by Gina Gordon
If I remained numb for any longer people would notice. Marta would notice. So I took a deep breath and got my head in the game. I reached out, only because I had to, and I couldn’t help the chill that skittered up my arm as soon as my hand touched his. Like the ice cold soul he carried around with him had somehow penetrated my body.
“It…it’s nice to meet you…too, Scott.”
I’d never gotten his name when he had been a client. It wasn’t really necessary to know it, considering I’d just been paid to screw him and his friends. I chanced a look at Marta and I wished I hadn’t. She looked on, curiosity and confusion staring back at me as she witnessed our awkward encounter.
“It’ll be great to have you around the office, Grace.”
The sound of my name on his lips made me want to hurl. Good thing I wasn’t into eating breakfast or my disgust would have greeted him as a mess on his shoes.
“I am overwhelmed by the beauty in this room.”
Just like the snake he was, he slithered out of the kitchenette, a smug look on his face that I’d never be able to get out of my head. Funny how Marta had used the perfect adjective to describe him, because there was something inherently creepy about him.
I’d been with probably hundreds of strangers, some kind, some angry, some rough, but only one had ever made me feel unsafe and like I had zero control over what was going on. I had every inkling that he’d had a box of Barbie dolls without their heads underneath his bed as a child. If not Barbies then small, dead animals that he’d killed with nothing more than a magnifying glass and the glare of the sun.
At his exit, Marta rushed me, jabbering words I couldn’t comprehend. I smiled and nodded like a good girl, all the while willing away the shudder that wanted to take over my body.
I left the office that night with my head spinning in circles. I made my way to the animal shelter. Somehow I managed to have a conversation with Alexandra, the owner of the rescue organization. As she got the newest member of my brood ready, she told me his story. Apparently, he’d been brought in by a young couple who had found him shivering and hungry on their doorstep. They knew he belonged to the old lady down the street, who a week earlier had been wheeled out in a body bag by paramedics. Like the old lady, the cat’s name was unknown. He was approachable, but standoffish. Who wouldn’t be if you’d been left all alone by the only person who had loved you? I definitely knew how the cat felt. My parents had left me high and dry, and if it hadn’t been for Everly and her grandmother, I would have ended up all alone.
Alexandra squeezed Mr. No Name into my cat carrier. He was huge, thick, and furry. The complete opposite of the scraggly little ones I already had waiting for me at home. I reached my hand inside the carrier, but he shied away.
“Come on, big guy.” I was patient and waited for him to make the first move. He nuzzled my hand in a moment of weakness then made his way back to the end of the carrier. “It’s okay. You’ll like me eventually. You have no choice.”
As we made our way home, it was impossible not to focus on the scene that had happened earlier that morning.
I had been recognized.
Taking this job had been a deviation of my original plan, and it was coming back to bite me in the ass. I couldn’t risk anyone else drawing unnecessary conclusions. I had to be extra vigilant in my actions, making sure that everything I did was squeaky clean. But that presented a problem. Not only because I lived with an escort, but because there was a six-foot-two-wall-of-hot problem I had somehow managed to fool around with. Again. Against my better judgment.
That blow job in the change room had been intense, and once again he’d had me begging, admitting things I never wanted to say out loud. But his voice was damn near irresistible and I’d let him direct me all night long if it meant I got to hear the rough grumble against my ear.
Ben had me wanting to be a bad girl, and I was trying to leave that girl behind. Unfortunately, I’d made him a promise. One he’d reluctantly accepted. I had the sinking feeling that he wasn’t used to people helping him. That he wasn’t used to people stepping up and being there for him. But I was going to have to back away. I’d give him a few more pointers, but as soon as we finished up the swag tonight, I was done. We’d be back to having mutual acquaintances and only seeing each other at social functions.
Ben Lockwood was everything I didn’t want in my life. And I was going to have to distance myself if I had any hope of finding my happily ever after.
Chapter 10
Ben
Grace seemed to be uneasy tonight, and I wasn’t sure why. With the number of times she’d checked her phone while we worked the swag bags, I couldn’t help but feel that once again, she had somewhere better to be.
We were back in the casting room, standing on opposites sides of the long boardroom table as if both of us were trying to keep our distance. The couch on the long wall behind Grace held our finished products. Although we’d been at it for an hour, it didn’t look as if we were making any progress.
We weren’t even halfway to our goal of five hundred bags. Partly because we were only two people, but also because most of the time we’d spent together had more to do with playing around instead of helping our best friends.
“You all right?” I opened up a new black bag and sat it down, reaching for a bundle of gift cards.
She didn’t answer, but I got a nod of her head.
Not that I believed it. Everything about her was stiff; her gait, her movements, and her eyes. Not to mention the radio silence between us was making me nervous.
“If you have something else you need to do, I can handle this.” Giving her an out felt like the right thing to do. The only way to guard myself against the inevitable—her great escape. “Worst case scenario, I can recruit Cory to help me out.”
