by Tessa Vidal
“Put your sweet ass in range.” A deep gasp. “Put it where it belongs. Yeah. I'll show you what I can do without hands. Oh, fuck, yeah.”
I straddled her head, a knee planted firmly in the mattress on either side of her ears, my pussy still raised a fraction of an inch out of reach. She rolled her head upward and stuck out her tongue. It gave me another of those little surges of sexual power when I watched her face turn red and blotchy from the effort of spanking my clit with her oral digit.
“Closer,” she said. “Fuck me. Just one inch closer, that's all I need.”
“You're doing pretty good as it is.”
“Fuck pretty good.”
There was a part of me that never wanted the tease to end. That never wanted to untie her from the bed. Another, more desperate part of me could no longer exercise quite this crazy amount of control. Shaking my ass, I thrust my soft pussy forward to slap it harder than I planned against her mouth. I was close enough now that she could rest her head on the mattress again, which gave her more of a brace for her athletic tongue. Laughing, licking, her lips and tongue moving, she probed energetically for all my tender places.
No more begging. No more “please” or “now.” The only sounds between us were the grunts of exertion, the sighs of pleasure, the deep-throated groans of agony mixed with ecstasy. I came in a throbbing gush, and her tongue spiraled even faster, refusing to be caught in the collapsing folds of my tremulous pussy. My secret flesh grabbed at her, and she let me feel her tongue sliding through my flesh, the reality of it, the flexible glide, the teasing flirt of a flicker...
I slumped at last. Shell, still spread-eagled, was my mattress. Our body heat kept the chill off.
Did we doze a moment, or did we only daydream? The afterglow was a warmth that continued to hum in my bloodstream long after I unknotted the scarves to set Shell free. I rubbed at her wrists and ankles, although they were barely pink from my attempt at restraints. The silk bonds were spiderweb strands, no more. She could have set herself free at any time if she'd wanted to.
An unfamiliar song began to play.
“My alarm,” she said. “Time to walk Dickens.”
“I'm supposed to do that. I can't hand him over to staff my very first day.”
“Am I staff?” She chuckled. “I suppose I am.” She swatted playfully at my bare ass.
“We'll walk him together,” I said. “You're here to evaluate how I work with him. You can see how I do around the neighborhood.”
She went still for a minute.
“Is something wrong?” Stupid question. Of course, there was something wrong. She didn't want to be seen coming out of her employer's house at this hour of the morning arm-in-arm with said employer. I'd gone too fast, assumed too much. I wish I hadn't asked, but it was too late to bite the words back.
“It's just that... I'm a professional. I don't want to get a reputation as somebody who sleeps around to get business.”
“Of course.”
“Visiting your house at a normal hour of the evening is one thing. But visiting your house and not leaving until six the next morning...” She swallowed. “If I leave alone, or if I'm walking the dog alone, nobody's going to take any notice. I am staff, for real. But if we're together...”
“Of course. I'm sorry. Of course.” I'd forgotten the first rule of celebrity dating. Don't be seen together in public, don't create gossip, until you're damn well sure it's going to last.
Chapter Twelve
Shell
How did asking for my kiss goodbye turn into my lazy arms and legs tied out of the way with silken bonds? How did it turn into Caro whipping the soft ends of her blonde hair against the hollows of my open thighs? Turn into Caro going down on me, her tongue skilled, her fingers coordinated? Turn into my head rolling back blindly, my own tongue stretching up and out? Turn into surrender?
My thighs still had a delicious tug in them, the after-effects of all that muscular clenching and convulsing. Walking naked across the large bedroom, stepping into the fancy shower with its eight heads spraying water from eight different angles, every little motion was a sensuous pleasure in and of itself. Could she see the tiny hitch in my step? The echo of last night's frantic ache?
