by Kayti McGee
Well that’s embarrassing.
“What kind of romance involves you selling yourself for fame, exactly?” My voice is muffled by my hands, but my point is clear as day and so is my face when I raise it to meet her anxious look.
“I am not writing any story but my own, Jacob Ryder.” Her voice and face are equally fierce and I’m a little cowed. “Don’t you sit here and judge anything I’ve done while pretending that you didn’t have better choices than me. Fuck you! No one fucking gave me a multimillion dollar deal when I was a cute little kid wandering the Ward Parkway mall. Matter of fact, no one really hangs out there anymore since the shootings. Sorry, were you still under the impression that I’m Dorothy Gale?” she asks my shocked face.
Well, yeah, kind of I was.
“I’m not selling my body for fame, you asshole. I’m making a strategic move to get ahead in my career, to make enough money that I’m not relying on your charity to sleep at night, and once I have enough, I will make sure that other girls don’t have to make a devil’s bargain like I am. So just… fucking don’t even look at me!”
It’s her turn to bury her face and I feel like the world’s biggest heel for turning her moment of vulnerability into a moment of shame. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I pick the contract back up, although the words are just blurs. My mind runs through every possible scenario of how to fix this, but in the end I have to admit defeat. Because even if she doesn’t turn in the signed contract, even if I somehow miraculously get her a new part, or Natalia does- it’s still me adding to the imaginary debt she thinks she owes me.
She’s an idiot.
I never did this to be a good guy, or to improve my own karma. I did it because I’ve been in love with her all along.
So real cool move on my part to drive her away. I sigh, change my tone of voice.
“Listen, I’m sorry,” I say, keeping the contract under my hand. “I just want you to be sure this is what you really want. What happens if you meet someone else, someone you really want to be with? Someone who wants you for you, and not just for your looks?”
What happens if I can make you love me back?
She shakes her head at me, her tongue pushed against the inside of her cheek, reminding me suddenly and fiercely of her initial question. Blood surges south at the most inappropriate of times.
“Jake, I’ve put myself on hold for a man for four years already. He was trying to talk himself into being something he’s not, and all the while I was wasting time instead of becoming who I want to be. This is my time now. My career is my new boyfriend, regardless of who I’m sleeping with. Period.”
“Can I think about this for a little while?” I ask.
“It’s fine. Really. I’m embarrassed that I even asked. It was a weird thing to do. Just forget the whole thing. I’ll find someone else.”
And that’s when I make my mind up. No way in hell am I going to sit back and watch some asshole enjoy her like a sex buffet. Fuck, the only other guys she knows besides me are probably my brothers after last night.
And that animal Jonas wouldn’t even bother calling her again, if I know him. I talked her through one heartache already, like hell am I doing it again.
If this is the only way for me to have her, and she’s determined…
Then I’m going to ruin her for every other man.
“Marlee. I want to.”
Chapter Five
Marlee
After the Contract Shit, as I refer to the incident in my head, things get really weird. Like, how do I look anyone in the eye after basically begging them to pop my cherry? Much less my best friend. Unfortunately for him, being my roommate on top of it means I can’t really avoid him.
I mean, I don’t even really want to. It’s just that every single time I look at him, or smell his cologne, or hear the words Bloody Mary, I turn bright-ass red and it’s got to be so obvious that I’m not squirming in my chair because of the heat.
I’m seriously halfway to orgasm every time I imagine what Jake’s going to do to me. And with the amount of smutty novels that I’ve read and re-read over the years, I have a lot of imaginings in that department.
Like my favorite, the one where he throws me down on his desk and ravishes me like a CEO with his naughty assistant.
I make a mental note to add a sturdy desk to my home-décor list.
Although really, we should maybe consider spreading a yoga mat out if I’m going to be ravished on a hard surface. And then I’ll foam roll afterwards, just to make sure all the ravishing doesn’t mess me up for dance.
See, Marlee, that is not very sexy, I remind myself. Maybe my insistence on practicality and my own comfort are as much to blame for my little issue as Johnathan’s desires. Like maybe we could have just done butt stuff and been moderately happy?
I do miss him, which is the shittiest part of all. Only what I miss is less his company and more like how good he was at helping me run lines, or how he could always fix my costumes in a pinch. Hell, sometimes he even designed them.
In retrospect, I wonder why any of this was a surprise to me.
But onwards and upwards. Soon I’m going to be banging a billionaire, and feverish reading sessions will certainly not be enough to teach me how to keep him happy.
For that, I need a live man, one with plenty of experience and the knowledge that if he hurts me, I could easily stab him in his sleep. I know exactly where he sleeps, after all. Maybe I should have made a contract for Jake, too. Like will I need a safe-word? Or is that just for the kinky shit? Should I be learning more kink? I just don’t know.
This is a whole new world for my vagina to explore.
And I’m equal parts anxious and terrified for things to get moving. So really, it would behoove me to start making eye contact with the man who’s going to put his turgid member into me.