Even though Professor Hughes had specifically asked that we not give students menial tasks, if I was desperate enough I’d pretend I hadn’t been listening. Besides, I had a feeling Cory would agree to anything if I enticed him with the appearance of porn stars.
“I said I’d do this for Everly.” She stuffed a gift card in the bag. “So let’s do it.”
“What’s got your panties in a bunch? You’re snippier than usual.”
Speaking of panties…
My mind was always in the damn gutter when it came to Grace. I had been wondering since the moment she’d walked in what kind she was wearing underneath that gray, patterned skirt. She’d paired it with a white blouse that was unbuttoned to an obscenely low position.
“I said I’m fine. Please drop it.” She pulled a little too tightly on the straw handles of the black bag she was working on, and one of them snapped. Her head fell back in defeat, her auburn hair billowing over her shoulders, and she whispered, “Jesus shit.”
I barked out a laugh. “Jesus shit?”
She lifted her head and our eyes locked. Then she burst out laughing. Her entire body softened with her movements, the tension rolling off her shoulders as they eased away from her ears.
I reached across the table and took the bag from her hand. “I’m sure I can fix the handle.”
It wasn’t only her body that had softened, but so had her eyes. Appreciation stared back at me, and I had no idea why.
With a deep breath and a jerk of her head, she looked away. “So where were we in our lesson?” She grabbed another empty bag and opened it, starting at one end of the table and moving along to the opposite end in an attempt to fill it.
Mental whiplash was becoming a common thread in our interactions. Every word out of her mouth, every decision, made no sense to me. I couldn’t figure her out, which only made her complete 180 into business mode all the more believable.
“We got your wardrobe down.” She looked up. “The suit will be ready by the end of the week, by the way.”
I nodded.
“So, next rule of presentation skills.” She shook the bag, making room for more items. “Be passionate about your subject.”
It never failed to amaze me how confident she was. I hoped I could channel that when the time came.
“You can probably talk about the porn industry backwards and forwards, but you have to be prepared. Anticipate questions and work out what you want to say. Write it down and memorize it. It’s how I get through all of my presentations.” She turned away, moving toward the couch to put down yet another bag she’d completed. “I have no doubt you can command a room full of porn stars and co-workers,” she said over her shoulder as she shuffled one of the boxes on the couch. “But this talk is going be outside your comfort zone and you need to take that confidence and apply it.”
My head was spinning. Questions? Writing out my answers? Comfort zones? Was this some kind of test?
“The students are all film majors, right?” she asked. She was once again standing across from me with a new bag open and ready for filling.
I nodded.
“I’d stick to the technical stuff. Your process. Your daily activities. Why you went into film. Did you always want to be a director? Where do you get your inspiration? Things like that.”
Why hadn’t those questions even come to my mind? This was such a bad idea.
I thrust my hand through my hair and let out a frustrated breath. “You make it seem so easy. How do you know all this?”
She shrugged. “I had to do it a lot in school and this summer I did quite a few corporate presentations.”
I was going to humiliate myself. For all of the bravado, for all of the times I had been the life of the party, it wouldn’t help me here. I was the director: the person telling everyone where to sit, where to stand, and where to place their cock. I was fucking in charge. But I knew that speaking to a class full of students would be the hardest thing I’d ever done.
“You just need practice.” She picked up the travel-sized bottles one at a time, placing a shampoo, conditioner, and mouthwash into her swag bag in progress. “I do have one major recommendation.”
“Other than completely changing my wardrobe?”
She laughed. “Stay away from porn as much as you can. You don’t want to get trapped into a conversation about ethics that you may never get out of.”
“But that’s the reason why I’m going. To talk about the porn business. I have to talk a little bit about it.”
“I’m pretty sure it will get you into trouble. Do you think I go around introducing myself as a former escort? Of course not. I’m not ashamed, and I’ll disclose it when necessary, but it isn’t information everyone in the world needs to know.” She finished another bag while preaching her rules and advice. I was still on the same bag since she’d started talking. “People are assholes. They don’t like anything they can’t understand or that challenges their way of thinking. They don’t sympathize with people’s choices.”
I wondered what it would feel like to be so confident in your words that you never second-guessed what came out.
But she’s had practice. It’s what she does for a living. You could be just like that if you applied yourself.
She also had a point. And it made me damn curious about her motivations for becoming an escort. But I knew we’d never get to a place where that kind of information would ever be exchanged.
I’d encountered my fair share of idiots who looked down their nose at me because of the industry I worked in. Not to mention, I’d witnessed many occasions as a child and teenager when Ellie had been shamed, overlooked, or passed over simply because she had sex on camera. I understood everything Grace was saying, but my gut was telling me she was wrong. My gut was telling me that I didn’t need to be anyone other than myself.
And what’s that gotten you so far? You’ve coasted on your best friend’s coattails for five years. Maybe being yourself isn’t who you should be anymore.
