She seemed so certain this morning, so confident, grinning at me in my dungeon as she examined all the toys arrayed around the room. But there was something unsettled in her eyes, a question there that I couldn’t find the right words to answer.
The question haunted me. It had settled under my skin and pricked at me as I finished setting up the scene, as Bambi disrobed and we ran through her no list. I felt Devi’s eyes burning into me as the cameras turned on, as I slid my hands around Bambi’s face and kissed her before pushing her down to her knees. Bambi is beautiful and Latina, with darker coloring like Devi, and so it was easy for me to imagine Devi on her knees in front of me, easy to recall that just a couple hours ago, I’d been buried inside her pussy.
But here’s the fucked up thing, the thing I don’t know how to deal with. I didn’t have to imagine Devi to get hard, to enjoy the feeling of pushing past Bambi’s plush lips into her wet mouth. My mind drifted between Devi and Bambi as Bambi sucked me off, fantasizing about what Devi was thinking and feeling right then. Was she as turned on as I was when I watched her and Kendi? Was she squirming and wet in her chair, wishing I’d pull her over to me and relieve the building ache in her cunt?
It had made me so hard to think about her watching me, to think about dragging her over to the table and making her kiss Bambi while I took turns fucking them both. I’d wondered if Devi was even touching herself watching me, crossing her legs to squeeze against her pussy or rubbing herself over her dress. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, in the best possible way.
But when I glanced over at her to catch her eye, the chair was empty.
Devi was gone.
I panicked. I worried. I even got a little pissed off. And here’s the even more fucked up thing—I didn’t stop fucking Bambi. In fact, I fucked her harder, faster, forced more orgasms out of her than I normally would have, because I felt that question nipping at my heels, chasing and grabbing at me.
I felt dirty, not in a sexy way, but in the way that I actually felt like there was grime inside my mind, the kind of scum that builds up on shower doors and on the edges of stagnant ponds. I felt ashamed, and yet I also felt angry and unfairly accused of something, even though no accusation had actually been thrown at me. So what if I was fucking Bambi? It was my fucking job!
Except why did I feel weird about it?
Except why did I feel like I was missing something, something vital, when Devi wasn’t there?
And how, with all this weirdness, this feeling of being bereft, could I still keep fucking Bambi? Not just fucking her, but murmuring all my usual sex words to her—you feel so good, and your pussy is so tight, and don’t you want to make my cock feel good? They were sex words that I’d murmured in so many different permutations so many different times to so many different women, and they should have felt hollow and wrong, but they didn’t. It did feel good to pump into Bambi, it did feel good to have her suck me off. And at the end, when I wrapped my hand around my cock and shot cum onto her uplifted face? Well that felt fucking good too. How can I feel guilty and good all in the same space? How can I love someone as much as I love Devi, and still get hard for someone else?
God, it’s all so fucking complicated. That restless shame, that empty feeling. It makes me horny and agitated all over again just thinking about it. I flex my fingers on the steering wheel before reaching down to adjust the growing bulge in my jeans.
I need to fuck Devi. On camera, off camera, I don’t care, but that’s the only way to discharge this fucking mess of emotions that I’ve conjured in the space of a couple short hours. I need her so badly, and we need to fix this, whatever it is. We both have livings to earn, so obviously we have to find a way to make fucking other people compatible with our relationship.
As I turn onto her street, I see immediately that her car isn’t around, which could mean she’s not home or that she parked in the garage. A pang of frustration almost paralyzes me; I counted on her being here, on being able to start fixing this right away.
I try calling her again as I pull into her driveway—no answer.
I park and I knock on her door—no answer.
I walk around the side of the house and squint up into the window like a fucking creeper—nothing.
She’s not here. I get back in my car and call again, leaving a message this time.
“Hey Cass,” I say after her sweet voice finishes delivering her voicemail response and the phone beeps to tell me it’s recording. “It’s Logan. I, um. You left and you’re not answering your phone and so I guess I’m worried is all. I love you. Bye.”
