Escorted (23 page)

“Anyway,” Ander
continued, staring up at the ceiling. “It makes you more of a challenge.”

That didn’t
sound too bad. She thought she’d been getting pretty vocal lately, but maybe
the sounds she made weren’t as loud and obvious as she thought.

“You don’t make
a lot of noise yourself,” she said, peering at his stoic face. “So you’re
hardly one to talk.”

Ander’s smile
was a little bitter. “No one really wants to hear me.”

Lori’s frown
deepened. “What does that mean? I don’t care if you make noises.” She thought
back over the grunting, panting, and guttural exclamations Ander made in the
midst of sex. “What do you say when you come?” she asked, turning to him with
her characteristic inquisitiveness.

He blinked at
her. “Excuse me?”

“When you come
it sounds like you say something. At least, the last few times. What do you
say?”

Ander’s face
was perfectly still for a moment. Then he gave her a dryly amused smile.
“Here’s a piece of advice. Never pay any attention to what a man says when he
comes. Anything might be blurted out at that moment, and it rarely means
anything.”

Lori chuckled,
although she recognized that he hadn’t answered her question. It was probably
none of her business anyway. For all she knew, it was some other woman’s name.
“Nice.”

“It’s true,” Ander
said. “Who knows what I say? I might ask you to marry me. Pay no attention.”

She snorted as
she imagined such a scene. Her gigolo blurting out a proposal in the moment
before climax. “I wonder how much you would charge me for that,” she said with
a laugh.

The silence
from the other side of the bed told her she’d offended him.

Groaning, she
said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Really.”

“I know. Don’t
worry about it.”

But Lori did
worry about. They’d been having a perfectly nice conversation and she’d said
something stupid. She knew by now that he didn’t like to talk about the money,
but she kept bringing it up.

It was
unavoidable. No matter how good a time she had with him, she could never escape
one basic reality.

He was with her
because she paid him

“They have a
Sunday brunch here that’s supposed to be excellent,” Ander said pleasantly,
obviously trying to move them past the awkward moment. “If we go out tonight,
maybe we can sleep in tomorrow and go down to brunch before we see some more
sights.”

“Sounds good,”
she said, turning on her side to face him and smiling. “I’m actually getting a
little hungry now. I wonder if they’ll have anything good at this banquet.”

Ander laughed,
as she’d known he would. And Lori decided that, despite a few awkward moments,
it was shaping up to be a really good weekend.

And she still
had all of tomorrow to look forward to.

“So the banquet went all right?”
Sabrina asked, puffing as she increased her level on the fancy elliptical
trainer and accelerated her speed.

“Yeah.” Lori
paused to even out her own breathing. She’d been working out on the elliptical
next to Sabrina now for almost a half hour, and she was hot, tired, sweating,
and breathless. “Not exciting but not too painful.”

“Ander didn’t
go?”

Lori wiped a
stream of perspiration from the back of her neck and steeled herself with the
knowledge that she only had fifteen more minutes to go. “No. Be kind of hard to
keep my penname a secret if he—” She cut off her words briefly to suck in a few
deep breaths. “If he came with me.”

“True.” Sabrina’s
long brown ponytail swung with her motion. She was in better shape than Lori and
didn’t have to work quite as hard for her requisite cardio time at the gym they
both belonged to. “And the rest of the trip was fun?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t
stay in the hotel room the whole weekend having sex, did you?”

“Sabrina!” Lori
tried to scowl at her grinning cousin but she had to focus too much on keeping
up her pace. “We did a lot of sightseeing and stuff.”

“What kind of
stuff?”

“Don't be
crass. We saw a lot of the historical sights and an art museum. He’s really
smart about art. And he knows a ton about military history.”

“Really? Was he
a history major or something?”

Lori shrugged.
“Don’t know.” After a pause to catch her breath again, she continued, “I think
maybe his dad pushed military history. Named him after Alexander the Great and
everything.” She sneered as she thought about the nameless man she absolutely
despised.

“Huh.
Interesting.” Sabrina darted a strangely intent look over at Lori. “Have you
heard from him since you got back?”

