The Princess and the Porn Star

by Lauren Gallagher

  She smiled. “I feel like one when we’re together.”

  I returned the smile, but it took work.

  Hers fell. “Something wrong?”

  I chewed my lip. “Are you sure about this?”

  “About what? Being with you?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Absolutely.”

  “But what about—”

  “Lee.” She ran her thumb along my lower lip. “Every time we’re together, I’m more sure about this. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.”

  “Except the stalkerazzi and Risen Star.”

  Rachel scowled, then shrugged. “That’s the price of my career.”

  “And of dating a porn star.” I stroked her hair. “Maybe if I quit. We—”

  “No.” She took my hand in both of hers and kissed my fingers. “I don’t want you to quit.” Before I could protest, she looked in my eyes. “I don’t want you giving up your career for me. If you’re ready to retire for reasons besides me, then go for it, but please don’t do it on my behalf.”

  I searched her eyes for a moment. “Are you sure?”

  “As far as the media’s concerned, you’ll always be a porn star, whether you’re doing it right now or you’re retired.” She held my gaze and squeezed my hand. “I don’t care what you do, Lee, and I don’t want to change a thing about you.” She moistened her lips. “I just want to be with you.”

  “And I just want you to be happy.”

  “I am,” she whispered. “Happier than I’ve been in a long time.”

  We held each other’s gazes for a moment, until her eyes flicked toward my lips. Then she slid her hands up my chest.

  My heart beat faster as I reached for and cradled her neck in both hands. I swore the ground under us was spinning just like that platform in front of the green screen. The air between us was taut and heavy, loaded with something that wanted to be said, but Rachel didn’t speak and I couldn’t find the words, so I kissed her instead.

  We melted against each other, my hand sliding up into her hair as the other drifted down her back. She wrapped her arms around my neck. The kiss was somewhere between hungry and lazy, our mouths moving slowly but insistently.

  When we finally separated, I could barely catch my breath. The sun had slipped into the ocean, and the light was fading fast.

  “I should drive you home.” I kissed her again, softly this time. “Since Quinn took off with your car.”

  She laughed. “Well, I do hope you weren’t planning on leaving me here.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “So if you take me home,” she whispered, letting her lips brush mine, “any chance you’ll stay there with me?”

  “Oh, I’d say there’s more than a chance.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rachel

  From the moment I’d signed my record deal, my life had gone ninety miles an hour. Red-eye flights and coffee-fueled interviews. The all too frequent bus ride through the night after an exhausting concert. Camera flashes and constant noise and go, go, go. Even when I slept, there was somewhere to be as soon as I woke up. I was away more than I was home, burning the candle at both ends with a blowtorch in the middle.

  But tonight, as Lee closed my bedroom door behind us, the world slowed down. Slowed down and nearly stopped.

  For tonight, there was nowhere else I needed to be, and even if there was, it didn’t matter. Only the sand in my shoes reminded me a world even existed outside this room, and as I toed off my shoes, those tiny grains of evidence went with them.

  Lee shrugged off his coat and let it drop forgotten to the floor with a quiet thud. My heels hadn’t been all that high, but without them, our height difference was even more pronounced, and as he wrapped his arms around me, I felt small. Tiny. Not at all helpless or defenseless, but somehow still protected. Safe.

  I hooked a finger in Lee’s blue tie and slid it down until the knot slipped free. His hand drifted up my back and into my hair. I pulled in a breath through my nose as his fingers slowly closed, and my entire scalp tingled in anticipation of the sting I knew was coming. Then it came, and I moaned as he pulled my head back, and I wriggled against him as he leaned down to kiss my neck.

  His other hand drifted up my back, and then a shiver followed the zipper down my spine.

  I was aroused beyond words. I lost myself in his kiss, in his embrace. Even as he broke the kiss and started down my neck, I was completely lost in him.

