FADE INTO ME

Part Two of the FADE series

KATE DAWES

Copyright © 2012 by Kate Dawes

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written consent of the Author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

~~~

ONE

I’m not sure how to explain how weird it was the next morning to be cruising through Los Angeles in Max’s convertible Porche 911. It was strange because I felt so free and elated, but in the back of my mind there was still the chill of fear from the incident with Chris.

What had started off as a terrifying evening had turned into a night of mind-blowing sex with Max, and there I was the next morning being whisked off to the California wine country.

He didn’t tell me where we were going, at first. He just drove to the small Bob Hope Airport outside of Burbank, where many Hollywood stars kept private planes.

I was in awe when he told me the plane belonged to him. I halfway expected him to tell me he had chartered a flight for us or something. I’m not sure why. Max was loaded. He was a Hollywood bigshot. So why shouldn’t he have his own airplane?

“But I don’t fly it,” he said.

“Oh, well then I’m not as impressed.”

He caught my sarcasm and smiled. “Just get on the plane. My plane.”

And that’s what I did, gleefully bounding up the steps as Max followed me, patting me on the ass once.

When we got off the ground, we had a great view of the California coast. Being from the Midwest, I had never had much experience with beaches. I’d found the California coast, what little I’d seen of it, to be breathtaking. The aerial view was even more gorgeous.

Max had arranged for breakfast to be on the flight, and about thirty minutes into the trip, we were drinking orange juice and coffee, and sharing a truly sinfully large plate of French toast with berries and cream and syrup.

“Are you trying to make me fat so no one else will want me?”

Max eyed me up and down. “One plate of French toast isn’t going to make you fat.”

I threw my napkin at him. “Jerk. You know that wasn’t the point of the question.”

He swallowed the last of his bite of breakfast with a smile on his face, took a sip of OJ and said, “I don’t care if someone else wants you. They’re not going to take you away from me.”

“Welcome to Napa,” Max said as we landed.

Having heard of the place throughout my life, but having never been there, it existed only as a fantasy in my mind. Sort of the same way I felt about Max. But he was real. So was Napa. And we were here for what promised to be an amazing weekend.

Max had a car waiting for us at the airport—nothing fancy or flashy, just a good old fun Jeep, which Max drove like he’d just stolen the thing.

We zipped along roads that snaked through the wine vineyards. Max was like a tour guide, telling me all kinds of details about the various wineries we cruised past.

We finally ended up at a cottage on the side of a hill. It was private, nestled in a patch of trees. I got out of the car and looked around, breathing in the crisp, fresh air.

“Come on,” Max was saying as I gazed out at the countryside, taking in the view. “There’s plenty of time for sight-seeing. What I want now is you, inside.”

“Why, Mr. Dalton,” I said, affecting a fake patrician accent, “whatever do you have in mind?”

I was trying to be playful. We’d had our fun with banter and teasing during the trip up here. I expected him to continue with the light-heartedness. But he didn’t.

“What I have in mind, beautiful Olivia, is you…naked, on the bed, so I can have my way with you.”

He stepped toward me and before I knew it, his mouth was on mine. My lips parted, letting his tongue slide in.

Max lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist, locking my ankles behind his back. He walked us over to the couch. Something about this man and couches…

He set me down gently, and I felt his erection pressing between my legs.

“Let’s get these off of you.” He unbuttoned my slacks, unzipped them, and started working them down my hips and my legs. When he kissed me again, he made a moaning sound deep in his chest, almost a growl, mixed with his warm breath against my lips.

Max ran his hands up the insides of my legs, and slipped a finger under the elastic of my panties. We held eye contact as I arched into his touch and felt his finger make contact with my clit.

“Already getting wet,” he said.

“You have that effect on me.”

He kissed me again, hard, passionately, taking my tongue into his mouth and sucking on it. His finger stayed right on my clit, working perfect little circles around in the slickness. Then he used his thumb to rub my clit, and I felt him slip a finger inside me, then a second one.

Our foreheads were touching and I looked deep into his eyes as he teased me so completely. Max licked at my lips, then said, “I’m going to get you to the point where you beg me to fuck you.”

“I’m already there,” I said, without hesitation.

He shook his head slightly. “No, not yet. I’ll be the judge.”

Max resumed kissing me as his fingers explored inside, finding the spot that made me squirm. He knew he had me. He kept rubbing right there as I writhed beneath him.