We were good together when it came to the physical. As far as anything else, it was much too soon. You could say I'd known her all my life, or you could say I didn't know her at all. Caroline Bullard was the girl I knew― Carol when she was small, before she'd asserted her right to choose her own name. Caro Ballad was somebody else. A movie star, a celebrity. Another client with a beautiful dog who needed to be exercised and socialized and provided with purpose for his active mind.
Caro Ballad was somebody I'd known for less than twenty-four hours.
In the end, we decided she should walk Dickens on his first full day in his forever home. If she experienced any problems, she should text me right away. Otherwise, I would stop by around five in the evening, and we'd take a second walk together. Was it a date or simply another consult with a meticulous client? I wasn't sure. Warm in bed, movie star Caro was cool and aloof again once we were out of it. That tug in my thighs was the only evidence I hadn't dreamed the whole encounter.
Coffee and out the door. Good coffee, a rare bean from Ethiopia, or so she said. I would have rather tasted another long, lingering kiss.
Maybe all Caro wanted was that famous closure after more than a decade apart. Hell, maybe that's all I wanted.
Keep it professional. You have a business to run. Take it slow. Wait and see where you stand.
Caro was the more famous one, and she'd got famous first. To me, that meant she was the one who should have reached out. A dog walker from Tunica County can't reach out to a movie star. Was that fair, or was that expecting too much from Caro? You could flip it on its head. I saw that now. The movie star might feel like she couldn't reach out to the dog walker. The differences between us might have seemed too great. Like she was showing off, like she was rubbing my nose in her success. We'd once been equals, and then she'd skyrocketed far beyond me.
Thinking wasn't going to fix this. Only time would tell.
Onward to my meeting with Brendon Brawn, a director who wanted to consult with me about his upcoming rom-com. His artistic vision called for the wrong kind of dog, but it was hard to tell somebody anything when they thought they already knew it all. Good times.
Before I walked in, I stole a glance at my phone. No texts from Caro. That was good because it meant everything was going well with Dickens. There was zero reason to feel a tiny jab of disappointment.
In his late sixties, Brawn was the kind of director who still liked to be seen in the Polo Lounge. It was around one, an occasion he celebrated by ordering Pappy Van Winkle over a single spherical ice cube. Old Hollywood all over.
“Well, well, well, here's the little lady who cost me a ton of money.” He thought he was being courteous because he got up to shake my hand. My firm grip told him without words what I thought about being called a little lady. Handling men in Hollywood isn't unlike handling dogs. You have to let them know who the alpha is.
“Nice to meet you at last, Brendon. How are Reena and Chevy doing?” Reena was his wife, and Chevy was her Australian Shepherd. I made no apologies for the price of Chevy's training, any more than Brawn would apologize for the lavish budgets demanded by his movies.
Brawn surreptitiously shook out his hand under the table. “You know what they say. Happy wife, happy life. And she's amazed at the miracle you worked with that dog.”
“I'm so glad to hear it.”
Being from the crowd who assumes if you don't order alcohol, you're fresh out of rehab, he reassured himself of his superiority by smiling at my tall bottle of sparkling water. That set the tone for the meeting. He'd follow my advice on the dogs, but it would take a few days for him to come around to it. And, of course, the change in plan would somehow be all his own idea.
“You'll be amazed at how much more smoothly the shoot will go
if you select a dog who actually enjoys swimming,” I said.
“I was already thinking about switching to a different breed. Maybe a chow.”
My hand went still where it was curled around my glass.
“They're very photogenic. Fluffy but not...” He flapped a fat hand. “Not a handbag dog. Not deentsy and twee.”
The photographs of me, Caro, and Dickens were already online somewhere Brawn hung out. Instagram or Twitter, maybe both.
I kept my tone neutral. “A chow is not the right breed for the story you described.”
“I can change the swimming scene. Maybe frisbee. Or, I don't know. Sledding in Colorado.”
Yeah, right. This wasn't about sledding in Colorado.
“So Caro Ballad,” he finally said. Like we didn't all know that was coming.
I shipped him what I hoped was my most inscrutable smile. A very tiny smile.
