by Iris Blaire
My mouth drops a little. "Why would I want them to find out?"
He shrugs. "It's probably a subconscious thing. You're afraid of hiding who you really are around them." He chuckles. "And honestly, I can't wait for when they find out."
"That's mean."
"It'll be exciting. And liberating."
"You better not..."
"I won't out you." He leans in until his lips brush against mine. "Don't worry."
He kisses me slowly, tongue flicking over my bottom lip, slipping into my mouth and grazing my own. When he parts, he says gently, "I have to go back to your parents' place with Cam and charm your mother now."
He rolls off of me, and I sit up. "What? Why?"
He spins around and walks backward toward my bedroom door. "Because I want my job back."
Jaime... his accountant job back? "I thought you said you didn't. I thought you just wanted to make amends with the family."
"I want to prove that I didn't fucking steal. And since I can't do that, the next best thing I can do is prove how damn good I am at being an accountant."
"And to do that, you have to flirt with my mother."
"It starts with your mother," he says. "A, because she's the McCulley parent that is home, and B, I'm killing two birds with one stone."
I raise an eyebrow.
"If she starts to like me for once, she won't have a heart attack when she finds out that your relationship with Micah is a fraud and we're the ones who are together. Because she will find out."
"Please," I beg.
"It's another one of your secrets to keep," he says. "I respect you too much to tell her. But that doesn't mean that both your mom and dad won't eventually find out."
And with that, he leaves the room before I have a chance to argue that it won't matter if Mom finds out we're fucking, because no matter how much Jaime flirts with her, her head will explode.
But another thought hits me... the thought that Jaime is expecting Mom to find out about us. Jaime is expecting Mom to find out, which means Dad and Cam will find out, which means he's okay with them knowing while he's trying to claim a position at the company.
Like he's trying to establish a permanent place in our family again, except this time, as my boyfriend.
Boyfriend. The word sounds so juvenile.
We've only had sex once... eight months ago, right after A.J. Harrison fired me from EPE and Jaime played his little apology game on me. When I was a teenager, Jaime was supposed to lead me to my birthday cake while I was blindfolded, and instead, he pushed me in the pool. So to say he was sorry, he blindfolded me, got me naked, and gave me the best orgasm ever.
I fucked my brother's ex-best friend.
But since he's arrived in Malibu, he's been slow. He's gotten me off twice without asking for any reciprocation, which is something that fifteen-year-old Britain wouldn’t have expected from Jaime Rivera in her wildest dreams.
It's about time to pay him back.
CHAPTER NINE
The day of the benefit dinner, I decide to shoot Dallas’s seduction. I’ve done shoots with Dallas where he is the one being dominated, particularly Ella’s in Boston where she got to whip him into submission. But every time I have shot Dallas with Evan, he was always the one dominating her.
Today is going to change that.
Evan is wearing this gorgeous bikini, teal with a push-up triangle top. She sprayed her body down with oil so that it glistens, her hair shellacked to look perma-wet. She’s spent the last half hour bouncing around the pool. “I’m so excited, I’m so exciteeeeeeeed.”
Dallas, who is lounging beneath the gazebo on the outdoor futon where we are going to shoot, rolls his eyes. “You’d think it was Christmas.”
“It is Christmas,” I say. “Evan finally gets to control you in a shoot. I’ve never given her that power before.
I let Evan choose the girl of her choice to perform the shoot with, considering the story was going to be insinuating a threesome. Andrea is currently working hard on the prose, typing away on her laptop in a lounge chair beneath the shade of an umbrella.
Evan chose Delilah, which isn’t a surprise. Evan and Delilah were my two original superstar models. The girls are well-studied-up on how the other photographs.
I sent the other models into town to run errands, mainly grocery shopping. The only ones who remain at the beach house are my three models for the shoot, Andrea, and Jaime, who sits on a lounge chair at the far end of the pool, biting his thumbnail.
