by Amy Lane
“Dex?” he said, finally recognizing the face and the name from some of his favorite vids. “Do I get to shoot a scene with you?”
He almost kicked himself when he said it. He’d put “bi” on his application, but that right there? That was the gayest thing he’d ever said.
Dex didn’t look offended. His grin widened. “Would you like that?”
Evan nodded. “Well, yeah! Can we do that? I’ve seen you in action—you’re like… like phenomenal!”
Dex blushed. He actually blushed. “That’s really awesome of you to say. We don’t normally do two guys in the first scene—”
Evan knew his face fell.
“—but,” Dex continued, winking, “if it’s all going good and you feel like you want a friend, we can probably arrange it no problem.”
Evan’s entire body lit up.
“A few things first, though.” Dex looked around and sighed. “God, we need a receptionist. John’s filming a scene and I hate to chat with you here, but we’re expecting the linen delivery, and I need to sign. Come around here, okay?” He pointed to the built-in secretary’s counter he was sitting behind. There was another office chair next to the one he was sitting in, and Evan took that one. They were both wearing cargo shorts, T-shirts, and sandals with socks. For some reason, this tickled Evan almost into hysterics. He was real. A real boy. Like Evan. That was awesome!
“Shoot,” Evan said, sitting down and grinning. “I’m all yours.”
Dex raised his eyebrows and laughed and proceeded to, well, just talk. He talked about working out, and diet, and what it took to be able to strip down in front of the camera.
“Not all guys can come on camera,” he warned. “I mean, you can be a god in the sack, but if your johnson gets camera shy, you need to find another gig, right?”
Evan nodded soberly. He didn’t think the camera thing was going to be a problem. “My old girlfriend used to take pictures of me coming just to see how far it could go,” he said, thinking about Ry and her awesome, dirty mind. God, he hoped she was getting all the face she could stand at college. She’d said something about wanting to kiss her female roommate in her last letter. He’d told her to go for it—the college try couldn’t be a bad thing, right?
Dex laughed, the sound bouncing off the walls of the office, and Evan grinned some more.
“Jesus, kid—you’re a natural, and I haven’t even seen you fuck! So, okay. You’re pretty sure you can come on camera, and we know you’ve had sex. Have you had sex with a guy before?”
Evan felt his expression go still, and suddenly his body, which had been bouncing excitedly on the chair, went still too, while his mind inside it went buzzing from moment to moment.
He swallowed hard and tried to center himself. “I tried once,” he said, breathing hard and reminding himself that Dex didn’t know anything at all about Curtis and Brittany and the whole painful mess. “It sort of freaked him out.”
There was a miracle then, a human touch on his hand, and Evan looked up into those twinkling blue eyes and relaxed. He smiled again, and that sense of fun he’d felt when he’d first walked in came back.
“That won’t be a problem here,” Dex said, patting his hand again. “Yeah, some guys don’t like it and they don’t come back, but so far, no one’s freaked out in bed. Some places don’t let you hook up after hours just to keep that from happening, but”—Dex shrugged and looked a little embarrassed—“I sort of like it when the guys date. It’s like… I don’t know, a big naked family. That fucks a lot. Anyway, we may change that rule if it gets in the way, but so far, so good.”
“Do guys have a problem?” Evan asked, suddenly apprehensive. “Getting attached?”
Dex pursed his lips and thought about it. “No,” he said after some consideration. “And when they do get attached, they usually move on to something else.” He shrugged, his own expression turning inward. “It’s only natural, right? You want to move on to something else? I mean, fucking around is great for a while, but eventually, you may want to find another job.”
Evan shook his head. “I can’t imagine ever wanting another job.”
Dex grimaced. “Just remember—this job can get in the way of a lot of things, okay? If you’re working your way through school, remember that some places will take one look at ‘porn star’ on your resume and kick you out the door.”
Evan hadn’t thought of that. “What sort of jobs?” he asked, feeling stupid, and Dex gave a snort of amusement.
“I don’t know—how about preschool teacher!”
“Well, that’s not fair,” Evan argued. “I mean, just because you have sex with guys doesn’t make you a child molester!”
