Harder than Steel

by Jane Galaxy

  And there was a copy of Shhh! with a picture of Jax waving at a car as he crossed the street, iced coffee in hand.

  HAS SUCCESS SPOILED JAX BUTLER? it read. Aside from being a forced reference, it wasn’t until she picked up the paper and squinted at the text below that it even made sense. Oh no, he’s behaving?! Is Hollywood’s hottest packing up his “bad boy” baggage for good? INSIDE: selling off his race cars! Secret engagement rumors? Jax speaks out on The Protectorate, plus new pics of his grown-up LA digs!

  It was hard to imagine the kinds of logical turns and leaps the headline copywriters went through to make something that would grab the most casual attention while staying inside the lines of slander laws. Vanessa walked her fingers back through the stack of Shhh!s, counting them to try to see how many had sold. Probably half gone already; maybe the primary consumers of American celebrity news—the furtive glancers-in-the-grocery-checkout-aisle and obsessive followers alike—were ready for a new narrative on Jax.

  Or maybe he was making an effort to change.

  She’d asked him about Holland Matthews while they were both lingering shoulder-to-shoulder in bed, watching green and purple remnants of light wash over the ceiling from the street below.

  “You know that story,” he told her. “It . . . turned out bad. He didn’t take it well. I’m actually surprised that it hasn’t gotten more attention, considering the way things are going on set.”

  “Hostile work environment, huh?”

  “Well,” he said, sighing and rolling onto his side to loop a strand of her hair over his fingers, “he’s definitely a good actor, I have to give him that.”

  She wriggled closer and set her cheek against the warm skin of his shoulder. Jax traced the backs of his fingers against her jaw gently.

  “Have you tried apologizing?”

  She heard him exhale a soft chuckle.

  “What do we think: basket of those cookies on dowel rods?”

  “No, seriously—have you actually tried it? Whatever way muscled-up actors in a superhero movie franchise manage to work out their feelings?”

  “It would be the mature thing to do,” Jax replied, “but no, I haven’t. It’s hard to apologize for something that everyone treats like it’s normal.”

  She brushed her palm over his dark curls, rippling them back and forth in a gentle massage, marveling at how they bounced back under her hand.

  “For the moment.”

  “For the moment?”

  “I think you’ll think of something.”

  He was silent for long enough that she thought he might have fallen asleep.

  “It was always bound to catch up to me,” he said. “I mean, I always knew that, really. Maybe I wanted it to, and just hadn’t gotten up the nerve yet to stop it some other way.”

  Vanessa couldn’t remember who’d started kissing whom, but it had been long and hot and slow, and ended with her knees quaking and Jax’s fingertips against her, everywhere she wanted him.

  She stopped and realized that she’d been squeezing her eyes shut. Vanessa shifted her pack on her shoulders, hyperaware of standing on a public corner in Manhattan with her eyes closed. Basic self-preservation instincts should have kicked in, but the sense memory was still strong.

  Vanessa smoothed the paper down, placed it back into the tray, and then pulled the stack toward her. The very last one in the back, with accordion wrinkles from being crumpled down into the bin, was different, an older issue that had been forgotten.

  JAX AT IT AGAIN! It could have been accompanied by a triumphant horn section. Party never stops when the Butler serves up the sexy! It was an old photo of him dripping wet, in a stark white Speedo that contrasted sharply against the bronze of his tan. She felt strange looking at the fascinating difference in color, the obvious invitation to arousal that was so easy to just accept. Look, he’s practically naked, all you have to do is look closer and maybe you’ll see the outline of his cock.

  He was standing on the back of a yacht with two young women in bikinis, the roundness of their plump asses surgery-perfect. A young man in the background was identified as the son of a music producer who hadn’t done much with his inherited fame in the amount of time it had taken this paper to become obsolete.

  Still.

  This was the Jax that she’d always photographed. Not this one—she’d never been off the shores of Cozumel before—but this version of him had been around for so much longer than his voice in his dark bedroom, cracked and gravelly late at night, nuzzling her cheek and resting his arm just so, so it wouldn’t be too heavy across her body, more like being held with deliberate thought, even through a fog of sleep, than anything else.

  Oh shit, thought Vanessa, very loud inside her head. She was falling for him, this tiny little sliver of the man’s life that she’d glimpsed, or that had only recently come to life, or that he’d workshopped like a part, for all of five seconds. This was the kind of thing that was easy to get wrapped up in: the idea that she could save him and rehabilitate him from his self-destructive douche-y hijinks with the usual crew of models and body dysmorphia-inducing actresses.

  This was confusing. And she could tell herself it was confusing, in her rational mind, but that didn’t help her, because it was easy to admit it, so now it felt like a virus spreading through her body, on the verge of becoming as much a fact as anything else. And when that started happening, the threat was that a rational mind couldn’t overcome the actual feelings that came as a bonus, couldn’t think straight, or her brain suddenly rejected the idea of thinking this through without bothering to let her know that it was now malfunctioning.

  She made it home with the shrimp intact to find an empty apartment.

