Exposure (12 page)

“
Get to the studio as
early as you can tomorrow. If the sales are really going to be as
big as I think they are, I’m going to want to start brainstorming
and shooting immediately for the rest of the spring series. Also,
Delilah says she misses you and you need to stop being such a
biology-obsessed twat.”

“
Yeah, yeah,” I respond
before hanging up.

“
Don’t look so
devastated,” Dallas drawls, leaning back on his hands. He looks far
too amused for my tastes. “I’m a good fuck. I promise.”

“
I thought you said you
couldn’t hear.”

He ignores my statement. “I’ll show
you.” Gathering the books scattered all over the bed, he drops them
off the side and says, “Take off your clothes.”

My jaw drops, fire suddenly racing
through my body. “For fuck’s sakes, Dallas.”

He rolls his eyes. “Cool it, Cosette.
I’m not actually going to fuck you. I’m just going to show you how
to simulate it.”

I cross my arms over my
chest. I know how to dry hump. If he has half a brain, he’s
aware
that I know how to
dry hump. And I could just point that out to him. But something
inside of me aches to grasp the hem of my t-shirt and lift it over
my head.

I glance at the door.

“
Your mom already thinks
we’re screwing,” he says.

Damnit, he’s right.

When I walk to the door and lock it,
his expression is victorious.

He takes off his shirt and pants as I
take off mine. “You’re not seeing my tits tonight,” I tell him,
keeping my underwear on.

“
Suit yourself.” He
smirks. “But eventually I will. You know it’s
inevitable.”

Wetness pools in between my legs. Fuck
him and his brazenness for turning me on so much.

He kneels on the mattress. “You just
going to stand there, or are you going to get under me?”

A take a deep breath to calm my
pounding heart and sit on the bed.

“
Lie down,” he
instructs.

“
This feels awfully
familiar,” I drawl, but continue to do as he says.

He rolls on top of me, propping
himself up on his elbows. Even with only the dim light of the lamp,
his blue eyes are petrifying. “Don’t tell me you weren’t turned on
as all hell in that office,” he murmurs. “I saw how wet you
were.”

Fuck fuck fuck
fuck
.

I try to keep my cool. “Focus, Dallas.
You’re supposed to be showing me how to simulate sex, not trying to
embarrass me.”

“
Suit yourself,” he
rumbles, sitting up. “Assuming EPE isn’t willing to shoot
penetration…”

“
Hah. Hah.”

“
I’ll just have to act
like I’m thrusting into you, and you’ll have to pretend like you’re
feeling it.”

“
So… in order to calculate
the ecstasy that I
should
be feeling, roughly how large is your
dick?”

He cocks his head. “You’ve felt it.
You tell me.”

A small shiver ripples through me as I
remember grinding on his erection during the pool shoot. God, if he
were actually in me… I imagine our underwear gone, his cock as hard
as a rock, pushing inside me…

“
Where’d you go just now?”
he asks, his eyes wicked.

“
Just do your thing,” I
whisper.

He points to the wall to the right of
him, “If the camera were over there,” he grabs my ankle and brings
my leg around his hips. “This would be a good pose to hide the fact
that we weren’t really having sex.”

“
But that’s a boring
angle,” I argue.

“
But far from a boring
image,” he says. As he pushes his hips forward, I can feel how hard
he already is. “When I push against you, arch your back and close
your eyes. Pretend it’s the best fuck off your life.”

I can hear my pulse in my ears. The
best fuck of my life… I’ve never had a best fuck of my life. All of
my experiences have been mediocre at best. So how am I supposed to
simulate this?

But then he thrusts his hips against
me, and I forget that I’m simulating. I shut my eyes, a small moan
escaping my lips.

“
There you go.” He thrusts
again, and I can feel every inch of him rub against my sex, nothing
separating us but the thin fabric of our underwear.

“
Oh, God,” I
murmur.

He lowers his lips to my ear. “Relax,”
he whispers, grinding into me again. My hands come up in between
us, fingers grazing abs, finding their way to his back. My nails
slowly drag across his skin, and his breath hitches.

My eyes flutter open, and I realize
that his face is right above mine. I could raise my head and catch
his lips if I wanted to. I could reach back and unsnap my bra, or
drag the fabric of my panties to the side and order him to stop
teasing me, because that’s all this really is. A whole shit ton of
teasing.

But then that would make me the other
woman. The whore.

“
You should probably go
take a shower,” I say.

He swallows and nods, but says
nothing, rolling from me and getting off the bed. When the door to
the joining bathroom shuts, I exhale.

Holy mother of God.

I’ve never wanted someone so bad in my
life. And I’ve never wanted someone that I couldn’t
have.

When he comes back into the room, I
pretend to be asleep even though I can’t be fooling him. But he
doesn’t call for me. Instead, he slides into bed, shirtless and
smelling of soap, and I wonder what his skin feels like fresh out
of the shower.

What it tastes like.

^^^^

After a vegan breakfast of carob chip
pancakes and maple syrup, Mom won’t let me go. In the doorway, she
clings to me tightly, and says, “You’re such a champ, Evan, you
know that, right? I’ve been a failure of a mother and haven’t been
able to help you at all and yet here you are, managing your money
perfectly, getting scholarships, not even in debt.”

I cringe. Managing my
money perfectly? More like managing my lies perfectly. Scholarships
are my excuse for staying afloat, when in reality the only aid I’ve
received for school is one measly little state grant.
East Park Exposed
is my
savior. And I hope to God Mom never finds out. That would be an
awkward dinner conversation.

“
Are you sure you don’t
need money?” I ask softly.

“
Evan!” She finally pulls
back. “Don’t you ever offer again. I mean it. I’m perfectly fine.
The new place suits me. I really like my new neighbors.”

