“Don’t you dare,” Lori gritted out through her teeth as she fluffed her hair in the mirror of the women’s restroom at a trendy restaurant.

Sabrina gave her a wink before she applied a new coat of lipstick to her full lips. “I wasn’t going to say a word.”

“Yes, you were. I can just see you brimming over with the urge to make sarcastic comments about Pretty Woman or The Wedding Date.”

With a long sigh and a sparkling look, Sabrina murmured, “Dermot Mulroney is hot.”

Lori couldn’t help but snicker.

Recognizing her cousin as off-guard, Sabrina went in for the kill. “But you have to admit you two are the sweetest thing,” she gushed with exaggerated saccharine. “You should write a novel about it. The Virgin and the Gigolo.”

Her cheeks warming despite her best efforts, Lori shushed Sabrina and ducked down to check under the stalls to make sure no one else had heard. “Stop it. We’re not like that. I’m not a virgin any more. And he’s not a gigolo.”

“I know. But it is kind of funny. And it proves I was right all along.” Before Lori could do anything more than growl, Sabrina went on, “And don’t think I didn’t notice how you two couldn’t keep your hands off each other tonight. He was groping your thigh under the table.”

Lori’s blush deepened and she pretended to hunt through her purse for lip gloss. “He wasn’t groping,” she insisted with indignation if not entire honesty. “We just haven’t seen each other much lately.”

“You live together.”

“I know.” Six months ago, Lori had moved into Ander’s apartment. While her old apartment was larger, Ander was really attached to his place. And Lori had grown to love it as well. Plus, it was in walking distance of the university, which made it easier for Ander to get to classes. And Lori could write from anywhere.

Lori went on to explain, “But he’s been buried in studying for his qualifying exams for months, and for the last two weeks he’s been at the library almost constantly. Now that they’re over, he can actually relax and we can spend some more time together.”

Sabrina gave her a dubious look. “Are you trying to convince me the two of you haven’t fucked in months?”

“Not months. A couple of weeks. But he’s done like three years of graduate coursework in less than two. He’s been obsessed with studying. So in these last couple of months before the exams we haven’t spent as much time together as normal.”

The closer Lori got to Ander, the more she learned about the obsessive streak in his nature. She’d known he was meticulous, determined, and assiduous in his commitment to his job before. But now that he was doing something he could pour his whole heart into, he was extraordinarily driven. Sometimes, she had trouble getting him to eat, sleep and relax. She had decided that taking care of him was her special duty and prerogative, and she’d found various strategies to distract him from his work.

Only in the last two weeks had these strategies failed.

She knew now that he’d successfully passed his qualifying exams for his degree and was starting on his dissertation, he would return to a more normal schedule.

“So tonight’s the big night?” Sabrina asked with a tart smile. “Is non-stop sex on the docket?”

“I’m not going to give you details,” Lori said, meeting her cousin’s eyes without flinching. After so long of this sort of thing, she wasn’t even self-conscious anymore. “So don’t even try to fish for our plans.”

Sabrina grumbled under her breath as she closed her purse.

***

Lori and Ander were leaving the restaurant after having said goodbye to Sabrina and her date when a woman waiting for a table called out Ander’s name.

Ander’s face showed no reaction as the woman—mid-thirties with dark hair and an entitled expression—came hurrying over on very high heels. His hand was on Lori’s back, however, and they were walking quite close.

She felt when Ander stiffened.

“Ander,” the woman said with a wide grin. “How have you been? It’s been ages!”

“I’m fine, Becka,” Ander said politely. Then he smiled at the woman.

Lori sucked in her breath.

She knew that smile. Hadn’t seen it in almost two years. Urbane. Sensual. Infinitely practiced. It had been habitual for Ander when he’d been seeing clients.

Which meant this woman had been one of Ander’s clients.

“You’re looking good,” Becka said, her eyes crawling over Ander’s body in a way that made Lori wanted to scratch her eyes out. “You’re a lot tanner than you used to be.”

