I have neither an attraction to stories about sex workers, nor an aversion to them. I read them when I come across them but don’t seek them out and hadn’t particularly imagined writing one. But one thing I’d noticed about them was that they usually ended with the sex worker no longer being a sex worker. The M/M fandom is generally sex-worker positive, but if a sex worker has to stop being a sex worker to get a happy ending, then is it really?
Not everyone’s idea of a happy ending is monogamous. And I question whether sex work necessarily breaks monogamy anyway. Relationship partners might choose to define sex-for-work as falling outside of the monogamous relationship boundary. I’m thinking about The Mating of Michael by Eli Easton, for instance. Michael is a sex surrogate. He works with people who are struggling sexually one way or another, which includes having sexual contact with them. At the end of the book, he and his partner agree he can continue his work, which is meaningful and beneficial.
We know there’s a kink called cuckolding, where a person becomes aroused by the idea of their partner having sex with other people. This can take two forms. One is humiliation based, which I wrote about recently in The Wide(r) World of Kink, but the other is something that in M/F is called “hot wife.” In the hot wife version of cuckolding, there’s no humiliation—only pride. The man is proud his partner is so desirable and enjoys watching or hearing about his partner having sex with other people as proof of their desirability.
So, given all of the options above—polyamory, defining sex work as work rather than sex, cuckolding kink—there are multiple ways for sex workers to have a happy ending without giving up on sex work. Omega Redeemed, which features Daisy, a sex worker omega, and Quoitrel, a law enforcement alpha, leans heavily on hot wife kink but also gives a nod to the fact that this is Daisy’s job. He’s good at it, and it fills a need their society has.
Not so surprisingly, Omega Redeemed was the least popular installment in the Omega Reimagined series. Which is a shame because it’s hot and sweet and also the series finale, wrapping up the entire Angel/Devin arc at last. But I’m going to stand staunchly by the idea that my characters get to define their own happy endings. And Daisy and Quoitrel are very happy, indeed.