“So you never told me where we’re going for the blowjob,” Devi says a few hours later.  With Madam Psuka’s card jammed in my back pocket, we walked all over the boardwalk, eating shaved ice and hot dogs and cotton candy, and watching the street artists.  Then Devi led me down to the beach and we walked ankle-deep in the surf, gossiping about the porn people we knew and speculating about what would happen in the next couple of years with our industry.  And then we made our way to my car, where we are now, heading back into the city.

I look over at Devi.  As usual, she has the window cracked, the hot wind ruffling her hair.  For a brief, tiny moment, I panic that the tarot card Madam drew for me might mean that Devi and I can’t make it, or won’t make it, for some important but unseeable reason, and my veins are flooded with an anxious adrenaline.

It’s not real, I tell myself.  It’s not real.

But what if it is?  What if this is some sort of sign that Devi doesn’t love me back? Or that I’ll have to give her up?

It’s not real.

Despite my mental pep talk, anxiety coats my voice when I say, “It’s a surprise where we’re going.”

She hears the change in my voice and turns her head to stare at me.  “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.  Fine.”

“Okay,” she says gently, letting me have my space without the slightest hint of resentment, and then I feel bad for shutting her out.

I take a breath, and then confess.  “That tarot card is a little disturbing, don’t you think?”

She laughs.  “Is that really what you’re thinking about right now, Mr. This Stuff Is So Silly?”

“Well, it’s hard to think it’s silly with all the death imagery,” I say, a bit grumpily.

“The Hanged Man isn’t dead, he’s suffering.  There’s a difference.”

“Well, that cheers me right up.  Thank you.”

“But in the end, he sees the world completely differently.  Sometimes perspective is painful.”

“You know, maybe you should also be fired from the fortune cookie factory.”

She puts a hand on my thigh, her fingers warm and slender, and I relax under her touch.  “It’s not divination, Logan.  It’s not prophecy.  It’s just something to think about.”

Sigh.  “Sure, Cass.”

“I think I know what would cheer you up.”

“What’s that?” I ask, but then her seat belt is unbuckled and she’s kneeling on her seat and leaning into me, her lips against my neck.  And then she’s sucking, soft and wet, sending shivers down my spine and straight to my balls, which start feeling heavy and constrained in my jeans.  I want to slide my hand up her thighs and see what else is soft and wet, but my stupid car is a manual transmission, and the thick L.A. traffic means I’m constantly shifting between gears as I slow down and speed up.

“This isn’t fair,” I murmur.  “I can’t touch you back.”

“Mmm, good,” she croons into my ear.  “I get to be the one in control.”

“Don’t say that stuff to me, Cass, or we may not make it to our destination.”

She doesn’t respond, just keeps kissing and licking all around my neck and earlobe and jaw, and it’s only by the grace of God that I don’t crash the car.  As it is, I still arrive at our filming spot with a hard-on straining the seams of my jeans.  I can barely focus enough to get the car parked and turned off.

“Where are we?” Devi asks, finally relenting with the necking and peering out the windshield.  We’re outside a small mural-covered warehouse near the river, with the skyline towering in the background, shimmering in the evening heat.

My skin dies a little when she pulls away, but it’s probably necessary unless I want to walk in there with a giant erection tenting my jeans.  “It’s an art gallery, a new one.  They’re doing an exhibit I thought you might like.”  I’m a little shy when I say this, mostly because I’m worried she’ll think it’s lame, and I want to impress her, dammit, and not just with my ability to make her come in under two minutes.  “The gallery owner let me rent it for the night, so after it closes to the public at nine, it’s all ours until morning.”

Her face splits into a huge smile.  “That sounds amazing.  Porn in an art gallery?”

“Yeah, I’d like to say that I have this meta vision for juxtaposing high art and low art, but really it’s because I thought the exhibit was something you’d like, plus it was cheap to rent.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” she says with a wink, and then gets out of the car.  I get out too, grab our bag, and walk to the front door to open it for her, catching a glimpse of the inside through the glass as I do.

It’s still eight o’clock, meaning that the gallery is open, and to my dismay, I see that there’s some sort of reception going on, so the space is crowded with people drinking free wine and milling around.  I was hoping to get some shots of Devi walking around the exhibit, since I got permission from both the owner and the artist to use it as a backdrop, but filming her will be difficult with a bunch of randos walking into my shot and needing releases or whatever.

I quickly decide it’s okay, and that I can always film her later.  I’m too excited for her to see it to wait any longer.  I open the door all the way, unleashing the normal gallery onslaught of music and voices.  I gesture for Devi to walk in and she does.

I follow her in, admiring the way her ass moves under her dress as I do.  Rich orchestral music reverberates throughout the space, deep strings and discordant piano keys, and I see the exact moment that Devi realizes what the exhibit is, understands why I thought she’d like it.

“Logan,” she breathes, reaching for my hand without taking her eyes off the display in front of us.  “This is...you...I can’t believe…”  She finally stops trying to put her feelings into words and simply squeezes my hand, overcome.  My heart soars so far above the ground that I’m certain it’s reached lunar orbit.  

If this is all it takes to make her so happy, then I’m taking her to an art gallery every day.

