The Princess and the Porn Star

by Lauren Gallagher

  I screwed the lid back on the jar. The scent faded, as did the pain in my foot, but the memories didn’t.

  I didn’t get it. What was it about him that kept me tripping over my own feet? It had been weeks since I’d seen him, and time hadn’t even begun to take the edge off.

  God. I’d dated rock stars, for crying out loud. The kind of charismatic men who made pyrotechnics dull by comparison and could bring a hundred thousand screaming people to their feet. I’d always been drawn to that kind of man. Always.

  Lee didn’t have that same charisma. What he had was a subtle but unmistakable magnetism. An aura that quietly drew my attention, held it and wouldn’t let go.

  And tonight, he still hadn’t let go. Twenty-five hundred miles away, weeks after the last time we were in the same room, he still had a hold on me.

  Everything that man did was sexy. Of course it was. He was paid to be sexy, but they didn’t hire him off the street and teach him to be that way. A presence like that wasn’t something a person could learn. Maybe someone had taught him to do that thing with his mouth, and maybe he’d learned somewhere how to tilt a woman’s hips just right to hit… Oh, God, just the thought of that made me shiver. Yeah, that kind of thing, he could have picked up along the way.

  But that air about him? The way he gave off a sexual charge even when he was still and silent? That was all him.

  I opened my eyes and let my gaze drift toward the cabinet currently closed over the television. The television, and my Xbox. Gnawing my lip, I glanced at the controller and headset on the tiny counter that served as a bedside table.

  Oh, what the hell? I put in the game and, once everything had booted up, scrolled through all my gamer friends—only three or four of whom knew who I really was—to one name in particular.

  Bucktacular1.

  He was online. Possibly already in a game, but online. That was a start.

  I highlighted his name.

  Press A to Invite.

  My thumb hovered over the button.

  Then I tapped it, and held my breath as the message flashed onto the screen:

  Waiting for Bucktacular1 to respond.

  No response.

  Another minute or so.

  Still nothing.

  I let a few minutes pass, all the while staring at the screen like I could will him to respond.

  Nothing. He didn’t decline, but he didn’t accept either.

  I sighed. He was in a game, away from the console or didn’t want to connect. Either way, it wasn’t happening tonight. I clicked off the invitation.

  Oh well. As long as I was on, a few rounds of some shoot ’em up relaxation wouldn’t hurt. I leaned over the edge of the bed and rifled around in a drawer for the binder containing all the discs of the games I couldn’t live without.

  A beep inside my headset made me look toward the screen to see who’d invited me.

  Bucktacular1 has invited you.

  I scrambled upright and snatched my controller off the bed, quickly hitting the button to accept.

  Inside the headset, a quiet click, followed by the soft static background of an open line of communication.

  “You there?” I asked.

  “Right here,” he said, and the grin in his voice brought one to mine. “This is a surprise.”

  “Not a bad surprise, I hope.”

  “Of course not. Where are you?”

  “I’m in North Carolina. Raleigh, I think.” I laughed. “Kind of lose track after a while.”

  “I can imagine. And isn’t it, like, one in the morning there?”

  “Something like that. I—” Missed you. Wanted you. Need you. “—couldn’t sleep.”

  “Same here.” He paused. “So, um, ready to play?”

  “Yeah. Ready when you are.” I lay back against some pillows I’d stacked on the bed. “Let’s do this.”

  Our characters appeared on the screen, and Lee’s followed mine into the abandoned military facility where we had to complete our next objective. We busted down doors, fired at enemies and made our way deeper into the building.

  “I’ve got some ammo over here.” I stopped my character beside the glowing box. “You need it?”

  “Yeah, I’m out. Be right there.”

  I turned my character around and waited as Lee’s came down the passageway to where mine was standing. It was weird how just seeing his animated avatar settled something in me. Neither of them looked anything like us—mine wasn’t even female—but just knowing he was the one controlling the camouflaged, heavily armed soldier on the screen was…comforting. We were thousands of miles apart, but the two characters could touch if they wanted to.

  The controller rattled in my hands, and an explosion shook the passageway on the screen.

  “Let’s go!” I directed my character to run toward the exit.

  “Right behind you,” Lee said. “Watch out on your left.”

  After a good hour or so, my eyes were getting heavy, so at a checkpoint, I said, “I’d better call it a night before I nod off on you.”

  Lee laughed. “Sounds good to me. We can pick up another night.”

  Another night. I smiled to myself.

  “Anyway,” he said. “Good game.”

  “You too.” The post-game adrenaline drop was starting to kick in, and I’d be dead to world within the hour, but a sense of urgency, near panic, twisted in my stomach. “Before you go…”

  He was quiet for a second. I thought he might have turned off his headset until he said, “What’s up?”

  “I, um…” I exhaled. Maybe it was fatigue, maybe it was desperation, but I just blurted out, “I want to see you.”

  “Oh. Like…”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence.

  I pressed my fingers into the bridge of my nose. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “You do?”

  I played with the edge of my controller, just to keep my fingers busy. “Yeah. I know we said we wouldn’t, and my manager will probably kill me, but I… I really do want to see you.”