Surely I can think about baseball, right? Honestly, the current state of my hometown Royals is enough to dampen any hint of arousal on my part. So I wander into the living room where Jake is idly flipping through what’s new on Netflix, flop down on the couch, and I think about how we never should have traded Jarrod Dyson. Or Lorenzo Cain. I remember how dead Eric Hosmer is to me since accepting a deal with the Padres, and I gaze into Jake’s eyes.
“Are you crying?” He looks alarmed, and begins to pat my arm.
“Don’t worry about that,” I say. “I’m here to Netflix and chill.”
My body is close to him like it was on stage, the heat radiating off him and sparking where he lays his hand on me. He reaches his other muscled arm out like he’s going to wrap it around me and bring me in and oh my god this is it we’re going to do it on the couch and every time I ever watch Real Housewives here again it will be in the place where I became a woman—and then he brings it back with a box of tissues in his hand.
I blush furiously at my misinterpretation as his hand begins to pat me comfortingly. I make my excuses and retreat to my room, for another furtive romance with my right hand.
The next morning is a new day, though, and I am prepared. Today, he will not see me spit coffee onto my boobs. Today, he will be overcome with desire and not friendship. Today, I will pounce upon his morning wood and start learning a new dance—the horizontal mambo.
Except no sooner have I gotten the coffee mugs out than he appears, fully dressed, and swaps his out for a to-go cup.
“Gotta go. Late to the studio. Nick and I have got to finish this song like yesterday.”
That’s fine. That’s fine. This makeup will still look good when he gets home.
It might have, too, had I not fallen asleep on the couch waiting for him and smeared mascara all around my eyes like a slutty little raccoon. So I try again the next morning instead.
Freshly made up, with fabulously straightened hair, I wait for him to walk into the kitchen where I’m leaning against the counter just far enough that he’d totally be able to see down my shirt if he was looking.
Why isn’t he looking
?
“Oh, hey,” I say casually, moving my hand toward his waistband. “Can we, uh?”
His phone vibrates vigorously on the marble island and he jumps towards it like a trained danseur.
“Sorry, I’ve got to take this.”
I have a moment of flashback with my ex, all the moments I reached for him and he would pull away, how he would smile benevolently and suggest that we run lines instead. Maybe I miss him less than I thought.
What’s a girl got to do to get laid around here?
It’s like he’s totally afraid of me and I have no idea how to hold his attention. It wasn’t like this before the Contract Shit. Maybe I’m being too casual. Maybe I need to be waiting nude for him when he finally returns from wherever it is he’s off to now, still on the phone, giving me a half-hearted wave.
Perhaps if he remembers that I’m a woman and not just his friend. That I have needs and he made me a promise.
Except—oh shit. What if that’s exactly the problem?
What if he prefers to look at me like a friend? A sexless running buddy who has amazing taste in interior design and scented things.
Oh my God, what if I’m his Johnathan?
New plan. I will be waiting for him, but not nude. I’ll be fully dressed. In real clothes, nothing sexy. Not even inadvertently sexy ones like my workout or dance stuff can be.
I keep my door cracked but my light off, waiting for him to get home from hanging out with his brother, or whoever it was he ran out to meet with this morning. I hear the front door click closed, the sound of his keys dropping into the bowl on the table, and the impact of his body as he strides across the house and heads to his room. My heart is pounding when I throw my covers off and toss a robe on over my jammies for good measure. It’s been two days since he agreed. Two days. It’s time to release him from this dumb promise and see if I can find a hookup at the gym, or the studio, or on an app or something.
When the light comes on Jake jumps a foot, seeing me waiting on his bed.
“Turn the lights back off,” I say.
He does.
I can hear the sound of his breathing and I hear my blood rushing in my ears. I’m trembling and I’m glad that the light is out because I don’t want him to see how nervous I am. This is almost as awkward as the initial talk was.
“You’re avoiding me, and I know why. You can just tell me without looking at me.”
“Tell you what?” he asks, his voice closer than I’d realized his body was.
“That you regret this. You didn’t want to say yes and I pushed you. You tried to tell me no and I didn’t want to hear it. You aren’t attracted to me, and you don’t want to ruin our friendship.” There, it’s out, and even though I did kind of tear up a little saying it, I feel relieved.
“That’s not it at all,” he says. I’m annoyed that he’s making this harder. I gave him the out already.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You don’t even look at me anymore, much less talk to me. I’ve been there before, I know what that means. Now I can recognize when a guy isn’t into me. It’s fine.”
It’s not, but whatever.
“It’s not like that at all. Believe me. I really, really want this.”
I can only see the outline of his tall frame from the streetlights shining in from the window but I can hear the intensity in his voice. If he agreed to this just because he pities me, I’ll just die. Actually keel over right here. I ask him, like a pathetic person, but I do feel like I need to know. He sighs, and I feel him approach me as he sits down on the bed.
His cologne is making me dizzy, and not in a sexy way this time. Okay, that’s a lie. It is sexy. How is it possible to be humiliated and turned-on all at once? I guess I’ve been reading the wrong sub-genres.
