“You care about your…” Her eyes flick down to my crotch again. This time, the bastard twitches, more instantly attracted to my pissed-off wife than the person who led us into this hellish situation to begin with. Maybe it’s the dumpster fire I’ve created here, but suddenly all my rock solid lines are blurring. “Why are we even discussing this? It’s none of my business.”
Dropping my head, I inhale, long and slow, one hand coming up to rub the back of my stiff neck.
Couldn’t I just have kept it in my pants another couple weeks? Just a few more days of appearances, and I’d be diving head first into the free-for-all paradise that is Kink Camp. The one place in this world where I can be myself. Not an actor on a set or a PR Ken-doll smiling for flashing cameras at red carpet galas, and definitely not a fake husband to this woman.
My gaze latches onto Twyla’s, slotting into place in a way that makes my body go still and blows the breath from my lungs.
This is it, the feeling I got the first time our eyes met. Or even before then. It’s—hell, I don’t know—recognition, on a base level, almost…molecular.I know you, it says.
But the feeling isn’t real. It’s a lie. She’s not mine. For the very simple reason that I don’t do vanilla.
No kissing, no relationships, no love.
I’m just not built for it. Never have been, never will be.
And I’m perfectly happy this way. Romance and all the bullshit surrounding it just isn’t for me.
Twyla Hernandez and I are just two colleagues, friendly near-strangers, who entered into a mutually-beneficial agreement.
That my dick had to go and ruin.
And I’ve got no clue how to fix it.
3
Twyla
This is all a terrible mistake.
I shouldn’t be here—in this rich person’s house, living a celebrity life, dealing with famous person problems.
I belong back in my affordable apartment, going from one half-decent acting job to another, praying that someday I’ll get the call for something bigger and better until I’m big enough and influential enough to make films of my own. I’ve got projects, dammit. I’ve got plans.
Sadly, no matter how hard I wish things back to where they were, I’m still right here, standing in the fanciest house I’ve ever even seen. Outside, we’re surrounded by paps and religious zealots and deranged fans trying to get to the literal Sexiest Man Alive, who just happens to be my fake husband.
Or, real husband, I guess. We are legally married, after all. There’s just norelationshipbehind the marriage. It’s all a business deal, meant to help our respective careers. Both of which he’s gone and blown up with his—
No. No, nope. Absolutely not. I cannot allow myself to think about his body parts or that video. Not again. Especially not infrontof him. It was bad enough earlier in the car ride over, when I first saw the video and went from feeling sick to my stomach to having to squeeze my thighs together and slow my breathing because it literally turned me on.
I was apparently so obvious that the driver asked me if something was wrong.
Wrong? Of course there’s nothing wrong. Not my fake husband getting caught on camera doing things with a stranger, not me squirming and breathing fast while looking at the pictures, and above all, not me, filled with anger and excitement and shame, fighting the urge to race home and touch myself.
Talk about mixed signals. Even I can’t get my own feelings straight.
Why oh why did I let things get complicated? Why did I let him get to me, with the way he sets my body off and makes me laugh, or the way, in the short time we’ve known each other, he’s always made me feel so cared for.
Yeah, well that was clearly an act. Which shouldn’t surprise me, right? I mean, the man’s an actor, after all. And this relationship isn’t real.
I think of the kiss. And the way we were on the couch the other night. It felt so—
Ugh, I can’t eventhinkit right now or I’ll cry. And that’s the last thing I want to do in front of him. My only goal at this point is to get the hell away from this, pride intact.
I mean, what else can I grasp at, now that the person the whole world knows as my brand-new husband has gone and had a seedy encounter with some other woman?
The saddest part, though, is that it hurts. Like actual chest and stomach pain. I’m holding it in, doing my best to hide it, but really, I just want to collapse on the sofa with a soft blanket and a gallon of Neapolitan ice cream and something to drink that will erase my brain for a while.
Although no way could I do it on the comfy upstairs TV room sofa, because that one’s been forever ruined by what we did on it. Or didn’t do.
