Friday afternoon, the buzzer from the lobby rang and Suzanne pressed the button. “Yes?” she called, her heart skipping a bit to know that the hour, so to speak, had struck.
“Hello, Ms. Sutton,” said the male voice from the lobby over the intercom. “My name’s Mack Mitchell. Mr. Gates sent me to pick you up.”
“Come on up, Mack,” Suzanne said, and pressed the buzzer.
Suzanne had put on her violet evening gown, the best thing in her wardrobe, which she had selected because violet was the complement for her long, shiny blonde hair, and painstakingly matched high-heeled party shoes. Her purse was on her shoulder. She was dressed, made up, packed, and ready for a business of sheer pleasure. She stood near the door, her bags in a chair a few steps away, and waited the couple of minutes that it took for the man she’d rung up to reach her door. At the knock, she opened up the door…
…and out in the hall stood someone that she could have sworn was a leading man from a daytime soap opera.
Seriously, he was one of those men. He had that look about him. He, like his employer, was the type that Suzanne would happily do for free. Thick, dark hair crowned a “lay me down and have your way” kind of handsome face. His tailored grey suit covered a body that Suzanne, an expert on male bodies, could tell was all tight muscle and not an ounce of fat. Without question, if she had met this young man under any other circumstances, she would absolutely have him right in bed and would blow things, including but not limited to, his mind.
“Mack…?” she said.
“Yes,” he replied. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Sutton. Are you packed? Can I take your bags?” He craned his neck to look inside the apartment.
“All set,” said Suzanne, motioning inside. “My bags are right there,” she indicated them on the chair. “We can get right underway. I know Mr. Gates likes things punctual.”
“Yes, he does,” said Mack, going to collect her things.
She watched him gather up her suitcase and her dress bag, and straight away they were out of the apartment and on their way to the parking lot.
Mack took Suzanne and her luggage to a shiny black Lexus. He helped her into the front seat and put her luggage in the trunk, and they were off.
On the road, she ventured to ask, “How long have you worked for Mr. Gates?”
“It’ll be six years now,” said Mack. “I’m his chauffeur, and I take care of his personal errands and whatever else he needs, when he needs it. And I’m his bodyguard.”
“His bodyguard? He needs a bodyguard? Does his business ever get him in trouble?”
“A man in Mr. Gates’s position can’t be too careful,” Mack explained. “He’s one of the richest, most successful businessmen in the world—and he’s a publicly known morph. I’m sure you know that not everyone likes morphs. You see things in the papers sometimes, or online, where humans, prejudiced, crazy humans—no offense—go after two-bodied people the way some racists go after blacks and Latinos and Muslims. You’ve seen things like that: people threatening someone because of what color they are or what language they speak, yelling all kinds of ugly things at them, threatening them. Some people are like that not because of what color your human body is, but because of what other kind of body you have. You’ve probably seen things like that too.”
Suzanne recalled things she had seen on Facebook, phone video captures of people screaming at people known to be metamorphs. Get off my street, you two-bodied piece of trash! Go back to the woods, you dirty wolf! Get your mangy ass out of here! Get out of my city, you no-good bear! This is for HUMANS ONLY; I’m calling the cops! Humans antagonizing shape-shifters could be every bit as bad as bigots antagonizing people of color and Jews. And sometimes they did not only threaten with words. Sometimes they threatened with knives or guns. It was shameful, but it happened.
“I have seen videos of things like that,” said Suzanne. “Yes, people do sometimes pick on shifters just because of who they are, and it doesn’t make any sense. But Mr. Gates is rich and successful and great-looking. Doesn’t that make a difference in the way people treat him? I mean, people respect rich, powerful people better than they do…regular people, I guess is the word. So don’t people treat Mr. Gates better because of that?”
“Mostly, they do,” Mack replied. “But not everybody loves the rich. And sometimes the rich do things to make people not love them that much. Mr. Gates isn’t one of them, I don’t think, but you know there are rich people like that. So being as rich and successful as he is, and being both a man and a bear on top of that…Mr. Gates just likes to be proactive, if you get what I’m saying.”
