Then she was creeping into the bed, dimly aware of all the people continuing to work around her, apparently oblivious to her nudity. She pulled the sheet up to her chin and her first line came back to her just as the director called, “Action!”
Then Javier sat on the bed beside her, his face transformed into a diabolical mask of sly lust.
“There’s no need to be frightened,” he said with a sinister purr. “You’re safe now, my dear.”
“Lorenzo? What’s happening? Where am I?”
He leaned toward her and brushed the hair back from her face. “Try to relax.”
“What happened? Is Annabella here?”
“Let’s not talk about Annabella.” He was stroking her cheek gently now, smiling lasciviously. “I’m not interested in Annabella anymore.”
“What do you mean? You’re her husband.”
“I’m not feeling very conjugal right now.” Here he leaned forward and kissed her. She struggled at first, but allowed him to wrestle her back against the pillow. When she’d read the script, it seemed incredible that this character would (as the stage directions now dictated) “yield rapidly to her passion.” But under the influence of his mouth on hers, his tongue passing over her lips, she began to do just that. When she opened her eyes, his black eyes were blazing into hers with a keen anticipation of what was to come. Then he moved to kiss his way down her neck, pulling the sheet down in stages until his tongue was passing over her breast, raising illicit tingles of response from her that made her gasp.
At that moment, she forgot that he was acting. She forgot that she was acting. Her hands went into his silky hair and cradled his head as he sucked on her nipple, sending sharp flashes of desire straight to her crotch. He kissed down her belly, waking the sensitive skin there into heat. Meanwhile, his hands were already stroking her upper thighs, parting them. As the sheet fell farther, she was shocked to feel the chill of the cool air on her exposed pussy, the reminder that she was wet and naked and ready.
“Sister . . .” he purred, and she was too far gone to even respond to the preposterousness of it. She cried out, “Lorenzo,” on cue, and his lips pressed to her clitoris, making her moan and writhe at the impact of this new, intimate kiss. His tongue slipped against her, hot and alive. She could feel her clitoris stiffening, the pleasure gathering there as he let his tongue play over it, describing rapid circles and occasionally dipping to sample the creamy wetness beneath. He parted her pussy lips with one hand and the sensation intensified. She strained her hips up to meet him. She could still vaguely see the little cluster of cameras following this. The faces in the background intent on her added an exotic spice of transgression. She shut her eyes against them but continued to feel the concentrated attention. It made every feeling more potent, multiplied it. She was almost cruelly conscious of the effect the scene was having on the watching men, a voice in her heart telling her that all of them wanted to fuck her. . . . Javier was sucking on her clitoris, then teasing it further with his tongue, strumming it back and forth until the tense delight in it reached an unbearable pitch. She came with a throaty moan of protest that turned into her final line of the scene. “Please . . . we shouldn’t!”
He crept up her body, pausing to take one nipple between his teeth. The delicate nip of his teeth set off a series of aftershocks from her orgasm that echoed between her breast and her pussy. Then he was poised over her, stroking her face with one hand while the other guided his cock into her. The force of his first thrust made her gasp. The continuing spasms in her vagina made his cock feel impossibly huge. It seemed to be making its own path through a desperate wall of pleasure.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “You’re so tight. . . .” Then he was fucking her violently, the pounding shifting her orgasm into a deeper, more elemental need. She opened her thighs farther, hungry for him, and her hands came up to his chest, finding the skin under his shirt. The contrast between its exquisite softness and the brutality of his invading cock dizzied her. Then, without thinking, she was drawing her legs up over his shoulders, letting him raise her and plunge into her even more deeply, exploring the border between pleasure and pain. Somewhere on that border, she found another orgasm, one that started deep within her and carried him with it so that a second later they were clutching each other and she felt his cock jerking inside her as he came, the semen an impossibly hot last flourish to her delight.
From a million miles away, Charity Cave’s voice called, “Cut! Brilliant! Exactly right.”
