Tempt Me: A First Class Romance Collection

by Jessica Hawkins

  Just tonight, tomorrow we’ll go on, but just tonight, I’ll be all-loved by lovers all.

  If I had any question about what I was reading, one line in particular spelled it out for me.

  Fucked from both ends, I’m your willing doll.

  I hadn’t known what to think. Still don’t. I got fucking hard, I’m a man after all, but the idea of someone else touching my girlfriend also made my blood boil. She said she didn’t necessarily want everything she wrote about in the journal, but I’m not sure how to clarify without upsetting her. If she thinks I’m weirded out by it, she might react again.

  I put it away—I’m not able to go there now—and return to my tried and true journal. I can find what I need in here. I pick an entry that describes waiting for her man to come home that’ll work for the bodysuit image.

  Her phone lights up on the counter, so I take it and the journal back into the studio. “Found what I need in practically no time at all,” I say. “I told you it’d be—” Two steps into the room, I stop. Halston’s head is blocking most of my view of the picture on the computer screen, but I’d know those tits anywhere. The fan of black hair on the cushion of Kendra’s hideous, deceivingly uncomfortable green velvet couch.

  Sadie.

  Halston doesn’t move, but her sweatshirt quivers with each breath. “You told me you never photographed anyone else,” she says. “Not like this.”

  My throat and mouth dry up. As I walk up behind the computer chair, Sadie comes into full view. She stares at the camera with her intoxicating, purple-blue eyes. Her back is arched off the couch, her breasts on full display. Desire is clear in her face. “It’s not . . .” I try to explain. “This was something else . . .”

  “What was it?”

  That afternoon with Sadie hits me in the chest like a slab of concrete. I’d thought I finally had her, but what a fucking fool I’d been. We’d spent the day together, gotten caught in the rain, and sought shelter in my apartment. Her own was across the hall, but she’d come to mine. Wet. Cold. Lonely. I’d warmed her up all right. Caught up in the moment, I’d loved her with my camera before devouring her head to toe on that couch.

  I can’t speak. Halston asked me a question, and I need to answer, or her imagination’ll run wild. My silence will hurt her more than I already have. “What?”

  Halston only gives me her profile, avoiding my eyes. The cute tip of her nose is bright red, her lips parted. “I asked you what this is.”

  I set her journal and cell on the desk. “It’s Sadie.”

  “I figured, since the folder’s named Sadie.”

  “It was just . . . when we were together, I took these. It wasn’t for any other reason than I felt—”

  “Inspired?” Her voice breaks.

  Fuck. Halston of all people knows what that means. For me to feel moved by someone. She’s that to me every day. “She never inspired me the way you do.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  “It wasn’t real. I was looking for something and Sadie came along.”

  She continues to stare at Sadie, even though I want nothing more than for her to close out of the photo. “What were you looking for?” she asks.

  “A way out of my marriage. I didn’t think I could do it on my own. I wanted an excuse, a partner to go through it with. I put all that on Sadie’s shoulders. I was a coward.”

  A notification pops up on Halston’s phone. She goes to pick it up.

  “Leave it.” I move it out of her reach. That fucking phone’s in her hand more often than it’s not. “We’re having a discussion.”

  “But my phone keeps vibrating. Something’s happening.”

  “I don’t care. I need your attention on me right now. Please.”

  “Fine.” She returns to the computer and clicks to the next photo in line. And the next. Sadie flips between poses.

  I have to look away. “Stop.”

  “No.”

  “I never looked at these again, not once after she left,” I say.

  “It’s taken you this long to get over her—if you even are—there’s no way you haven’t been jerking off to these. Probably even when we were together.”

  My face warms. I’ve been nothing but good to Halston. Her accusation is unfounded. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s married. Looking at them never felt right.”

  “But screwing her was?”

  I shake the chair a bit to get her attention. She turns to me, startled. “You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true,” I say. “I never looked at them. I never thought of them when I was with you. I would’ve deleted them, but I forgot they were there once I met you. I’ll delete them now.”

