The light is all wrong.

Normally, this wouldn’t bother me. I am not bothered easily, especially not on a set and especially not on a day like today, when my day’s work involves fucking two beautiful women.

But the problem is that this is my set.  And the two beautiful women are my friends, who are admittedly getting paid to be here. But still. They could be off doing anything else and probably getting paid better, but instead they chose to give me their time.  Which means, as a director and as a friend, I feel a lot of responsibility right now.

I want this scene to look good.

Don’t get me wrong, the set already looks good because it’s my house, and my house is amazing.  High up in the Hills, lots of windows, lots of open space.  It was the first thing I bought myself when I started making decent money, and even though I could probably upgrade to Bel-Air or North of Montana, I’ve stayed put.  I like Laurel Canyon and I fucking love this house. But right now, light is pouring in like God himself is outside, and it’s making everything over lit and high-key, and like a fucking Christian Singles ad, all bright and hopeful.

No Christian Singles here today, although I give myself a little grin at the mental joke and then glance over at Tanner, the twenty-four-year-old camera genius I’ve somehow tricked into working for my company.  “What’s it look like?”

Tanner shrugs, not looking away from the camera, where he’s toying with a few settings.  Ginger and Lexi are in the frame, both still in lingerie and both scrolling through their phones, looking like bored customers in line at the post office—save for the see-through bras and hickeys already blooming on their necks.

“We can fix some of this in post,” Tanner says, eyes still on the girls, “but right now, it’s kind of got a laundry commercial vibe.”

I chew on my lip for half a second.  The essence of this business is speed and quantity, specifically the speed at which you can create quantity.  Which often means sacrificing quality.  Most directors wouldn’t give the lighting a second thought—in fact, there is a certain sense of tradition to the harshly lit scenes.  What began as an accidental convergence of cheapness and lack of equipment turned into an industry aesthetic.  After all, who gives a shit what the mood of the scene is?  The mood is fucking.  The mood is always fucking.  And if you can jack off to it, then mood achieved.

But that wasn’t what I wanted O’Toole Films to be when I started it.  I wanted to find a place between the high-end vanilla stuff that suburban couples rented on anniversaries and dirty dungeon porn. And there has to be a place in between, right?  A place for the depraved porn junkie who also happens to have taste?

I make a snap decision.  “We’ll finish the kissing here.  Then I’ll pull them both into my bedroom.  The windows in there are north-facing, so maybe the light will be less…”

“…1970’s sitcom?” Tanner finishes for me.

“I was going to say aggressive.”

“Ah.”

With a sigh, I trot back over to the girls.  “So I was thinking after we get done with the kissing—the part where I make you two kiss each other—we’ll move to my bedroom.”

“You should drag us by the hair,” Ginger suggests, lowering her phone and narrowing her eyes past my shoulder at the door to the bedroom, as if blocking the scene in her mind.  “That’d be hot.”

“So hot,” Lexi echoes, not bothering to look up from her Instagram.

That is one thing about this business.  In about an hour, I’ll have my dick up both their asses, but right now neither of them will look me in the eye.  Not like they’re ashamed to be here.  But like I almost don’t exist to them unless we’re fucking.

Which is kind of a lonely thought.

Kind of a really lonely thought.

And I want to slap myself for that.  I’m about to fuck two women who I love to fuck, and we’re all going to make money doing it. When did I get so goddamn broody about everything?

Raven.  That’s when.

Today is a good day.  It is also going to be a sober day.  So I refuse to let Raven infect my thoughts, moving them instead to the pleasant way Lexi’s ass curves into her girlish hips, the way her sleek blond hair begs to be tangled and tugged.

Tanner gives us a thumbs up and we move to my sofa.  The phones vanish, Ginger’s thigh-highs are adjusted, and then we’re back to the kissing, which is one of my favorite parts of my line of work.  

Well, all the parts are my favorite part, but this especially.  Ginger—red-headed, tattooed, a ten-year industry veteran like me—crawls up to me on all fours, her full tits threatening to spill out of her bra, her pretty, overly made-up face schooled into a convincing pout.  Lexi, small and slender, has nestled against my other side, petting my dick through my jeans, coaxing it to full-length as I impatiently grab for Ginger and pull her to me.

“Come here,” I growl, delighted at the little squeal she gives as I yank her onto my lap.  Ginger’s a hardened pro, and so I’ve made it a private goal of mine to shock genuine reactions out her whenever I can.  I like genuine.  I like raw.

I like real.

