Vice, Virtue & Video: Revealed (The Vice, Virtue & Video Series) Read online

  I get in the car and head out of my old neighborhood. With my parents hating me and Lola going off to college, I don’t know that I’ll be around here again anytime soon, so it’s kind of surreal to be leaving town for what may very well be the last time. Sure, Keegan and Joey are here, but those dudes are already chomping at the bit to come visit me so they can get onto the set and meet some porn stars. It’ll be a rude awakening for them when they see how boring and not-at-all sexy those shoots can be, but I’m guessing Keegan’s reactions will be a crack-up.

  I hit the highway and concentrate on the future. I’ve got a shoot with Lexi Jaxxxon in a couple weeks, and she’s way sexy, so that should be kind of hot. Rick said he’s thinking about hooking me up with a line of sex toys that will be molded from my anatomy. That kind of shit is normally reserved for the very small number of guys who are huge stars, but I’ve been generating a pretty major buzz and Rick says I’m doing really well with the female market, so it could be a big moneymaker. Then, of course, there’s Lola. As I get back to my apartment, I’m going to plan a trip out there to visit her as soon. I’m thinking October, after she’s started classes and gotten settled into college life.

  Thinking about her makes me miss her already. My little angel. My best friend. I have a real bond with that girl, and sometimes I feel like I just need to be around her, like I have to do it to survive. The next six months without her will suck, but it’ll only make it sweeter when I see her again.

  I crank up the stereo and pull onto the interstate for the long-ass drive back to SoCal.

  Chapter 12

  Lola

  SOFT KISSES UP AND DOWN my neck. The weight of his muscular body pins me down against the bed, his excitement very evident from the firmness pressing into me. His hands drift up and down my body, seemingly everywhere at once. My heart races and my pulse jumps when his lips close over mine, claiming my mouth in a passionate kiss. I realize that I’m no longer wearing my pajamas, and my bare skin curves into his. He’s warm—more than warm. He’s hot to the touch, melting me with overpowering sexuality.

  “I want you,” he whispers to me as his hand reaches down to tease my nipple.

  I only answer with a moan, my neck arching back, allowing him to kiss the side of my throat.

  He smiles when he slips his fingers under the covers and between my legs. “You’re wet for me,” he says with a hooded, lustful gaze. “You want me too.”

  “James,” I breathe as he rubs and teases me.

  My body is on fire, burning white hot from just the feel of his fingertips against my sensitive flesh.

  His hazel-green eyes sparkle with delight as he gazes down at me. “Do you want me inside you, Lola?” he asks, a devilish grin spreading over his lips.

  I close my eyes, not able to come to terms with my answer.

  “Tell me, Lola,” he softly commands. “Say it out loud.”

  “I can’t,” I reply in a nearly inaudible whisper.

  “Yes, you can,” he assures me. “You can’t deny it, not anymore. Just look in my eyes and say it to me. Tell me what you want.”

  I take a deep breath, forcing myself to look up at him. “You, James,” I reply. “I want you.”

  “See?” His smile grows even warmer. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  I shake my head, and he gives me a soft kiss, which puts me at ease.

  “Be with me, Lo,” he says in a half-plea. “Let me show you how good I can make you feel.”

  I concede with a nod of my head, and then I feel him easing into me. I can barely hear over the beating of my heart as he fills me. God, it feels so good. His hips move slowly at first, but he starts to pick up the pace, and I start to moan his name, which spurs him on.

  “You want me this way,” he says into my neck. “You want to be mine, and you want me to be yours.”

  “It’s not like that,” I reply, trying to fight off the longing I feel for him. “It’s only attraction. It’ll go away. It’s not real.”

  “I don’t think so,” he says with a teasing grin.

  “I can’t let myself get emotionally wrapped up in you this way.” I shake my head, wishing I could stop the swirl of feelings that are making me dizzy.

