DISCLAIMER: This story is an original work of fiction that includes prostitution and late-in-life lesbianism. If either of the latter two things offends you, you're probably better off not reading it. If the former thing offends you, you're probably better off not reading.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
FEEDBACK: To eldritchsandwich[at]gmail.com
Professional Help
By EldritchSandwich
The woman who stood outside Sharon Weist's motel room didn't look like a prostitute.
In the half-hour since she'd called the escort service, she'd sat alone on the edge of the bed, trying to figure out which would be worse, that or the opposite, and now that the woman—girl, really—was standing in her doorway, Sharon decided that this way was worse. All of her experience with prostitutes was via TV and movies: fallen women in the truest sense, clearly strung-out with too much makeup and frizzy hair and ripped stockings. The girl didn't look anything like that. Her race and age were hard for Sharon to pin down, aside from 'non-white' and 'young,' but her face was pretty and her eyes were big and brown, her curly bronze hair was shiny and neatly arranged, and the silver dress glimpsed under her coat, while far, far more risqué than anything Sharon would ever have been caught dead wearing, was clean and attractive. The girl looked nothing like she had been expecting, and that was worse, because if she'd looked like a prostitute then Sharon would have known what her role was, maybe would have even had the stomach to send her home. Instead, she looked like just another young woman going out for a night on the town, and Sharon swallowed. "What's your name?"
The girl smiled lazily. "Darci."
Sharon cleared her throat. "I'm...Jane."
The girl's smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. "Honey, you can call yourself whatever you want."
Sharon flushed, mortified that her pretext of being the dominant party had been broken so early and so easily. "Sharon."
The girl cocked her hip just slightly, baring a long, satiny brown leg through the cover of her coat, and her smile returned; Sharon noticed that it didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Sharon. Do you want me to come in?"
Sharon thought that was strange: not 'Can I,' not 'May I,' but 'Do you want me to.' Was the girl trying to put her at her ease, or was she trying to give her a way out? Either way it was academic. "Yes."
The girl slid past, and Sharon caught a whiff of subtle perfume and felt like crying. The girl looked back over her shoulder as she shed her coat, revealing bare arms and a smooth, naked back. Sharon busied herself with closing the door as the girl made herself at home, only half-because she suddenly felt very plain, middle-aged and saggy. She'd been pretty enough in her day, but that day was decades ago; her hair had spent her twenties going from blond to dishwater brown, her once-bounteous tits were starting to droop, and the rigors of age and motherhood meant her trim body had become host to paunches, cellulite, and all the myriad horrors of middle age. Her throat seized as the thought struck her that it should have been Mark in the motel, not her, cheating on her with a younger, firmer, more lustful woman.
"Would you like a drink?"
Sharon turned sheepishly to find the girl, Darci, leaning against the end table, tilting the neck of the bottle of Scotch Sharon had bought in case she didn't have the courage to go through with it any other way. Sharon shook her head. "Oh. Uh, yeah. I guess. I'm sorry, I should have offered."
The girl was already pouring, eyes focused on the plastic water cup. "I don't really drink." She looked up, and Sharon had to turn her gaze down to the bottle to avoid those liquid brown eyes. "Unless you want me to."
Sharon accepted the cup with a blush, immediately taking a sip and feeling the burn down the back of her throat that only truly cheap booze could provide. This wasn't going at all like she'd planned, in so far as she'd planned at all.
"You seem awfully concerned with what I want you to do."
Sharon glanced up to find that enigmatic half-smile back on her face. "Well, that's pretty much why we're here, isn't it?"
Sharon quickly looked back down and took a much, much longer pull from the Scotch. She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a breath, only to open them again when she felt the cup being lifted from her hand. Her gaze traveled from the girl's slender, manicured fingers up a soft arm to the high, firm mounds of her breasts half-exposed by her dress, then finally to the girl's face. Sharon swallowed; this was as close as she'd been since coming through the door, and the older woman could smell her perfume again. Vanilla and something.
"I've never done this before."
"That's okay."
Sharon watched the girl set the cup back on the nightstand, not refilling it. Every small movement of the girl's wrist captured Sharon's attention, but when she turned back around Sharon shook her head. "I shouldn't be here."
The girl pursed her heart-shaped lips carefully. "I wouldn't be offended. But...I think you called me for a reason."
Sharon licked her lips. Her eyes were locked on the girl's thigh where she leaned against the edge of the bed. "I don't...I don't know what...how do we...how should we start?"
