by Jess Bentley
But she doesn't seem to feel self-conscious in her uniform as we stroll around the mall. After stopping immediately for a chocolate chip cookie, she holds out her hand, demanding my phone. She scrolls through the texts between me and August, moaning and giggling to herself, then scrolling back up to the top and beginning all over again.
“Goddamnit, you are one lucky slut!”
“I am not a slut,” I remind her. “I only play one on Instagram.”
“Well, keep this up, and you will achieve your life’s dream,” she nods. “This is some seriously hot stuff, Dahlia! Where did you learn how to do this?”
“I have no idea,” I shrug. “I mean, the other day, he just seemed to go off like a rocket. I just sort of follow along and try to keep up, I guess.”
She casts me a sidelong look, arching her eyebrow. “So are you ready to admit that you love it? That this has been in you all along, and you are now finally appreciating the finer things in life?”
I reach out, snatching the phone back from her.
“I don't know… okay. Yeah. It's pretty good. I mean, is this what everybody's doing all the time? I've been missing this all along?”
She pops another cookie piece into her mouth and smacks her lips lustily.
“Hell yeah, if you're lucky. The whole world is just filled with people getting it on, talking about getting it on, thinking about getting it on… it makes the world go round. People shouldn't pretend otherwise!”
“Wow… I really had no idea.”
“Shit, girl, I've been trying to tell you! Like, for our whole — wait.”
She puts her hand on my arm, stopping us in the middle of the mall walkway. The designer boutiques on either side of us smell like perfume and incense.
“What? You need to get back already?”
“No, look…” she gestures with her chin, jerking forward. I squint down the hall. Trying to figure out what she's looking at. “Isn’t that your new boyfriend over there?”
I scan back and forth, then finally see him. He is standing outside the Gucci store with his arms crossed over his chest, his head swiveling back and forth as he checks out every employee and shopper that passes by him. With his sunglasses on, he looks almost comically perfect as the security detail/intelligence operative.
Bunny grabs at my elbow and starts dragging me forward. “Come on.”
I try to jerk back, but she's surprisingly strong for a petite person. “No, Bunny!” I hiss. I have to get back to work!”
“So do I!” she hisses back. “But this is fate, Dahlia! Let's go!”
I still try to twist out of her arm, but as we approach, I know he sees us. Continuing to attempt the retreat would only make me look ridiculous, so I try to appear casual and nonchalant and let Bunny drag me along. My heart thuds so loud in my chest that I can barely hear her cackling with glee.
“What a coincidence!” she singsongs as we approach him. “Dahlia here was just saying that I need a new pair of Gucci boots to go with these jeans I picked up. What are you doing here, August?”
He looks us each up and down, and I can see myself reflected in his dark sunglasses. The corners of his mouth turn down into a serious frown.
“I would have thought you would be at work,” he mutters. His tone is abrupt and clipped. He clearly doesn't want us here.
“Yeah, well, so… Dahlia and I just decided to go for quick little shopping spree at lunch. It's not weird, is it?”
He looks at her directly, ignoring me entirely. I feel strangely cold. After this morning, I guess I was expecting a warmer greeting somehow. I know how absurd that is, but still this feels all kinds of terrible.
I know Bunny can tell, and she grips my elbow tighter.
“Okay, well, nice seeing you, August!”
She starts to drag me toward the store entrance, but August sidesteps, placing himself right in front of us again.
“Not now, ladies,” he says gruffly.
He's not even looking at me, I don't think. There's nothing there at all.
“This is the public mall, August,” Bunny reminds him pointedly. “We'll just be a minute. I don't know why you're being so —”
“Is Kirkman inside?” I ask him.
He looks toward me, as though surprised I figured it out. He seems startled to see me somehow. I have to fight the sudden urge to reach out and snatch those glasses off of his face.
“The store will be open again in just a moment, ladies,” he huffs coldly.
“You really think I'm a security risk?” I ask him defiantly. “You really think that there is some reason I can't just duck in here on my lunch hour and check out a new pair of boots? August?”
He shifts uneasily from foot to foot. I know he is not accustomed to my tone of voice, but I feel a sudden equality with him, since I've seen his ejaculating cock not thirty minutes ago.
His jaw clenches and unclenches, the muscle jumping there over and over again. Finally, he shifts subtly to one side so that Bunny and I can walk around him. I stick my nose in the air and stride toward the door with Bunny jogging right next to me.
“Oh my God, girl,” she whispers dramatically. “You are a changed woman I tell you! That was dark!”
Once inside, I scan the overly bright interior. House music thuds over the PA as we swiftly circle the perimeter of the room. It only takes about forty seconds to find him. Kirkman East is standing right there, holding up two nearly identical pairs of snakeskin loafers in front of a smug, nonchalant saleswoman.
As soon as he sees us, he dips his head to smirk at me over the top of his mirrored sunglasses.
“And how did you ladies get in here? Hm?” he says slowly, his tongue wetting his lower lip. “Did Melanie send you?”
“Nobody sent us,” Bunny huffs. “Just doing a bit of shopping.”