Fuck. This guy knew how to make me come so good, so easily. Usually, anyway….

He stopped and raised up, kneeling on the couch. He pulled his shirt over his head. I loved watching the way his muscles moved beneath his skin.

He stood, unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and was quickly standing there totally naked. Each time I saw him I was more in awe of his beautiful body. And this seemed like he was enjoying the way I looked at him, as he just stood there—totally exposed to me, his hard cock raging with lust.

“Sit up,” he said.

The commanding tone in his voice sent a tingle through my body. Never before had I been with a man who could have spoken to me like that without igniting a little resentment in me, or even eliciting some laughter. But with Max…well, he was different in countless ways.

He stepped toward me and, wordlessly, guided his cock toward my mouth. I opened and felt the head slip just past my lips.

“Suck me there.”

Again, the blunt commanding nature of his words urged me to please him.

The head of his cock was nestled between my pursed lips. I sucked gently, then moved my tongue in a circular motion around it. A droplet of precome was my reward.

“You look so beautiful doing that. Take it all now.”

Max put his hand on the side of my head—his palm on my cheek, his fingers pointing downward and curling under my chin. He held my head in place as he moved back forth, slowly, fucking my mouth.

I felt his cock grow harder and bigger as it slid in and out of my mouth.

Max pulled it out after a minute or so. “Look what you do to me, Olivia.”

His erection was thick, full, appearing to be on the verge of erupting right there in front of my face. It was slick and glistening from my sucking. Pointing straight out and up a little. Eager. Ready.

Max moved toward me, bent down, and kissed me vigorously. “Lie back.”

I repositioned myself the way he wanted.

He lowered himself to his knees in front of me, and in less than two seconds his mouth was on me. His tongue parted me and slipped into my wet hole. Damnit, I could come just from being tongue-fucked by Max. But I didn’t want to yet. I wanted it to build up slowly before the release.

“Don’t come yet,” he said, as if he were able to read my mind. And, well hell, judging by everything else he was able to do to and with me, maybe he could read it.

Max’s lips encircled my clit. He sucked it into his mouth and my hips pushed upward to meet his face.

I looked down at him. His eyes were wide open, looking right back up at me. He’d been watching my reaction. Just then, he slipped a finger inside me again, curling it so it hit that spot he had found earlier. I clenched around his finger as he rubbed me.

He pulled his face away, but kept fucking me with his finger. Just the one at first, but then another joined it. My vision was going foggy from the pleasure, but I was able to look down my body and see him still looking at me. Watching me as I writhed on the couch and grabbed one of the throw pillows so tightly I probably could have torn it open.

I didn’t think my voice would work, but I found out it did when I involuntarily said, almost shouted, “Fuck me, Max. Fuck me!”

Just like he had said: he would get me to the point of begging him to fuck me.

And finally, mercifully, that’s what he did…

With the condom rolled on, he pushed into me slowly. Deep. Then hard, all the way to the hilt. There was a little stab of pain as he stretched me, but it quickly turned to pleasure.

Just like the last time we fucked, Max again gathered both of my wrists in his strong hand and pinned my arms up over my head on the back of the couch. I was rocking back and forth from his thrusts, which were picking up speed and intensity. I could see on his face how much he wanted me, needed me, had to have me lying there with my legs spread open for him to take me however he wanted…and it was the sexiest look I’d ever seen on a man’s face.

“Tell me how it feels.”

I was almost breathless but I managed: “Perfect.”

He rammed into me harder, then stopped, his face just a couple of inches from mine. “You are perfect.” Max dropped his head and took a nipple into his mouth, sucking it in hungrily, then running his tongue around the edge of it, flicking his tongue across it, drawing it to full hardness. Then he sealed his lips around my other nipple, and applied pressure as he held it between his tongue and upper teeth—soft on one side, rough edge on the other, pleasure and a little pain.

I had been holding my breath and finally had to let it out and take another one. I hadn’t even realized I’d been doing it. Damn, how far had I let myself go that I forgot to breathe when he was doing these things to me?

He let go of my wrists, then wrapped his hand around my ankle and lifted it up in front of him, then over, so I was lying on my side.

He was still buried deep in me.

“Say my name.”

I didn’t have the breath power to say anything—my lungs were working overtime, almost panting.

“Say my name, Olivia.”

“Ma-Max…”

“Olivia.”

“Max.”

His thrusting increased, harder and deeper. “Olivia.”

