“Young, beautiful, and desperate,” I whispered. “The trifecta for the sharks circling the waters for such opportunities. He was nice, the first guy. It was through some crappy audition I didn’t get. He said he liked me, gave me a card, said I’d get a job, good money. By this point, I was close to living on the streets. There was no backup, no one to bail me out. I would’ve done anything.”
I paused, squinting my eyes as if that would help blind me to those memories I’d been so blind to in the past.
I straightened my shoulders, forced my chin up in defiance, dared Duke to look down on me. “So I did anything,” I continued. “It was horrible, as you’d expect. But not that horrible. I was good, by then, at disconnecting myself from things happening in the present, in putting myself away in different compartments. And then there was the money. It seemed like a fortune to me then, even though they were taking advantage of my desperation and naiveté.” I didn’t look at Duke. “Though I didn’t stay naive for long. I was determined, smart. I didn’t spend a dime of what I made on anything but the essentials. Got out as quick as I could. Got my first real job on a fluke. I used every dime of that for the best plastic surgeon in the business. He didn’t do anything drastic. It was in the subtleties. I changed my hair, my name, everything. That’s why no one’s ever connected it before—in case you were wondering. I guess it’ll come out eventually, but I’m not ashamed of it anymore.”
He didn’t say anything.
Not for a long time.
I blinked at him, at the blankness on his face, and not even that polite, judgmental blankness that people wore until they could safely leave your presence and never see you again.
No, true blankness like I’d told him I wasn’t a fan of mushrooms. Like he’d just received information that wasn’t shocking or obscure.
“What?” he asked, reading my face, as he was getting better and better at doing.
I fidgeted with my rings. “Well…that’s it?”
He tilted his head ever so slightly. “What do you mean?”
“I just told you I used to have sex on camera for money and it’s just this reaction.” I waved my hand in front of his face.
He shrugged. “You needed to do it? To survive?”
I nodded.
“It’s a decision that got you standing right here, in front of me.” He moved forward to grasp my hips. “So yeah, that’s it.”
I continued blinking at him. “It doesn’t make you think…less of me?” My voice was small, vulnerable. “Like I’m…unclean?” I hated how small I sounded, like I needed his approval.
His eyes darkened.
“Baby, I plan on fucking you dirty. So it doesn’t matter how fucking clean you are before that.”
10
My entire body was numb. No, not numb, just spent. Every single muscle I had was used up, drained with the force it took to give me an orgasm like that. Three orgasms like that. The thing that I’d been absolutely certain was impossible without a vibrator.
There was no way I was going to be able to move from this spot for…the rest of my life. But that was okay, because this was the most perfect moment I’d ever had.
“Where did you learn to fuck like that?” I demanded. Or tried to demand. My voice was breathy and the words dragged out with the energy it took to speak them.
A pause. Duke’s arms tightened ever so slightly around me before he moved us so our eyes met. His were dark, hooded with lazy satisfaction.
“You really want to know where I learned to fuck like that?” he asked, teasing in his voice. It was slow, like mine though. Even the big man seemed to be spent, which made sense, since he’d exerted a lot of energy.
I smiled. That was easy to do. “Yes, I do need to know because then we’re going to open a fucking academy so you can teach the masses your skills.”
He grinned and his arms tightened around me. “I’m not teaching the masses about how I fuck my woman.”
My heart skipped with the my woman address, something he’d referred to me as before, of course, as part of the act. But never with the two of us. As much as the title should’ve pissed me off, it fit better than any of my custom gowns. Mostly because they’d always been made a size too small, forcing me to constrict myself in order to slip into them.
“Yes, we are,” I argued, swallowing my emotion. “We’ll make millions.”
The grin went wider this time. Arms tightened even further so that my ribs started to protest. It was harder to breathe with him holding me this tight, but it was easy to…exist.
“You already have millions,” he pointed out.