I’m not sure when or if I actually decide where I’m going, but at some point my driving turns from aimless to purposeful, and before long I’m pulling into his driveway and using the key under the succulent plant to let myself into his house.
Logan’s stretched out on his front room couch. He’s wearing nothing but jeans; his bare feet are crossed at the ankles in front of him as he edits some footage on his laptop.
He sits up, surprised, when I walk in the room, but then I think he must get a good look at me, and his features quickly wrinkle into concern. Instantly, he’s on his feet. “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering him, I fall into his open arms and let out a raspy, “I need you.” Because, the truth is, now that I’m wrapped in the cocoon of his warmth and his scent and his touch and his him-ness, the answer to his question is, “nothing.”
16
Devi’s face is buried in my shoulder, and I want to pull back to look at her, but then I feel the unmistakable warmth of tears on my skin, and so I don’t. Instead, I hook an arm behind her knees and scoop her up into my arms and carry her into my dark bedroom, where the drawn shades keep out most of the afternoon sun. I sit on the edge of the bed with her still in my arms, and simply sit, rocking her slowly and resting my head on top of hers.
I don’t ask her what’s wrong again, even though I’m itching in the worst way to know. When I last saw her this morning, she was dewy-faced and flushed from her scene with Kendi (and, I secretly hoped, the moment we shared on set). And when she kissed me goodbye, she seemed happy and chipper, if a little nervous. I know she had a scene scheduled after the one I saw—could that be what’s upsetting her? Something that happened on set?
I rack my brain, trying to remember if she told me any details about the shoot she was going to. Generally, her scenes don’t get much rougher than some dildo play and maybe the occasional light bondage, but certainly not the kind of punishing scenes some actors film. So maybe she fought with someone on set? Another performer? A director?
“Devi,” I say. It’s an invitation for her to speak, but it’s also an affirmation, a reminder that I am here for her and only for her, and that she is completely safe and cared for in my arms.
“I—I didn’t tell you something,” she gets out.
I frown, my eyebrows pulling together. “Whatever it is, babe, it’s fine.”
She shakes her head against my chest. “It wasn’t fine,” she says, the tears flowing faster and harder now. “I—I thought I could do it and then he was so aggressive and he cornered me—”
He?
A fucking he?
What the fuck was she doing this afternoon? While I was missing her and feeling lonely as I worked on my couch, she was on a set with a he?
My mouth reacts before my brain entirely catches up. “What?” I ask sharply. “Who is he?”
I feel her shrink in my arms, retreating into herself and curling into a ball. “I booked a het shoot with LaRue Hagen,” she whispers tearfully. “That’s where I was going today...not for a girl-on-girl scene, but for a scene with Bruce Madden.”
“Bruce Madden?” I demand, five different kinds of anger rising in my chest, the chief one an insanely protective instinct, because Bruce Madden is notorious for shitty onset behavior and fuck that guy. My blood immediately boils, conjuring the worst possible scenarios and elaborate fantasies that involve me going on vigilante murder sprees, but I try to breathe myself into a state of patient calm until I know what actually happened. It’s just that I know my girl, and I know that she’s not the type to cry. She’s not the type to let emotions overrule her control, and so whatever happened must have been big.
And bad.
I think about some of the worst stories I’ve heard happen on porn sets, all the rapes that happened on camera and were never prosecuted. Raven and I advocated hard for those performers—and we still do, albeit separately now—but I never ever thought that it might happen to someone close to me, someone I love…
Oh God. If something like that happened to Devi today, there will be no end to the hell I will rain down on everyone even tangentially connected. Hell and handcuffs and blood and money, and I will personally see to it that Bruce himself is castrated.
You don’t know what happened yet—set the mental castrating knife down.
“Yes, Bruce Madden,” she sniffles. “He was...oh God, Logan, he was awful.”