“Instead of talking about the how, talk about the what,” she continued. “I mean, you can’t go in there all ‘Hey dudes, I point the camera at naked people.’ ”
She made it seem so trivial. I knew I wasn’t curing cancer. I wasn’t rescuing animals. I wasn’t trying to achieve world peace. But my work served a purpose, and I knew that it was done in an ethical and legitimate way.
I was the VP of a porn production company, whether she liked it or not. Whether I liked it or not. And it pained me to know that she saw through me, saw the real me that I tried to hide behind the veneer of calm carelessness. But that veneer wasn’t doing me any good in my job promotion. In fact, it had had the opposite effect. It had highlighted everything that was wrong with me and my life. Everything that I had thought was important was suddenly trivial, useless. My goals. My sex life. My job. It was all a farce. Art imitating real life and all that jazz. Because when the lights were out and I was alone, trivial and useless was exactly how I felt about myself.
And that feeling hurt worst of all.
But for a woman who until recently had worked in the sex industry herself, she had zero space for judgment.
I rounded the table, making my way to the opposite side. Before she had the chance to turn and face me, I placed my hands on either side of her body, bracketing her against the table. “Do you have a problem with what I do for a living?”
“Who said I have a problem with what you do?” The grip she’d had on the bottle of conditioner tightened as her body tensed under mine, and I stifled a groan when her ass brushed against my pelvis.
“You didn’t seem to have a problem with my work the other night when you wanted me to fuck you in my office.”
“Well…” She cleared her throat and wiggled inside my embrace, her hair whipping around behind her as she rested her bottom on the table.
Like someone had poured red dye under her skin, I saw the blush creep across her chest, up her neck, and settle in her cheeks. I gave her some space, stepping back, and immediately my eyes traveled down to admire her breasts.
“You want me.” My eyebrow lifted, daring her to respond. Daring her to tell the truth.
“Why are you doing this?” The swipe of her tongue across her bottom lip was almost enough to do me in. It definitely didn’t stop the pull in my groin, the ache to thrust inside her, and the craving to fix my hands over those perfect breasts. “You won’t have sex with me. You’re just torturing both of us.”
She was right. It was a sick form of torture. I wanted her so damn much and denying myself the pleasure of taking her was killing me. But I’d lived my entire adult life letting my dick call the shots, and it was about time he was retired from my decision-making rotation.
“Let’s be clear, it isn’t a matter of won’t, it’s a matter of can’t.” I returned to her with one long stride and stepped between her legs. She tried to get some distance, leaning back, but it only pushed out her breasts and I wanted to lower my face and get lost in them. Her breath had become noticeably heavy, and I felt it hot and steady on my neck when I leaned down, letting my lips graze her ear. “But you keep offering yourself to me, and you’re pretty much the closest thing to irresistible I’ve ever encountered.”
Her eyes darkened, that brilliant jade color devoured by the darkness of her pupil. I grabbed her hips and pulled her forward, pressing the center of her body against my noticeable erection.
“You should stop me.” My cock throbbed against the fly of my pants. It actually ached. Demanding release. Demanding to be thrust inside the perfect Y of her body.
“Please, Ben.” Her whispered plea was more than I could take, because I couldn’t help myself when it came to Grace Nolan. She looked up, dark lashes fluttering at me as our eyes locked. “I don’t want you to stop.”
At that moment my heart stilled, and so did the world around me. There were no ex-clients. There were no porn films. It was just the two of us.
I wasn’t looking for a future with Grace. I wasn’t looking for a future with anyone. But she was able to give me something that no other woman could—acceptance. With Grace I didn’t have a past, or at least it didn’t matter. She wiped my slate clean an
d I could be anyone I wanted, anyone she wanted me to be—for a few weeks, a few days, or even a few moments.
But despite the ache in my pants and the blood rushing away from brain at breakneck speed, I still had some wits about me. I still remembered that I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t have sex.
There was a reason why I had compartmentalized this woman into the severely fucked compartment, because every time we were together she proved that I couldn’t withstand her pull. I’d already compromised my principles by letting her go down on me in the change room, and it looked like tonight was going to include a new revision to my promise.
Tonight there was vulnerability in her eyes. An emotion that in the less than a year I’d known her I’d never seen before. Grace Nolan was strong, determined, and in control of herself and her decisions. If she truly didn’t want this, she’d already be out the door.
Her hand came up and she tried to place it at the back of my head so she could pull me in for a kiss, but I stepped back. She’d already had those lips wrapped around my cock in the change room but now it was my turn, because if she got anywhere near my cock I knew I couldn’t be responsible for my actions. And those actions would most likely lead to me thrusting inside her sweet pussy and trying to relive the moment I had cataloged as the best sex of my life.
“Put your hands back where they were.” My command filtered out of my mouth in a voice I’d never heard before.
She looked up at me, confusion filling those eyes that never failed to disarm me. But she did as she was told, returning her hands to the edge of the table, clamping her fingers around the wood.
“No touching.”
Realization washed across her face and it flared to life in her eyes, sparkling up at me with excitement. I saw it in her nipples where they’d puckered and now protruded against the white fabric of her shirt.