“
We
are the cast—excluding Glenda, of course.”
I turned to look at him, feeling my eyes widen and my belly clench. “You’re …
uh ….”
“Hunk number seven,” he said, amusement threading his voice.
Oh fuck!
It was all I could do to focus on eating when everyone else finally did even
though that was some relief. I’m not sure why it unnerved me so much to discover that Gabe fully intended to participate, but there was no getting around the fact that it did.
I managed to make it halfway through my sandwich before I happened to glance
down and discovered my nipples were poking through the hair I’d thought was covering me. I stared at them in horror for a couple of moments but it occurred to me that I might only draw attention to the state of them if I dropped my sandwich and tried to rearrange my hair.
I threw a glance at Gabe to see if he’d noticed and found him staring at them.
“Well!” Glenda announced briskly. “Now that everyone’s been introduced and
everything is settled, we should get going and conclude our business. Once we get the paperwork out of the way, we’ll get you two checked out and, if everything looks OK, we’ll be back next week.”
“Checks out?” Brandy asked in confusion.
Glenda sent her a sour look. “It’s required. Everyone goes through a careful
screening to make sure they’re not carrying anything before shooting starts. The viewers don’t want to watch the guys fumbling with condoms. They want to see action. They want to see lots of come shots.”
I stared at the remains of my sandwich and carefully placed it on the table, feeling vaguely nauseated. Gabe, I discovered, was still staring at me, or staring again, when I glanced at him, his eyes gleaming with heat. Basil’s heat, I discovered, was in his face.
He was frowning at his sandwich as if he’d found something in it that shouldn’t be there.
The men got up and walked us to the door. I was actually glad for it since there was such a crowd I could sort of fade into the background and let Brandy take center stage where she was always most comfortable. I beat the herd to the stairs and went up to change while Brandy paused at the foot to chat with the guys.
Feeling a good bit better once I was decently covered, I lingered until Brandy
finally came up to change back into her street clothes and then let her lead the way down.
The guys, thankfully, had headed back to complete their wiring and camera set up. Gabe, I presumed, had disappeared back into the ‘playroom’ to finish setting up the torture chamber.
SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 17
Brandy was almost maniacally gay on the way back, but then that wasn’t unusual
for her. Dread knotted in my belly. Brandy’s highs usually resulted in a crash down the road. Thankfully, we managed to make it through the paperwork Glenda had spoken of and the examination by the doctor.
Brandy hit bottom before I could drop her at her apartment and retreat.
Thankfully, Brandy’s boyfriend—the one she’d taken to Vegas with her, was there—poor idiot!
I was still sitting on the couch, staring at nothing in particular and trying to come to terms with what I was facing when Brandy called to tell me the cops were at her apartment. Dread immediately swamped me, but she was too hysterical for me to make any sense of what she was saying and I told her I’d be right over.
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to hide in my apartment and hope everything would blow over. Selfish thing that I was, it occurred to me immediately that if Brandy was in jail for killing her boyfriend, I was going to be stuck doing the porn gig by myself, though, so I dashed over to see if anything could be done to smooth things over.
Brandy was sitting on her couch when I arrived, her big hazel eyes swimming
with tears, her full lips trembling threateningly. The cops—big surprise—looked more inclined to protect her than throw her in jail.
“They’re looking for Glen,” Brandy informed me in a whisper when the cops
finally allowed me inside and I settled beside her.
“What for?” I asked blankly, studying her a little anxiously for signs of trauma.
“That
bastard
was in my bed with a tramp when I got home!” she said angrily. “I threw both of them out and then I threw all of Glen’s things out the window.”
I stared at her in horror. “This a third floor apartment, Brandy! For god’s sake!
You could’ve killed somebody!”
She sniffed. “He was running too fast. I couldn’t hit him with anything. I almost got that skinny bitch he was with, though,” she ended with a touch of satisfaction.
“My god, Brandy!” I hissed through my teeth. “You didn’t tell the cops that?”
She gave me a look. “Of course not! Do you think I’m stupid?”
“What are they looking for him for?” I whispered.
“Assault.”
“He assaulted you?”
Brandy shrugged. “He threw the TV at me.”
“My god! But he missed, right?”
She stuck out one leg. “Broke my toe and just look at the bruise on my shin!”
I frowned. “You’re sure he didn’t just throw it on the floor?” I asked skeptically.
She glared at me. “Whose side are you on?” she demanded indignantly.
“Yours, of course,” I responded promptly. “I just don’t see why he would’ve
thrown it at your foot.”
She shrugged one shoulder irritably. “I threw it at him and he pitched it back at me.”
As in, he threw up his hands to keep her from braining him with it and the TV
bounced back and hit her? Some people might question that a frail little thing like Brandy was capable of pitching a full sized TV across the room, but I knew from personal experience that there wasn’t much Brandy couldn’t lift and throw when she was in a rage.
SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 18
She caught my hands, squeezing them. “I have to go down to the station to give my statement. Will you go with me?” she asked pleadingly.
I was almost as allergic to police stations as I was hospitals, but I’d never denied Brandy the support she demanded. “Sure. I’ll follow you down.”
“Maybe I could just ride with you?” she asked loudly, looking hopefully at the
cop that seemed to be in charge.
He studied her a little doubtfully, but he was a man, which meant he was a sucker for any woman that looked like Brandy. I could see she already had him convinced that she was the wronged party and had barely escaped with her life when in reality it was the fool Glen and his bimbo that were lucky to be alive. “I guess that would be alright,” he said finally. “I’ll follow your car to the station.”
That was telling her!
I discovered they’d just been waiting for me to arrive. The cop took Brandy’s
arm and helped her hobble to the elevator. Resisting the urge to roll my eyes when he asked her if she was sure she didn’t want to go to the hospital first, I followed the two of them.