The girl let out a thoughtful hum. "Well...you could start by kissing me." Sharon's eyes snapped up only to be trapped by Darci's. "Or...I could start by taking off my dress."
The girl's hand strayed to the strap on her shoulder, and Sharon's heart and stomach lurched in tandem. She couldn't think about either option without panicking, but at least the former gave her the control, and something told Sharon that she desperately needed to hold on to as much of that as possible. She stepped forward.
The girl was a few inches shorter than she was, meaning that Sharon had to lean down, a sensation she'd never experienced before. Of course, that paled next to the sensation when the girl's lips brushed against hers. Sharon felt a jolt and had to force her feet to stay on the floor and her mouth not to recoil from the alien and distressingly appetizing softness. Neither woman moved her lips, Darci simply leaving her mouth pressed against Sharon's for a few seconds. When she pulled back, Sharon lost control.
The older woman dove back in, one hand threading into the girl's hair and sloppy, open-mouthed kisses the likes of which she hadn't given since she was a drunken, awkward teenager landing everywhere except the girl's mouth. Suddenly, she felt a steadying hand on the side of her neck, warm and dry and smooth, and the wet, satiny lips met hers again. She bucked again when she felt the girl's tongue touch her lower lip and pressed harder against the younger woman's body, her own shaking with current as she felt hard nipples atop soft breasts press into her own and a strong, velvet-smooth leg wrap around hers.
Sharon pulled back to gasp for breath. After the third gasp, she realized she was crying.
She felt the warmth recede, and she looked up to find the girl had settled on the edge of the bed, very carefully not watching her. "I'm sorry," Sharon choked out. "I'm sorry."
"You know...Sharon, most people don't call someone like me just because they have something they need to talk about...but you wouldn't be the first."
She dabbed at her eyes, and when she opened them she found the girl looking at her. She didn't cross to the bed—that would have been too complicated in a number of ways—but simply dropped down to sit against the wall, letting the brown eyes pin her there. She took a deep breath, and found to her horror that she could still smell the girl's perfume on her own skin.
"Two weeks ago, my daughter came out of the closet."
Sharon glanced up, expecting something, anything, but the girl was still watching her steadily. Sharon sniffed. "There was...is this...girl she met in one of her gymnastics classes. And they didn't want to lie to anyone, so..."
Sharon took a deep breath, gaze focused on the girl's calves; the sympathy in her eyes was too much. "She wanted to tell me before she told her father. She brought this girl home and I...I just started screaming at them. These awful, unforgivable things. And then...halfway through, I just started crying. Because I realized..." She let out a shuddering exhalation. "I realized I'd been living a lie for over thirty years. That I'd been telling myself I felt what I was supposed to for my husband, for...for all men. That that was all there was." Her head shook softly. "And then I got slapped in the face with..."
She trailed off, giving way to absolute silence: silence enough that she could hear Darci's lips popping repeatedly as she opened and closed her mouth, trying to decide what, if anything, to say.
"How old's your daughter?"
Sharon sniffed. "Sixteen." She risked a glance up to find the girl's eyes still glued to her. "I just...I think about her, and I can't help but imagine that...what if I had been half as brave, half as aware as she is at her age? My entire life...everything would have been different. Wouldn't it?"
The girl shrugged helplessly, and Sharon chided herself for expecting anything else. She licked her lips. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"You've...I mean, the esc...the service, they knew I was a woman, and they sent you, so you must have...you've..."
Just for a moment, the girl's smile resurfaced. "Yeah, I've worked with women."
"Do you...do you prefer, or..."
Sharon was surprised when a bitter laugh escaped the girl's lips. "I don't even really think of it that way, I guess. Not anymore. Maybe if I'd met someone in high school, you know? But now...it's all just business."
"But...but I mean what's it like? Is it...better?" Sharon blushed as soon as the question left her lips, but the girl just smiled.
"I don't know. I guess I can see where being with a woman who knows what she's doing would be hard to beat. But...well, most of the women I...work with are like you, I mean, they're either bored or curious, but they don't really have a lot of experience."
"But what about them, do they...do they like what you do?"
The girl shrugged. "Sure. Most of them. Some of them realize it's not for them."
Sharon risked looking up to meet her eyes again to find that all the seduction was gone and the half-smile had faded to melancholy. "Are you...should you be telling me all this?"
For a split second, a genuine grin gave Sharon a view of straight, white teeth. "No. I'm supposed to tell you how much I want you, and how hot you make me, and how good I can make you feel."
"So why aren't you?"
