She’s this complete package of fun and summer and sex, of the girl next door and the girl of my dreams, and I want to pull her into my lap and kiss her neck while she straddles me. I want to wind my fingers in her hair and leave a trail of marks from her neck to her tits, and then I want to fuck her until she’s trembling with the need for release, and then I want to give it to her...again and again and again. I shift in my seat, my dick now hard and insistent, and I resist the urge to start rubbing it through my jeans.
“See something you like?” she teases.
“Yeah, I do,” I answer honestly. I meet her eyes without a trace of a smile on my face, and that pink flush deepens, and suddenly I am plunged back into Vida’s pool, desperately wanting to kiss her and also knowing I would be a giant tool for doing it.
Get it together, Logan. This is still a scene, no matter how little sex you have tonight, so act like a goddamned professional. Not for the first time since I pitched the idea to Marieke, I wonder what my real motivations are here. This is supposed to be a scene, a fantasy, a fake date, and I told myself if I really wanted it to work, it needed to be with a woman I had chemistry with.
But what if I’m only doing this because I want to be close to Devi?
Because I do want to be close to Devi. A lot.
But how can I be sure that I’m really ready for that, that I’m not going after Devi as part of some rebound agenda? She deserves better than that. She deserves to be sought after because she’s perfect, not because I hate my ex-girlfriend and the loneliness that chases me since she left. I want to give Devi what she deserves. I just don’t know if I can yet.
Focus, goddammit. You need her for this project to be amazing and you can’t scare her off.
Tonight is supposed to be our first shoot, our first fake date, and I want everything to be perfect, I want everything to feel real, but I also don’t want to freak Devi out with how real things are inside of me right now. But still. Even just knowing that our project is going to lead to sex, that at some point next week or the week after or the week after that, I will fuck Devi Dare—I feel like my skin is about to combust.
Focus.
I reach over and grab her seatbelt, buckling her in the seat, the backs of my fingers brushing against her breasts as I bring the strap over and down and click it into place.
She shivers.
“We haven’t even started filming yet, and already you’re starting with the foreplay,” she jokes weakly, trying to scrub the goose bumps off her arms.
“I’m always on the clock,” I joke back, equally weakly, hoping she can’t sense the conflicted desire pounding through my veins. I turn my body back to the front, start the car and shift into reverse. Soon, we’re on our way north, driving through the city and towards Pasadena.
“So where are we going?” Devi asks, reaching forward to fiddle with my radio.
“A movie in the park,” I say, a little proud of myself for coming up with this great date idea. “Zombie double-feature: Night of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Isn’t Night of the Living Dead really old?”
“Old?” I sputter. “I think the word you’re looking for is classic!”
She giggles at my indignation, and it’s been so long since I’ve made a woman really, truly laugh, and oh my God, I told her there wouldn’t be any sex tonight and how am I going to hold myself to that?
I start talking about the movies to keep myself from saying or doing something stupid (namely confessing that I’ve had this crazy thing for her for years and that I beat off to her porn almost every night.)
By the time we get to the park, I’ve given Devi a forty-five minute lecture about the zombie film genre, ranging from Romero to James Bond to a little gem called Zombie Strippers.
“You should open your own film school,” Devi says as I park the car and pull my camera bag from the back.
“I don’t know enough,” I admit. “I need to go to film school.”
“Then why don’t you?” she asks, sweetly puzzled, and I realize that I don’t have an answer for that, actually. Other than money and convenience and the fear of failure and the fact that when you fall into doing something, it’s so hard to fall out of it. I mumble something about not having enough time, and I’m glad she can’t see my face as I look down at the bag.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m going to start filming now, but don’t worry about what you say or what you do. I was planning on tonight ending with our first kiss, but I’m not married to that idea, because I think it’s better if the night has its own flow and rhythm and doesn’t feel forced. And remember, I can edit anything out that I need to, so there’s no pressure to get this right the first time.”