  She glances at the phone, then Sadie, then me. “She’s beautiful. I had no idea she was that pretty. I mean, I guess I figured she was. Is . . . Kendra like this too? Are all your exes like models?”

  The way Halston says it, she almost makes it sounds like a contest. Her, versus the other women. I tell her a lot how beautiful and sexy she is. Even if I didn’t, she sees herself through my eyes on a daily basis. Will it ever be enough? If I forget to tell her sometimes, will she spiral down, comparing herself to every woman who crosses my path?

  “Kendra’s . . . cute, I guess.” Cute? How the fuck do I describe my ex-wife and ex-lover without hurting Halston’s feelings? “She’s spunky. Not beautiful like you.”

  Halston’s shoulders lower a little. “Oh.”

  “And Sadie, she was attractive, yes, but cold.”

  Halston shifts against the leather. She unpurses her lips, the lines in her forehead smoothing. With a tilt of her head, she asks, “How so?”

  I’d rather drop the subject, but I think Halston needs to hear this. Sadie, the dark beauty on my couch, will eat at Halston if I don’t share her flaws. It’s true, Sadie was cold. “For the longest time, I didn’t see that about her, the way she could so easily detach. I thought she was unhappy, and that she needed someone to make her smile, and I did, but it wasn’t enough.”

  I’m relieved when Halston relaxes, pulling her feet in to sit cross-legged. “I think I can see it in her eyes,” she says. “She doesn’t look friendly.”

  I nod. It’s working. “She belongs with him—Nathan—her husband. He’s right for her, I guess. I think I would’ve realized after it was too late, that I wasn’t.”

  “Is that how you saw me?” she asks. “Unhappy? Cold? Someone to be rescued?”

  “Oh, God. No.” I squat and take her face in my hands. “You’re the warmest, most loving girl. You know that? You have so much to give, and I just take and take. I’m not even sorry about it.”

  The corner of her mouth twitches. “I wasn’t like that with Rich. Or anyone really. Just you.”

  “Good. That makes me happy.” When she smiles, my heart melts. I never want her to feel inferior or question my feelings for her. I hope her insecurity is only because we’re still new, and that one day soon, she’ll hear me when I tell her how wonderful she is and stop needing reminders. I lean over her, blocking her view, as I trash the photos. She lets me. Seeing them again makes me feel many things, but mostly just sick to my stomach. I’m not sorry about erasing them for good.

  Halston kisses me on the cheek and rolls the chair back to get up. She takes her phone and leaves the room. I think I’ve diffused the situation, but I’m not entirely sure. Because once in a while, rare as it is, it feels as though the more I get to know Halston, the harder she is to read.

  26

  The afterimage of Sadie’s naked body is still burned into my vision when I walk out of Finn’s studio. If he photographed me that way, face and all, would I come off as confident as her? By Sadie’s expression, she knew she had Finn on the hook. He and I have been together longer than they were. He didn’t love her like he does me. I know that’s true, but sitting there, faced with her beauty and poise, I couldn’t help thinking about all the things I’m not—normal, calm, cheerful, charming. But I am warm, unlike her.


  I check my phone. I was only away from it half an hour, but the amount of notifications makes me stop in my tracks. I can’t even scroll to the bottom of the lock screen. I type in my passcode and my mouth falls open. “Finn? Finn. Come here.”

  He appears in the hallway. “What?”

  I show him the screen. “Look. They keep coming. Like, a lot of them.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  I wrack my brain. The only explanation is that we’ve been featured by someone big, but when that happens, it’s generally their account that blows up, not ours. “Did you just post something?” I ask.

  “No. I was with you.”

  The last photo Finn shared has more likes than usual, which doesn’t make sense. It’s my freshly-manicured, dark-nailed hands cupped together, filled with bobby pins. It was just a filler we threw together since we’ve been hard at work on the lingerie shoot.