“So,” Suzanne wondered aloud, “if a situation like that came up, where there was someone who recognized Mr. Gates and threatened him…what would you do?”
“Depends,” replied Mack. “I’m trained to handle anything. I used to work for this security outfit in Ambrosian City up in Canada; maybe you’ve heard of it. I’m from Canada originally. That’s where Mr. Gates found me, on one of his trips up north. I know all kinds of hand-to-hand or armed combat, on top of being a werewolf myself.”
Now Suzanne was startled. She looked over at him in the driver’s seat and blinked, feeling herself flush with embarrassment. Having been to all kinds of places and been in all kinds of situations with a great variety of different men, she still had utterly failed to suspect that there was a metamorph right next to her. The excuse, You don’t look like a werewolf danced briefly through her head, and she dismissed it for the stupid and flimsy thing it was. She used to sleep with a werewolf, for pity’s sake; she knew better than most people that as their human selves they, like all metamorphs, were generally indistinguishable from humans. She felt like a naive little girl and the embarrassment was audible in her voice as she reacted, “You’re…?”
Sensing her discomfiture and wanting to put her at ease, Mack said, “I am, and don’t worry about it. It’s like being gay; I’m sure you know that. Most of us, you wouldn’t know the other thing we are unless we told you.”
Suzanne was tempted at this point to ask Mack if he were gay, but she refrained. And Mack was right; she was a woman of the world and she did know that the majority of morphs could pass for completely human unless they shifted in the presence of a human. It was elementary, common knowledge. It did not, however, stop her from feeling naive and foolish.
“If you don’t mind me saying so,” said Mack, “we lycanthropes have a sense about human emotions, and I can tell you’re feeling a little awkward right now. Can I ask what it’s about?”
With a sigh, Suzanne said, “I don’t know why I’m surprised to be talking to a lycanthrope right now. I guess it’s just unexpected, and I shouldn’t feel that way. It so happens my boyfriend in college was a werewolf.”
“Oh. So you’re really used to us, then. Having a werewolf for an ex-boyfriend, you’ve had some experience with us.” He glanced over at her, knowing how thoroughly “experienced” with his kind she must actually be.
“Yes, I’m really experienced.” She let the layers of meaning in that word go without saying. “I met his family and everything; I know all about them…you.” Recalling something, she knitted her brow, frowning. “But wait…”
“What?”
“You said you knew all kinds of hand-to-hand and armed combat.”
“That’s right. I do.”
“But…,” she began again, this time feeling truly awkward and perplexed.
“Go on.”
There was nothing to do but ask the question directly. “But aren’t you… I mean, aren’t you supposed to be…afraid of guns? Don’t you have some kind of natural phobia about them? I remember, just the idea of guns made my boyfriend look like he wanted to run and hide.”
“We do have that problem, yes. It’s partly an instinctive thing and partly something we learn from our elders. Guns and werewolves don’t really mix; we have a really bad history with them because of the way humans have always treated real wolves, which crosses over to our kind. We don’t like guns, at all, no.”
“Then how can you…?” she began to ask.
“How can I use guns?” Mack anticipated. “How can I carry a licensed revolver on me when I’m working, the way I’m doing right now?”
Suzanne’s eyes bulged a bit at that. “You’re carrying a gun, right this minute?”
“When I’m working, yes, I’m always armed and always ready to use it if I have to. Absolutely,” Mack confirmed.
“But if you’re a lycanthrope…how?” she asked, mystified.
“It’s not easy for us,” Mack explained. “Just to be able to touch a gun without freaking out, I had to have special training and therapy. That’s how bad the lycanthrope’s mental block against guns is; that’s how deep that runs with us. I had to have therapy for that, and I had to have more therapy to get over just hearing the sound of a gun go off. The kind of therapy that humans have to go through to get over being afraid of spiders and snakes and heights—that’s what I had to go through to handle guns.”
“I had no idea,” Suzanne said, shaking her head, amazed.
“It never comes up for most of us.”
There was a little beat of silence before Suzanne continued. “So now you’re not afraid of guns and you’re a billionaire werebear’s bodyguard.”
“That’s it.”
“Sounds like you’ve done all right for yourself.”
