Sarah's Education by Madeline Moore Read Free Book Online

–’
    ‘No.’ A smile played on Veronica’s lips. ‘The day after tomorrow is this Friday. A week from this Friday is next Friday.’
    ‘I get confused. I’m sorry.’
    ‘Don’t be. It’s rather appealing, actually.’
    ‘Just the once?’
    ‘That’d be up to you.’
    ‘And if Jack comes back?’
    ‘If he comes back looking for you, I’ll contact you immediately. You wouldn’t be the first of my girls to land a man that way.’
    Sarah stood up, shoulders back, and looked Veronica straight in the eyes. ‘I’ll do it.’
    ‘Then I’ll explain the details of my client’s requirements, so there’s no misunderstanding. At eight o’clock, a week from Friday, that’s nine days from today, you’ll go to …’

4
    ON THE WEEKEND , David, as pitiful as a whipped puppy, begged Sarah for a date. She suggested he stay home and nurse his cold, but agreed to see a movie with him early in the week. He thanked her for her concern and didn’t suggest, as he would’ve not long before, that she come to his place and nurse him back to health. She spent the time studying. She’d decided to do a paper on ‘Love’, for her epistemology course, starting with Plato’s definitions of
eros, philia
and
agape
and moving to more contemporary considerations of the possibility, or impossibility, of a knowledge of love.
    The closest Sarah had come to the kind of thing described by the sages was her night with Jack, though maybe she was confusing lust with love. Sarah didn’t think so, but her academic mind insisted she explore the possibility, and so she would, for a credit.
    David took her to the movies on an off-night when the theatre was almost empty. They sat in the back row. She knew what that meant, and so, obligingly, she buttered her hand from the tub of popcorn and jerked him off.
    When they parked under the Crimson King maple, he had to content himself with a few tepid kisses.
    Well, what did he expect, for free?
    Sarah went in and up to her room, grateful for her lonely bed. Tonight, as she did every night, she relived her time with Jack in detail until lust overtook her and her fingers played at being his fingers and brought her release. Whenever she remembered something she’d forgotten before, she felt a frisson greater than anything she’d ever felt with David. Anyone would think, to see her writhing on her bed mumbling, ‘Jack, come back,’ that she was half-crazy. But no one ever did see her, so she was safe.
    Someday she’d share a bed with the man of her dreams. Until then, she’d sleep alone, not bitter, but young, female and free.
    Sarah ‘mmm-d’ her lips. She’d purchased make-up with some of her money, just as her mother had suggested, though not with the intention her mother had had in mind, but Ms Veronica had told her to keep her make-up ‘invisible’, just clear lipgloss, a delicate brush of blush and the faintest trace of eyeliner. She had been told to look younger rather than older and to wear her page’s uniform.
    Well, here she was, outside the hotel-room door, ready for her debut as a genuine, deliberate, not accidental escort. To be honest, as a call girl – even if she had been promised there would be no physical contact. That didn’t mean that her ‘date’ wasn’t to be a sexual one. From what Ms Veronica had told her, it was certainly going to be that, in a weird way.
    She asked herself how she felt about doing what she and Classique were to be paid two thousand dollars for, and decided that she was both excited and nervous, like a virgin bride. In a way, she was a virgin, where this sort of sex was concerned. She’d never even watched porn, apart from what her sister sneered at as ‘soft core’.
    She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and rapped on the door. Seconds later, it was opened by a big sandy-haired man, in his mid-forties, she guessed, who looked like he’d been something of a jock in college, a line-backer, maybe, and who was just beginning to