Show Me

by Carole Hart

  “But, Valerie,” he said, “what I’m doing isn’t half as daring as what you’re doing after this segment.”

  “Um, right,” she said. “That’s nice of you to say.”

  “It’s obvious to everyone,” he said with a certain languid tone that put her on her guard. “You’ll be having sex for the first time—in front of a camera. Most of us are terrified having sex for the first time, or doing it in front of a camera for the first time. Both at once—that’s huge.”

  For a second, she thought he was trying to frighten her, but then he winked at her and she just said, “Well, I’m trying not to think about it.”

  “And I’m not letting you.”

  “Let’s get back to you,” she said hastily. Friselle Belesci laughed, and then J.T. added his deep laugh to hers. Valerie shot Friselle a dark look and said to the camera, “That laughter you hear in the background is from some of our friends from XTV, who are here to cheer us on—”

  “And laugh at us,” Jared put in.

  “That’s right, and laugh at our mistakes,” said Valerie smoothly, smiling at Jared.

  He said, “So, who’s the lucky man?”

  “No, getting back to you,” she said pointedly, “who’s the lucky girl?”

  “Oh, that would be telling.”

  “Yes, telling is often a component of an interview,” she said. “But let’s try this: I’ll make a guess, and you can tell me whether I’m right.”

  “Good,” he said, with that infuriating smile. “I love games.”

  “There’s been some talk of a new love in your life,” she said. “A girl some of our viewers may know from Home of X, Zaza Jeresky. I don’t suppose there’s any chance that she’s your choice.”

  “No chance at all,” he said.

  There was a faint stir of reaction from the people watching. A few people glanced at Zaza, who stood smiling imperviously.

  Valerie cocked her head. “Very interesting. So give me a hint. If she’s not your new lady love, and by the way, she is very beautiful and charming . . .”

  “Always means more from someone who’s never met her,” Jared said, “but as a matter of fact, that’s an understatement.”

  “If it’s not her, could you tell us whether this is someone you’ve chosen or is it someone who’s been visited upon you by our birthday girl? I think many of our viewers will know that Babylona can be very controlling about these things.”

  “Oh, that’s an easy question,” Jared said. “Neither one nor the other.”

  “Very cryptic. What do you mean?”

  “I mean you asked me yourself.”

  Valerie balked. “Sorry?”

  Jared stood up. Valerie already half suspected, and felt her heart pounding. He said, “You asked me to fuck you, Valerie. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

  He was standing very close to her, looking down at her. She found she couldn’t meet his eye. “I remember,” she said.

  He bent down and took her chin in his hand, lifting her face to look at him. “So we have the answer to both of our questions.”

  A voice in the audience said, “No way!” and was quickly hushed by the other onlookers.

  Valerie made herself look Jared full in the face—just as he kissed her on the lips. The touch of his mouth was a shock, his lips so soft. Immediately, her body responded, even as she was thinking that this couldn’t happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  But he was touching her cheek, his fingers slipping down her throat lightly. As he began to kiss her in earnest, his tongue invaded her mouth. His hand caressed her neck, the strong fingers molding to the shape of her throat. Then the hand was gone, and she was barely conscious of him pulling off his jacket and letting it drop to the floor, him unbuttoning his shirt. She should be stopping him, reminding him that this was business. . . . But she was already weak with desire; her body was lit up with the anticipation of this particular man. She could feel the darker insinuation in his teasing now, his awareness that he was going to fuck her. That she wasn’t going to be able to stop him.

  There—his hand on her breast, playing with it, appreciating its shape. The palm grazing her nipple and making her tense for the next touch. She reached up and found his chest, the smooth muscles flexing as his other hand moved down her bare belly. He turned his hand and drew the backs of his fingernails over her lower abdomen, making her squirm and kiss him more deeply. Then he stood back from her to take off his pants. She opened her eyes and saw the people watching, some of them actually with open mouths. In the first instant, she almost wanted to laugh: shocked porn actors! In her peripheral vision, she noticed that Friselle Belesci had already managed to remove the pants from one of her tamed interns and was nuzzling his erect cock with her cheek while she met Valerie’s eye. Then she saw the poker players looking wry and disappointed. She couldn’t help noticing that Liam had the biggest pile of chips after all; he would have won.