“I think you just want to take me on more dates,” she laughs, and God, I hope I’m not that transparent. Because I do want to take her on more dates. I want to bring her home. I even want to introduce her to my fucking family, and she can’t know that, or she’ll think I’m a stalker for sure.
So I just flash her a big smile, and say, “I bet I could make more dates worth your while.”
I press a couple buttons, fiddle with a handful of settings, and then I get out of the car and walk around the front, opening the door on her side. I take her hand and help her out, and she’s so beautiful in the hot evening light, sun-kissed and happy. My dick, which dozed off during the impromptu session of Logan’s Zombie Classroom, wakes right up as she stretches and her tank top rides just above the low waist of her shorts, exposing a sliver of golden skin. God, those thighs with those surfing and hiking muscles, and those breasts, so full and high and perky all at once.
It hits me all of a sudden how young she is, only twenty-one, just barely out of girlhood. There’s something so fresh about her, so unsullied, and then I remember her sucking me off when she was eighteen, remember how I was thinking the same thing then too. That it should feel wrong to be almost a decade older, that it should be wrong for a man my age to cradle the face of a barely-legal girl and fill her mouth with my dick, but help me, sweet baby Jesus, the wrongness only made it better.
When I finally speak, my voice has a subtle rasp to it. “Devi,” I say, “won’t you say hi?”
Devi waves, a little shyly, which is perfect, and I turn the camera to face myself. “I’m Logan O’Toole, and I’m here tonight to take this cute girl on a date. We met a few years ago, doing a job together, and then we reconnected...where was it, Devi?”
She plays along. “At a party a few weeks ago. You jumped into the pool with all of your clothes on.”
“Well, I was drunk.”
“You were drunk. And then I told you about a constellation and you didn’t fall asleep, so I decided that you were a good guy. And I gave you my number.”
I like this version of our meeting. It doesn’t mention anything about Raven or about our aborted kiss; it makes it sound like we are just two normal people with normal jobs who go on dates in all the normal ways.
We banter back and forth as I unload the blankets and cooler out of the trunk, and then we search out a good spot with a view of the screen and a little privacy and no bees. (I’m allergic, but I don’t mention it to Devi; in my experience, the minute you mention you’re allergic to bees, people start mentally replaying that scene from My Girl, and that scene’s a bit of a boner-shrinker to be honest.)
I have her film me spreading out the blanket and arranging our cushions, and by then, it’s time for the movie to start, so I turn off the camera for a little while.
“Would you like some champagne?” I ask.
“Yes, please.”
I dig out the champagne and get to work, and then I have one of those surreal moments, one of those moments that feels so perfectly scripted and blocked that it feels like a movie instead of real life. The pop of the cork and the dull clack of the plastic wine glasses that are mostly drowned out by the murmuring moviegoers and the wind ruffling through the palm trees and scrubby evergreens. The scre
en in front of us, where the black and white film shows a blonde girl running down a dirt road to escape a suit-clad zombie. The brass-heavy soundtrack blaring through the speakers, and the evening breeze light and warm on our skin. Devi’s hand hovering in mid-air, paused in the act of reaching for her glass, her face tilted up to the screen and her eyes wide and her lips parted in total absorption.
I watch her watching the movie, a smile tugging at my lips. She gives a little yip of surprise when the zombie bangs against the window of the farmhouse the girl is hiding in, and then she follows that with a self-conscious laugh, glancing over at me in embarrassment.
“Don’t feel bad,” I say, handing her the plastic cup of champagne. “It’s only a fifty-year-old movie and you’re sitting in a sunshine-filled park with five hundred other people. Any sane person would be scared in your position.”
She sticks out her tongue at me, playful and somehow still inciting lust in me at the same time because I remember exactly how that tongue felt on my cock three years ago.
“Careful sticking that tongue out there,” I mock-warn. “Somebody might try to put it to good use.”