Dex nodded. “I hear you. But the rest of the world doesn’t, and that’s something we’re going to have to live with, okay?”
Evan took a deep breath. Yeah. Okay. He knew this. He wasn’t stupid. “Okay,” he said, committing. “Anything else?”
“Well, here’s the paperwork. You said you’d get your own HIV test. For the record, we test you three days before every shoot, and you sign a contract saying you’re not going to get off—at all, actually, but especially with someone else—in those three days, okay? So you’ll be tested a lot. If you do anything with someone today, it’ll either be solo or, well, no swapping fluids, okay? No sucking and swallowing, no penetration, just hands on skin, okay?”
Evan nodded and then shivered. “You think? You think we could do that?”
Dex shrugged. “Don’t see why not. If not with me, then—”
The door opened, and Dex smiled with genuine happiness to see someone, and Evan had another fangasm. “Kane! Man, just the guy I was hoping to see. You want to do a little shoot? Got a new guy here who might want a friend at the happy ending part. You game?”
Kane was shorter than Dex, muscular as hell, with dark hair, a slim goatee, and a bold nose. Whereas Dex’s smile was playfully wicked, Kane’s was plain old evil.
Evan felt that same slug of sex appeal in his gut and shrugged. “Man, I wouldn’t kick either one of you out of bed.”
Kane laughed. “Oh, I like him! What’s your name?”
Dex held up a hand to forestall him. “Wait. Don’t tell us. The new computer forms give you some anonymity. We need to get him a name.” He looked at Evan then and worried his lip. “You look sort of like an open book—it’s got to be something close. What’s close to what you got?”
“Ethan,” Evan said promptly. “I got confused with this Ethan kid in high school all the time.”
Kane grimaced. “Man, I hated it when teachers did that. But then, I wasn’t getting great grades—if I was lucky, that kid was getting better grades than me, and you know, every little bit helps.”
Ev—Ethan laughed at that, and the rest of the afternoon, filling out the paperwork and talking to Dex—which seemed to be most of the interview—went quick and easy. After that, they moved the action into an office suite, one that was outfitted to look like a bedroom, complete with drapes around a window designed to look residential as opposed to business-class. When Ethan found himself in front of the camera, lying on the bed and answering Dex’s questions, it was the easiest thing in the world to shove his shorts and underwear down and wrap his fingers around his cock. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, Kane was naked next to him, stroking his monster for him.
He groaned long and pleasurably, without a hint of self-consciousness. Oh holy gawd, someone was holding his prick in a strong, soft-skinned hand. Ethan bucked his hips up into Kane’s grasp and started asking for the other stuff he wanted.
“Put your hand on my chest,” he murmured, wanting the feels. “Mm….” Because oh damn. The feels were glorious. Kane had to shift his position, with one knee between Ethan’s spread legs and the other knee on the other side. That way he could sit up a little and stroke Ethan’s cock, and Ethan… damn.
“Oh God… that’s right, only… can you do that harder? Faster’s good, but harder is… oh yes! That�
��s perfect. Oh God, keep going… keep stroking—yes!” It was so quick. Kane’s hands on his body, and that was all it took. The burning cold of orgasm swept him from toes to balls to chest, and he was—“Oh my God I’m gonna come!”
He announced it, and then orgasm hit, and a curious thing happened. His brain just sort of detached from his body, and Ethan in his head was perfect, floating, happy, and Ethan in his body was screaming in joy, his arms coming out from his sides and his entire body spasming.
He opened his eyes and panted a little and looked into Kane’s face. Kane’s eyes were closed, and Ethan looked down to see Kane stroking himself over Ethan’s cock and balls. A secondary orgasm built up in his groin, something smaller but with potential. That potential shot when Kane’s hot come splashed on Ethan’s skin.
“I’m gonna fuckin’—whoof!”
And then he was shivering all over while Kane rubbed his arms and kissed his face and neck.
“Jesus,” he said when Ethan’s orgasm shivers faded a little. “Jesus. Did you really just come ’cause I came on you?”
