Riptide Publishing
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Burnsville, NC 28714
www.riptidepublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.
Cam Boy
Copyright © 2018 by Quinn Anderson
Cover art: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm
Editor: May Peterson, maypetersonbooks.com
Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm
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ISBN: 978-1-62649-696-5
First edition
February, 2018
Also available in paperback:
ISBN: 978-1-62649-697-2
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After years of making minimum wage, twenty-one-year-old Josh Clemmons may have found his salvation. Murmur Inc., a local adult entertainment company, is hosting auditions for new performers, and Josh has been invited to try out. If he can make it as a porn star, he can kiss his money troubles goodbye.
Mike Harwood is a loud-and-proud professional adult entertainer. In the past three years, he’s starred in dozens of films, and he’s very good at what he does. But as focused as he’s been on work, he’s neglected everything else, including his love life. He’s so used to faking attraction, he can no longer tell when something real is staring him in the face.
Josh gets the job, but when porn fails to live up to the fantasy, he quits to do cam work instead. But he can’t stop thinking about the one scene he filmed, and the captivating man he filmed it with. Their chemistry is undeniable, but Mike knows better than to mix business with pleasure. Then again, with true love on the line, this unorthodox office romance may need a second take.
I dedicated the first book in this series to my beta and the second to my best friend. But this one? This one’s for me.
About Cam Boy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Dear Reader
Also by Quinn Anderson
About the Author
More like this
“Someone call for a plumber?” grunted a burly man in blue coveralls that barely contained his bulging muscles. “I’m here to snake your drain.”
A smaller blond man batted his eyelashes at him. “You’ve come to the right place. My pipes are in desperate need of a good snaking.”
“Well, bend over, and let me take a—”
“Joshua!”
Josh shrieked and dropped his phone. It landed on the granite countertop with a clatter, but thankfully didn’t break. He snatched it up again, scrambling to hit the Home button in the hopes of closing the video before—
It was too late. His boss appeared next to him, and judging by the sour look on her face, she was pissed. “Are you watching porn at work?”
“No, Sana! I swear.” Josh flashed an innocent smile.
Sana plucked the phone out of his hands. “Then what do you call this?”
“Hey, give it back!” Josh swiped for it, but Sana held it above his head. Thanks to the heels she was never seen without, she was as tall as he was. He couldn’t reach it. “Damn your treelike stature.”
Sana glanced at the screen. “Not porn, eh? Look, I know gay smut when I see it. Either that hairy bear is about to bend that twink over, or I’m the Easter Bunny.”
“I’m telling you, it’s not porn.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“No, really. They’re just porn intros.” He stood on tiptoe and managed to finagle his phone away from her. He angled the screen so she could see the title of the YouTube video he’d pulled up. “I’m watching ‘Top Ten Cheesiest Gay Porn Openers.’ Let me tell you, some of these are bad.”
One of Sana’s thick eyebrows rose to the top of the bright-purple headscarf that covered her hair. “You know what else is bad? Watching porn at work.”
“I already told you, I’m not. And besides—” Josh waved a hand at the near-empty coffee shop around them “—it’s dead today.”
Sana muttered something familiar under her breath that—after a day of extensive googling—Josh had identified as an Islamic prayer for strength. “Joshua. We need to talk.”
Uh-oh. Now I’ve done it.
“What about?”
“You and your recent obsession with the porn industry.”
“I’m not obsessed with—”
Sana held up a hand, silencing him. “I don’t know why you think this behavior is acceptable, but it’s not. It’s not appropriate for a workplace. I don’t care how long you’ve been working here. If I catch you on your phone again, I will write you up. Customers or not, there is plenty around here to do. Busy yourself.” With a swish of her long black dress, she disappeared into the stockroom. Probably to do some breathing exercises. Josh had that effect on her.
When he was certain she was gone, he puffed his cheeks up and exhaled, making a rude noise. Sana was a good boss on most days—fair, flexible, and not too demanding—but she never let him have any fun.
For a brief moment, he considered going back to his video, but Sana wasn’t one to make idle threats. If she caught him on his phone again, she’d probably send him home. He couldn’t afford to lose half a day’s pay.
Being broke sucked.
Grabbing a clean dish towel from one of the cabinets, Josh wiped spilled coffee grounds and milk from the counters. Sana was right about one thing: there was always something to do around here.
The Globe, where he’d worked for the past three years, was one of few independent coffee shops that had stood against the march of time and Starbucks. Probably because it appealed to a very specific demographic, which Josh could only term “liberal as fuck.” There was a rainbow flag undulating outside the door, and the walls were covered in local abstract art. The front of the counter had been layered with bumper stickers over the years that bore pride colors and catchy slogans. The smell of their organic, locally sourced coffee beans was thick in the air.