  He kissed my neck as he pushed one strap over my shoulder. Then the other. With a gentle tug, the dress fell away, like it had simply lost its form and collapsed to my feet, leaving my skin bare and cool.

  His hand moved around to the small of my back again, and he pulled me against him. Warm hands ran up and down—my back, my sides, my neck—like he just wanted to touch me all over when any other man would have been groping.

  The cool air against my back and shoulders emphasized the warmth of his body against my front, and I pressed into him, searching for more of that heat.

  Lee lowered me onto the bed. I pulled him down with me. His shirt brushed my nipples, making me gasp and shiver beneath him. His unraveled tie hung over either side of his neck. His jacket was long gone, his shirt half-unbuttoned, and he sucked in a hiss of breath as I slid my hand over his clothed erection. Oh God, he was hard, rock hard, ready to fuck me into oblivion if he wanted to or I begged him to, but in spite of his obvious arousal and my nearly unbearable need for him, we didn’t rush.

  His hand drifted downward and then gently nudged my inner thigh. My body responded to him with no thought on my part, my legs spreading for him and my hips lifting in anticipation as his hand slid upward. I gripped his arm as he gently moved my panties aside, and every muscle in my body tensed and trembled as two fingertips made the slowest, lightest circles around my clit. I lifted my hips off the bed, pressing against his fingers, and whimpered into his kiss as the earliest sparks of an orgasm came to life beneath his touch.

  I shuddered and dug my nails into his arm. With a groan he bent and kissed my neck, and I almost lost it when, at the exact same time his fingers slipped inside me, he released a warm, ragged breath across my skin. The heel of his hand pressed against my clit as his fingers moved in and out. Jesus Christ, the motion of his fingers was perfect—the speed, the angle, everything. After a moment, I realized his hand wasn’t moving at all but staying perfectly still while my hips did it all, and maybe in another time and place I would’ve been embarrassed, knowing I was fucking his hand like this, but with Lee, I didn’t care. I wanted more, so I did it faster, and he growled softly as he kissed his way up the side of my throat.

  “Don’t stop,” he whispered. “Not until you come.”

  I moaned and shivered against him. “Oh God…”

  “I want you to come.” He was breathing hard now, fast and hard and hot against my neck. “Fuck, baby, I want… I want you to come.”

  I fucked his hand harder. I was on edge, the growing tension closing in, and just before I lost it, Lee bent his fingers, and with a shuddered, “Oh my God…” I surrendered to an explosion in extra-slow motion. A white-hot and ice-cold shockwave unleashed one ripple at a time. He drew it out, teasing every lightning bolt and shudder out of me until I begged him to stop.

  I settled back onto the bed. Neither of us said a word. Lee leaned away and pulled open the bedside table drawer, and the hiss of foil on foil made my breath catch. Then his belt jingled, and the zipper came down, and he looked me right in the eyes as he tore the condom wrapper with his teeth.

  I could barely stay still as he put the condom on. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d needed someone this bad. I even caught myself wishing we could forego that single, thin barrier, if only so we could be just a millimeter closer to each other. So he could feel me like I felt him.

  But I didn’t say anything as he put it on.

  He wasn’t naked yet, but he was unbelievably sexy like this. The open shi
rt, the unwound tie, the black trousers and boxers pushed over his hips. The clothes could come off later; I wanted him exactly as he was.

  Lee moved over me and pushed my legs a little farther apart. Sitting up, he guided himself to me and pressed in slowly, making sure I felt every inch of him stretching and filling my pussy until he was buried all the way inside me.

  He looked down at me, and I looked up at him, and we held each other’s gazes as our bodies moved together. He lowered himself all the way, meeting my lips in a deep kiss as his hips rocked with mine, and my arms, moving of their own volition, wrapped around him. The entire universe concentrated itself into this tiny space, into this single room where Lee and I moved, kissed, fucked.

  With the world locked outside and no camera lenses in sight, it was hard to believe there was anyone who thought we shouldn’t be here like this. That there was any reason he was wrong for me, or I was wrong for him, or anything about this was wrong.

