Lemondrop

Journalist Anna David's novel, "Bought," (out this week from Harper Collins) delves into the real-life Hollywood subculture of "kept women" -- girls who don't define themselves as prostitutes but shamelessly trade sex for stuff.

The book follows Emma Swanson, a celebrity reporter who meets Jessica, one of these professional gold-diggers. Convinced that writing a story about Jessica and her ilk would seriously boost her journalistic cred, Emma finds herself sucked into a world where the temptations of prettied-up prostitution may outweigh the costs.

Check out an excerpt from "Bought" below.

I wonder if Claire and all our other friends from high school who got married at the first possible second will be sick of sleeping with their husbands after 20 years -- or if, perhaps, they already are. Then again, Claire seems to expend so much mental energy convincing herself that Eric is wonderful, she probably wholeheartedly believes she's never going to want another guy again. Can she keep a self-delusion like that going for the rest of her life?

Click here to keep reading ...

While it's impossible to imagine either of them cheating -- Eric's passion seems to be limited to his golf games and Claire just doesn't have it in her -- it's almost as difficult to conceive of them having sex with each other. Theirs seems just like a partnership-- the coming together of two entities to share a bed, plasma-screen TV, and last name -- with their baser impulses, if they had any, rendered almost irrelevant.

"From the beginning," Jessica continues, "Bernie was clear with me that he couldn't give me anything, you know, real. Right after the whole car hood thing, he told me he was married with kids, as if it wasn't completely obvious before he even opened his mouth. 'But I like you,' he said, 'and want to see you again.'"

The waiter delivers our steaks and Jessica immediately cuts into hers.

"He just said, 'Beverly Hills Hotel. This Friday. I'm supposed to be on set with a client in New York this weekend, but I'd rather play hooky with you.'" Jessica takes a bite and gestures for another martini. "So ... I told him about my situation – the bastard I'd move to L.A. for, the debt, the rent I couldn't pay. And when he went home on Sunday night, he had already taken care of my rent for the next six months." As she puts a sliver of meat in her mouth, I try to imagine what it might be like to have rent concerns for the next half a year evaporate in an instant. "And he's been setting me up with other clients ever since."

"Are you serious?"

"Well, Bernie knew a lot of men like him -- wealthy and sexually unsatisfied, but not interested in the drama of having an affair or fucking one of the by-the-hour or by-the-night girls who consider having a GED some great educational achievement." She smiles. "And he saw it as a real opportunity for me. As he put it, I should first figure out what I wanted, then find the people who could give it to me."

She takes a gulp of her just-delivered drink. "So, whether it's my credit card bill or my car payment or my rent, I explain what I want and then find out what, exactly, I'm going to have to do to get it. Is it a week of regular sex, plus spending the night? ... Playing live-in girlfriend for a month? Or just a night of something 'special'?"

"'Special'?"

"Oh, you know. Maybe there's a guy who likes to have his face shoved into the toilet before he's chained to the sink faucet. Or ... " I must look completely appalled because she laughs when she sees my face ... She shakes her head and laughs again. "Turns out there's a whole subsection of humanity that's into that kind of thing ... I swear. You can look it up online."

Copyright © 2009 by Anna David. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Anna David is the author of "Party Girl" and the editor of an upcoming anthology about reality shows. A former magazine staffer who's been published in The New York Times, The L.A. Times, Playboy, Vanity Fair and Cosmo, among many others, Anna currently writes for Details and Maxim. She is the sex and relationship expert on G4's "Attack of the Show" and appears every month on the Fox News cult favorite "Red Eye" as a cultural commentator.