“Dude! This is so delicious!” I groan as I take a bite of pasta. James could defeat an Iron Chef with his eyes closed.
He chuckles and smiles proudly, watching me savor another big bite. Aside from cooking me dinner on the regular, James is always taking care of me. Growing up, he was like my big brother and he always looked out for me. I remember him fighting off bullies for me when I was going through my gawky, tween phase in seventh grade and how he’d intimidate boys who got a little over-amorous with me once I hit puberty and emerged with a pair of D cups and a healthy dose of low self-esteem. He’s like my bodyguard, my protector, and he’s the only person I can share absolutely everything with.
“So, how’s that Eric dude?” He asks, zapping me out of my nostalgic childhood memories.
“Oh, he’s good. He knew Peter was making me work through lunch, so he brought me one of those portobello sandwiches I love,” I reply. Eric is the hot guy who works at the law firm on my floor. He’s about 6’4” and he works out like crazy. He’s got blonde hair and blue eyes and he looks like a hulking viking. At 38, he’s 15 years older than me—which worries James, I know—but he’s sexy and he flirts with me all the time.
James raises an eyebrow and gives me a look.
“What?” I laugh, feeling my cheeks starting to flush.
“He likes you, you know?” He grins with a teasing undertone in his voice.
“Maybe he’s just being nice,” I reply, knowing very well that it’s not true.
“He’s been really ‘nice’ for the past three months since you met him,” he teases. “I’m telling you, Lo, dude’s trying to hit that.”
I laugh and continue to blush before retorting, “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take advice from a guy whose relationships with women begin with ‘action’ and end with someone yelling ‘cut’!”
“Cold as ice tonight!” He laughs, grabbing his heart.
I shoot him a smirk and then impersonate the girls in his videos. “Yes, Master Langdon,” I mock, “I’ll be a good girl. Don’t give me a spanking.” I chuckle and roll my eyes. “I swear, how these girls can let you boss them around like that!”
James has done videos that fall under every category and appeal to almost every fetish, but his most recent genre is BDSM porn. His scenes usually involve a buxom woman tied up or hand cuffed or bound in some other fashion while he goes to town on her with a riding crop or a flogger or whatever instrument is the tool of the day. There’s a lot of “yes, Sir” and “please, Master,” and I’ve never really seen the appeal.
“I guess I just don’t see the point of spankings and all that,” I shrug. We’ve had this debate since he first got into this particular genre, but he’s never managed to sway me on the whole Dominant/submissive thing.
“It’s acting,” he chuckles at my eye rolling and mocking.
“Is it?” I laugh. “Because you don’t see Meryl Streep doing movies that involve ball gags and nipple clamps.”
I can see him trying to resist it, but he laughs hard at that comment. I’ve spent over a decade sassing James about his extraordinarily active sex life and, now that he’s doing porn, I have so much more material.
“Hey, some girls dig it,” he shrugs. “They like giving up all control and being totally at my mercy.”
“Yeesh! Not me,” I shake my head.
“Ok, like you have room to talk!” He teases. “You’ve never had sex at all, so how would you know what you’re into?”
Immediately, I blush. It’s true, I’m a virgin. Pretty funny considering my best friend is a porn star, right? People can’t wrap their heads around the fact that I made it through my horny teenage years without falling pretty to my Casanova best bud. In truth, James was always very cautious when it came to me and he never made an attempt to seduce me. Now he likes to pull the purity card on me every time I tease him. I can joke about his sex life a million times a day, but when he turns the tables around, I go all pink cheeks and giggles, and he loves it.
“Shut up!” I say, trying to sound stern despite the fact that I’m giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl.
“Ah, there’s that blush,” he chuckles, tipping his wine glass to me. “Not so tough anymore, huh?”
“This is about you and all the fake-titted girls you screw on film,” I protest, still laughing uncontrollably, “not about me and who might or might not be between my legs.”
“I certainly hope no one’s between your legs!” He says with surprise. “Otherwise I’d have to kick somebody’s ass.”
James is always protecting my virtue like some kind of knight. He’s done this all my life and I’m sure he’s a big reason why guys were too intimidated to ask me out in high school. Who wants to date a girl with a big, hulking bad ass just waiting to beat the crap out of you if you hurt her?
He yawns and stretches in his chair, his t-shirt lifting up just enough to reveal a glimpse of his toned, tanned stomach. The sight of his six-pack is so commonplace that it’s almost boring to me at this point. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen him naked, so his bare skin is like wallpaper, always visible, but not all that noticeable until you focus your attention on it.
“Sleepy? Must have been a very rigorous scene,” I say with a smirk.
He chuckles and gives me his patented devilish grin. “Two girls can wear you out, dude, you don’t even know. We had to stop for stills, like, a zillion times and they fucked up and entire section of close ups so we had to do those over. Plus, I had to do, like, seven pop shots,” he says casually like he’s talking about sending some faxes instead of ejaculating all over some poor, shackled starlet.
“Well, isn’t life so hard for you,” I tease.
“You try coming seven times and see if it doesn’t wear your ass out!” He chuckles. Suddenly, his eyes flash on me and he gives me a cartoonishly exaggerated version of the James Laird Sex Laser Bean, the look that might as well be a gamma ray burst of pure sexuality. “I could show you, if you want,” he says, his voice filled with overplayed sensuality. “I’ll put your ankles behind your head and show you exactly what it feels like to come seven times in a row.”
“James!” I squeal with laughter.
He throws his head back as he laughs at my shy response. He loves riling me up like this. We’ve never really been sexual with each other before—our relationship has always been a brother-sister, platonic one—but there were a few times during our teenage years when my highly skilled friend served as a lab rat for my sexual experimentation. James was responsible for my first orgasm, his was the first penis I ever saw and he was the first boy to touch my breasts, but that was a log time ago. We haven’t done anything like that in years.
“I’m just fuckin’ with you, kid,” he chuckles and stands up to clear the table.
I help him put all the dishes in the dishwasher and we move into the living room to watch TV. This is how we spend most evenings. I lie back against the arm of the couch and stretch my legs over his lap. By the second commercial break in The Colbert Report, I’m nodding off. I’m half asleep when I hear him turn off the TV and I feel his strong arms scoop me up as he carries me off to my bed. I remember how I always used to fall asleep before him every time I stayed over at his house when we were little kids He’d opt for the air mattress on the floor and he’d pick me up and get me comfortable in his bed. Some things never change.
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