Under any other circumstances, being with someone and repeating each other’s names back and forth would have been silly. A child’s game. But this was well outside the realm of play. It was a verbal connection. Just the two of us, alone, fucking, calling out to each other.

Max was kneeling on the floor and with me lying on my side on the couch, he was lined up perfectly. He had one hand on my thigh, one on my ass, as he drove into me.

I clutched the pillow and brought it to my face. I wanted to scream from the unreal sensation and I wanted the sound muffled. But Max reached up and pulled the pillow away.

“I want to hear you.”

As I moaned and breathed heavily, Max leaned down over me. He turned me on my stomach and lowered me to my knees on the floor, my arms still on the couch.

From behind, he slid deeper into me as his hips bumped against my ass.

“Let it out, Olivia.”

I screamed and “Oh!” and then “Yes!” and then his name.

“That’s it.”

Max brushed my hair to one side, exposing my neck. I felt his lips on my neck, sucking on my skin, then the hard edge of his teeth grazed along me.

Fuck. It was like he was trying to devour me, consume all of me…

His mouth still on my neck, he reached around my hip. I felt one of his fingers zero in right on my clit, and he began making circles around it. I dropped my head to the couch and just let go—all control fully ceded to Max.

“Come for me,” he whispered. “Now.”

I couldn’t hold back. In a flash, the orgasm’s prelude flushed through my body, and my pussy was in spasms around his cock.

He slowed his thrusts, riding my orgasm slowly. And then I felt his cock throb and pulsate. Then his breath exhaling harder on my neck—hot and steamy.

“Fuck…” he groaned as he began to come.

TWO

I would have been content to take a little nap after that round of incredible sex, but Max was eager to show me around the vineyards. He also said he was famished, which I began to suspect was the real reason he was in a hurry to go out somewhere. What is it with men who have to eat after sex? Something animalistic, perhaps. Judging by Max’s ferocity on the couch earlier, I guess that’s a good assumption.

We showered together. Max washed my hair—an extremely intimate and erotic thing, in my book. I loved the way my hands slipped and slid all over his naked, lathered-up body. Forget the nap idea; I could have stayed in that shower all day.

But there was so much to do, so much to see.

We had lunch at a California cuisine restaurant, out on the deck, overlooking fields of grapes that seemed to go on forever.

“How is it?”

We had moved on from the salad to sharing a flatbread with fresh local tomatoes, artichoke hearts, onions, mushrooms, topped off with herbs and a layer of fresh house-made mozzarella.

“Amazing,” I said. “I almost wouldn’t even call it pizza.”

“Healthiest kind there is. More wine?”

I nodded but didn’t speak, having taken another bite already.

We enjoyed a few moments of silence and then I asked Max if he still wrote movies.

He looked at me and frowned. “All the time.”

“Are you going to make any of them?”

Max sipped his wine, set it on the table, and a heavy sigh left his mouth. “Probably not.”

“Why?”

“I just write for myself now. I think I’ve said all I wanted to say in my movies that got made.”

There was something on his face that told me he didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe a kind of regret, or remorse, or…maybe exhaustion.

“I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to do this,” he said. And quickly, he added, “But that’s between you and me.”

I wondered if the movie he was making with our client, Jacqueline Marthers, would be his last. I had read the script and thought it would make an amazing movie. To think that I had played some small part in the creation of what may be Max Dalton’s last movie was thrilling and chilling at the same time.

More importantly, though, was the fact that he had apparently shared a secret with me. He trusted me enough to tell me he was thinking about getting out of the business. There was no way I’d breach his confidence.

“Okay,” I said, “so you write for yourself. Do you have all these scripts lying around somewhere?”

“Not lying around.” He smiled. “I keep them all in a desk drawer. Which,” he added, “is locked, so don’t think about stealing them and selling them on eBay.”

“What?!”

Max laughed heartily. “God, you’re fun to tease, you know that?”

“We have good banter.”

“Yes, we do.”

He lifted his wine, we clinked glasses, and drank.

We spent at least another lazy hour there, looking out over the vineyard, looking at each other, making mostly small talk. That is, until he brought up Chris.

“What’s he capable of?”

I shrugged. “What do you mean?”

“You told me what he did that night, but is there more?”

“No.”

His eyebrows rose. “Honest?”

“Honest. And I’d rather not talk about him right now.”

“Olivia, if I’m going to protect you, I need to know—”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” I said, a bit more acidly than I had intended. “If he comes back, I’ll call the cops.”