  “Me too,” he said quietly. “How long will you be in Raleigh?”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow.” I paused and mouthed a few curses. “I don’t know when I can get back to LA. Not any time soon.”

  “I could come to you.”

  I swallowed. “Really?”

  “Sure.” He was quiet for a long moment. Then, “I’m shooting all this week. But, the week after…”

  My heart beat faster. “How easily can you get to Atlantic City?”

  His soft laugh brought a smile to my lips. “Oh, I think I can get there easily enough.”

  “I’ve got four shows there,” I said. “I’ll be there next Monday, and I’m not leaving until Friday morning.”

  “Hmm.” He paused. “I can probably get there on Tuesday.”

  “It’s not too much of a headache, is it?” I asked. “I know it’s a long flight, and—”

  “Rachel.” The grin in his quiet, soothing tone made me shiver. “It’s no headache at all. I promise. In fact, I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Are you—”

  “I’ll text you when I’m in town. With a hotel and room number.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and soft. “I can’t wait.”

  I smiled. “I’ll see you then.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Lee

  The cab dropped me outside the airline’s check-in desk at LAX. I paid him, picked up my bag off the seat and headed into the airport.

  I checked in on the electronic kiosk and then headed for security. In the security line, a trio of girls—probably college students—whispered behind their hands, and all three looked straight at me.

  I tried not to look at them. All the way through security, I felt more than a little conspicuous, like the fact that the three college girls seemed to recognize me meant that everyone did, and I just focused on keeping my head down and getting the hell through to my gate.

  On the other side of
the security checkpoint, I put my shoes back on, grabbed my bag and headed into the concourse.

  When I reached my gate, I still had forty-five minutes or so before the plane boarded. Time to find some lunch, maybe a book for—

  “Excuse me.”

  I turned around, and a red-faced blonde looked up at me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you…are you Buck Harder?”

  For a second, I considered pretending I wasn’t, then nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

  Her face darkened even more, and she giggled. “Oh my God, it’s so good to meet you.” She held out her iPad and gestured at its cover with a pen. “Do you mind signing this?”

  I smiled. “Sure.”

  As I signed it, she said, “All I need now is Olivia’s autograph.”

  I glanced at her, and her eyebrows were raised expectantly, like she thought I’d offer some sort of insight into the acquisition of an Olivia Taylor autograph. Shrugging, I handed back the pen and signed tablet. “Well, good luck. You can probably get a signature at one of her concerts.”

  “Oh.” The girl scowled, but then looked down at the signature on her tablet case, and smiled. “Anyway, thanks!” She clutched the iPad to her chest, smiled one more time and then turned to go.

  That was weird. Really weird.

  I was used to silent recognition. The occasional double take, followed by wide—and quickly averted—eyes. Most people didn’t want to admit too loudly that they watched porn, especially not enough to recognize a face on the street. They definitely didn’t ask for autographs or photos.

  This? I wasn’t sure how I felt about this.

  Especially when I was on my way to see Rachel, and all it would take was a few incriminating tweets to track me right to her.

  Maybe incognito, or at least inconspicuous, was the way to go, so I slipped into one of the gift shops and found a Raiders baseball cap and a decent pair of sunglasses, and then headed back toward my gate.

  I felt like an idiot, walking through the airport with sunglasses on. I’d always sworn I’d never be one of those pretentious jackasses who wandered around indoors with shades on, but here I was. I glanced at my reflection in a window. The dark lenses and the baseball cap obscured my face enough that someone would have to work at it to recognize me. I could pass for some random guy instead of standing out as Buck Harder.

  I hoped.

  I touched down in New Jersey and took a cab to the hotel in Atlantic City. Once I was checked in and settled in, I grabbed a shower.

  As I dried off, I texted Rachel with the room number and then checked the time. Eight forty-five.

  She was probably onstage right now. If her after-show routine was anything like that of musicians I’d known, there’d probably be some autographs for fans, maybe an interview with a radio station or two. Then an escape to her hotel room or her tour bus just to come down from the adrenaline and let her ears stop ringing.

  So what did I do in the meantime?

  I went to the window and looked out at the strip. Or the boardwalk. Whatever they called it in Atlantic City. The sidewalks were still crowded, and casinos glittered along the ocean’s edge.

  I could go find something to eat, except I wasn’t terribly hungry. What these nerves and butterflies were all about, I had no idea, but eating just didn’t sound like a good idea.

  I could go play the tables for a while.

  No. Bad idea. If random girls in airports recognized me, then random players in casinos might too. Plus, casinos had cameras eyeballing everyone from every possible angle. Best not to get caught on tape in the same city where Rachel was performing, at least until the media forgot about how much they wanted to catch us sleeping together.

  My skin crawled. I scowled and rolled my shoulders. People in my line of work didn’t usually have to deal with that kind of scrutiny. If anyone wanted to know what we did in the bedroom, they need look no further than our last film. Well, that was what they thought, anyway. If we had sweaty gang bangs on camera, then clearly that was what we did in real life too.