“I have,” said Mack. “Of course being in this line of work isn’t always easy. I make good money, I live in a good place. But it’s not always that easy for me with my own people.”
“Really?” Suzanne wondered. “What could be the problem there?”
“Well, see, just being able to touch a gun, and then having other wolf people know about it—it doesn’t give me the kind of respect you’d think it would.”
Uncomprehending, Suzanne asked, “Why?”
“Well, it means I’ve done something a wolf guy isn’t supposed to do. To some of my people, it means I’ve gone someplace a wolf guy isn’t supposed to go. It’s like, to some of my kind I’m not really a wolf any more. I’ve stopped being a wolf and become something more like…a German Shepherd.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, that’s the way some of us think. I mean, you know we’re not monsters like you see in the movies, all out of control and bloodthirsty and ready to rip a human to pieces and kill him as fast as we’d look at one. But to some of us, a werewolf who’s trained to protect humans isn’t really a werewolf. He’s more like a guard dog. Some of my own kind actually don’t trust me because of that.”
“Oh my God, I had no idea…”
“It’s true. To some of my own kind I’ve…gone human.. Or turned into a pet.”
Suzanne looked at him with genuine sympathy. “Mack, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “And it’s not your problem. It’s ours.”
“Yes,” she said. “But my kind is so full of prejudices, I’ve never even thought your kind could be…well…”
“As bad as humans?” he finished for her. “You know, we’re half human ourselves. And yes, we can be every bit as bad. In the end, human is human. Makes no difference how many bodies you have; if one of your bodies is human, you get everything that goes with it.”
She leaned her head back on the seat and sighed. “I guess that’s true.”
“Our people can be really judgemental,” Mack said. “Still and all, I’m a werewolf through and through. I look like a man most of the time, but I’m a wolf to the bone and I’m proud of it. Mr. Gates could tell you some stories about how judgemental morphs can be. I shouldn’t because it’s not my place, but he could.”
Suzanne eyed him with respect and admiration, and not only for his heart-stopping looks. “You really like Mr. Gates, don’t you?” she guessed.
“He’s a good boss. He’s the best boss I could want,” said Mack. “And yes. Yes, I like him. He’s a good man. And even being a wolf, I’d say he’s a good bear. You’ll like him.”
“Judging by his video,” said Suzanne, turning her eyes to the road before them and her mind to the weekend awaiting her, “I’m sure he is.”
She wanted to ask Mack if he knew who she was and what she actually did, and what was the true purpose of this weekend. She wondered if Justin had told him, or how much he had told him. Had he let Mack in on the fact that she was an escort and this weekend would be a transaction as much as a “date,” or had he kept that information on a need-to-know basis? She assumed that Mack knew this weekend would not be a platonic thing. No man, human or otherwise, asks a woman as beautiful as Suzanne to his luxurious home for the weekend if he expects it to be platonic. Mack, she assumed, must know at least that during her stay, she would be spending the majority of her time naked under his naked boss with her legs in the air (and loving every minute and every thrust of it). The other part, the part about her being compensated for what she would be thrilled to give him “on the house,” and Ginny taking a commission for it, may or may not have been knowledge at Mack’s pay grade. She discreetly did not bring it up. Whatever Mack knew, he knew, and it would not really make a difference.
For the rest of the ride, Suzanne thought of Justin—and also let her mind play with the thought of entertaining Mack as she would soon be entertaining his employer. Not that she actually would, of course. She wondered whether Justin would object to such a thing, or whether he would look on it as something that Mack did on his own time that had nothing to do with his job. Nevertheless, she decided it was only a thing to imagine, not a thing to do. Though she also wondered if Mack might have any such thoughts about her. She guessed he might, but he would consider it a line not to be crossed. It was just as well. She would have her hands—among other things—full with Mack’s boss for the next couple of days.
_______________
The black Lexus made its way to a place on the outskirts of the city where a long private road wound its way up a hill. Mack drove up the hill, the road on either side enclosed in tall grasses and brush, until at the top of the hill the road leveled off. At the summit stood one of the most magnificent-looking modern homes that Suzanne had ever seen. She resisted the impulse to gawk at it. She took that kind of reaction and that kind of behavior to be unprofessional.
