I have taken a while to write about him, this most recent of my courtesan dates, the fourth of the gentlemen to have had me. My apologies to readers who have been expecting my report sooner.
My delay is due to a conflictedness I felt in the experience with Alan. I find it difficult when a man has sex with me and I walk away not really knowing him. I suppose that’s the life of an escort — intimacy without relationship — but I have expected that my “courtesan form of escorting” would yield more… connection.
To be sure, all my courtesan dates have had me in bed the first night before much relationship has developed, and I am good with that, good in that, as it turns out. But that becomes part of an ongoing process of relationship-building the next day and next night. With the others, there has been a progressive emotional intimacy, and relationship has emerged, making the sexual intimacy meaningful.
Alan was never relationally personal with me. He was aloof and kept me distant. At the end, he revealed a particular disclosure that made me angry. Actually, I cut short our time together, so in part I might be blamed for not giving enough time for a relationship to rebound. But he didn’t seem headed in that direction. Sorry to be cryptic, but he was cryptic with me until the end, so welcome to my party.
And now, I’m not sure how to write about Alan Devers.
I’ve entertained the possibility that I just might not post anything about Alan, skip this one, sit out reporting on this psrticular my courtesan date. Then again, I don’t think that’s fair to him. Alan was not an unlikable man and was only having me as he wished to — distantly — for personal reasons that became clear to me later. And there were good things, to be sure. He is an attractive man and was quite good with me sexually (I mean really good). I feel that if he made more time with him relationally, we might have been good together. But he didn’t indulge me that way, and it all became a bit of a chilly mess.
But I will tell about my time with Alan Devers, after all, for better or worse. Maybe I just feel the need for a complete history of the gentlemen and their times with me.
This occurred on April 16 and 17.
From the beginning, it seemed Alan Devers considered me a call girl that he didn’t want to be seen with. He enjoyed me in bed but otherwise distanced himself from me in public. He knew other people attending the conference, but he didn’t have me with him when he chatted with them. He didn’t attend any social functions with me. We “did the conference” separately. So, there wasn’t opportunity for me as a “social courtesan” with him, to be his companion in his world.
Perhaps he has his reasons, I thought. I understand the stigma that might attach to a man being seen with an escort like me, but still — do people care about that anymore? Further, it’s not like I dress provocatively like a whore on the street luring tricks. Why should he care about being seen with me?
All the same, I’m not saying Alan was cold to me or unlikable. Maybe a little formal, yet personally he was approachable (funny that I have to clarify that a man who has sex with me is “approachable.”) He laughed at my sometimes wry sense of humor, which is usually the key to my heart — and some of my other features. And, as I say, he was good with me in bed.
I try not to compare my gentlemen relationships to each other, but in this one aspect I will. Previously, I had written about Chaz (Jenkins) treating me more like escort than like his courtesan, being more “client-like.” Yet, Chaz was playful with me and social, taking me to dinner with a couple of his colleagues. Yes, I was just his sex companion, not his deep-hearted confidante, but we had time for good conversation and got to know each other, yielding much fun together, privately and socially.
I am having to remind myself that in my courtesan “work,” I cannot expect a scintillating relationship with each and every man. Each will have me on his own terms, according to his own personality. And I know that part of the pleasure a gentleman has with me is in the opportunity to be himself and not have to measure up to some romantic dream date. Some men may simply not be such a meaningful and glorious experience for me.
I guess sometimes there is just “work” in “sex work.”
The event was the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. It’s a forum for big ideas, world trends, and creative initiatives in a kaleidoscope of subject areas. Alan attends on behalf of his company, reporting back to the company leadership — their way of staying current on trends and movements.
One of the side benefits of my courtesan work is that it brings me into these kinds of arenas of knowledge which I would otherwise not be able to sample. With Bill, it was a leadership summit; Chaz had me at a biomedical conference. This conference was eclectic, featuring sessions on climate change and world power shifts and global trends, as well as music and film. A fascinating milieu. At this conference, I sat in on an interesting session on “storytelling in science.” There are perks to being a courtesan at these things.
The conference started on Monday and lasted through Thursday. I met up with Alan on Wednesday afternoon, and the original plan was for me to be with Alan through Thursday night, leaving Friday morning.
