A 21st Century Courtesan (26 page)

“Ah, yes, Joshua … just like that.”

I am soaking, trembling already. And he is sucking, sucking, until my clitoris is sore and tender and I can hardly take any more.

He lifts his head. “Are you going to come, Valentine?”

“Yes. Yes …”

He turns me over suddenly, his hands rough on my body, and I love it, love being handled like this. I need it not to be romantic, not to be pretty, and he understands exactly.

Yes, he's fucking perfect, this man.

And he is about to fuck me.

He lifts my hips, positioning me on my knees. Spreading my ass cheeks, he presses his condom-sheathed cock at my opening. I surge back against him.

“Just do it, Joshua. I need you to. I need to … to lose myself. Please …”

“I know just how to do it, baby. I know what you need.” There is a darkness in his voice that's all about sex, about taking me over.

He slides the tip of his cock inside me, and my body clenches.

“Oh, yes …”

Then his hand comes down between us, his finger slipping between my cheeks and stroking that tightest of holes. His finger is slick with lube, I realize, before he presses it in.

A shock of pure lust goes through me; being filled this way, pussy and ass, makes each sensation more intense.

He pumps into me, his cock driving deep, and with his finger he presses harder into my ass, moves it in a circular, twisting motion that has me writhing and panting.

“Please, Joshua.”

“Please what, baby? What do you want? I'll give it to you, whatever it is. All I need to know is that you want it.”

“I need you to … I need you inside me everywhere.”

He pushes his finger in deeper, thrusts his cock inside me, and pleasure courses through me, hot and powerful. I am losing all sense of anything but his hands on me, his cock, his skin against mine, and the sharp scent of sex in the air.

“You want me to fuck you in the ass, is that it, Valentine? To really take over?”

“Yes. Please, Joshua.”

I am nearly sobbing with need now, squirming against his finger, his thick cock.

“Anything for you, baby.” Lust in his voice, adding an edge that reverberates through my body.

He pauses, and his finger slips out of me for a moment, comes back covered in lube. He pushes it into my ass, big gobs of it, and even that makes me shiver, makes my hard clit throb, pulse.

His finger slides out of me, then his cock, but in moments
I can feel it at the entrance to my ass, his fingers stroking, teasing. His other hand slides around my body, finds my clitoris, and begins to massage it.

“Oh, God, Joshua! I'll come too fast. And I need to feel this.”

He slows down, his fingers still pressing onto my clit, but gently now. With his other hand he guides his cock into my ass, just the tip. There is that familiar burning sensation, but it is gone in moments as I breathe into it, let him past that ring of tight muscle. I am shaking all over. And I realize that despite how many times I've had anal sex before, this time it's as much about trust as anything else. I press back against him, taking him deeper.

“Ah, you do need it, don't you, Valentine? You need me to love you everywhere. I do, baby. I do.”

He presses deeper, an inch at a time. I breathe into it, relax my muscles, rocking a little with him. And with every inch the pleasure shafts deeper into my body: my sex, my belly.

When he shoves two fingers into my pussy I gasp, pleasure like a shock to my system. I am filled completely. Possessed. And it is flawless.

He thrusts his hips, not too hard, but enough that I really feel it. And when he moves his hand so that he can thumb my clit while his fingers move inside me, I gasp for air. Pleasure runs hot in my body, electric, exquisite. And as he whispers into the back of my neck, his breath warm and lovely against my skin, I come, my climax crashing down on me like the weight of the earth. I can hardly breathe as I cry out his name, over and over.

He is still pumping into me from every direction, milking my orgasm for all my body has. I am coming and coming, shivering, tears rolling down my cheeks.

When he tenses, a long shudder rippling through his body so that I can feel it inside my own, my sight dims, and I am momentarily blinded, breathless. Pure bliss, his climax and my own, and this moment of giving myself over to it all. To him.

He slips out of me, fingers and cock, rolls onto his side, pulls me up against him, my back to his chest. We are damp with sweat, panting. Beautiful.

The thought goes through my mind that this is all I'll ever need.

I know even now that's not true. But at this moment, it's enough. More than I ever dared to dream of.

TUESDAY MORNING AND JOSHUA
decided to go into work late so he can take me to breakfast. We got up early and drove to Lily's, this funky place on Abbot Kinney in Venice Beach. It's packed, even at eight a.m. on a weekday. The usual eclectic mix of beach people: writers with their laptops, teenage kids with their skateboards, the local soccer moms in their jogging suits, babies in designer strollers.

The place is tiny, the tables almost on top of each other. But the coffee is superb and it smells like heaven: fresh pastries and bacon and a little patchouli from the bohemian crowd.

I've ordered French toast, a childhood favorite. The waitress brings it to the table and I smile at Joshua as I pour too much maple syrup on and dig in.

He fits right in here. His hair is a little mussed, spiky. It usually is, even when he's in a suit. But I like him even better like this, in his cargo pants and a T-shirt. Casual. Comfortable.

“You look happy this morning,” he says, forking a bite of eggs into his mouth.

“I am. Happier than I've been in a long time.”

He lowers his voice, leans forward, a glint in his hazel eyes. “I should fuck you in the ass more often.”

I laugh. “Maybe you should. But that's not it. Well, that's certainly part of it. God, I don't know. I just feel … different. In a good way. It's as though things are shifting around inside me, and it's an almost physical sensation.”

He nods his head. “I felt that way when I came back from Europe. Stronger. Even though what happened there, and before, was hard.”

“Yes, that's it exactly.” I take a bite of my French toast, savor the sugary syrup on my tongue. “I realized something when I woke up this morning.”

“What was that?”