Oh man, Kane’s hands were warm, and his body was so safe and hard on top of Ethan’s. Ethan raised his legs and wrapped them around Kane’s narrow hips, hauling him close, and Kane took the hint, falling on top of him and engulfing him in a warm, no-strings-attached, we-just-had-sex-and-it-was-awesome hug.
Eventually Kane rolled off him, and Ethan looked up and saw Dex with the camera in front of his face.
“How’d I do?” Ethan asked, so glowy from the human touch he wanted to stroke himself off again and ride the wave.
Dex grunted and the red light on the camera went off. Then he peeked at Ethan from around the screen. “Ethan, you and your giant fucking Schwantzstucker are going to make us all a whole lot of money. You got a problem with that?”
Ethan shook his head and smiled. “Not as long as cute guys keep touching my body!” he said, and it was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Part II: The Discovery That Virgins are Boring
Step 1—discovering the new guy
is not for you
“GOD,” Regina said with feeling. At twenty-one, Regina had three years of marriage under her belt, and she spent a lot of her time looking for guys cute enough to make her regret getting married so young. So far, no dice—her husband wasn’t that smart, but he was easy on the eyes. From the sound of her voice, though, her quest was at an end.
Jonah looked up from his tuna salad sandwich at the two guys standing at the break room wall by the manager’s office. He swallowed.
“And all his angels,” he affirmed. “Jesus. Zeus. Apollo. Fuck.”
The guys were… damn.
Beauty did not even cover it. They were both dressed casually—in really pricy clothes. Zip-up hoodies from PacSun and not Target. Dr. Martens and not Payless specials. Professionally cut hair, expertly styled.
And that was just cosmetic stuff. They were about the same height, both with brown hair and brown eyes, but the similarity ended there. The slightly taller one was built rangy—longer arms, longer legs, a little more slender, although he had muscles Jonah could see through his sweatshirt, and that wasn’t easy. His face was long-boned, his mouth was firm, and there were wrinkles in the corners of his eyes that could come from scowling as much as smiling. He still had the remains of a childhood freckle problem across his cheeks, but his skin was clear now, and pale. There was something fragile about the grim set to his mouth and the way he was scowling. Jonah couldn’t put his finger on it, but the guy looked like he was either going to deck someone or burst into tears.
The guy next to him looked like he’d come straight from Jersey Shore, without the tan. He was a little shorter than the guy with freckles, but his lips were fuller and his cheekbones a little wider. He had sculpted eyebrows, but they were dark enough that Jonah thought he might be fighting a unibrow, and eyes set back just enough beneath his forehead to make him look brooding and a little mysterious. He had a slight dent in his chin, but that wasn’t all. At one point he elbowed his dour companion and smiled, and Jonah resisted the urge to bang his head against the table and whimper.
Besides being built like a freight train—God, you could see muscles in the guy’s neck, and his pants were cinched around an impossibly narrow set of hips—he had a smile that would melt the icy heart of winter’s coldest bitch.
“It’s like they’re sent here to punish me,” he muttered, and Reggie raised her eyebrows.
“Isn’t your life punishment enough?”
“Thanks, Reg. Thanks a lot.”
“I’m just sayin’. You’re a virgin who lives with his mother—”
“By choice!”
“Yeah, and what a fucking choice!” Reggie burst out.
Jonah repaid her with an anguished look, and she grimaced. She had thin blonde hair pulled so tight in a bun that you could see her scalp through the sides, and green eyes, and right now, those green eyes were full of sympathy.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t believe you haven’t lost your nut by now. Your life—man, don’t think of them as a punishment because you can’t have them, think of them as a reward because you can look at them!”
Jonah darted his gaze to where they were standing. The taller, grimmer one elbowed his companion back with an attempt at a smile, and the shorter Italian one with the biceps that bulged through the sleeves of his sweatshirt responded with another stunner, and then, out of the blue, leaned forward and hugged the guy. It wasn’t like a lover’s hug, more like a friend’s hug—complete with the fist bump at the end—but it seemed to center the other guy. Freddy, their boss, called, “Tommy Halloran,” and the guy who’d just gotten the hug turned to go.