But I never anticipated I wouldn’t be with Alan in attending the sessions of the conference. I saw him around, here and there, and he seemed to be doing real research, collecting handouts, papers, and occasionally chatting with people. It became clear he wanted me available just for sex, just when he wanted me, and only in his hotel room. He would text me his plans, where and how we would connect.
Like I was an escort or something.
Alan is a tall man in his late fifties with short gray hair. He has an attractive square-ish face and wears black glasses that gives him the serious look of an executive. He reminded me of the Christopher Reeve version of Clark Kent. Well, an older Clark Kent. Nonetheless attractive, appealing, virile.
All of the gentlemen are twenty years older than me or more, evoking some sense of age differential — I’ve been aware they see me as the young woman who could be their friend’s daughter’s girlfriend, and it seems there’s some illicit excitement in that for them. They like the experience of being with a younger woman.
I have indulged them in that, even played into the age difference as their fantasy (Bill Holt as “grandpa”). But the gentlemen have also shown me another dimension, a boyish side to them, which opens them up to me more personally and casually. It evens the age difference — they become a younger version of themselves, and I become something other than that “friend’s daughter’s girlfriend” — but simply a woman friend they confide in. And that becomes the basis for a fledgling relationship — in the midst of a lot of sex they have with me.
Alan Devers doesn’t have that other “boy gear,” or at least didn’t show it to me. Our age difference never got evened out. He was always the older man, the senior professional. To him, I was always the younger woman, a call girl, a “professional” in that sense.
For these two days, I always felt with him like I was his hidden shame, the friend’s daughter’s girlfriend he was fucking in a misbegotten sexual tryst that he needed to keep secret.
That first night, he texted me to come to his hotel room at 9:00. I walked in with my small lingerie case. He smiled to see me, welcoming me in, and offered me a drink from the mini-bar. He poured me a white wine, and we sat in the anteroom of the suite and talked awhile.
Surface pleasantries, much as I would imagine initial conversations between an escort and client might go. It was about the conference sessions at first. I asked him if he was attending with colleagues, and he said no, not offering more. He mentioned some of the sessions he was planning to attend, and I spoke about wanting to sit in on the storytelling seminar the next day. He was friendly to me but not forthcoming.
I asked about the league of extraordinary gentlemen, when it all got started. I knew some of the history from Master McKenna, but I like hearing each man’s version of the group origins and dynamic. I also hoped it would get Alan talking. It did, and he shared with me some of the history of it, and his first entry into the group, hinting at the bonds that knitted them together. In the moment, I glimpsed a more relaxed and relational side to him.
After a while, Alan paused. “You come highly recommended,” he said. It was an obvious reference to my sexual services.
“That sounds like a lot for me to live up to,” I replied.
He smiled, chuckled. “Well, you look the part.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that. Was he saying that I look like an escort, and what did that mean? Maybe he was complimenting me on my body, which he was about to see in the flesh. It was one of many slightly awkward moments when we were not quite in sync. Maybe the problem was me, I didn’t know.
I managed to offer a demure, “Well, thank you,” and opened my lingerie case. “I brought some special outfits for you, Alan, and you’ll have to choose one for me tonight.” I hoped this might shift him out of his professional airs and get him into his boy mode.
“Sounds good,” he simply said. He bore a tone of professional expectation not boyish eagerness, as if this was my job and he wanted me to get on with it.
I held up in succession each of three sets of lingerie. Alan chose my sheer white robe, a frequent favorite. I think the men like it because it shows all my bare curves as if I’m framed in a window behind a gauzy curtain.
This is the moment when common escort protocol is to ask, “Have you left me a little gift?” and the client points to the table and the envelope stuffed with the money payment. That’s followed by “Give me a minute to change in the bathroom.” It’s the escort ritual.
Well, I don’t have the financial element, but changing in the bathroom is part of that ritual. There, in that private moment standing before a mirror, I feel most like I’m selling my body to a stranger. Which is actually not a terrible feeling to me, but it is a moment of self-reflection, especially because I’m aware this body of mine is about to be used by a man I don’t know.
I felt this more so with Alan Devers. With others, I have been able to look into the mirror and tell myself that I actually like this man and this is an interesting or fun or surprising date. Alan, however, didn’t see me as a date, per se, not as a real woman-friend, but as a sex girl, one whose name he might forget the next day.
I modeled for him in my sheerness, my breasts moving nakedly underneath the white mesh, my promised land showing its fleshy folds as if through a fog. He smiled as he gazed at me, and he held out his hand for me to come to him.