And just like that, the smile was gone again. "Because I don't think that's what you need." The girl slid to her feet, skirt drifting daintily down to cover her thighs. "And...I don't think you really need me here."
Sharon blinked. The girl's rising made her realize that she was still huddled against the wall, and she scrambled to her feet. "What? But...you said that..."
"Look, I get a lot of curious women who just want to try it once. But that's not really you, is it?" Sharon couldn't really respond as the girl walked back over to her coat, and Darci met her wide-eyed gaping with a soft smile.
Sharon was helpless to move as the girl crossed to her purse sitting next to the TV, rooting around until she found the wallet and held up two folded bills. "One hour. Cheaper than therapy, right?"
Sharon walked numbly to the door, holding it open as the girl brushed past and her perfume hit Sharon one last time. "Wait!"
The girl turned on her heel, framed in the doorway like she had been when Sharon had first opened it. Sharon swallowed. "I just wanted to...I don't know what to do."
The girl licked her top lip. "Sharon...why'd you call me here tonight?"
Sharon blushed. "I just...I thought that I had to...I didn't know how else to...go through with this. I needed to know."
The girl paused, then stepped back into the room and closed the door. Before Sharon could speak, the girl's coat was on the floor and her thumbs were looped through the straps of her dress.
When she pulled down, Sharon sucked in a breath; she'd been so conspicuously not looking at the girl's chest that she hadn't realized she wasn't wearing a bra.
Now, Sharon couldn't stop staring, her heart lurching into her throat. The girl's breasts were high and tan and perfectly round, with smooth, nut-brown areolas and long, thin nipples. Sharon didn't realize she was squeezing her hands into fists to keep from reaching out until one of the girl's fingers hooked around hers. "Do you want to touch them?"
Sharon didn't answer, just reached out a trembling hand. When it hit soft, yielding flesh, she groaned, arousal hitting her like a wave. The girl sucked in a breath, but she didn't move as Sharon's left hand came up to weigh the other breast. Sharon squeezed experimentally, pressing her fingertips into the skin lightly. Her hands felt like they were on fire, a fire that was spreading between her legs.
The girl's hand wrapped gently around Sharon's, guiding her fingers to wrap around a prominent nipple. Sharon pinched the bud softly, and the resistance under her fingers and the girl's little gasp sent a shot of liquid heat between her legs.
"Is this what you want?" the girl murmured, and Sharon could only nod helplessly, tears building in the corners of her eyes. Yes. Yes, this was exactly what she wanted, and she hated herself because she knew what that would mean.
"Do you want me?"
Sharon swallowed. "Yes." Yes, the girl was the first person she had ever, really admitted to wanting. Images came to her mind unbidden of other girls, the ones she'd looked at too intently or not-looked at too conspicuously. She remembered her husband's secretary, the giggly blonde one she'd for some reason been so certain he'd been fucking even though Mark would never have done that, the young widow who used to live next door to them and always worked in her garden in cutoffs, the college roommate who'd thought nothing of parading around in her underwear and who'd said nothing when she caught Sharon staring.
A rustling sound made Sharon look up to find that the girl was fully dressed and back by the door. "I should really go."
Sharon blinked; between the arousal and the tears, she was ready to burst at the slightest touch. "But...why? I thought..."
The girl smiled gently, genuinely. "Sometimes I get hired for these guys...these boys whose friends get them a hooker for their eighteenth birthday." She shrugged as she opened the door, never taking her eyes off of Sharon's. "I'm not a romantic or anything, but...your first time shouldn't be with a whore in a motel room."
Sharon blushed at the frankness of it all, stark white light throwing into relief what she'd been about to do. "I just...I don't know what to do."
The girl smiled that enigmatic half-smile. "Maybe you should ask your daughter?"
Sharon let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sob. Darci leaned in, her lips brushing against Sharon's one last time. "Look...whatever happens...it's not your fault. You didn't try to hurt anyone, you know?" Her fingers brushed against Sharon's on the door handle. "It'll be okay."
Sharon let the door slip closed behind her. When it did, the room was silent again. She pressed her forehead against the wood and sucked in a breath.
Back at home, Mark and Allie were probably asleep by now. He'd been working later and later, mostly to stay away from the drama between mother and daughter, and Allie had been staying out with...what was her name, Leah...for the same reason. Sharon let out a slow, shaking sigh. She'd have to talk to them both eventually.
Slowly, she walked back to the nightstand, tipping the still mostly full bottle of Scotch into the trash.
She'd talk to Allie first.
The End