The old lady must have kept our secret, because when we presented ourselves to the gallery owner after closing after all the other patrons had left, she didn’t say a word of censure or reproach to us. And so we were able to have the night I planned—some wine and snacks I packed, and a campout on the gallery floor, the camera trained on us from a perch at the foot of the sleeping bag, recording everything.
This is possibly the silliest thing I’ll ever admit to, but right now, the mere fact that Devi and I are sharing a sleeping bag makes me feel floaty. A side effect of being a porn star is that I don’t have very many firsts to share with women. I hardly have any firsts, actually. But I’ve never spent the night with anyone in a place other than my house. I know, that’s insane, but it’s true. Raven and I were always so busy with work that there was never a chance of our travel schedules matching up...so no hotels. And because I’m so busy, she (or the girlfriend I had before her, Tessalie), always came to my house after a day’s work. I have fucked women in every imaginable space, public and private, but when it comes to actual, honest-to-God sleeping, when it comes to snuggling and spooning and talking about whatever random stuff floats to mind, it’s only ever been in my bed. The novelty of sharing this first with Devi is better than a whole bottle of eighteen-year-old scotch.
“You don’t seem like the kind of person to have a two-person sleeping bag,” Devi points out dreamily as we lie on our backs and look at the strings of fake stars above us. “Do you camp a lot?”
“I’ve only been camping once with a church group and I hated it. Showers are very important to me.”
She gives a rueful sigh. “I think I’ve been camping more times than I can count.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. No, my parents got this for me a couple Christmases ago because they never know what to buy. What do you get the man who has everything—or at least gets to fuck everything? And the answer is usually the kinds of gift you see in catalogs on the airplane.”
Devi rolls over onto her elbow, her face suddenly serious. “Do you think that you want to be the man who fucks everything forever?”
I turn my head to look at her. “You mean, like do I ever see myself quitting porn?”
“Yeah.”
I think for a moment. “Maybe?” I finally say, after my thoughts refuse to order themselves out of the incomprehensible jumble they are right now. “Like, I know logically that the job depends on my body, and my body only has a lifespan of being nice to look at for another decade or so, unless by some magic, I age like Robert Downey Jr. or Terry Crews or something. I guess I just keep thinking that I’ll have my shit figured out by then, and I’ll know what to do when the time comes to step away.”
“If you could do anything, what would it be?”
Her brow is adorably furrowed right now, as if the answer to her question is the most important thing she’ll ever hear. I reach up with my thumb and smooth it out, bringing a smile to her lips. “I’d make movies. Not just sexy movies, but all kinds of movies. But that’s not really the kind of thing I can just jump into, and I don’t know enough about it even if I wanted to jump in anyway.”
“You could go to film school.”
“That used to be the plan.” I roll up on my elbow too so I can look at her better. “Hey, Cass?”
“Yes?”
“Tonight—did it feel real? With the camera?” As I ask, I glance over to the camera trained on us now, recording in silence.
Even in the dim light, I can see her cheeks color. “Yes, Logan,” she says quietly. “It felt real.”
“Does it feel real now?”
A pause. Then: “Yes.”
I trace the curve of her shoulder, my fingers dancing over her skin to find the slope of her rib cage, and my hand settles in making circles in the dip of her waist. “I want things to be real between us all of the time,” I say, and I didn’t realize how nervous I would be saying this until I’m saying it now. “I know we’ve admitted that we like each other in a physical sense. That we’re attracted to each other and want to be more than friends. But it’s even more than that for me.”
I feel her tense up underneath my hand, and I have a brief debate—backpedal or continue? But I have to continue. If she decides that my feelings make her too uncomfortable to go on with Star-Crossed, then I have to accept that. But I don’t think I can hide how I really feel from her any longer.
But to make myself more comfortable, I revert to what I know best—sex. My hand skims around her waist to the curve of her ass, and then I find her * warm and soft between her legs. She moans as I start playing with her.