I deliver it in the short choppy way that a teenage boy calling his crush might, and I don’t even care at this point. I don’t care if she thinks I’m pathetic. I just need to see her and make this feeling stop.
I wait in her driveway for another thirty minutes, picking up my phone to check the screen every few minutes, even though it would have chimed if she called or texted. But there’s no response, and the late afternoon heat seeps into the car, reminding me that I have work to do at home and a phone call with Marieke de Vries at five.
Suddenly, I’m filled with an anger so intense I can barely see straight, my vision going static at the edges and my hands gripping tight around the wheel. It’s a fury so displaced and projected and tangled that I’m not sure what I’m actually angry about or who I’m angry with. I’m angry with Devi for leaving and with myself for not realizing she’d be upset watching Bambi and me, and I’m pissed that she won’t answer her phone and I’m pissed that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Mostly, I’m angry because I’m scared.
The anger vanishes as quickly as it came and I loosen my grip on the wheel, feeling both empty and pointless. With a deep breath, I reluctantly pull out of her driveway and onto the street, looking in my rearview mirror as I slowly roll away. It’s like I’m leaving my heart in her driveway, and all the tendons and veins that attach it inside of my chest are stretching and snapping as I drive away and leave it there to bleed out and die.
Needless to say, it’s not a happy drive home. I walk in the door, knowing I need to go to my office, knowing I need to work, but instead I drop my keys on the counter and wander over to my window. Outside in the bright heat, the pool glimmers clear and cold, and I think about watching Devi swim there, moving so effortlessly, the contrast between her dark bronze skin and the bluish water beautiful and perfect and striking.
What if I was right last night? What if that first off-camera sex was the best it will ever be for us? What if it’s all downhill from here? What if that perfect moment of shimmering connection can’t last? We’ve defined it now, as love, and maybe love can’t bear this many complications, and maybe our baby relationship is already in its death throes.
I scrub at my face with my hands and step away from the window. I can’t right now—with any of this. I have too many feelings jumbled too close together, and I can’t even begin to sort them out without my Cass beside me.
So instead, I try to throw myself into work for the afternoon, writing and filming my monologue for Bambi’s scene and having a ninety-minute phone call with Marieke about Star-Crossed. She loves the footage so far, and since Devi and I are getting ready to schedule our last episode for the season, Marieke and I talk about what another season of it would look like. There are a lot of great, sexy ideas tossed around and we finally settle on one, and I should feel energized by all this but I don’t.
I feel like my heart is still pulsing in sad, bloody little pulses on Devi’s driveway.
I feel like I want to drive back to her house and sit on her steps until she comes home.
I wander downstairs, past the wet bar by my kitchen, and I stop to pour myself a scotch because that is what I do when I’m upset—I process my feelings through my liver. But I don’t actually drink it. I just cradle the glass in my hands and watch the sky darken above my pool. And then my phone rings.
I practically drop the scotch ans
wering it, my blood spiking with excitement and dread at the same time when I see Devi’s gorgeous face on the screen. I answer, trying to keep my voice from shaking with trepidation and relief.
“Hey, babe,” I say, setting the scotch down. “Thanks for calling me back.”
“I’m sorry it took so long,” she says. Her voice is measured, unreadable. “I wasn’t feeling well this morning, so I had to leave. I went to my parents’, and then my phone died.”
It has the practiced pitch of a rehearsed excuse, and my stomach sinks. I’m pretty sure this means she’s upset about my scene with Bambi today, not that she’s actually sick.
“Cass, I want to see you.”
“Not now,” she says. “I’m still not feeling well.”
“Later tonight maybe? If you’re not feeling well, I can come take care of you.”
“I’m going to stay at my parents’ until tomorrow,” she says, and there’s a note of apology in her voice. “I think I really just need to sleep it off...whatever it is that I’ve caught.”
“Devi.” I swallow. “Please.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Logan. Remember we planned on shooting in the afternoon? I’ll be over at one.”