“Did he…?” I can’t even get the question out, because I’m asking two questions—did he assault you? and if not, did you still fuck him? But even in my protective rage, I can’t bear to ask anything that makes her feel for one second like she’s to blame or did anything wrong. Whatever happened was one hundred percent that shit-bag’s fault. “Did it happen during the shoot?”
“I couldn’t even start the shoot. But then he found me while I was trying to leave…” She breaks off abruptly and starts sobbing, the kind of sobs that tell me that words can’t happen right now, and so I just hold her and rock her, stroking the back of her head as she cries.
Then as I’m rocking her and murmuring reassuring words, something else hits me and hits me hard.
Devi booked a het scene. When Devi kissed me goodbye this morning, she was driving off to go fuck another man. And even through the veil of my rage at Bruce Madden and my desperate fear that she’s been terribly hurt, another emotion surfaces, ugly and undeniable.
Jealousy.
I remember our first fake date in the park, when I saw that Sinner’s Playpen was calling Devi, and I remember her asking my advice about doing more mainstream porn, and I remember telling Tanner that of course we were both professionals and would keep filming all the scenes we wanted to. And somehow none of that matters right now, because before now it was all in abstract, just things that could potentially happen, things that didn’t feel real. I told myself and everyone else it was okay.
But it’s not.
It’s not okay.
Because I’m holding this woman in my arms, and I want to be the only one to hold her, fucking ever, and you know what? That goes for the female performers who get to fuck her too, because I want it just to be me me me, and have her all to myself.
I try to remind myself that it’s just sex, it’s just fucking, and it doesn’t mean anything, but if it doesn’t mean anything, then why didn’t she tell me about it? Why would she keep it a secret?
And then the twin sister to jealousy shows up.
Suspicion.
I hate it. I hate every inch of that emotion, I hate feeling it crawl over my heart and rifle through my thoughts, wondering if there’s some reason Devi kept it a secret, wondering if I’m going to wake up one day soon to find Devi posting pictures of herself with some Italian. I hate wondering if I care about her more than she cares about me, if she’s been fucking other guys all this time, if I’m about to have my heart broken again.
And then I shut it down—all of it. The jealousy and the suspicion and the rage. I don’t have a right to care if she’s fucking other guys because I’ve been fucking other girls, and even if I hadn’t, “sort-of boyfriend” isn’t a term that has to mean explicit monogamy. We never talked about being exclusive.
We’re porn stars. We shoot porn. We fuck other people. That’s just how it is.
And right now the woman I love is hurting, and that’s where all my attention needs to be. I can figure out the rest later.
After a few minutes, I feel her begin to relax in my arms, her tears slowing and her breathing returning to normal. She wipes at her face with her hand, and it comes back black with mascara. She pulls back to look at my shoulder and chest, which are smeared with the same.
She barks out the kind of laughter that only comes in the midst of tears. “I got your chest all messy.”
“We can fix that,” I say as cheerfully as I can while I’m still trying to contain all of the residual bitter pangs of jealousy and the over-protective boyfriend instincts that are telling me to go burn shit down. I stan
d up and carry her into my bathroom and set her down on the wide bench in my shower.
My shower is big—the size of most people’s entire bathrooms big—and has a million showerheads and jets and nozzles that I don’t normally use, because, as you may have heard, we don’t have water in California anymore. But today is an extenuating circumstance, and I turn everything on, hot as it will go.
Devi blinks at me from the bench, suddenly very young and forlorn-looking. And then all of my jealousy and suspicion melt completely away, washed down the drain. Instead, I feel an overwhelming need to shelter her and protect her, to erase whatever bad thing has happened, but it’s too late for that. I can only hope to atone for not being there, for not being able to help her.
I approach her slowly through the water, ignoring the way my jeans are getting soaked. You’ve probably already guessed this, but I don’t mind getting my clothes wet—a porn habit, I guess. But I leave my jeans on for another reason: I don’t want Devi to think that I brought her in here to fuck her. I don’t want her to think that this is about sex or about me, or about anything other than helping her feel better.