“What do you
mean? We have an engagement scheduled this weekend.”

“That’s still
on?”

Lori was so
confused by the direction of the questions that she slowed down her speed
unconsciously. “Why wouldn’t it be? What are you getting at?”

Sabrina gave
her a sheepish look. “I had a talk with Belinda Forsythe a couple of days ago.
She’s the one who first gave me Ander’s name, remember?”

“Ye—yeah,” Lori
replied, feeling a flutter of nerves develop in her belly despite her physical
fatigue.

“Do you want to
hear what she said?”

Lori understood
why Sabrina asked. It was remarkably sensitive of her cousin to check with her
to make sure she wanted to hear details about another woman’s experiences with Ander.

The truth was Lori
didn’
t want to hear about it. She didn’t like to think about Ander with
his other clients. In the beginning, she hadn’t felt strange about his
professional promiscuity, but lately the idea of him with so many other women
made her feel kind of sick. She supposed it was inevitable. As she got to know
him better, thought of him more as a person, it would be harder to accept the
ways in which he let himself be used. But Lori was fighting the instinct to
feel disgusted by the thought of him in bed with anyone else and was trying to
ignore the visuals.

It didn’t
always work. Sometimes she had random flashes, visualizing Ander having sex
with Sarah Jacoby or other nameless, faceless women. She immediately stifled
the images whenever they popped in her head, but it was happening more and more
often.

She really
shouldn’t feed her growing fixation. She should tell Sabrina no and change the
subject. But she heard herself saying, “What did she say?”

“She said Ander
was retiring.”

Lori felt a
sharp kick in her gut. “What?”

“That’s what
Belinda told me. That he was retiring. He wasn’t making new appointments.”

For a moment, Lori’s
vision blurred over and she felt a sudden burst of angsty momentum, her legs
and arms abruptly moving fast and hard on the elliptical. But it only took her
a minute to figure out a sensible solution to the bewildering scenario.

The tension
eased in her chest as she explained, “He’s cutting back on clients.”

Sabrina’s
manicured eyebrows drew together. “Belinda said he was retiring.”

With a shrug, Lori
explained, “He probably wanted to let her down easy, and that was his excuse
for refusing her appointments.”

“And what is
his criteria for keeping some clients and letting others go?” Sabrina frowned
as if she remained unconvinced.

“Who knows?
Maybe he’s keeping the ones he gets the most money from. Or the ones that
aren’t as much work.”

“And he’s
keeping
you
as a client?”

“Yeah. He
hasn’t said anything about canceling my appointments. We’ve got the rest of the
month scheduled out.”

“Hmm.”

Lori jerked her
head over to glare at her cousin. “What does
that
mean?”

“Nothing,” Sabrina
said, feigning innocence. “I was just thinking.”

Gritting her
teeth, Lori resolved not to dignify her cousin’s teasing with a response.

“But,
seriously,” Sabrina continued, “You had a good time with him in Quebec? It wasn’t weird or awkward?”

“Why would it
be weird or awkward?”

“I don’t know.
Belinda told me that she took him on a weekend to London and the business
matters kept getting in the way of the sexy thrill.”

Lori swallowed,
trying to channel her irrationally conflicted emotions into her workout. It
would be far wiser if she just dropped this subject completely.  “What business
matters?”

“Oh, you know.
Sorting out exactly what his role would be. Keeping track of all the sexual
activity so she could pay him at the end. Getting a suite with two bedrooms so
he could sleep in his own room. All the logistics.”

Lori stopped
moving, her legs sliding to a slow, heavy stop. “What?”

Sabrina slowed
down too. “
What
what? Why do you look so gut-foundered?”

Lori didn’t
answer. She just stared blindly ahead of her and tried to process this new
information.

Apparently, Sabrina
could put the pieces together on her own. “Didn’t he do all that with you?”

“Yeah. No. I
don’t know.” Unable to get her legs to move, Lori climbed off the elliptical
trainer and picked up her towel to wipe off her hot, red face.

“Lori?” Sabrina
got off too. “Tell me.”

“We shared a
room,” Lori admitted. “And we didn’t spend much time talking about money.”

