“Yeah, I had everything. Which was, of course, why I now reclined on a rented, rock-hard, queen-size bed, waiting for a male prostitute to show up.”

“No, not a prostitute. An ‘escort’ … An ‘Escort’ who’d meet me in a hotel room and do anything I asked in exchange for three hundred prepaid dollars. Not a prostitute at all.”

“I'll give you some credit," he said with a sneer. "You don’t look like a prostitute.”Austin shrugged. “I don’t usually wear the fishnets and garish makeup on my day off.”

“There’s sex, and there’s…this.” He met my eyes. “Just being with someone like this. This isn’t something that can be bought or sold, and I couldn’t manufacture it for someone no matter how much they tried to pay me for it.” He ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “That’s why I’m here tonight. Because I needed this. And here, with you, is the only place I can get it.” He swallowed hard. “Or give it.”

“I had never considered myself to be multi-orgasmic, but Sabian either assumed I was or decided I would be.”

“Lovemaking was fine and good, and someday, when a man came along with whom I connected enough for that to happen, fine. For now? I craved sheet-mangling, shoulder-clawing, headboard-pounding fucking.”

“Any man for her had better be well-dressed, well-groomed, and well-hung, and if he couldn’t get her off at least twice with his mouth, she wouldn’t return his calls. Couldn’t imagine why she was thirty-nine and still single.”