Raw

by Simone Sowood

  “Of course you didn’t do it. You think it was the photographer?”

  “It’s the only option. I’m furious with her.”

  “We can’t do anything about this now, so put it out of your mind and try not to let it bother you. The big issue is they now know I’m in a hotel in New Jersey, so I’ll have to move on.”

  “They don’t know it’s this particular hotel, although they can tell from the room decor that it’s a Good Rest Inn.”

  She so sweet and innocent. “They have a picture of your face. Trust me, they’ve already found you online through Facebook or some other social media. And that means they’ll know you work here and that means they know I’m here. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already on their way. In fact, I’d be surprised if they weren’t here already.”

  “So, what does that mean?”

  “It means I have to get out of here. And you should too. They’ll hound you for an interview and sit outside your home until they get something.”

  “My apartment? Like stalkers?”

  “Exactly like stalkers. Why do you think I fled New York?”

  The room phone rings and I pick it up, “Yes?”

  “This is Nathan at the front desk, Mr. Newman. Two people with cameras have just shown up,” he says in a whispered hiss. I roll my eyes and press my fingers against my temple.

  Now what? After Elsie left last night I tried the piece-of-shit car I am using, but it wouldn’t even turn over. I wasn’t too concerned. I figured I’d have someone bring me one of my cars today or tomorrow but there’s no time for that. And there’s no time to rent one and I sure as fuck am not taking the bus.

  “Can you stall them?” I ask the person on the other end of the line. Elsie steps closer and puts her head near the receiver.

  “I think it’s better if you get out of here.”

  Elsie grabs the phone from my hand and says, “Nathan, stall them and meet me at the back exit in three minutes. Grab my bag for me.” Putting down the receiver she says to me, “You have one minute to pack if you want me to help you leave.”

  “Three minutes was awfully precise,” I say, leaping up from the bed and grabbing my suitcase. I’m glad I initially hadn’t planned to stay long here so everything is still packed.

  “My car’s parked where it was last night, right outside the back exit. We can take the service elevator down and no one will see us,” she says.

  “I could kiss you,” I say, flashing her a grin.

  “That’s for later, right now we have to run,” she says and laughs through the strain in her voice.

  “I’ve got everything, let’s get out of here.” I open the door a crack and listen but it’s quiet. Peering my head out, I check both ways but the hallway is empty. “Let’s go.”

  Elsie pushes past me and I follow the sway of her ass all the way to the far reaches of the hallway. She uses a key card to call the service elevator and we step onboard. She didn’t even think twice about helping me get out of here, something I can’t say the same for about any of my so-called friends yesterday.

  The elevator is slow and I can’t resist putting my arm around Elsie and kissing her cheek. She’s trembling and I give her a reassuring squeeze.

  We arrive on the ground floor and step into the stark white employees-only hallway that we were in last night.

  The door at the far end flings open and the guy who was working with Elsie last night bursts through it.

  “You have to get out of here right this second. I’m trying to hold them back but more and more keep coming. I think there are six of them now. This is mega cray-cray.” He winds up his arm and bowls Elsie’s backpack down the hall. “I gotta get back before they get any wise ideas.”

  As quickly as he’d arrived, he disappears back to the door. Elsie runs and picks up her bag and we both rush to the exit door. She finds her car keys and has them ready in her hand.

  She puts her hand on the push bar and is visibly shaking. I put my hand over hers and we push open the door together. Even if there are photographers waiting in the parking lot we’re going to have to hustle our asses into Elsie’s car and get the hell out of here. It’s our only choice.

  The door opens into the back of the hotel and the coast is clear. I fling my suitcase into the back seat of her black Mazda and we pile into the front.

  “You really need a hoodie or a baseball cap or some kind of disguise, don’t you think?” Elsie says as she reverses the car out of the spot.

  “I left in a hurry yesterday, what can I say?”

  “Maybe you should duck down or something while we drive past the front of the hotel.”

  “It’ll be fine. Just drive normally — don’t draw any attention.”

  Elsie cruises to the front of the hotel. News vans and paparazzi dickheads fill the space in front of the entrance. Thankfully they are all looking into the hotel and not at us. Elsie takes a left onto the road and we both breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Now what?” she asks.

  “How do you feel about coming to my friend Owen’s house with me?”

  Chapter 15

  Elsie

  “Really?” I say in disbelief. Is Xander serious about taking me with him? Although I don’t have much of a choice since I’m sure he’s right about the paparazzi camping out at my apartment and hounding us both for a tell-all.

  “One hundred percent. I’m not gonna let you go back to your apartment. I want to finish what I started with you in my room before we were so rudely interrupted.”

  My thighs clench, sending a shiver over me as I remember the way he made me feel. I hadn’t intended for anything like that to happen in the hotel room, but my body had ideas of its own.

  “I have to go home and pack a suitcase,” I say, visualizing where I keep my things and how quickly I can pack.

  “No way. Trust me, there’s bound to be at least one person there waiting for you. You’re not going to need clothes or anything silly like that anyway. And I’m sure Owen has a new toothbrush hanging around.”

