There are ass men and there are breast men. I can appreciate a beautiful ass or a nice rack. The blood in my veins is red, after all. But what I really am, what drives me absolutely crazy, what seems obscene even though women walk around with them in full view, are freckles. There’s something about them, the way they scatter over skin, the knowledge of the other places they must cover, that makes me hard as a rock. I have this primal instinct to map the constellations on Bea’s body.

Her black dress covers more than it shows. The fabric reveals an hourglass figure that I would love to run my hands along, but we aren’t close to that. And above the high neckline, that’s where the freckles begin. Only a shade darker than her natural skin color, which is pale.

Pale enough to turn a charming pink whenever she’s nervous.

“Thank you for coming,” she says, pink all the way from the point of her nose to her neck. I would bet tonight’s entire fee, which is sizable, that the pink extends across her breasts.

Everything about her is closed, her legs pressed together where she perches on the armchair, her lips clamped shut as if to keep herself from saying more. In contrast I’m a study in openness, my ankle slung over my knee, arm stretched across the top of the sofa.

“It’s my pleasure,” I assure her. “I’m touched that you trust me in your home.”

She glances around, as if considering for the first time that she ought not have invited me inside. “We could get a room downstairs, maybe. Unless they’re sold out.”

“I’d rather be where you’re most comfortable.”

She gives a small laugh of embarrassment. “I’m not sure I’m capable of being comfortable.”

“Shall we call down for dinner?” I offer, mostly because the opportunity to eat and drink and breathe will help soothe her. But also because it will give me more time with her, this woman who may hold the answers to my long-held questions.

“No, thank you.”

“We could go out. I know a lovely bistro not two blocks away.”

She shakes her head, almost stricken. “No.”

Such refusal, this one has. Such determination.

Her eyes are wary, watching as I stroke the brocade fabric of the sofa leisurely. It’s almost like she expects me to lunge at her, to rip her clothes away without any discussion. Of course, I would most enjoy that, if I thought she wanted me to do it.

My curiosity is a living, breathing presence in the room. I want to unravel her secrets. Why does the idea of leaving make her anxiety spike like a tangible blaze in the air?

I decide to go for frankness. “You’re a lovely woman, Bea. It would be an honor to spend the evening with you, but I have to be honest. I don’t usually work for clients as young as you.”

A blink. “You don’t?”

One shoulder lifts. “The CEO of a multinational corporation who realizes she’s spent more time on work than building a social life. A divorcee who wants to experience pleasure without resentment. They are the usual, but I have a feeling those don’t quite apply to you.”

“Not exactly,” she says, cheeks almost cherry pink.

The cat has found a perch on top of an old roll-top desk, her yellow eyes trained on me. I don’t mind one female looking at me. Don’t mind two. To be honest I have a bit of the exhibitionist in me, one of the many reasons I’m in the perfect profession. I know without looking that my shoes are perfectly shined, my bespoke suit conforming effortlessly to my body. Bea’s green gaze, both nervous and curious, is the best foreplay I could want.

“I don’t need to know what led you to call me, certainly not the details of your circumstances, but it would help if I knew what you expect out of our evening.”

“Oh God,” she says on a groan. “I’m screwing this up, aren’t I? There’s probably a secret handshake or something and I don’t know it. You must think I’m insane.”

I shake my head, slow and slight. “No secret handshake, I promise. There’s only you and me, having a conversation about pleasure.”

The word seems to take her aback. “Pleasure?”

“That’s the nature of my business, yes.” My body tightens, because it would be pleasure indeed to touch this woman. To kiss her. To make her moan for me.

Although I might have to rethink that plan, because the word pleasure might as well have been medieval torture based on the way Bea looks at me. “I thought we were going to have sex.”

She sounds so forlorn it could break my heart.

Instead I laugh, a small huff of breath, because I can’t afford to have a heart.

