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Andrew learned early in life that humor was one of the best ways to mask an awkward situation. Pulling up the jokes and distracting conversation when Susan hit too close to uncomfortable with questions about his past was instinct, but he recognized what he was doing as soon as the first words were out of his mouth. He was pretty sure little sister wasn’t as innocent as Mercy believed, but those moments when the pink dots formed on Susan’s cheeks short-circuited his off switch.
He slowed his step to watch her walk. It was a fantastic view. Her jeans hugged her ass, and she had a casual grace he’d rarely seen. The holiday lights sparkling like a million multi-colored stars surrounded her in an angelic-like glow.
“Serious question.” Her voice tugged him back to the conversation, and she paused to let him catch up.
“I can’t promise a serious answer with a lead-in like that, but I’ll try.”
“Why porn?” There was a brief hesitation when she said porn. It could have been a stutter or a catch in her throat.
He didn’t think either was the case. “Asking the question a different way than last time doesn’t mean you get a different answer.”
They reached the center of the plaza, where a high wall curved up to meet the second floor and created an amphitheater out of the bricks below. In the summer, it was an open fountain, with jets of water dancing toward the sky at random intervals. Now it was a crystal half-cave, glinting in Christmas lights and reflecting the full moon, and circled with benches. When she whirled to face him, her body flowed. She managed to turn the simplest step into a pirouette.
“I’m not the only one who’s asked,” she said. “You’ve got a stock reply. Easy answer is, I’m a guy; I like naked stuff.”
He frowned. He did have a party-version of the story on hand, specifically for questions like why porn.
“But I’m thinking you’re about twenty-eight, like Mercy,” Susan said.
“Yes. We’re the same age.”
“So you were my age when you kicked the whole thing off.”
“Which makes me sound ancient. It was only seven years ago.” Jesus. He felt like a dirty old man, lusting after someone so young. He’d hoped to hold out until forty or longer before that happened. That had to be it. He projected some sort of misplaced opportunity from his early twenties on her. Another reason to add to his Why Susan is Off Limits list, right under for Mercy.
She stuck out her tongue. “I can do the math. Thanks. My point is I haven’t finished school. I can’t get the job I want. My future is a huge blur. You’d already spent three years exploring the world, and you decided to build a billion-dollar empire because you like masturbation?”
“Yup. That’s how it happened. I woke up one day and said, I like naked people. So does everyone else. I’m going to be a billionaire.” He kept the teasing in his sarcasm.
“Exactly. You didn’t do anything like that. So, once again, why porn?”
“It was a bit like that, but I didn’t expect to make any money from it. Why do you want to know?”
She furrowed her brow and tilted her head to the side, studying him. “Because it’s about you.” She made it sound as if the answer was obvious.
He had no idea what to do with the statement. “It’s not this great and grandiose tale of victory and smart business.” No. This wasn’t how the script went. “When I first got to Argentina, I lied my way into a bed or fifty, saying I was a talent scout from the U.S. It was how I found places to sleep.” No, no, no. His version of how it happened was far flashier.
“Did women actually buy that?” She didn’t look disgusted or bothered. The same open curiosity she had the night of the wedding shone on her face.
“I’m pretty sure they didn’t,” came out instead of Always. I was a smooth mother fucker. Damn it. He didn’t know where he was in the script anymore. The problem was, he’d delivered it so many times, he wasn’t even certain what the truth was.
He could get close, though. “It was sleazy. It was effective as fuck. It didn’t matter they didn’t buy it, they liked the way I pulled the line off without flinching. I had a whole spiel, including a photocopied release form, in case they made my list. One day, someone called me on it. I’d drunk too much tequila, promised her all sorts of fame and fortune, and she wanted to see the site she was on. I wanted back in her bed in the near future, so I tossed a few pages together, convinced Mercy to hide them behind a login, and threw some of my other pictures up there, to make it look authentic.”
“Let me guess. This doesn’t end with you learning your lesson on account of her knowing the site was fake.”