  “But you are emotionally wrapped up in me.” He smiles, continuing his gentle but persistent thrusts. “You know it’s more than attraction. You know it’s deeper than that. Stop running from it.”

  “James, we shouldn’t—” I gasp in protest, but my objection is cut short when I feel a strong, very pleasurable ache flaring up from low in my core.

  “See how good it could be?” he whispers as the sensation builds.

  I moan louder, and I know something is about to happen—something I’ll thoroughly enjoy. He’s going to get me there. I’ve never been there, and I have no idea what there feels like, but I know with every fiber of my being that he could take me there. I can feel the sensation building up, and I’m holding my breath as I eagerly await its glorious arrival.

  Somewhere in the distance, I hear Christina Aguilera’s “Ain’t No Other Man” playing. It gets louder and louder like an approaching ambulance.

  “Where’s that coming from?” I ask James as I look around the room.

  He doesn’t respond, just gives me a little wink.

  A second later, I open my eyes to find that I’m alone in my bedroom with a light sheen of sweat on my skin and a surging heartbeat. Christina is belting out her trademark vocal flourishes from my alarm clock, and I’m starting to realize that I just had a vivid sex dream about the very last person I should be fantasizing about.

  “What the fuck?” I whisper to myself as I sit up and put my hand to my head. “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I add in a disappointed jab at my own brain. Stupid neurotransmitters making me think about James that way!

  Needless to say, I am freaked the fuck out. Never in my life have I had a single sex dream about James—Leonardo DiCaprio maybe, but never, ever, ever James. I feel guilty and embarrassed, like Ashton Kutcher will be waiting outside my door to surprise me with news that I’ve been mentally Punk’d.

  Quickly, I get up and rush into the bathroom, trying to shake off the lingering emotion—and horniness—left over from the dream. I brush my teeth with surgical focus and try to clear my mind of James altogether.

  What the hell is wrong with me? Why on earth would I even allow myself, subconsciously or not, to let James infiltrate that part of my mind? I wasn’t just dreaming about having sex with him; I was dreaming about being with him—in every sense of the word. It’s absolutely absurd to even imagine a scenario in which he and I would be some kind of “item” and actually date each other like a regular couple. That seems about as likely as finding Sasquatch riding the Loch Ness Monster in the lost city of Atlantis. Our lives are way too different, so despite how much we care about each other, we could never have that kind of relationship.

  I’m feeling overwhelmed with confusion, anger at myself, frustration that I can’t force the dream out of my memory, and a longing for someone to help me talk this out and figure out how to get over this. Normally, I’d call James and he’d help me sort things out. He’s been my sounding board for years, a patient listener who offers me genuinely good advice and always has my best interests at heart. This time, he’s the last person I’d want to talk to, since “Hey, how are you? I just had a graphic, ultra-hot sex dream about you” isn’t exactly the best way to begin a conversation.

  I flip open my phone and try to decide who to call, quickly eliminating half my contacts due to the secretive nature of this conversation. This would be a great time to chat with a girlfriend, but Zoe has had a not-so-secret crush on James for ages and her only advice would be on what position he and I should try first. I need someone sensible, someone who can give me a logical answer and, above all, someone who can keep a secret. Naveen seems to fit the bill quite well, so I call him up and ask him to lunch. He happily agrees, and I pull on some jeans and head out the door.
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br />   Naveen greets me with a hug, and we both sit down and place our drink orders.

  “How are you, man?” I smile. “All done with finals too?”

  “Yep,” he says, nodding. “Last one was Thursday. Just getting college stuff together now. How about you? I haven’t seen you since prom.”

  “Yeah, I had a really busy few days.” I chuckle at that. You don’t know the half of it! “James was here, and we hung out, then he had to take off.”

  “How’d that go?” he asks knowingly.

  Just then, our waitress comes over and asks us if we’re ready to order. We both get veggie burgers, and I sip an iced tea before I answer.

