Show Me

by Carole Hart

He stiffened, and she pulled away slightly, trying to see his face. “What?” she said. “Do you know something about him? Something bad?”

  “Oh, God,” he said. “That explains it. It’s definitely bad, but I don’t know how bad. Valerie’s decided he should be her first.”

  “Valerie? Valerie LeBlanc?” For a moment, Emily didn’t believe it. “But you were supposed to be her first.”

  “Believe me, now I wish I’d just agreed to that. It’s a gross thought, but what’s a miserable twenty minutes compared to being persecuted to the end of your days by the Evil Virgin?”

  “But why Ralph?”

  He looked at her unhappily. “I was asking myself that. Does she have anything against you?”

  Emily shrugged. “How would she even know that I cared about him?”

  He shook her gently by the shoulders. “So my little girl is in love?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, but she blushed and a smile forced its way onto her lips. Her heart felt heavy and bright at the same time. “Well, I feel like I’m in love. But it’s probably over, so . . .”

  “You can’t give up like that,” Jared said seriously. “It’s probably not what you think, anyway. What if he just has commitment issues and he’s dying for you to break through his commitment issues?”

  “Um, that’s not very likely.” Emily laughed. “Guys with commitment issues are usually dying to stay single.”

  Jared shook his head. “Speaking as a guy with commitment issues, I can state authoritatively that what guys with commitment issues are dying to do is have sex with you.”

  She laughed. “Is that a formal offer?”

  “Let me turn it into an informal offer.” He kissed her, letting her laugh into his mouth as he cupped her ass with one hand and pulled her against him. She could distinctly feel the shape of his hard-on through the soft material of their clothes. Ralph will never know, she thought vaguely. Then, with a pang of hurt, she altered that to Ralph wouldn’t care. Then she was kissing Jared back, letting the comfort of his uncomplicated desire and fondness ease her bruised feelings.

  He stood up and stripped off his clothes with familiar casualness, flashing her his famous devastating smile. She couldn’t help staring with admiration at his body, which he kept in perfect shape: washboard abs and massive arms on which the muscles softly rippled as he moved. And then there was his cock. Semierect, it was already longer than most men’s cocks when fully hard, and rosy and sleek. She sat up and reached to stroke it gently along its underside. It twitched in response, hardening to the touch. Taking it in her hand, she let her fingers play along its silky surface while it grew, stiffening and showing its slight curvature. Looking at it, she immediately imagined it sliding into her, stretching her vagina with an excruciating smoothness.

  “Oh, the magic touch,” he said, and groaned as her fingers tightened and released. He bent a little to pull the drawstring on her pajama bottoms and slipped his hand down to find her wetness. Meanwhile, she leaned forward and took the head of his dick between her lips. It was already so hard that she had to pull it down and hold it against its natural rearing toward his belly. Instinctively, his hips thrust forward an inch, and she tasted a sweet drop of precome on her tongue. She licked it off, letting her tongue play over his cock’s tip.

  “Oh, God,” he said, and moved his hand to find her clitoris with his fingers, using her own wetness as lubricant as he played with the sensitive nub. She moaned, feeling as she always did that somehow it was her pussy moaning; the sensation itself was like a sustained, sweet moan. He cut off the noise by sliding his cock more deeply into her mouth, and she sucked it, feeling his pulse as it hardened further in response. Then time stood still as she sucked him, taking his cock a little way into her throat. The feeling of almost choking was a subtle turn-on. He was bent sideways, his fingers fucking into her. With each thrust he let them play over her now lusciously slippery clit.

  “No, wait,” he said. “I want to fuck you.”

  Immediately, she knew what she wanted. Sliding off the couch, she positioned herself with her arms on the coffee table, inviting him to enter her from behind. She watched him in the mirror as he knelt behind her, his face transformed by need. Then came the familiar wonder of his cock opening her and filling her impossibly perfectly, so that it felt both overwhelming and exactly right. He went into her slowly, slowly, making her gasp as he hit a point where she thought she could take no more—and then went on and showed her that she could. As his balls pressed against her clitoris agonizingly sweetly, he paused and leaned forward to pull her pajama top open, taking one breast in his hand and fondling it gently. He kissed the back of her head, and the tenderness of it made her tremble. “I love you, Emily,” he said.

