Sarah's Education
Authors: Madeline Moore
Contents
About the Book
Sarah’s birthday plan was to taste her first drink and lose her virginity on the same night. When her boyfriend lets her down, she goes ahead with the drink and is mistaken for a call girl, much to her delight. It is the most thrilling night of her life and leads Sarah into regular secret liaisons in top hotels with strange and exciting men, for cash. And Sarah finds she has a natural talent for satisfying her kinky clients’ fetishes. All is well until a sexy, dominant client ignites her deepest desire and then shows up as a professor at her college. Life, already complicated for this student call girl, becomes a heady mix of love and lust as she learns her lessons both in the classroom and over the knee.
About the Author
Madeline Moore is a Canadian author of erotica and a screen writer. In another guise, Madeline’s scripts have been produced by the National Film Board of Canada as well as by a number of Independent Television Producers. Madeline Moore lives in sin with Nexus author Felix Baron near Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Also by Madeline Moore
Wild Card
Amanda’s Young Men
Madeline Moore
1
THE PINK MARBLE
wall was cool to the touch. Sarah trailed her fingertips along it as she ventured further into the brand-new Toledo Royal Avenue Hotel. Great glittering crystal chandeliers lit the huge space. Urns of fresh tropical flowers and exotic fleshy plants created a bright, welcoming look that softened the austerity of the marble and brass décor. If it hadn’t been for the watchful eye of the concierge Sarah would’ve pressed her flushed cheek to the marble to soak up some of the cool. But he was watching, and she suspected she knew what he was thinking: What’s that cheeky little schoolgirl doing in my fancy new hotel?
He couldn’t be blamed. She’d just finished a shift as a tour guide for Seneca University, and the powers that be decreed that their guides wear old-fashioned uniforms of short tartan kilts, crisp white shirts, white bobby socks and black patent Mary Janes.
Her chestnut hair was caught up in two untidy bunches that approximated pigtails. She wore no make-up, not even a coat of mascara on her lashes or a gloss of colour on her lips. Sarah didn’t think she needed make-up – her lashes were thick and her lips were lush and pink. Her eyes, which she considered her best feature, were wide set and such a dark blue that they’d been compared to sapphires (by her dad, true, but still …) and described as navy blue by her boyfriend, David. She’d never felt the need to colour her lids or her cheeks or her mouth – not until now, when she wished with all her heart she could suddenly look like a grown woman, not a little girl. A woman who belonged here.
It would pass. The awkwardness she always felt in new places would fade away as she got used to the hotel, if she lingered long enough. She was tempted to hoist up her knapsack, heavy with books, and turn tail, but she resisted the impulse. It was steamy hot outside, more like the middle of summer than the end. There was nowhere for her to go, nowhere but home to her room or to David’s place, where he, a teaching assistant in the history department, was conscientiously marking the first papers of the fall semester and nursing the first of his winter colds. She flushed with anger. No way.
A loud whoop resounded in the cavernous lobby.
A lobby bar! Sarah’s lucky day, and why not? It
was
her birthday, after all.
She glanced longingly at the exclusive shops that called to her, like sirens, from the right side of the lobby. It would only take ten minutes to pick up the clothes and make-up she needed to masquerade as a woman of means. Ten minutes and a credit card that wasn’t already maxed out, as hers was. No.
Much as she might enjoy the feel of silk or suede against her skin, it wasn’t to be. No more so than a room in this hotel, likely cool and understated, with fresh flowers and a spacious bed made up with luxurious linens and a pristine white duvet, waiting for her to enter and make it hers. No.
But a split of champagne, in the lobby bar? Yes. That she could
almost
afford. That was why she was here. She’d waited for this moment for a long, long while, never once succumbing to the urge to so much as slug back a beer or sip a margarita or a zombie or a screwdriver. She’d had a plan, ever since puberty had ripened her, and she’d kept to it: she’d lose her virginity on the very day she could legally drink, age twenty-one. Not old, but not too young, either. To sip champagne and lose herself in sexual delight – both for the very first time – it had seemed a perfect plan. Worth waiting for. But plans have a way of not working out.
That didn’t stop her from making them. Sarah had a well-ordered mind; she was smart, conscientious and skilled at
absorbing
information and extrapolating possibilities. These skills should have helped her make sense of the world, which she desperately wanted to do. But people rarely behaved as expected; there were so many variables in the real world, too many, in her opinion. Sarah was beginning to think she’d never find her place in it. She would always be a weirdo, an outsider in a world that must make sense to some, but never would to her.
Bah. Just because stupid David had forgotten her birthday didn’t mean she had to suffer all day. With a longing farewell glance at the enticing shops she veered to the left.
Before she could venture into the lobby bar and find a table for one, she was intercepted by the bartender. He held out his hand. For a moment she thought he expected a tip before serving her.
‘ID?’ he asked.
Right. Sarah let her knapsack drop and bent over to root for her wallet. She produced her driver’s licence for inspection, and was gratified when he said, ‘Happy birthday, Ms Meadows.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Your party is right over here.’