She blows a raspberry at me and then turns her attention back to the movie screen, taking a drink of champagne. Within a few moments, she’s gasping at the jump-scares again, jump scares that are clumsy and old and haven’t actually scared people since 1968, if they scared them even them.
But Devi is completely caught up in the movie, gnawing on her lip as the main characters fortify the farmhouse, shuddering whenever a zombie shambles into view. I’ve seen this movie at least fifty times in my life, but watching it again with her is like watching it for the first time, and I remember seeing it as an eight-year-old boy late at night when my parents had friends over to play cards and had given me free rein in the basement with the VCR. I remember the fear, the anxiety, the constant assessment of whether or not I would survive if the zombies came and surrounded a house I was in.
“You know, all the blood effects were made out of chocolate syrup,” I offer.
She flaps her hand, and then makes a shushing noise. And then another sudden zombie attack happens on the screen and she jumps right into my side, her fingers like claws in my thigh. I wrap an arm around her shoulders, amused, and she gradually relaxes, but her hand stays on my leg and her head stays against my shoulder, the sun and cinnamon smell of her filling the air. She’s so intent on the movie, tension rippling through her back and arms, but I’m intent on her. On the way the fading sunlight catches in her honey-brown hair. On the way she fits so perfectly against my body, two halves of the yin and yang symbol slotted back together.
What was I so worried about earlier? I like Devi. I like her. In fact, I’m wondering if I’m maybe falling in love with her a little as we sit here watching this zombie movie in the park, champagne still bubbly on our tongues and her hair spilling over her back and my arm, blowing against my neck and face in the breeze.
I’ve never felt like this, this relaxed and excited and nervous and giddy all at once, even when I was dating Raven, and it’s as if just thinking that lifts a huge weight from my shoulders. What I feel for Devi is separate and apart from what I ever felt for Raven...and so much better.
All of the things I told myself earlier—that my heart wasn’t clear enough to start chasing after Devi, that it would be unprofessional given that we were on a fake first date that we were filming for a porn site, it all blows away in the breeze.
Instead I’m left with this warm certainty, this feeling like a balloon is expanding in my chest. The movie-moment feeling is still here, still achingly, clarifyingly present, and the only thing that should happen next, that must happen next, is me kissing her. Tilting her face up to mine and finding her lips, and kissing her against the backdrop of the movie screen.
I forget about the camera, about the job we are supposed to be doing, about the fact that the ostensible reason I asked Devi to do the project with me was so I could make sure things like our first kiss had chemistry and so I should be making damn sure that I film this—everything is lost except the feeling of my skin against hers as I reach over and slide my hand up the long column of her neck.
I feel her swallow against my hand, and then she slowly turns her head up to me, her amber eyes meeting mine as my hand moves up to cradle her face. Her pupils are massive, huge pools of black rimmed with gold, and her lips begin to part.
“Logan…” she breathes.
I bend my face closer to hers, my heart pounding. “Yeah?”
I never find out what she was going to say because her phone starts vibrating noisily on the plastic lid of the cooler, bzzz, bzzz, while Rihanna’s tinny, digital voice starts singing the opening lines of “Work.”
Devi flushes a deep red and then reaches for her phone, pulling away from me and leaving my body aching with the sudden absence of her touch. A few people on blankets around us look over disapprovingly as Devi fumbles for the silent button on her phone.
“‘Work’?” I ask, eyebrows raised, as she finally succeeds in silencing the call. It still lights up her screen, though, and just as I glimpse the name on the screen, Sinner’s Playpen, she answers me. “It’s my ringtone for business stuff. My agent and other performers and people like that. Hey, are you okay?”
She peers up at me quizzically, her phone still lit up in her lap, and I nod and clear my throat, as I move away under the pretense of getting her more champagne, but really to give myself space.
