by Hazel Jacobs
“Big words,” I say, leaning my cheek on the bark and straining to look over my shoulder. “You’re gonna need to prove that to me.”
Blake stares at me for a moment before a small smile graces his lips. It’s just a moment, one breath of a pause in the midst of all that heat and desire, but it’s wonderful. I’m pressed up against a tree, my legs spread-eagled, my pussy still throbbing, and my neck sore from the hickey that’s blooming there—standing in the semi-dark of the trees and knowing that someone could come by at any moment—but I feel completely safe.
And then his face goes dark, and he seems to be moving with pure lust as he shoves my pants down. I barely have time to brace myself against the tree before I feel the hot, burning pressure of his cock breaching me from behind—bigger than I was expecting—and I moan at the feeling of the pleasant stretch as he takes me.
At first, I try to hold myself up. I attempt to keep my legs from buckling and my cheek from scratching against the bark. But after a moment, I realize it’s futile. I have no more control over this situation than I have had over anything since I met Blake. All I can do is hold onto the tree for dear life as Blake pounds into me as hard and fast as I’d been hoping.
I can hear my breathing jerking with every movement he makes, little moans breaking through, and behind me Blake grunts and mutters inaudibly as he grips my hips and takes me hard.
I gasp and drop my cheek against the bark, feeling it scrape a little, and Blake’s hand coils around my throat and pulls me back. The pressure of his hand and the knowledge that he could rip the life out of me without another thought makes my still-quivering clitoris throb. He’s squeezing with a grip that could be deadly if he wanted it to be. Blake’s pounding into me, and I can hear the sound of our skin slapping and my own gasps. It’s a sound I know someone walking past would be able to hear.
While he holds me with one hand, the other is reaching down to rub at my clitoris again. It’s still sore from his rough treatment before, but it feels so good. It feels like he’s stoking the fire that had blazed only moments before, and it’s not going to take long for him to make it explode all over again.
He wasn’t lying when he said it would be rough. If he were any other man, I don’t think I would feel safe with his hand on my throat like this. As it is, I almost want him to hold me harder, to push me to the edge of losing control, to hold me so tight I couldn’t escape even if I wanted to—not that I ever would.
I don’t know how long we’ve been here. It feels like hours. My muscles are beginning to ache, and I can feel myself shuddering as he pushes me harder, shoving himself deeper inside of me. I wonder if he can hear how turned on I am. He probably can. If he can’t, he’ll probably be able to feel it in the wetness between my legs.
Blake’s chest is heaving against my back. He’s long enough and thick enough that I can feel him rubbing against my g-spot, hastening my second orgasm.
“Keep going, don’t stop…”
He doesn’t. He goes faster and harder. Blake’s hand on my throat spasms and his fingers on my clit are moving faster and faster. His hips are jerking, and he seems to be fighting with me or something, which is ridiculous because I couldn’t put up a fight even if I weren’t entirely fixated on the way he is moving.
And then my orgasm slams into me. It is the most intense orgasm I’ve ever experienced. Whether it’s the combination of safety and danger, or whether it’s the desire that has been developing inside of me ever since I met him, my entire body feels as though it’s on fire and frozen at the same time.
I open my mouth in a silent scream, and Blake’s hands tighten on my throat and pussy. His thrusts become erratic. His groan in my ear is so erotic I think my legs might buckle under the strain of my own want. I feel him throbbing inside of me.
Blake’s hand loosens over my throat, and I gasp for breath, pulling hands away from the tree and resting them against the bark, resting my sweaty forehead against my palms as I try to get my mind in order. My crotch still throbs. My heart is racing faster than it ever has after sex. I want to turn around to kiss him, but my head is still spinning.
I feel Blake pull out of me, and I gasp. And then he is kneeling down and pulling my pants back up, unerringly gentle and achingly slow. He presses a kiss to my hip before straightening up.
“That was…” He seems lost for words, and his voice is ragged.
“Yeah,” I say.