Lexi transitions seamlessly into petting Ginger’s ass now, tugging on Ginger’s thong and spanking her for the benefit of Tanner’s second camera directly across from the couch.  He stays behind the one shooting from the side, so he can change angles or cut in closer when he needs; later we’ll blend the footage between the two cameras to maximize all the elements of the scene.  But the reason I have Tanner is so I don’t have to think about this shit too hard when I’m actually in the scene—I tell him what I want, we discuss everything beforehand. After it’s over, we’ll edit the scene together, but right now I can just focus on the only thing I want to focus on, which is tasting the inside of Ginger’s mouth.

I crush my lips to hers, and she tastes, fittingly enough, like Big Red gum.  We kiss a few more times before I cup my hand around the back of her neck and hold her face fast to mine as I part her lips with my own and lick inside.  She tries to pull back, since, like a lot of girls, she likes to stage kiss.  But I don’t.  I deepen the kiss, stroking my tongue against hers and then pulling her lower lip between my teeth.   She makes a little noise—a noise of protest or affirmation, I’m not sure which—but I keep going.  As per our pre-game discussion, she’ll reach up and subtly tap the outside of my arm if she gets emotionally or physically uncomfortable and I’ll stop the second that happens, but until then she’s mine.  

No tap, no mercy.

Once I have Ginger panting, I turn my face to Lexi. I decide right away that I’m going to book a million more scenes with her as soon as we’re finished today, because she’s not afraid of tongue, not at all, and when I reach down to play with her pussy, I find it completely soaking wet.

“Good girl,” I murmur against her mouth.  She squirms against my hand, and I grin at her.  “Is there something you want?”

“I want you to fuck me,” she croons.

She says it with the rote intonation of an experienced performer, and I press the pad of my finger against her clit, rubbing a tight little circle that makes her gasp.  “I don’t believe you,” I inform her quietly, moving my hand to spank her ass.  She lets out a breath of real surprise.  

“You better convince me or maybe I won’t fuck you at all,” I continue.  “Maybe I won’t let you come.  How do you feel about that?”

She blinks at me, her mouth parting as I find her clit once again, stroking her in earnest now.  She whimpers and I can feel her wetness all over my hand now.  “Please,” she murmurs.  

And then there it is, that moment I love, when the performance starts to skid into the real, where her body is telling her yes yes yes, you want to fuck him, and it becomes about more than the money or the scene. It becomes about relieving the ache I’ve just created inside her.  (I like to send my girls away happy.  It’s good business, and I’m impossibly addicted to the feeling of a girl coming on my dick.)

I give Lexi one final, lingering kiss, and then I guide my girls towards each other.  They start kissing, Ginger grinding down on my erection, Lexi running her small hands over Ginger’s tits, and when I look down, I see that Ginger is leaving a wet spot on the front of my jeans.

“Fuck,” I groan.  “Fuck yes.”

They lick and nibble each other’s mouths, Ginger taking charge as she slides her hand behind Lexi’s neck and moves down to kiss her throat, then back up to Lexi’s lips.  I catch a glimpse of pink tongues and white teeth, and my dick would look so good in between their faces right now, sliding in between those lips and tongues. I can see it slipping into one girl’s mouth, then the other’s, and oh my God, if Ginger doesn’t stop rubbing her pussy against me, I am going to flip her over and fuck her ass right now.

That thought summons another—a memory really—of different place and time, of two different girls.  I bite it down, push it away, because it’s a Raven thought…except not really, because even though Raven was there, it’s the other girl I want to think about, it’s the other girl I’ve been secretly jacking off to for the last three years.

It’s Devi Dare that Logan O’Toole thinks of when he wants to get off by himself.

And then out of the corner of my eye, I see Tanner raise a finger, our signal that we’ve got enough of the foreplay and it’s time to move on. I am so reluctant to stop all this when I have both girls kissing and grinding so nicely on top of me, with Devi and her perfectly plump ass hovering in my mind…

With a low growl, I fist one hand into Ginger’s fire engine red hair and the other into Lexi’s silky blond locks, and I stand up, dragging them both with me, forcing them down to their hands and knees where they crawl after me like the little minxes they are.

I let go of their hair and walk backward to my bedroom, going slowly enough that Tanner can join my backwards walk with a camera and so the girls don’t bruise their knees clambering across my hardwood floors.

Neither Ginger nor Lexi get off on such overt submission, but that’s fine because they are faking it so well for the camera, waggling their asses and batting their eyes as they prowl towards my bedroom door like cats.  It’s also fine because I’ve tried to stay away from the hardcore submission scenes for a while (three months) for a plethora of reasons (Raven, Raven, Raven) and playful, fake dominance is exactly the kind of facile, uncomplicated work I’ve been burying myself in lately.

“Okay, that’s good.  Give me about fifteen minutes to set up?” Tanner doesn’t wait for a response as he trots back to the living room for his equipment.  I go into my bedroom to make sure I don’t have embarrassing shit all over the place, which I don’t, just laundry and endless stacks of external hard drives and some tax stuff shoved haphazardly into a binder. I pull the covers tighter across my already-made bed (I make my bed every morning, just like my mom taught me) and almost step on a pile of DVD cases lying on the floor.  I pick up the movie on the top.  