“I heard she's going to be on your new TV show.”
Mysterious smiles weren't working. I was going to have to contradict the famous director. I sighed. “Brendon, you know I can't deny or confirm gossip.”
“Your voice sounds very southern when you say my name. Reminds me of home.”
I smiled an even tinier smile than the one before. Bastard. He'd been testing me to see if I would violate another client's confidentiality to impress a big name director. Well, I'd passed his test, so now we could move on to the small talk.
So Caro Ballad.
If we dated, the two of us would be talked about. That was a given.
After the consult, I had the chance to take thirty minutes for myself, an opportunity I wouldn't waste Hollywood-style on rooftop yoga in some snooty spa. Leaving the grand pink hotel, I located a hidden studio nearby where men and a few women worked out in a sweaty silence rarely broken by anything other than grunts. As I lay on my back on the bench to lift the weighted bar slowly overhead, I flashed on a quick fantasy of lifting Caro like that, high and higher and then back down close...
“Concentration.” The spotter talked in koan-like words rather than sentences. “Attention.”
I lifted more slowly, using more muscle and less momentum. She was right. My attention needed to be on the lift, not on the sweep of Caro's blonde hair falling down. Her hair had an evil way of tickling my thighs, and this wasn't the time or place.
After, my hair damp from the shower, I hurried to the public lot where I'd left the Range Rover. The back of my neck tingled, although the person leaning against my vehicle wasn't studying me from behind. He was up front and in my face, his arms already folded across his chest to defend against some argument we weren't yet engaged in.
“Ryder,” I said. “I didn't know you were in Los Angeles.”
“I'm not.” He tapped the brim of his brown leather cowboy hat, then the arm of his vintage mirrorshades. Two twin images of my own face reflected back at me.
“Tie that bandanna a little higher, and you're ready to rob a bank.” A joke, one I instantly wished I could call back.
He faked a tense smile but didn't bother to laugh.
When I hit the key in my pocket to unlock all the doors, Ryder got in on the driver's side. A man from Mississippi's presumption, that he'd always be the one to drive.
I shot him a meaningful glare.
“Sorry.” His big shoulders shrugged up and down. “I like to maintain control of where I'm going.”
Wish you'd thought about maintaining control of where you were going in the summer of 2008.
“You took the job with Caro,” he said. “That's good. But now there's a little more.”
Chapter Thirteen
Shell
I had no desire to argue with the twin I'd seen once in eleven years. Not over who was going to drive the fucking Range Rover anyway. Getting in on the passenger side, I handed him the key. If he wanted to fight Los Angeles traffic, so be it.
For a man who learned to drive on the flat, open roads around Tunica County, Ryder turned out to be good at taking advantage of small opportunities to jockey ahead of the other vehicles crowding the busy streets. Relaxed but in control, he had an uncanny gift for predicting what the distracted drivers around him would do.
“You don't drive like somebody who's been locked away from motor vehicles,” I said.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.” Now he did laugh. “I haven't been locked away anywhere. I've been living very well.”
“When I don't hear from my own fucking twin for eleven years, I tend to assume the worst.”
“I didn't want to bring more trouble to your door. I was protecting you, Rayna. I wouldn't be a good brother if I dragged you into my bullshit.”
“There's no Rayna in this car or anywhere.”
“I can't get used to it. Shell Tate.” Ryder sped up to elude the silver Tesla drifting into our lane while its driver applied a coat of mascara. His hands were steady, his voice calm. Splitting his attention between me and the traffic wasn't difficult for him at all. He was telling me that much of the truth― this man hadn't been in prison, he'd been in large cities where he'd gained experience handling expensive vehicles on busy streets.
“There's a lot we don't know about each other's lives,” I said. “Hard to even know where to start.”
“The lesbian dog whisperer.” This time his smile was real. “It's brilliant once you stop and think of it, but how do you think of it in the first place? I pictured you as a math teacher or something. That card counting stuff, that was pretty cool.”