She’s lying through her teeth. It must
run in the family.

“
All right.” I kiss her on
the cheek. “Love you.”

As Dallas and I pull away from Mom’s
unit, I wonder if her answer would be the same if she knew I had
almost ten grand saved up. If not telling her, if letting her live
here thinking that I’m barely scraping by, makes me a terrible
daughter.

Dallas

Evan says nothing about last night on
our way back to the studio. What’s worse is that she keeps talking,
yammering on about the most mundane shit ever—biology. The thing
is, Evan doesn’t yammer, so I can only assume that this is some
kind of coping mechanism to avoid awkward conversation.

I should have never “practiced” posing
with her last night. I got ahead of myself. Thing is, even if I
told Tricia, she would probably just brush it off, telling me that
doing things like that with Evan is just part of the job. That’s
why I have to be even more careful. Only I can hold myself
accountable.

Which is becoming harder to do. The
more she blabs on about this article she read on the internet about
mutating genes in kittens, the more I want to order her to pull the
car over, push her against the window, and shut her up with my
mouth.

My fantasies are getting out of
control.

Luckily, I don’t have to listen to any
more biology crap when we roll up to the studio. The cul-de-sac is
packed with cars. Evan opens the front door, and the place is
buzzing with people—models, makeup artists, writers, photographers.
Britain runs up to us, her eyes bright with excitement.

“
The numbers are already
rolling in for e-issues.
Huffington
Post
mentioned my blog interview in an
article today. Can you believe that? The
Huffington-fucking-Post.”

“
The
Huffington Post
covers porn?” I say
dumbly.

“
Apparently, us renovating
the zine to be more universally friendly cross-gender caught their
attention. And it did. I mean, it worked.” She’s babbling a million
miles a minute, almost as bad as Evan was in the car, but what
Britain is saying is much more interesting. “Our agenda worked too.
Have you been looking at the website?”

“
No I haven’t been looking
at the website,” Evan says with a huff. “We literally just got back
from my mom’s.”

“
Well, fuck you. Wait.”
Britain raises and eyebrow. “We, as in
both of you
, just got back from your
mom’s?”

“
Long story,” I answer.
“You were saying?”

“
Right. Well, our feedback
on the issue over all realms of social media is positive for both
genders. But almost everyone is wanting more.”

“
More what?” Evan
asks.

“
More sexual tension. And
more skin.” Britain waggles her eyebrows and Evan rolls her eyes.
But her eye rolling is a poor mask. She looks nervous.

“
I hope the two of you are
ready. We’re gonna promote the shit out of the second in the
series. I want to shoot today, if that’s cool with the two of you.
Can you be in hair and makeup in five? And it doesn’t matter what
you wear.” She winks, and before either of us can respond, saunters
away.

Evan sighs loudly and pushes back her
chocolate hair with her fingers. I grasp her shoulders, forcing her
to look at me. “Hey. You okay?”

She performs the adorable gesture of
pushing up the middle of her glasses with her finger. She’s not
wearing makeup, just like how she was last night. Arching beneath
me. A guttural moan escaping her throat. I blink the image away
before I have the chance to get hard.

“
Peachy,” she says with a
weak grin.

“
If I ever do anything to
make you uncomfortable, in front of the camera or not, you’d tell
me, right?”

She blinks slowly before saying,
“You’re not the problem, Dallas.”

I have no idea what she means, but I’m
quickly distracted by the giggling coming from the corner of the
room. A gaggle of models are looking toward us. A gorgeous blonde
smiles at me and winks. She holds up the current issue of
EPE.

Evan rests her hand on my arm. She’s
looking over at the girls with disdain. I bite back a grin—is she
being protective of me?

“
You want to look at the
issue?” I ask her.

“
Hell no,” she replies
quickly. “Especially not the shoot with you.” And in the same
breath, “I need to get my makeup done.”

She stalks away.

I walk up to the blonde model and her
friends. All of them are dressed in bikinis or lingerie. “Can I
borrow that?” I ask.

She pops her hip. “Sure.” She hands me
the magazine and bats her eyelashes. “I hope you don’t mind me
saying this, but I would pay money to shoot with you. Maybe we
could do a private session later?”

“
Err… I can’t tell if
you’re being literal, or if, by private session, you’re hitting on
me. I’m a science dork. I’m not that great with reading
women.”

She and her posse giggle. “You silly
boy.” She leans in and whispers, her hot breath tickling my ear. “I
meant that, later tonight, I’d like to get your alone and fuck your
brains out.” She takes a step back. “Offer’s on the
table.”

What the hell is wrong with me? Why do
I not feel turned on in the slightest by this beautiful girl
offering herself to me? “Sorry,” I tell her. “I have a
girlfriend.”

She sneers. “Rylan?”

“
Uhh… no, actually. But
Rylan is a friend. Look, I gotta…”

“
Pretty boy!” Someone
hollers across the room. On instinct I turn. A pissed, goth-looking
girl is staring right at me. “You done flirting? You need to get
your ass into makeup.”

I don’t argue, using this as an excuse
to dodge any more advances from blondie.

When the makeup artist and I are alone
in the dressing room, she orders me to sit. “Luckily, because you
have balls, I don’t have to do a lot to you,” she says to me,
getting a pasty makeup ready for me by mixing colors together. “You
wouldn’t believe the shit these girls have to put on every day
before they shoot.”

I open the magazine right
at the end of mine and Evan’s office shoot. I’m standing over her,
cupping her ass. At least she
looks
like she’s having a good time. I quickly close it
again. Now I know why Evan never looks at issues. I looked… well, I
looked creepy. I have no idea how chicks find this
professor-student role play shit attractive.