Damaged Goods (10 page)

“No, it"s not stupid.” He folded his arms on top of his own menu. “If you"re not

experienced with these things, it"s something to be concerned about. The truth is,

though, they"d have to be really, really bored to bother with us. If they"re inclined to

bother with any of us, they spend their time busting the streetwalkers.”

“None of the male prostitutes?”

“Oh, they get busted too.” He idly traced the gold-embossed restaurant logo on

the menu cover with his fingertip. “But the cops aren"t as concerned with call girls

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43

and escorts as they are with the streetwalkers. Those are the ones who tend to be

involved with rather unsavory types. Like pimps and drug dealers.”

“Not the case with escorts and call girls?”

“Can be. But there"s usually less trouble with us, so they pretty much leave us

alone.”

“So, with that client, being out somewhere in her car,” I said. “It doesn"t bother

you, riding around with a stranger like that?”

He shrugged. “It"s no greater risk than going into her home.”

“Ever had any dangerous situations?”

“Oh, a few.” He gave a quiet laugh and dropped his gaze, watching his finger

follow the embossed lines on the menu. “I"ve had three separate clients grossly

misjudge when their husbands would be home.”

My eyes widened. “That must have been uncomfortable.”

“You could say that.” He blew out a breath. “I only ended up meeting one face-

to-face. The other two kept their husbands distracted while I got the hell out of

Dodge.”

“What about the one who met you?”

“It was exactly what you"d expect.” Sabian laughed and folded his hands over

the logo he"d been tracing. “He threatened to do all manner of things to me, mostly

involving detaching my balls from my body or killing me.” Sabian shuddered. “Then

she started screaming at him, and while they were arguing, I took off.”

I laughed. “Oh, that must have been an interesting story to tell the guys back

at the agency.”

“They"ve heard worse, trust me.”

“Does it bother you, being with married women?”

Sabian sighed, his humor fading. “It"s one part of the job I really don"t like. But

she"s the client. It"s not my place to tell her that dropping a few hundred bucks on a

night with me might not be the best solution to an unhappy marriage.”

“I guess we all have our ways of dealing with those,” I said.

“Counterproductive or otherwise.”

He looked at me. The question was in his alarmed eyes, but I guessed it was

professionalism that kept it from his tongue.

“I"m not married.” I reached for my glass. “Not anymore, anyway.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Such is life.” I shrugged. “So, tell me more about the things people ask you to

do. If you"re okay with that, anyway.”

“Of course, it"s fine.” He leaned forward and kept his voice down. “It"s not

uncommon at all for clients to have us go as their dates to company functions.

Christmas parties, that kind of thing.”

“The imaginary trophy boyfriend?”

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Lauren Gallagher

He nodded. “She gets to show off that she"s got a man even though she hasn"t

had time to even think of dating.” He sighed again. “A lot of times, she"s a woman

who works herself into the ground, has to keep up appearances, but barely has time

to call the agency, let alone find a real date.”

“I can relate to that,” I said.

“It"s sad, really,” he said softly. “I have met a lot of lonely women this way.

Present company included.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

Then I cleared my throat. “So, these company function clients, are they escort-

only, or do they get the whole package?”

“Depends on what she wants. For some? I"m just her date, and when the

party"s over, she sends me on my way.”

“And others?”

He rested his forearms on the table, leaning closer to me and lowering his

voice. “Well, let"s just say one Fortune 500 CEO and I pretty much destroyed a very

expensive dress in the back of a limousine.”

“Lucky woman.”

He raised his wineglass, stopping just shy of his lips. “Another asked her

secretary to come back to the hotel room with us.”

“Oh, really?”

He nodded, rolling a sip of wine around in his mouth for a second. “I probably

should have charged her extra for that, but…” He shrugged, and his grin was

almost sheepish.

“You enjoyed that one, didn"t you?”

“I had fun that night. I won"t deny it.”

“Don"t you usually have fun with it?” I paused. “Or, at least enjoy it on some

level?”

“Sure, but it has its moments. And it
is
a job.”

“An interesting one, that"s for sure.”

Laughing quietly, he said, “It can be, yes.”

I tapped my fingers on the stem of my wineglass, not sure if I wanted to take a

sip or not. “But do you like what you do?”

“It beats the hell out of waiting tables or holding down a desk.” He paused,

grinning behind his glass. “Though I have, on occasion, been asked to hold down a

desk.”

I squirmed in my seat. “That"s true, you have.”

He winked and set his wine down. “Anyway, yeah, I like what I do.

I decided I needed that sip of wine after all. As I picked it up, I said, “I always

heard prostitutes were treated like shit. Seemed like everything I ever read or saw

in the movies, they were getting beaten, assaulted, whatever.”

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45

“It happens, but not usually with escorts. Not in this city, anyway.” He clasped

his hands together beneath his chin. “Fortunately, I work for an agency that sees

the safety of its employees as equally important as the safety of the clients. We"re

not required to see a session through if it gets dangerous.”

“Danger aside, does anyone ever treat you badly?”

“Occasionally,” he said. “But you get that in any service industry. To be quite

honest, I took more abuse in a given month slinging coffee in college than I ever

have as an escort.”

“Shows how much I know, I guess,” I said. “Do you ever get male clients?”

“The agency does,” he said. “But I don"t. Some of the guys service both men and

women; some are one or the other. Just women for me. If I"m requested for a three-

way, it"s always one where we focus on the woman only.”

“And if she decided in the middle of it that she wanted you and the other guy

to play with each other?”