  But as I look through our notifications, I realize it’s not that one they’re interested in. Users are going back to where it all began. Our coffee series, the first three photos, is getting like after like after like. I open each of them.

  Finn sees it at the same time as I do, reading upside down. “Does that one have twenty-one-hundred?”

  I stumble back into the studio and sit on the sofa. Comments are coming in faster than I can track. “Check your e-mail,” I tell him as I look through everything we’ve been tagged in recently. There are more than usual today, a few feature accounts included, each with thousands of followers. Still, I’m not sure why they all chose the same photo. “I can’t figure it out,” I say. “It’s not Butter Boudoir; they don’t even have many more followers than we do. I have no idea where this is coming from.”

  Finn’s leather chair creaks when he sits back. “I do.”

  “You do? Where?”

  He massages his jaw, looking at the computer screen. “It’s dumb.”

  “What is it?” I get up and read over his shoulder. “A Buzzfeed article?”

  “Yeah. ‘Twelve sexy photographers to follow now.’”

  “Holy shit. Why is that dumb? Our stuff is sexy.”

  “No. They don’t mean it like that. Here’s the subtitle: ‘These photographers are even sexier than the photos they take.’” He scrolls down to number one on the list, and it’s Finn’s face. His sun-kissed skin. His butterscotch hair and mossy-green eyes. The photo from the bio section of his website.

  Underneath it is the photo of me licking coffee off my forearm and a caption that reads, We’d be drooling too.

  “Sexy photographers,” he explains. “As in, every photographer in the article is—well, according to them . . .”

  “Sexy,” I finish.

  He moves down the list. A couple other men are included, but most of the accounts featured are women shooting female boudoir—pretty pouts, big eyes, delicate bralettes, smooth-skinned, toned asses. All the images are embedded on the site, so people can follow with one click. They don’t even have to leave the page.

  “Someone e-mailed me about this a couple days ago,” Finn says, rubbing his temples. “She asked if she could feature us. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  “I don’t know if it is.” I lean over and scroll to the bottom of the article to see if anyone has commented.

  “Almost two hundred people,” Finn says, reading the screen. “Is that normal for Buzzfeed?”

  I stand up again. “It’s a lot. Sometimes things like this go viral, so if people are sharing it all over social media, then . . . that must be what happened. Plus, you’re number one on the list.”

  “We’re number one.”

  “That’s not my face at the top.”

  “Hals.” His eyebrows draw together, his gorgeous lips turn down into a frown. “Honestly, I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. I assumed it was about our work.”

  My caption is included, but that’s obviously not what this article’s about. Professionally, this is huge for him, yet he looks unhappy. Because he’s worried how I’ll react to this? He shouldn’t be. I want his success probably more than he does. He deserves to have his moment.

  “It is about us.” I bend down to kiss him. “They wouldn’t have picked you if our work sucked. And you know what?”

  He watches my mouth. “Hmm?”

  “I don’t need a Buzzfeed article to tell me how sexy you are, but it’s still pretty amazing they picked you. And you picked me, so I’m feeling good right now.”

  He pulls my arm so I fall into his lap. “You’re amazing.”

  “You know, there’s a lot of pressure on us now. Our next post has to be seriously good. None of that bobby pin bullshit.”

  He grins. “It’s the onesie one.”

  “The onesie one?”

  He gestures over my body. “The leotard thing. That’s our next photo.”

  I instinctively glance at the computer and Sadie pops into my mind. I said I was okay with what I saw, so I need to be. There isn’t enough room for both of us to be paranoid about past partners. He has more reason to be distrustful, even though I’d never pick Rich over him. Finn, on the other hand, hasn’t ever made me feel insecure about our relationship. “Right. The bodysuit. It’s good, but is it good enough as a first post for all those new followers? Let me see which caption you chose.”

  He pinches my chin. “It’ll be perfect. Don’t worry.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll handle it, babe. I want you to enjoy this moment.”