  I couldn’t convince myself there was any reason why this was wrong. I also couldn’t make myself believe that what this was ended at the edge of the bedframe, that it didn’t exist outside the confines of these smooth, warm sheets.

  No one else could know we were in bed together right then. Lee was deep inside me, and I was tangled up in him, and there wasn’t a soul in the universe who needed to know. How good he felt, how his cologne mingled with sweat and me, how beautiful he was; if only for tonight, that was all mine.

  The only thing deeper than the secrecy was the intimacy. The closeness that didn’t stop where skin met skin, that had begun well before he’d slipped inside me and wouldn’t end when he withdrew.

  Neither of us made a sound. During those rare moments when we weren’t kissing, we just breathed.

  And all the while, he moved inside me. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes faster. Sometimes just enough to ignite all my nerve endings and keep me from forming a coherent thought. Sometimes so hard he knocked all the air right out of my lungs.

  Somewhere along the line, the feverish, insatiable fucking had segued into feverish, insatiable lovemaking. Rapid breaths on sweaty skin. Hands sliding across flesh just to touch, to feel. Two bodies in search of orgasms but also each other.

  On the set of my video, we’d started out too close for comfort, and now? Now this. Aching to be closer, holding on to each other until no space existed at all between us, and still it wasn’t close enough.

  “God, baby…” Lee screwed his eyes shut and thrust harder. A quiet groan escaped his lips, and when I rocked my hips a little faster, he threw his head back and gasped.

  “Oh, fuck. Oh my God, you’re—” He pulled in another breath and kept fucking me, kept slamming as deep and hard as he could until a shudder forced him all the way into me. He grunted with exertion and took a few more quick, hard thrusts before he moaned and then relaxed.

  He rested his head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around him, stroking his hair and the back of his neck with my fingertips.

  He pushed himself up on his forearms, and our eyes met.

  The world beyond this room existed again. We’d settled back into the reality where we couldn’t be together, and all the reasons why we couldn’t came back into existence.

  I’m not supposed to be with you.

  I’m not supposed to feel this way.

  But I am.

  And I do.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lee

  My left arm was numb, but I didn’t mind. Not when Rachel’s dark hair was splayed across my chest and shoulder, and her body was molded against my side. She’d hooked her leg over mine, and her arm was draped across my stomach.

  Faint music brought me firmly into reality. My phone? No, that wasn’t my ringtone. It must have been—

  “Shit!” Rachel leapt out of my arms and off the bed. She grabbed her purse off the dresser and dug out her phone. The ringing stopped. “Damn it,” she muttered. She came back to bed and then hit the callback button, and a second later, “Hey, Quinn. What’s—”

  I couldn’t hear what Quinn was saying, but he was talking fast. Judging by Rachel’s expression, it wasn’t good. Her eyes lost focus. The crevices between her eyebrows deepened. Her lips thinned into a straight line, and after a moment, she closed her eyes and sighed heavily.

  “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  Oh shit. That’s not good.

  Rachel groaned. I put a hand on her leg, and she absently squeezed it as she listened to Quinn. “Okay, I’ll take a look. Thanks for the heads-up.” She hung up and muttered, “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  As she scrolled through her browser on her phone, she said, “Apparently the media are having a field day with our dinner out last night.”

  I exhaled hard and rubbed my eyes. God, those fuckers could really tarnish anything, couldn’t they?

  “Here it is,” she said.

  I read over Rachel’s shoulder.

  STOOD-UP OLIVIA TAYLOR MAKES HURRIED EXIT FROM RESTAURANT—Mystery Date Didn’t Show

  Olivia Taylor seemed poised, calm and looking forward to an intimate evening at the luxurious House on the Beach restaurant outside LA last night. After an hour and a half alone in the otherwise empty restaurant, though, she was seen exiting in a hurry, hiding her face with her coat. She refused to show her face as her personal assistant whisked her back to her home.