Josh glance
d out the large entryway windows at the aluminum sky. It was an unseasonably cold and gray day, befitting his mood. Summer was normally the time when Los Angeles came alive. The sun seemed to energize the millions of people who lived here, like fields of sunflowers. But the sun was buried beneath leaden clouds, and it reflected in the hunched backs of the people walking down the streets.
The stormy sky added to the ennui that settled over Josh like mist. Sana might not understand his sudden “obsession,” but he knew exactly where it’d come from. Well, if he were being totally honest, he’d discovered a healthy interest in porn a long time ago, but his recent interest in the industry was another matter.
It’d started when one of their long-time employees, Pete, had quit a couple of months ago. That sounded innocuous enough, but Pete had left after it was revealed that he’d been working as a porn star on the side for over a year. Talk about moonlighting.
Not that he’d left because his secret got out. If this were a small town, that might have caused a scandal, but this was LA. The land of starving actors doing whatever they had to do in order to survive.
No, the revelation had been a whimper as opposed to a bang, excuse the pun, to most everyone. Everyone except for Josh. He didn’t know for sure why Pete had quit, but he had to assume it was because the money was incredible. LA was the porn capital of the world, after all. If you wanted to star on Broadway, you moved to New York. If you wanted to become a famous porn star—a Jenna Jameson or a Ron Jeremy—LA was the place to do it.
Famous. Damn, he liked the sound of that.
It’d certainly gotten him thinking. And thinking had led to googling. Googling had led to a fever Josh couldn’t seem to sweat out. Especially when he’d seen how much porn stars made. Jesus. The numbers refused to exit his brain no matter how many times he shooed them out. He was no math whiz, but he didn’t need to be: he could get paid more for an hour of sex than he netted in a week at minimum wage.
The bell above the door jingled, startling him back to the present.
Josh shook off his thoughts like water and plastered a smile on his face. “Welcome to the Globe! Let me know if you need any help.” He poured extra solicitation into his tone, in case Sana was listening.
The woman who’d walked in barely glanced at him in favor of consulting the baked goods display. After a moment, she jabbed a finger at one of the rows. “I’ll take an orange-vanilla scone, um—” she adjusted her glasses and squinted at his name tag “—Joshua. You don’t go by ‘Josh’?”
“I do.” Josh opened the case and used a pair of silver tongs to grab her selection. “With family and friends. Joshua is my professional name.” He puffed out his chest. Going by his full name totally made him sound like an adult.
“Sounds kinda pretentious if you ask me.”
He deflated like a punctured hot-air balloon. “Anything else I can get for you?”
“Glass of water, please.”
He grumbled under his breath as he filled a to-go cup from the tap. He plunked it down on the counter, rang her up, and sent her on her way with a smile that had shifted from cheerful to manufactured. When the door closed behind her, he collapsed dramatically on the counter, his face tucked into the crook of his elbow.
“Still slacking off, huh?”
He peeked to the side. Sana had reappeared, and if her voluminous eyelashes were any indication, she’d touched up her makeup.
“I literally just finished with a customer.”
“Uh-huh. I believe you.”
“I did! And I was the epitome of service with a smile.”
“Sure, and Schwarzenegger is gonna run for president next.” She frowned. “Although I guess these days that would be a marked improvement.”
“I can’t believe you. When have I ever lied to—” Josh stopped as half a dozen examples popped into his mind.
Sana pinched the dirty dishcloth between two manicured fingers and held it up. “Get back to work, please.”
Josh snatched it from her and, tongue pressed between his teeth, excused himself to the milk station. There, he spent the rest of his shift cleaning up spilled cream, refilling sugar packet dispensers, and topping off cinnamon shakers. Truly, he was living the dream.
The sun had sunk beneath the morose horizon by the time he hung up his apron, clocked out, and said good night to Sana, who usually stayed late to close up. He hauled two bags of trash out to the dumpster behind the Globe and then began the trek home. Twenty minutes of walking and one bumpy, smelly bus ride later, he was in Lincoln Heights, one of the worst neighborhoods in all of LA.
Home sweet home.
The streets around here glittered not with gold but with broken glass. The buildings were run-down at best and collapsing at worst. He wasn’t sure why, but he’d always thought the area smelled like . . . beige, somehow. Not the benign, sterile beige of hospitals and dentists’ waiting rooms. But of colors that had been bright once, before they’d been beaten down by the sun and grime and decay.
