Archive of Our Own

 

“No,” she says. “No, Charles, absolutely not.”

“Why not?” Charles tips his head to the side, grins at her. It’s a devastating grin, extraordinary and enticing. Emma, to her mild disgust, is not thoroughly immune. But she pretends to be.

“He’s looking for an escort,” she stresses. “A gentleman of the evening. A temporary liaison, Charles. In other words, not another client.”

“Erik Lehnsherr.” Charles isn’t listening to her. He’s looking at Erik’s picture, instead: short-cropped auburn-dark hair, strong lines, pale green-grey-blue eyes. No smile in sight. “The artist. He does metal-work. Sculpture; I’ve seen his pieces on display. I think I’d like him, don’t you?”

“Charles,” Emma sighs, “no.” Charles is young, and beautiful, and eminently approachable. He doesn’t tend to like people, however; or, rather, he does, but only at a surface level, the casual acquaintanceships that’re all absolutely genuine and full of externally directed compassion and reveal nothing of himself. Charles likes other people, for a given value of like, and gives away no secrets.

She’s wondered about that, on occasion. Has concluded that that’s why he comes here, to her extremely select establishment. Discretion. Class. Financial transactions, no expectations.

What she doesn’t know is why. What happened, to make the lovely boy who’s heir to the Xavier fortune so polite, and so cool, and so distant, and so desperate.

She’s heard the stories, after. Read the employee reports. Charles likes to be tied down, to be fucked hard, to be bruised and called names and, on occasion, slapped. Hot wax and belts and handcuffs and gags; begging, and dubious-at-best consent, though of course it isn’t when Charles has paid in advance. Logan’d told her once, in confidence and over whiskey, that that elegant well-muscled body has a map of old scars, nothing caused by her escorts, of course, and invisible in those tailored suits, in the way he carries himself, assured and calm.

Charles is always a generous tipper, and unfailingly polite. He says thank you, after.

“What does he want?” Charles picks up the picture. “For tomorrow evening, I mean.”

“He really only wants an escort.”

This gets her a raised eyebrow.

“He wants someone to accompany him to his exhibition. Arm candy, generally speaking, though he’d prefer someone who can—what was his phrase?—charm the wealthy idiots so he doesn’t have to.”

Charles laughs. “I can certainly manage that. Anything else?”

“He didn’t specify. But I assume sex isn’t out of the question.”

“Sex is never out of the question. When and where?”

“Charles,” Emma tries, one more time. “Don’t. I’ll send someone. He wasn’t terribly picky, to be honest. He’d get on well with Piotr, I think…”

“Everyone gets on well with Piotr.” Including Charles, who, if memory serves her correctly—and it unfailingly does—had urged the muscular Russian to pin him against the wall by his throat, not insignificant cock buried deep in his body, trying to scream and unable to as the climax hit.

Piotr’d come into her office the next day shaking, looking sick: “I can’t, Miss Emma, not with him, he’s too…he thanked me, with the bruises around his neck, and offered to pay for my sister’s art classes this summer, and I can’t…”

Charles had never said anything, not batted an eye, when Piotr’d been unavailable on all of his infrequent visits after.

“Still,” Charles says, gaze focused on the photograph. “He needs someone who will…make an impression. Who won’t be intimidated by him, either.”

“You’re not one of my escorts,” Emma says. “This is off the books. And you understand we’re not legally obligated to do anything if this goes badly.” She might not be able to stop Charles, but possibly she can scare him.

“Understood.” He runs a thumbtip along the side of the picture, absently. Winces, puts his thumb in his mouth, catching the trickle of red. “Paper-cut. Sorry.”

“Charles,” Emma says, and gets up and comes around her desk. He’s a client. She doesn’t care, not like that. But they comprehend each other, in certain ways. They always have. “Bandage?”

“No.” One more little touch, like a caress, to Lehnsherr’s printed face. “He looks…lonely. Don’t you think?”

Her first impulse is to snort and say no, not the activist artist she’s heard of, the angry protester for social justice with those stern lines around his lips. But Charles sees something there, and she does trust Charles’s insight. He’s good at reading people; that’s one reason she lets him in this far, to her inner sanctum. He’d been right and she’d been wrong about Victor Creed and the violent tendencies, six months before, and young Marie’d been saved a trip to the hospital because Charles had looked up and shaken his head and said “you didn’t let this one in the door, did you?” and they’d both run two floors down to the room just in time.

So he’s likely not wrong this time either.

And maybe, she thinks, he’s seeing something that he needs to see. Because Emma Frost is also good at reading people; she’s had to be, commanding New York’s most prestigious escort service the way she has. And Charles is, she suspects, under all the calm worldly amusement and the inexplicable desire to be broken and used up and shattered, very much alone.

She says, “I’ll tell him we’ll send someone. Seven-thirty. Don’t be late.”

“Emma,” Charles says, “you’re marvelous,” and throws her one more coruscating grin as he leaves, apparently just because.

Emma sits down in her luxurious white-leather office chair—highly impractical, but deceptively comfortable, which is entirely the point—and hopes to hell she’s done the right thing.