I sat beside him there on the couch in the suite, us both angled toward the other, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulders, placing his other hand against my gauzy robe. As he cupped and squeezed my breast, he leaned close, and we kissed.
He whispered, “You’re beautiful,” but I didn’t take it personally.
He continued to kiss me in fervent hunger, and his hand roamed my body like a man finger-mapping the terrain of one of the conference dioramas, curious with a touch of awe.
Alan unwrapped me from my gauze, consumingly like a man, not giddy-gee like a boy, for he would never share his inner boy with me the whole time. But he opened my shroud and gazed at my naked flesh.
“You look like a dream,” he said.
I said nothing, letting him have his visual pleasure of me.
Alan added, “You have a body to die for.”
“Thank you,” I joked, “but I was hoping there wouldn’t be any violent death tonight.”
He chuckled, but didn’t banter with me further.
That led me to another question that’s part of the escort ritual: “How do you want me tonight?” I ask this of all the gentlemen, but maybe it was more appropriate for the “let’s-get-down-to-it” Alan Devers.
“I want you on your back in bed with your legs spread.” He spoke it without hesitation.
“Oh!” I replied in a surprised laugh. “You’ve been thinking about this.”
“A little.” He grinned, and that was nice to see.
“I’m not sure that’s my best look,” I replied.
“I’m told it is.”
“You boys have to stop talking about me.” I said it with a smile, hoping he would engage me further in my love language of words and sass. But he didn’t. He closed himself again.
Finally I nodded. “As you wish.”
I held out my hand, we stood, and he walked me into my fucking.
So, I’ll say this again: his sex with me was really good.
The bedside light was dim and the room was shadowy and I think I felt him inside me before I saw his manhood. I was plenty wet for him. I could say it was the circumstance — the novelty of being a stranger’s fuck toy — but I often am wet even in other situations, my common state, my almost constant low-grade arousal, like a persistent fever.
In any case, he slid into me easily, extending deep. I remember thinking that it was just that morning we had shaken hands like passing acquaintances, and now he was impaled inside my pussy thick like pudding. It all felt wrong to me, and yet he thrilled me.
This wasn’t love-making, rather sex-making, but for me there was a kind of relieved pleasure in that. He didn’t care to make me a real relationship, so I didn’t strive to make meaning out of it. As I looked across my body, over my mounds, I could see he and I were nothing more but a male cock sheathed in my vagina, his veiny shaft spreading my labia folds and exposing my clit, shiny and moist. Un-relational sex reduces you to an explicit, carnal intercourse of flesh but not of the heart, nothing more than bio-sensation, with no emotional crests and tides to ripple the pleasure. But he wanted me this way, and I gave myself to the meaninglessness of it, for better or worse as in a marriage vow. I would hate myself later for becoming to him nothing more than his warm wet fuck toy. Yet in the moment, there were visceral pleasures galore.
I felt his fullness, his girth stretching me. He was big and felt so lovely good. Alan pushed and pulled his cock back and forth within my vagina in slow strokes, sending me into some faraway la-la-land where I floated for a while, not worrying about the whore that I was.
His fucking of me lasted longer than I expected. I maybe assumed his distancing from me would mean that he’d make quick work of me in bed. But no, he took his time, and that turn out to be… wonderful. Perhaps he felt he’d “paid” for me and was going to get his money’s worth. But actually that’s too harsh on him. He was making with me some really good sex, such as it was.
He was forceful for a time, thrusting me hard, rocking the bed, and making my breasts sway. But later he slowed, pacing himself. We settled into a lovely rhythm, an easy, swollen lust of flesh and flow. My joggling breasts felt hot, flushed with heat. My nipples grew into Hershey’s Kisses.
When he eased back on his thrusts, he changed his angle, I guess, and his intercourse more directly played my clit like a bow on a violin. That aroused me all the more. I clenched the bedsheets.
I didn’t want to come, didn’t wish to give him that. My climax is the most intimate experiences of a relationship, and we didn’t have a relationship. I tried to hold back, just has he had held himself in reserve from me.
But eventually, his fucking of me was too effective. I couldn’t help myself. I gasped, my body bucked. I shuddered into a rolling orgasm.
Maybe prompted by my helpless spasms, Alan tensed and came, and I felt his warm cum shooting deep inside me.