  “I am. Remember that day I said I wanted to hit ten thousand followers by mid-January? Before this article, we’d almost doubled it. Now we’re closing in on forty, and it’s barely February.”

  “Is this you enjoying the moment?” he asks.

  It is. Watching the numbers grow excites me. Knowing all those people are not just reading my words, but relating to them. Feeling them. I hate to admit that the thrill doesn’t end there. The article said it, and forty-thousand people agree, so it must be true: the photos are sexy. And they’re of me. I can’t wait to see what happens when we post the next series of Butter Boudoir images. Just as I’d suspected, they’re the most provocative yet. “I think with Valentine’s Day around the corner, we can double that number by March.”

  He looks skeptical. “Eighty-thousand?”

  “No. A hundred. Pick a day in March. We need a goal to keep us on track.”

  “Jesus. That’s the population of a town.”

  “We can do it, Finn. This is the kind of thing I was talking about. We can do more with more.”

  He scratches his chin but nods. “Okay, but . . .” He runs his hand down my thigh. “Can you give me a teensy bit more motivation?”

  “If we hit a hundred thousand by the date you pick in March . . . I’ll give you blowjobs until my jaw falls off.”

  His eyes widen. “March first.”

  I laugh. “Are you sure? Day one? You’re going to take that risk?”

  With an eye roll and a chuckle, he sits back. “Fine. How about March eleventh? It’s my birthday.”

  A smile warms my face. I had no idea. I’ll have to think of something good to surprise him with. “I love March eleventh.”

  That’s just over a month away. With what we’ve accomplished today, and with what’s to come, I just know we can do it. Our own little town.

  But then, as is becoming standard since I stopped my antidepressants, it doesn’t take long for my high to even out and let doubt in. We can no longer pretend this is a hobby. Now, we have a real following, opportunities to get sponsors, and the ability to charge for advertising. If we play our cards right, this could mean a new life for us—and our art. It also means we have something to lose. And as Finn grows more recognizable, I’ll have to share him with the world, watching from the sidelines, hiding behind a mask of my own creation.

  27

  Finn squats, examining a box on the floor of my apartment labeled Books. “It’s all in the knees,” he explains. “You have to protect y
our back.” After counting to three, he hoists the box into his arms and stumbles backward a few steps. “What the . . . there’s nothing in here.”

  I can’t help laughing. “You can thank Rich. He didn’t return any of my paperbacks.”

  “Maybe next time get a smaller box,” he teases. “I think this is the last of what I can fit in the car. We’ll have to come back for the rest next weekend.”

  “That’s fine. We’ve got time.”

  While he takes the last of today’s stuff downstairs, I get out a six-pack I bought for this occasion. I pop the cap from a bottle, and it clatters on the counter, the noise echoing off empty walls. It should be strange to see my place this barren, its eggshell-colored walls looking sad and splotchy, but it hasn’t been my home for months. The important things are already at Finn’s. We moved some last weekend, some today, and we’ll do the rest next Saturday since it’s the last weekend before March. That’s the way to move.

  Finn walks through the front door with a pizza. “I ran into the delivery guy downstairs.”

  “Perfect timing.”

  I trade him a beer for a slice, and we stand at the counter to eat.

  “When we get home, leave those on,” he says, nodding at my outfit.

  “What, my overalls?”

  He winks. “And the bandana.”

  “The bandana is to keep sweat out of my hair,” I say. “Not to be cute.”

  “Then definitely wear it, because what I’ve got in mind will leave you all kinds of sweaty.”

  “Ew.” I toss a piece of crust at him. “Gross.”

  He laughs and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “How come you never got roommates?”

  “I’ve never had any.”

  “Never? But that’s like a rite of passage into adulthood.”

  “My dad didn’t want me to. He offered to pay for me to live alone, and I’d be an idiot to turn that down.”

  Finn shakes his head. “It’s good to live with people. You learn weird things about yourself, like that you fucking hate the smell of sautéed Brussels sprouts.”