She was a beautiful woman accustomed to the company of men who lived, worked, and traveled to beautiful places. She took it as part of her job to look at all times as if she belonged in such places. So she did not react—outwardly. Inside, however, she marveled at the house. It was a thoroughly 21st-Century dwelling, but it looked like something out of a fantasy, like a sparkling palace in white marble and stained wood, with polished windows that took up entire walls.
There was a garden with evergreens and shrubs and flowers on one side, and on the other a large deck of shining marble with an area enclosed by stained wood and glass on three sides and open on the other side to what Suzanne guessed must be a generous-sized swimming pool.
She allowed herself a little smile at the thought of the number of places in and around the property where her host and client would be taking her—in both senses of the word “taking.”
The hilltop palace had a circular driveway that arced around to a garage on one end. A van was parked at the garage, which Suzanne guessed must belong to the caterers. Mack pulled up the car to the front of the house, where he was standing, looking every bit the gentleman in a charcoal-colored suit that itself likely cost two or three times what Suzanne would have charged for a weekend when she was just starting out.
His hands were folded calmly in front of him and had a welcoming expression on his stunning face. Suzanne noted that he had not shaved off his short and immaculate beard that shadowed the lower part of his face while still showing the perfectly cut contours of his lower jaw. He had simply given it a perfect trim.
Her skin tingled at the thought of that incredibly gorgeous, scruffy face kissing her all weekend, and those whiskers rustling against the soft skin of her neck, shoulders, bosom, inner thighs, and buttocks. She remembered what he had said in his video about not liking to “date,” and agreed with it wholeheartedly. A man like this should not need to date. This was a man with whom one wanted just to jump into bed with and enjoy on the spot, and she liked it that he seemed to know that.
Still and all, she was looking forward to talking with Justin Gates and letting him serve her dinner before she served herself up to him.
With the car parked in front of house and owner, Mack climbed out and went around to open the passenger side door and help Suzanne out. She stepped onto the front landing as Justin made room for her. Giving Justin her hand, Mack said, “Mr. Gates, Ms. Sutton is here for you.”
Justin took Suzanne’s hand and gallantly kissed it. “Welcome to my home, Suzanne. Or one of them.” He grinned warmly at that. “I’ve seen to it you’ll enjoy your stay.”
Suzanne looked up admiringly at him. Are you kidding? What part of this—or you—do you think I’m not going to enjoy? “Thank you for asking me, Mr. Gates.”
“Please, Suzanne,” he said. “It’s Justin.”
“Yes, Sir…,” she caught herself. “Justin.”
To Mack, he said, “Please take Suzanne’s bags to the sunken bedroom off the deck. We’ll be dining in the sitting area overlooking the deck. Then you’re done until Monday; have a good weekend, Mack.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Mack, and quickly went to pop open the trunk. “Thank you; I will.”
Justin offered Suzanne his arm and she took it. Fine, let him be a gentleman for now. She’d be patient and let him drop his manners—and his expensive trousers—when he was ready. “Dinner is being put out right now; the chef that I hired and his staff are ready for you. They’re the best in the city.”
“I’m sure they are,” said Suzanne, letting him lead her to the door. What else would they be if you hired them? You probably could have had them flown in from France.
“What do you think of the house so far?” asked Justin proudly.
“It’s absolutely lovely. I’m sure it’s even better on the inside,” she replied.
“We’ll have a tour of the whole place tomorrow,” he said, “after we’ve had some good quality time tonight.”
Ah, quality time. There was his favorite euphemism again. She let him usher her through the front door, looking forward to where she would be ushering him when their “quality time” truly got under way. She would make it a point to make it a time of the highest quality that a billionaire who was a bear could want.
_______________
At one side of the house there was an area with a king-sized bed between twin nightstands, a full bath, some high-end sofas and chairs, and a fireplace at the level of a basement. This was where Mack had placed Suzanne’s bags before excusing himself. A stairway led up to the ground level of the house and an area where a dining table had been set for two and the chef and a couple of assistants had rolled out a tray of dinners and desserts, a case of wine, and some buckets of ice.