She watches me with curious, tired eyes as I get closer, until I’m over to the bench. “Can I undress you?” I ask.
She bites her bottom lip and then nods. “Yes, please.” Her voice is barely audible over the hiss of the water.
Steam billows around us as I work her damp T-shirt off of her body. My dick jolts as I see she’s not wearing anything underneath and those delicious tits are just hanging out, ripe and plump, but I move my focus elsewhere, helping her out of her flip-flops and then her denim cutoffs, tossing everything to the edge of the shower.
Once she’s naked, I take her elbows in my hands and guide her to the waterfall showerhead, where I make her stand while I go get a washcloth and body wash.
“You’re going to smell like a dude, I’m sorry,” I apologize as I start washing her.
“No,” she corrects me. “I’ll smell like you.”
The way she says it, like it’s the best possible thing I could give her, twists my heart. I quickly look back down to the washcloth so she doesn’t see how much this affects me, paying extra attention to non-sexual places like her hands and feet. Even so, being this close to her body, watching the water pour over her breasts and hips and ass, is doing uncomfortable things to my jeans. I wait until I go get shampoo and conditioner to surreptitiously adjust myself—not easy in soaking wet denim, but I manage.
I take my time washing her hair, massaging her scalp and rubbing the tresses clean between my fingertips. I love you, I think, wishing she could feel the words radiating off my body. I love you so much.
But of course I don’t say them, knowing now is not the time, not with whatever is hanging over her like a dark cloud. I rinse her off, wrap her in a giant fluffy towel and carry her to my bed.
I go to shuck my wet jeans and grab another pair when she finally speaks again. “No, don’t put another pair on. Come here.”
“Cass, it doesn’t have to—”
“I know,” she says firmly. “I know what you’re trying not to do, but it’s what I want.”
Somewhere inside of me, I know I should protest more, but I can’t. Not only because of how aroused I am after washing her body, but because the warm confidence in her voice is undeniable. I strip off the wet jeans and walk towards the bed, crawling up next to her. She reaches immediately for my cock but I grab her hand.
“I know I look horny as fuck right now—and I am—but Cass, if something… really bad…happened today, I need to know about it.” I don’t use the r word, but it hangs in the air between us nonetheless.
She takes a minute to answer, struggling for words. “I wasn’t—it’s not—” She swallows and looks down at my hand, large and strong, wrapped around her wrist. I quickly let go.
“I want to know what happened, but I understand if you don’t want to talk about it. We can just be here. But I’m not comfortable doing anything more until I’m sure that I’m not taking advantage of you.”
Devi groans loudly and suddenly, flopping onto her back. “I wish you wouldn’t be so goddamned circumspect. I want you; I need you. Only you can make me feel better in the way I need.”
“Then you have to tell me why.”
She blinks up at the ceiling. “As long as you touch me while I’m talking.”
“Cass…”
“It doesn’t have to be sex. But Logan, I need to remember what it feels like to be touched by the person I’ve chosen to give my body to. I need a man to touch me in the way I like and want, because I don’t want today to make me forget.”
In a flash, I understand. I mean, not entirely, because I’ve never been touched in a way I didn’t have control of, and because I’m a man, I’ll probably never be powerless in that way. But her plea is so deeply human, so deeply vulnerable, and I can’t deny her. I can’t deny her anything, when it comes down to it.
I roll and crawl over her, resting my body weight on my knees and forearms, letting our naked chests and stomachs touch and my stiff cock press into her lower belly. I kiss her neck and her shoulders and jaw, and I feel her melt into my touch and let go of her last remaining shreds of control. She starts crying again, slow and silent tears, and she keeps crying as I drop kisses everywhere, light lips-only kisses, and gradually, haltingly, the story emerges. She tells me about the set, about her discomfort with the director and with Bruce.