Sabian pursed his lips. “If a client asked for it, then…” He shrugged.

“Just wouldn"t be your thing?”

He shook his head.

“Do people ask you to do, like, kinky stuff?” My own question sent an image of

Sabian, leather clad and smacking his palm with a whip, through my mind.
Price

check on aisle five, please?

“Sometimes,” he said with a single nod. “I won"t take on a client who"s into

bondage or pain, that kind of thing, though. I wouldn"t know what I was doing, and

I"d be afraid of hurting someone.”

So much for that idea, damn it
. “That makes sense, I suppose. Anyone ever try

to hire you guys for bachelorette parties?”

“You mean as strippers?”

“That or anything else.”

He laughed. “I never do bachelorette parties. We get calls occasionally, girls

looking for strippers. We"re a bit too expensive for most, and hey, I can dance, but

not like that.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You can dance?”

“I can hold my own.”

I glanced at the dance floor. “So, does that cost extra?”

“It most certainly does not.” Sabian stood and held out his hand.

This had to be a dream. A gorgeous man, a top restaurant, and he was willing

to dance?

Oh. Right. I"d paid for this. As he led me out to the dance floor, I wondered if

this was yet another reason going out with him like this wasn"t such a good idea. If

anything, it would probably just depress the hell out of me because the only way I

could get this involved swiping my credit card.

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Lauren Gallagher

Oh well. I"d paid for it, and I would enjoy the hell out of it.

“Just so you know,” I said, putting a hand on the shoulder when we got to the

dance floor, “I haven"t danced in ages.”

“Don"t worry about it.” He put a hand on my waist. “Just follow my lead.”

“Simple enough,” I said. “That"s what I"ve done every time we"ve met.”

He smiled. “Then this will be easy.”

“Easy for you to say.”
Forget dancing. I’m lucky I can walk when I’m looking at

you like this.

“Just trust me.”

He wasn"t kidding. The man danced like he fucked: perfect rhythm, flawless

execution of every step, and my body followed. When another couple got in our way,

Sabian just changed our course, and we glided right past the pair who wasn"t so

light on their feet.

“You really are good at this,” I said.

His cheeks colored, and he laughed shyly. “Part of the job.”

“Does it ever…” I paused, chewing the inside of my cheek, looking around in

case any prying ears were too nearby. “What you do, does it ever bother you?”

“Not really.” His eyes darted to my left, probably making sure there was

enough room between us and another couple. “Some of the guys have a tough time

with it. Some don"t last more than a few months or even a few weeks. Me? It doesn"t

bother me all that much. It"s business. Nothing more.”

“It doesn"t bother you that you"re selling yourself?”

“I"m not selling myself,” he said matter-of-factly. “I sell a service, use my body

to give that service.” His fingers curled against the small of my back, drawing me

closer to him. “And afterward, I leave with just as much of myself as I came in

with.”

“Interesting way of looking at it.”

“And if you think about it, it"s really not that different from the games people

play to get laid,” he said. “Particularly if the roles were reversed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Damn near everything people do is to get sex or money. I use one to get the

other, just like everyone else.” One corner of his mouth rose slightly. “Look at what

you and I are doing. We both know what the deal is. You"re buying dinner, paying

me, and in exchange…” His eyes darted around the room, and when they met mine

again, he lowered his voice. “In exchange, I"m yours for the night.” Abruptly, he

released my waist and raised my other hand to spin me. When my back was to him,

he wrapped his free arm around me and let his lip brush my ear when he

whispered, “Now, flip the gender roles and remove the business side of it. Instead of

a few hundred dollars for the night, make it dinner out, a bracelet, an expensive

flower arrangement.”

I gulped. “I hadn"t thought of it that way.”

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47

He turned me around and put his hand on the small of my back again, and I

didn"t miss the fact that we were even closer together now.

“Most people don"t think of it that way,” he said. “If anything, this is a more

honest approach. We both know all of this”—he nodded toward our table—“is

currency, and we both know what that currency is buying. Everyone else just fools

themselves into believing they"re doing something different.”

Part of me wanted to get righteously indignant and defensive, angrily retorting

that I had
never
done such a thing, that I"d only been on the paying side of an

agreement like this. But another part of me—probably the same part that had hired

him in the first place—couldn"t argue. Maybe the whole dating routine
was
just

nicely dressed prostitution.

“So why do you do it?” I asked. “For the sex or the money? Or both?”

“The money,” he said simply. “The pay is great, and with the economy being

what it is, quite frankly, I"d be stupid to give it up.”

“That much I can understand,” I said. “I think the money"s all that keeps most

people going to work every day. How did you—” I hesitated. “You really don"t mind

me asking, do you? I feel like I"m giving you the third degree.”

“No, not at all.” He smiled. “As long as it"s not boring you to tears.”

“Hardly.”

The string quartet finished their piece, and while the rest of the restaurant

patrons quietly applauded them, Sabian and I went back to our table.

With a fresh glass of wine in hand, I said, “I"m curious, how did you even get

started doing this?”

“I needed the money.” He topped off his own glass and set the bottle aside. “I"d

just gotten laid off, and a buddy of mine from college had done it for a while, so I

gave it a try. The thing is, the longer I do it, the more difficult it is to quit.”

“You like it that much?”

He shook his head. “It"s not that. I mean, I do like it, don"t get me wrong, but

it"s when I go to apply for another job that it can be a problem. My work history for

the last few years is legit and legal, at least on the surface, but any idiot can do a

Google search of the agency"s „legit name" and figure out where I really worked and

what I did.”