“I… I don’t want to hurt you,” he finally says.
“I’m not worried,” I say, too quickly. And I know he knows it. Because I am worried, just a little, because who really looks forward to pain? I guess that’s in those other books too. Anyways, I’m not worried enough to call this project off.
“Come closer to me.” he says.
“Okay,” I say, my breath catching in my throat. The bed adjusts as the side of his body meets the side of mine. I’ve been close to him a hundred times before, but this want that comes along with it recently is still surprising. He slips his hand over my thigh and all of it fits in his hand. I don’t want him to feel me shake but I feel a trembling start to roll inside. His lips brush against the edge of my ear.
“Okay, maybe I am a little worried,” I admit.
“Then let’s start with something that doesn’t hurt.”
His hand moves to the side of my cheek and his fingers stroke my jaw for a moment before drawing my face towards his. My breath catches when his lips play against mine. Then I feel the force of his mouth and the finesse of his lips as he parts mine and his tongue enters my mouth.
It feels like my first kiss, as he presses his hand against the back of my head, and runs his tongue along mine. Maybe this is my first kiss in some way because I feel something on the other end of his kiss that I haven’t known before—desire. His mouth is hot and hard and pliable all at once and I feel myself becoming liquid as my body molds into him, my nipples erect and chafing against my shirt. No one has kissed me like this before.
I guess he does want this after all.
He guides me back, lies on top of me as we kiss, and I spread my legs to make room for him, to take on his weight. It feels so natural I wonder why I was shaking only a moment ago.
His weight presses me onto the bed and I feel his firm muscles contracting against me, his erect cock pressing into my belly. I feel drunk on him again and can’t believe this is finally happening. I had imagined kissing him, imagined our bodies together, but wowzers. I hadn’t imagined all the desperation I’d feel. There’s too many layers between our bodies and I want my clothes off. I break my mouth away from his, gasping. I’m all ready to untangle my robe and go back to the whole nude thing I was going to do before, but he stills.
“If we’re going to do this right, we need to do everything one lesson at a time.” I stiffen, not even remotely close to being done. “Hey, now, it’s the best way. Each lesson will build on the last.”
“Like a dance class,” I say. “One skill at a time.” Okay. I like that idea. I’m good at learning choreography. I have excellent muscle memory. He runs a finger over my lips and I part them for him.
“You’re a good student,” he says. His voice is deeper than usual but also tinged with more than just that desire. It’s like—I don’t know, seduction or something. “I want to take my time with you.”
I feel safe and comfortable and horny all at once. That’s a much more reasonable combination of emotions, like the ones I read about. In my romance novels.
Oh, shit. Another realization rocks me. Those books might have the good sex, but they’re really about love. And this particular bit of feels always comes before someone falls in it.
Have I made a horrible mistake?
Chapter Six
Jake
She has to know. I’m positive she knows.
Last night, in the dark, I told her I love her with my lips and my tongue. I had to set up a plan in order to get myself back under control because it felt like I was losing it. There was too much intimacy in the dark like that, all snuggled up in bed and making out like teenagers. When I was on top of her I couldn’t help but pretend, just for a minute, that she felt the same way.
When I told her I wanted to start with something that doesn’t hurt, I wasn’t referring to my own feelings, I guess. Because it really did hurt to remember that the only reason she was kissing me like that was to get herself ready to kiss Thurgood.
Today, I’m prepared.
Today, I’m not the friend she doesn’t like-like that way.
Today I’m her teacher.
It will be easy if we do it this way. The lights will stay on. I’ll practice my own acti
ng skills, and I’ll pretend I’m just a really good friend and not a guy who’s harboring a secret crush through the countdown to his misery.
And while we’re doing it, I’m going to give her a million times more attention and care and orgasms than her producer ever will. There won’t be a single moment with him she isn’t comparing him to me and I’m goddamned determined to come out on top. I’m going to show her how to lose herself in me.
And pray that maybe she finds herself there, too.
I’m so ready for this, and it seemed like she is, too. She’s going to be a great student. She knows how to take direction and how to isolate one part of her body for the sake of the other. I’m just going to be teaching her choreography that includes her mouth wrapping around my dick, her throat opening. A how-to on riding me with moves that give both of us the most pleasure possible. Demonstrations on just how many times she can come in an hour.
Wait. Okay.
One thing at a time.
Even though my whole body is aching to consume her, that isn’t where we’re going to start. I take a deep breath, make my face as blank as possible, and follow the smell of eggs into the kitchen.
There’s a steaming plate waiting for me, piled high with cheesy scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and the veggie sausage I pretend to bash in front of her but secretly kind of like.
“Check it out,” she says with a giant grin. From her glow-y face, you’d think last night’s kisses had been total-body orgasms. “I made sausage. Cause, you know, today is Sausage Day.”
“Is that one of those Facebook holidays?” I ask, scooping some eggs onto my toast to maximize the flavor potential.
“No…” she waits for me to catch on.
“Oh. You made a dick joke. Bully for you, it was a good one, you sex fiend.”