Lead Me Back

by Reiss, CD

“Open your legs wider.”

  I shuddered so hard my eyes closed, and then slowly I spread my knees.

  My permission granted him the leisure to take his time; he ran his finger along the edge of my underwear, then behind it, where he touched more fabric than skin.

  “Soaked,” he said between kisses. “Did you finish your period?”

  “Yes.”

  He slid his finger inside me, and my whole body turned into a whirlpool around it.

  “What are you like when you come?” He ran his lips along the center of my chest, and his free hand moved the neck of my dress away, exposing my breast. Not waiting for an answer, he kissed my nipple, sucking on the hard whorl.

  “You’re going to find out if you don’t stop,” I gasped.

  “You want me to stop?”

  “No, I’m just . . .” Pushing deep inside, he put his thumb on my clit, and I couldn’t finish.

  “Tell me how this feels.”

  Two fingers. More thumb.

  “Like a bomb’s gonna go off. Justin. I . . .” I grunted like an animal, opening my legs, lifting my hips to make him press harder.

  “Come for me.”

  “I don’t want to . . .”

  “Want to what?”

  “Waste it. I want to fuck and . . .”

  “Who says you can’t come twice?”

  With that, he rolled his thumb quickly against my clit, and I exploded, jerking and moaning with my skirt around my waist and my bodice half-off, pulsing around his fingers, gripping the couch cushions as if they could save me from falling down an endless abyss of pleasure.

  When I was done, he removed his slick, sticky hand and put his fingers in his mouth.

  “Perfect.”

  In my adult life, no man had ever licked my juices off his fingers. I had no idea I needed to know he was into every single part of me, nor had I realized how hot that was.

  “I can’t even think about how you got me off so fast,” I said.

  “It’s more fun if you don’t.”

  He stood over me. He peeled his shirt off, revealing the taut perfection that made girls scream, but all I could see was the impossibly large tent at the crotch of his sweatpants.

  “I have rubbers upstairs,” he said.

  “My bag.” I held my hand out for it. He reached behind him and placed it in my lap. I dug the foil pack out of my wallet, and when I looked up, his erection lay bare before me in all its glory.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Will this fit?”

  “Yeah.” He sat next to me and took the packet. “Tight, but fine.”

  I peeled my dress off, and as he unwrapped, I kissed his chest, his abs, and finally licked the bead of precum from the tip of his erection.

  “Oh yeah,” he groaned. With my mouth on him, I reached up and took the condom, unrolling it over his length. “I have a bedroom,” he said as I straddled him.

  “I figured.”

  He lined himself up, and I lowered myself onto his dick, stretching for him as he watched my face.

  “Slow,” he said. “That’s it, Kaylacakes. Nice and easy.”

  Every inch demanded more of my body, and every stroke found more pleasure. When we were joined, he shifted my hips and his along an acute angle that put my clit against his shaft as we moved. He got quicker, and when he threw his head back and growled from deep in his throat, I knew he’d been right. I could come again.

  “Don’t you have to work on your portfolio or something?” Justin asked with his body curled against mine. We’d moved to the bedroom to have another go at it. The sun was low in the sky. I was pleasantly sore and so relaxed I could barely move.

  “Yeah. And I bet your phone’s been ringing.”

  “That phone’s too demanding. I’m breaking up with it.”

  “You better. We agreed on monogamy, player.”

  He flipped on top of me and pinned me with his hips.

  “You calling me a what?”

  I reached for the sensitive skin on his waist and tickled him. He erupted in spasms of laughter, rolling over to get away, but I straddled him and kept up the torture until we were both laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe.

  CHAPTER 16

  JUSTIN

  Kayla called while I was driving. I put her on the car speakers.

  “Wish me luck,” she said.

  “You gotta tell me what for,” I said, getting off the 110.

  “My meeting’s today.”

  “Nah, you don’t need luck.”

  “I do. There could be traffic. I could fall into the mud. I could projectile—”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “I could be perfect, and they could say no anyway, which would be the worst.”

  I couldn’t imagine it, but she could, so I waved the white flag and did what she wanted me to.

  “Good luck.” I stopped in the red right outside the high-rise where Ken had his office. “So, about yesterday.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You cool?”

  “Totally.”

  I smiled and nodded. I figured she was feeling good about it, but it never hurt to check in. The confirmation made it like we were in it as a team. Which was cool. I had teams of people, but they were all focused on me. I liked being her support.

  “You wanna get together tomorrow?” I asked. “You can come hang in the studio.”

  “Sure.”

  A car behind me honked. I couldn’t stay in the red much longer without being seen.

  “You’re all right. You know that?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so.” I put the car in drive and headed into the parking lot. “Gotta roll.”

  “Bye, player.”

  The connection dropped before I could tell her not to call me that.

  Ken’s office was all windows and shining metal, perched in the corner of the top floor, overlooking Wilshire Boulevard. Everything about it said control, which was what Ken Braque LLP sold to the out of control.

  I was showered and my hair was brushed, but next to his snazzy suit I was a precision-crafted slob. His aesthetic needed a touch of chaos.