And there was a small, faraway burst of applause from the crew as Zaza weakly opened her eyes and saw Javier smiling down at her.
“I’m sorry,” he said in an undertone. “I would have liked that to last
much
longer. But that’s the rule on this show. Two minutes.”
“That was two minutes?” she said, a little groggy. “It felt like a lifetime.”
He smiled. “I hope I can take that as a compliment.”
He kissed her on the forehead, and she began to smile, too, babbling, “Yes, of course. Of course it was a compliment. I mean . . . wow.”
Then she became uncomfortably aware of her position; curled naked under a still-half-clothed man in front of a crowd of strangers. His cock sliding out of her woke her completely and she was suddenly snatching at the robe on the floor, aware of a blush that spread from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet. She had just swept the robe on, clutching it shut against her chest, when she spotted Jared Vairy.
He was standing by the door, watching her intently, but his expression didn’t give her any clue as to how long he’d been there or what he had witnessed. Was the darkness in his eyes lust or repulsion? She froze, not knowing if sheshould wave. At that moment, the director appeared in front of her, smiling.
“That was superbly done,” the older woman said. “Really first-class. Remind me, what’s your background?”
“Oh . . . I don’t exactly have a background.” Zaza was still trying to peer around Charity to see Jared, in vain.
“Really? You mean, this is your first sex scene?”
Zaza nodded, her heart pounding with an anxiety she couldn’t explain. “Yes, it’s my first time. I’ve never done anything like this before,” she said, and almost felt as if she was pleading her case, trying to prove her innocence of some crime.
“Well,” Charity said. “I never say this, but you’re a natural.”
Zaza swallowed, trying to smile. Then Charity turned away, and where Jared had been standing . . . there was no one.
SIX
“
I
t’s not even that I don’t want her to be in porn, or that it bothers Ime to see her fucking other men.”
“No, of course not. Why would that bother you?”
“Okay, it doesn’t bother me
much
.” Jared shrugged and gave Emily a watered-down version of his famous smile. “I mean, having my girlfriend fuck other guys in front of me became the new normal years ago.”
“Granted.”
“But the thing is, she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Yet.”
Jared frowned. “At this moment, Javier could be making her his girlfriend, or Liam could, or any of those rotten, charming, good-looking, damned
porn stars—
”
“So the solution is . . . ” Emily balked and bit her lip.
“The solution is
obviously
,” Jared said with light self-mockery, “to get Babylona to fire her from the job that I just made Babylona give her, so that I can eliminate the competition from the porn stars. After which I have to figure out a way of secluding her from the rest of the world.”
“And then you have to run into her by mistake, of course.”
Jared sighed. “I was never this ridiculous about a girl before, was I?”
“Not remotely this ridiculous.” Emily frowned down at the tub of Häagen-Dazs they’d been sharing and dug her spoon in again, hooking out a chunk of chocolate chip cookie dough. “Disturbingly unridiculous.”
“You see, that’s it,” he said, with a wistful look in his eyes. “Up till now, I thought love was supposed to be pleasant and fun. Which was great.”
“Um, except that it wasn’t love.”
“Well, porn confuses things. You add liking to fucking, and it feels a lot like love. It’s just so much, everything you like, and you think, What could be better than this?”
“Not to me,” Emily said.
“Didn’t you used to like it? At least, you used to enjoy . . .”
“All this,” Emily said through her mouthful of ice cream, gesturing around her at her own living room, with its sleek modern furniture, imposing paintings, and the orchids in lacquer pots that clustered on every available surface. Jared looked around, his gaze resting on her most recent acquisition, a grand piano that she was determined to learn to play—one of these days, when she wasn’t so impossibly busy.
“Come on,” he said. “It wasn’t all about money.”
“Well, of course.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to remember. “There was a time when I’d look forward to every new guest. It was like a romance without the responsibility. And, of course, they were all so gorgeous.” She sighed. “But I didn’t ever feel at home in it the way you did. I still don’t know why you quit.”