“After mom passed, I wasn't in the college frame of mind, so being a teacher was kinda out.” And a card counting career wasn't going to happen after Ryder Taylor's immediate family was banned from the area's casinos. “Anyway, college wasn't good then. People were coming out with a hundred thousand dollars in debt, and there weren't any jobs.”
“You were the smart one of the three of us. I thought about sending you money.”
He had no idea how hard I prayed he wouldn't. “You would've caused me a lot more trouble if you did.” Not to mention the trouble he might have caused himself. More money was more links going back to wherever he was hiding.
“I know.”
“If Mom lived, she'd be getting hassles from the FBI for the rest of her life about where that money came from. She'd be followed. You'd never be able to see her again.”
“I know. But, see. She'd be alive. I had to take that chance, Rayna. Shelly.”
“Shell.”
“Shell.”
“And I know you had to take that chance, brother. If I'd known...” But I didn't, and so I'd never know what I would have done if I'd realized how sick she was. Ryder had been protecting me as much as he'd been protecting our mom. You might think it was old-fashioned, a little bit Mississippi, but I couldn't blame my brother for trying to protect his family.
He drove us to some Los Angeles viewpoint I didn't even know about. Was it a common tourist spot, something he'd discovered after five minutes on Google? Or was LA his town? Did he actually live here now? That didn't seem safe to me, Ryder living in America. Sure, there's such a thing as the statute of limitations, but there's also such a thing as the FBI never forgiving, never forgetting.
Los Angeles looked good from above. Mountains and ocean. Skyscrapers and parks. But neither of us made a move to step out of the Range Rover for a better view.
Something inside of me feared what he might tell me. It might be bad, even now, if I knew too much about his life. It might give the FBI a tool they could use to trap him. But if I didn't want to hear about his life, I had little option but to talk about mine.
“After I graduated, I got a job at Doggie Day Afternoon. The owner was already over seventy...”
“I remember Stella Rhonda's dog grooming place.” That wasn't her name, which he probably didn't remember, but a nickname we made up from a story we had to read in high school.
“Yeah, so, Gerta was looking for somebody to take over, I think. Even before you left, her partner h
ad already passed, so... Me, at first, it was just a job, I thought she was just helping out the baby lesbian around town. But she and the dogs accepted me when other people didn't. Dogs didn't gossip. They didn't judge. I could be easy in that job. I didn't find out until she passed, but she'd changed her will to give the place to me.”
It was a funny feeling, knowing Gerta thought of me as an orphan. As somebody who needed to be taken care of. A strange thing to be when you're eighteen, nineteen, twenty. She wasn't wrong, though. Without the seed money she left, would I be giving dog shampoos and nail trims in Mississippi for the rest of my life?
“The casino wanted that strip mall property for years.” Ryder talked as if he'd paid attention to things like that when he was seventeen. Hell, maybe he did. All those hours I spent counting cards on the computer, he must have spent them studying other ways people got money. “Golf courses only want to grow bigger.”
“Sure. I sold. Robinsonville wasn't the end of my rainbow, any more than it was yours or Caroline's.”
“You're more alike than you know. You and Caroline.”
“Yeah, I'm practically twins with the ice princess.” By now, I was getting suspicious. Ryder was working up to something bigger than a chat about my dog training career.
“Inside, you're alike. You were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, but you found a way to get to the right place.” The mirrorshades made it hard to tell, but the way he turned his chin suggested he wasn't looking at the view but rather at the Prius pulling up next to us.
Tourists. Mom, Dad, two kiddies under the age of five. They got out, squealed at the view, took some selfies, got back in. His shoulders relaxed.
“Why are you back, Ryder?”
“You know why.”
“You want out of the life, and you think I can get you out. Or Caro can.”
He shrugged.
“There's a more direct way to get out.”
His shoulders went tense again. “What way is that, old twin of mine?”
“Get a lawyer, get a Witness Protection deal.”