Off this area were large glass doors that took up a whole wall, and outside the doors was the enclosed and covered deck area that let out onto a large swimming pool of inviting blue water surrounded by shiny marble tiles. It reminded Suzanne of pictures that she had seen of tropical beaches. She had always hoped to have a client who would take her to a place like that. Perhaps one day one of them would.
For that matter, if she was lucky—or if she played her cards right in bed this weekend, as she had every intention of doing—her present client might take her on such a trip. She could not have asked for a more desirable man with whom to walk, or do other things, on such a beach.
The chef and his assistants served as efficiently as their training, at what Suzanne was sure must have been the finest culinary schools in the country, had taught them. With dinner served and wine poured, Justin dismissed them and allowed them to let themselves out.
As dinner got underway, Justin raised his glass to her, and Suzanne raised hers to his. “To the perfect weekend with the perfect company,” he said genially.
“I’ll second that,” she replied.
They clinked and sipped. And then dinner and their real conversation began.
“I’m going to start,” said Justin, “by asking you one of the most dreaded questions in the English language, which in your work you’re probably grateful you never have to hear.”
Curious and ever so slightly unnerved, Suzanne asked, “What’s that?”
“Tell me about yourself.”
Suzanne smiled and blushed. “Is that all?”
“In my experience, that’s one of the questions people least like to hear,” said Justin. “And I completely understand why. Asking someone to tell you about himself—or herself—is asking them to sum up everything about who they are in one question. Job interviewers do this all the time and I can tell people hate it from the look I’ve seen on their faces when I’ve asked them myself. It’s one of the most loaded questions in the world. If I ever got that question from anyone, I’d hate it too.”
“I never thought of that,” said Suzanne. “And you’re right, people don’t usually ask me that, and if they did I’d hate it.”
Justin smiled a friendly, reassuring smile at her to tell her that all was well. “No pressure, though. Really—tell me about yourself. I’d like to know something about who you are.”
It was part of Suzanne’s business to know and understand her client, or to figure out or anticipate what things would please him the best. He had just asked her, though not in so many words, to tell him something about herself that he would find the most interesting and intriguing. Knowing who he was and understanding whom she was dealing with, Suzanne went right to the thing that she anticipated would both interest him the most and create the greatest empathy between them.
Empathy, she found, lent itself to good sex. It helped her to establish a rapport with the client, especially when the client was, to put it tactfully, not up to physical standards. That latter part was in no way an issue now; Justin was by far the most physically desirable client she had ever met. But empathy and rapport would still be indispensable.
“I was an Economics major,” she began, “and I was planning to go on to graduate school for an MBA.” And she studied him for his reaction. As she expected, that piqued his interest. She could tell that Justin was now as focused on her words as he was on her appearance. Yes, she had him now—and that would pay off later when he had her.
“Really?” he asked. “And you decided not to go on with it?”
“What I decided not to go on with,” she explained, “was piling up more and more student loans. My parents were helping me at first. But then they died within just a couple of years of each other. Cancer took my mother, and I think my father just couldn’t take the grief. He went into a decline and died of heart failure less than a year later.”
Justin looked genuinely stricken. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been really hard on you, as a student at the time, having to be in school and deal with grieving.”
“And my parents’ estate,” said Suzanne. “Their will said the house was to be sold and the money was mine for school. But there were legal fees, and home maintenance, and taxes, and realtor’s commissions, all of which took a huge bite out of it. I didn’t get as much money as I would have, and there were still the loans to pay off.
By the time I was in my senior year, I was afraid that if I didn’t get started in a business of some kind soon, I’d end up drowning. I wanted to stay in LA, but you know what it costs to live here.” She wanted to add, …not that it matters to you at all…, but she discreetly refrained. “I didn’t have any interest in taking just any pitiful job that would pay next to nothing just to keep my nose above water. And without my parents, I got resentful and angry at the cost of everything.”
“So what did you do?”
“I took the money I had and I took…a personal inventory, I guess you’d call it. I sat down and figured out what it was I had to offer that was worth the most to people. And that turned out to be…me.”