“Just don’t want to be a middle-aged porn star. Call it vanity. I don’t want to have a Fat Elvis phase.”
“You’re thirty-five. I mean—”
“Oh, well. It’s kind of a moot point, since I have to come out of retirement, anyhow.”
“Oh, right. Thanks to Valerie.”
“Can’t be a sex symbol if everyone thinks I’m impotent. God, how I hate that woman.” He looked unhappily at the mirror beside the piano, in which they were reflected, lying facing each other at either end of Emily’s shocking pink sofa. Jared was wearing running pants and an undershirt; Emily was still in the purple silk pajamas she’d been wearing when she answered the door to let him in. But even lounging there in their Sunday worst, they looked to Emily now like characters in a porn scenario—the man who dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar, possibly. The girl who was “so lonely,” bending over to show him her cleavage. High jinks ensuing, ending in some tangle in front of the mirror, which would turn out to be a two-way mirror, et cetera. Often scenes from everyday life struck her this way nowadays. She would have helpless fits of blushing in the midst of asking for a home improvement loan, shaking hands with her personal trainer, seeing her doctor. The boundary between life and sex had become paper-thin for her, which could be cheering or unsettling, depending on her mood.
Now Jared put out his hand, and Emily frowned at the mirrored hand for a moment before getting it. Then she turned to pass the ice cream into his real hand.
“Why don’t you come on my show?” Emily said. “We can talk about how horrible she is and—well, have one for old time’s sake.” The idea appealed to her. For one thing, it would be easier than sleeping with another in the line of random celebs and celebrity wannabes. Her job had become a serial stress bomb since her afternoon with Ralph. She still didn’t know why he couldn’t see her again, but she was certain that it had something to do with the stigma attached to her job.
But sleeping with Jared couldn’t be exactly stressful, not after all these years. When she’d first gotten her job at XTV, he’d been her instant best friend. He’d also been her part-time lover. Nowadays, looking back, she remembered the feeling she’d had then that sexuality could be based on a heady mix of affection and the senses, without the burdening needs and hopes of “true love,” and she wondered if it hadn’t all been based on her relationship with Jared Vairy. He had been her fun and her comfort for years, without ever being a real love interest—she wasn’t sure why. Sometimes they joked that when they were old, they would marry each other, “and become campaigners against porn,” Jared always added. “I want to be a famous hypocrite someday.” But it was just a joke. One of the special things about their friendship was that they could cheer each other through their relationships, be a shoulder to cry on when the relationships failed, and then have porn-quality sex to forget their worries.
“Well, I wish,” Jared said now. “But Babylona has her heart set on using me in her birthday special.”
“Oh, no! That fucking birthday!”
Both of them started laughing. Emily said, “What charity are we aiding now? Has Greenpeace agreed to take our tainted dollars?”
“Oh, no. It’s some charity for the poor in the Third World. I forget which one. The open-minded one, anyway.” Jared mimed holding a microphone and said, in his best TV presenter voice, “Now, we see on the chart that the erection is only at half-mast! We need to raise another five hundred thousand dollars by midnight to get this baby good and hard! And while you phone in your contributions, let’s see Jujubee Connor fucking three men on a roller coaster!”
“Erection?” Emily frowned.
“You know. Instead of a thermometer.”
“She’s not doing that really?”
“No, I just made it up. Don’t mention it to her, though, please. She can’t resist anything that’s in poor taste.”
Emily laughed. “I’ll never get over the elephant.”
Jared began to laugh, too. Years before, Babylona had decided to add an elephant to the live sex show that had been her pet project before she launched XTV. The act called for two couples to have sex on the back of said elephant—a retired circus animal. The elephant was cool as a cucumber in rehearsal, but on the opening night he’d first tried to knock the sex performers from his back and then got down and rolled, scattering naked panicked people across the stage.
“I still can’t get over Candy’s face in the video. When she’s lying back with Mike on top of her, and then she sees the trunk come around . . .”
“And you can tell her first thought is,
No way is
that
thing fucking me
.”