Damaged Goods (4 page)

hips. Then he drew and released a deep breath, picked up speed again, and my

vision once again clouded over.

Until he faltered again. Recovered. Slowed down.

A heartbeat"s worth of clarity pierced my fog of ecstasy long enough to make

me realize he was close,
that
close, but probably held back until I gave him the

word. How he"d made it this far, when any guy I"d ever been with before would have

long ago been snoring away beside me in post-orgasmic bliss, I had no idea.

I licked my dry lips and somehow managed to speak.

“I want… I-I want you to come.”

He didn"t hold back. At all. He fucked me harder than before, faster than

before, and it was enough to bring tears to my eyes. His fingers dug into my hips,

his breath caught, and with a low groan that reverberated through every nerve

ending in my body, he took one last thrust and came.

Everything was still. The room was completely silent except for my thundering

heart and Sabian"s sharp, uneven breaths.

Steadying me with a hand on my hip, he pulled out.

“Get on your back again,” he said. “I"ll be right back.” While I changed position,

he got up to get rid of the condom.

I glanced at the clock I"d warily watched before his arrival. Still plenty of time

between now and when the proverbial meter ran out. So did we both catch our

breath? Talk about the watercolor on the wall? Another area where my knowledge

of prostitute-client protocols was sketchy.

Sabian, of course, didn"t have any such issues. He rejoined me in bed and

kissed me deeply as he put an arm over me.

“Doing okay?” he asked.

I nodded. With a shy laugh, I said, “Definitely getting my money"s worth.”

He chuckled. “That"s what I like to hear.” He craned his neck to look at the

clock. “And it looks like you have plenty of time left, so…” He kissed me again.

Damaged Goods

13

Where he got his energy, I had no idea, but he didn"t quit until the time was

up. By then, God knew how many orgasms I"d had, and Sabian had come twice. I

couldn"t help noticing he was hard again when he got up to get dressed. A shiver

ran down my already tingling spine. How much longer could he have gone? Did I

dare cough up the money and find out?

Tempting though it was, another round with him probably would have killed

me. As it was, I had no doubt I"d be sore tomorrow, and it was worth every minute.

Every minute and every dollar.

Watching him button his silk shirt, I grinned to myself.
That was two hours

and three hundred bucks
well
spent.

With his time up, Sabian made a quick but polite escape, leaving me with his

kiss still lingering on my tongue in the room with boring watercolors and haphazard

sheets.

Lying back on the other bed, I laced my fingers behind my head and stared at

the ceiling.

So that was what a night with a prostitute was like. One-night stands and

unemotional sex were nothing new to me, but this had been different. A lot

different. Even with a one-nighter that I knew wouldn"t go any further, I"d always

felt the pressure to at least pretend there was more between us than there was.

With Sabian, I was free to lie back and enjoy the ride.

That"s not to say sex with Sabian was cold or unfeeling. Far from it. With no

pretenses of this extending beyond the allotted, prepaid time limit, there"d been no

pressure. It was lust for me, business for him, and we both made damned sure I got

my money"s worth. I got my orgasms, he got his money, and we parted ways with

what we both came for and no fear of unmet expectations on the other"s part.

I sighed. Why couldn"t it be like this with
every
guy?

14

Lauren Gallagher

Chapter Two

Sabian refused to be forgotten the next day.

While I sipped my morning coffee in my deserted kitchen, every last inch of my

body ached, and my head was still light from the orgasms he"d given me. He"d made

me climax more times than my previous boyfriend had over the course of several

months. I had never considered myself to be multi-orgasmic, but Sabian either

assumed I was or decided I would be.

He was incredible. Hell, of course he was. He didn"t get paid for it because he

was lame in bed.

Paid for it. I cringed. I still couldn"t believe I"d resorted to a prostitute. More

than that, I"d enjoyed it. And now I craved it. Hot sex, no bullshit, no one treating

me like damaged goods because I had the audacity to have a couple of kids—what

wasn"t to love?

Well, besides the price tag, the stigma, and the regret that really wasn"t regret.

How could I simultaneously regret it and want so badly to do it again?

My smoker friends might be able to answer that question.

Pouring my second cup of coffee, I groaned and rolled my eyes. It wasn"t an

addiction. It was a onetime indulgence to blow off some steam. I"d gotten it out of

my system, and that was that. And now that it was out of my system, it was time to

get back to real life.

It was Sunday, which was the day my ex-husband and I traded the kids for the

week. I spent the day getting everything done that needed to be, all the cleaning we

would negate before the week was up, and I tried unsuccessfully not to think of

Sabian the whole time. That evening, on my way over to Michael"s place, my

stomach was still a ball of guilty, self-loathing nerves.

I couldn"t decide what bothered me more: that I"d done what I did with Sabian

or that my love life had gotten so pathetic and frustrating that I"d even felt the need

to resort to it.

Oh, well. There would be time to wallow in it later. Starting now, as I pulled

into my ex-husband"s driveway, I needed to switch on parent mode.

I rang the doorbell, and Carrie, my ex"s wife, answered.

She smiled and stood aside to let me in. “Right on time, as always.”

“Would you expect anything different?”

Damaged Goods

15

She laughed. “Not at all. Come on in. Michael"s upstairs helping them get their

schoolbags and everything together. They"ll all be down shortly.”

“No rush.” I followed her into the kitchen. From upstairs came footsteps,

voices, shuffling papers, and drawers opening and closing.

“Can I get you some coffee?” Carrie asked.

“Oh, no, I"m fine. Thank you.”

She picked up her own coffee cup. “So how are things?”