He was. It had been two months since he’d returned from his latest field project but he still hadn’t lost all the tan. This evening, he was dressed in all black, and Lori thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen in her life.

“I spent part of the summer on a Greek island.”

To avoid being separated for two months over the summer while Ander was at yet another dig, Lori had rented a villa on the island. Although he’d been busy during the days, they’d been able to spend most nights together. Lori had started a new novel set on the island, and Ander had blithely ignored all the teasing he received from his colleagues over his plush living arrangements.

“How decadent,” Becka said, flicking her eyes over to Lori with obvious curiosity. “I heard you were retired.”

“I am.” Ander repositioned his hand to the small of Lori’s back. “This is my girlfriend, Lori.”

“Nice to meet you,” Becka said absently, her eyes returning to Ander, raking them over his face and body like she still had a right to leer at him. “It’s too bad you’re retired. You were the best.”

Lori had been stiff from the initial greeting, but now she grew so tense she was almost shaking. She had to fist her hands to keep from clobbering the woman to rid that face of that presumptuous, objectifying expression. She was bombarded with images of Ander fucking Becka until she came and came and came again.

Ander murmured out a few parting words, and then he guided Lori out of the restaurant, using his hand on her back for both momentum and support.

“She was always obnoxious,” Ander said as they exited the building and started down the busy sidewalk.

His words didn’t help Lori feel any better. She was now imagining how Ander must have felt, required to sexually satisfy a woman as spoiled and obnoxious as Becka.

“You all right?” he murmured, his observant eyes scanning her face.

“Yeah.” She gave him as wide a smile as she could manage. “Dinner was fun.”

“Do you feel like doing anything else tonight?”

“Sure,” she said, “If you want to.”

With one final look of scrutiny, Ander concluded, “Let’s just go home.”

***

Ander was blessedly quiet on the cab ride home. Lori did her best to rid her mind of the horrifying images. Ander was her boyfriend now. They were fully committed, in love, and living together. He was well on his way to being an archeologist. If his words and the evidence of his behavior were any indication, he was happier now than he’d ever been in his life.

So was Lori.

But sometimes she still hated what he used to do. Hated all of his other clients. Hated it with every glimmer of passion in her soul.

It didn’t matter that she never would have met Ander if he hadn’t gone into his former profession. She still hated it because he had used it to hurt himself.

When they returned to the loft, Lori grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, kicked off her shoes and curled up on the sofa. She was about to turn on the television when Ander sat down across from her, at the desk in front of the windows, and looked at her soberly.

“What?” she demanded, feeling a little clench of nerves.

Sometimes it was really annoying not to be able to keep secrets from Ander.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked mildly.

“No.”

“Lori.”

“I said I’m fine,” she gritted out, “I didn’t like meeting that bitch, but it’s not a big deal.”

Ander lifted his eyebrows. “I think it is a big deal. You’re either about to scream or about to cry.”

She was actually about to do both, so she bit her lip and took a few deep breaths through her nose.

“Lori.”

“Stop trying to boss me,” she snapped, losing her patience as she lost control of her emotions. “I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“All right.” Ander picked up a book and quietly began to read at the desk.

Torn between relief and irrationally hurt feelings at being ignored, Lori stewed for a few minutes, staring at the blank television set, and then she reached for her bottle of water.

Because she was distracted, she missed her target and ended up knocking the bottle over. It fell to the floor, spilling a small pool of water on the hardwood floor and Asian rug before she grabbed it and turned it upright.

“Fuck!” In a blaze of frustration, she got up to get a towel from the kitchen.

Ander had started up at the first impact. “I’ll get—”

“Just sit down.” Her tone was unjustly grumpy and part of her immediately regretted it, but she was in such a bad-temper now that her regret was quickly squelched.

She returned with a towel and knelt on the floor to wipe up the water.

She wiped and wiped and wiped and wiped, the tension in her body increasing with each push of the towel.

“Lori,” Ander began, very gently, as he watched her from the desk.

For some reason, his gentleness was what made Lori finally snap. She straightened up, sitting on her knees with a wet towel in her lap, and she burst into tears.