And then when she gets to the part where Bruce cornered her in the office, my open hands clench into fists, and I turn my face away so she can’t see my expression. Because all I can think about is murder. Castration and murder and then castration again. Double castration.
She finishes and then reaches for my face, gently turning me so that I’m forced to meet her eyes. “What are you thinking?” she asks, uncertain and vulnerable.
My heart breaks, but I’m honest. “About how I want to hang Bruce Madden and LaRue Hagen from the Hollywood sign.”
She presses her lips together in what might be a smile. “It would be too difficult to get up there with two bodies in tow.”
“Not for a determined man.”
She sighs underneath me, and I stroke her hair away from her face. “I don’t know what to say, Devi. Except I’m so desperately furious and heartbroken for you. I wish I could have been there to protect you!”
“I wish that, too,” she murmurs, but then she falls silent, as if she’s troubled.
I hesitate, but then I say it anyway. “Devi, why didn’t you tell me about the scene? I have never lied about the work I’m doing. It makes me worry that we aren’t on the same page…?” My voice lifts in a question at the end, betraying all of my unfounded fears.
She glances away, new tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Logan. I didn’t mean to lie to you. But telling you about it—it would have meant having a talk with myself that I didn’t know I was ready to have. And it’s all so stupid because now I’ve ruined everything.”
I’m not sure what she means by the first thing, but I can help with the last. “Please don’t worry about the fallout. As long as I’m around, you will have work if you want it, I swear. And I will personally see to it that Bruce Madden is destroyed. That fucker won’t get away with this. Neither will LaRue.”
Another sigh. “Even you would be hard-pressed to take on LaRue. And thank you for the offer of work, but I also want to work on my own terms, you know? That’s important to me. As it is, I’m not sure how much I want to work at all…” she trails off.
I’m confused. “Like, not work while you sort all this out? Or leave porn? Because this was shitty and horrible, but you know that there are safe places to work. You’ve been working in them for three years. And you’re so fucking amazing at it! Don’t let an asshole like Bruce drive you away from something you love to do and something you fucking rock at doing.”
“It’s not…” She takes a breath. “It’s not that I feel driven away, Logan. But there’
s something else, something I haven’t told you, and I don’t know what it means for me or my work yet.”
I’m listening, but she doesn’t continue talking. She seems to shut down, something in her eyes shuttering closed and her mouth pressing together.
“You can tell me anything,” I say, leaning down to kiss the delicate skin near her ear. “Anything. Devi, please. You asked me not to shut you out…don’t shut me out. Tell me.”
Her voice is cautious. Logical. “I don’t think I’m ready to tell you. I haven’t thought it through yet.”
“You don’t have to have a thesis paper written about it, babe. If we’re going to try this boyfriend-girlfriend thing, part of that is talking with one another about things that might be messy or hard. It’s okay if you haven’t gotten it all figured out yet. I want to hear about it because I care about you, and I—”
I stop myself right before I say it. Not the time, Romeo, I remind myself. This is not the place for my tendency to jump into shit heart first, head later. Devi is too precious for my usual messy, full-throttle approach to love.
But something I say seems to unfreeze her. Her lips part and her eyelashes flutter and all of a sudden her chin starts trembling.
“What were you going to say?” she whispers.
I shake my head. “It’s not important.”
“Is that true?” she asks. “Or are you just saying it’s not important because you don’t want to talk about it? You just talked about shutting each other out, but you’re doing it too!”
Shit. Why do I keep fucking this up?
“I don’t want that,” I say, “but I also…you’re so young and I don’t want to fuck this up and I’m worried that I’m pressing on the gas too hard for you.”
“No,” she murmurs. “You’re not.”
“But it’s okay to take things slow, I mean, that’s kind of what we talked about at the gallery—”
“I’m in love with you,” she says abruptly.
There’s nothing but static and sparks in my brain, and an expansive hot glow igniting in my chest. “What?” I manage.
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