The exhibit is called Zodiactive and is laid out in a large circle.  All throughout the gallery, tiny light bulbs of various brightness are arranged, in a manner that looks completely random and discombobulated to me, but that I know from the gallery’s website is designed to mimic the constellations visible from Los Angeles at this time of year.  The bulbs are strung up high, but also line the walls, creating the dazzling effect of being surrounded by stars.  Gauzy strips of fabric in deep lavenders and pinks hang from the ceiling, wafting with the movement of the guests, the ephemeral panels representing nebulas and gas clouds.  And punctuating the gallery space at regular intervals are huge, magnificent paintings, each one representing a sign of the zodiac, with more light bulbs studding the canvas to show where the actual stars are in each constellation.

The artist in me appreciates the effect of the light and the color and the spacey music, but the Logan in me, who doesn’t know shit about the zodiac or the constellations they come from, is deeply bored.  So instead, I turn all of my attention to Devi, watching her eager eyes drink everything in, watching the way her lips move as she murmurs quiet things to herself that I can’t quite catch.  We make our way around the circle, stopping every three feet for Devi to examine the light bulbs and declare which constellations they are supposed to be, and once for me to grab a couple cups of free wine.

At one point, she stops and slowly spins around, as if lost.  “It’s like being in the sky,” she tells me with excitement in her voice.  “It’s easy to forget that the sky isn’t flat, that the stars are actually light years apart.  But it doesn’t feel cold or distant at all when rendered this way.  It feels intimate.”

I lift my hand and gently sweep some hair out of her eyes.  She pauses and looks at me, our eyes meeting, and it’s as if every atom in my body is thrumming with electricity.  There’s something about her, some indefinable thing, that supersedes her lovely face and sexy-as-hell body and even her top-notch brain.  It’s strange, because even at the height of my relationship with Raven, I could list logically all the reasons I enjoyed being with her—namely sex and shared interests—and loving her was more of a sustained choice than a feeling.  But with Devi, it’s more than a choice or a feeling—it’s fact, just as much a universal fact as gravity, or the speed of light.

Because with Devi, it’s different.  It’s like there’s something beyond the quantifiable, easy-to-name reasons she affects me.  My pull to her is something above the sexual, above the intellectual, and maybe even above the emotional, and all of a sudden, I feel myself at the edge of a vast abyss.  My stomach drops as I continue looking into those dark gold eyes, because what I feel for Devi is a thousand times stronger than anything I’ve ever felt, even after three years with Raven, and I’m scared.  I’m scared by the intensity of my own feelings, and I’m scared that she doesn’t feel the same way.  I’m scared that this speed of light feeling is going to blast a hole right through me, and I’ll be left gutted in a way that Raven never could have gutted me.

It’s this fear that makes me swallow and look away.  “Do you want more wine?” I ask Devi, even though I know she’s barely touched the wine she already has.

“No, I’m good.”  She puts a hand on my wrist.  “Logan, this is more than I could have ever expected.  This is the best fake date I’ve ever been on.”

Her words prick into me like needles.  

Fake date.

Right.  Because now we’re on location.  But then why can’t it also be real?  Why can’t something be real and planned?  Real and recorded?  Why can’t it be both?

I can’t help myself, I say the words pressing against the inside of my lips begging to be let out.  “It’s not a fake date, Devi.  Yes, we’re recording what happens later, but it’s real.”  I plead with her with my eyes.  “I want us...I mean—I want there to be an us.  I want to take you on actual dates.  I want this to be a real date.”

Her lips are parted ever so slightly, and they tremble now as she searches for a response, and oh my God, I am going to devour her mouth if I watch it any longer.  With a quick glance around us, I grab her hand and pull her in between two of the zodiac canvases, and suddenly the noise dims a little and we are by ourselves, sandwiched between canvas and exposed brick.  I lead her a little farther around the outer edge of the exhibit, until we’re near the back of the gallery space.  Here, the narrow gaps between the canvases are covered with a cluster of gauzy fabric panels and the comparative dearth of lights in this corner gives an extra shroud of shadows.  In other words, though only a few inches of fabric, canvas and paint separate us from the other people in the gallery, it won’t be easy to be seen, unless somebody took the trouble to look at the six-inch gap between the floor and the bottom of the canvas, but I honestly doubt that will happen.

Once we’re sufficiently hidden, I take her cup of wine and set it down a nearby ledge with mine, and drop my bag to the floor.  Devi looks like she’s used this interval to compose herself somewhat.  

“It can’t be a real date if we’re filming it,” she says, her chin rising slightly.  “This is amazing, Logan, don’t get me wrong.  No man has ever done anything like this with me.  But once we turn on the camera, it’s different.  You have to see that.  Even if it’s not solely performative, it can’t be completely genuine.”

I’m already shaking my head.  “I don’t think there has to be barrier between art and life.  I don’t think capturing a moment makes it any less authentic.”

She gives me a sad smile.  “But when that moment’s being captured to make money?  When that moment is being made for sale?  How can that not retroactively affect the moment itself?”

A tiny voice inside of me wonders if she has a point, but I push it aside.  I want to prove to her that we can have it all—the realness and the camera—and that all it takes is a shift in perspective.  After all, wasn’t that what she was trying to explain to me about The Hanged Man?  Perspective?

I step closer to her.  “Will you let me try to convince you?”

“Convince me of what?”