Thinking he knew where this was going, Justin guessed, “And that’s how you came into this line of work.”
“Not exactly,” she said. “You see, I’d studied yoga and been doing it for years, which is how I’d always kept myself in the best shape. And I realized this is LA—Hollywood, where the way you look is a commodity, and if you’re a woman, being pretty is a marketable skill. So there were certain things I knew I could do with that, and I picked one.”
“But not the line of work you’re in now?”
“No, not this. Not right away.”
“What, then?” he wondered. “Did you try modeling?”
“I thought about modeling,” Suzanne replied. “But I decided I didn’t want to go that way. Not modeling.”
Justin was ever more curious now. “Why not? You would have done great.”
“That’s what you’d think, I know,” said Suzanne. “But I know something about modeling from some other women I know who’ve been in it, or near it. In that profession a woman is pretty much a walking clothes hanger, or a coat rack in fancy shoes. You’re not allowed to have a figure; you’re just something to hang clothes on. I think those women are kind of grotesque, or that industry makes them make themselves something grotesque. I could never be like that. I don’t want to be just this collection of sticks and rails walking down a runway. That’s not me.”
He looked her over appreciatively, the way her cascade of golden hair fell over her well-toned shoulders and down her back, the lean and taut but not emaciated shape of her bare arms. Suzanne was right. That was not “her” at all.
“So,” he asked, “if you didn’t become a model and you didn’t go right into the business you’re in, what did you do?”
“I studied massage. I became a masseuse.”
At that, Justin broke out into a bemused smile. “Really!”
“Really,” she said. “And that was the business I went into, while I was a senior in college. I put out some ads, with pictures of myself in a T-shirt and shorts, and that was all it took. I had as much business as I could handle, so to speak.”
“I have no doubt of that,” said Justin, admiringly.
“So, being a masseuse,” she continued, “and looking like this, and having the marketing that I had—I studied economics, remember—and being in LA, which is full of men with a lot of money to spend and a lot of interest in women who look like this, I started doing okay. Maybe a little better than okay. And I did well enough to start taking on regular clients and building a reputation. Word started getting around about me. And one of my regulars started talking me up to Ginny Westbrook. She saw my ads, and she gave me a call and invited me into Telegirl.”
“I understand,” Justin said. Then, after a beat: “So…did you have any…misgivings about getting started in it?”
At this, Suzanne looked wistful. A kind of look came over her that was sad and faraway. For the first time since she’d arrived, she did not look at Justin. She looked off a bit, and Justin could sense her mind’s eye falling on something that only she could see.
“At first,” she began, softly and hesitantly, “I thought about my parents, and what they would have wanted for me. And…I couldn’t see them wanting this. I couldn’t see any girl’s parents wanting a life like this, a career like this, for their daughter. And I can’t blame them. You know, there are reasons why this profession exists. People say it’s about morality, but there’s something I heard about morality once. I once heard someone say what people call morality is really the fear that someone else is happy. And I think the reason why this profession exists is unhappiness.”
“I don’t follow,” said Justin.
She looked back at him now. “Maybe you don’t, because of the kind of life you have and the kind of life you’ve always had. And you have to understand, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty for being rich or being born with money. It’s not that. It’s just that there’s a huge difference between your life and most people’s. You don’t want anything in your life. But the world is full of people who want things they don’t have. There are people who want a kind of person for a lover who doesn’t want them back.
Or people in relationships where they’re not getting something they need, and they don’t want to leave the one they’re with, but they don’t want to go their whole lives never getting that thing. And they’re unhappy. They tell me about their lives sometimes, and they’re so unhappy, so full of wants, and it hurts. The way I see what I do, it’s about making people maybe a little less unhappy, making them maybe hurt just a little less. And when I think of it that way… I still wouldn’t expect my parents to understand. But that’s the way I’ve taught myself to look at it.”
Justin was completely captivated at this. He ventured further: “The unhappy men—was it hard for you at first, when you were new, being with them?”
