Yours for the Night

An exclusive and secret agency, for over two hundred years Courtesans has specialized in providing entertainment of a sexual nature. Its clients are rich, powerful, and influential men and women, and one only meets a courtesan through referral from trusted sources. Courtesans facilitates bringing together men and women to satisfy any sexual need imaginable, matching the perfect courtesan with just the right client. The agency prides itself on training its courtesans, male and female, to interpret and fulfill its clients greatest fantasies, even the secret ones no one dares to say aloud. The price is high, but everyone who’s ever had the pleasure of a date with a courtesan will agree, the fantasy is worth every penny.

Yours for the Night (Book 1)

Transformed into mistresses of the night, three women discover that sometimes fulfilling your deepest desire is the most dangerous thing you can do…

Raised to believe that the only measure of self-worth is money, being a courtesan gives Marianna Whitney value beyond her wildest dreams in “
The
Girlfriend Experience
.” She discovers a world where she holds the key to unlocking a man’s fantasies—until one of her “dates” opens her eyes to the delight of complete surrender to her own fantasy...

Devastated when her husband leaves her for a younger woman, all Dominique Lowe wants is “
Payback
.” Becoming a courtesan and having her pick of men is the perfect revenge. But when she meets a man determined to resist her, she wonders what she’d be willing to give up to make him hers…

In “
Triple Play
,” three divorces have taught courtesan Noelle St. James that her sexual appetite is far too insatiable for any one man. But even she is shocked by her newest patron, who wants to prove that one man can give her everything she needs…

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Skullestad.

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Heat trade paperback edition / November 2009

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haynes, Jasmine.

Yours for the night / Jasmine Haynes.—Heat trade pbk. ed. p. cm. eISBN : 978-1-101-14914-0

I. Title.

PS3608.A936Y68 2009

813’.6—dc22 2009019532

http://us.penguingroup.com

To Linda Simi, for all the brainstorming over the years

Thanks to Jenn Cummings, Terri Schaefer, Kathy Coatney, and Rita Hogan, for always being there to keep me flying straight. To Renee Bernard, for telling me about the wonders of port, and Janice Beach, for letting me borrow her gambler’s chain. To Bella Andre, Shelley Bates, and Pam Fryer, for the writing days and the unending support. To my agent, Lucienne Diver, and my editor, Wendy McCurdy.

The Girlfriend Experience

THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE

7

The Girlfriend Experience

1

“I AM NOT BAILING YOU OUT AGAIN.”

“I’m not asking for a bailout, Dad. I’m asking for a small loan.” Marianna had paid back every loan he’d ever given her. With interest, both monetary and emotional.

Asa Whitney rocked heel to toe in front of the picture window overlooking San Francisco Bay, hands clasped behind him like Captain Ahab searching for a whale to harpoon. She was pretty sure he wasn’t admiring the water sparkling in the bright sunshine. January in the Bay Area could be short-sleeve weather, a respite before the rains of February.

Marianna wasn’t in a position to enjoy either the view or the weather.

“You’re thirty-five, Marianna. At some point, you have to start taking care of yourself.”

As usual, he’d made her feel like she was fifteen. “I take care of myself. I just had some extraordinary expenses this month—”

Her father cut her off with a slash of his hand. “Enough.” He turned toward her, gray eyes glittering, hard and cold as the bay. Tall, with a full head of steelcolored hair, at sixty-two he was imposing, autocratic, and omnipotent, with the ability to slice her to ribbons. “That’s where the old cliché about saving money for a rainy day comes from.”

She bit down on a curse. It wouldn’t help. “The Bay Area is a very expensive place to live, Dad, and you and Mom didn’t want me to move to Nevada last year when I had that job offer.” Marianna knew that was a cheap shot, but she didn’t take it back. She would have despised Las Vegas. She hated hot places.

“Your mother didn’t tell you to buy those choo-choo shoes.” He pointed at her blue suede Jimmy Choos, which, by the way, were more than a year old. She’d gotten them at Nordstrom’s half-yearly sale for a steal at 75 percent off.

“I’m in sales, Dad, I have to dress for success.” How did he even know they were Jimmy Choos? Oh yeah, Mom loved her Choos as much as Marianna did.

“Dressing for success obviously hasn’t helped you.”

He always managed to push the right button, making her feel worthless. A failure. A total fuckup. In the world according to Asa Whitney, she should be married, driving the kids to soccer practice in a Porsche SUV, and living in 8

The Girlfriend Experience

Atherton. Or better yet, in Pacific Heights, in the same building as her parents.

“Why can’t you be more like your sister?”

She knew he was going to say that. Everything was about money and the lifestyle one could afford. Marianna, however, had graduated from college with a degree in library science, and she’d gotten a job right away. She loved books; she loved reading them, touching them, talking about them. She especially loved the kids’ reading groups, where she’d gotten the little ones to fall in love with books. She’d adored her job. Except that in the Bay Area, you couldn’t live on a librarian’s salary. In San Francisco, you couldn’t even afford a studio, let alone a room in someone else’s house. Unless you liked bed lice in the Tenderloin district.

So she’d run into a money problem. Her dad helped her out. On the condition that she find a career with a better pay scale. Five career changes later, she was still looking for the magic combination that would please her while making her father proud of her at the same time. One of San Francisco’s elite, a pillar of the business and social communities, her father knew everyone who was anyone, and she was his embarrassing disappointment.

“Dad, I honestly can’t help it that the economy is in trouble and the real estate market has taken a nosedive.”

“I told you that you were getting into it three years too late. If you hadn’t taken so long to get your real estate license . . .” He let the sentence dangle. If, if, if. If she’d remained a librarian and moved to Kansas, where she could afford a house. If she’d gotten away from her father so he didn’t micromanage every decision she made. If her Beemer hadn’t taken a rock to the windshield. If the tiny chip hadn’t become a fissure that snaked across the driver’s side. If this weekend she hadn’t gotten a fix-it ticket for it. She survived the cracked radiator by filling it up with water all the time. Not to mention the bald tires she shouldn’t be driving on. But if she told her dad about all the issues with the car, he would go into the whole lecture about how he’d told her to lease instead of buy in the first place.

“I promise this is the last time I’ll ask.”

“You’ll have to find another way.” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “You could sell some of the shoes in your closet.”

She tried not to take a deep breath, because he’d accuse her of sighing to try to make him feel guilty. But she knew Asa Whitney was not going to feel guilt. 9