by Carole Hart
Having no idea whether she agreed—did women really watch porn?—Emily said, “Oh, absolutely,” and began to work on Babylona’s shoulders.
Two minutes later, Babylona was telling her she had a magic touch. A silvery touch—no, a golden touch. Ten minutes later, she was sitting up on the massage table and asking whether Emily had ever thought of changing professions.
The rest was history.
Greil helped her up off the bed and handed her a white silk robe embroidered with roses twining around the XTV logo, courtesy of Babylona’s signature negligee line. She was smiling and returning waves to the cameramen, sharing the wash of relief that always came after the adrenaline of being on air. As always also happened, she wanted to get out of the studio as quickly as possible, back to her dressing room to collapse on a couch and let the excitement wash out of her. So she was already leading a grinning and still-naked Greil down the corridor to the dressing rooms when he said, “I don’t suppose you ever see your former guests, I mean, socially.”
She was trying to think of a way to put him off—ever since the disaster with Evan, she had a policy of keeping business and personal life strictly separate—when she heard a familiar voice saying, “Hello, Emily,” and stopped just short of running into Ralph Anderman. Then she was standing there like an idiot, blushing to the roots of her hair. Greil stopped short, too, and was surveying Ralph with an expression of suspicion.
She caught her breath and said, “Greil Gage, this is Ralph Anderman.”
“Hi,” said Ralph, putting out his hand with perfect, unruffled calm. He showed absolutely no reaction to being presented with a stark-naked rock star on his way to . . . whatever he was doing here. Emily couldn’t imagine what that was. Meanwhile, his air of cool was troubling her. If he couldn’t approve of what she did, he could at least have the decency to be shocked by it.
“Yeah, hey, man,” Greil said, looking at the hand dismissively and crossing his arms. “You’re that guy who was seeing Marisa, right? I remember that.”
Ralph Anderman’s most recent girlfriend had been the supermodel Marisa Brice, a fact that had been returning to Emily’s mind disturbingly often recently. And she guessed Greil might actually not know that Ralph was also one of Fortune’s 100 Richest People in America, a businessman who had blazed a trail through several different industries, transforming them all in his wake. Greil might not know that, but she wasn’t placing any bets.
Ralph just said, with every appearance of friendliness, “Yes, I guess that’s what I’m most famous for.”
“And how is Marisa?” Greil said. “I haven’t seen her around.”
“Very well, hopefully.” Ralph looked at his watch. “Because she’s getting married right about now.”
“Whoa! Not invited to the ex’s wedding! That hurts,” Greil laughed, looking at Emily.
Emily blurted, “Could you both excuse me? Because I, um, I want to get dressed. Though, I mean, it’s good to see you, and . . .”
Ralph said, “Before you go, could I invite you to lunch?”
“Um, now?” Emily was aware she was blushing again, and that Greil was looking daggers at her. “I guess . . . Can you wait ten minutes?”
“I can wait exactly ten minutes,” Ralph said.
She smiled—mindlessly, she realized—and set off to her dressing room, with Greil scowlingly pacing at her side.
“Who is that guy?” he muttered. “I mean, who does he think he is? He just shows up here. I mean . . .”
“Oh, I don’t know. I wanted him to come on the show. So I guess . . .”
“The show? You’re going to have that guy—”
Greil stopped in his tracks. Emily almost kept on going, but realized belatedly that they were at her door—a hot pink door stenciled with a gold heart around the gold letters EMILY LISTER. She said, “Well, no, he said no, actually. But—”
“He said no? What is he, fucking crazy?”
“But—”
“So what does he want to see you for if he won’t even be on . . . the show?”
Greil was glowering at her with his arms crossed. Emily took a deep breath.
“Listen,” she said, in her most understanding older-sister tone. “It was great getting to know you, and I do hope to see you again, but I try not to get my personal life intertwined with—”
Greil had turned chalk white. He said, “Oh, shit. You’re dumping me.”
“Not dumping you. I mean, we never . . .”