Come over now.
Or let me come to you.
Please, Cass, don’t do this.
I don’t say these things. I don’t say them because I know the right thing to do is to give her space. I don’t say them because a good guy would give her the benefit of the doubt and believe her when she says she’s not feeling well and needs to sleep.
Most of all, I don’t say them because my throat is too tight to speak. I clear it and manage to say, “Okay, babe. I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Love you too,” she echoes, and in those three words, I hear pain and confusion fathoms deep. “Goodnight, Logan.”
* * *
If I were filming a movie of my own life, I’d be disgusted with it right now. First of all, I’m not exhibiting any believable character growth in response to my obstacles. And second of all, there’s no coherence or unity of theme right now. I mean, what am I even feeling? I’m feeling way too much contradictory shit to express in film. No, if I were a director, I would tell my character to pick one thread and stick with it. Am I trying not to cry or am I swooning on my feet whenever I think of Devi? Am I checking my phone constantly or am I trying to resist throwing my phone across the room? If I were a director, I would tell myself that feelings are passive, and to choose actions instead—and then to choose those actions deliberately.
One action at a time.
The idea is appealing to me as I get up the next day and shower. I’m not naive enough to believe I could actually pick one of those feelings and discard all the others, but the idea of cleaning up all these emotions is so deeply attractive. And as I remember Devi’s eyes as she watched me prepare for my scene with Bambi, as I remember convincing her that reality is not the antithesis to porn, I realize something so terrible and clarifying that I abruptly stop washing my hair and drop my hands, simply standing under the spray and staring at the wall as I absorb how wrong I’ve been.
I wanted everything to be together, gloriously messy and unified, because I felt like our palpable love and attraction would make Star-Crossed a better project. I thought that blending our personal romance and our onscreen sex would be the answer, not taking into account Devi’s youth or the fact that I would end up falling for her so much harder than I ever could have guessed. I wanted everything together, because I thought that together was better, more real—hyper-real—but all it did was mix everything up. It cheapened the real connection we had and gave the filming more emotional importance than it deserved.
Fuck. No wonder Devi and I both felt confused yesterday.
The worst part is that this is all my fault. I convinced Devi to go down this path. I made us blur all the lines. I’m responsible for all our pain right now.
If we want to continue this, if we want to survive with our hearts intact and with our careers thriving, then we have to carve out boundaries now. We have to separate porn from real life, we have to compartmentalize. And I have to take responsibility for what I’ve done to us.
I just hope it’s not too late to fix it.
So when Devi unlocks my door at one, right on the dot, I have an entire speech prepared, practically an entire class to teach on Why I’m an Idiot and How I’m Going to Fix It. But then I see her, and all the words melt away from my mind, because she’s so fucking beautiful right now, wearing a short flared skirt and tank top, her long hair in a messy braid that’s slung over one shoulder.
The moment she steps in, I’m pinning her against the wall and crushing my mouth against hers, my hands roaming everywhere, aggressive and needy. She kisses me back with an eager hunger, her mouth searching. And then her legs are wrapping around my waist, and we are grinding together while we kiss, and then she pants, “Let’s go to your bedroom,” and she doesn’t have to ask me twice. I carry her, her legs still wrapped around my waist, and we barely make it to my bedroom before her hands are fumbling with my zipper and I’m yanking at her tank top. I set her on the bed, toss her on her belly and then climb on top, flipping up her skirt and yanking her thong aside so fast that I hear the fabric tear. I don’t care; another second’s work and I’m notched in her cunt, pushing roughly inside.
She’s not quite ready, but she’s bucking back against me, raising her ass up in an attempt to get me inside her faster, and the friction is fucking unbelievable. Tight and raw and primal. I’m grunting and thrusting hard, the zipper of my jeans scraping against the soft skin of her ass and thighs, her skirt a twisted pink mess of fabric around her waist.
And all I can think is
she wants me
she loves me
she still wants me.
“Make me come,” she says, squirming like a wild woman under me. “God, Logan, please. Make me come.”