Max shook his head. “They won’t do anything. At least not until he crosses a major line and tries to hurt you, or actually hurts you.”

I knew he was right. Plus, there was the whole aspect of keeping this from my family.

By this time, however, now that Chris had showed up in L.A., I began to think there probably was more depth to his obsessively controlling anger. But what was I going to do? Express that fear to Max? Then what? I didn’t exactly know what Max was capable of, either. I really just wanted Chris to go away, back to Ohio, and stay there.

Equally as much, I wanted the topic of Chris to go away. This was supposed to be a fantasy getaway weekend. It had started that way, but Max’s worries about Chris had derailed it. I needed to get things back on track.

“Tell me more about you.”

He looked at me. “What do you want to know?”

I thought about it for a second, then said, “Everything.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Are we in a hurry?”

Max smiled and sipped from his wine. Then he told me his life story.

THREE

It turns out he, too, was from the Midwest. So we had that in common. That day I met him and later went to research him on the Internet, I hadn’t seen any birth info, other than his age. His Wikipedia page had been mostly professional data, which interested me then, but now I needed to know more about Max the man, not Max the Hollywood big-shot.

He was an only child; his father was a men’s clothing salesman, his mother a teacher, both of whom wanted Max to go to college and obtain a business degree. But Max had no interest in that.

Most of his teen years were spent in movie theaters and libraries, absorbing film and literature. He was totally enthralled with the idea of a cast of characters and a story coming out of seemingly nowhere. He said he could remember nights in bed, staring at the ceiling, in complete wonderment that great movies and great books began with a blank page, and someone’s thoughts and wishes and desires filled the pages in the form of the characters and a story.

Something from nothing. Even the bad movies and bad books were the products of someone’s hard work and imagination, so in Max’s mind they deserved his respect, even if they didn’t personally appeal to him.

He began filling notebooks with ideas—plots, characters, scenes—all a big jumble of things that flowed from his mind when pen hit paper. It’s how he spent the vast majority of his free time. Even some of the time that he was supposed to be studying.

When he turned sixteen, he stopped going to church, to the great disappointment of his parents. It wasn’t that he was rejecting his upbringing so much as he had a new focus. All he wanted to do was write, and any time he spent not doing that was, in his mind, wasted time. When he announced his desire to stop spending two or three hours every Sunday at the church, a huge argument erupted, and he left home for three days.

“I had to go back. I had no money, and home was where the food was,” he told me with a grin.

His parents were happy to have him home, at least for the first night. The next day they began to issue instructions: more schoolwork, less time playing around with what his father called “time-wasting writing,” and the obligatory demand to keep going to church.

Max gave in. He kept going to church, but spent most of the time writing in his head. That’s when he realized he had a memory like a steel trap—he could write in thoughts, even edit in thoughts, and when he got home he would frantically scribble them down in a whirl of excitement.

“It was a rush,” he said. “The fact that I could do that was just more proof to me that I was born to be a writer.”

So it all worked out for the time being. Then came the inevitable battle with his parents over where he would go to college. They, of course, wanted him to go to a local state school, where his father would have gone if he’d had the intelligence and the money back when he was Max’s age. Max was unyielding in his desire to go to film school. His parents said there was no way they were going to pay for him to go all the way to UCLA, where Max wanted to start his undergrad work and then apply to the film school for his junior year, as the admission requirements stated.

His parents hadn’t even wanted him to apply to UCLA, but he’d sent off the application along with the fee, paid for out of his savings from his part-time job at the movie theater.

It was during this argument that his parents confessed to taking his UCLA application out of the mailbox all those months ago. Max couldn’t believe it.

Alone with his dad one afternoon while his mother was at the grocery store, Max confronted him. “Stop hitting mom.”

Max’s father turned to face him. “What are you going to do about it?”

Max stepped closer to his father, and looked down at him. By this time in his life, Max was about an inch taller than his father. He also outweighed him by at least twenty pounds—all of it muscle.

“Touch mom again and you’ll find out what I’m going to do about it.”

Max’s father laughed, but said nothing.

“And there’s always the police,” Max added.

“So,” his father said, “what are you going to do? Blackmail me?”

Max just laughed and left the room. His father had been such an asshole to him, never giving Max the freedom he wanted or needed, always treating him like he was incapable of doing anything right, taking his belt to Max, or swatting him with the back of his hand, which stung due to Max’s father’s fake college class ring (an item he wore to impress people). Well, now that had all changed. Max had the upper hand on his father.

