.”
“What? Who’s Joey?”
“New office runner. Who were you talking about?”
“Nick Steel,” I said in an exasperated huff.
“Oh! Oh, my God.” She laughed, and I could almost hear the embarrassment in her voice. “That guy. Yeah, what about him? Oh my God.” Her voice dropped low. “You aren’t considering hiring him for yourself, are you?”
“I—no, of course not. I’m, just doing some research. I’ve never heard of O doctors before this, and you know how I get when I don’t know everything about something interesting.”
“Always could rely on you to do the research work,” she said fondly. “What do you want to know?”
“When you met him, was it like a date, or did you just get down to it?”
“Oh, it was definitely a date,” she said confidently. “That’s his whole gig. Makes you comfortable. Makes you feel like the only girl in the world before taking you to bed. He says it’s the only way… Women, he says, don’t usually get there if they aren’t one hundred percent comfortable, so he puts in his time.”
“Yeah, a few,” she said thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I usually talk too much when I’m nervous, and he mostly just let me talk his ear off.”
“Makes sense. He probably adjusts his approach depending on the kind of woman he’s with that night.”
“I guess he would. That’s really the only way to get repeat customers, I would think.”
“You’re probably right. Okay, well, that’s all I guess.” I was trying very hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice, but I don’t think I succeeded entirely.
“If you’re sure that’s all,” she said doubtfully. “Hey, Carmen, are you doing okay? You’ve seemed a little off lately.”
“I’m all right,” I assured her. “Just, you know, feeling the passage of time a little stronger these days.”
“You say that like you’re old.”
“Thirty isn’t exactly young.”
“Tell that to my mama. She’d slap you silly.”
I laughed at that, but I didn’t really feel a whole lot better. The one guy I had met in over a year who had managed to make me feel like dating again was only in it for the money, and whether Valeria wanted to admit it or not, my time was running out. All of my mental pictures of weddings, babies, and cute houses were fading ever more rapidly by the day.
After hanging up with Valeria, I took my coffee out to the sunbaked balcony, watching the world go by beneath me. Young couples in love, little families with babies strapped to them or tucked snug in their strollers; mothers wrangling a gaggle of small children, looking worn out and frustrated until the youth was magically brought back to their cheeks by aggressively enthusiastic hugs and sticky kisses. I watched, alone.
“Self-pity doesn’t look good on you,” I reminded myself as I sipped my coffee. “Feeling like an observer of life doesn’t make you an outsider.”
My words felt hollow and false even as I said them. My mind took that thought and ran with it, flashing pictures at me of every time I had ever felt like an outsider in my own life. Dozens of tiny little moments in the last week alone. Every time I tried to join a conversation with my coworkers. Every time I walked down the street and watched two mothers share a look of quiet desperation and camaraderie. Every time I had to excuse myself to squeeze past a couple locked in a loving embrace on public transportation.
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