Chapter Fourteen
Eden
“Less bubbles! I want to see the action, not have it all blocked by foam!”
Glenn barked an order at an intern, who quickly raced over to the Jacuzzi and flicked a switch on the side. Troy was sitting in the tub with a contestant named Sarah, and we were filming a one-on-one date scene between the two of them. It had been Glenn’s idea to put them in the hot tub together with some champagne, mostly as an excuse to titillate viewers with the soaking wet, half-naked bodies of two beautiful people, but so far, things weren’t going well. Sarah was bitching about all of the other contestants instead of trying to start a deep and meaningful conversation with Troy, and Troy was beginning to look uncomfortable being so close to her.
He kept glancing over at me as if to ascertain whether I was okay with him hanging out so closely with a bikini-clad woman, and when he did it for the third time, I gave him a thumbs up and smiled. It was all part of the job, and I didn’t want him thinking I was going to get jealous and freak out over him simply fulfilling his contractual obligations to go on fake ‘dates’ with the girls.
“This light is fucking terrible. You two, go and get something from the lighting crew to brighten things up!” Glenn shouted, gesturing towards Candice and me, seeing as we were standing closest to him.
Candice and I headed over to a large crew trailer to ask for some spotlights to place around the tub, and while we waited for the guys there to grab us some, we chatted about how the show had been going for the last week since we returned from the camping trip.
“Do you think our Sabotage Queen could’ve been Tara?” I asked, referring to the petite blonde contestant who had been cut during the last elimination episode. Ever since she left, things had been a lot quieter on the set, and we hadn’t had a single incident of sabotage against any of the girls. I was hoping it had been her, because that meant we no longer had to concern ourselves with finding the saboteur.
Candice shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. If it was her, then at least we don’t have to worry about it anymore. Especially you; Glenn’s been riding you pretty hard about catching whoever it was, hasn’t he?”
I nodded, and the words ‘riding you pretty hard’ quickly made my thoughts flash to Troy and the particular way we’d made love last night when he sneaked into my trailer. I felt heat rising in my cheeks, and Candice gave me a funny look. “You okay?” she asked. “You’ve gone a bit red.”
“I’m fine, but thanks.”
The lighting crew guys finally returned to the front of the trailer with two big boxes and several power boards. “Give this to Brett,” one of them said, a cigarette lazily dangling in one hand. “He’ll know how to set it up. If you have trouble, come and get us.”
“Thanks.”
Candice and I turned tail and headed back towards the hot tub area with the gear. Glenn was nodding and smiling broadly at the camera crew as they captured what was going on in the hot tub now, and I stopped in my tracks as I squinted towards it and saw what was happening. Sarah had removed her bikini top, and she was perched on Troy’s lap in the tub, passionately making out with him. He was actively kissing her back, and his muscular arms were wrapped around her. One hand snaked back to her front before squeezing her bare left breast while the other moved further down, clearly sliding inside her bikini bottom from the back to grope her pert ass-cheeks.
What the hell?
Had he somehow interpreted my earlier thumbs up as a blanket statement that said ‘you can do whatever the hell you want with these women’? If so, then that was honestly bullshit. We’d spoken about this issue before, and he’d made it pretty clear to me that he had absolutely no interest in any of the contestants—at least that’s what he’d said. I’d told him that he might have to kiss a few of them occasionally during date scenes, just for the cameras, and I was fine with that because I knew it wouldn’t mean anything. But this…this wasn’t just a little kiss for the cameras! Sarah was writhing on his lap and moaning into his mouth, and he was giving it back just as good with all the boob-groping and ass-grabbing.
He was just as into it as she was.
“Eden, are you really sure you’re okay?” Candice asked, stopping and looking at me with her eyebrows furrowed. “You were all red a second ago, and now you’ve gone really pale.”
“Yeah, I’m actually not feeling well all of a sudden,” I mumbled.
She put her hand on my shoulder. “Go back to your trailer and get some rest. I’ll cover for you here. It’s not like we need a hundred producers to finish one hot tub scene, anyway,” she said, before looking over my shoulder at the scene. “Jeez, they’re really going at it. I think he’s actually got a finger in her pussy now. Like horny rabbits, huh?
“Yeah. Thanks for covering for me, Candice,” I managed to choke out before turning and practically racing down the path which led to the area where my trailer was parked.
I couldn’t believe what I’d witnessed back there. For the last week, I’d honestly thought Troy and I were on the same page in our rekindled relationship. He’d told me we were! He’d gone on and on about coming on the show just to find me, and he’d made such an effort to get back into my affections….and what, he was just going to throw that away for a chance to bang a drunken girl in a hot tub? There was just no excuse—the way he’d been kissing her and touching her was not the actions of a man who wasn’t genuinely interested. He’d really wanted her, and he was probably having her on camera at this exact second. Glenn was probably ecstatic; viewers absolutely loved it when a contestant and a Stud had hot, dirty sex, and ratings always soared when it happened.
Hot tears filled my eyes, but this time I refused to let them spill out. Troy obviously hadn’t changed as much as he’d told me he had, and he was still a party-hard, womanizing asshole. I wasn’t going to shed a tear over him ever again.
Not even one.