“Oh, Lori,” Ander murmured thickly, getting to his feet and starting toward her.

“Don’t touch me!” she sobbed. “I can’t...I can’t ...”

Ander sat down immediately at her uncontrolled words. “You can’t what?” he asked carefully.

She sobbed some more, mopping at her face with the towel. When she finally got a hold of herself, she managed to choke out, “I didn’t want you to hold me or coddle me.”

“Coddle you?”

With a sniff and another messy wipe of her face, she said, “I’m feeling prickly.”

“I can see that.”

She shot suspicious eyes over at him, but there was no trace of humor on his face. He looked more tired than anything else.

“Do you want to talk about it now?” he asked.

“There’s nothing to talk about. We met one of your clients.”

“Former clients.”

“Former clients,” she amended with a roll of her eyes. “You know what I mean. It’s no big deal. I saw you with Sarah Jacoby before. Remember? I was your client myself.”

“But obviously seeing Becka tonight bothered you.”

Emotion still threatened to spill over into more sobs, so Lori tried to back off from the sorest of subjects. To divert the direction of his questioning, she asked, “Didn’t it bother you?”

“Yes,” Ander said. His voice was calm and his expression natural. Only his eyes were urgent as they tried to dig into Lori’s soul. “Some. But I was more worried about your reaction. With good reason, it seems.”

“I have no reason to get upset about it,” she insisted, wishing she could just make the words be true. “I’ve always known what you did. I participated in it myself. I knew you had a lot of clients.”

“All of that is true,” Ander said slowly. “But it might still upset you.” He wasn’t being sweet and gentle, really. Just bland and matter-of-fact.

Lori snuffled, trying to force back a sudden surge of violent tears. “Well, it doesn’t.”

“Uh-huh.”

Shooting him a fierce glare, she rasped, “Well, you don’t have to be snotty about it. How many other women are in my situation? It’s...it’s weird to meet women that your boyfriend fucked for money.’

She gasped and put a hand over her mouth when she realized what she’d said. Since they'd gotten together, she’d been so determined not to berate or reproach Ander for his past. It was mean and petty and futile.

Ander lifted his eyebrows slightly. “As you said, you’ve known that all along about me. You went into this relationship knowing what you were getting into.”

“I know. But knowing is different than seeing.”

“And what did you see?”

“I saw that...that bitch!” Even Lori was vaguely shocked by the rough vehemence of her words. “That bitch—looking at you like you were a piece of meat. Like you were hers to leer at and touch and...and fuck. It made me sick.”

“I’m not hers,” he said. “I’m mine. And yours.”

“I know that.” Her voice cracked at the matter-of-fact way he’d said it—as if he had no doubt at all. “But she used to...you used to ...”

“But not anymore.”

Lori felt like an absolute fool, a blubbery mess, particularly in contrast to Ander’s cool composure. “But doesn’t it...doesn’t it bother you?”

“Of course, it bothers me sometimes, but I refuse to dwell on it. I’ve made different decisions. I’m doing something worthwhile and fulfilling with my life now. And I’m going to spend the rest of it with you. I’ve got nothing to complain about, and I’m not going to beat myself up over what I used to do.”

Obviously, Lori’s emotions were too much in a turmoil to react appropriately. His words made her so happy, soothed something so raw and aching in her heart, that she burst into tears again.

“Oh, God, Lori,” Ander murmured gruffly, for the first time his face twisting in concern. “I know it’s hard for you to think about how I was with those other women. But you know you’re the first woman I was ever really with. We’re the same in that. It's the first for both of us.”

“I know,” she gurgled. “I’m okay. You know it’s not that I blame or judge you—”

“I know. Of course I know.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into me tonight.” She wiped her face one more time, feeling a lot better and convinced that her hysterical weeping was finally under control. “Must be that time of the month. Hormones.”

“Could be.” Ander leaned forward in the chair, gazing intently on where she was still sprawled on the floor, her pretty dress hitched up around her hips. “But I know sometimes all of this still bothers you.”