Max knew what he had to do, and he hatched his plan over the next couple of weeks.

He would leave home, taking the three hundred and sixty-one dollars he had to his name, and hitchhike halfway across to the country to Hollywood. But that probably wouldn’t be enough.

He’d never thought of blackmailing his father before he himself raised the possibility. Now it was looking like a damn good idea. Especially since Max had something else on his father. So, two days before Max skipped town, he went to the store where his father worked and said he needed five-thousand dollars.

His father didn’t ask any questions. He simply wrote the check. After all, what was he going to say when Max told him he knew about Annette and Roberta, the two women his father had had affairs with (Roberta was still in the picture, as far as Max had been able to determine). Max’s dad didn’t even look shocked, didn’t ask how Max knew.

When Max was leaving the office, he turned around and looked at his father. His dad’s eyes were weary, and he appeared to have given up all hope of having a normal relationship with his son.

Two days before his seventeenth birthday, Max told his mother to pack her favorite stuff, but only two bags. On the morning of his birthday, after his father left for work, Max and his mother boarded a Greyhound bus. It was bound for southern California. It was on this bus ride that Max’s mother said she always wanted him to do what he wanted, and only agreed with his father because of the hold he had on her. Max said he knew all along.

Over the next three years, Max worked in movie theaters, restaurants, and gas stations, while he finished high school. His mother got a job as a teacher’s assistant at a middle school.

He finally landed a job that interested him: as a PA announcer on a tourist bus. He had impressed the owner of the tour bus company with his vast, almost obsessive knowledge of Hollywood. This led to him making a connection with someone who worked as a junior production assistant at MGM studios. His foot was in the door.

Max started leaving his original scripts lying around the studio—in various conference rooms, mail-slots, under windshields of cars parked in spots that were marked with the names of bigwigs.

That’s how he sold his first script. He was a true self-made screenwriter, without an agent, and all before he had turned twenty years old.

By the time he was twenty-five he had three blockbuster films, an Oscar nomination, and the next step was moving into directing and producing. But he hadn’t been happy since.

“And,” he told me, “to this day I’ve never told my mom that I knew about my dad’s cheating.”

“You could have ruined him.”

He nodded his head. “I know. But it would have ruined my mom, too. But she’s happy now. She lives in Thousand Oaks. Not too far from me, but not too close, either. She didn’t want to be right in the heart of all the Hollywood action.”

“And your dad?”

“Haven’t heard anything about him in years.”

We were getting tired of sitting at the table, so Max suggested we take a walk through the vineyard. It occurred to me that throughout the whole story he had just told me, he didn’t mention any girlfriends.

FOUR

Rather than go out to eat, Max grilled salmon and made a giant salad, and we ate on the floor of the lodge. The original plan was to have an evening picnic, but the weather brought an unexpected—and rare—rain shower.

Max’s culinary skills turned out to be as impressive as everything else he did. The food was delicious, and the setting was romantic. Just the two of us sitting on a large blanket, a roaring fire going, and Harry Connick Jr. tunes providing the soundtrack.

Later, Max wowed me again. But this time we were in his bed. I had three orgasms to his one, and I teased him later that it seemed like a fair ratio.

Sunday morning, I woke to an empty bed. I called out for Max, thinking he might be in another room, but got no response. I got out of the bed, wrapped the sheet around me, walked through the den, and looked out on the large deck. No Max to be seen.

I looked around for a note. Nothing.

I was beginning to worry when I heard the door open and he came in, sweaty and catching his breath. “Morning.”

“Hey. Where were you?”

“Went for a run. I was about a mile away when I realized I should have left a note in case you woke up. Sorry.”

I moved toward him.

“I’m all sweaty.”

“I don’t care,” I said, wrapping my arms around him. The sheet dropped to the floor, leaving me standing there naked.

Max kissed me on the cheek, pushed me away gently, looked me up and down and said, “You’re wearing my favorite thing.”

Before I could respond, I heard my cell phone ringing. I got it out of my purse. It was Krystal calling. If she hadn’t been my roommate, I might have just let it go to voicemail. But I answered it.

“Are you okay?” she blurted.

“I’m fine. Why?”

“You haven’t been here all weekend. I was getting worried.”

I didn’t have the speakerphone on, but the volume was loud enough and the room was quiet enough so that Max could hear Krystal. I looked at him and rolled my eyes. Krystal, worried about me? I was surprised she even noticed I was gone.