  The concentrated attention made her feel every sensation Jared had given her again, amplified by the arousal she saw on the faces behind the cameras. And behind the cameras, the people who would see this later at home. She looked up at Jared but ended up looking at his cock. It was already fully erect, longer than Liam’s and a deeper mauve, its straightness making it look harder. It was magically beautiful to her at that moment, and she was reaching for it without meaning to—and then allowing herself to reach for it, to grasp it in her hand as if claiming ownership. She licked her lips and looked up again to meet Jared’s eyes, to find his face distracted and tense.

  He put his hand over hers and moved it up and down his cock, his eyes growing distant. She let her hand be guided by his, her breath coming faster as she felt the hardness of him, the sweet skin there hot and dry. At last she couldn’t wait any longer; she stood up and pressed herself against him, trapping both their hands over his dick. He didn’t kiss her but leaned forward to nip her ear. He whispered, for her only, “I always wanted to fuck you, Valerie.”

  She whispered back to him, “So why don’t you?”

  At that, he turned her around and he was embracing her from behind, his hands moving on her breasts, his dick pressing into the cleft between her buttocks. He whispered to her, “Put your foot on the chair. It will hurt less from behind.”

  With a twinge of conscience, she realized he was still thinking she was a virgin. But she did as he said, letting him guide her so that she had one foot up on the seat of the huge chair and held its back with both hands. She was keenly aware of her pussy spread and exposed to the cameras. And then he began to stroke it, teasing the edges of her pussy lips with his fingers, pressing down on them gently to spread her farther. His thumb passed lightly over her clitoris, making her gasp. Then it dipped into her cunt and circled back, slipping wetly over her tender nub, making her grip the chair and moan.

  For a minute she was poised that way, Jared playing with her cunt and brushing his dick lightly against the inside of thigh, arousing her beyond all consciousness of the watching people, who had fallen into a stunned silence. At last she felt the tip of his dick pressing against her, into her. She cried out, and there was a suppressed gasp of response from the audience. He was pushing into her carefully, slowly, spreading her open with his dick. It was all she could do not to drive herself back onto him. Her cunt was in an agony of sensation, and his dick seemed to be carving through the pleasure he had aroused in her, moving far too slowly. She needed him, needed him to just fuck her. To fuck her hard and long. Every way.

  At last his cock eased into her all the way and he bent over her, embracing her from behind. Again his hands were on her breasts, holding her against him. He began to move his cock in and out of her. Valerie let herself moan, feeling the people watching, wanting her to fail somehow, wanting her to succeed. Wanting her. He built up to a harder, more aggressive rhythm, his body taking over from his intentions. Her body answered his, pushing back onto his, her back arching to bring him in deeper. With every stroke now he was h
itting a point inside her that resounded with lust, that sent shimmering aftershocks of pleasure through her that shattered as he hit the spot again. As he fucked her harder, the length of his dick became almost too much; every stroke seemed to push her to the point of pain and stop just short, making her cry out with panic and lust and pleasure. She was crying out in a high, helpless voice, “Oh, God. God, fuck me . . . please.”

  As if out of contrariness, he pulled out of her. She immediately, instinctively turned to him to reclaim him, and he pulled her around, sitting in the chair and making her spread her legs to straddle him, her back to the audience again. She saw what he wanted and guided his cock into her again, sliding slowly down it, feeling it come back at a different angle, awakening a new chord inside her. Then he was fucking her from below, fondling her breasts, and saying, “Valerie, yes. Yes,” his voice hoarse.

  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

  “And 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.”