She rode him, meeting his thrusts with the weight of her body, feeling the length of him pounding into her, every jolt of pleasure jarring her to the roots of her hair. She was crying out with every thrust now, holding on to his shoulders as if the feeling could sweep her away. And then she felt her cunt begin to focus into an intolerable heat. She wanted to make him stop. It was too much, too much—she was already coming, but she held her breath and let go into it, her body freezing as he continued to fuck into her hard, her pussy becoming the exploding center of the world. The blow of it made her melt, and she was still crying out without knowing it. He pulled her down onto him one more time, gripping her as his orgasm came to meet hers, his cock jerking as it emptied into her. She was still coming as he held her, pulled her into his arms. The spasms subsided only slowly, and she was dimly aware that her skin was covered in a light sweat, and she felt the lights on her as a chill.
When she finally opened her eyes, Jared was grinning at her. He shook his head very slightly and whispered, “It wasn’t, was it? Your first time.”
She winked at him and grinned back. She whispered, “And Babylona made you do this?”
He winked back and kissed her roughly on the cheek. Then behind her, she heard a sprinkling of applause that grew and grew, the audience cheering her, them.
Jared said, “Congratulations.”
She said, “Thank you. I’m glad it was you.”
“I never thought I’d say this,” he said. “But I am, too.”
Then Friselle Belesci was standing beside her, holding a bottle of champagne and a tray of glasses. She was nude, her dark hair tumbling over her breasts, a halo of musky perfume rising from her pale skin. She looked like a hostess of the demimonde, welcoming some new recruits. “Brava,” she said to Valerie. “We didn’t know you had it in you.”
Valerie said, “Neither did I.”
Then Liam appeared at Friselle’s side, looking at once lustful and wistful. Meeting his eye, Valerie felt an immediate response, a complex sense memory from all the times they’d been together in recent days. She caught her breath. As Friselle turned away to wave at one of her interns, Valerie mouthed, “Sorry.”
Liam shook his head and smiled. “I was just coming to ask permission to be . . . your second.”
“My second? Oh, my second . . .”
“The second man you sleep with?” He grinned at her conspiratorially. “And maybe the third and fourth.”
She smiled back, feeling a rush of happiness she couldn’t explain. She said, “It would be my pleasure.”
NINETEEN
“
A
nd today, a special session of
In Depth
,” Emily said, her voice Asounding rote even to her. Although it was a point of pride to her to have her lines by heart, today she was shamelessly following the teleprompter. She had let the makeup artist and the hairdresser work on her without bothering to check the mirror afterward. Babylona had had the trademark
In Depth
bed flown here from New York, and, pulling on the XTV robe and walking to that bed, Emily felt as if she were being put through her paces in some quiet but very public hell. It was a place where nothing would ever change, where you would forever be surrounded by all the things you were stupid enough to want when you were young. At the same time, she kept chiding herself not to be self-indulgent, not to be hysterical. This was a day job. It was just a day job. The question of whether or not she would ever see the man she loved again had nothing to do with this at all.
Settling on the bed with a habitual feline stretch, she read from the teleprompter, “Usually on the show, I spend time getting to know the man of the week. We dine together, go on an outing together, and spend hours talking before coming to bed at last. This week, we’re cutting to the chase.” She smiled for all the world as if this fact were delightfully arousing to her. Reaching back to grasp the bottle of wine on the nightstand, she began to pour two glasses, saying, “And, of course, we have a very special guest.”
This was the crux of the matter, and the one thing that was helping Emily get through this. They hadn’t been able to get a very special guest. Without Emily’s uncanny ability to coax celebrities into bed when they really should have known better, with Emily despondent and distant, barely bothering to answer phone calls, the show had promised to be a dud, with some luminary of the C-list. But at the last moment, discussions had begun about killing two birds with one stone by putting Jared in as the bridegroom of the week, an idea Emily had fostered as best she could. It would be a great comfort to do this show with him. Then the season would be over and she would have three months to decide what her next step was.