Glen was still enraged at the destruction of his property when the cops hauled him in, unfortunately for him. Brandy managed to maintain a façade of weak and helpless female throughout the hours of questioning and was finally released. Since she’d trashed her apartment, she invited herself to mine and kept me awake half the night going over all she’d done for that bastard Glen, the cheating son-of-a-bitch!
I was so heavy-eyed from lack of sleep the next morning that Glenda called me
into her office before the day was over to chew me out for trying to get out of the deal we’d made. It was completely unfair, but after wrestling with the idea of confessing exactly why I was spacey and looked like I had two black eyes, I finally decided it was better to be treated unfairly than to confess. Unjust or not, my fate was firmly tied to Brandy’s and I didn’t think it would look good to mention the assault and battery charges that the police had considered—and thankfully dismissed—lodging against Brandy.
The apartment manager threw Brandy out when we arrived at her apartment to
clean up the mess. Brandy threatened to sue him and file charges against him for harassment, etc., etc., and then packed up what she wanted and left the mess for him to clean up. She seemed to take it as a matter of fact that she would move in with me until she could get another place.
I didn’t want her, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. She kept me awake half that night complaining about how persecuted she was and how mean everybody was to her when she was as sweet and innocent as the driven snow.
Glenda glared daggers at me most of the following day, but I was too tired to
care. That night I was mean to Brandy. I went to my room at my usual bed time and locked the door, refusing to sit up with her and keep her company. I didn’t know how she could stay up half the night and still function the next day, but I couldn’t handle it.
She decided to forgive me the following night, since it was a Friday, and invited some friends over for a ‘girl’ party. As pissed off as I was to discover she’d planned a party without even asking me, I discovered after a couple of strawberry daiquiris that I was enjoying it.
Right up until my landlord started pounding on my door and threatening to call
the cops at two A.M.. Brandy was inclined to pick a fight with him, but I managed to SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 19
evict her guests and smooth things over with the landlord.
Strangely enough, by the time the day of reckoning rolled around I was actually glad that I wasn’t going to be cooped up in my tiny little apartment with Brandy any more. It wasn’t until Glenda pulled up in front of the Victorian house and told us to get out that my belly clenched with nerves.
SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 20
Brandy, who’d spent nearly three hours primping for her big debut, beat me to the front door and knocked before I was halfway up the walk. When I finally turned to face my destiny after watching the wicked witch fly away on her broom, leaving a cloud of dust in her wake, I discovered Gabe was standing in the door, watching me, and Brandy had disappeared inside.
Knowing there was no getting out of it didn’t help bolster me. Uttering a shaky breath, I trudged up the walkway reluctantly.
“You ready?” he asked in a husky voice.
I sent him a scared look, but managed a weak smile. “No.”
He grinned abruptly. His smile made my belly feel as if it was caving in, but I couldn’t decide whether I was charmed by it or more frightened. “We don’t bite.” He seemed to think that over. “Well, not hard anyway.”
Oh god! BDSM!
He settled a hand on the back of my neck, practically dragging me inside. “Come on up and pick out your wardrobe and I’ll show you your room.”
Brandy, escorted by Daniel and Scott—I thought—was already halfway up the
stairs, chatting animatedly as if they’d known each other forever. Brandy was chattering, anyway. I knew that nervous chatter and the giggles that punctuated it. She was as unnerved as I was.
Fortunately for her, Brandy was easy to distract. By the time I reached the
wardrobe room with Gabe, she was completely engrossed in grabbing the outfits that appealed to her the most before I could get to them. Ordinarily, that would’ve annoyed me. I didn’t particularly want
any
of the damned clothes, though!
Gabe nudged me forward. “You need to choose what you want.”
“I’m good. I’ll just take what Brandy doesn’t want.”
“Not that I’d mind if you wear nothing but your hair while you’re here,” Gabe
said dryly, surging toward the rack and looking through the clothes, “but you’ll need costumes.”
I thought for a few moments that he was going to have to scrap with Brandy over some of his choices. “I was going to take that one!” she said indignantly, when he’d grabbed one, looked it over cursorily and shoved it at me.
“Too late!” he said tightly, ignoring her while he went down the rack. He paused with his hand on a red outfit, turned to look at me speculatively and then wrestled it from Brandy and handed it to me.
I was almost enjoying this! Brandy was so unaccustomed to being thwarted—by
anyone—she was getting more and more possessive and pissed off and Gabe was starting to look like a thundercloud. Apparently, he tired of the battle before she did. He stopped looking and simply grabbed an armload from the end.
“I hadn’t looked through those!” Brandy said pointedly.
“These are for Nicole,” Gabe threw at her over his shoulder as he strode toward SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 21
the door. He paused there when he discovered I wasn’t behind him. “Come on. I’ll show you to your room and we’ll go over orientation.”
I blinked at him, uneasy as to what orientation might include.
Gabe turned to eye the other guys speculatively. “You two think you can handle giving Brandy orientation?”
“Sure!”
“No problem!”
Brandy batted her eyelashes at them.
Gabe’s dark brows lowered threateningly when he discovered I hadn’t moved
from the spot. I surged forward. Satisfied that I was following him, he strode down the hall to a door, waited until I’d caught up to him and looked at the doorknob pointedly when I merely stared at him. Prompted, I opened the door and pushed it wide. He still had trouble getting both shoulders and the bundle of clothes through.
After glancing around, he dropped the bundle on the bed—a four-poster with a
canopy. I stared at the bed, which looked awfully big for one person, swallowing a little convulsively.
“You can put your things away later,” he said curtly, heading to the door and
closing it. “For now—strip.”
I gaped at him blankly. “What?”