I lean forward and brace myself against the wall with my forearms, caging her between the wall and me.  “Let me turn on the camera,” I say, using the tip of my nose to trace the line of her jaw.  She shudders and goose bumps erupt everywhere on her skin.  “Let me film us doing our thing tonight and show you how real it can be.”

“I’m not saying I don’t want to film,” she says.  I take her earlobe between my teeth and she lets out a soft groan.  “I just…”

“I know what you’re saying,” I breathe into her ear.  “And what I’m saying is I want you to be open to the idea of it feeling real.  I want you to forget about the camera while I’m touching you.”

“I can’t,” she protests faintly.

“I think you can.  At least let me try to help you?”

She sighs, half resignation, half pleasure because my mouth is now on her neck.  “Okay,” she relents.  “I’ll try to forget about the camera tonight.”

I give her neck one last nip and then straighten up, reaching for my bag.

“Wait, now?” she asks, sounding horrified.  “While there’re still people here?”

I give her an evil grin.  “Are you being modest, Devi Dare?”

“There’s a difference between modest and law-abiding,” she shoots back.

Undeterred, I dig out the camera and turn it on, setting it on the ledge so it’s aimed at our corner.  While I adjust the settings to compensate for the dim light, Devi lists off all the reasons it’s a bad idea to film right now.  

“We could get caught.  We could get thrown out.  We could get arrested.  They’ll find out you didn’t have the right permits and you could get fined.  Even Vida could get in trouble.”

Satisfied that the camera is set up well, I walk towards her and slowly back her into the wall.  Her voice falters and her words trail off as my stomach touches hers, and then she gasps as my hips move forward and I press my growing erection into her.

“I’m not ignoring your concerns,” I tell her, sliding one hand around her waist and the other up her neck to hold the side of her face.  “But I want you to trust me.  Let me take on your concerns, and I promise to take care of you.  I’ll be responsible for you—for us—and I’ll make sure we don’t get caught.”

I feel her hesitate, and even though I want nothing more than to seal my lips over hers and kiss the resistance right out of her, I have to know whether or not this is an actual limit for her.

I use my hand to guide her face so that she’s looking at me.  “Devi, it’s okay if this is a boundary.  Being in public.  All you have to do is tell me.”

She worries at her bottom lip with her teeth, and then she finally shakes her head.  “As long as you listen for anyone…”

“I give you my solemn vow.”

“...then I guess it’s okay.”

“You guess?  I need more than that, Cass.”

She takes a breath.  “I’m sure it’s okay.”

“I don’t know how much better that is.”  I’m full hard now, and all I want is to start, but I have to know that she feels safe and comfortable.  Otherwise, no dice.  “It seems like you’re uncertain...do you want to try it and then if you need to stop, we can stop?”

Her forehead wrinkles.  “Like with using a safe word?”

“Right, but you can just snap your fingers if you’d like.”  I’ve found that many girls struggle to vocalize their limits, even with permission, and sometimes things like snapping fingers are easier.

“Okay.  I’ll snap my fingers if I want to stop.  But I don’t think I’ll need to.” She gives me a small smile.  “I trust you.”

“Thank God,” I exhale.  “I didn’t know how much longer I could keep from kissing you.”  

“Then don’t wait any longer,” she says, and I don’t.  I do have something to prove, after all.

I lower my face, brushing across her mouth once, twice, three times before I firmly settle my lips against hers.  For a minute, everything seems singularly slow and distinct: her small inhalations and exhalations tickling the skin above my upper lip, the way her hand finds the back of my neck to pull me even closer to her, the way my heart pounds in my chest as I cradle her face against mine.  And then time catches up with us all in a rush, Devi’s fingers finding my hair and pulling, my hand dropping down past her hip.  I ruck up her skirt until my hand finds the bare skin of her ass and then I’m grabbing and squeezing the delicious curve of firm flesh, my cock leaping every time my fingers dig into her skin.

She’s just as busy, her other hand finding the bottom of my shirt and then sliding up my stomach to trail lines of light scratches across my abs.  I hiss as she finds a flat nipple and pinches it, the sensation traveling straight to my dick.  

I deepen the kiss, parting her lips with mine and licking inside her mouth.  It’s sweet, like the cotton candy she ate earlier, and warm—and like a lightning strike, I remember that she’s going to suck me off with that sweet, warm mouth, and I have to pull back for a second to clear my head.

“What?” she murmurs, using the break in the kiss to move her mouth to my neck, sucking and biting hard enough to bruise, and I have to wrap my hands around the brick ledge to keep from shoving her to her knees right then and there.

Keep control, you asshat.

After all, I am supposed to be proving something to her, right?  Not simply proving how much I want her to go down on me.  I’m going to prove to her how real and how organic we can be, even with the camera.

Resolve renewed, I take a step back.  “Turn around,” I say, keeping my voice quiet to account for the people enjoying the art mere feet away.

Biting her lower lip, she pivots so that she’s facing the wall.  I lean forward enough that my mouth comes close to her ear.  “Brace your hands against the wall,” I whisper.

She shivers and more of those delightful goose bumps appear, and she obeys, her slender hands spread wide and flat against the brick.  The thin dress she’s wearing has ridden up slightly in back, and I place a hand in the middle of her shoulder blades and push her forward even more, so that the hem of the dress barely clears her ass.