I can’t let my head fill with thoughts about Jaime and tonight’s benefit dinner right now. I have to focus. I fiddle with my lens and take sample shots of Dallas relaxing in the natural light until Delilah comes out of makeup, and then I tell her, “I hope you don’t mind being so close to Evan and Dallas, you know, doing it. Because knowing them they’ll most likely end up doing it.”
Delilah scoffs. “You act like I haven’t been exposed to sex since I started working for you.”
It’s true. My life is made up of sex. A giant sex ball. Shooting crazy, kinky shit is just a part of who I am, maybe for the rest of my life.
I’m good at it.
I initiate the shoot. Andrea helps direct to what she wants. The first shots are composed of Evan crawling up to Dallas, slow and languid like a cat, climbing on top of him, moving his hands to where she wants them on her body. She’s the ones kissing and licking him, pulling loose the drawstring of his shorts and slipping her hand inside. They’ve gotten so comfortable shooting together and having sex in front of people that it’s like no one else is even here. It isn’t until Delilah is in the picture that the embarrassed giggling from all of them begins.
I roll my eyes and drop the camera. “Come on, you’re professionals, remember?”
Delilah clears her throat and puts on her serious face. Evan tries to share Dallas with her, so I can get some shots of him submitting to two women, but the giggling comes back, and Dallas is blushing, and Evan huffs and pushes her hair back, flustered.
“Hmm…” Andrea says behind me. Her voice is disapproving.
“Something isn’t sitting right,” I say. “This feels goofy.”
She strokes her chin. “Not goofy, just… cheaply pornographic? Like, this scenario is designed for the male gaze. Totally for jerking off and nothing more.”
She’s right. The one thing that makes me stand apart from normal porn is that I try to do more with my photos. Two girls and a dude isn’t really anything special.
“If Evan’s character succeeds at seducing Dallas, the focus should switch to pleasuring Evan when Delilah is in the picture.”
“You two,” I point to Evan and Delilah. “Better get comfortable with each other.”
Even though Evan and Delilah glance at each other reluctantly at first, it doesn’t take long for them to relax. Delilah pulls Evan off of Dallas, and Evan rests her head in her lap as Dallas slowly strips off Evan’s swimsuit and gets between her legs, kissing her navel, and then lower.
The shoot is one of the less overtly explicit ones I’ve done as of late. Dallas’s body is shot from the side and Delilah still has her swimsuit on. Evan’s leg is up, so her breasts are the only scandalous part of her showing, but somehow the photos manage to be as erotic as those of Adam and Jaime, and maybe even more so. Evan holds Dallas’s head to her, like she’s still in control, writhing enough so it looks like Delilah is the one holding her down. Delilah has her face to Evan’s ear like she’s whispering naughty things to her while Dallas works between her legs. Maybe she is. Both Dallas and Delilah have their hands on Evan. Dallas’s grip her ass, and Delilah holds her shoulders down, sporadically tracing her fingers over Evan’s breasts and ribs.
Partway through the shoot, I look at Jaime, who stares at me with lust-filled eyes. The downside to this job is definitely being horny all of the time, which is probably an upside too.
When I’m finished, Evan and Dallas disappear inside, probably to finish each other off. Delilah takes a swim to
cool down, and Jaime and I make eyes.
“Gotta get ready for the dinner.” I bite my lower lip. “See you tonight.”
///
Evan leaves the sex sanctuary of Micah's beach house to help me get ready for the benefit dinner, because if I rely on myself, I will end up looking like a Who from Whoville and that just can't happen tonight.
I can tell my mom is a little enamored by Evan, who acts like a real girl even though she's stupid-gorgeous, both comfortable dressing up and also comfortable walking around everyone in her sweats and glasses, her hair a tangled bun on top of her head. Evan is an excellent chameleon, which is why she's the one I beg for help from when I have to pick out a dress for the benefit dinner.
When we're in my room, she walks into my vault of a closet, the one I haven't looked in since I left for college, flips on the light switch, and mutters, "Holy fuck."