“Same old, same old,” I said. “Work, work, work. That place is going to send me

into an early grave, I"m telling you.”

Scowling, she nodded. “God, yes, I know the feeling. I"m starting to think

meetings were invented solely to waste time and drive me insane.”

“I figured that out the day they invented PowerPoint.”

Carrie groaned. “Ugh, that program is the bane of my existence.” She gestured

toward the stairs with her coffee cup. “You know, Michael was at an awards

banquet recently, and some guy broke out a PowerPoint presentation in the middle

of dinner.”

I blinked. “You"re kidding.”

“Not even.” She sipped her coffee and set the cup down. “He said it killed every

last person"s buzz, so they all had to start drinking all over again.”

“Maybe the guy had a deal with the bartenders, then,” I said.

She laughed. “Maybe so.” She started to speak again, but footsteps on the

stairs turned both our heads.

Michael appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Hey, Jocelyn.” He gestured over his

shoulder with his thumb. “Kids are just about ready to go.”

“I"m in no hurry,” I said. “Carrie was just telling me about your death by

PowerPoint at a banquet.”

“Oh, God.” He rolled his eyes. “That was some bullshit, let me tell you.”

“Of course it was,” I said. “That"s why they were using PowerPoint to present

it.”

He chuckled. “Good point.” He rested his hands on the back of one of the

kitchen chairs. “So, kid stuff. Mikey"s got tryouts for wrestling on Wednesday after

school. Will you be able to pick him up?”

“What time will it be over?”

“Four thirty.”

I nodded. “I may have to shuffle a couple of appointments around, but I think

I"ll be able to, no problem.”

“If not, let me know,” Carrie said. “That"s my work-at-home day, so I can get

him if you need me to.”

“Okay, thanks, I"ll let you know.” To Michael, I said, “He turned in his

paperwork from his physical, right?”

16

Lauren Gallagher

“Yeah, I made sure he had it in last week.”

“Okay, good.”

“Oh, and on the twenty-seventh, there"s a father-son thing for scouts,” he said.

“It"s a Tuesday, during your week. Do you mind if I take him, and we can switch

another day?”

“Sure, yeah,” I said. “I think I still owe you a day from when I took them

camping a few months ago anyway.”

“Do you?” He furrowed his brow, then shrugged. “I don"t know, I can"t keep

track.”

I laughed. “Well, you take him for the father-son thing, and we"ll call it even.”

“Sounds good to me.” He glanced toward the stairs. “Let me go see what"s

keeping them.” He left the kitchen, calling to the kids to tell them to get their stuff

together.

There were a lot of things I could say about being divorced, but if I had to have

an ex-husband, I was glad it was Michael. We"d both watched plenty of couples fight

over their kids, nitpicking custody arrangements down to two-minute increments,

and each pitting the kids against the other, and we"d both sworn not to do that to

our children. If anything, we got along better now and were better parents like this

than we ever were before we"d split. If one of them wanted to stay an extra night at

Michael"s one week or have a birthday party at mine during his week, we didn"t

make a big deal out of it.

Sex and dating as a single mom may have sucked, but I thanked God every

day for such an easy, amicable parenting arrangement with my ex-husband.

“Hi, Mom!” Alexis, my seven-year-old, trotted into the kitchen, arms out.

“Hey, you.” I hugged her. “Got everything for the week?”

She nodded. “By the door.”

“Okay, good. Where"s your brother?”

“I"m right here,” Mikey, my twelve year-old said, shuffling in the way his sister

had come. He offered a brief hug. Ah, the joys of a preteen.
Glad to see you, Mom,

but don’t get all mushy.

“You both ready to go?” I asked. They nodded, so we all migrated from the

kitchen to the front door. Hugs, good-byes, and my custody week began.

For the rest of the evening, the kids kept me occupied. It was “guess what

happened at school this week” and helping with homework, figuring out

extracurricular activity schedules, and packing lunches until it was time for them to

go to bed. Once they were asleep, I settled onto the couch for a glass of wine and an

hour or so of downtime before I went to bed myself, and what a surprise, my mind

went right back to last night.

The pendulum swung back and forth between feeling guilty and wishing I

could do it again. Having the kids in the house intensified the guilt, like I should

Damaged Goods

17

have felt even worse because I wasn"t just a single woman. I was a mother. I was

supposed to be respectable or something.

Back and forth. Back and forth. I was reading too much into it, wallowing too

deeply in something that wasn"t a big deal. I was pretending it was no big deal

when it was. I hated myself for doing it, and I wanted to do it again.

Eventually, I finished my wine and went to bed, pretending I stood a chance at

sleeping without thinking about Sabian.

After I"d seen the kids off to the bus stop the next morning, I put myself

together and headed off to work. One more step back into the world of being a

responsible, respectable adult. I"d only escaped this life for a few hours on Saturday

night, but it was surreal going back into it, whether as a parent or employee.

Come on, Jocelyn, get it together.

In the parking lot at the foot of my company"s building, I took a deep breath.

That night was supposed to relieve some stress, and it had. No sense canceling out

the effect by stressing that it had even happened.

One more deep breath, and I was out of the car and on my way in to get to

work. As soon as I walked in the door, Laura, my assistant, handed me a thick stack

of phone messages and a thicker stack of files and forms for me to peruse, sign,

correct, reject, scream at, shred, or forward. Fortunately, I had the kind of job that

offered little downtime, which meant not a lot of time to think. Or dwell. Or wallow.

Sabian was still on my mind but relegated to the back of it for now, because I had

too much to do.

My desk was deceptively clear. Only my computer monitor, coffee cup, and