“It does. And it’s not just jealousy or possessiveness. I just can’t stand that they ...they used you. That I used you.”

Ander stiffened in the chair. “You never used me or objectified me. It was never like that with us.”

Lori felt a rush of tenderness at the bristling defensiveness in his tone and expression. She knew it was all in defense of her. But she shook her head and objected, “Obviously feelings developed. But, Ander, I paid you to have sex with me.”

“Yes, but it was never like it was with other clients,” Ander repeated, sounding annoyed and strangely stiff. “We weren’t like that.”

“I know what you mean. But, still, Ander. You took my money. I used your body. And I can’t help wishing it was...it was ...” She trailed off. She had no way of putting into words how she felt.

She couldn’t wish she’d made different choices because her choices had led her to such happiness with Ander, but she’d always be conflicted about how they’d gotten here.

Taking a deep breath, she used the damp towel to rub her eyes and her nose, trying to clear away the last of her tears.

She jumped when she felt a swish of air and heard an impact just next to her hip.

Then she blinked down at an envelope on the floor beside her, filled with what was obviously cash.

Gasping, she turned to stare at Ander. “Wha—”

Ander, his face unreadable, reached down into a drawer in the desk, one he always kept locked. He pulled out another envelope and sent it sailing over toward Lori.

A few hundred-dollar bills slipped out of this one as it flew, fluttering down onto Lori’s legs as the envelope landed near the first.

“Ander?” she gasped.

He threw another envelope at her. Then another. Then another. Some landed still full while others fell open. Envelope after envelope plopped down around her. Until the floor was littered and she was showered with stray bills.

Lori sat like an idiot, dazed and bewildered and delighted in the middle of a small fortune in cash.

Finally, Ander aimed the final envelope. When it landed, bursting open and spilling out money, he arched his eyebrows at Lori with obvious significance.

“But,” Lori croaked, her eyes blurring and her heart exploding with feeling. “But...how many?”

“All of them. From the very beginning.”

“But...You didn’t ...” Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t catch her breath.

“I didn’t fall in love with you that first time, no. But something about the money made me uncomfortable. So I didn’t spend it. Just stuck it in the drawer. And then I stuck the others there too. I can’t tell you how much I hated them. Sometimes I would sit and glare at them. When you decided to date Rothe, I came so close to burning the envelopes in my fireplace. But you emailed me for a new engagement just in time. And I started to hope. I never wanted this money, Lori. The sex was never about the money. Not with you.”

“Oh.”

Ander had been speaking with admirable composure, but now his mouth twisted in discomfort. “I bare my heart and all you say is ‘oh’?”

Lori swallowed hard. “I’m glad.”

His mouth twitched.

And, for the moment, everything was all right.

She stretched out her arms to him. “Can you please kiss me now?”

With a guttural exclamation, Ander moved quickly over to the floor beside her. He gathered her in his arms, and their lips found each other’s with passion, tenderness, and need.

At first, the kiss was more about an overflow of feeling than anything else. But eventually it became deeper, Ander stroking his tongue into her mouth and Lori rubbing her breasts against his chest eagerly.

And before she knew it she was lying on her back on the floor, the hardwood thankfully softened by the Asian rug and scattered envelopes and piles of cash all around her.

Ander was on top of her, pushing against her groin with the bulge of his growing erection. His mouth played along her neck while his hands fondled her body with shameless entitlement.

Lori moaned as an arousal built inside her, quicker than she would have expected after her flood of emotions earlier. But it had been two weeks since she’d made love to Ander and her body craved his touch.

His face moved down to her neckline. He nipped around her cleavage, giving one erect nipple a tweak with his finger and thumb through the thin fabric of her dress.

She gasped and shifted restlessly at the jolt of pleasure. Then he did it again and she whimpered. Then he took her breast in his mouth and fluttered his tongue around her sensitized nipple, dampening the fabric and making her mew helplessly.

While he teased her breasts, she stroked his smooth scalp, knowing how much it turned him on.

“Fuck, Lori, I love you,” Ander mumbled against her breast, sliding his hands up to stroke the line of her bare arms. “So beautiful. So sweet. I always want you so much.”