  “It was good, actually,” I continue once she moves out of earshot. “He made my prom night really fun. I had a really great time with him.”

  “Did you guys hang out at your place or just chill at his place?” he asks, though I still get the impression that this is just a lead-in to the real conversation.

  “He planned this little picnic thing for me up in the mountains. It was really sweet.” I smile, fondly recalling the evening. “Then we hung out at my house after that. He, um, he slept over.”

  “Interesting.” He grins.

  “Oh, please.” I snicker. “He used to sleep over at my house all the time. It’s no big deal.”

  “Did you hear about his porn thing?” He’s cutting right to the chase.

  “How did you know about it?” I say with shock.

  “Everybody knows about it,” he responds. “I guess somebody found a clip online and then sent it out. Pretty soon everybody was texting me about it, asking me if you knew.”

  Naveen is the editor of our school paper, and he’s been my friend since middle school, so people would naturally assume he was in the know about anything in my little James bubble.

  “Yeah,” I reply in a resigned sigh. “I knew about it.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Awhile.” I shrug. “But I didn’t care, and I didn’t tell anybody because I knew shit would go down if everyone found out. Man, did it ever.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His mom and dad found out,” I say, my expression grave.

  “Oh, shit,” Naveen exhales, his eyebrows shooting up.

  “Yeah, it was bad. His dad freaked out completely, threw him out of the house, and poor James was a total wreck about it. I wanted to be there for him, so I had him stay with me for a couple days until he was feeling a little better.”

  “Man, I didn’t know all that,” Naveen says.

  “He was completely devastated. You know how close he was with his mom. He was shaken to the fucking core when she sided with his dad.”

  “That’s so fucked up,” he sighs. “I feel bad for him.”

  “I felt terrible.” I hang my head. “That whole night all I wanted to do was hold him and make him feel better.”

  Naveen looks at me for a moment longer than he should, and I know he’s teetering on the edge of saying something, but he’s trying to figure out a tactful way to spit it out.

  “What?” I ask when I see his hesitation.

  “Nothing.” He shrugs. “I guess if anybody could comfort him at a time like that, it’d be you.”

  I narrow my eyes at him, but he starts to smile, and I can’t help but smile back.

  “You guys have a weird relationship,” he says, chuckling. “He’s your non-sexual boyfriend.”

  “Shut up!” I laugh.

  “He is!” he continues to tease. “He basically performs all the basic functions of a boyfriend, but without the sex part.”

  I know I’m blushing, but I try to act nonchalant.

  “You guys have this weird love for each other like you’re married, but at the same time it’s like you’re brother and sister.”

  I crinkle my nose at the comparison, but it’s not altogether inaccurate. I’m not entirely certain how to describe my relationship with James—especially now. Just thinking about him at this moment fills my heart with a surge of longing, but it also makes my stomach churn out of fear for what that longing might really mean.

  “Something happened,” I confess, looking down at the table.

  “What?” he eagerly inquires, leaning closer.

  “Nothing major, just something,” I say, trying to figure out how to tell him about James moderately feeling me up, and how much I loved it.

  “You did not have sex with James, did you?” he gasps with a big grin on his face. “Don’t tell me you succumbed to temptation like every other girl in school.”

  “No.” I shake my head and blush so hard that I must be turning purple. “We just—there was a moment. I feel like something changed for me, and now I’m not really sure what I feel.”

  “Oh, shit, Lo,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “You have a crush on James.”

  “I do not have a crush on James!” I vehemently insist. “But,” I begin a little more timidly, “I have started thinking about him a little differently.”

  “So are you saying you have feelings for him now—feelings beyond friendship?”

  “No,” I say, not even sure if it’s the truth. “I think I just missed him a lot, and then, after what happened, I started to realize that there’s an attraction element at work too.”

  “What happened?” Naveen asks, narrowing his eyes.

  “Hm?” I ask, trying not to acknowledge my new lust for James.