  “I love you, too.”

  With his hand holding her breast, he cradled her against him, his slightly dazed smile meeting hers in the mirror. Then his hips began to move, fucking into her with delicate, knowing movements that seemed to feel for her inner sensations, triggering ever new impulses of pleasure. He had shut his eyes, but she continued to watch in the mirror as his body tensed and released, the muscles flowing under his skin. He was beautiful—this was beautiful. The feeling of his cock meeting her again and again was building into an intensity that lingered just below the point of orgasm. Emily arched her back, letting him drive in deeper. And he felt her need and began to fuck her harder, at the very edge of control. He let go of her breasts and moved his hand down to her clitoris, teasing her with feather-light touches there. That did it: She began to come with wild, helpless spasms, her eyes shutting into a delirious blackness in which his cock pounding into her was the only remaining reality. The orgasm peaked and eased. She opened her eyes to see him in the mirror, biting his lip and then convulsively gripping her to him as he tensed into his own orgasm.

  As his cock pulsed inside her, he kissed the back of her neck. She felt his limbs relaxing around her into a grateful tenderness. At last he said, “Thank you.”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to thank me.”

  Then they were separating, pulling their clothes back on. It was an instinctive movement backward from the intimacy they shared; both of them naturally drew a line after sex, wanting a little space to reaffirm that what they had was, after all, friendship.

  When they were sitting back on either end of the couch, exactly as before, though with an added undertone of calm and warmth, he said, “I’ve been thinking about it. I think I should fuck Valerie.”

  “Excuse me?” She laughed. “You were thinking about it while you were fucking me?”

  “No! God, no. Did it seem like my mind was elsewhere? No, when you were telling me about your man.”

  “He’s not my man.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Whatever you want to believe.” Then he said, with a flippancy beneath which she could sense his loving protective-ness for her, “I have a friend in need. I’m going to make the ultimate sacrifice. If Valerie still wants me.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said softly. “Ralph wouldn’t . . . sleep with her. I mean, he wouldn’t do it on camera. I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

  “Look, I could have sworn she had something up her sleeve. For some reason, she thought she could make him do it.”

  Emily looked at him, touched. He was meeting her eye with a stubborn set to his jaw, as if daring her to argue with him.

  Instead, she found herself saying, “I am in love, you know.”

  “I know.” His face softened. “Love. I wonder if that’s really what’s happening to me.”

  “Maybe talking to her would help you figure it out,” Emily said lightly.

  “Shh,” he said. “You know I will. I’m just savoring this last moment before I become completely obsessed.”

  “I think that moment is over.”

  Jared smiled slowly. “Oh, well. Takes a lovesick fool to know a lovesick fool.”

  SEVEN

  “Sohow did you end up here?”

/>   It was Thomas, the black guy Zaza had had a mini-crush on ever since she got to the house. He was leaning against the bar, drinking the last of the martinis they’d been given in a surprise gift at seven. His green eyes were fixed on her with the slightly self-conscious libidinousness that seemed to be common to all the residents. Don’t look at the camera, she told herself.

  She cleared her throat, keeping her gaze fixed on Thomas’s face, and said, “Oh, I just drifted into it. I mean, I had a little role on that soap opera Midnight’s Secrets.”

  “No way!” Janice put in from the floor, where she was looking through a contact sheet of nude photographs of herself, circling the ones she liked. “You were on that thing? I love that show.”

  “Just a few episodes,” Zaza said. “I got killed in a tragic car crash on my third day.”

  “I hate when that happens,” Janice said. “You get to fuck anybody?”

  “Um, Javier. I mean, Lothario on the show.”