I'm not going to lie, my Malibu closet is pretty freaking huge, and most of the garments hanging up still have the tags on them. Mom used to buy me everything she wished she had the money for at my age, and I never wore it. I never felt comfortable in designer garb. I felt comfortable in department store dresses that were too big for me, dresses I could actually move in and ones I wouldn't get the wrong kind of attention in. When I was in high school, the wrong kind of attention was too much of a distraction, but that was before I learned how to channel it.
"Do these still fit you?" Evan murmurs as she touches the fabric, mesmerized by the rows of color-coordinated material.
"Most of them, probably." I've been the same weight and body type since I was sixteen. Narrow hips, average boobs, and chunky thighs. Boring old Britain.
"I'm going to need a few hours," she says. "Leave me to my work."
I giggle, shaking my head as I return to my room and start editing the photos of Chloe and Ella. I haven't been able to touch the ones of Adam and Jaime yet because every time I think about the shoot I feel like I need to spend an evening with my vibrator, so I channel all of my concentration into my other LGBT photo set.
Ella's and Chloe's shoot was a midday pool session. It involved underwater photography and absolutely no clothing.
I'd been worried about Chloe. She had been a little terrified in Boston during a group shoot, where I quite literally shoved all of my models into a strange BDSM cage and had them touch each other. But now that she's been working with me for a year, and now that she realizes that no one is going to judge her for what she finds hot because we're all a touch perverted, she's relaxing. And liking it.
I'm in the middle of editing my favorite photo from the shoot. With some crafty skills and the beta software that Cam let me use, I shopped the photo so it looks like the lens rests halfway above the water and halfway below. Chloe's against the cement side of the pool. Above the water, Ella's against her and licking her neck, and beneath the water, Ella's hands are between Chloe's legs.
"That's hot."
I swivel around in my chair, and Evan is gaping at the photo. I grin.
"That might be one of the hottest pics you've ever taken."
"Getting a little bicurious, are we?" I wink, and she laughs.
"Any human can be sexy," she says. "Doesn't matter their gender. Fuck their gender." She holds up the dress she chose. "And both boys and girls are going to be crossing their legs uncomfortably when they see you in this."
The dress still has its tags on, of course. My jaw drops.
The dress is covered—and I mean covered—with black sequins. The neckline drops down to the cleft of my ribcage, and the length of the dress is only mid-thigh.
"There is no way in hell your mom bought this for you," Evan says.
And then it clicks. She didn't buy it for me. It had been the one expensive clothing purchase in high school that I made. Something daring, something I saw myself in the moment I laid eyes on it. My blond hair would be tied up in a knot and the dress would hug my ass perfectly. It was three-hundred-and-fifty dollars. I bought it without even trying it on and then never wore it once.
High school Britain was scared.
"It's perfect," I blurt. She grins wickedly. My father may shit his pants when he realizes his colleagues can't take their eyes off my tits, but I don't care.
I have a bigger agenda than impressing my parents. Tonight, after I'm done parading around with Micah Greene, I'm going to fuck Jaime Rivera.
As I slink into the dress, Evan plugs in the curling iron on my vanity. I walk out of the closet, stomping into the middle of the room because I suddenly lack the courage I had two seconds ago.
"Stand up straight," she barks. "Don't walk duck-footed. Push yourself onto your tiptoes like you would be standing if you had heels on. That's it. Hold your chin up." She walks forward and grabs my boobs, making me jump. She pushes them together. "Jesus, these bad boys are about to pop out of your dress. We're gonna need tape for them."
Heat flushes the back of my neck. "Holy fuck Evan, can I do this?"
"Hell yes, you can. You look better than I do."
I narrow my eyes at her, and she cracks up.
Evan wrangles me into the vanity chair. As she works on my hair, I work on my makeup. And then she fixes my makeup when I fuck up. It's a two-hour ordeal, mostly involving me screaming at her over the fact that I look like a clown and her telling me to shut the hell up.
Finally, she lets me stand. I clasp a silver chain around my neck and slip into a pair of black pumps, and Evan smiles manically. "Oh hell yes. You're getting tail tonight."
I purse my lips before opening my mouth, but she cuts me off.