“Nothing to worry about. I’m in Napa.”

“Ohhh, nice. With Max?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll let you get back to doing him—I mean, I’ll let you get back to him.” She laughed.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll be home later sometime today.”

We stayed in Napa for lunch and went on a private tour of one of the oldest wineries in the area, escorted by the founder’s grandson who looked to be about Max’s age or early thirties at the most. His wife joined us, and more than once I caught her looking at Max in a way that was pretty risky considering her husband was standing right there.

It might have bothered me at some point in my life. Maybe even just a few weeks ago. But I was getting more comfortable in the feeling that Max wanted me and only me, so I didn’t care how she looked at him. Plus, the way Max was holding on to me made me think he noticed it, too, and might have been reassuring me.

It sounds ridiculous, I know. After all, what could he have possibly done? Lost me somewhere on the grounds of the winery, found a way to distract her husband, and gone off somewhere private and fuck her?

But Max knew how uneasy I was. I had expressed to him in no uncertain terms that I doubted my ability to keep up with his style of life. So far, though, I’d been doing just fine. But I still like to think his tight hold on me was a signal…not so much for her, but for me.

On the plane ride home, I raised the subject I had avoided the day before and asked him about his love life.

“I thought we were going to nap on the way home,” he said.

“When did we decide that?”

“We didn’t. I did.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, I veto the idea. So start talking.”

He was good natured about me being so forward. Which is exactly what I expected. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone there.

Max’s first girlfriend was a girl named Denise. They were fifteen when they started dating, and sixteen when they had sex. It was the first time for both of them. Max admitted to being a fumbling ball of nerves during the act, and to freaking out when he saw a spot of blood on the sheet when Denise got up to go to the restroom afterward.

“Cherry-popper,” I said, hitting him lightly on the shoulder.

“You say that like I’m guilty of something.” He looked at me, an uncharacteristically sheepish look on his face.

“Well, aren’t you?”

“No more than the guy who popped yours,” he retorted. “Why don’t you tell me about him?”

“No, no. You go on.”

He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”

I didn’t want to talk about the time I lost my virginity. It was unremarkable. Actually, quite a boring story. I was older than Denise had been when she lost hers, and the guy was no Max Dalton. God, how I wished it had been Max that night….

I let go of the fleeting thought and focused on the rest of his story….

Denise cheated on him with a wide receiver on the football team. He never spoke to her again. Shortly after that, he met Katherine, and within two months they were talking marriage and kids. This was during his junior year in high school, and Katherine was much like my sister—wanting to get married young, have kids, settle down. Max played along for a while, figuring there was no harm and that he wasn’t leading her on. After all they were teenagers.

Their relationship ended when he left town, of course.

Once in California, he dated, but nothing serious. Mostly surfer girl groupies, the bleach-blonde bunnies who kick up sand all day while fit, tanned, athletic boys show off their board skills. Max wasn’t that great at surfing but, he said, the girls liked him anyway.

“Yeah, I bet,” I said. “Who could resist you?” I squeezed his bicep.

“Turns out a lot of girls could.”

“Oh, go on…”

“There’s nothing really interesting,” he said. “I haven’t been serious with anyone in quite a while.”

“Do you want to get married?”

He looked at me. “Are you proposing?”

I blurted out an indelicate laugh. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. Marriage? I don’t know. I guess it’s just a matter of being with the right person.”

“Well, sure.”

“No,” he said. “I mean the desire. How can someone just want to get married? I think you really only have that desire when you’re with the right person. Nobody knows if they want to be married, as some kind of abstract idea. You don’t know what it’s like, and if you’re not with someone you’d marry, how can the thought even be serious?”

There was a pause and I guessed he was waiting for me to answer. “I think you’re over-thinking it.”

“Hmm. Maybe. All that matters is that you’re here.”

We were quiet the rest of the way back to Los Angeles. We hit some turbulence about ten minutes out, but otherwise it was a smooth flight.

Smooth in the physical sense, at least. Emotionally, things were a little rocky.

I didn’t want the weekend with Max to end. Tomorrow would mean back to the grind. And while I loved the work I was doing, it would be an extreme understatement to say I was distracted by thoughts of being with Max all the time.

On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, I was a little nervous about Max being so vague and dismissive about his relationships with women during recent years. I knew it was probably nothing more than him sparing me lurid tales of encounters with Hollywood’s hottest, horniest, and most desperate female starlets and socialites.