  But whatever our films did or didn’t say about our real-life sex lives, the media typically didn’t notice we were alive unless one of us wound up in some sort of scandal. Even then, they didn’t make a point of following us around to pick up all the juicy details of our personal lives, because the juiciest of those details were available online for a few bucks and some bandwidth.

  The idea of people sniffing around to catch a glimpse—and a photo—of Rachel and me together bugged me. Just because I fucked women in front of cameras didn’t mean the cameras should latch on to any woman who gave me the time of day. My career was not an all-access pass to Olivia Taylor’s private life.

  Which begged the question again: what the fuck was I doing here?

  Okay, so it wasn’t easy to find women who were interested in Lee instead of just Buck. Even if it was just sex, most of the women who didn’t run away screaming when they found out I was Buck Harder, well, they wanted to be with Buck Harder.

  Rachel had been a bit put off by Buck, as some were. A little chilly and distant. The weird part was that she’d warmed up to Lee, even though she already knew about Buck. Maybe that was why I hadn’t been able to talk myself out of flying three thousand goddamned miles to see her. Because she wanted to see me.

  Or maybe I was getting my hopes up. Reading too much into the fact that she’d asked me to be here. Or that we’d reconnected at all. But it was one thing to drive across town for a booty call. Wasn’t it entirely another to be flying across the country?

  Fact was, I wanted her. I just didn’t want to be the reason the media ate her alive or the record company dropped her.

  And the question I couldn’t ignore no matter how hard I tried:

  Did I want to be another musician’s dirty little secret? The one she weighed constantly against her public image?

  It’s just sex, Lee. Just a cross-country, super-secret booty call. Sex and nothing more.

  Yeah. Earth-shattering sex that drove me to distraction every damned time and had kept me hurting for more for weeks. Sex like I’d never had with anyone else.

  My phone buzzed. With a hell of a lot less dignity than I ever wanted anyone to see, I lunged across the bed and grabbed it off the night table.

  Rachel’s name sent my heart rate up, and I opened her message:

  Just got offstage. Give me an hour, and I’ll be there.

  I smiled and sent back, Take your time.

  And in my mind?

  Please, please, hurry…

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rachel

  As soon as I was offstage, I took the towel Quinn offered, and mopped sweat and makeup off my face. My heart was pounding, my ears ringing and my head spinning. Jesus, this rush never got old. And tonight, I was even higher, because within the next hour, I’d be with Lee.

  “Come on, my giddy little schoolgirl,” Quinn said with a wink. “Your fans await, darling.”

  “Just a minute.” I took off my earpiece and unclipped the receiver from my belt. Then I handed it off to a roadie, grabbed a bottle of water and swallowed almost three quarters of the contents in one go. The roadies and the band were already breaking things down, so I got out of the way and followed Quinn out the back door.

  After I’d signed autographs and posed for pictures—one of the other perks of the job, visiting with my fans—I headed back to my tour bus.

  Rich was waiting by the door, and he clapped my arm.

  “Fantastic show, Rachel. Go on with that kind of energy every night, and the fans will go berserk.”

  I smiled. “Thanks.” He’d have shit kittens if he knew how much of my energy tonight was from the nervous excitement centered around the countdown in the back of my head. The countdown that marked every second until I’d slip out of my tour bus and steal away to room number 2626 at the hotel three blocks down the road.

  “Rest up tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a big one too.”

>   I inched toward my tour bus door. “I will.”

  “You’ve got interviews before tomorrow’s show,” he added. “Remember?”

  “Quinn’s got it all on my schedule.” I put my key in the lock. “I’m on it, don’t worry.”

  “Good. Good. Well”—he gestured toward the door as I turned the key—“see you bright and early.”

  I smiled again. “Bright and early.”

  He turned to go, and I pulled open the tour-bus door. As soon as it was shut behind me, I kicked off my high-heeled shoes and left a trail of colorful leather clothes from the door to the shower. I wasn’t a slob by nature—I’d pick it all up as soon as I’d showered—but once a show was over and the night was mine, the first thing I had to do was get out of my costume and into the shower before my skin turned inside out. Tonight, I had somewhere to be, so I was in even more of a hurry to get cleaned up.

  As the lukewarm water rushed over my skin, washing away the sweat, makeup, and glitter, it occurred to me it was just as well I had to meet Lee in a hotel room. Much as I’d wanted him to meet me here in my trailer, this was me at my unsexiest. When I just needed a few minutes to clean myself off, scrub away a show’s worth of sweat, and give my ringing ears a little peace and quiet while the water soothed my aching muscles.

  I spent maybe ten minutes in the shower, and by the time I turned off the water, I felt like a completely different woman. Still aching from the show, still especially sore in the ankle, but refreshed and human.

  And now there was nothing except a three-block walk standing between me and that hotel room. Time to get dressed and get there.

  I quickly picked up the clothes I’d left strewn all over the bus, set them on the end of the bed so I could hand them off to Quinn tomorrow morning and then dug through a drawer in search of something to wear for that three-block walk.