I turn around and lean back against the tree. Blake’s eyes are still blown out with lust, and his cheeks are red. He looks immediately down at my neck, and his eyes go remorseful as he reaches out to brush his fingers gently against the skin there. I shiver.
“Sorry, that’ll bruise.”
“I’ve got a friend who knows concealer better than I know my ukulele,” I say, thinking about all the shit Shane will give me when he sees the bruises. “I can handle it.”
His touch is so gentle I feel my eyelids fluttering. Then he leans forward and kisses me, and it’s achingly gentle. His fingers find their way into my hair, and I wrap my arms around his neck, anchoring myself to him and hooking an ankle over his calf. My whole body is reacting to him. I want to lose myself inside of his kisses.
I can smell sweat, sex, and damp leaves. It’s a natural, warm scent I desperately love. I want to bottle it and wear it to my next red carpet event, preferably when Sadie Hawks is nearby so she can get a whiff of it.
That thought gives me some vicious satisfaction, and when my eyes meet Blake, he has his head cocked at a weird angle. Am I smiling strangely? I want to rearrange my face, but my body seems to be completely out of my control right now. I have a disturbing suspicion I’m smiling goofily.
“That was… everything I hoped it would be,” I tell him, and then I want to drag the words back into my mouth, but it’s too late.
Blessedly, Blake just smiles back. It’s not the wide, blissful smile I wish for that I think is probably on my face, but it’s something.
“Yeah,” he says. “Me, too.”
For the last two weeks, things seem to be going perfectly. Blake and I fall into a companionship that could look to the casual observer like a relationship, but I try hard to remind myself we’re not a couple and he’s not ready for a relationship. But sweet Jesus, do I wish he was.
Because the thing is? It’s so damn easy.
Every engagement I go to, Blake is there. Blake follows me wherever I go, and where there used to be slightly awkward silence, there’s now curiosity and ease. We’re friendly, which is something we weren’t quite making it to before. Before, Blake and I could sit together, but we couldn’t talk like we do now. I ask him what made him want to be a bodyguard, and he asks me what made me want to be a Broadway actress.
“I’ve always liked playing pretend,” I tell him. “And Broadway is so exciting. It would be like a new show every night.”
“I trained with the Marines, but I never liked the combat,” he tells me. “I prefer having something to protect, rather than going out and trying to take things from someone else, and that’s really what combat is.”
He was so cold and aloof when we met, and now that he’s finally warming up. It’s like a bright light has been cast over the two of us. We trade jokes in the wings of the shows and interviews I go to. When I hate my wardrobe, he leaves Magnus to sort it out while he kisses my cares away. We’ve become a lot more comfortable with touch, though there is an unspoken agreement we never touch or kiss somewhere where there could be cameras.
I find out he has a younger brother who’s training to be a teacher, and he’s desperately proud of him. I tell him about my small-town parents who are so excited I’m doing well, even though they’re not really sure what YouTube is or how I can make money from it. He tells me he would have liked to be a chef if he could have been anything else. I tell him I would have liked to have been an astronaut.
“It would be fun!” I’d told him defensively when he’d snorted.
“You’ve got an adventurous side, you know
that?” he’d replied, a wry smile on his lips.
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Good thing I’ve got such a great bodyguard to keep me safe.”
He still doesn’t laugh much, but I’m working on that.
We fall into a pattern that, on anyone else, could definitely be considered a relationship. He kisses me when he sees me, we talk and share details about our personal lives as often as we can. Blake stays over at my dorm. He kisses me to sleep every night and gives me the best orgasms of my life.
To be honest, I hadn’t expected us to be this great so quickly. It doesn’t make sense, really, but it seems the lust I felt for him is starting to blossom into something else and that terrifies and thrills me in equal parts.
In hindsight, I think it might have been inevitable, and that caring for Blake and feeling him inside of me on a regular basis would make me like him more. The fact he is a genuinely good person—the kind who would run into a burning building to save puppies, the kind who prefers to defend instead of attack, I mean, how could I have resisted that?—only makes things worse.