And then I drop down to my knees, my palms sliding up the back of her thighs to her rump.  I inch the hem of her skirt up until she’s mostly uncovered and then I spread her cheeks to see a thin strip of lace covering her pussy.  She’s wearing a thong, as white as fresh snow, and I get the most maddening glimpses of what that lace is hiding—tiny curlicues of glistening pink, small semi-circles of smooth bronze.

Without hesitation, I bury my face there, the flat of my tongue running over the lace to press against her clit.  She gasps above me, her legs widening to grant me better access, and I oblige her unspoken request, repeating the motion over her clit and then moving my tongue to her entrance, she and I together thoroughly soaking the lace all the way through.  I can taste her through the fabric, and the taste is a perfect balance of sweet and female, a taste that triggers all of my most primal, male impulses.

I hook a finger in her thong and pull it aside, and the moment my tongue makes unfettered contact with her cunt, she sucks in a breath and raises up on her tiptoes.  Finger still holding the thong aside, I lick from her clit to the small button of firm flesh between her cheeks, and I repeat the process several times, until I can sense her breathing speeding up.  Then I add a finger, then two, curling them against the sensitive front wall of her pussy as I bite and suck on her ass.

She’s breathing hard now, her thighs tense, and I abandon her entrance and start rubbing her clit fast and hard.  She throws her head back, her fingers turning into claws against the brick, and then I withdraw.  Completely.

She spins around, dazed and angry.  “Don’t stop,” she pants, and I shrug with one shoulder.  I bring my fingers to my mouth to suck her taste off them, and her eyes narrow.  I do a little internal victory dance when she doesn’t glance at the camera once as she steps forward.  I knew that to distract her from the filming would mean making her focus only on me, and making her angry and needy seemed like the best way to do that.  Looks like I’ve succeeded.

“Finish me off,” she says in a furious plea.

“But you’re so cute when you’re angry.”

“Don’t fuck with me—finish fucking me.”

“What about,” I offer mischievously, “you give me head, and then I’ll think about finishing you off.”

“You bastard.  I can finish myself off.”  She pulls up her dress and then moves her hand underneath her thong, slumping against the wall when she finds her clit with her fingers.  God, I’m so fucking glad I’m filming this, even if she’s forgotten.

I stare at her hungrily, watching her fingers move under the lace and her nipples bead and strain against her dress.  I don’t have to look down to see that my dick is practically sobbing at me to do something; I can feel the wet spot growing on the inside of my jeans.

But still I wait, wait until her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are closed, when her orgasm is imminent, and then I grab her wrist and pull her hand away from her pussy.  Her eyes snap open and an expression of beautiful, incandescent rage lights her face.  Behind us, I hear the gallery music change into a soft melody, which makes the footsteps on the gallery hardwoods and the animated chatter seem even closer, like any minute people could push through the fabric and find us.

I fucking love that.

Devi, however, looks like love is nowhere near what she’s feeling, and she tries to wrench her wrist away from me.  When I don’t let her, she tries to push her other hand down to her cunt, and I don’t let her do that either, sandwiching her body between mine and the wall and leaving no room for her to touch herself.  

“Fuck,” she groans, trying to squirm against me, and I grin.

“You seem like you want something,” I say cheerfully.

“Fuck you.”

“Hmm,” I respond, slowly guiding her hand to her mouth.  She doesn’t resist, letting me push her fingers past her lips to touch her tongue.  She licks her own taste off her fingertips in curling, deliberate licks, like a cat, and I watch her tongue obsessively.  Fuck, I can’t wait until it’s on my cock.

“I think that you might want something,” I repeat, my eyes still on her mouth.  “And you know else what I think?”

She raises an eyebrow at me but not very high.  Her eyes are glazed with lust and her pulse pounds hard in her throat, and I think she’s at the edge of coherent thought right now.

“I think that thing you want would feel even better with my mouth than with your fingers.”  Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and to demonstrate my point, I carefully suck one of her fingers into my mouth, nibbling and licking.

She moans quietly.

“Don’t you want me to use my mouth?  Put my mouth on your pretty pussy?”

She nods.

“I want to do that too.  At least, I think I do.  Maybe you should convince me.”

As soon as I say it, I have a quick moment of clear-headed panic.  Even though we planned tonight’s scene to be a blowjob, I think I’ve done a pretty effective job of disorienting her and pulling her out of the typical scene mentality.  Which was what I wanted, obviously, but I also need to make sure she isn’t so dazed that I’m coercing her into anything.

I lean forward, my lips moving against her ear.  “Remember, you can snap your fingers at any time, okay?”

“I know,” she murmurs back and when I move my head to look at her, her eyes are clear and lucid.

Perfect.

Keeping my fingers curled around her wrist, I reach down with my other hand and work my belt buckle open.  She keeps her eyes on mine as I unbutton my pants, as I tug my zipper down with a faint purr.

“God, I’ve been wanting this,” I mutter.  “So fucking much.”  My dick is finally free, and Devi gives me a naughty little nip on my jaw before she moves down to her knees.  Jesus fuck, even just that is almost too much, with the way the bite sends a small zing of pain straight down my spine, with the look on her face as she kneels, as if she’s about to give me the fiercest blowjob in history.

Yes, please.

She tugs my pants down more so that my whole shaft is exposed, and she takes me in her hand.  Normally at this point, a porn actress would pump my dick a few times, maybe even smack her lips with it, and I always like it fine whenever actresses do that, because hey, a woman playing with your dick is a woman playing with your dick.  Don’t look the gift-horse in the mouth and all that.