“Me too,” she panted, already too far gone for extended conversation. Her body squirmed beneath his, desperate for friction, for release. “Ander, me too.”

“Are you ready for me, baby?” he asked, slipping his hand beneath her skirt and between her legs. He found her hot, swollen entrance easily enough.

She wasn’t wearing panties.

“Oh fuck,” he bit out, his eyes igniting with heated possessiveness. He penetrated her with two fingers, spilling her collected moisture and rubbing deliciously against her inner walls.

Lori stretched like a cat and moaned again, half-shutting her eyes as the sensations spun out from his massage.

She mewed with disappointment when he withdrew his fingers.

“Sorry. It’s been a while and I’m not sure how long I can last.”

Smiling at him with sensual affection, Lori sat up and reached over to feel his crotch. She rubbed the hard bulge until Ander let his head fall back and groaned.

Delighted with this reaction, Lori would have continued. But Ander recovered enough to take her by the shoulders, ease her back down to the floor, and gently turn her over onto her stomach.

She knew he loved this position, and she was rather fond of it too.

Gazing at him with both love and desire from over her shoulder, she watched as he unfastened his trousers and freed his cock. “Feeling like a caveman tonight? Or do you still insist you’re immune to such primitive impulses?”

He shot her a warm, amused look, despite the tension on his face. Then he straddled her legs, pushed up her skirt to bare her bottom, and lifted her hips until her entrance was exposed.

Lori braced herself with her arms and let out a wet sigh as he pushed his erection into her wet, pliant channel.

Ander exhaled too, his almost gravelly as they adjusted to the penetration. Then he leaned over and said against her ear, “Me big strong man. Me take woman from behind.”

Caught by surprise, Lori broke into rippling laughter, her body shaking beneath his and the vibrations spreading deliciously through her body. “I knew there was a caveman in there somewhere.”

Because she was looking back as she laughed, she saw his gaze take on a new intensity, a depth that took her breath away.

“I love you, Ander,” she whispered, stretching her neck back for a kiss.

His lips found hers and they kissed deeply as he started to thrust.

So they made love on a floor strewn with discarded envelopes and thousands of dollars of cash.

They kissed for a long time, Ander’s hips moving with short, rhythmic pumps. But soon the stimulation and the emotions coalesced with deep power, and it felt so good she had to tear her mouth away.

“Oh, God,” she panted, “Oh, Ander.” Her body began to shudder as an orgasm built up quickly.

His rhythm intensified, as if in response to her coiling pleasure. He bumped his pelvis against her bottom with accelerating speed, his cock sliding slickly in her tight, heated clasp. “Fuck, Lori. I love you. Come for me, baby.”

She made soft, sobbing sounds as she worked up toward climax. She was washed with alternating waves of heat and cold as her vision started to blur.

Each of his tight strokes connected with her g-spot and he’d started to grunt as he unleashed his own need.

He ducked his head down again and nuzzled her hair away from her neck. Then he bit down on the hollow between her shoulder and throat.

“Ander!” she choked, her body clenching up brutally before it all released in waves of sensation. She eagerly rode out her climax around his cock, extending the duration of the spasms.

As soon as she clamped down around him, Ander made a gruff burst of sound. His motions became jerky, clumsy, uncontrolled as he thrust hard and fast.

She found the energy to turn her head back to watch him again, loving the sight of his barely reined passion, his face twisted with effort, his fiery, tender eyes. His obvious love and need for her affected her so much that another climax swelled up without warning.

She shook helplessly as Ander froze for a moment inside her. Then he came in a series of twitches and twists, muttering a long, thick exhalation of, “Love you, love you, love you, love you, love you.”

Lori came too on the words. Her body convulsed with another round of spasms, and this time she cried out from the pleasure of it.

They rocked together until they finally came down. And then they collapsed together onto the floor.

Ander’s weight was hot and heavy on top of her, and Lori’s belly was pressed against the rug, a few hundred-dollar bills sticking to her damp skin. But she didn’t really want to move.