  “Cool,” said Thomas awkwardly. He was (as Janice put it) a “civilian”; he’d never had anything to do with the sex industry before, and he was clearly feeling a little out of his depth. Most of the residents on Home of X had some kind of related background; the producers of the show (an X-rated version of Big Brother) had decided to play it safe by using people who could be counted on to have good on-camera sex, with a few “ordinary” people thrown in for spice.

  “I think those twins only have their jobs because they’re twins,” Justin said now, scowling at Zaza. “They’re really freaky-looking.”

  “Jea-lous,” Janice sang.

  Thomas and Zaza laughed. Justin looked around at the three of them angrily. “No shit,” he said. “They got their eyes too close together.”

  “I didn’t notice that,” Zaza said diplomatically. “I mean, I thought everyone was so good-looking, I was really scared. I thought I was the freak the whole time.”

  “Oh, that’s nuts,” Thomas said. “You’re gorgeous.”

  “You’re way better-looking than that Javier guy,” Justin said, and snorted. “He looks like a weird snake.”

  “Snakes have their eyes on either side of their heads,” Janice pointed out.

  “According to you,” Justin said dismissively. “All I know is, he looks like a snake.”

  Thomas, smiling, caught Zaza’s eye. She almost laughed, but swallowed and made herself say, “It was scary, anyway. Everyone was so professional. I had no idea what I was doing.”

  Thomas nodded. “But what I meant was, how did you end up . . . you know, here at all? Doing this kind of thing.”

  “Is this the ‘Where do you come from’ part?” said Janice, looking up sardonically through her too-long blond bangs. “I hate that part.”

  “Well, it’s lucky no one asked you, then, isn’t it?” Justin said. “I want to hear where Zaza comes from.”

  “Oh,” said Zaza. “I feel like I don’t come from anywhere. I mean, I don’t have parents.”

  “You were hatched from an egg.” Justin sniggered.

  “I was raised by my aunt Lucy,” Zaza said, trying not to be annoyed. If she started getting annoyed with Justin, the weeks to come would be a nightmare—unless, of course, he was voted off first, which seemed likely. “My mother left me there when I was a baby, and we just never heard from her again. And my aunt didn’t know who my father was.”

  “Really?” Janice put down her contact sheet. “You don’t know who he was? You don’t know where your mom is? That’s awful.”

  “Oh, it’s not so awful,” said Zaza, trying to be cool. “My aunt is kind of awful, though. She calls me up and tells me I’m going to end up like my mother.”

  “Well, she doesn’t know how your mother ended up, does she?” Janice said. “She could have married a prince, for all she knows. Poor you.”

  “Yeah, poor you,” said Thomas.

  Zaza was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. She wished desperately that there was more booze left. “She means well. She’s just conservative. I grew up in Oklahoma, and I was always kind of wild.”

  “Chip off the old block,” said Justin. “So you ended up in sex work because of your genetics.”

  Thomas scowled at him, but Janice laughed and said, “That’s me. Third generation of sex workers in my family. I grew up at prostitutes’ union meetings. But I’m telling you, my mother wouldn’t even let me date until I was seventeen. She used to tell me, ‘Men only want one thing.’ ”

  “Oh, exactly!” Zaza said. “That’s word for word what Aunt Lucy said! It made me think about that one thing like it was the Holy Grail!”

  “Yeah,” said Janice. “ ’Cause you knew that one thing must be pretty special, if it was all dudes wanted. Wow, give me that thing!”

  Running his hand over his shaved head a little nervously, Justin said, “I hate that. Like men are responsible for all the sorrows of the world. I think girls are just as likely to be using guys for sex. I hate that thing where men are assumed to be predators.”

  “Then why do you try to look like a predator?” Janice said skeptically.

  Justin had arrived at the house in a black leather biker jacket that, he proudly informed them, had weathered two crashes that put him in the hospital with broken bones. It was accordingly scuffed and torn, and seemed of a piece with his scarred and angry face. When he took it off, he was wearing a wife-beater that showed off a wealth of tattoos, mainly variations on the themes of skulls and knives. With his shaved head and massive size, he was frightening at first glance. On further acquaintance, he became both frightening and annoying.