But Devi does something different, and it does something to me, drives me crazy.  She holds my cock and looks at it, her lips parted and her eyes wide, as if she can’t believe that she’s actually holding me.  She slides her fingers up and down slowly, not to stimulate me, but to feel me and touch me, measure me and weigh me.  Learn me and memorize me.  

Everything about her hands and her expression makes it seem like she’s stunned and eager and grateful, and goddammit, it’s so fucking sexy.  And by the time she presses her lips to the underside of my dick, I’m ready to explode.

More than ever, I’m aware of the people shuffling around near us, of the fact that if someone looks under the painting they’ll see the legs of my jeans sagging around my ankles, Devi’s knees on the floor.  But as long as they stay on their side of the art, I don’t care.  In fact, it makes it that much hotter, but never mind that now, because Devi is kissing my cock.

Not sucking.  Not licking.

Kissing.

Sweet little kisses, from my base to my tip, soft and warm.  And then that she’s so fucking young feeling comes back, but I’m too far gone to care or feel anything about it now.  Instead, I revel in it, revel in the small, innocent kisses and her wide, dark eyes, which have gone from angry to imploring.  

And like a flash, my mind is back to Raven’s Real Playdates, to the eighteen-year-old Devi worshipping my cock with her mouth.  As soon as I saw her on that set, I was entranced.  She was beautiful, fresh, soft and firm all at once, and after watching her go down on Raven, her thick ass in the air, I didn’t need any prep whatsoever when it was time for me to walk on.  Watching her with my then-girlfriend had made me rock-hard, and then when she knelt in front of me, licking and kissing my cock with the kind of inexperienced and hesitant eagerness that told me she hadn’t given very many blowjobs before…

Well, the director almost got one more pop shot than she’d paid me for.

I used to justify my body’s response to Devi that day as a perverted reaction to her youth or maybe just a natural reaction to a new woman, but the truth is staring me in the face right now with dilated amber eyes: it’s none of those reasons.  It’s Devi.  She does this to me, brings me to the edge, and it won’t matter how many times she sucks me off, how many times she touches me or I touch her, it will always be like this.  

Hell, at this point, even I’ve almost completely forgotten about the camera, and I know I should make this blowjob last longer, should back off a little, because if I’m this far gone without her even taking me in her mouth yet, if I’m this close just with these kisses…

But fuck it.  I want this.  I want it like this.

I reach down and stroke her hair back from her face.  

“Lick it,” I instruct, and she does, starting with my base and licking up towards the tip.  Over and over, teasingly, maddeningly, and I realize she’s mimicking how I tongue-fucked her earlier with the long, taunting strokes.

“Very cute,” I say.  My thumb finds her lower lip, and I pull her mouth open.  “But you know what I want.”

She smiles, my thumb still on her lip.  “Then why don’t you take it?” she teases.

Well, then.

I fist myself near my root and nudge my crown against her lips, tracing the heart-shaped pout once—and then once more again—before I lazily push past that pout to the wet heat inside.  For a moment, she does nothing but stare up at me, her tongue soft and still against my dick.  And it’s not as if she’s being passive out of inexperience or reluctance or even naughtiness...once again, I get the feeling that she’s trying to commit this to memory, the way my face looks right now and maybe the way I feel against her tongue.

I can’t blame her.  I want to commit this to memory too, every detail, the stray lock of hair on her forehead, the way her lips stretch around my girth, the way her eyes search mine, asking for permission or affirmation or absolution.

And then her hands slide around my hips and her fingers find my ass, digging in as she starts sucking me.

“Holy fuck, Devi,” I say raggedly (and maybe a little too loudly) but I can’t help it.  Her mouth is like this Valhalla of wet silk, her lips sealed tight to create the kind of suction that would make a man weep.  And believe me, I’m near weeping.

She holds my ass and swallows against me, making me groan, and then she pulls off to focus her attention on the tip, sucking and swirling.  

“I want to go deeper,” I manage after a few deep breaths.  “Can I go deeper?”

“Yes,” she whispers with her lips still mostly occupied, smiling as if I just offered her a brand new car instead of asking to shove my dick down her throat.

What a woman.

I reach back to find one of her hands and then I move it to my front so that it’s braced against my hip and she can easily stop me if I go too deep.  And then I cradle her face with one hand as I feed my cock to her with the other, pushing past her lips and teeth and tongue until I hit the back of her throat, and fuck me, she’s so perfect, even more perfect than I remember from Real Playdates.  She takes me so willingly, so easily, and I feel the armored plates of my control beginning to chink open and fall away.

I pull back, giving her a minute to breathe, and then I shove in again, a little rougher this time.  Kneeling is not the easiest way to deep-throat, and I don’t want to hurt her or make her gag.  But even though her eyes water a little, she swallows me without issue, her eyelashes even fluttering up at me coquettishly.  Trusting that she’ll stop me with her hand or snap her fingers to signal if she needs to slow down or stop, I pick up the pace, driving in deeper and faster now.  My hands look so large wrapped around her head like this, large and powerful, and I’d be lying if I don’t say this fuels my lust even more.  The power exchange, this young woman kneeling in front of me while I fuck her face, it turns me the hell on, and the fact that it’s a young woman I love and respect—that makes the pretend degradation even sexier.