“Not even close. We played out the ruse too well. Mercy did a bang-up job with the search-engine optimization. Landed the right keywords without meaning to. My photos were incredible, and suddenly our shitty payment portal and handful of images were bringing in money. Not much. It kept us in bus tickets, and hotel rooms instead of hostels. But God damn, if I didn’t get more tail than I thought possible, when I actually was the guy who owned that one adult site.”
Susan fiddled with the button on the cuff of her jacket, her gaze focused on the bricks.
An unfamiliar sensation tugged inside Andrew. Was he embarrassing her? Why did he care? “Anyway. From there, we spun it into a venture where I could pay other people. Mercy worked her magic, getting the various sites out there. I designed the layouts and set the fetish guidelines. The rest fell like pretty much any other business plan.”
“But you love what you do.” She looked up, and her gaze bored into him, as if she could read below the surface.
“Naked people and fucking. We covered that.”
“It’s more than that. You enjoy what it represents. Being open. Letting people express themselves.”
He shook his head. “You’ve got a lot more faith in my intentions than they deserve. By the way... we’re not here for me. Don’t think I missed that you’ve turned the attention away from you.”
*
“NOT ON PURPOSE.” SUSAN swallowed her frustration. Everything with Andrew was counter, block, and parry. Each time she caught a glimpse of what lay underneath, he covered it up with a new flash and distraction. Worse, she didn’t understand why she kept poking, prodding, and digging. She’d coerced him into doing her this favor, playing off some twisted attachment he had to her sister. What more did she need to know, as long as they both accomplished their goals?
“Now that we’re back on topic, I’d like to see you dance,” he said.
“You’ve seen me dance.” The notion twisted her gut in knots. What if he thought less of her, once he had a chance to see her for more than a few seconds? What if she screwed up? What if Dad was right, and this was a waste of time? Familiar doubts pressed in and threatened to suffocate her, but she clawed her way past them. She’d asked for his help with this; she wasn’t going to tell him no. “But if you meet me back at R&T early tomorrow, I’m happy to do an on-demand performance.”
“You misunderstand. I want to see it now.”
“Here?” Her question came out as a squeak. People passed by in groups of two or five or more, on their way to dinner or the movies. This time of year, with so many holiday shoppers lingering despite the closed stores, it was far from being a private show.
Andrew moved close enough that heat flowed between them, but he never made contact. “I dated a guy once. Super uptight. Formal. Complete control freak.” His voice rolled over her with a current of electricity. “But—Jesus—he could fuck.”
“Like on camera?” Stupid question. That was what most of his stories were about.
“Like on me. He wasn’t an actor. The man knew how to get me off.”
Andrew never flinched, and neither would she. The problem was she was now fantasizing about him with another man, and that was distracting. Picturing Andrew stripped down, some well-built guy kissing him, stroking him— “Is this another story that ends with you getting a blow job on a bench?” She was grateful she kept her question steady and neutral.
“No. Do you want to hear it or not?”
“Yes.”
“I took him out to dinner one night. I was enjoying the new feeling of having a free cash flow. It was a super classy place—or I thought so at the time. French version of Olive Garden, but with American food.”
She’d been to France and was pretty sure such a thing didn’t exist, but she didn’t dare interrupt and stop the tale.
“Or—you know—it was a little café on the corner somewhere, but they had tablecloths and candlelight, so it felt classy. We placed our orders, and chatted while we waited. He had a little wine. Wasn’t sitting quite as straight as normal. I dropped my hand to his leg and glided it up to his zipper. He pushed me away, but the right coaxing convinced him no one could see.”
She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry. “And?”
He flicked his gaze across her face and gave a tiny shake of his head. “When I worked his cock free from his jeans, it was so hard I could cut glass with it and his spine went just as rigid. But the company was good, and his dick was hot against my palm, so I took my time stroking him.”
Details splashed with images through her thoughts, making her pulse race. Desire thrummed under her skin and throbbed between her legs. This was better than Tumblr.