“That there are three different sides to me.” I sip my coffee, enjoying the heat of it. “No, four. The old me, who I was growing up in that house, with my parents. I saw a glimpse of that yesterday, and I didn't like it. It was … frightening, to feel like that again, even that small hint of it. It was sad.”

“What about the other sides?”

“There's the working me I created when I left home. That person is someone I made, pulling bits and pieces out of thin air. A design I furthered by going to college, taking classes. A doppelgánger, almost. And I lived like that all these years, in ghost form. Does that make sense?”

He nods his head. “Sure it does. But it wasn't all bad. You speak how many languages?”

“No, it's not all bad. I managed to get an education of sorts, even if it wasn't very specific. And that's more than anyone from my background could have expected, I suppose.”

He nods, and I'm glad he's not arguing the point with me.

I go on. “There's the person I am when I'm in Lydia's office.
And that person is so damn honest it scares the hell out of me sometimes. That person is angry and raw. But also thinking, exploring, trying to figure it all out. My life. But that me spends a little too much time intellectualizing everything. I know that. I'm sure Lydia knows it, too. And then there's who I am with you. And that me is also working, trying to figure everything out. Working really hard.” My throat is closing up, and I have to swallow a few breaths to make it open up again.

He reaches across the table, covers my hand in his. “I know that, baby. I can see it.”

I nod, continue. “That's when I'm the most vulnerable, when I'm with you. I don't always want to be, but it just happens. It's happening right now. But as wide open as I am with you, I still don't feel like that's my true self. Not yet. I haven't discovered yet exactly who that is.” I pause, wrap my hands around my coffee mug, sip the hot, sweet liquid.

He says, “Maybe you have to find a way to integrate all of those selves before you find out who you really are.”

“Yes, that's what I've been thinking. I wish I could just do it, that grasping the concept would make it happen.”

“It'll happen. I know you can do it, Valentine.”

“I hope so.”

He picks up my hand, brushes a kiss across the knuckles.

I have never wanted anything more in my life than I want him. And not just sexually, although that's there, too, a sharp current always running beneath the surface. I want
him.

What I want is a real life. And I'm so afraid I'm going to blow it.

“Baby, you need to stop worrying so much.”

“I don't understand how you can be so calm.”

He's quiet, watching me, his golden-green gaze on mine.
Shadows pass across his eyes as he's thinking. “I'm not always calm about it. You know I'm not. But I understand that if I dwell on the obstacles, I'll miss all the good stuff that's happening every day with you. I wish you could see it that way, too. I think it's a lot harder for you. I wish it wasn't so hard, baby. I wish I could make it easier for you.”

His gaze is warm on mine. He squeezes my hand hard.

“I love you, Joshua.”

He is still looking at me. His eyes are so beautiful, his long lashes lit by the easy morning sun.

“I love you, too. If you can't believe in anything else yet, believe in that.”

I nod, smile. Deliriously happy and so damn scared all at the same time. Have I ever really believed in anything? I don't think I've had the chance to.

I think I'm afraid to. And I'm afraid that fear is what's going to blow this, to blow everything apart.

Don't fuck this up, Valentine. Do not fuck it up.

Please.

H
OW MANY PEOPLE EVER
get to know on a true, deep level what the word “idyllic” means?

I remember learning that word as a kid, reading it somewhere, looking it up. I imagined people who had perfect lives, but I thought of their lives as artificial constructs. I thought of the Brady Bunch as plastic. I was so jaded, even then. I think I was the only kid who didn't just swallow it.

I've had a taste of it now. And it's beautiful and terrifying and
real.

I've spent all week playing housewife. Not that I've done any actual housework, other than washing a few dishes, making Joshua's coffee every morning before he goes to work. And sometimes I cook for him, which I love in a completely sentimental and ridiculous way. I feel so proud when I serve a meal to him. It's pretty wonderful simply indulging myself, doing something I love. But so much better doing it for him. I feel like I should be wearing an apron and a God damn string of pearls sometimes, some twisted version of June Cleaver.
Twisted far beyond any sort of amusing irony. But I still love it, even then.

We haven't talked about what I'm doing here, exactly, or when I'm going home.

During the day I walk through town, go down to the beach, and sit on the sand. Sometimes I bring a book with me. I've been reading a volume of Walt Whitman that I found tucked in a bookshelf in Joshua's house, but in a lazy sort of way. It's so luxuriously sentimental; I can only take a few pages at a time.

Sometimes I think ahead to what I might want to do with my life. I'm thinking a lot about those young girls I read about in the magazine. I wonder if there's any way I can help. I don't know where to begin, who to talk to. Maybe Lydia can point me in the right direction, when I'm ready.

Mostly, though, I just watch the water and the sky, the colors shifting with the time of day: blue, green, gray. The beach is so peaceful; I could spend hours there, and I do.

I've already made a habit of getting an iced mocha latte and a brownie in the afternoons at the little café closest to the house. The girl behind the counter with the facial piercings and purple hair knows my name already, knows what I always order. The ritual is comforting to me. And I realize I am creating these new rituals in an almost conscious way.

It's Friday morning, and as I get up, shower, dress, I realize I'll have him all to myself tomorrow. Lovely. I don't know what I'll do today. Probably what I've done all week. Or maybe I'll take the Lexus out and do some shopping. I've been wearing the same few pieces of clothing all week long.

I don't want to go back to my house yet.

But maybe I can check my messages, make sure there's nothing important from my housekeeper, my accountant.
Hardly anyone else has my home number, just those few impersonal people—hired staff—and even fewer friends.

I dial and enter my PIN. I have four messages. One from my housekeeper, letting me know my orchids are fine. Sweet of her. And three messages from Regan, each one more frantic than the last.