I thrust in again, this time so deeply that I feel her nose press into my stomach, her lips and tongue reflexively swallowing and tightening around my base, and I could come like this, just like this, feeling that nose against my stomach and her head in my hands, and my tip being squeezed so tightly.

My balls draw up in anticipation, but I’m not ready to come yet.  I want this to last forever.

Even though she’s not snapping or pushing, I sense she needs a breath and I pull back, letting her breathe, and she does with a gasp, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes and smudging her eye makeup.  She looks so beautiful right now, her makeup blurry and her hair impossibly tangled, and I take some of that hair in my fist now and pull her up—not hard, but hard enough that she scrambles to her feet.

My mouth crashes down on hers, and I taste traces of myself—salt and soap—and her mouth is wet and gasping.  She kisses me back messily, desperately, as if she’s struggling against her own need to breathe, and I am practically clawing at the lace on her hips to yank her thong down.  I finally manage to get it past her knees and then my fingers are there in her secret place, which is so impossibly wet right now.  She’s so wet that her thighs are slick, and it’s pure instinct that makes me step forward and grind my dick against her.  I feel the taut skin of her stomach, the silky curls between her legs, and then her hands are sliding between my slumped jeans and my ass again, pulling me even closer.  

It’s an accident, or at least I think it is, the first time she raises up on her toes and my cock slips between her thighs.  One second, I am grinding on her like a horny teenager, and the next second, my dick is squeezed between her wet thighs, which are so wet that I can slide in and out of them easily.

“Fuck,” I mumble, because it feels good, because I want it to keep feeling good, but thigh-sex isn’t exactly the hottest category on my website, and also it’s dangerously close to the real thing and that’s not the plan for tonight.

But then it happens again, and I stop caring.  My hands are everywhere—inside her dress, on her ass, thumbing her nipples—and it feels so good to push between her thighs, especially with that wet pussy moving against the top of my shaft.  Without me saying anything, she brings her feet together and crosses her ankles, making it tighter for me.

I hiss out a string of swear words, and she giggles, and I decide that I want to know what it sounds like when her giggles dissolve into moans.  So I hook a hand around one of her thighs and haul it up to my waist, raising her up enough that I can bend my head and take a nipple into my mouth through the fabric of her dress.

She does indeed start to moan, and I’m sucking the tip of her breast as hard as I can, and we are both unconsciously squirming and grinding, and then all of a sudden it happens.  I feel my swollen crown not just brush past her folds, but for the barest of seconds, push in.

“Shit,” I whisper, raising my head to look at her.

“Shit,” she agrees in a moan, and her face is a mask of desperate, frantic longing.

I can’t seem to pull out, even though I’m barely in, and then she says, “What if you did it just once?  Felt the inside of me just once and then pulled right back out?  That wouldn’t count, right?”

“Cass…” I say, my voice stretched to the breaking point.  I can feel how wet she is against my tip, as if her pussy is kissing my crown, and I’m about to ignore everything I know I should do—like stop and step away and really, seriously stop—and just thrust home.  But I can’t, and the reasons are legion: the show, plus we haven’t discussed sex yet, plus even if I were going to do this, I need to get a condom…

“Just once,” she pleads.  “Then we can stop.  But I can’t—you can’t stop now.  Just once, Logan, please.”

And then she’s pulling me closer and murmuring all those dangerous words, just once just once please please please.  And there’s no way in hell I can win this battle, even if I wanted to.  

Which I don’t.

I never advocate not-thinking when it comes to filming porn, I never advocate shifting a scene’s acts outside of the agreed-on list beforehand, but I’m so far gone and we are so far outside of what constitutes a normal scene now that maybe God and the county of Los Angeles will forgive me for what I’m about to do.

I wrap an arm tight around her waist, press my hand to her cheek, and lock eyes with her as I shift my hips and then slowly, so slowly that it almost feels like I’m barely moving at all, press inside.  The minute I truly breach her, she lets out a loud gasp, and I clap a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.  

Her head drops forward to lean on my shoulder and I keep going.  I have to bend my knees and angle myself, reach down and hike up her leg again, but it feels so fucking good that I wonder how mad she’d be if I came right now.  

Her pussy is tight, tighter than I could have ever imagined, and so wet that even with the squeeze of her channel I can slide in with almost no resistance.  The flared edge of my crown drags against her g-spot and she moans and shakes against my hand, and then I’m pushing up and up and up, deeper and deeper, until her pussy is stretched wide around my base, her pelvis flush with mine.  I grab her other leg and pull her up so that she’s got her legs wrapped around my waist and I’m supporting all her weight with my hands under her ass.  I lean back a little so that I can look at where we’re joined, and then I look up at her.

“Cass?”

Her mouth is open and her pupils are huge and black.  “Move in me,” she begs.  “Just for a minute.”

Jesus fuck.  I squeeze my eyes shut for a minute to stave off the waves of fire her words ignite in me.  “Okay,” I murmur, eyes still shut. “Just for a minute.”

I push her against the wall and move, the kind of deep, rolling movements that cameras don’t capture well, but goddammit my body can feel perfectly, and hers too, judging by the amount of noise my hand is blocking.  I can feel my tip tracing circles and lines and angles in the deepest parts of her, can feel how tightly she’s stretched around me, and every time I move in her, she moans against my palm.