“I get it.” For a second he stood there looking at the floor. At last he said, in a more subdued tone, “Yeah, I’m sorry. I guess this whole thing . . .” He gestured at his head. “I got the wrong idea. I guess that happens to you a lot.”
“Oh, well. It’s flattering. And yes, it does happen.”
“Well, I’ll . . . yeah, I’ll see you around.” Then he set off down the corridor again, his beautiful nude back looking suddenly thin and vulnerable. Emily was already inside before she realized he had been heading away from the guest dressing room and toward the staff canteen. Oh, well, she thought. Given that it was XTV, they probably wouldn’t even look up from their food.
Then she went to her clothes rack and stood there with her face in her hands for a minute. Ralph Anderman. Here to see her. Lunch. 100 Richest People in America. 10 Most Eligible Bachelors. 8 People Who Are Transforming Our World.
One man still capable of making Emily Lister behave like a besotted thirteen-year-old.
TWO
Zaza dashed down the hallway, damning the high heels she’d decided to wear that morning (if she’d known!), each step sinking into the deep pile carpeting that covered every inch of XTV’s three surprisingly capacious floors. Zaza felt as if she had run a hundred miles this morning, and every step of it had been like running in sand. But of course it was only her first day; tomorrow she would wear flats. If she could still walk by tomorrow.
She came to an awkward halt in front of one of the dressing rooms—the gold heart enclosing the two names VALERIE LEBLANC and LILA PARKER. For a moment she allowed herself self-indulgent chagrin—if only she could have been Lila’s assistant (or, as another assistant had introduced himself that morning, “porn slave”). If there was one person in the world she could have been, it was Lila Parker, the voluptuous (and nice! Until today, Zaza hadn’t even known how important it was to be nice!) young star of The Mountain Lion. Instead she had to be working for Valerie “Most Hated Woman in Porn” LeBlanc.
She knocked, with a leaping in her heart—maybe Lila Parker would be there?—and when no one responded, took a deep breath and used the key she had been given. The door opened and she entered a room that was pointedly divided into two equal parts.
At a glance, she could tell which half was Valerie’s. Lila’s half of the room was a luxurious confusion of silk underwear, furry slippers, bouquets, and champagne bottles. Framed photographs (all of gorgeous men, to Zaza’s covetous eye) coated her wall. On a red velvet love seat, a pile of recently opened boxes were surrounded by their torn silver gift paper. Oh, God, to be Lila Parker! A mini-parade of Lila’s most recent amours marched through Zaza’s pining brain: John Banks, with his cool air of mystery; Ben Hartford, the most beautiful man in the world of erotica (voted as such by the union two years running); and, most painful of all, Zaza’s eternal crush, Jared Vairy. Zaza told herself to snap out of it (Late! She had been late for everything all day!) and turned determinedly to the other half of the room.
Valerie LeBlanc’s side of the room was so austerely neat that Zaza at first despaired of finding the thing she had come for—was there anything there? The surfaces had a perfect antiseptic shine; the white walls were bare; even the sofa cushions were perfect and undented, as if no one was allowed to sit there. Just like her, Zaza thought, and smiled at the thought of Valerie as a sofa on which no one was allowed to sit. She was, after all, renowned as much for being a virgin as for being the naked anchor of the world’s only daily TV sex news. It was actually amazing that
anyone could give so many interviews about not doing something, Zaza thought, as she desperately scanned the shelves for the makeup kit she had come to fetch.
There! It was a gleaming metal box, and Zaza’s heart sank as she pulled it off the shelf and felt its weight. Maybe she could just get the rouge out of it? But no—it was locked. Typical. Zaza was whirling her arm protesting the deadweight of the box, her mind turning to the idea of Valerie LeBlanc as a box that couldn’t be opened, when the door flew open and a young man came in, looking as flustered as she.
It was the assistant she’d met briefly that morning—Lila Parker’s porn slave, of course!—looking somewhat more tousled and much more frantic. When he saw her, he froze, only to relax a second later and say, “Thank God. I thought you were Valerie!”