He pressed kisses into the spot he’d bitten, occasionally murmuring out gruff endearments.

Her body was relaxing deliciously, and she could feel Ander’s softening too. And finally the discomfort caught up to her.

She shifted beneath him until he rolled off. But instead of getting up he just rolled them both over on their sides so he could spoon up behind her.

“You all right, baby?” he asked softly, inhaling against her hair, like he was smelling it.

“Yeah.” She knew what he was talking about. “We haven’t worked through all our issues. But we’re doing good.”

Absently stroking her belly over the fabric of her dress, he said, “I think so too.”

“Sorry about the meltdown earlier.”

“Don’t be.”

“At least it led to the discovery of all this money you had socked away.” Lori giggled, feeling absurdly giddy. “What should we do with it all?”

“Spend it, I guess.” He kissed her hair a few times. Then added, almost diffidently, “Maybe we should use it to buy an engagement ring.”

Lori sucked in a little breath but managed not to stiffen. Her heart beating wildly, she drawled, “Do you have any idea how much money there is here? If we spend it all on a ring, I wouldn’t be able to lift my hand.”

Ander chuckled. “Then an engagement ring, wedding rings, a wedding ceremony, and a honeymoon.”

Trying to contain her smile, Lori said, “That would probably cover it.”

His hand grew still on her belly. “Lori?”

“Yes.”

“It might have been indirect, but that was a proposal.”

“Was it?” She still tried to keep her tone light, but her smile burst out in a blaze of joy.

“Yes,” he said, sounding grumpy. “It was.”

Laughter rippled out as she rolled over to face him. “Yes, I’ll marry you, silly.”

“Oh.” Ander blinked. “Good.”

She hugged him and it only took a few seconds before he was hugging her back. Then they lay for a long time, half-dressed and tangled up on the floor, in the throes of embarrassing bliss neither would admit to even an hour later.

Lori had just done her little, irresistible tapping-the-shoulder routine—feeling now was an appropriate time—and Ander had laughed with delicious warmth, when she heard herself murmuring foolishly, “I love how you laugh.”

Ander’s blue-gray eyes were softer than she would have believed possible when she’d first met him in that coffee shop and thought him to be the coolest man she’d even seen, burdened with the weight of experience. “You should. You taught me how.”

Feeling overwhelmingly sentimental, Lori tried to temper it with an ironic drawl. “Did I? Well, I’ve got you beat. You taught me how to have sex, how to have an orgasm, how to use my trusty vibrator, how to get myself off, how to use dozens of sexual positions, how to give a blow job, and how to ice skate.”

Ander shook his head, his lips twitching a little. “Lori, are you serious? You taught me how to be with someone genuinely, how to enjoy sex, how to express emotion, how to value myself, how to feel, how to love, how to trust. How to live. You’re never going to win this game.”

Her mouth parted as she stared at his face, just a few inches away. When she could finally get past the lump in her throat, she whispered, “Well, maybe we taught each other.”

“Maybe so.”

They kissed again until Lori started to feel sleepy. Then she snuggled up against him and stroked the back of his head. “Now we get to teach each other how to be married.”

It was a clear sign that she’d suffered an overload of sap when she didn’t even think that sounded stupid.

“Hmm,” Ander agreed, nuzzling her hair. “And then later on maybe we can teach each other how to be parents.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “All kinds of stuff to learn. I’m looking forward to it.”

Then she processed exactly what Ander had just said.

Lori gulped. “I think.”

***

 

If you enjoyed Escorted, you might also enjoy another of my books, Hold. It’s a futuristic romance, but it follows a similar sex-arrangement-transforming-to-love development as Escorted. You can check out an excerpt on the following pages.

 

When I first got this book ready for publication, I needed to think of a penname to use it  to publish it, so I spontaneously chose Lori’s original penname and used it for mine, thinking it was meta and funny. As a lot of people took the gesture as my writing myself into the book, I’ve changed it in the latest edit. The book was written long before I chose my own penname, but I figured it was better to write myself out of it to avoid possible misunderstandings.