We talk sometimes. I’m slowly breaking through the wall he’s built up since Sadie left, but a lot of the time we just sit in silence. We’re together so often, going to interviews and appearances, I feel almost like I’ve had him with me for years like he’s always been there and always will be. When I look at him now, I’m less distracted by his biceps and his chest and more interested in the way his eyes will light up when I make a good joke or a daring pun. I want to see him laugh—that’s my goal.
At the end of two weeks, I’m able to admit to myself I want more from Blake than excellent sex. The only problem is finding a way to bring it up with him.
While all of this is happening, I’m frantically trying to plan my tour. My idea is to act out my YouTube career, using Shane and a couple of my other friends as characters. A musical I write and direct myself—it’s something I’ve done over and over for school, but this time it’s deeply important I don’t fuck it up. There’s more than just a grade on the line. Magnus has made it clear this could be the thing to make or break me.
No pressure or anything.
I spend hours huddled up in my dorm while Blake is sleeping on my bed or reading quietly. I type away, put together a mood board, try to map out every inch of what I want the stage to look like. Because it’s so personal for me, because I’m in charge, every detail has to be perfect. I can’t allow for anything else. The stress of the looming tour, plus the two videos a week—videos I have to plan out, rehearse, shoot, and edit myself—leaves me with little time to be worrying about a potential relationship with my bodyguard, but somehow I manage.
Blake seems to instinctively know when I’ve had too much. When I need a break, he takes me for a run or guides me to the bed for a few hours of blissful, mind-blowing sex. Sometimes, he can make me forget my name—making me forget I’ve got a tour to plan is child’s play. Blake can play my body with the same finesse I reserve for my music, and I love it.
Shane pretends to tut when he sees the bruises Blake leaves on my neck before he’s climbing all over me and demanding details. His own sex life is looking better and better. He and Magnus have been on a couple of dates, though Magnus did give Shane the courtesy of finding a different manager to cover Shane’s career—“To avoid conflict of interest, he’s such a sweetheart,” Shane had told me. So Shane only ever sees Magnus in the personal setting.
Maybe that’s the problem with Blake and me. We’re professional colleagues first, lovers second, and friends third.
After two weeks, though, it all falls apart.
Shane scored a role in a TV pilot. It’s the type of thing that could launch a career if the pilot gets picked up. We spent a good two hours squealing about it. I wanted to run and tell my Instagram followers who love Shane as much as I do, but he quickly swats the phone out of my hand.
“NDAs, woman,” he says. “We can’t tell a soul until the pilot season is over!”
I am so damn happy for him. When he invites me to the set to help him run lines before the first shoot, I’m ecstatic, and I agree immediately. My tour and videos can wait. I need to support my friend.
Blake drives me. The limo for the red carpet was a one-time thing, and I’m not pulling in enough to hire a full-time driver. Ordinarily, I would have split an Uber with Shane, but he’d had to be on the set at 4:00 a.m., and I’m not about that life. Instead, Blake picks me up from the dorm.
“So what’s your friend doing on the show?” Blake asks as we merge seamlessly into traffic. He’s wearing a blue Henley that hugs his biceps deliciously. I’d told him once, after a particularly delicious round of sex, that I think the tight shirts are sexy. Since then, he’s worn nothing but tight shirts. He is clearly trying to drive me insane. It’s working.
“A small role,” I tell him, leaning my head against the window. I can’t get my grin off of my face, I’m just so proud. “But it’ll be something big, I can tell. There’s too much talent there.”
“As long as the pilot gets picked up.”
“Well, even if it doesn’t, a reputation will build up, won’t it? It certainly can’t hurt a career?”
Blake shrugs, but I take that as a positive reaction. I realize we’ve never really talked about Shane so much. In fact, I don’t think Blake has even met Shane. Shane always makes himself scarce when Blake comes over, like a true friend. I think I’ve been holding off on introducing them properly. Shane has always been my litmus test for men. If he likes them, then the relationship is worth pursuing.