He looks her up and down, his eyes lingering over the edges of her waitress uniform.
“I love your costume,” he says, grinning.
Bunny shoots me a look, twisting the corner of her mouth sarcastically like who does this guy think he is?
I put my hands on my hips and look at the shoes in his hands. “The silver ones,” I tell him pointedly.
He shifts his attention to me, and I do my best not to react to it in any way. I get the feeling that Kirkman is used to having women crumple in front of him, and I'm determined not to do that.
“No, but seriously,” he continues, “I was supposed to have security out there, and he’s kind of a hard ass. I do not think you guys are supposed to be in here.”
I sigh, tipping my head in a gesture that I've seen Bunny do. It seems to make people like her quite a bit. He narrows his eyes at me.
“Well, I guess we will have to be going then,” I announce. “Mind if we take a quick selfie?”
He stands up straight again, rolling his eyes dramatically. Poor thing. He probably gets asked this question all the time.
“Sure, sure,” he sighs. He holds his arms out, making a space for Bunny and I to tuck under as though draping his wings over us. It's kind of slimy, but ten seconds later I've got five selfies with Kirkman, and Bunny and I are headed back out the door.
“Hey, I thought you were shopping?” August says as we exit the store and rush past him.
“I guess she found what she wanted,” Bunny calls out over her shoulder as we hurry away. “Right? Did you get what you wanted?”
“More or less,” I say stubbornly.
I know that August didn't realize he was rejecting me, but I still feel rejected. And yet, knowing that these pictures might just save my job takes a little bit of the edge off of that.
Chapter 37
August
“I think you have a new challenge in your hands,” Melanie tells me over the phone. I scroll through the entries on my laptop, looking for any new problems that I might've missed.
“Oh really?” I reply. “I think it's handled, actually. Taylor Swift dropped that new song just in time, and everybody's attention mo
ved away.”
“Lucky for you, wasn't it?” Melanie says wryly.
She's right, it was lucky for me, but I'm not going to admit that. Somehow, I’m going to make it seem like it was all part of my plan.
“Everything seems to have a way of working out, Melanie. So, we just have a few more days with Kirkman here in town. Can we just try to lay low and get to the end of this thing? Maybe without going nuclear?”
I hear her tapping, maybe on the edge of her desk, maybe on her steering wheel. Melanie is always going somewhere, doing something.
Kirkman is actually not her only client, so I never really feel like he's got one hundred percent of her attention. I suspect that she plays the celebrities off each other, creating collisions like billiard balls so somebody's always in motion, always spinning toward the edge.
She sighs for a long time. I use this pause to double and triple check my lists. But currently, there’s nothing important to take care of. Crisis averted.
Kirkman really did look like he was going to be trending, and then Taylor Swift knocked him right out of the air. Suddenly everybody was downloading her video, posting their comments, and sharing the reactions of a half dozen other stars who wanted to hitch their wagons to Taylor's meteoric rise.
In less than twenty-four hours, her new song was the most downloaded song on iTunes. It was the most played video on YouTube. She has a lot of influence. I'll bet Kirkman's seriously jealous, but the plain fact is that he doesn’t have nearly that kind of firepower.
“Well, that's the thing I wanted to talk to you about,” she continues. “He's got a weekend at MGM National Harbor coming up now. You need to get him out of town.”
“MGM, in Maryland? Are you kidding me?”
“Why the fuck would I joke about Maryland? It’s our least funny state.”
“When did this come up? I was not informed.”
“It’s all Kirkman’s idea. Talk to him. He thought a surprise show was a good idea and I can’t say I disagree.”
I don't need to remind her that my contract was for this location, creating a security detail around this studio, these penthouses, this situation. She knows. She also knows that I don't have time to plan a new detail for the weekend. It's going to be all seat of the pants kind of stuff.
My least favorite kind of stuff.
“Melanie, this is highly unusual,” I start, grinding my molars together to try to keep my voice even. “I need to make travel arrangements, get a whole new manifest of entourage personnel approved, reconnoiter the lodging —”
“— sounds like you got it exactly right,” she snaps. “Just make it happen, August. At the end of this, he'll be totally out of your hair anyway.”
Well, that is a relief, I think to myself. At least there is a silver lining on this thundercloud.
“It's practically impossible,” I inform her.
She sighs again, dragging it out so long it's practically an opera.
“You know Lori Coleman?”
“Of course I know Lori Coleman,” I reply, suspicious. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Oh, I had an interesting conversation with her this morning, is all,” she sighs. “Are you guys friends?”
I don't think that I appreciate the playful tone in Melanie's voice. I feel like I know exactly what she's going to say, but I still want to hear her say it, just to make sure.
“We're competitors, Melanie. I assume you already know that.”
“Oh, hold on,” she snaps distractedly. “Let me just get through this tunnel.”
The line seems to go down for a second, but I'm not sure that's true. She may just have switched over to another phone call. Or she might just be fucking with me. At this point, it's hard to tell. In any case, this brief silence gives me an opportunity to get truly pissed about what Melanie is insinuating.
