It was time.

He’d harbored this decidedly unhealthy obsession for far too many years. It wasn’t as if he’d been brought up in the Church, but when he thought about it, maybe that was the root cause.

His best friend Geoffrey had gone to Catholic school. Although he hadn’t been Catholic either, his mother had decided that he’d get a better education there. He couldn’t argue with that—Geoffrey was the smartest man he knew. But Geoffrey had no such obsession.

Actually, Jake blamed the whole thing on Geoffrey. If he hadn’t waited outside of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows every single day of his life, he wouldn’t have seen them, flowing by in the full length black gowns—this was back in the days before they de-formalized their dress—and their beautiful, serene faces framed in the cleanest of whites.

At ten, he’d spent most of his time wondering what their hair looked like.

Were they bald?

He found that idea incredibly stimulating long before he had any idea of what an erection really was.

By the time he was fourteen, his imagination was going quite a bit further.

He was picturing—courtesy of an extremely vivid imagination and his father’s Playboy magazines—just what was under those gowns. In colorful and increasingly erotic detail.

Other women, women without the mystery, had played a part in his life even as a teenager, after he was a teenage boy. But they’d never stuck—neither to him or with him. And he regretted that.

He wanted a woman in his life. Hell, he’d even been thinking about the possibility of marriage. And children. But those things were never going to happen if he didn’t get over the nun thing.

His friends Geoffrey and Calliope had told him, in strictest confidence, of the way they’d met. The Pleasure Club had brought them together and, breaking several of the Club’s rules in the process, they had found each other again after their one night together, and they had stayed together.

When he watched them, he knew he wanted that love, that closeness for himself.

But none of it would happen until he got over his obsession.

So he contacted the Pleasure Club. And one week later, here he stood.

How had they known?

He hadn’t told them, and Geoffrey wouldn’t have. Besides, he was pretty sure Geoffrey’s involvement with the Pleasure Club was over and done with, although it was possible he was acting as a consultant for them—or that Calliope was. But even so, no one knew about this corner.

No one except Jake.

Being here took him back twenty years, back to when a green, fifteen-year-old had spent hours standing right here. Jake looked down. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was an indentation in the sidewalk at his feet, exactly the size of his fifteen-year-old self’s shoes.

His hands moved inside his big brother’s jacket, a jacket big enough to hide what they were doing, while he watched. Ostensibly he was waiting for Geoffrey to get out of school. Instead, he was using the stash of his grandpa’s old handkerchiefs he’d inherited to catch the cum as he stood and masturbated, day after day. Afternoon after afternoon.

He wouldn’t be able to do the same thing today. He wouldn’t want to do the same thing today.

But those were more innocent times, and a teenage boy hanging out on a corner—as long as he wasn’t smoking or obviously ogling the girls in their school uniforms—was a normal and recognized fixture in that world. Half the boys and girls in his small town went to public school, and most of them trotted over to the later-finishing Catholic school to meet their friends.

Jake could still remember the smell of it. His brother’s musty wool jacket. The cheap cologne he’d taken to wearing in the hopes it would attract the attention of the nuns. The always scent of the river behind the church and the damp cold aroma of the stones it was built of.

And over it all, the smell of his cum gathered up into his grandpa’s handkerchiefs.

He wanted to run from it all. Or maybe, he thought, he wanted to run right back to those afternoons.

Standing here at the corner of Main and Norton, the black silhouette of the church rising out of the remnants of the sunset, Jake was transported to another time. A time when he spent every afternoon with dream girls dressed in black and white, their voluptuous bodies only hinted at beneath the flowing cloth.

But even now, Jake recognized that the bodies were the smallest part of what he craved. He wanted the peace and serenity they exuded, the patience they extended to even the most obstreperous child, the sweet smiles they bestowed on anyone who passed their way.

There had been no smiles at Jake’s house, no peace, no serenity, and definitely no patience.

And twenty years on, he couldn’t get the smiles out of his mind.

* * * * *

She waited behind the gate, watching him. He wasn’t at all what she had expected when she’d taken on this particular assignment. He wasn’t tall, but he was built, as her mother would say, like a brick shithouse.

Jan smiled to herself. Even though she drove Jan crazy, her mom could make her smile at the oddest of times. And it was hard to get odder than this.

She wiped her hands down the soft cloth shrouding her body, the black retaining the heat of the summer’s sun. Jan had grown up in a commune, mostly naked until she was five when she got sent to school with the other kids. Her mother, the schoolteacher, had taught them everything—from math and science to yoga and meditation.

Jan had loved the commune and had been devastated when her mother decided to leave it and move back into the real world. She still wasn’t sure she’d mastered the art of living with people who didn’t grow up the way she did—with dozens of brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. With organic food and handmade clothes and dinner for fifty every night.

She missed everything about it.

And she spent most of her time—at work and in the evenings—dreaming about or painting her memories of those days. She painted the damp, rainy autumns, gloomy and cold. She painted the brilliant summer sun, and the children playing in the gardens. She painted the matriarchs and the patriarchs, their faces lined and as cheerful as the sun. She painted herself.

But only from the back.

She couldn’t bear to paint the joy she knew she’d see on that child’s face. She just couldn’t do it. Some memories were too much to bear.

So here she was, standing at the corner of Main and Norton, waiting for her very first Pleasure Night. She tried to replicate that smile of her memory and thought, in the barely visible reflection in the window next to her, that she’d done a pretty good job. She looked happy—or at least content.

And she was, after all, supposed to be a nun.

She thought about the day she’d decided to go to the Pleasure Club Guardians, had decided to try and break out of her cycle of discontent with her new life. It had taken her weeks to get there, but once she had, the Guardians had immediately set her at ease.

And the training, oh my god, the training. It had been gloriously, extravagantly, erotically more than she’d ever expected. Jan loved the feeling of being in control, of being allowed again—finally—to release all her inhibitions and just go for the pleasure. That’s what she had missed the most about the commune—that feeling of unrestrained joy.

The man across the street looked up. She watched as he started to back away then just as obviously changed his mind. He stood at the corner, the setting sun silhouetting his body. She couldn’t see his expression, could barely see his face, but she could see his hesitation in his posture.

He was bent slightly forward but his legs were locked tight to the pavement, as if he’d stuck them there with Krazy Glue.

Jan waited.

He had to make the first move. This encounter was all about Jake Drummond, about what he wanted. Her job—her only job—was to provide him with pleasure. She would wait.