“That would have been awful!” Zaza said with immediate heartfelt sympathy.
He laughed. “She’s going to kill one of us someday. With those fingernails of hers.”
Zaza made a face. “You’re so lucky to work for Lila.”
“Yeah, I’d like to say that Valerie’s bark is worse than her bite, but her bite . . .”
“Oh, it’s like a snakebite,” Zaza said. “I know it makes me want to wet myself.”
“Well, don’t do that.” He smiled, and she noticed again his peculiarly charming lopsided smile. He was a tall, thin man—Built like a swimmer, she thought approvingly—who, like everyone else at XTV, seemed to carry with him an aura of sexual promise. Perhaps it was being surrounded by sex all day that did it. Still, Zaza couldn’t believe she would ever have that appeal. She was an A cup. A weed.
Before she could stop herself, she said wistfully, “But at least she’s sexy.”
He made a face. “You think so?”
“Well, of course. She’s got everything. I don’t want to be tacky, but if you’re beautiful and you have a perfect body and . . .” Zaza shook her head. “I’d give anything to look like her.”
“You’re crazy,” he said. “Valerie isn’t half as sexy as you.”
She was about to brush off this empty flattery when she saw the frank lust in his eyes—which dropped to take in her body fleetingly before returning to her face. He smiled and said, “No contest.”
She found herself staring into his pale blue eyes, her mouth slightly open. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Zaza caught her breath. Go! her mind screamed. You’re already going to be late! But she just stood staring at him, one hand at her throat, as her breath came faster and faster.
“Sorry. I can’t stay and talk,” she said at last, in a hoarse, hesitant voice. “I’ve got to carry that box to Valerie. And I’m late.”
“Me, too.”
But they continued to stand, staring at each other. Finally, he said, “Oh, hell,” and they were in each other’s arms.
He was kissing her deeply and his hands immediately began pulling up her shirt while she murmured, “Oh, God. Oh, no . . .”
He said, “I was hot for you the instant I saw you. Wow, your breasts . . .”
She pulled her shirt off over her head while he fondled her braless tits and began to open her jeans. “Hurry,” she said breathlessly, although he didn’t need any urging. In a second, all her clothes were on the floor next to his jeans. She bit her lip as she noted his firmly muscled thighs and the long cock, deliciously hard, curving slightly to the right. Then she surrendered completely and pressed herself to him, flattening his cock between their bellies, making him groan. She gave him one more brisk kiss on the lips, giving herself a second to appreciate the rasp of his razor stubble on her cheek—men were so fantastic!—before they both tumbled onto Valerie’s pristine sofa.
“This is crazy,” she breathed. “We’re going to be in so much trouble.”
“I can be fast,” he promised. “Do you mind if it’s fast? God, I’m sorry but I’m dying to . . .”
She gasped as she felt his naked cock pressing against her inner thigh, the heat of it startling, its hard shape making her dizzy with want. “Yes! Okay!” she said. “Fast, just . . . do it.”
Then there was the unbelievable, searing pleasure of him sliding into her. Just like that, he was fucking her. Her hands were on his back, gripping the tensing muscles there, her head back on the sofa. As he thrust into her, she spread her legs wider, shutting her eyes in concentration. One last anxious time she thought of Valerie angrily waiting, frowning at the studio clock. Then he thrust into her again, harder, making her cunt ring inside with satisfaction, and she forgot everything.
The curve in his cock made it swipe past her clitoris with every stroke. Between that and the urgency, the near frenzy of his fucking, she had to clench her teeth to keep from crying out. It was like being sliced into again and again by bliss. She just had time to think, This is it; this is what I came here for, before her pussy caught fire and swept her with the first twinge of orgasm. Then she did cry out. His movements quickened still more, the fucking so rapid it was outpacing the twinges of coming. The vibrations from it were maddeningly good, and Zaza let herself go limp as her orgasm rose to its peak and then extended—and extended—and merged with the barrage from his dick in a wavering cycle of blind ecstasy. When he finally drove into her with a hoarse cry of his own, and pulled her body against him hard, she was almost surprised to realize that he was coming, too—that he hadn’t already come. It was as if she’d forgotten that they had two separate bodies.