  No word on who she was supposed to be meeting. Has her alleged porn-star paramour, Buck Harder, left her high and dry? Or has Taylor moved on to someone else? Perhaps someone who thought twice about stepping out with someone whose recent love life may have involved a man who has sex for pay?

  “Buck Harder’s probably a tough act to follow,” said bloggers Chatty & Catty. “Any man’s probably either got performance anxiety trying to go in after a porn star, or he’s squicked out by the idea. Can you blame him?”

  Harder is said to be in Los Angeles filming a sequel to the successful It Gets Harder. Taylor, who is touring to promote her latest album, is currently nominated for four Rock N Rhapsody Awards: Song of the Year, Album of the Year, Entertainer of the Year and Female Entertainer of the Year.

  Rachel set her phone aside. She groaned and rubbed her eyes. “Jesus…”

  I wrapped my arm around her and kissed the top of her shoulder. “It’s just wild speculation. You know how these idiots are.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “I’m just, I’m tired of everything they keep saying about you.”

  “I’m sorry they put a damper on last night.”

  “No.” She put her hand over mine and managed to smile in spite of her frustration. “Last night was perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  “Good. I’m glad.” I pulled her closer and kissed her gently. “It would just be nice if they’d leave you alone.”

  “Leave us alone, you mean.” She rested her head under my chin. “You know, you and I could pass each other on a sidewalk and not even see each other, and they’d still find something to say about it.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Which means Risen Star will be breathing down my neck about it.”

  I ran my fingers through her hair. “But it’s all just wild speculation. Isn’t like they have anything concrete.”

  “Not yet.” Rachel paused. “You know, half of the scandal right now is the mystery of it. Are we or aren’t we?”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “I’m thinking we should go public. Take the mystery out of it.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?”

  She nodded. “Once they get over it, and the novelty of ‘I told you they were dating’ wears off, they’ll move on. But as long as we keep it a secret, and they have even the slightest suspicion, this isn’t going to stop.”

  “Except your label is going to head you off at the pass if you try to say anything.”

  “I could tweet it.” She paused. “Except then the label would flip and then twist my arm until I say my account was hacked and that
it wasn’t really me.”

  “They’d be hard-pressed to prove both our Twitter accounts were hacked.”

  “True.”

  “But hacked accounts aside, this would stir up all kinds of headaches for you.”

  “I know.” She took a deep breath, then looked me in the eye. “But I don’t want to keep this a secret anymore.”

  I stared at her. “Rachel, if you go—if we go public, this could—”

  “I don’t care anymore.” She put her hand in mine and squeezed gently. “I’m tired of the secrecy and pretending I’ve never thought twice about you.” Gesturing at her phone, she added, “And I’m sick of listening to the way people speculate about us.”

  “They’ll keep speculating even if we go public.”

  “But maybe they’ll get tired of it eventually.”

  I moistened my lips. “So you want to go public, then.”

  Rachel looked at me through her lashes. “Are you okay with that? I mean, do you want people to know about us?”

  “Of course I do.” I smoothed her hair. “But I don’t have as much to lose as you do. Once we do this, there’s no going back. It’s out.”

  “I know. It could also mean Risen Star plays their morality card.”

  I cringed. “Rachel, I don’t want to cost you your contract.”

  “To be honest,” she said, “I don’t think they’ll drop me over it. They’ll threaten it, but the fact is, what we’re doing isn’t hurting my ability to perform and uphold the rest of the contract. If I start getting high again or talking trash about Risen Star, that’s one thing.” She shook her head. “But this? They’ll just get pissed off when the news breaks, and they’ll get over it when it all dies down. As long as my albums are selling and I’m lucid enough to work on the next one…”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m not really sure about anything when it comes to Risen Star, but I am sure about this.” Rachel grinned. “In fact, I have an idea.”

  The leather seat creaked as Rachel fidgeted, smoothing her long blue skirt for the hundredth time.