  He pulled a disgusted face. “I got to say, that’s a pretty stupid question.”

  “Yeah? What’s stupid about it?”

  “I’m not trying to look like a predator—that’s what.”

  “So why do you dress like that?”

  “Stupid question.”

  Janice rolled her eyes. “Am I talking to myself?”

  He was silent for a moment, looking around at his housemates’ expectant faces. His jaw was set and he was obviously struggling to contain his anger.

  Zaza said softly, “It’s okay, Janice was just—”

  “No, fuck it,” he said. “It’s stupid ’cause the answer’s totally obvious.”

  “Because you’re scared of seeming gay,” Janice guessed.

  “No, you idiot,” he said. “Because I am gay.”

  Thomas laughed, while Janice sat with her mouth hanging open, looking both amazed and contrite.

  Thomas said, “I guess you don’t seem gay—I mean, in stereotypical ways.”

  Justin shrugged, still nettled. “Yeah, whatever that means.”

  “Oh, honestly,” Janice said. “What I wonder is why they want a gay guy here. I mean, did they know you were gay?”

  “Of course they knew,” he said. “It’s part of their whole plan.”

  Janice looked at Thomas and said, “I see a new experience in your future. . . .”

  “Cut it out,” Thomas said, crossing his arms uncomfortably. “It’s really not funny.”

  “Well, we’re all here to have sex with each other.” Janice shrugged. “So, what’s supposed to happen?”

  “I don’t know. You figure it out,” Justin said. “I’m going to go take a shower.” He got up from his chair and left the room in a huff, actually stamping his feet as he went up the stairs.

  Thomas looked at Zaza with concern. “Hey, are you okay? I’m sorry. We just forgot about your mom. Did something hurt your feelings?”

  Zaza shook her head. “No, I’m okay.” She forced herself to smile weakly.

  The secret task she had received that morning had just gotten ten times harder. From the outset, she hadn’t seen how she was going to get Justin to fuck her—without letting him know it was a task rather than her natural inclination. After all, most of the sex they would be having would be assigned for the duration of their stay. Surely he would guess. And now . . . she would seem like one of those crazy wome
n who were obsessed with “saving” homosexuals.

  To her surprise, Justin sought her out that night. She was in the back garden, watering the flower beds (one of her chores), when the water suddenly stopped coming out of the hose. She turned around and saw him standing by the faucet, smiling with his usual belligerence.

  “Got your attention,” he said.

  “Oh.” She felt herself blushing. Her mind immediately went blank. She couldn’t even imagine having a conversation with this person, never mind fucking him. At last she said, “Well, hi.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” he said. “I know you’re not like Janice. I mean, you were trying to be nice.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s . . . people say things.” She made a face. “I’m sorry. I’m being dumb.”

  “No, I just wanted to say . . . I don’t know. I’ve got some beer. Do you want to have a beer in the breakfast room? No one’s in there.”

  Five minutes later they were sitting at the table in the breakfast room, and he was earnestly advising her on her life. She should have more self-confidence, because she was a beautiful woman and if she wasn’t so shy, it would shine out. He didn’t think she was cut out for the sex industry, because it was for people who were tough-skinned, and she was obviously sensitive. Primarily, he thought it was essential that she find her parents, because she would always regret it if she didn’t.

  “Don’t you have your birth certificate?” he said. “You got to have a birth certificate somewhere.”

  “Sure.” Zaza shrugged, wondering how she was going to get from this to seducing him. “It’s somewhere. I never saw it.”

  “But then you can find out what your parents’ names are.”

  “It just never mattered to me that much. I mean, I don’t know them. And I figure if they wanted to know me, they know where I am.”

  “But they might be scared that you don’t want them.” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Well, it just doesn’t mean that much to me, though.” She was feeling increasingly uncomfortable at the idea that this conversation was being filmed. What if her real mother or father was watching this? She added hastily, “I mean, I care about them. I hope they’re okay.”