The Night Off Read Online Free PDF Page B

respite.
    She had just done something completely unplanned, something so far outside her norm that she didn’t know how to feel about it. She’d asked Emily Parker to penetrate her. Sure, it was only her tongue, and yeah, Emily had been on her knees in submission at the time—but still. She didn’t demand that from clients. Ever.
    Penetration was something she occasionally enjoyed, but only when she was alone. There was a time when she’d had sex with men for money, and that act was rarely negotiable. She’d never liked how it made her feel. These days, she could choose her clients—women only—and set her own limits, so she no longer did anything that made her feel vulnerable. Being penetrated was an intimacy she had chosen to reserve for someone she genuinely trusted, should that woman ever come along. Despite her admittedly rough past, Nat still held out hope that she would appear.
    A half hour with a client wasn’t nearly enough time to build trust, so her impulsive command to Emily baffled her. As good as this particular client was with her mouth, as perfectly cute and sweet as she seemed, Nat didn’t understand why she had so easily lowered her defenses.
    On paper, Emily Parker was her dream client. Her sexual turn-ons almost perfectly complemented Nat’s—where she liked taking charge, Emily clearly yearned to have her own sense of control stripped away. Reviewing Emily’s file had actually excited her, which didn’t happen often. The photograph that Janis had taken during their initial appointment revealed a very pretty girl-next-door—blond-haired, brown-eyed, with light freckles spattered across her nose. Nat would notice her across a room, but never approach someone like her.
    Emily Parker appeared to be a preschool teacher, or a cupcake decorator in a chic bakery, or something similarly innocent and good-natured. In other words, she appeared to be Nat’s polar opposite. While Nat found that wildly attractive and infinitely exciting, she was fairly certain that a woman like Emily wouldn’t be interested in someone like her—at least not for more than a one-night stand. And as ironic as most people seemed to find it, she wasn’t really into casual sex.
    Hoping to walk off her strange lapse, Nat headed for the kitchen. She craved a beer, but would have to settle for water. Drinking was strictly forbidden during work, not that she was much of a drinker, anyway. She’d engaged in her fair share of stupidity as a teenager, but at nearly thirty, she’d outgrown the easy escape of sex and substances.
    She pulled two bottles of water out of the refrigerator that Janis kept fully stocked. This condo was one of a few that the Xtreme Encounters agency leased for all-night appointments, and it was a nice place, if a bit more posh than Nat would choose for herself. Her clients seemed to love it, though.
    On her way out of the kitchen, she glanced at the counter where she’d left Emily’s file. She reached to pick it up, then stopped. Having already memorized its slim contents—the questionnaire, the health-screening results, the adorable snapshot—she knew it didn’t contain any answers. Nothing in there would tell her why Emily Parker affected her so powerfully.
    Asking for penetration hadn’t been her first lapse. The first was in the car, when Emily had asked her name. She never gave her real name to clients. Never, until tonight. It had just fallen out of her mouth, as though her brain were insisting that Emily should know something real about her. She’d surprised herself with the disclosure. Perhaps she’d done it because Emily seemed so nervous. Maybe she’d been trying to comfort a woman who clearly didn’t have a lot of experience with this type of thing. Whatever the reason, revealing something so personal was out of character.
    Two extensions of unearned and instinctive trust to a perfect stranger in one night. Nat snorted. She almost felt like a kid again.
    Forcing away her slight