Jersey Shore said, “Go get ’em, Tango!” and Tommy Halloran turned and nodded.
Jersey Shore bounced on his toes for a few seconds before catching Jonah’s eye as he sat in the break room table, and grinned. “Hey, so can I come sit?”
Jonah blinked and his jaw dropped, leaving him looking like a stoned possum, he was sure.
Regina saved him. “Oh yeah—come sit. Oh my God, you and your friend—boyfriend?”
Jersey shook his head. “Tommy? Naw. We used to work together. He’s got a boyfriend.”
“He’s applying here?” Jonah asked, his voice squeaking. Oh Jesus. He was going to work next to that guy? He could barely look at him without swallowing his tongue.
But Jersey didn’t seem to notice that, or care. “Yeah,” he said, nodding earnestly. “He sort of loves animals. He’s thinking of going back to school to be a veterinarian, but we figured this would be a way to work with them first.”
Jonah nodded. “Yeah—I love them too, but I can’t bring any home.”
“Allergies?” Jersey was nodding sympathetically.
Jonah shrugged. “My little sister,” he said, thinking that would be the shorthand for it.
There was a grimace across the table, and the air seemed to get static and still. “Yeah,” Jersey said, like something around them all hadn’t just frozen. “My oldest sister moved back into the house with her baby. It’s getting crowded with all of us.”
“How many does that make?” Jonah asked, grateful he didn’t have to talk about his own home life.
“Sisters? Four. They’re all at home too. Mom….” He shook his head and grimaced. “My mother’s something else. It’s like, Allie moved out, got married, had a baby—it was all good. Then, one day, Mom and Allie get home from a shopping trip, and Dev’s asleep on the couch with the baby on his chest—”
“Aw,” Regina said, and Jersey nodded.
“You’d think so, right? But suddenly Mom starts getting up in his face about not taking care of Felicia, and she puts Allie right in the middle of the fight, and Allie takes Mom’s part because, I don’t know, she lost her mind, and now she and her husband are separated. And it’s not just Allie. She did the same thing to Belladonna and her one good boyfriend and Mina and her roomm
ates, and Danni just decided she’d hang out and wait until she could move too far away for Mom to fuck it up!”
“Wow,” Jonah said, torn between laughter and awe. “That is a lot of personal information to just dump on a person. Are you sure you don’t want some of it back?”
Jersey shook his head. “No, kiddo, if it helps me get the bathroom any sooner in the morning, you can have all of that you want!”
Regina thought that was about the funniest thing she’d ever heard. Jersey grinned at her and winked and let her laugh, and Jonah tried not to hyperventilate into his tuna sandwich.
“It must be nice,” he said when Regina had caught her breath. “I mean, all those people in the house.”
That curious stillness swept the table again, and Jersey shrugged. “So, tell me about the critters. Do you guys have cats? Man, we’ve got a cat at home and she saved my life. Cats don’t want nothing from you, right? I love a good cat!”
“We don’t sell them,” Jonah said, “but we do have the adoption center. The animal rescue people work out of it, so there’s always some cats there. If you want I can show it to you?”
Regina’s faded green eyes grew huge, and he tried not to grimace. It wasn’t even really a come-on—he was just being friendly, right?
Jersey even looked inclined to take him up on it too, but he stopped himself and took a breath, darting his gaze to the closed office. “I’d better wait for Tango,” he said, pursing his full lips. “He needs to know we got his back.”
And before Jonah could ask who “we” was, or why Tommy or Tango or whoever needed the extra support, Jersey’s phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket apologetically and stood up and wandered to the far corner of the staff room to talk. Of course, Jonah and Regina could hear every word.
“Yeah, Dex. Yeah. We got him in. He’s interviewing now. Yeah. This was a good idea. I don’t know, how do you think he’s doing? Yeah, you’re right. Sorry. He’s… I mean, Tango’s not usually this quiet, right? Yeah. I know. I’ll stay with him tonight. Can you or Kane, tomorrow?”