  Claudia must have been babysitting down the hall again. She set the bag on the kitchen counter and started looking for achiote, sure that there was probably some left in the cupboard from an earlier experiment in the kitchen not too long ago. They got it into their heads to do that sometimes, try their hand at cooking. Usually their agreed-upon “brand new starts” lasted until Vanessa was sent off on some other big assignment, and then it was back to Seamless or grabbing something from a cart. Some of the cupboards were stocked. There was nothing left from Mama’s cooking days, though—she would never have allowed her daughters to keep spices for that long.

  Mama wouldn’t have allowed a lot of things that were happening these days.

  Vanessa always tried to keep things neat at home, but with the trip, she’d gotten behind, and now was trying to make up for it. With that, and all the clothing she’d brought back, it had quickly become obvious that the whole place needed a deep clean, and she’d been making an effort to sift through the closets and cabinets. That included the storage room and textbooks from her abandoned classes. She tried to go through them objectively, without thinking too closely about what they meant.

  She poured the finished pot of soup into another container and left it for Claudia—there didn’t seem to be a schedule; her sister just disappeared these days and came back after the late news was over. Vanessa paused with a bowl and spoon in her hands, giving a once-over to the dining room table, but it was next to the buffet, which hadn’t been touched except to add more mail to the drawers. She decided to sit and eat in front of the laptop in the living room instead.

  All of Claudia’s tabs had been opened to the usual round of sites—Uptownist, the snarky New York gossip blog that made up half its stories to keep readers on their toes; GIRL WHAAAT?!, like an endless slumber party, with the top post permanently set to gleeful speculation on the size of Tristan Eccleston’s cock; and of course Claudia’s secret celebrity sighting Twitter account, currently nearing one million followers.

  Vanessa hadn’t done hard research in a while, what with Claudia taking care of most of it now, but earlier in the day, Trevor had once again brought up his offer of bringing her on permanent staff if she brought him something good, and it was time to start branching out. Farming the work to her sister was very
helpful, but Vanessa needed a clean update. That, and she had overheard Trevor making the same pitch to Sam while she was trying to decide whether to risk drinking anything that came out of the crusted-over Keurig machine in the hall.

  Sam was being distant and weird, and she didn’t hate to admit to herself that it was more convenient than it was tragic.

  Dominic Thompson was in Chicago for a music festival, Gabriella Zahn was in Dublin for a charity benefit, and anyone else she gave a shit about following around the boroughs on a Monday was either out of the country or in LA. There were more photos of Jax on Shhh!’s Twitter feed, this time in Dirk Masterson’s suit vest and loosened tie, walking along the studio lot. Claudia had installed a browser extension that automatically made thumbnail photos huge when you moused over them, and the shot went massive when Vanessa tried to scroll past it.

  He was unshaven, and his hair looked rumpled—she wondered what scene that was from. Dirk Masterson’s hair was always deliberately tousled-looking. It never felt like dried gel, but like it just formed that way, sprung out from his head in a thick coif she could twist between her fingers, put a little pressure on, and make him groan and arch his back, the muscles in clean shocking lines, making perfect grips for her hands when his neck bent below her navel and his shoulders moved in waves to lift her off the bed, to move deeper and press his tongue right into the center of her.

  Vanessa wondered what he was doing right now, if he was sitting at home on the couch or on set. Was her phone still in her bag? The battery might be getting a little low. She could grab it and charge it, check her texts—

  No. More sex was not the answer. She could ask Dave about tagging along to see who was new or different, get some new projects going—

  Oooh. Joanna Hart.

  The name sprang back into her mind, and Vanessa remembered that she’d never asked Claudia to look into that, apart from showing her the original stoop photos. Hart was sure to be a competitive area now that The Protectorate was in full production mode.

  Swiping through the usual tags and searches, Vanessa flipped between tabs. Joanna was a newcomer to the franchise—yes, sure. Here was a headshot from a few years ago. Hart’s hair was shoulder-length. She was looking directly into the camera. The casting agents had seen the possibility for cruelty here. Dominance. Villainy. It would be neat if Card One made one of their movies entirely from the villain’s perspective. That was a fascinating part of Hollywood production, being able to visualize what someone was capable of, who they could play, just from a black-and-white picture. Back to Joanna.

  She had deferred her university attendance and then dropped out entirely. That was. . . interesting to know. There were no social media accounts associated with her. Uptownist had decided to substitute a fan illustration of Morganna instead of trying to find any recent photos. Large-format external hard drives were on sale this weekend. A sponsored post was featuring a can of cherry-flavored energy drink. She’d tried it once; it had tasted just okay. The asopao had been okay. Her mother had always added more spices, her sofrito was better.

  Vanessa sat back from the computer.

  And then she clicked over to Shhh!’s Twitter feed.

  And then scrolled back, far back, to their blurbs promoting the previous issue.

  And then moved her mouse slowly over the photograph of Jax in the white Speedo.