There was a dreamy spell in which she pressed her lips to his throat and put her tongue out to taste the sweat there. She was smiling with her eyes shut, her body awash with gratitude. Then she froze.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Late!”
He laughed and said, a little teasingly, “So late.”
“Oh, but you don’t work for Valerie!” She was squirming, trying to escape from beneath him.
He released her, grinning. “You’re right. I’m late, too. But anytime you want to be late together again . . . I’m Anthony, by the way.”
“Oh, hi! I’m Zaza,” she said with an apologetic tone as she pulled on her underpants. “Um, that was great.”
“So great,” he said, and sighed as he moved to pick up his jeans.
For a scrambling moment they were both dressing hurriedly with half-pleased, half-embarrassed smiles. Then Zaza grabbed Valerie’s makeup box. Anthony pulled open a wardrobe and took out a flimsy robe—a garment made of feathers and gauze that immediately looked ridiculous in a man’s hand. Then he followed Zaza out the door and they said, “See you later!” in nervous unison before parting ways to run again down the corridor.
Zaza arrived at the studio winded, weak-kneed, and painfully conscious of the scent of fresh sex surrounding her. The box had hit her in the leg with every step of her mad dash, and she was feeling bruised and sheepish as she opened the door. Then she froze. The worst had happened. The show had already begun. The team of absorbed producers and tech people in headphones blurred in her eyes. Doom.
The sound technician turned to look at her and made an I wouldn’t like to be you! face. She grimaced back and crept in to watch the show on the monitors, the soft wetness in her crotch all too palpable as she sat. There was Valerie, in all her blond and buxom glory, her rich cellolike voice reading a report on this year’s Exotic Erotic Ball. No one could look that good sitting in a chair, Zaza thought to herself. It wasn’t strictly natural. But plastic surgery was another thing Valerie LeBlanc was on record as not having done. She had not had breast implants, though her breasts were impossibly perfect. She had not had vaginal intercourse, ever, with anyone (“I guess I’m saving myself for the right guy,” she would say sweetly—she was always impossibly sweet with interviewers). And she had not, ever, lost her temper and stabbed her former assistant in the neck with a silver pen. (“That girl was a very sad and confused person,” Valerie had told a reporter sweetly. “I hope very much that she can get the help she needs.”) It was all impossibly awful and impossibly unfair and impossibly typical of Zaza�
��s impossible life.
Oh, well, she told herself. At least I got that fuck. And—what was his name? Anthony! He wants to see me again. . . . But a stronger voice was bemoaning her irresponsibility. It was reminding her that this was the chance she’d always wanted, and that she was messing it up exactly the way she always did.
Zaza had wanted to be a porn star since before she knew she was going to have A-cup breasts. Before she had ever seen porn, she wanted to be what she had called “an actress in sex movies.” It wasn’t that she was an exhibitionist, though she was sure she could be, given the chance. It was the combination of the glamour of movies with the glamour that sex had had for her when she was young. Of course, it still had that glamour, and she guessed that from most people’s points of view, she was still young. The trouble was, at twenty-one, she was already old enough to know her breasts were never going to be anything but tiny A cups. She was going to be the wrong kind of redhead—a carrot-topped, freckled, spindly redhead—for the rest of her unglamorous life. And her aunt Lucy, who had raised her, had never let her forget it. Every other day, Lucy would look at her with bliss in her eyes and say, “At least you’re not likely to go the way of your mother!” Zaza’s mother had apparently been a famous reprobate in little, Christian, parochial Dulcie, Oklahoma. About Zaza’s father, all Lucy would say was, darkly, “Could have been anyone, dear, but no one’s talking.” Zaza couldn’t help but dream that someday she would meet that glamorous bad-girl mother and live with her in a world of late nights, skimpy clothes, and booze—all things that were strictly forbidden under the rule of Lucy.