He held me then, his hands full with my breasts, and we fell asleep.
We both roused a little after midnight, awakening into another awkward moment. He didn’t say so, but I sensed he preferred me to leave.
“Maybe I should go back to my room,” I said. It was open-ended, inviting him to choose.
He didn’t say anything, which I took to be an agreement that I should go. Even so, there was something in his non-response that seemed regretful. It was as if he felt it was proper that I leave, yet didn’t want me to.
There’s a meme online that “You don’t pay a prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterwards.” Something like that. Kind of vile, but maybe true in sex work. Maybe as a “proper escort,” it was my time to “leave afterward.”
I was drowsy and still buzzy from our sex and couldn’t make sense of his his vibe. I just collected my things to go.
“This was good tonight,” he said. “Thank you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Apart from any relationship or even the prospect of one, it felt like that he was complimenting me for having a pleasurable vagina. Maybe that’s all I am.
He kissed me at the door, and added perfunctorily that he would like a blowjob from me in the morning. It was like he was ordering breakfast.
In his defense, the other gentlemen have likewise ordered this “from the menu,” and the morning blowjob has become a common practice in my courtesanships. Still the timing of his request surprised me.
“You’ve been talking to the others,” I noted.
“They might have mentioned something.”
I nodded, resigned to this, realizing this was the work of an escort. “So, Alan, what time do you want me for that?”
At 7:30 am, I showed up at his hotel room door. I was dressed in one of my business outfits — black skirt and matching black blazer, with a white blouse underneath. This surprised and excited him — I assume he didn’t expect to see me looking so much like one of his professional assistants.
I soon found myself on my knees in front of a cock and balls that I had barely seen the night before.
I vowed silently that I would not worship his cock. He didn’t deserve to be the lord of my life, though I admit that’s a low bar to achieve — I submit to most anyone. But I wasn’t, apparently, significant to him, even as an “other,” so I would do this without any, let’s say, adoration. (I know these are the games I play when I am made insignificant.)
Yet his cock was full and meaty, and my mouth salivated around it. I loved its velvety head against my lips, and its weight along my tongue. I told myself I would lick it but not kiss it, as if kissing — even a man-cock — was a signal of emotional commitment. And, for a while, I did lick his hard penis, albeit too eagerly, like a girl at Dairy Queen licking an ice cream cone.
But in time, I couldn’t help myself, and I did kiss his cock up and down along its shaft, god help me. In the moment I told myself it was just my technique, this is how I do this, and it didn’t mean anything. Which it didn’t, and yet, to be honest, I kissed his cock with the faint hope that somehow by kissing this one part of this man could prompt him to love me back.
No, no, no, I didn’t want him to love me. I just wanted him to open up to me. And what was that about? Was it just me? Did I want him to open up to me as some sort of confirmation that I wasn’t for him just a bundle of female flesh for him to fuck? Did I long for him in that way as a justification for this that I do with men?
Well, he did “open” up to me — in the form of releasing his thick semen into my mouth. He burst into me there, coating my tongue, leaving droplets of his frothy cum on my lips.
And I couldn’t help but hate myself in the debased pleasure of it.
After, with his cum still on my lips, he suggested we meet up at one of the conference sessions — and that I sit with him.
This confused me to no end. The day before, it felt to me like he couldn’t bear to be seen with me. Now, he wanted me to sit with him. Was this going to get personal after all?
So, I don’t much cotton to passive-aggressiveness in people. As readers know, I can handle most anything someone does or says to me, but I’m not good with passive-aggressiveness. If you don’t like me, say so. If you want to keep me at arm’s length, just tell me why. Do you want to be seen with me, or not? Just decide.
Still, I wasn’t sure Alan was really being passive-aggressive. Maybe this was his decided plan all along —sex first, and if that goes well, then get to know the girl. Maybe he just needed to warm to me first, his fuckings of me making me worthy of a seat beside his throne. Or maybe there was some other purpose I didn’t understand.
So, when he said, “You should sit with me,” in my confusion, I couldn’t help a snarky comment: “Are we going to hold hands?”
He laughed, but it was uneasy, and he didn’t know how to take it.
In the session room, I slipped into his row and asked, “Is this seat taken?” Perhaps I was still being sarcastic, but truly I felt I was playing along with his seeming desire for mutual anonymity. He smirked, and I sat down. No we didn’t hold hands.