  “Okay, I’ll go with you on one condition.”

  “What’s that?” he says, screwing up his mouth.

  “No pegging,” I say and burst out laughing. The entire situation is so surreal that I have to laugh about it.

  “I’m going to make you pay for that comment,” he says with a smirk.

  I maneuver the car across lanes and head south on I-95.

  “Yesterday I didn’t even know what pegging was, but I tell you I wish I knew before because I would’ve loved to have done it to my ex-boyfriend. It would’ve taken out a lot of anger.”

  “He was that good, was he?”

  “Just another cheating bastard.”

  “I cannot stand cheating. To be honest, the thing that bothers me most about the media shit show is the implication that I’m somehow a cheater.”

  “Cheating ex-girlfriend?” I ask, surprised at the passion in his voice.

  “Nah, I don’t do girlfriends. Never have.” Why am I not surprised? At least it means I know where I stand.

  “Any reason?”

  Xander shrugs and pulls out his phone. “Let me plug his address into your GPS.”

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “There isn’t anything to say. I don’t do girlfriends.”

  “Just pretend girlfriends on TV, right?”

  “Yeah and look how that turned out. Even the pretend one was a mistake.”

  I checked my blind spot and pull out to pass a slow-moving transport truck. “How long is the drive?”

  “Couple of hours unless you’re a speed demon.”

  “Does this look like a Ferrari?”

  “You’re right. I’m kind of enjoying being driven in the slow lane. Normally I’m flying past everyone but it’s all super chillaxed down this outside lane.”

  “Just like the rest of life, if you go too fast you miss everything.”

  “Normally I’d say New Jersey is meant to be missed, bu
t I did find you here.” Xander reaches across and rubs my knee and I’m filled with reassurance.

  I hadn’t realized how much I’ve been trembling or how fast my heart has been racing. Yesterday morning was an ordinary day at work and today I’ve been suspended, have my half-naked photographs on every TV and computer screen in the nation and am in a car on my way to hiding out with the world’s sexiest man.

  Plus, my core is still softly pulsing from the most amazing orgasm ever, reminding me how badly it wants more of Xander. Which is probably why I agreed to go with him in the first place. You cannot have a guy make you feel that good and say no when he invites you away with him.

  I just have to remember that this is only me having some fun and nothing more. He said it himself, he doesn’t do girlfriends. That’s okay, it’s not like I ever expected to be the girlfriend of the world’s sexiest man. But if that’s how he made me feel the first time he touched me, I can’t wait for him to do it again.

  My mind zones out, visualizing the muscles under his shirt. The T-shirt from last night already showed off his strong arms, and I bet his abs are just as sculpted. A Mack truck passes a little too close to my passenger door for comfort, bringing me back to reality.

  “Asshole,” Xander mutters.

  We fall back into a silence for several miles, each of us lost in our own thoughts. My thoughts being, what’s he going to do to me when we get to his friend’s house? I imagine him stripping off my work uniform and laying me on the bed but then realize that’s probably far too gentle for him, given what he did to me in the hotel room.

  My mind races over all the possibilities but I can’t decide on any of them. It’s funny how that’s all I can think about, instead of obsessing on how the rest of my life quite possibly has just been ruined.

  “Has Luna retracted her story yet?” I ask.

  “I haven’t heard from her. I don’t even want to think about how much pleasure she’s getting from your face being splashed all over. She probably thinks this means she doesn’t need to do the retraction anymore.”

  “And you really agreed to be her pretend boyfriend for TV ratings? I find that hard to believe.” The question has been bothering me ever since he told me their arrangement but until now I didn’t have the nerve to say it out loud.

  Xander exhales sharply and I wait for him to speak. “I hope Owen has a fully stocked fridge, I’m starving.”

  “You sure are good at changing the subject when you don’t want to answer a question.”

  “And you sure are good at asking questions I don’t want to answer. I’d much rather talk about the way your pussy clamped on to my fingers like a pit bull when I made you come.”

  “A pit bull? Did it bite you?”

  He leans across the seats and says, “It damn near ripped my fingers clean off my hand.”

  “Well, you’ve got to be careful where you stick those things.”

  “Tell me some more about your family,” Xander says, watching an Audi fly past us.

  “Why do you want to know so much about my family and my childhood? When are you going to tell me about your family?”

  “When you stop asking me about them.”

  I roll my eyes and say, “What do you want to know? We went to Disney World for vacations and lived in a three-bedroom house in the suburbs. We went to a regular school with regular friends. It was a normal, regular life. What more do you want to know?”

  “Maybe I want to know what it’s like to be normal,” he says. He’s half laughing but I detect something in his voice that makes me pause.

  I take my eyes off the road and scan him. He is staring straight ahead, his chiseled jaw taut. Now I feel bad for my outburst and I reach across and rub his thigh the way he’d rubbed mine.