With this thought in her mind, it was easier to go through the next few stages of the routine. Emily sprayed her wrists with perfume and then went to a full-length mirror, pulling the robe off to look briefly at herself, front and back. She gave a significant glance to the camera as she exhibited her body, and then slipped the robe back on and went back to the bed—and the teleprompter.
“Our bridegroom for this special broadcast is a man whom many of our viewers already know from the pages of magazines. And we’re sure anyone who doesn’t know him will be glad to make his acquaintance.” A doubt niggled in her mind: magazines? Certainly Jared had been in magazines, but why lead with that instead of his film career?
The next screen came up, and she was reading, with a growing disquiet, “He began his career in business with a start-up company dealing in medical equipment, and since that time has . . .” As she continued to read the words, a lump grew in her throat. There had been some awful mistake. This was the material they’d sketched out to introduce Ralph. Stalling, she paused to sip some wine and looked for the director, who was looking back with complete composure, smiling as if she hadn’t noticed anything wrong. Was anyone even listening to the words?
“By the time our guest was thirty, he was one of the richest men in America. Of course, he’s been one of the sexiest men in America for a much longer time. Please welcome . . . Ralph Anderman.” Emily put a special emphasis on the words, looking pointedly at the director, who did not flinch. Then the door behind her opened, and she looked back to find . . . Ralph.
Angled away from the camera as she was, she was able to give full rein to her look of shock. He smiled at her comfortingly and covered for her, saying, “Hello, Emily. It’s wonderful to see you again.”
Emily took a deep breath, but her voice was still weak and shaken. “Yes, Ralph. It is . . . really wonderful.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and reached out to take her hand. The cool touch of his big palm calmed her somewhat, and she squeezed his hand before saying, sticking to the script, “I have to thank you for making the trip to Germany for us, Ralph.”
“Well, Emily, I’m sure you know why I’m here.”
That wasn’t in the script. She stammered, “Oh yes. Well, why don’t you tell our viewers, nonetheless?”
“I’ll do my best.” He turned to the camera with the air of someone biting the bullet.
Emily said, with restrained panic, “I mean, I know you’re a private person and you haven’t wanted to talk about your personal life in the past. So don’t feel pressured to—”
“This is the right time for it,” he said firmly. “The fact is, for many years I’ve been constrained by circumstances to the point where I haven’t had much of a personal life to talk about.”
In a last-ditch effort to play the talk-show hostess, Emily put in, “But you certainly have had an impressive string of girlfriends. I believe your last was the supermodel Marisa Brice, who—”
“Who went to clubs with me for a few weeks, yes,” Ralph said a little impatiently. “But I haven’t had a real love affair since I was twenty. The truth is, at that age I had a child.” Here he paused and looked at Emily to prompt her.
She made herself say, “I guess this is news to most of our viewers.”
“This will be news to all of your viewers, I think,” Ralph said, “since my daughter isn’t old enough to be watching XTV.”
“And . . . you were saying?”
“I don’t have a smooth segue,” Ralph said, turning to her. He put her hand to his lips and kissed it gently, then said, “You know the rest of the story, Emily. I fell in love.”
Emily cast a glance around the studio, but all of the cameramen and the handful of production staff were smiling at her with soppy expressions on their faces. She said, with a leap of boldness, “Of course. And I fell in love with you.”
He pulled her forward, wrapping her in his arms and kissing her softly, lingeringly. When their lips parted, he looked back at the camera once more and said, “I’m sorry to steal your hostess from you, but I want to ask Emily to marry me. And I think—as the wife of one of the richest men in America”—he smiled a little wryly—“she should at least be able to do what she’s always wanted to do. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
He turned back to her, but before he could speak she said, “Oh, of course I’ll marry you. Of course.”
“Then I firmly plan to make an honest veterinarian of you.”
“Of course,” she said softly. They were staring into each other’s eyes, an energy building between them that could only end one way. She felt a prickling up her thighs and over her breasts at the thought of his touch, his kiss.
She said to him, “I love you so much, Ralph.”
“I love you more, Emily.”
Emily turned to the director and said, in a newly strong and joyful voice, “Cut.”