We sat through a panel discussion on (no lie) “Reclaiming Human Connection in the Digital Age,” which seemed terribly ironic. I was with a man who wouldn’t let me know him, yet whose man-cum I was still tasting on my tongue.
Every courtesan date seems at first like a terribly long time to be with a stranger, yet as it actually plays out, it isn’t. At least, usually. With the other gentlemen, as I have reported, I have come to really enjoy the man and want to spend time more time with him even after the sex is over, hanging out with him socially and publicly.
But with Alan, I’d had the night and early morning with him, and while the sex was good (actually great), I wasn’t sure how I was going to continue the rest of the day and evening and night only as his sex whore. I began to think about a way I could bow out early, sometime in the afternoon.
I would not feign sickness, for I don’t do that. I would not simply drive away without telling him. I would have to speak with him directly about it, maybe just admit the truth, that he had clearly just wanted sex with me as an escort, had gotten his fucking of me, and so let’s just go our separate ways.
But after that morning conference session, Alan asked to have coffee with me. He had a brief opening in his schedule, he said.
This made me really confused. Now he wanted to talk? At the same time, it presented itself as my opportunity to beg out of the rest of the date-not-date with him.
Cafe Alon is an upscale brasserie at the edge of the university campus. He wanted to meet me there at 11:00. I agreed. Whatever his intentions, it was my way of getting out.
As we sat in a corner, sipping lattes, I was forming the words to beg my departure: I think you’re a very attractive man, Alan, and the sex with you has been amazing. But there’s something about this that isn’t working, and I feel it best that I go home. That was one version. Not sure that will work. I conjured up other versions as well.
However, Alan beat me to it: “Shae, I want you to know something. I realize now I should have mentioned this earlier.”
Surprised, I mumbled, “Okay.”
“I’m at the beginning of a relationship,” he said. “Her name is Dierdre. It has just started, just in the last month. There are no commitments between us. In fact, she is dating other men. But she and I have been seeing each other, and I feel there might be something there.”
This was a confession, of sorts, although his tone was informational not apologetic. My first thought was that Alan was finally confiding in me, sharing about a woman he was fond of. I was happy for him. Then it began to dawn on me what he was getting at.
He went on to say that there were people at this conference in the same circles as he and Dierdre. He didn’t want them seeing him with me. He went on: “I really respect her, and I didn’t want this… with you… getting back to her.” He said it as if it was all very logical: it wasn’t an apology, just news that he had mis-timed in telling me.
And now I felt angry. IFunny that your respect for her didn’t translate into respect for me.
“You’re a beautiful, intelligent, sexual woman, Shae. ”
Here we go…
“Also interesting to be around.”
How would you know?
“This event with you was scheduled long before I met Dierdre. I wanted to keep our date, enjoy you… like the others. And until this past month, I didn’t know Dierdre meant something to me… She would not understand… not approve… of me doing this with… well, you know…”
With a whore.
“So I needed to keep this secret. While here, I felt it best to keep my distance from you socially.”
He stopped there, looking into my eyes for my reaction. He had said it all as something practical, sensible, even virtuous. In his mind, he was being respectful of another woman.
I took a long moment of silence. “You should have told me up front,” I said in a growled hush. “I would have accommodated you, been careful in public. But at least I would have known why you’ve kept your distance.”
Alan nodded. “I realize that now. Which is why I’m addressing the problem.” He said it as if was a badge of honor that he was facing the issue. That he was doing the right thing in finally addressing it.
At this point, I was seething inside, but I tried to remain civil. For all of this mess, Alan was still Master McKenna’s friend. “So, out of respect for this Dierdre,” I said, “you felt it was okay to use me for sex, as long as she didn’t know.”
He blinked, but didn’t pick up on how many ways his thinking was wrong. “Yes,” he replied. “After all, that’s what this is.”
There it was. I was just his whore. He needed to keep me secret. And it didn’t matter if I knew why.
So many thoughts raced through my mind.
I wasn’t upset that Alan had a girlfriend. Good for him. An escort assumes every client has other relationships. She probably expects him to keep her a secret — usually in a hotel room in a far-away city. Should I really be angry about that?
