“What?Why not?”
“Ah-ah-ah. It’s not your turn to ask another question.” She seemed to be enjoying herself now.
“Oh come on, you’re probably going to waste it anyway. What do you wanna know now? My shoe size?”
“Not especially.” She smiled contemptuously. I hadn’t even meant it that way, but I was fine with her having no interest in my dick. I’d be scared of what she’d do to him anyway.
She pinned me with her arresting eye contact. “What scares you, Mr. Chase?”
Part of me wanted to give her a teasing answer rather than exposing a vulnerability, but you get what you give.
I took a deep breath. “Losing touch with who I am and where I came from. I’ve seen it happen too many times. Chill guys who spend too many years surrounded by yes-men, having people cater to their every whim…they become assholes who buy into their own marketing machine. The worst part is, they have no idea it’s happened. They slip into this mindset that they’re genuinely more important than everyone else or they deserve special treatment and forget how the world really works for most people. I’m scared of it happening, but it seemed inevitable if I didn’t challenge myself.”
She watched me with eyes that missed nothing. “Surely, even being self-aware enough to have that fear would preclude it from happening…”
“You’d be surprised. Fame is quite a drug. Okay, back to me—Why don’t you have ‘intercourse’?” I made air quotes.
“In my job, there’s…a required level of intimacy that shifts your sense of normal. Even outside of work, in my world, sexual acts aren’t a big deal. Nothing is taboo. Very little is sacred. So early on, I decided I would hold something back. In the five or so years I’ve been in the scene, I haven’t let anyone fuck me like that—girl, guy, or enby—in or out of the dungeon.”
I hadn’t expected her to give me such a vulnerable answer.
“Five years.” I gave a low whistle.
She smirked. “Some dude repeatedly ramming his dick in and out, thinking he just has to do it fast and hard enough, doesn’t get me off. Traditional sex is overrated.”
Sounded to me like she’d been with selfish men who’d made the rest of us look bad, but I kept my mouth shut.
Christ, I’d gone from not really liking her, to thinking she might just be the sexiest woman I’d ever met, and I didn’t know how it had happened.
Her sex appeal snuck up on you. It wasn’t a straight visual thing like the gorgeous actresses and models I worked with. There was a simmering intensity to her that probably intimidated the piss out of people, but there was no mistaking how comfortable she was in her own skin. And that she might just remove yours before letting you touch hers.
She was watching me expectantly, waiting for me to react to what she’d revealed. It felt like she was testing me, so instead of teasing further, I pointed to her. “Your turn.”
“Is this your first contract relationship? Or were the other ones I was reading about this morning PR stunts as well?”
“It's my first,” I answered honestly. “I haven’t dated in a long time. Things get…complicated with fame and fortune.”
She murmured, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
I smiled. I might’ve panicked at her use of the wordwifeif I didn’t recognize the quote fromPride and Prejudice. A friend had just sent me the script for a reimagining of the story set in space, but I wouldn’t be able to do it because it conflicted withCrown of Swords, which kind of sucked because it was a damn good script.“Exactly. It’s impossible to tell Lizzie from Caroline when they’re all ready to cater to my every preference. For a while at least.”
She blinked at me in surprise.
I hadn’t really answered her question yet, so I felt like I owed her more of an explanation. “I think my last girlfriend was mostly with me for the fame. It sounds like a cliche, but it was partly my fault for not making sure our expectations were the same. At least I know how you’ll breakup with me rather than the joy of finding her banging her costar in her trailer. And then everyone has an opinion about deeply personal parts of your life. They feel entitled to every detail of the story like it’s just another piece of entertainment instead of my real life humiliation.”
There was something in her eyes now that I couldn’t read, but it looked a lot like scorn and it bothered me. I wasn’t looking for pity. I knew what sacrifices I made for fame and what I got out of the bargain.
I also thought I knew how to tilt this game back on her.
I gave her a wicked grin, and it only deepened when she responded to it. “So, Lady Elena…whatdoesdo it for you? You’re into something twisted like cutting dicks off, aren’t you?”
I’d amused her now. I could get hooked on making that dark twinkle in her eyes appear.
“Are you asking what turns me on?”
I nodded, feeling fairly confident I was about to be verbally eviscerated, but it might just be worth it.
“Enthusiastic consent. A really good pair of forearms…” She paused, and I thought that was as much as she was going to give me. “The way a woman jerks just a little the first time my tongue makes contact with her clit. And the way she spreads her legs wider and arches her hips higher without even knowing she’s doing it when I find just the right rhythm against it, her whole body silently begging for release. But what really gets me off, is the way she tumbles over that first orgasm, clenching around my fingers as she bucks her hips against my tongue, lost to the pleasure.”