“Sex,” I say, standing to full height, circling the scuffed oriental coffee table, standing behind her chair. “And pleasure. Pleasure and sex. They’re interchangeable.”

I brush my knuckles over the side of her neck, a demonstration. Her wild curls tickle my skin.

It’s provocative, this. If she had agreed to dinner I would have started with small touches, a glance of my palm against the small of her back as I pulled out her chair, holding her hand while we talked over a glass of wine. Perhaps being so bold as to run a finger along the inside of hers, where it’s more sensitive. She would shiver; her gaze would meet mine.

There’s an order to these things. You can move fast or slow, but there’s still an order.

“We can skip the pleasure part,” she says, her voice high, her breathing faster. Her chest rises and falls in the black dress, made all the more alluring by how much it covers. She’s a mystery. The black sky in the city. I have to work to see her secrets.

“No,” I chide gently. “We focus on the pleasure. That’s the point.”

“What if—” Her breath catches as I drop the back of my hand over her collarbone, a reverse caress. That’s what one does for a skittish creature like her. “What if I have a different point?”

“And what point would that be, my sweet Bea?”

“I want to lose my virginity,” she says, so fast it comes out as a single word.

IWANTTOLOSEMYVIRGINITY. It takes my lust-warmed brain a full minute to comprehend. She’s not only nervous, this woman. She’s a virgin.

My hand freezes. I yank it away. “Pardon me?”

I can’t have heard her correctly. There is no chance in hell that this beautiful young woman, as strange and interesting as she is, is a virgin. No chance in hell that I was the one tasked to be her first. I could not possibly spread her legs and thrust inside her, knowing that no one’s ever been there. It would be a physical impossibility. Never. No possible way.

“It doesn’t have to take long,” she says, suddenly earnest. Almost begging me. “I don’t need…you know…whatever you do for other women. I only want the sex.”

My God. “You are insane.”

A scrunch of her nose. “Well, you don’t have to sound too surprised. It is what I requested when I called. The woman said that’s what you do.”

“I’m not taking your virginity.” On some level I might have guessed this about her. If I had considered it even possible, I might have. Virgins don’t hire me. They stammer and giggle and turn away from me, their protective instincts strong enough to send them in the opposite direction. So perhaps I can be forgiven for not recognizing this one, so forthright.

Bea frowns. “Is that a different department or something?”

She’s mocking me. She’s mocking me for being, well, prudish, and I feel strangely buoyant. I could float away with the absurdity of it. “Yes, it’s a different department. The department of a frat boy who fumbles around in the dark.”

“Are you seriously not going to do it?”

The irony is enough to flatten me, that this is a woman I might have pursued outside this job. She would have been too young for me, even if I weren’t an escort and she wasn’t my client. That wouldn’t have stopped me from wanting her.

But in another incarnation, if I had been one of those fumbling frat boys, I would have followed this woman to the ends of the earth. That’s a hypothetical scenario on multiple levels, but I’m good at hypotheticals, which is another reason I’m good at my job.

So good that I please every single client I’ve ever had.

Until this one, apparently.

“I’m seriously not going to do it.”

A small line forms between her eyes. “Is it because I’m, you know. Not pretty enough?”

There are about a thousand ways that I’m beneath the woman in front of me. The fact that she might think I’m turning her down makes me want to flay my skin off.

Well, technically I am turning her down. “It’s for your own good.”

And then she makes a sound. Kind of like ugh but more annoyed.

“Look, I don’t know what made you call to the agency, what made you think your first time should be a transaction instead of a meaningful experience, but I will not help you do it.”

“Is this because I said no pleasure?”

I glare at her. “You must insist on pleasure. Regardless of who you’re with.”

“From a fumbling frat boy?” She sounds dubious. “It seems to me that if you were really concerned with making my first time pleasurable, you would be the one to do it.”

There’s only one thing I find sexier than freckles, and it’s a sharp wit. I am ready to get on my knees for this woman, even as I know I should walk away. In short, I am screwed.