  “You said you had a moment, then you said ‘after what happened,’ and I want to know what happened. Clearly something went down if you’re suddenly finding yourself all jumbled up like this,” he continues, his journalistic instincts telling him to pursue the answer.

  “There was just a little incident—nothing significant. He came on to me a little bit,” I shyly confess. “At the time, I pulled the plug on the whole endeavor, but I’m wondering if that was the right decision.”

  If Naveen were James, I’d be spilling all the dirty details. James always wants to know every single aspect of any of my sexual encounters—which have been few and far between. I think it’s because he shares detailed histories of all his sexual conquests with me, and he likes when I can throw a story or two in there too, despite his utter distaste for any of my ventures into the sexual wilderness. If James had been the one I was confiding in right now, I would have spilled it all—the kisses on the neck, the touching, the way my heart fluttered in my chest when he moved his big body on top of me, the way my body kept telling me to let him roll with it, even as my brain told me to shut it all down.

  “So you had a window, you closed it, and now you’re wondering if you should have?” Naveen smiles, and I can see him trying to analyze this in his head.

  “Yeah, kind of,” I say, shrugging one shoulder. “I’ve just never really thought about him like that, so my first impulse was to steer him away from that direction, but then I started to wonder if maybe I wanted to go down that path with him.”

  Our waitress brings our burgers, and we both take a bite before he replies.

  “I’ve always thought James was a good dude,” he says, “and he’s always treated you better than any of the girls he hangs out with, but I think you really need to weigh whether that’s what you want. No disrespect to him—because you know I like him a lot—but he has a rep. With the porn thing, that rep has increased to supermarket-tabloid level. Just from a PR standpoint, I’d tell you not to even attempt it.”

  I laugh lightly at his sudden turn from buddy to publicist.

  “You’re not tarnished by rumors and gossip, but he is. Let’s say you guys do hook up and that he really does become your boyfriend, then all that shit would reflect back on you. There are girls right now who are denying they ever slept with him—girls people literally watched him have sex with—and they’re trying to act like they never touched him because they know he’s a porn star now. It’s different from when he was just the school’s reigning manwhore—”

  I laugh loudly, and Naveen gives
me a smile. It really is the perfect way to describe James; I’m not going to lie. If he was a woman, they’d call him a skank, a slut, a whore, a nympho, but because he’s a guy everyone applauds him for his hypersexual behavior.

  “The whole point is, when he used to sleep with all those girls before, it was a behind-closed-doors kind of thing, even when it was out in the open at parties and stuff. It was a smaller circle, and only people who were there saw it firsthand. Now he’s all over the Internet doing videos with all these different girls, everyone’s seen it, and he’s gone from rumored slut to legit slut.”

  I breathe a resigned sigh. “You have a point.”

  “Personally, I think you should try to put a little distance between you and him. A lot of rumors are going to be swirling, and you don’t want this to somehow follow you all the way to college. What if you meet really cool people there and they’re freaked out that you’re best buddies with a porn star? And imagine how much worse that would be if you were dating him!”

  “I’m not that bothered by what people might say. Nobody’s opinion will threaten my friendship with him…but I see your point.”

  “Honestly, Lola,” Naveen says, “think about everything you have ahead of you. Do you even know what percentage of kids who apply to that school even get in? Hardly any!”

  I feel a little surge of pride and nod my head as he continues.

  “Your life hasn’t even really taken off yet, and you’d want to get tied down with a guy you’ve known since elementary school?” he asks. “Think about the cool people you’re going to meet—smart people who will graduate and get killer jobs doing amazing things instead of making Internet porn.”

  “You’re right,” I quietly answer, feeling a little dismayed. “I think I just got hung up on him because he was here and the whole flirtation thing was new for us. It messed with my usual flow. I should be focusing on college and moving forward with my life—but I absolutely will not leave him behind. He’s a part of my life, no matter what capacity that may be, and I’m not going to cut him out just because people might judge me for his career.”