I shift, ever so slightly, moving my pelvis against hers so that my lower abs knead her clit as I grind into her.  The effect is instantaneous—her muffled moans rise in pitch and frequency and her thighs clench tight around my waist.

“Are you going to come, Cass?” I whisper in her ear.

She nods.

“Because...I don’t think I can make it through you coming,” I confess.  “If you come, then I’m going to come so fast…”  Saying it aloud helps me think, helps me figure out what to do.  I can’t come inside of her.  This is already so outside of the bounds of pornography film restrictions and what I consider personally okay, and I assume she’s on birth control, but what if she’s not?  That would be an asshole assumption to make, when I have just as much power to exercise caution as she does.

On the other hand, now that I’ve felt her pussy, I’m hungry to make it come, eager to feel it squeeze and flutter around me.  And the idea of holding her so close as I pump my own way to climax...appealing isn’t nearly a strong enough word.

More like necessary.

Luckily for us both, I’m a good problem-solver.

I lift my hand from Devi’s mouth, and then I back away from the wall and maneuver us so that we separate and I can set her on her feet.  It’s the third time I’ve denied her an orgasm in the space of twenty minutes, and her wild eyes and stunned pout tell me all I need to know.

“Don’t move,” I tell her, and then I reach for the slender wallet in my back pocket.  I locate a condom and pull it out, dropping my wallet to the floor, where it lands with a flat-sounding smack.  My patience is so ragged-thin that my hand is shaking as I raise the wrapper to my teeth to tear it open. Devi’s feral eyes are on me the entire time, as I roll the condom down my dick, which is so hard now that the crown is a swollen and angry maroon color.  I give it a few hard pumps as she watches, and I feel the last of my control evanesce away, disintegrate into nothing.

“Turn to the wall, like before,” I say.  My words are short, staccato rasps, and I hope she forgives me for being brusque, because I can’t be anything else right now.  Not with that wet pussy within reach.  Not knowing that I can fuck her without any worry or reserve.

The minute she turns and spreads her legs, I’m behind her and it only takes half a second for my sheathed cock to find what it needs.  I slam in, letting out a low hiss at the same time she lets out a guttural groan, and I think I hear someone ask, “Did you hear that?”

But there’s no stopping now.  I wrap her long coffee-colored hair around my hand and yank her head back to me.  “If you want to come, you have to be quiet.  Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she breathes.  “Oh Logan, I’m so close, make me come, make me come.”

I use my other hand to find her clit and start rubbing her there.  I’m pounding into her hard now, her ass cheeks shaking, the wet, sweet sounds of her pussy getting loud and distinct against the backdrop of music and conversation.  

I keep a hold of her hair, forcing her to arch her back and keeping that ass at such a delicious angle to me, and I rub her clit harder and faster, until I can feel every muscle in her body tense up, her legs and her shoulders and her stomach, all of her tightening and tightening like a guitar string.  And I’m so close now too, so close to exploding inside this girl I’ve craved for so long, and I feel the years of tension, the years of secretly jacking off to Devi when Raven was asleep, twisting at the base of my spine.

“Your pussy is so good,” I tell her in a low voice.  “I’m going to come so hard for you, going to come so fucking hard…”

“Logan,” she gasps.  “Oh, fuck, Logan, that’s it, that’s it, oh my God—”

I feel her crescendo, the split second before all the tension unravels, and then she’s unspooling around me, clenching and releasing and clenching again, and I look down at where my cock disappears in and out of her, and I remember what she felt like raw and think of how good it would feel to come inside her without a condom, how satisfying it would be to see my cum dripping out of her, and then my balls draw up tight and then I’m coming so fucking hard that my vision goes fuzzy and my hearing fades out and there is only the tight heat of her cunt and the surges of roaring pleasure and the mindless drive to rut as hard and as long as I can.

My cock convulses, and I’m grunting, still fucking my way through the orgasm, and I feel her peak again, her hands flying out to grab at the brick ledge as she tries to keep on her feet, but her knees are buckling and she’s going to collapse.  I wrap an arm around her stomach, holding her upright as she rides out the tremors, as I finish releasing my pent-up lust inside her, and we gradually come down together, panting and sweaty and I realize I’m not sure how loud all that just was.

I don’t care.  So worth it.

Once I’m certain she can stand on her own, I circle the bottom of the condom with my fingers and slowly pull out of her pussy.  Everything is wet—her, the condom, me on the inside of the condom—and this is one of the moments I usually love least in a scene, pulling out with all my cum still contained.  I know, it’s probably domineering and wrong of me, but there’s something so gratifying on this deep, primal level about seeing my cum in a woman’s pussy or on her tits or on her ass.  The condom makes things safe, and I respect that, but at the same time, it makes things sterile, and Devi Dare is the last woman on earth I want to be sterile with.

But, despite all that, despite the sterility, as I pull out, I mostly only feel this intense gratitude and wonder.  I got to be inside Devi, I got to feel her come on my cock, I got to touch and experience her in the most intimate way possible, and it’s like fucking her has taken the torch I carry for Devi and fanned it into a fucking wildfire.

It’s so strong that I’m not even going soft right now.  I could put on a fresh condom and go again...and probably again a few times after that.

