Dominque (Knights to Remember)

What does it cost to sell yourself? Your body? Your heart? Your soul?

At eighteen, with no job, no money, and a young sister to care for, becoming an escort seemed the perfect answer, but by the age of twenty four, Dominque is left wondering how he can break free of his ‘short term’ solution.

Jacob is at the top of his profession, leaving him with no time or desire for a relationship. Caring for another person full time isn’t on his agenda, but that soon changes when fate steps in and offers him the chance of something more.

Unable to forget the intriguing brunette after their first date, Jacob is enticed to spend more time with Dominque, seeking to put the pain of the past behind them, and bring peace to the wounded bird who captivated him so easily. Only through gaining his trust can Jacob hope to set him free.

It’s not just the clients who pay

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used factiously. Other names, characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Dominque

Knights to Remember Series

All rights reserved.

Copyright©2015 by Nicole Colville

Cover designed by Kellie Dennis from Book Cover by Design

Photographer: Sasha Kosmos

Model: David Lurs

Edited by: Jessica McKenna from Liteditor.com

No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise without prior permission by the author.

This is an erotic book and contains graphic sexual content which should only be read by people sixteen and over.

F
or Valerie and Louise.

Your support and friendship mean the world, and you have both helped turn this ‘short’ story into what it is today. Dominque and Jacob have a lot to thank you for because they had the chance to share the rest of their journey with everyone, and what a journey it was.

Thank you to my wonderful beta readers, Loopy, Valerie, Hannah, Emma, Carolyn and Cathy, for taking time out to read Dominque and to offer their thoughts and reactions. You all helped make this book shine, and I am always grateful and excited to see your comments.

For my hubby Chris who offers such a great support system at home, and who encouraged me to go the extra distance with the cover. I wouldn’t be able to do this without you.

And finally, to Sebastian Knight from the original Knights series. Without you, my life would have been very different last year, and through you I found Dominque and Jacob. Thank you for being in my life. You always make me smile.

Enjoy Dominque. All my love, Nicole.

D
ominque
looked at the total chaos surrounding him. When he left for work four hours ago, the house was clean. On his return, he found his sister Angelique had invited a few of her friends around for a party and destroyed all his hard work.

Shifting a few empty pizza boxes along the floor with his foot, he glanced over his shoulder, hearing the dull tones of bass coming from Angie’s bedroom and sighing into his hands, covering his mouth so he didn’t scream out in frustration.

He couldn’t remember ever being this stroppy when he was seventeen, but then he wasn’t ever what you’d call your average teenager. Sucking down his temper tantrum, he began picking up the discarded boxes and plates. Dumping them in the kitchen, he sat down at the table, resting his head on his folded arms and closing his eyes. He was too tired to even think about going up there and starting what would probably be another two hour argument. One where he would end up with a distraught, emotional teenage blackmailer crying in his arms while he forgot all about what she’d done to deserve the talk in the first place.

He couldn’t blame her really. He’d spoilt her over the past six years. Looking back, he could see where he’d gone wrong, but he couldn’t go back and change what had happened, so why should he waste his precious energy thinking about it? Besides, they both needed spoiling at the time, but Dominque could see
that
time was over. She’d be an adult soon, and it was time she learned how to grow up and be responsible for her own actions.
He
had to. Not by choice, but it happened and he coped… most times.

Dominque pulled out the family photo album, opening it up to the page which he knew by heart, and finding him and his mum sitting in this very house ten years ago. It was taken just before everything changed. Before she became ill and no one knew why, before it all became too much for his dad and he disappeared during the night, before Dominque was running home from school at fifteen to care for his eight year old sister and help his mum.

Before. It was such a small word which people used so insignificantly in their everyday life: I’ll do this before I go to the shop. Before he went, I kissed him goodbye. Before, before, before.

Sometimes there seemed to be no before, there was just now. Dominque coped that way for a long time, no past, no future. Just the day. That moment. That terrible second where his mum was in so much pain, nothing helped, and he would have to watch her suffer alone, trying to keep the bad stuff from Angelique.