“As the anticipation built, he relaxed.” If Andrew had any idea the effect he was having on her, it didn’t show. “When he tilted his head back, eyes half closed, I knew he was lost in the moment. He groaned when he came. Made a mess of my hand. Drew stares and more than a few whispers from the people around us. I guarantee, not all of them were as disgusted as they were acting.”
She didn’t know if she was more embarrassed for the unnamed boyfriend, or jealous. Temptation urged her to excuse herself for a few minutes, find the nearest bathroom, and slip her fingers between her legs. “What happened next?”
“Management asked us to leave, because we were disrupting the other diners.”
“Oh my heck, why would you tell me that?” There was no way she was dancing here now.
He raised an eyebrow. “It made you hot and bothered, and I like the memory.”
“I thought you were trying to convince me to do a command performance.”
“I am.” He leaned his head in, and his hot breath sent tantalizing shivers down her spine. “What’s holding you back?”
“What if it pisses someone off?”
He looked her in the eye, but his nearness jumbled her thoughts. “That’s a worst-case scenario. The story is important because, aside from being sent to jail or getting beaten up for being queer—neither of which is an option here—there wasn’t a lot more that could happen. It didn’t kill us, and it left us both with a fantastic memory.”
“But it’s so embarrassing.” The argument sounded weak, and she was the one saying it.
He slid behind her and rested his hands on her hips. When he pressed against her back, his hard length told her she wasn’t the only one turned on. “You want to be a performer.” He dragged his nose along the back of her neck as he spoke. “Perform.”
She swallowed a whimper. “There’s no music.” She hovered on the knife’s edge, between paralyzing fear and intense desire. If he teased his fingers under the waistband of her jeans, she’d have a difficult time saying no. But she couldn’t imagine dancing here, with so many people around.
He removed one of his hands from its resting spot, and seconds later, a heavy dance beat spilled from behind her. She assumed it came from his phone. People turned to look, muttering to each other.
Humiliation flooded her. “Please stop.”
“I told you how this works.” His lips moved against her skin. “You do things by my rules, or we call it quits. If you stop now, we’re done. I’ll take you home, and we won’t speak of this again.” He swayed her hips to the beat, moving with her.
It felt forced. She couldn’t bring herself to do anything more than respond mechanically. Too many thoughts pressed in on her at once, fuzzing the world around her, until all she saw were the stares and all she felt was him.
“Stop caring what they think. What you want is all that matters.” His voice was low and hypnotic.
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Focus on my voice and the music. Ignore the people. Block out the rest of the world.”
Temptation mingled with desire and embarrassment, racing through her. Clouding her mind. Humming in her head and over her body.
“I can’t.” She pulled out of his grasp but couldn’t turn to look at him.
The music vanished. He didn’t respond. Her heart hammered in her ears, as seconds ticked away. Why wasn’t he saying anything? She whirled to see him walking toward the parking lot.
She sprinted to catch up and tugged the sleeve of his jacket. “I’m sorry.”
“If you’re not serious, you’re wasting your time and mine.”
“I am serious. I told you I want this. I’ll do it. Stop, please.”
“No.”
“Why not?” Her throat was raw with frustration.
He didn’t look at her. “I can prompt you. Coerce you. Encourage you and go so far as to seduce you. But at the end of the day, if you do this for anyone’s approval except your own, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”
“I want to try. Please? I’m doing it for me. I promise.” She pulled him to a stop. “Damn it. Look at me.”
He spun and grabbed her wrist, locking his gaze on hers. “If you lie about this, to me or yourself, it doesn’t work.” The smooth tone was gone from his voice.
The power in his grip terrified and excited her. She refused to look away. “I’m not lying.” She was, though. The idea of doing this still terrified her. Did it show?
Expression going flat, he let go and turned away. “I don’t know how many ways I can say this. You didn’t follow my rules. We’re done. We have to work in the morning, it’s more than a half-hour drive up the canyon, and you have to tell your B.F.F. nothing horrible happened to you. We should go.”