“When I started,” she replied, “I was afraid I couldn’t do it. I was afraid I’d have to tell Ginny no, I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t touch these strange guys, see them out of their clothes, do things with them and let them…no, I couldn’t. Because all I could see was aging, plain-looking, balding, flabby guys with all the money in the world, who hadn’t taken care of themselves.
I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I honestly thought I’d ruin myself. But I found something out about the kind of guys that Ginny takes on as clients. They’re…I guess you’d call them discerning men. They don’t have any worries about money or how they spend it, but they also like to keep themselves looking good. See, they put most of their time into their work and themselves, and they don’t have much time for the kind of social life that other men have.
And a lot of these guys know what it’s like out there for men now, where anything they say or do when they’re socializing with a woman might get them into trouble. Ginny’s clients like to be able to relax with a woman, and they’re really not the kind to do the kinds of things that men get called out for. They’re smart, educated, busy guys. And they know what ‘no’ means and they back off when they hear it. They come to Ginny looking for the kind of women they want, who won’t be quick to say no. They’re looking for quality time with someone who interests them, with no worries and no complications.”
And there she had used the expression that Justin had used: quality time. An expression that said nothing specific, but still said everything. She thought she saw a little glint in his eyes to hear it coming from her.
“The biggest problem I had working with Telegirl, honestly,” Suzanne went on, “was the idea of serving unfaithful husbands and cheating boyfriends. I was afraid I’d be trampling on other women’s marriages. So I made a rule right away. I knew these guys must be coming to Ginny—and me—for something they weren’t getting at home, with their girlfriend or their wife.
But I didn’t want to hear about it. No details about home, or their families, or anything outside of my time with them. My time with a client, I think of it as an island, cut off from everything else. There’s just him and me, no other people in the world. I think of it as a space in his life where nothing else even exists. And when it’s over, he goes back to whatever his life is and I know nothing except what happened in that space.”
“Compartmentalizing,” said Justin.
Suzanne blinked, startled at the word. “Excuse me…?”
“It’s something that I’ve heard some of the women who work for me talking about when they talk about their boyfriends and their husbands. The way men can ‘compartmentalize’ their thoughts and their feelings, keeping everything in their heads in its own separate box or on a shelf and taking things out when they need them. My women employees talk about men being able to ‘compartmentalize’ instead of letting all their feelings run together. Sometimes they complain about having to compartmentalize at work. I don’t judge them for it and I don’t call them out for it or hold it against them. I just take it as a difference between men and women, something that I accept. I’m aware of it. Sometimes I have to take it into consideration when I’m dealing with a woman employee. Women don’t seem to like compartmentalizing. They prefer to ‘multi-task,’ emotionally.”
“If I had to ‘multi-task emotionally,’ doing what I do,” Suzanne admitted, “I’d probably go crazy. To do the work I do, I have to compartmentalize. I have to keep things separate. If I let things run together…well, Ginny would probably have to find herself another ‘favorite girl,’ I’ll put it that way.”
The conversation veered off into other things—things they had studied in school, places they had been, funny stories about Justin’s business; things not quite as deep as the story of how Suzanne became an escort and how she felt about her profession and her role. Dinner passed into dessert, the most exquisite chocolate mousse that Suzanne had ever tasted. While they dabbed at spoonfuls of mousse, the conversation veered back to the matter soon at hand.
“Have you ever been with a morph before?” he asked.
“I have,” she replied. “Once. In college. My boyfriend was a lycanthrope.”
“Good,” said Justin, smiling subtly. “Experience with a lycanthrope is good. Or with any morph. You know what morph men—straight ones, anyway—are like with females. You know what we like. And what we like best. And how much we like it.”
Their dessert glasses empty, they put down their spoons and traded looks across the table. Suzanne could practically feel Justin getting erect already. She calmed her heart and stopped it racing. She was experienced, after all. She was not a little girl, and she did know what she could expect from this night and the next two days. Justin’s inexpressibly handsome face took on a little bit more of a smile. He stood up, went around behind her to pull out her chair, then offered her his hand, which she took. His hand felt strong and warm and sure. Her heart fluttered just a bit in spite of her best efforts. Justin led Suzanne, hand in hand, down the stairs to the lower area where the bed and the fireplace were.
It was time to take care of business.