He wasn’t the only fifteen year old who helped care for family members. He’d met some other kids during the three years he looked after his mum, but when you’re all alone at night, and you’re lost and afraid, too hurt watching the person you loved more than anything lie in bed, biting back screams of agony until the next dose of morphine took hold, no one else mattered, because there is no one. There’s just you. Alone.

He smiled down at his pretty brunette mum holding him in her arms as they both laughed for the camera. She and him were like twins, especially as he looked now. Angelique took after their dad, darker skin, more olive tones and her hair was naturally black—although the ludicrous amount of brown and blonde highlights she constantly added made it look lighter than his some days.

He missed his mum. Despite everything they’d gone through, he wouldn’t change anything, which was selfish considering she’d been in so much pain, but he’d been a child at the time. Even though he’d grown up faster than most, he was still just a boy watching his mum hurt, not knowing what would happen to him and Angelique when she passed away.

He swore she held on until he turned eighteen so he could keep his sister with him. Legally, he could care for her at that age. Before, both of them would have probably gone into care. More than likely to different places. Losing his mum was devastating, but losing the only remaining part of his connection to her and his old life would have hurt even more.

That’s why he chose to struggle for as long as he could to keep their house, the one they’d lived in all their lives. Losing it, and all the memories within it, just seemed too heartbreaking. It still was. The mortgage was huge. His mum took loans and ran up debt against it while she was off work, and his dad never contributed to it after he left, so when Dominque took over responsibility for the debt, he had a lot of catching up to do. Living in a detached five bedroom house was insane. Selling it would have been the best option, but neither of them could stand even discussing moving out.

Most people his age shared an apartment and split the cost, but Dominque’s job as one of the UK’s highest paid male escorts afforded him a level of comfort others his age would never find, unless they, like him, were willing to sell their body to the highest bidder. The escorts he worked with used an apartment block in the city centre which was subsidised by the agency,
Secret Pleasures
. Dominque was offered a nice one there, but the thought of taking Angelique with him put him off.

Their home was filled with ghosts of the past, a past which he didn’t feel ready to say goodbye to, but if he was truly honest with himself, a lot of those memories were bad. Some days he would think about leaving, packing up and starting fresh, but then he would catch sight of his mum’s bedroom, remember her smiling as she twirled around in some new outfit she’d bought, caught a faint whiff of her scent, and he pushed the thought of moving from his mind.

“I’m sorry, Domie.” Angelique’s soft voice woke him from his trance. He brushed back a stray strand of brown hair from his eyes and glanced at his sister standing in her PJs, twisting her hands in front of her and looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “I promise I’ll clean up tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dominque was past caring about the state of the house, and despite what she said now, in the morning it would be another matter. She’d have people to see, places to go and all this would seem so insignificant and dull. “Go to bed, Angie. It’s late.”

Of course, she ignored him completely, choosing instead to sit beside him, running her fingers through the mess of his hair and kissing his cheek softly. “Hard date?”

Dominque sighed heavily, closing his eyes. He didn’t like she knew he was an escort. The fact he had sex for money wasn’t something he shouted about or shared with anyone, but she was a smart cookie, and nothing really got past her for long, which is why she’d known since she was fifteen. “The usual. I'm just tired, Angie. Really tired. Like,
sloth
tired.”

Angelique giggled. “Was he any good?”

Dominque glared at her, narrowing his oval shaped eyes even more. “He was a job, nothing more. Besides, that’s not why I'm tired.”

“Why don’t we take a break and go away for a week?” She was always bugging him about going away. Spain, Greece, Turkey. That month it was Egypt and the Dead Sea which caught her attention.

“We went away four months ago. I don’t have an unlimited amount of money to spend, you know. This house, the bills to run it, school fees, the car, your clothes… the list goes on and on. I
literally
have to sell my arse to pay for all this. I sometimes wonder if you even care about that. I don’t see you getting a job and helping out.” His pissy attitude didn’t often make it to the surface because he held it inside and waited until he took his morning run to work out the tension he felt, but it had been a bad night.