Sinner’s Playpen is one of the biggest web-only studios out there right now, and if they’re calling Devi, then that must mean either they’re interested in her or her agent has let them know that she’s interested in them, which is only significant because Sinner’s Playpen specializes in hardcore porn. Hardcore het porn. She really is moving wider with her career, not just with me.
Devi will soon be getting fucked by other men.
And the moment I saw that name on the screen, my blood ran hot with the most intense jealousy imaginable, jealousy like acid eating up my veins. And the moment I recognized the jealousy, regret and shame and logic barreled into me. Who the fuck am I to care what other jobs Devi works? I already knew that she was thinking of moving away from the lesbian porn, that’s why I felt like I could ask her to do this project with me, and it would be beyond unreasonable—it would be creepy and insane—to assume that our project would be the only one she would do. She’s got bills to pay, after all, and even if we did have a thing, we would never expect the other not to work. Raven and I never slowed down our careers for each other when we were dating; if you dated another porn star, you both had to respect the job. I would never say that it is an easy thing to do, but what’s the alternative? Leaving a career you enjoy and make a living at? I don’t know when I’ll ever meet someone worth that.
Except.
Except except except.
Except right now, when I can’t force the adrenalized anger out of my blood, when I can’t force my breathing to return to a normal, non-caveman-like state. I’ve never felt this intensely jealous over even just the possibility of a girl I liked doing a scene, and all I want to do is drive her to some beach cabin where we can live forever without either of us ever touching another human being again…and get it fucking together, O’Toole!
I take a deep breath. I’m being a total fucking hypocrite. If I pulled up my calendar on my phone right now, I would see scenes booked for almost every day of the week. How did I have the fucking nerve to be jealous of Devi working when I was planning on screwing seven different women in the next five days?
I clear my throat. “I’m fine,” I say, handing her another full cup of champagne. “Just thirsty is all.”
“Okay,” she says, her eyes and voice full of this gentle implicit trust that I haven’t fucking earned, and fucking hell, that punches me right in the chest.
What is happening to me right now? I need to get my shit together, mentally and emotionally and also spiritually, since spiritual is the
only word I can think of to define at exactly what level Devi Dare affects me.
I grab for the camera, because that’s the one thing I know for sure will put me back on level ground. But while I’m turning it on, she touches a hand to my shoulder.
“Logan,” she says. “I just wanted you to know...this is the best fake date I’ve ever been on.”
The sun is setting behind her, painting her in oranges and lavenders, and I can’t help the words I say next, any more than I can help my aching erection or still-hot jealousy. “Me too, but...I guess I just also wish this were a real date.”
Maybe it’s the faint bitterness in my voice or the obvious lust, but her eyes widen and as they do, I realize what a giant fucking mistake I’ve just made. She thinks she’s here as a peer, a colleague, a friend maybe, but I’ve just made it clear that I have feelings for her, and that’s so unprofessional, not to mention dick-ish, and fuck fuck fuck.
“Logan?” she asks.
I have three options. I can run away—pretend I have to piss or something—or I can ignore her and mess with the camera some more. Or I can face her and apologize. And as much as I itch to run away, I turn to face her. “I’m sorry,” I manage. “That wasn’t okay for me to say, and I shouldn’t have said it, and we should just forget it. Can we just forget it?”
Her mouth opens and closes, and she looks away, and I feel even worse about myself, and more unprofessional bullshit pours out from my mouth. “You remember our scene three years ago?”
Her expression shifts, a flash of exposed hope immediately schooled into something closed-off and cautious. She gives me a single nod that, yes, she remembers.
I know what I want to say. I think about it all the time—I think about you all the time. I’ve had a crush on you for three years, and now in the span of two hours, I’ve decided that I’m falling for you.
But my sense of self-preservation finally reappears, and I think quickly, equivocating around the truth. “I’ve wanted to do another scene with you ever since then.” That’s the truth, at least, if only part of it. “You are so fucking sexy, Devi, and that’s why it had to be you for this project. I’ve been wanting to film with you again for three fucking years.”
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