Nell, or The Right Thinkers

He's working his way through school at the Premier Escort Agency.

Jared Ramirez was born in the slums of a mining planet but he found his way to the planet Haivran, the intellectual center of the Four Species Alliance, where the major universities, institutes, research facilities serving all Alliance citizens are located. Agencies are legal, licensed and regulated, and an attractive young man with a flair for pleasing a female clientèle is in great demand. And Jared has an advantage; he can read minds, and sometimes influence the minds of the people around him. It's only a little talent, and he never talks about it, but it can be useful.

Nell ran away from a restrictive religious cult just months ago, and moved in with her aunt Veronica, who also left the cult many years ago. Roni has been a regular client of Jared's for some time. Now Roni has hired him for Nell, for a slightly unusual and unexpected reason. And complicating the evening, members of the cult, including Nell's ex-fiancé, want her back any way they can get her, if they have to chase her through the city, climb up the side of a hotel, or batter their way through the ceiling of her hotel room.

This is a novella, one of several prequels to The Misborn, to be released in the near future. The story is suggestive rather than explicit.