Hollywood's Secret Baby
Then Cory bends down so he’s eye-level with my knees. He grabs my legs and forces them apart. Before I can get out a single word, his tongue draws a wet stripe over my clit. He gathers it up in his lips and sucks, and fireworks in my skull begin exploding. The sensitive touch of his tongue works me up, up, up into the stratosphere, where the air is so thin I can’t help but breathe faster and faster. I’m working my hips against his tongue, unable to hold back the moans.
I lean back on the desk, hands splayed out and back arched as I let out a most unladylike grunt. My thighs snap shut, squeezing his head, and then, just as quickly as all my muscles tensed, they let go.
Cory emerges from between my legs with a goofy grin plastered across his face. He licks his lips and says, “Your acting before was good, but the real thing is so much better.”
While I’m still quivering, he presses the tip of his cock against my entrance. He then presses inside of me and lights flare in my brain, illuminating the depths of my pleasure center, casting everything else into shadow. From my position just barely sitting on the edge of the desk, there’s little I can do, movement-wise, but this doesn’t deter Cory. He thrusts in and out of me, grabbing my hips and pulling me down to find the perfect angle. I’ve got my arms wrapped around his neck, just holding on for the ride.
The back of the desk thumps against the wall, faster and faster as his tempo increases. His fingers dig into my thighs and his hard breaths tickle at my ear. Then he’s shuddering, thrusting a few last times, his breath ragged now.
After we’ve both cum, he lifts me off the desk and deposits me on the sofa along the side wall. Here I melt against his shoulder, all the tension from earlier gone. I’m not even thinking about the fact that I still have scenes to film, because Cory has done a helluva job erasing every thought from my head. Every single one except the three words bouncing around my skull like an old Windows screensaver. The words find their way down to my throat where they’re soon leaping from my lips, prompted on by my heart, unstoppable in the face of my endorphin-drowned brain.
“I love you,” I say, snuggling up against him.
It’s not even been one week since I’ve known this Cory, but ever since I stepped on that plane, every moment of my life has been like a fairy tale. And while I’m certainly not a princess in need of a prince to rescue her (a fact that our little eleven-year reunion cemented in my head when I realized that out of all my ex-classmates, I was the only one not drowning in debt or saddled with a spouse who’s grown to despise my presence), my god if this prince doesn’t have a splendid kingdom to explore.
And whether I planned it or not, the truth is that I’ve fallen for my old best friend. Watching him interact with Lizzie has only cemented in me the fact that what I’m feeling isn’t some fleeting lust or hope for an impossible prize. It’s love, plain and simple. But from the pause dragging out as my words fade into the still air of the dressing room, I might be the only one who feels this way.
Cory checks his watch. As
if I haven’t just confessed my love to him. “We’d better hurry back for the next scene.”
When he turns adjust his pants, my hand shoots out and grabs at his wrist. I feel like that rejected schoolgirl waiting for a dance at the prom that would never come. “Did you hear me?”
His back remains to me. “Listen, Augusta,” he says, and I feel my heart physically drop. I know my actual heart is still where it’s always been, pumping the same blood round and round my body. But the beats are somehow louder now, resounding in my ears with each pause in Cory’s pathetic excuse. “You know I care about you. And Lizzie. And I’m going to tell her that I’m her father. I really am. But this thing between us…it’s something we need to explore, but first and foremost, we need to make this movie before we throw ourselves into the deep end like this.”
“You pulled me into the deep end when you brought me out to Hollywood.” I’m standing now, though I don’t remember leaving the comfort of the sofa. I’ve grabbed my robe from off the ground and wrapped it around me once more. He might have just had his tongue buried between my legs, but now I feel more exposed in my lingerie than I did when I was in front of the cameras. “I thought this is what you wanted. Don’t you want to be in my life? In your daughter’s?”
His lips part to say something, but there’s another pause. After a deep breath that pushes his chest out, he says, “We have to film the next scene. You should get back to Becky in wardrobe. She’ll get you set up with your outfit change.”
Then he’s out the door, leaving me behind. Just like he did when he left eleven years ago. All I can do is stand there, wondering how a girl can be so lucky and so empty at the same time?
Chapter 20
The next scenes should present me with the worst anxiety of my life. I’m filming more of the montage, so there are more steamy scenes, only this time they’re with different actors. Different men. On any other day of my life, I would need to rush to the bathroom to vomit between takes, not out of disgust, so much, but from nerves. But for better or for worse, I’m so distracted by Cory’s rejection that I’m hardly fazed.
Not by the scene in which I’m supposed to be riding a client with wild abandon. Nor the one in which I imitate sucking off a plump businessman with a balding head. In this final scene, the camera is just behind my newest client, who’s standing up nude, giving me a full frontal view in real life. Even with a grown man nearly twice my age standing proudly nude just two feet in front of me, I zone out, replaying the scene with Cory earlier in the dressing room.
“Cut!” Cory calls out. “Let’s try that again.”
And I’m dropped right back in reality, where I’m supposed to look the elderly man up and down before nodding in clear approval at what I find.
If I expected that my impersonating sexual acts with the other men would have Cory growing jealous and rethinking his earlier inability to commit, I’m disappointed. Each time I glare through the blanket of lights and catch a glimpse of his face, he isn’t even watching me. He’s either talking to one of the sound men, reading through a revised script, or simply staring at the opposite wall, his gaze passing right through me as though I were less than a shadow.
Having spent the past two hours pushing our last conversation (or lack thereof on his part) out of my mind and forcing myself to focus on the task at hand, when Cory finally calls cut to my final scene of the day, I look to the actor who has been pretending to hump me for the past twenty minutes. I was supposed to act bored and distant, which was not a hard sell considering the state of my mind. Despite our odd proximity, Rob’s been the nicest actor I’ve met so far. Before we even started the first take, he said to me, “I just want you to know. I’m sorry if I do. And I’m sorry if I don’t.”
“Do or don’t what?” I asked.
Rob looked down at the bulge under his boxers, pulling my eyes too. “Some actresses get offended if you get an erection. Others get offended if you don’t. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve got no control over it. This is just acting, right?”
Just acting. Right.
That’s what I’ve been reminding myself of again and again. But the only way I’ve gotten through these racy scenes has been to grit my teeth and just dive right in. It’s a technique I’ve honed day in and day out filming for public TV, but in that rundown studio, it wasn’t such a hard sell to jump in front of the camera, plaster on a fake smile, and get on with it. Comparing the scenes I’ve filmed today with any of the lessons I’ve taught alongside a cartoon dinosaur I couldn’t even see would be like comparing apples to hand grenades.
“That’s it for today,” Cory calls out.
Rob peels himself off me and awkwardly juts out his hand for me to shake. Which I do while also covering up with the robe an assistant has just draped over my shoulders.
“Good luck,” he says.