By now, I can almost read Raven’s name without flinching.  Raven’s Real Playdates was a feature-length film we made near the very beginning of our relationship, only a couple months in, and while I usually give all the DVDs I get from my films away as prizes and contest incentives, I kept this one.  I flip the case over to look at the back, at the still of Raven lying back getting her pussy licked.  The licking is being done by a smiling girl on her hands and knees, a girl with long cinnamon hair and golden-brown skin.  

I’m already hard, but the sight of Devi Dare with her naked ass in the air is enough to make a man insane.  Especially when that man remembers all too well what it was like to touch her, what it was like to push his cock into that smiling mouth.

“You okay?” I asked, right before the filming started and she, Raven and I climbed onto the bed.

“Yeah,” she whispered.  “It’s my first real scene though, so…”

“Take it easy?”

A sunny laugh.  “I was going to say make it memorable.”

It was memorable for me at least.  I’ve jacked off to both the memory of that scene and the actual thing on DVD enough times to have every gasp and moan memorized. And still I’m about to come just thinking about it.

I need to fuck someone.  Where is Tanner with the cameras?

By the time I’ve kicked my dirty boxers and the Criterion Collection DVD cases under my bed and walked back out, Tanner is still breaking down equipment and the girls are already back on their phones.  Ginger is apparently tweeting selfies of her tits, while Lexi giggles at something she’s reading.

I accept the fact that fucking is still a ways off and I readjust my raging erection as I help Tanner bring in his camera stands and lighting boards.

“Are you going to Vida’s party tonight?” Tanner asks as we work.  “You should, you know.  Networking and all that bullshit.”

“I honestly haven’t thought about it,” I say, which is a lie.  I’ve thought about it a lot.  Vida Gines is the grand-maven of the porn scene right now, a former star turned producer, and her party tonight is celebrating her company’s acquisition of Lelie, a popular Dutch feminist porn studio.  And that makes this party a problem for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love feminist porn.  The authenticity, the real women, the real orgasms, and I am a little obsessed with how creative and visual the directors are. Not to mention that my erection-fairy Devi Dare has only done the fair trade, female-friendly girl-girl stuff since Raven’s Real Playdates, and I make it a point to watch every single one of those.  

Plus, Vida’s party is going to be huge, and while O’Toole Films is doing well, it never hurts to rub shoulders with affiliate managers, distributors, and new talent.

No, the problem is that the party will have the feminist porn crowd there.  And the art-porn crowd, and the alt-porn crowd, and the locus at the middle of those three groups…

Raven.

My brain stutters to a halt, and I blink at the lighting board I just set on the floor.

Tanner reads my mind.  “She may not be there, you know.”

“I know,” I say defensively, like my brain hasn’t just been immolated by a thousand terrible, wonderful memories.  

“And even if she is, maybe it’s time you showed her that you’re over…whatever it was that happened.  You’re one of the biggest names in the industry right now—this is your playground too.  You can’t hide from everything forever.”

I take my time answering, fussing with the lighting board stand far longer than necessary.  But when I do answer, it’s only two words.  “You’re right.”

This satisfies Tanner.  “Of course, I’m right.  I’m always right.  I was right about tacos for breakfast this morning and I am right about Vida’s party.  You go, impress everyone with your smile and your dick, and you make Raven regret the day she left you.”

Tanner makes it sound so easy, so direct, and for a moment, I see it in my head the way I would film it. An establishing shot of Vida’s modernist mansion, richly lit, scored by something low but catchy.  Me, laughing, making other people laugh.  Raven, alone and glowering into a glass of mid-range white wine.  There would be a moment—closely tracked, carefully scored—where I would pass her on the way to somewhere, the balcony maybe.  And she would lift her eyes to mine, and see the easygoing confidence I’m famous for, and nothing else.  She wouldn’t see the empty scotch bottles or that night I saw Goldfinger three times in a row at a classic movie theater because I couldn’t bear the thought of going home to an empty house.  No, she would see the real Logan, the new Logan. The Logan who was about to kick everybody’s ass (and then come all over those asses afterwards.)

Adrenaline pumps through me.  For three months, my life has been a cycle of fucking, filming, and editing.  I’ve only seen my friends if they happened to be part of my filming and fucking cycle.  But tonight, all of that is going to change.  Tonight, I’m going to take back my old life.

“Get the girls,” I tell Tanner with a grin as I unbutton my jeans.  “I’m ready.”

Tonight, Logan O’Toole will finally come back from the land of the brokenhearted.