I’m still staring down at my dick and Devi is still braced against the wall catching her breath as the footsteps approach, and there’s no time, no time at all, and then a tiny white-haired woman—bespectacled and lost-looking—rounds the corner with her quad cane.  We freeze and she keeps walking, mumbling something to herself as she does, and then all of a sudden, she sees us, her head snapping up and her eyes going wide like dollar coins.

“Um,” I say, my hand still around my cum-covered dick and my jeans around my ankles.  “Howdy.”

“Howdy,” Devi parrots, still bent over with her dress hiked over her ass.

For a few seconds that seem to stretch into infinity, the old lady blinks at us, too stunned to speak.  And then she makes a hasty retreat, shuffling backwards around the canvases until she’s out of sight.

Devi explodes into snorts and giggles, and I start panic-laughing as I frantically tie off the condom and try to pull up my pants and grab all my stuff at the same time.  My pants are zipped but not buttoned and my bag slung over my shoulder as I take Devi’s hand and pull her towards the fire exit door, where we emerge into the California night wheezing with the giddy laughter of people who’ve been caught having raunchy public sex by a tiny old grandma.

And then I drop everything to the ground and pin Devi into the fiercest, longest kiss I’ve ever given, wishing she could know with every trace of my tongue and every brush of my lips how much I’ve fallen in love with her.

---

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 pussy warm and soft between her legs.  She moans as I start playing with her.

“I like you, Devi.  Not just in the porno way, but in the mushy hearts and flowers kind of way.  I like being with you and hearing you talk and just watching you exist.  I know that makes me a stalker, but...well, I guess I don’t really have an excuse for that.  Almost every night since we filmed Playdates, I’ve beaten off to your scenes…”

“Jesus, Logan,” she murmurs.

“Is that a good Jesus or a bad Jesus?”

“So good,” she mumbles, rolling onto her stomach and spreading her legs so that I have better access to her pussy.  “Rub me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  I comply with her request and search out her clit, kneading it gently in case she’s sore.  “So I know I’m being manipulative by fingering you while we have this discussion, but I guess I want to know if I’m alone in this.  If you like me in the mushy way too.”

I can hear her smile in her words even though I can’t see her face.  “I like you in the mushy way too.  A lot.  You’re definitely not alone.”

The wave of sweet relief hits me so hard that I’m surprised to find that my eyelids are burning a little.  I clear my throat to cover it up.  “Really?”

“Really.”  She turns her head to look at me.  “I masturbated to you almost every night too, you know.  And the sex tonight was so good.  You make me feel—I don’t even have words for it.  Reckless.  Alive.  Ecstatic.  I was so caught up in you that I let you fuck me without a condom.”  She shakes her head in disbelief.  “I would fucking never do that in my right mind.”

By now I should be used to the fact that Devi doesn’t make emotional leaps without a healthy dose of logical caution, that there will always be a gap between my impetuous declarations and her admitting that she feels the same way.  But I’m not used to it yet, I guess, because relief and joy and giddy excitement are still thrumming through me with tornadic force.  I drop my head to her shoulder blade, breathing in her cinnamon smell.  “I want to make you out of your mind all the time,” I say against her skin.  “Like the way you make me.”

“I’d say you’re off to a good start.”  She squirms against my hand, and when I tease her folds open, I find that she’s completely soaked.

I peer around to see her eyes.  “Does this mean I can—” I search for the right words.  “—try to be your boyfriend?”

“Try?”  Her voice and expression are unreadable as she repeats the key word to the request, and shame bolts through me.  I want to offer her so much more than try, I want to be, but at the same time, this is Devi.  Perfection embodied.  My goddess and queen of the night, and what if I’m not able to be good enough for her?

What if, like Tanner suggested, she’s not okay with me continuing with my porn career?

Try is safest for now, even though it’s the least of what I want to give her.  I’m the older, (theoretically) more mature party in this, and I’ve also recently traveled through the conflagration of a ruined relationship.  I deserve better, Devi certainly deserves better, and that means treading thoughtfully for now.

“Yes,” I say carefully.  “I want to try a boyfriend-girlfriend thing with you.”

I see her mind running through my words, weighing them and judging them, and then the biggest, most bashful smile spreads across her face.  “Yes, Logan.  Let’s try to have a boyfriend-girlfriend thing.”

“Oh, thank God,” I say, and I should tell her I love her now, I want to, but then I think of my logical girl with her cautious eyes.  It’s fascinating to me how she can seem so carefree, so sunny, but at the same time, she’s got a mind that ticks through thoughts and decisions like a Swiss watch.  I can’t spring the love thing on her now without making her watch mechanisms work overtime, so instead, I say, “I’ve got to fuck you again, you know that right?”

Her body makes a sinuous arch as she stretches off the sleeping bag to find my wallet.  She extracts a condom, and I rise up on my knees, a big dopey grin on my face.  My thoughts run something like this: sex is happening, yay!  With my new sort-of girlfriend, yay!  Sex sex sex!

She tears the wrapper open with her teeth, expertly pinches the tip and rolls it down my thick erection.  When she’s done, she gives my cock a little teasing squeeze and looks up at my face.

“You look so happy,” she says shyly.

“Because I get to fuck my sort-of girlfriend right now.”

Spontaneously, she rises up and gives me a deep, searing kiss.  I kiss her back until she’s panting and squirming against me.

“On your knees and smile for the camera,” I say.