  Instead of sitting across from his desk, I threw myself in an upholstered chair in the living room section every executive had in their office. He got up and came to me.

  “So, Justin,” he said, unbuttoning his jacket before sitting on the couch.

  “I told you I was busy.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I have some news.”

  “I saw it all. I’ll say it again for the people in the back. I’m not banging Heidi. She wasn’t eating, so I fed her a fry. I’m done explaining myself.”

  “And?”

  “My dad’s sailing around the world with my mom, and I don’t need a surrogate father. I do what I want, and you manage it. That’s all.”

  A flicker of a smile flashed across his mouth and disappeared.

  “Do you know who she is, really?”

  “A nice girl. Period.”

  “Did she tell you why she left New York?”

  He was going to tell me. I knew as well as I knew my own songs that I didn’t want to hear it.

  “We did a show at Madison Square Garden for Cherry Girl. We shook our security to go to an after-hours. It was in some warehouse in The Bronx.” I took my feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Shane and I met these girls and went back to their place.”

  “Spare me the details.”

  “It was cool. They were cool. So we figured we’d get a cab back to our hotel. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a yellow car, right? But the girls laughed, ’cos no. Cabs don’t hang around The Bronx. My girl . . . Imani was her name. She had a car, but she was gonna be late for work if she took us back. She said it took an hour to go five miles. I thought she was lying. You know, maybe it was her boyfriend’s car or something. Or I said something to piss her off. So, fine. We took the train to the airport. The train, man. And a bus.
You never seen people packed in a little box like this. Like pomegranate seeds. Guess how long it took?”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “Two and a half hours.”

  “Is there a point to this story?”

  “I didn’t ask why she left New York, because you don’t need a reason to get outta hell, okay?” I leaned back and put my foot back on the table, realizing I couldn’t stall anymore. He was going to tell me something I didn’t want to know. “Some of the streets are still made of flat little rocks. Rattle like hell. Bad enough to give you a headache. And everything’s packed. There are people every-fucking-where. Nobody notices the smells either. Like vinegar and rotten hot dogs.”

  I’d been there all of two days, and I still had a couple of things left to complain about.

  “She ran away,” Ken said.

  “Car alarms day and night.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I heard you. Her sister’s here. She was born here. She inherited a theater. That’s not running away. That’s running toward, okay?”

  “You know Josef Signorile?”

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t do preppy, but I know the stuff. You got any water?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer but got up and opened the little fridge under the bookcase.

  “The New Yorker ran an article on him,” Ken continued behind me. “Accusing him of groping one of his employees, and two others came forward with the same story. His backers pulled out. Stores pulled his stock off the racks. His wife came forward with proof the initial allegation was completely made up. The rest recanted.”

  “Bummer.” I cracked the bottle open. I could see Ken in the reflection of a picture frame. “But good he didn’t grope anyone.”

  I drank the entire bottle of Fiji down in three gulps.

  “His accuser’s name wasn’t public,” Ken said. “And she shut her social media. But Seventh Avenue’s a small community. Everyone knew who she was.”

  “Gossip mills are always right.” I finally turned and held up the empty bottle. “You got recycling in here, or does the blue clash?”

  “Under the counter.”

  Finding it, I tossed the bottle and let the cabinet door slap shut. I couldn’t stall or deflect anymore. Ken was going to earn his retainer whether I liked it or not.

  “Why would she lie?” I said. “Did she try and blackmail him?”

  I was joking, but I should have taken this seriously.

  “According to him? Yes. When he said he wouldn’t promote her to creative director, she went to the New Yorker. The other two were just in it for reasons I’ll never understand.”

  “So, just let me get this straight.” I stayed standing. No way I was sitting for this. “Kayla worked for Josef Signorile and made up a story about getting groped. Tried to blackmail him and when he said, ‘Yeah, no,’ she told a reporter. Stayed anonymous though everyone knew who she was. The reporter found two other girls to lie using their names until his wife proved Kayla was a liar and the other two said nah. I got this right?”

  “You got it right.”

  “Yeah, nah. I’m going to ask her.”

  “No,” Ken said, standing so straight he looked like an exclamation point. “You won’t. The days of you being too young to know better are over. The bad boy image doesn’t translate into a bad man image. There’s a recording date that’s still dependent on you keeping on the straight and narrow. You just wrapped your feature debut, and I don’t want you to let this go to your head, but the word is your performance was . . . and I’m quoting here . . . phenomenal.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Everyone at Overland. They’re adding marketing dollars for a damn period piece everyone knows the ending of. But you pushed it with Heidi.”

  “It was a french fry!”

  “She’s still married, and the climate isn’t right for maybe-he-is-maybe-he-isn’t. If you step over the edge, your record deal is canceled, and getting you on a film set’s going to be a pain in the ass, even for Gene Testarossa.”

  My feet kept shifting back and forth as if they wanted to bolt the hell out of there, and my eyes went to the view of the Hills, where I’d started my house, back to the stack of scripts on the desk, to the photos of Ken with half of Hollywood. The carpet. The doorknob. My Gucci sneakers. Every bone in my body fought to wander in a different direction.