“Today was hard for me too, Domie. I know what today is, despite you thinking I don’t give a shit. I know what happened today six years ago.” She sat back in her chair, folding her arms around her waist and looking at her bright red painted toenails by Dominque’s chair. “I lost her too. So I got sad, invited a few friends over to forget for a bit. You went out.”

“I went to work.”

“Being paid to have a nice meal and go dancing followed by sex isn’t exactly hard work, Dominque.”

She had no idea. Seriously. Dominque’s eyes would roll back into his skull if they weren’t so heavy. “I know you lost Mum too, and I'm not saying you were wrong to try and liven up your day a bit, but there’s not just you who lives here, and we all cope in our own way, so I’d appreciate a bit of help now and then if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Ugh!” She stood up, knocking the wooden chair to the floor and storming off, shouting over her shoulder as she made for her room again. “I can’t wait until I'm eighteen and I can do what I want.”

“Yeah, I'm twenty four and I'm still not doing what I want, so get used to it.”

“I don’t get it.” She stopped mid-step, turning to him, hands on hips, scowling so harshly her pretty face was distorted, slipping into the all too familiar spoilt brat phase. “You get paid a ton of money. Go out all the time. Meet men you would never meet in your wildest dreams. Get money for clothes, get treated like a prince, and all because you’re a good fuck.”

“Angelique!” He hated her swearing. Mum brought them up better than that.

“All you do is complain. Most men your age don’t earn half what you do. It’s not like you’re stuck in an office working nine to five all day every day.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Angie. Just drop it.” Dominque wasn’t about to go into fine detail what he’d gone through in the past six years. Despite how much he wanted to shut her up with stories of the disgusting men he’d been with, the depraved sexual demands and the constant demeaning and humiliation he’d gone through, she was only seventeen. Still, hopefully, a virgin seventeen year old with no idea what the world had waiting for her to discover. He was sure one day in the future, she would look back on this moment and be ashamed, but not today. “Go to bed.”

He walked out of the kitchen, sitting down on the back step outside in the garden and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He should stop, not that he smoked loads, but it wasn’t healthy, and he’d seen the terrifying effects of cancer. So why did he self-destruct in such a way?

He held the pack in his hand, looking at the back of it and turning his nose up at the sight of a pair of black lungs—the government’s new anti-smoking campaign. Dominque smiled to himself. If there was one thing inside him which was black, it wasn’t his lungs. His heart… well, that’s another story.

Finally admitting defeat, he lit one up and lay back, resting against the cold, stone wall behind him and gazing at the stars twinkling back at him. He often wondered if his mum looked down on them, quickly followed by the worry she would be ashamed of him, of what he’d done.
He
was. He was constantly ashamed recently.

In the beginning… Dominque closed his eyes, taking a drag and blowing the smoke up into the night sky.

The beginning seemed so long ago, like he’d survived two lifetimes. He lived in a time loop where every day was the same. Even the faces blurred into one. Voices and other distinguishing features a person calls his own—they all meant nothing to him. They were just another client. Another date. Another fuck. Another pile of cash. Another bout of self-loathing before the cycle began all over again.

It wasn’t worth it. He’d known this for the last three years. Every date during those three years he said would be the last one. That he’d saved enough money to get by until he found another job, but then the car would need work, or the roof would need repairing. Angelique would be wailing about how she never went away, begging for a holiday, or the latest iPhone. Teenagers were so expensive to keep, and he sure as hell didn’t get any of the things she did when he was her age. The only mobile he ever had was a brick sized one which he got free so his mum could call him if she needed anything.

His money wasn’t spent on himself. He saved it. Squirreled it away for hard times. Times when he was ill and couldn’t work, or when he just had enough and hid in the house for two weeks. There was one moment which almost stopped him from going back. One horrible night Dominque hated thinking about, but even after a two month break, he eventually returned to Secret Pleasures, to Harriot, to the constant turnaround of men and women working there.

The voice in his head was telling him
now
was the time to get out while he still could, before he became what he hated. Before he became one of the oldies. He’d been there six years, but some people had been there for much longer. Those were the ones who lived shallow, lonely lives, too late to change their habits and too reliant on the lifestyle the money provided. They didn’t have a big family house to pay for and a blood sucking sister to contend with though.