Sarah hoisted her knapsack back up and followed. Her party? She glanced around, half expecting to see David at a table, champagne in a bucket and a room key in hand. It would be so great to discover he hadn’t forgotten her birthday, especially this particular one, and instead had arranged a magnificent …
The bartender led her to two thirty-ish men in business suits and three younger, vivacious women. All three were dressed in sexy, sophisticated party clothes; one in a very off-the-shoulder top, two with deep cleavages. Before Sarah could protest, she was greeted effusively by the two men and a chair was pulled out for her.
She sat.
‘I’m Jack,’ said a good-looking man, extending his hand, ‘and this is my partner Bill. You are …?’
‘I’m Sarah.’
‘Glad you could make it – finally,’ muttered one of the women.
‘I got lost,’ Sarah mumbled, not understanding how she could be late for an appointment she hadn’t known she had. Still, in a way it was the truth. After her shift she’d headed into downtown Toledo to pick up the textbooks she’d ordered from Barnes and Noble, using a gift card she’d received for Christmas. It had seemed worth the extra effort to use it, rather than spend cash at the university book store. But, of course, she’d gotten lost trying to get back to campus from the City. She had zero sense of direction. Nothing short of a personal GPS would make it possible for her to go anywhere without winding up spinning in a confused circle, wondering where the hell she was. It always happened. It always made her mad.
Even worse, a young passer-by, a straw-haired, snub-nosed girl in a too-young too-short candy-striped poplin dress, had asked for directions to this very hotel. Sarah had said, in her best tour-guide voice, ‘The Royal Avenue Hotel is about ten blocks south, I think.’ The gum-smacking girl had not been pleased. Five minutes later Sarah had turned the corner to discover the new downtown Toledo Royal Avenue. Some tour guide she was!
‘No problem, no problem,’ said Jack. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘It’s my birthday today. I was planning to order a split of champagne.’
‘Your birthday! Marvellous! Bartender, a magnum of Dom Perignon, please.’
‘I can’t – I couldn’t possibly –’
‘Birthdays come but once a year. And we’re celebrating, right, Bill? We just sold our dot-com company for … well … a great deal of money.’
‘Congratulations.’
Bill piped up. ‘It’s a coup, no less. We set it up just in time to be a thorn in the side of the major web-based industries and, sure enough, one was forced to buy us out. Thanks to Jack, here, we’re set for life.’
Set for life. What must that feel like? Pay off her student loan, her car loan, the repairs to her car … Sarah had no time to further ponder the concept.
Frosted flutes were set in front of everyone. The bartender presented a large, elegant bottle. ‘Dom Perignon, 1998, sir,’ he murmured. Jack nodded, and the bartender twisted the cork free. Jack motioned to the glass in front of Sarah, so she was the first to be served.
‘It’s so pretty,’ she whispered. She couldn’t help it. The pale-yellow liquid bubbled to a white froth on top. Glasses were raised all around.
‘To Sarah,’ said Jack. ‘Happy birthday!’ His dark eyes travelled her body, from her face to her patent Mary Janes, and back. He seemed to like what he saw.
‘And to you, Jack and Bill.’ Sarah glanced from Jack to his bigger, balding partner, and back.
‘And to Andrea and Silky and Me-Me,’ said one of the women. She eyed Sarah suspiciously. ‘To a good time.’
Everyone clinked glasses.
Sarah had her first ever sip of alcohol. Stunning. The champagne burnt her tongue and bubbled up to her brain and down her throat at the same time. ‘Wow,’ she blurted, ‘How delicious.’
‘One would think you’d never tasted champagne before,’ said the dusky, exotic woman whose name, Sarah had gleaned, was Silky.
‘I haven’t,’ she confessed. ‘I’ve never had an alcoholic drink before. I wanted to wait until I could drink legally, and then start out with champagne. But I wasn’t expecting Dom Perignon, nor was I anticipating such a big bottle!’
‘Adorable!’ Jack was clearly pleased with her, even if the young women seemed standoffish. ‘Let me top up your glass.’
He refilled her flute. Expensive foam dribbled down the side. Sarah’s tongue flicked out to catch it. She didn’t want to waste a drop of the precious fluid. This time, she poured a healthy amount down her throat. It didn’t burn her mouth at all, but rather glided down like liquid silk. She giggled.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Jack said in a low, throaty voice.
‘But – the champagne!’ Sarah couldn’t imagine leaving half a magnum of champagne behind. The very thought of it was painful.
‘We’ll take it with us,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s go.’
He stood, as did Bill. The other three women stood as one, and Sarah was left with no choice, really, but to rise as well, though she swallowed the last of the wine in her glass first.
‘Whoop!’ She tottered a bit. ‘This stuff is powerful,’ she squeaked.
‘God, you’re too good to be true,’ said Jack.
‘That’s for sure,’ muttered the woman Sarah knew only as ‘Me-Me’.
Jack tucked the magnum under his arm, which surely wasn’t allowed, yet the bartender did nothing to stop him. He threw a wad of cash on the table. The party of six made its merry way out of the lobby bar and into the elevator. On the way up, Silky pulled Bill’s head down for a long deep kiss, which paused when an elderly couple entered on the fifth floor and resumed when they exited at the tenth.