“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” I ask tentatively.
“Yes,” she whispers.
“And are you okay with it?”
A pause. And then a nod.
Well, it’s not the most enthusiastic response I could have hoped for, but what did I expect? Even holding back from going full Romeo on her, it’s still a lot to lay on a girl, that I think about her all the time, and not in a friends-only way. I start to get up from my kneeling position, but she stops me with a hand on my shoulder. It drifts over to my throat, where her thumb caresses lightly across my Adam’s apple.
It’s my turn to shiver.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, “you just took me by surprise. What I mean to say is that it’s more than okay with me. I’m...I’m a little obsessed with you, too.”
I feel like my chest is going to explode. “Really?”
She smiles. “Really.”
“But you also understand why I want to bottle up some of...whatever this is...and use it for the show, right?”
She nods, but the smile fades. “I understand. We want it to feel real.”
“Because it is real. The heat between us, it’s special, Cass, and if we play our cards right, everyone who watches us will feel it.”
“I get it.”
But something is off in her voice, and I don’t know how to fix it. Except to do what I planned on doing originally when I made her sit: lean down and bury my face between her legs.
She lets out a low noise—half moan, half sigh—and I go easy on her, knowing she’s probably a little sore from all the times I made her come in the desert. I go soft and steady, long strokes of my tongue and light flicks over her clit, and her build-up is slow but inexorable as she squirms in front of me, her fingers laced in my hair and pulling hard. And when she comes, she cries out my name, and I nearly lose all my resolve and fuck her right there.
“I just needed another taste before I went home,” I explain as I straighten, wiping my mouth.
“I like that,” she mumbles dazedly. “I like when it happens without the cameras...it makes me feel like you want me.”
“Jesus, woman. I can prove that I want you every second of the day, if you want. But for tonight, I’ll be happy with my taste.”
She falls back against the couch with a tired laugh. “You can have all the tastes you want.”
“I might take you up on that, Cass.”
And later that night, when I’m undressing, I discover that I still have her panties—pink, silk, teenage boy’s wet dream panties—in my pocket. And so I finally, finally relieve the ache, stroking my neglected cock with the silk until I erupt in thick ropes of cum. I film the entire thing on my phone and I send it to Devi.
Told you I was obsessed, I text right after it sends.
Can’t type, my fingers are too busy, she responds after a few minutes.
I fall asleep to the image of her masturbating to a video of me jacking off with her panties, and maybe my depraved porno heart has never been happier than it is right now.
I can’t stop humming. It’s becoming a problem, apparently, at least according to Tanner, who has started grumbling about staging a humming intervention. I hum in between takes when filming scenes, I hum while I’m editing, I hum when I crack open a beer for Tanner at the end of our workday.
“You okay, man?” he asks, taking a drink of his beer.
It’s Wednesday, four days since I went down on Devi in the desert and told her that I had more-than-friends feelings about her. We’ve been texting every day, mostly banter and industry gossip, but at night, our conversations devolve into absolute raunch, usually ending in us sending each other naked selfies and videos of us masturbating to said selfies and so on and so forth until we fall asleep. I’ve been importing some of the selfies and texts and videos to incorporate into the Star-Crossed series (Vida and Marieke both loved Devi’s idea for the name.) All with Devi’s permission, of course.
But even as I work our late night messages into the series, I feel like we’re edging into this exhilarating gray area where the rules don’t apply; where what’s happening between us happens off-script, off-camera first, and then makes it into the project later. We’re skidding off the road in slow motion, and all I want to do is press down hard on the gas, barrel headlong into this thrilling thing together.
And to that end, I’ve been desperate to see her, but I had to stay in Las Vegas for a few nights for an extended shoot, and she has to work tonight. But tomorrow I get to see her again, and I feel like someone has injected me with pure, uncut happiness. Even right now, while I’m on my knees with leather upholstery cleaner wiping down the couch I just had sex on this morning.
“I’m more than okay, dude,” I reply to Tanner’s question. “I’m magnificent. I’m brilliant. I’m—”
“Are you using drugs?” he cuts in. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so...animated.”
“The only thing I’m high on is life,” I say with as much dignity as I can muster while scrubbing semen off my couch cushions.
“It’s that girl, isn’t it?” he asks. “Devi.”
Thinking of Devi sends my thoughts tumbling down a spiral of affectionate depravity. I want to do the filthiest things to her and then I want to take her to meet my parents. Is this normal? Is this how normal relationships work?
Can we even call it a relationship, given that the only thing we’ve actually admitted is how desperate we are to fuck each other?