Page 25 of Sapphire Storm

“Watching someone eat?”

Ethan nodded. “The first few bites. If I’ve done my jobwell.”

Looking self-conscious and nothing like the guy he’d been inthe penthouse suite, Roman cut off another bite, added some spinach to the forkand chewed. “I guess it’s like you said back at the hotel.”

“How’s that?” Ethan asked.

“You like making people feel good.” When Ethan nodded, Romanswallowed. “Was it the same with…uh…escorting?”

Time for that plate,he thought, rising to fixhimself some food. Interesting that he was less comfortable talking about hisown relationship to his old job than he was his fake relationship with Roman’sfather. “It was. Very much so.”

“I bet some of it was gross, though.”

“Gross?”

He took a seat, cut himself a big bite and chewed.

Roman chewed as well. “You know…Unattractive men, women.”

“Attractive’s subjective, and I didn’t get a lot of women.They were in a few group settings I worked, maybe a married couple every nowand then. But I didn’t have any consistent female clients. The truth is, if awoman just wants sex and doesn’t care who it’s with, she can whistle it up inpretty much any bar on earth. And if she wants something more, an escort’s notgoing to do it.”

“That’s kind of binary, don’t you think?”

“It was my experience. What can I say? I didn’t have a rule.They just never called.”

“You must have had some rules though, right? Like nokissing.”

Ethan shook his head. “That’sPretty Womannonsense.Sometimes a nice, deep kiss was a great way to shut up a really annoyingclient.”

Roman smiled and wiped his mouth. “You’re deflecting.”

“From what?”

“Come on. Some of it had to be gross.”

“Why? Why did it have to be gross, Roman?”

Roman glowered at his food, but it was clear the nourishmenthad taken some of the edge off him, even as they strayed close to a verydangerous topic. “I tried it once. Sort of.”

“Escorting?”

Roman nodded at his plate, quickly forked another bite intohis mouth, and chewed with too much force. “I’d just moved to LA and thingswere rough. I was getting all this attention on social media, so I dropped outof school. Figured I’d put a bunch of private clients together and be trainingMark Wahlberg in no time. Woo-hoo! Instead I had two guys for a year—one alwayscanceled just outside the cancelation window, and the other kept offering memore if I let him…do stuff. He said it would just be a massage with a happyending. But I knew it wasn’t going to stop there. He was a forceful guy. Alawyer for one of the TV studios.”

“They’re the worst. So did you do it?”

Roman shook his head. “I freaked out on the front stoop ofhis house the night of our firstenhancedsession. I ran off and nevercalled him again. So I lost his regular sessions too. After that it was a lotof catering gigs and temp jobs until I could get hired at a gym.”

“That means it wasn’t for you.”

“But it was for you?”

Ethan saw a slide show of the nights when he’d enjoyed it.Feeling tight bodied and indestructible as he marched through the lobbies offine New York hotels, pockets full of fresh cash, dressed in designer labelsbought for him by the client he’d just left with a smile on his face. Nightswhen he felt beautiful and untethered and free, like taking all the shame outof sex meant there was no situation he couldn’t sleep his way out of.

He saw Zach Loudon, his old New York roommate from thesix-person crash pad he’d landed in on his desperate arrival in New York. When Ethanhad worked up the nerve to ask the long-limbed, blond Adonis how he always managedto have a new cell phone and come home most nights bearing Dean & Delucatakeout when the rest of them were flat broke, a twinkle had come into theguy’s crystal blue eyes, and he’d offered to show him. Showing him meantmentoring him, and mentoring him meant Zach doing things to Ethan’s body thathe’d never had done before, things his clients loved, things that made his eyesroll back into his head and had him gasping Zach’s name.

After that came the cautions and the rules.

Never, under any circumstances, accept a beverage a clienthas prepared for you. Not even bottled water. No telling what they might havespiked it with and where you’d end up by the time you came to.

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