Depressing as it was, it was all Josh could afford. He rented a single bedroom in a derelict house that he shared with three other guys. It wasn’t much, but it was his. If nothing else, he always had something to bitch to his friends about.
As he approached the ratty house, he noted for the hundredth time that its yellowing edifice looked like an old man with a squashed face. The gutters sagged like a bad comb-over, and the windows were his clouded, beady eyes. Every time the front door was opened, it swung loosely on its hinges like a single crooked tooth.
“Another day in beautiful California,” he muttered to himself as he dug his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the dead bolt. He eased the door open—always concerned that one of these days it would topple right over, bringing the house with it no doubt—and shut it behind him. He flung his shoes off in the entryway and noted two other pairs there: A.J.’s Birkenstocks and Chris’s knockoff Vans. Great. He’d have to fight for control of the TV.
After making his way down a short hallway, he poked his head into the living room. Sure enough, A.J. and Chris were piled on the threadbare sofa they’d salvaged from a friend’s shed last year. It had been rained on, judging by the watermarks, and what might have once been a pattern of roses now looked like angry red blobs, but free was free.
The blue light from the ancient TV flickered over his roommate’s faces, illuminating how incongruous they were from one another. Chris looked like he’d fallen out of a Hot Topic display, and A.J. could have been a page from an Abercrombie catalog. Between hair gel and eyeliner, they probably put the same amount of time into their appearances.
“Hey,” Josh greeted them. “Will’s not home?”
“Nah.” A.J. dug his hand into the bowl of popcorn in his lap and crammed a fistful into his mouth. He chewed for a moment before a wad appeared in his cheek. “He’s shacking up with some girl. Said he won’t be back tonight.”
“Word. Is anyone making dinner?”
“You volunteering?”
“Fuck no.” Josh grimaced. “Unless you want three packets of ramen served in a plastic mixing bowl.”
“Better than what I’ve got.” Chris flicked black emo bangs out of his eyes. “If I have to eat canned beans and rice one more night . . .”
“You’ll what?” A.J. punched him, the sleeve of his salmon polo shirt rising up over his bulging arm muscles. “Finally gain a pound? Be careful, or you’ll split your skinny jeans.”
Chris opened his mouth—perhaps to deliver an acerbic retort—but Josh backed out of the room before he could hear it. He wasn’t in the mood for their squabbling tonight.
His stomach growled as he bypassed the kitchen and made his way to the second bedroom on the right. He’d left his door unlocked, not because of some sacred bond of trust he had with his roommates, but because he had little worth stealing. It opened with a horror-movie-esque creak, revealing an unmade twin bed that took up half the room, a pile of dirty laundry, and a battered dresser that was covered in crap, inc
luding his laptop.
He flopped onto the bed and immediately shot up again with a yelp. Fuck, his keys. He dug them out of his pocket again and threw them into the pile of laundry. They landed with a soft plunk. His wallet and phone got honorary spots on the wooden crate next to his bed, and then he tried his flop once more. This time, he stuck the landing.
With a sigh, he stared up at the watermarked ceiling. His single window let in barely enough light from the streetlamps to illuminate its craggy surface.
“This place isn’t you,” he whispered to himself. “None of this shit is you.” It was a mantra he’d taken to repeating whenever his lack of earning potential started to get him down. He’d said it so many times, it was noise to him now.
He forced himself into a sitting position, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His laptop sat next to a pile of dusty textbooks he hadn’t been able to sell after his ignominious departure from higher education. One bachelor’s-degree-turned-associate’s later, he had a useless piece of paper that didn’t qualify him for jack. But at least he hadn’t flunked out entirely.
Along with his degree, he also had the super-expensive laptop he’d shelled out for, certain that it would help him become a star student. So much for that theory. He settled it on his knees and opened it. The screen showed a loading symbol for a moment before revealing his desktop wallpaper: a headless, muscular torso dressed in tight underwear. He’d picked a black and white photo so he could claim it was artistic.
He double-clicked on his internet browser of choice, and twenty tabs popped up. He’d had them open for so long, he’d become emotionally attached to them. Job postings, Craigslist ads, and calls for him to donate a stunning variety of fluids. He could find something decent among all the crap if he were diligent enough to sift through it every day. Too bad that wasn’t a word anyone would use to describe him.
His gaze wandered to the crate next to his bed. It sported a collection of cheap picture frames he’d picked up from a thrift store. His friends smiled at him from one: Ashley, Darius, and Monica. His parents waved from another. The pics were grainy and bleached of color—he’d printed them on copy paper in his school’s computer lab before he’d graduated—but they never failed to cheer him up.
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