I’m worried, on some level, that Shane will like Blake because I already know how Blake feels about relationships.
Blake drives us to the studio. I’ve seen a few studios in the last month or so, but this one is big. The building is an imposing, sand-colored monolith with people scurrying around it like ants. Many of them are wearing headphones or Bluetooth earplugs, talking loudly and checking things off on their clipboards. There’s a group of men unloading a catering truck as Blake, and I pull into the service parking lot. Blake drops me off there, and I walk inside while he looks for a place to park his car.
“See you,” I say, leaning over to give him a brief kiss on the lips.
He returns it without hesitation. It’s so damn domestic. Like we’ve been together for years.
I walk past the caterers who are unloading, frankly, an irresponsible amount of food. The studio is smaller on the inside than it had looked from the outside, and I find a harried PA who can guide me to the trailers parked on the other side of the building.
Walking through the organized chaos, gazing around at the many plywood outsides of sets, the green screens, and the camera equipment which puts my tiny Nikon to shame, I think I would definitely prefer the stage. Not that there’s anything wrong with this environment, I just know from experience that plays are more… intimate, for the want of a better word. Backstage, there’s only so much space. You’re squeezing between people to get your makeup on in a tiny mirror, you’re sorting through other people’s costumes to find your own in the wardrobe chaos, and there’s a feeling of comradery that comes from knowing it’s you against the audience.
Here, even though the room is small, there seems to be a place for everything and everything in its place. There’s no sense of muddled confusion that makes the stage feel so alive. When I find the trailers at the back of the studio, the feeling that I don’t quite like this environment is reinforced. There are over two dozen trailers all in a row. Each looks sadly solitary. Even though there are probably hundreds of people on set today, the actors are isolated, not just from the crew, but from each other. I think if I worked in film and TV, it might get a bit lonely.
I find Shane’s trailer and knock.
The door flies open, and I find my best friend beaming down at me. “Thank the good Lord you’re here,” he says in his thickest Southern drawl. “Honey, I need to practice kissing a girl, and you’re the closest thing I’ve got.”
/> “I thought your character was supposed to be from Alaska?” I say, following him into the trailer.
“They made the change last minute, darlin’.”
Inside, the trailer is almost spartan. There’s very little personality beyond the Red Bull cans in the trash and the smell of Shane’s sandalwood cologne. There’s makeup on the dresser and script pages strewn all over the table from where he must have been feverishly trying to learn his lines.
He guides me over to the table and sits me down, straight to business.
“So, I didn’t think I’d have to do this scene today,” he says, his accent reverting back to his usual one as he shuffles through the script pages. I’m so glad there are page numbers—seeing them in a pile like this is giving me anxiety. “But I’ve got to kiss a girl, and I realize now I’ve never actually done that?”
“Never?” I ask.
“Nope. All the roles I’ve ever had at school were either second lead or the gay guy.”
I’d never realized that, but now that I think of it, I really can’t remember a time when he had to kiss a girl for a part in one of our student-run productions.
“Not even when you were a teenager?”
“Honey, I’ve been queer as a rainbow since I came out of the womb.”
I laugh at him. “Well, I’ve kissed girls, and I don’t think it’s that different.”
“Still, give me some practice?”
“Of course,” I say easily.
Grinning, he hands me a page from the script. His lines are highlighted in pink, which I think is adorable.
“Okay, you read for Tiffany.”
“Tiffany?”
“Yeah, the name makes me sad, too.”
Shane clears his throat, and his voice immediately drops a few octaves switching to smooth southern with an ease that would have been astonishing if I hadn’t worked with him for hours to perfect it. We learn accents the way math majors learn equations. I could switch from French to Greek to Czech in my sleep.
“Tiffany, I don’t think I can keep this up,” Shane says, with all the sincerity of a man who is talking to the love of his life. It’s convincing. I tell myself I’ll let him know that when we’re done with the scene. “Your daddy is never going to stop hunting my brother, and I can’t keep pretending your family doesn’t have it out for mine.”