“Anything,” I say, dropping my lips to the back of her neck. “I’ll give you fucking anything.”
I mean it. I reach under her hips and find her swollen bud, and this is another position I rarely film in, because I’m almost completely on top of her, all of the motion hidden by her thick ass and my pumping hips. But who cares how it would look? It feels fucking amazing to take her like this, it feels fucking wonderful to impale her like this, with the rounded curves of her ass pressing back into my hips.
I’m still kissing the back of her neck, stretched out on top of her and bearing most of my weight on my left forearm and my knees, and my right hand is rubbing the throbbing bundle between her legs, and she comes abruptly, catastrophically, keening into the pillow as she shudders and quakes her way through her release.
I feel the sharp heat thrumming in my pelvis already, and the porn star in me wants to change position and slow down, draw this out. But the boyfriend in me wants to go with her, fall together, just like she said two nights ago, and so I let the frantic torrent of desperation and relief carry me over the edge. Deep currents of pleasure unfurl into jagged arcs of lightning, and then I’m pulsing inside of her—still thrusting and ramming hard and fast.
Frenzied.
Relentless.
And finally it comes: sweet relief. All of the pain and worry I’ve chewed on for the past twenty-four hours bleeds away as I slow my thrusts and my breathing returns to normal, and as she starts to make that purring sound underneath me, my chest constricts with incandescent joy.
“I love you,” I murmur.
“I love you,” she whispers back, and I want to shout with triumph. I haven’t ruined everything after all!
With our clothes still rumpled and twisted around us, I roll us onto our sides, my arms wrapping tight around her torso and my cock still buried deep in her pussy. It’s possibly the shortest amount of time I’ve taken to have sex in years, it’s possibly the most spontaneous sex I’ve had as an adult, but I don’t care. Because it was only about us, the two of us, no cameras an
d no bullshit. I hold her tight and breathe in the smell of her skin, thinking that I’m right, I’ve finally figured it out.
This is so amazing right now, so perfect, exactly because there are no cameras. And if we carry these boundaries into everything else—if we only think about Star-Crossed when we’re doing Star-Crossed, and Logan and Devi when we’re just Logan and Devi—then we’ll be able to sustain this peace and satisfaction. Sustain us, for the long haul.
Devi’s going to love this, I think happily, pressing my lips to her shoulder as she snuggles back against me. She and her parents seem into that Eckhart Tolle mindfulness stuff, and this is basically mindfulness, right? Mindful fucking.
“What are you thinking?” Devi asks.
I answer honestly. “About writing a book called Mindful Fucking for Fun and Profit. I could do seminars and speak at corporate retreats and stuff. Make lots of money.”
She giggles. “You already make lots of money.”
“Pfft. I work hard for that money. I need a plan for when my stamina runs out.”
“As if that will ever happen.” She shifts against me, and my cock is very eager to prove her right, except we’re still supposed to film a scene today, so I tell him to wait. “Look at all the books in here,” she observes. “I never noticed them before.”
I’m far more interested in licking circles on her shoulder, tracing the line between her tank top and her skin with my lips. “I don’t have nearly as many as you do,” I say in between kisses. “Was always more of a movie guy. But I think good storytellers should appreciate all mediums.”
“Logan O’Toole: fiction nerd.”
“Hardly.” I glance up at the set of low shelves against the window. “Most of those are poetry collections.”
I hear the smile in her voice. “Poetry?”
I feel a little defensive, not because I think she’s teasing me but because it’s so hard to explain. “It was always my favorite part in English class, when we’d read the poetry. And I knew when I made the choice to do porn instead of going to UCLA like I’d planned, that there probably wouldn’t be much poetry in my future. So I started doing this thing where every month I’d buy a book of poetry. I didn’t have to like it or even read it all, but I had to try it. Because I think poets come the closest to seeing the world how I see it sometimes. Images. Tastes and sounds. Not always perfectly stitched together, but uneven and unexplainable.”
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