As a courtesan, though, I assume I am something more. I am to be a social companion, and in some ways a confidante. My liaisons with each of the gentlemen are more than a couple of hours of sex in a bedroom but two or more nights and days in a “dating” relationship. I am supposed to be a girlfriend — with benefits, of course — but a girlfriend companion of a kind.
I never expected to be special to Alan Devers, nor did I have illusions about being some significant other. But I also didn’t expect to be marginalized socially, kept out of sight, hidden like a dirty whore.
Yes, I am an escort to be used for sex, but I am a woman even so. His failure to explain his situation with me up front was a manipulation, a way of managing me as nothing more than a sexual opportunity. He wanted the use of my body.
Without the chance of snapshots.
I was in a swirl of conflicting feelings, and I didn’t know what more to say. Technically, I was provided to Alan Devers by Master McKenna. Alan was Master’s friend. I didn’t want to displease Master by how I would handle this. I was pretty sure Master would understand my predicament, but I couldn’t let my anger toward Alan become a permanent rift.
In another example of how Alan and I were out of sync, I was just forming my responses when Alan started talking again.
He mentioned his plans for me later in the afternoon and for the night ahead— bedroom trysts — proceeding as if he’d moved on from the problem. In his mind, he had handled it, handled me, and was on to his next agenda item. That item was his next fucking of me, like he had paid for the time and was now collecting on the remainder due.
I stopped him mid-sentence. “Alan,” I said, “This isn’t working.”
He got quiet.
I said that I understood about Dierdre, and was happy for him with her. I said something about how my being a courtesan is supposed to mean something more social and personal. “But you’ve made me distant from you, Alan. Now I understand why, but you didn’t respect me enough to share that with me up front.”
I also said that this was the reason I didn’t wish to be courtesan to anyone who was married. “You know there’s is a rule about that,” I reminded him. “I’ve never wanted to be disruptive to anyone’s existing relationships… You aren’t married to Dierdre, of course, but the issue is the same — you don’t want her to know about me. That’s a red flag. And that’s the point of the rule. I feel I am hurting this other woman Dierdre. And, Alan, that’s why this should never have happened.”
I had an edge in my voice, but I managed to talk without too much anger spilling out as hot muck. I knew I could have, should have, just slapped him and walked out, but these were complicated circumstances, his being one of the gentlemen and a friend of Master McKenna’s.
“I have a proposal for you,” I finally said. “Let’s conclude this now. I’ll drive home. We had some really good… moments together. The sex was great, it really was. Let’s just leave it at that. All of you gentlemen will have more times with me. When your second opportunity with me comes up, see where you are with Dierdre. If you’re not in any relationship then, I would love to be with you again under different circumstances. We can try this again. Start over.”
It was something like that.
He absorbed my words and said nothing, offering only a reluctant smile. I don’t know if that was a regret that he had hurt me or a regret that he wouldn’t have more sex with me.
I drove home then and there. The hour and a half in the car gave me time to collect myself. I wasn’t emotionally distraught. He hadn’t invested himself in me, and I wasn’t invested in him. No tears. My anger had dissipated, and I was no longer upset, though I still felt I’d been used by the man.
I realize that in my other life as a sex slave, I often am used by dominant men (and women), and that I have no rights to be treated gently. But at the heart of it, being a sex slave is consensual. I am used in the mutual awareness that I am a submissive and the other is a dominant. And even when I am marginalized and demeaned, there’s an underlying respect for me as a submissive woman who gives herself to being dominated.
Being someone’s courtesan-escort is a different role for me. But it too is consensual — or is supposed to be. This with Alan Devers was not. Not that he violated me sexually but that he was concealing his true situation from me, using me in a way I didn’t really know, and thus didn’t consent to. Maybe there’s a technicality in that, but that’s how it felt to me.
By the time I got back to the mansion, I’d worked some of that out. Above all, I actually felt good that I had pushed back with Alan and found the words to end it.
Back at the mansion, I told Master McKenna about everything.
He listened, was fully supportive of me, said I’d done the right thing. He thought my solution was well thought out. Actually, he was more angry with Alan than I was.
He asked if I wanted him to have a talk with Alan, and I said no, it was okay, that I didn’t need retribution. It was all just a misbegotten engagement.
Master said he would talk with Alan anyway. And maybe with all the gentlemen. About the nature of my being a courtesan and not a whore.
There are times I feel I would do anything for Master McKenna.
Then I realize I already do.