Of course I'm not to give up the contract to Lori Coleman. That would be ridiculous. But an even bigger question is, how did the communication even occur between them? Did Lori contact Melanie? Or vice versa?
Does Lori realize that Kirkman is in town?
The implications of the question make me see red. There are only a few different ways that Lori could've found out that don't involve Dahlia or Bunny.
They both better hope that one of those ways is how Lori found out. They better not be involved.
“Okay, back,” Melanie tells me. “What was I saying?”
“You're asking if I knew Lori Coleman,” I remind her.
“Oh, right! Well… it's probably nothing. But if you don't think you can get the detail together to go to MGM with Kirkman —”
“I'll handle it,” I cut her off.
“You sure?” she says sweetly. “Because I could just go ahead and call Lori —”
“— it's handled. Talk soon.”
I disconnect the call and carefully put my phone down so I don't accidentally smash it. I'd like to get to the bottom of this immediately, but I might need to take a breath for twenty or thirty seconds to make sure I’ve got everything under control.
Instead, I find myself opening Instagram.
What are you wearing? I ask her.
A pink dress and sandals, she texts back immediately.
No, underneath, I continue. Tell me about your panties.
…
Also pink, she texts back after a ten second hesitation.
Show me.
They’re lace, she continues. Stretchy and tight.
I don't want you to tell me. I want you to show me.
…
I shouldn't be so forceful, I know it. I’m trying to keep my tone light, but I just want her obedience. I just want to feel that feedback loop of pleasure. I just want her to fucking obey me.
After a few more seconds, a picture appears. Again, it's the slanted angle of a camera that’s being furtively shoved between her thighs. The pink of the panties is pale, I can tell, but in the shadows, it looks dark like a candy drop. Slightly translucent, and I can almost see the fluff of hair behind it.
I want you to touch yourself, I tell her. I want to know that you're making yourself wet.
Okay.
Do it, I command her. Are you doing it?
In a few moments, I get another picture. Similar angle, but this time there is more light. Her skirt is drawn back, and her fingers are buried within her panties. I see the strain her hand, see the outline of her knuckles as her fingertips are hidden between her juicy, plump folds.
My hand drifts down, and I find my cock already hard and pulsing. Staring at the photo, I spread my fingers to expand it until it is as close up as I can get. My groan fills my chest as I fist my cock, bringing myself to a clenching, explosive climax, fueled by frustration and longing.
When I'm done, I realize that I'm glad that she obeyed me, but I don't feel satisfied. Like a drug, I need more. It is just a taste, and that only makes me hungrier. Every time we communicate, it's just another morsel. Another tease… another taunt.
This is not the path to satisfaction, not like this. I need more. I'm not some pimply teenager who is going to be happy beating off to the fantasy of a girl. I need a real woman, the real satisfaction of a live woman underneath me.
When can we meet?
…
I scowl at the phone, waiting for her to answer.
What's your name?
Who is this?
She doesn't answer right away, and I set the phone down, counting to ten, then ten more, then ten more. I might be overreacting, but this is on my nerves. If it's Trina, the game has gone long enough. Even if it's anybody else, the game has gone on long enough.
Soon, she finally says.
Soon what?
Soon we can meet. I promise.
I want to throw the phone. What the fuck does soon mean anyway? It’s just one of those stupid things people say to each other, a fairytale about a meeting that doesn't actually exist. It’s not even a real time. Some made up word that means not right now.
&
nbsp; Instead I close Instagram and scroll through my contacts, looking for Dahlia’s cell phone number. I find it and pause for a moment considering what to say to her. I do not want to come off badly, considering the foul mood that Melanie has put me in. But I need to take care of this, right away.
Chapter 38
Dahlia
As soon as I get back from the storeroom to my desk, my phone double vibrates, the alert for a regular text message. I assume it's going to be Bunny, but when I turn the phone over, the name on the alert stops my blood in my veins.
It's August. He's contacting me directly?
Heart pounding, I tap on the message to open it, but quickly flip my phone back over when Lori’s blonde hair catches my attention from the corner of my eye.
“I want to thank you for following up about Kirkman,” she starts, her eyes sweeping the room distractedly. I'm grateful that she's not looking at me directly, because I know that my cheeks are flushed, and she could probably see my heart beating like a cartoon right now if she looked at my chest.
“Oh, yeah, sure…” I croak, swallowing nervously. I can't get August out of my mind and I try desperately to push thoughts of him aside and focus only on Lori. I need to be in this moment right now.
“I got a hold of his manager, or whatever she is. Was she there too?”
“Manager?” I repeat, confused.
“Yeah, I figured it was Melanie. Anyway, she wasn't sure that there was an opportunity available there.”
“Oh,” I mutter, not sure what to say. The realization of what she's saying starts to sink in: she actually reached out to Kirkman to try to get this contract. She failed, but that's not really the point. I almost created a nuclear catastrophe. What if Melanie had said yes?
Another tidal wave of guilt washes through me as I remember that I've got an unanswered text from August sitting right here on my cell phone.