“Why not?”

Lori felt
mortified all of a sudden—for no good reason. She couldn’t even look Sabrina in
the eye. “I don’t know. It all just sort of felt...natural.”

“Natural? A
weekend with a male escort?” Sabrina’s voice conveyed ironic skepticism.

“I know it
sounds weird. But it did. We like each other. I think. I mean, we’ve gotten to
know each other. And so it doesn’t feel so much like...like an impersonal
business transaction.”

“Oh God,” Sabrina
groaned into her towel. “
Pretty Woman
.”

“It’s not like
that,” Lori snapped. “I’m not stupid. But we get along well. And so most of the
business stuff just sort of falls to the side and we just have a good time.”

“He has a good
time too?”

“I don’t know.”
Lori tried not to squirm with embarrassment. “Sometimes I think so. It’s hard
to tell—because he has such good instincts about what a client wants from
him—but I’m pretty sure he has a decent time with me.”

“That doesn’t
sound like a normal scenario with a male escort and his client.”

Lori scowled.
“How the hell do
you
know what’s normal with a male escort? I don’t even
know. I’ve never been with another one.”

“Well,” Sabrina
said, her face softening with humor. “I guess that’s true. Who’s to know what
normal behavior consists of when it comes to male escorts? But it sounds a
little suspicious to me. Like things aren't entirely professional."

"They are
professional," Lori insisted, "I pay him every evening. He's just
really good at his job. He gives women what they want."

"Maybe.
But maybe you should dig into it a little to make sure. Have you thought about
talking to him about how you are together?”

Stiffening, Lori
said a little awkwardly, “No, I haven’t. He’s told me quite clearly that he
breaks off the business arrangement when a client tries to go beyond
professional boundaries.”

“Oh. I see.”
After thinking about this for a moment, Sabrina added, “And you’re not willing
to take that risk.”

“What risk?
It’s a done deal. He made that more than clear. No more appointments for a
client who tries to break those boundaries. I know this thing can’t last
forever, but I’m having a good time with him, and I don’t want it to end yet.”

Sabrina studied
her—a little suspiciously, she thought. But for once her cousin didn’t say
anything.

Lori let out a
long breath. Her legs felt weak from the exercise and her face was blazing red.

And she felt
strangely uncomfortable in the wake of this particular conversation.

***

Lori lay next to Ander on the
bed of her hotel room and stared up at the ceiling. “Are you going to retire?”
she blurted out.

Ander’s neck
twitched spasmodically, jerking his head over to look at her. “What?”

She found the
courage to glance over at him. Saw his expression was still, almost frozen. “I
asked if you were going to retire,” she admitted, feeling a surge of
mortification at the random, revealing question.

It was almost
seven-thirty on Friday evening. Just last weekend they’d been in Quebec. Just last Monday Lori had talked to Sabrina on the elliptical trainers. And both
things had been on her mind all week.

When Ander had
arrived, they’d talked for a while about casual issues and then had fallen into
a silence that felt almost tired. They hadn’t yet touched, and now Lori had
been foolish enough to blurt out a question she never should have asked.

Ander replied
with a slow, careful sentence. “I assume I’ll retire one day.”

“Yeah. I would
imagine so. I meant any time soon.”

“Why do you
ask?”

She gave a
helpless shrug. Sorted through a few possible responses and landed on the
truthful one. “My cousin was talking to one of your old clients. And she said
you were retiring.”

Ander’s lips
parted slightly, as if he now understood where the question was coming from.
But he didn’t immediately answer.

Lori felt her
pulse start to pound as she watched the subtle flickers of emotion cross his
face—the flutter of a jaw muscle, the tightening of his mouth, the blink of his
eyelashes. She unconsciously held her breath as she waited.

She wasn’t even
sure which answer she wanted to hear. Part of her wanted him to say yes, wanted
him to give up this line of work and find something to do that would really
fulfill him, that would make him feel like something more valuable than a piece
of meat. Maybe doing this job wasn’t unhealthy for some people, but she was worried
it was unhealthy for Ander, so he would probably be better off if he didn’t do
it.