  “Look, she seems . . .” Ken waved his hand, forfeiting the challenge of finding the right word. “I can tell you like her, but you committed to cleaning up. People are talking about your talent, not your escapades. Not the model you’re fucking or what happened in some hotel somewhere. We have Hollywood laser focused on your gifts. It’s what we wanted for you. It’s what we worked for. It’s here. Right now. You’re so close to winning it all. Is she worth losing it?”

  Ken’s question missed the point.

  Why walk through fire if there’s just the same old shit at the end?

  Why finish if the girl on the other side of the flames—the one who made you walk faster and want it more because when she beckoned you realized the fire was an illusion—lived in the same fake world?

  Nah. She was hotter than the fire. More important than Ken’s issues.

  Before that could filter down into words, then a businesslike explanation, Ken opened his fucking mouth and answered before I could.

  “You have a responsibility to your talent.”

  I’d said I didn’t need a surrogate father, but that was exactly what my dad would have said. The whole speech was pure Beckett. I could run the neighborhood until my shoes had holes as long as I took care of my responsibilities. The boundaries were wide but indestructible.

  He clapped me on the shoulder and looked me in the eye.

  “I know you,” he said. “You’ll do what’s right.”

  Ending it like that was why Ken Braque had houses in Malibu and Como. He made me want to see it his way, but I couldn’t just cut Kayla out. She was part of this, too, and I wanted the story from her gorgeous mouth. I needed to make her want to tell me her side of it instead of coming at her like a bull running at a red cape.

  That wouldn’t matter to Ken. For him it was all about what powerful people thought fans would think. They underestimated fans like it was their job. Which, I figured, it was, more or less.

  As I drove down Wilshire, I passed the Signorile store with its boring preppy argyles and flat-front trousers. I whipped around the corner to get to the back entrance.

  I knew how this had to go down.

  I couldn’t force her to tell me anything, but I could wear something to remind her that she trusted me.

  CHAPTER 17

  KAYLA

  Butter Birds occupied a warehouse space deep in Downtown Los Angeles, where Alameda Street turned into a right-of-way for freight trains, and the density of the graffiti had its own abstract logic.

  After the guard waved me into a parking spot, I crossed the lot, where a dozen women and men in blue pocket aprons lined up for a taco truck, and went into the building.

  The smell of old leather and cut cotton met the sight of matte-sanded raw wood and blackened, industrial steel. Behind the reception desk, where I signed in on an iPad, a burly man in a blue apron opened the door to a cutting room with the white noise of fabric saws and unintelligible voices. It closed behind him, but I’d seen all I needed to.

  I wouldn’t say it felt like home, but as the leather couch squeaked under me, it was a space I understood. Clutching my portfolio, I realized how out of my element I’d been since I’d driven my newly purchased white van onto I-80.

  No. I’d felt cut off since the head of Signorile’s HR came to my desk with two security guards behind her and asked me to pack my things. With her manicure and blowout to match an insincere look of compassion, she’d cut a cord that had been fraying over months of whispers and glances.

  This was what I was meant to do.

  A handsome guy my age wearing a lanyard with an ID ca
rd at the end and his shirt tucked into his jeans just so came through the cutting room doors. He was short and slim, with a little scruff on his olive skin.

  “Kayla?” he said with his hand out. I stood and shook it. “Dale. Dale DiMineo.”

  “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “Come on in.”

  There may have been a shorter way to our destination, but I was glad to see the sample floor and industrial washers. The banging embroidery and rivet machines were links in a chain of activity I found thrilling in its tedious repetition. Design, trace, wash, fit, sell, repeat, repeat, produce, pack, ship.

  By the time Dale showed me into the design room, which was a warehouse-size open space of its own, I was buzzing with love for an industry that had rejected me.

  “This is an awesome setup,” I said, passing glassed-in offices.

  “It is. We have ten proprietary laser machines I’d love to show you. Ralph saw them at Prima Cosa last year and bought the entire company. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Wow.”

  “So,” he said with a hint of juicy gossip he wasn’t supposed to say out loud. “Your father says you’re friends with Justin Beckett.”

  Friends? Had Justin and I risen to the level of friends? Or had we whizzed by it on our way to more than friends?

  “I know him.”

  “We’ve been trying to get him in our fall ads.”

  “Huh.” I didn’t know how I was supposed to respond.

  “So, he’s not a total ass, then?”

  “Oh, he’s an ass, all right.”

  Dale laughed and led me into his office, holding his hand out for my portfolio before taking the seat behind his desk.

  “I understand you’re looking for backing. Not a job.”

  “Right.” I sat across from him. “I have a head start on some selvedge for sampling, but I’m looking for facilities to make protos and thought . . . well, I read somewhere Ralph . . .” I cringed. Companies changed hands all the time, and I hadn’t looked at the trades in months. “Ralph Cardello? He still owns you guys, right?”

  “Until the day he dies,” Dale said with a charming smile.

  “Cool. I understand he does some investing in designers he believes in. Didn’t he let Larry Falk use the facilities here to get his start?”