"Don't even try to hide the fact that you only agreed to this dress because you're so getting laid by Jaime tonight. You wouldn't have me put this much effort into making you hot if your only agenda was to be Micah's arm candy for the night."
I open my mouth. She raises her eyebrow and I start to laugh, but it dies quickly. "You know we haven't had sex since Boston, right?"
She frowns. "He gay?"
"Half gay, but that has nothing to do with it. I feel like... I don't know, he's trying to prove himself to me. He's gotten me off twice and walked away like he didn't have the biggest case of blue balls in all of history."
Her eyes sparkle.
"What?" I ask bluntly.
She shrugs and twirls a piece of her long hair around her finger. "From what I know of Jaime, he's not the kind of guy to stick around after he fucks a girl. So take his situation. If he was really a scumball and ended up screwing a girl he's known for most of his life, he'd hide from her, not answer her calls, and pray to God he never saw her again. When a scumball fucks a girl he's not supposed to fuck, he turns into a coward. But he's here, Brit. He's returning your calls, he's flirting with your parents, and he's working for you, for crying out loud. He's a smart guy and obviously knows the risks. So the fact that he's not having sex with you means he's dead serious about you, Brit."
Dead serious. I've never been dead serious with a guy, and the last thing I'd ever expect from myself is to be dead serious with a guy who is as equally unserious as I am. I thought I'd end up settling down with some guy who would comb the wild out of me. Tame the voyeur. Tame the girl who's a party animal on the inside and secretly-not-so-secretly obsessed with sex.
Anyone but a guy like Jaime.
"You look freaked," says Evan.
I'm about to respond when there's a knock on the door. Evan tells them to come in.
It's Cam.
His eyes nearly pop out of his head when he looks me up and down. "Mom and Dad are going to—”
"Shit themselves?" I finish. "I know. Trust me, I know."
"They want us downstairs. You ready?"
I shoot Evan one last what-the-fuck-am-I-doing glance.
"You look fucking delicious," she says. "Have fun!"
I follow Cam out of my bedroom and then down the stairs. Not only are my parents waiting for us, but so is Micah, Jaime, and Ava.
I remember Ava from when I was a teen, w
hen Mom and Dad used to drag me to benefit dinners regularly. Ava Jennings, heiress of a company that developed some fancy tax service software. She's the kind of beautiful that, regardless of your sexuality, you look at her and wonder what it would be like to be with her. Her eyes are huge and bright green, her nose small and sloped, lips big, cheekbones high, and breasts a perky c-cup. If anyone was deemed a walking Barbie, it would be Ava Jennings.
Plus, you know, she's filthy rich.
And right now, Jaime has his arm around her waist.
I try not to focus on them.
Like Cam predicted, Mom looks like a troll is following Cam down the stairs instead of her daughter. Dad clears his throat and tugs at his tie.
Jaime bites down on his bottom lip. I keep eye contact with him, wondering if my parents or Ava or Micah notice. But I can't rip my eyes away from him. In this moment, he owns me. He grins and slowly shakes his head. He must know what I'm trying to do to him with the dress and the heels.
I'm trying to torture him.
"Britain," Mom says slowly. "Don't you think that number is a little... ill-fitted?"
"The clothes in my closet are all from high school," I say innocently. "It's the only thing that didn't make me look like I was fourteen."
Dad scoffs. "Well she definitely doesn't look fourteen."
Jaime opens his mouth like he's thinking of saying something smart, and then snaps it shut.
I'm surprised when Ava is the next one to speak. "I think she looks fantastic."
I study her to see if she's being sarcastic, but Ava looks genuinely sincere, wearing a smile that shows off her perfectly straight, white teeth.
"It's nice to see you, Ava." I step into the foyer behind Cam, holding my clutch in front of me.
"No date?" Jaime asks Cam. "Typical of you."
Cam shrugs. "I can't hit on rich chicks if I have a date. I mean I could but it would require being sneaky, and I am way too lazy for that."
Mom and Dad exchange a look. They say nothing before heading out the door.
"See? If I ever said something like that, they'd lock me in my room without supper. Even at twenty-two."