  The shadowed lines beneath the tip of his cock were definitely visible through the wet fabric. Even worse, there was another picture at a slight angle, one that showed the full curve of him against his thick thigh muscles, everything arranged in a tapered bulge, slung low and out from his body.

  Did he do things like that on purpose, to mess with the photographers? Was it just part of the attention-seeking?

  She went back to the tabs with the sponsored posts, with the hundred-word speculation pieces on Joanna Hart that gave nothing new except the exact same press release copy phrases, and looked down into the half-finished bowl of tepid soup.

  Vanessa went into her room, closed the door, and flopped over face-first onto the bed. She was going to take a nap. That was what she was going to tell Claudia.

  She dug her face down into the gap between the two pillows, unbuttoned her jeans, and slid her fingertips along the already wet split. This had to be done; she was going to accomplish fucking nothing tonight if this didn’t happen, sitting around staring into blips on the laptop screen like any of it was assembling into remotely usable information. This was a thing that needed to occur, and then her higher brain would kick back on and everything would be okay again.

  Well—maybe it wasn’t quite so grim as all that, she thought. Maybe she was just prepared to feel ashamed if she got caught.

  Vanessa settled in to hug the mattress a little bit deeper and thought back to the last time he’d fucked her from behind, his fingers wrapped around her hips and thumbs pressed into the top of her ass, the warmth from her puckered breasts seeping into the cool bedsheets while she stretched forward and down. He’d run the whole length of his shaft back and forth along the seam of her pussy, not entering her yet but luxuriating in the sensation, the ridge at the base of his tip catching against her clit and making her thighs start to tense.

  “What does that feel like?” asked some low, altered version of his voice from far away.

  “Amazing,” she was gasping into the sheets and the tendrils of her hair while she rolled her fists up and leaned on her elbows. He coaxed her hips back easily, she was giving him much more leeway than she would if she’d had any sense left, and Jax dipped in, pressed, let her body expand and adjust around him, paused, and then went in all at once like a gulp or a swallow. He stayed there for a moment, and she imagined him back there, observing just how far in he’d gone, how much she could take, when suddenly he gripped her waist and with a sharp grunt thrust once, hard, and in response to her surprised cry that turned into a moan he ran his thumb down between her ass cheeks and over her anus, exposed to the air, making her hips jerk before he settled them back.

  He was methodical, and she was a wreck before he even got the rhythm going. Maybe it was mostly because her hair kept falling into her face, like that one thing gave her permission to let herself be fucked, be pleasured like this, with an unflinching merciless precision while her back bowed in, and she’d wrenched the covers in her hands, her neck rolling before she knew it was, her smooth muscles clenching hard, and then again. She felt him tense, but he never left that space of detached service.

  The orgasm over and her breath coming back, Vanessa rolled onto her back in the present, and looked up at the ceiling, wondering whether lust was separable from affection.

  Chapter Thirteen

  FADE IN:

  INT. PROTECTORATE SECRET HQ LOUNGE – NIGHT.

  DIRK MASTERSON finishes mixing a cocktail and looks up, as if he’s actually surprised by the presence of the galactic warrior standing in the doorway.

  MORGANNA THE ALL-KNOWING appears: She’s huge, her thick blonde hair falling to her waist. She’s actually standing on the ground for once, changed out of her usual uniform with the protective epaulettes and cape into clothing suitable for a woman on Earth. Casual, but not ridiculous on her. She could easily kick his ass, even dressed like this, if she felt like it. She FROWNS, curious but suspicious at what he’s doing, and Dirk HESITATES.

  DIRK MASTERSON

  I’d ask if you want one, but I’m not sure what space goddesses drink.

  MORGANNA

  I am not a goddess, Steel Knight, I am a conqueror. You exaggerate only because your ridiculous lifespan prevents you from seeing the truths of the universe. Gods do not exist. Only those who rule.

  DIRK

  So . . . a vodka gal, then, huh? You look like a goddess. And you can call me Dirk.

  He moves behind the bar fully and starts looking over the bottles lining the walls.

  MORGANNA

  I do not understand.

  DIRK

  Well, vodka is made fro
m potatoes, and it doesn’t really have a kick, per se—

  MORGANNA (impatient)

  I do not understand why you call yourself by so many names.

  DIRK

  What do you mean? You have many names. Morganna. The All-Knowing. Morganna The All-Knowing.

  MORGANNA

  That is not the same as being Steel Knight, and then being Dirk Masterson in the same life. One man with two identities surely cannot be trustworthy to his fellow warriors, let alone a leader of Earth’s defenses.

  Dirk has found the right bottle. He pours and starts looking underneath the bar for something else.

  DIRK

  It’s, um . . . it’s a way of protecting myself. And other people. We all have them.

  WIDE SHOT of the empty underground lounge. The rest of the Protectorate are nowhere to be seen. Soft distant noises from the computers in the lab. It’s soothing and calm here tonight.

  BEAT as he hands her a GLASS with the drink. CLOSE on the cherry inside with the stem twisted into a little pretzel knot. She peers at it with a haunted expression, recognizing it from the earlier attack.