  Xander immediately presses his hand on top of it and laces his fingers through mine. Clearing my throat, I start to tell him anecdotes from both my childhood and my current life. I talk for an hour without Xander so much as saying one word. Occasionally he squeezes my hand but mostly he stares straight at me. As if he’s hanging on my every boring word. His eyes rest intently on my face the entire time, and my cheeks flush under his gaze.

  I get the feeling that he’s only half listening, and that he’s mentally undressing me as I sit here. Or maybe that’s simply what I wish he was doing. I adjust the position of my legs to try to shift the thong, which is wet and clinging and not the comfiest choice of clothing for a long car journey.

  We navigate our way off the interstate and down Highway 1, and Xander urges me to continue talking. It seems like it’s all I can do, like he needs it. The more I talk, the more I become convinced that something more is going on behind this media hunt. I don’t know what it is, but I do know I want to help him anyway I can.

  “Your turn’s coming up,” he says, tapping the map screen.

  We negotiate our way down a series of local roads until the computer voice says, “Arriving at your destination in point five hundred yards.”

  “Fuck,” Xander shouts. I see the same thing he does, vans and camera crews. I pull the car to the side of the road.

  “I’m turning around,” I say and do a U-turn.

  “Luna had to tell them I’d be here. How else would they ever know?” he says and bangs his fist against the dashboard.

  “Where to now?”

  “I don’t know. Got any bright ideas?”

  I think for a second and say, “Every hotel is going to recognize us. Hell, Nathan and I clocked you straight away, you’re just lucky your secret was safe with us. But how are you going to guarantee that at a random hotel you go to?”

  “No shit.”

  “What about camping? There’s not many people around now since kids are still in school, so I expect campgrounds are nearly empty. Plus, realistically no one on earth is going to think you of all people would ever go camping.”

  “And they’d be right, no way am I going camping.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “I’ll come up with one.”

  “What about wanting to be a regular guy?”

  “That guy can wait. Right now, I need walls with a door I can lock. Trust me, people are relentless. If they found out I was camping they’d come right in the tent. I’m calling Owen.”

  Chapter 16

  Xander

  “Dude, we got near your parents’ house, but the place was crawling with cameras,” I say into the phone.

  “What? How the hell did they know about the house?” Owen says.

  “Luna, obviously. I don’t know why I told her where I was going. Anyway, where the fuck am I supposed to go now?”

  He thinks for a second and says, “My parents are on a cruise around the Pacific with some friends of theirs, the Shaftesburys, that’s why their house was free. But their friends only live a couple of miles away and I know where the key is.”

  “Perfect, text me the address,” I say and hang up.

  “Looks like we’ve got a nice warm house to go to,” I say and plug the Shaftesburys’ address into the GPS, whoever they are.

  “Thank God,” Elsie says and follows the directions to turn left.

  The whole time I’ve been sitting in the car with her, listening to her stories about her life, I’ve realized how incredibly fucked up my own life was and is. My parents are so screwed in the head that it’s no surprise Luna and I are so unhappy. At least as unhappy as two rich and famous people can be. The only thing they ever gave me was money. Money that they told me to use to chase material things rather than my dreams.

  Not that I have a fucking clue what my dreams would be.

  Normality, maybe? At least normal parents and a normal childhood would’ve been nice. I’d even trade all the money, I think.

  I slide my eyes up Elsie’s body, her delicate hands lightly grip the steering wheel and her eyes shift between the road and the GPS screen. She’s fully composed in her seat, even though this must be one of the most stressful days of her life. And I admire he
r for it.

  The plastic posers I know would have lost it by now.

  Aside from how bad they are, I simply enjoy being with Elsie. It’s like she represents everything my life isn’t. My eyes drop further, connecting with the cleavage poking out between the edges of her blouse, and the memory of her crying out as I made her come takes over everything else in my head. I need to hear that sound again.

  “I think it’s this place,” Elsie says, pulling the car onto a long driveway flanked with rows of trees. “It’s very fancy.”

  “Owen’s family has had their house since the Revolution. Most likely these people have, too.”

  “The Revolution? Like, as in George Washington?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Elsie whistles as we finally reach the house. It’s a big, white clapboard building with blue shutters on either side of the many windows.

  “No wonder you were asking me what it’s like to be a regular Joe.”

  “Yes, and I enjoyed your stories immensely.”

  “When am I going to get any of your stories?” she asks, stopping the car near the steps to the front door.

  “I’m going to find the key,” I say and hop out of the car. According to Owen they keep one in a key box that’s hidden around the side of the house. Owen texted me the code. Thankfully he knew it because they gave it to him in case of an emergency while they were on the cruise. As far as I’m concerned, this is an emergency.

  As I come around the corner of the house, Elsie is leaning into the backseat, her ass in the same position as the very first time I saw her. She wrestles my suitcase out of the car just as I reach her.

  Standing behind her, I place my hands on her hips and press my body against hers. The warmth from her body spreads into mine and I squeeze her tight. All I want to do right now is bury my cock in her and I curse the layers of fabric between us.

  “Easy, we just got out of the car after running from two groups of reporters. Don’t you just want to get inside and calm down a bit?” Elsie says, gripping my hands.