If that’s what he was doing, then he did the right thing. I really didn’t want to know about those women. All I wanted to do was see where this was going with Max. And, so far, he’d given me no real reason to be afraid. He had done and said absolutely nothing to make me feel like I wasn’t enough for him.

I mentally kicked myself for letting my negativity and self-doubt cap off such a wonderful weekend.

FIVE

Krystal wasn’t there when I got home. She hadn’t mentioned it on the phone earlier, but I guessed she had to work.

It was a little after 5pm so I decided I should do my regular Sunday check-in with my parents. Mom answered on the first ring. Dad got on the other extension. They asked how my week went, and I filled them in, minus the little jaunt up the coast with Max Dalton, of course.

They were having their kitchen remodeled, so I had to listen to about ten minutes of Mom describing precisely what the contractor was going to do, with Dad piping in every thirty seconds or so complaining about the cost of the new counters, cabinets, and pretty much everything else. A little bickering ensued and Mom finally said they should have that discussion when they’re not on the phone with me. Thank God.

“Is Grace around?”

“She’s just put the baby down. Let me get her,” Mom said.

I really needed to talk to my sister. I’d been putting it off all weekend. I knew if I had called her Friday night, I would have been so angry I probably would have said something I regretted. But now, enough time had passed where I could probably have a rational conversation with her.

When Mom and Dad dropped off the line and it was just Grace, I said, “Did you tell Chris where I was?”

“What? No! I told you I just said LA.”

“Then he stalked me.”

“He what?”

I said, “Chris showed up at my apartment door Friday night.”

“Holy shit.” The surprise in her voice was genuinely fearful and then changed to regret. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s my fault. Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

Over the next full two minutes or so, she must have apologized a dozen times as I explained what happened. I knew she was truly sorry, but I told her to stop apologizing. I got to the part about how someone saved me, but I didn’t tell her who it was, specifically. I just said it was a neighbor.

“I just need you to do something for me,” I said, trying to bring this conversation to a close for now.

“Anything. I’ll do anything.”

Monday morning. I got to my desk without seeing Kevin, thank God. The last thing I needed was my boss asking about my weekend and detecting from my blushing or body-language that I’d been up to something. Of course, he would have no idea I had been with Max. But the ramifications of my dating and sleeping with someone we were working with could have been disastrous for me and my future.

I did finally see Kevin around 11 a.m. He stopped by my desk and said I should pack up my things.

My heart sank. Did he know? Had he found out I had breached his trust by being with Max? I felt my throat go dry and the beginnings of that little stinging you get before you cry, as the tears well up.

“You look like you’re going to pass out,” he said. “Don’t worry. I was joking. Or trying to, anyway. But you do need to pack up your things and come with me.”

I stood. “What’s going on?”

“Just do it.”

He put a box on my desk and started putting things in it. I joined him, and it wasn’t long before we were done. There wasn’t all that much on my desk. I did make sure to pack up the drawer I used to stash my many packages of sunflower seeds—a snacking habit that caused Kevin to refer to me once as a bird.

He led me down the hall to an office that had been serving as a storage room. He opened the door. All of the extraneous stuff he had been storing in there was gone, and now in its place was a desk, a big leather chair behind it, and two nice visitors’ chairs on the other side of the desk.

“I think you earned your own office space,” he said, standing aside so I could walk in.

An office of my own. With a window! And out of that window was a view of a good part of Los Angeles. There was a lump in my throat as the realization hit me that I was already moving up in the show business world. Just a few months ago, I could never have dreamed of doing the things I’d already done, and now, with my new office, I felt like I was on my way.

“Wow. Thanks, Kevin.” I put my little box of belongings on my new desk.

“You deserve it. Now get settled in and back to work.” He smiled and turned down the hallway.

An hour later I was doing yet another interview of an aspiring actress who was seeking representation. Her real name was Madeline Ostrosvky but, like so many others with names that were hard to pronounce, she planned to use a different last name professionally.

“Redford,” she said.

“Redford,” I repeated flatly.

“It sounds elegant. Like a rich, successful sounding name.”

I handled it as gently as I could. “People will think you’re trying to capitalize on Robert Redford’s name.”

“Who?”

Oh, Jesus. Did she really not know who Robert Redford was? I mean, sure, he was of a different generation and it was entirely possible that she hadn’t seen any of his movies, even the more recent ones. But what kind of aspiring actor or actress hasn’t even heard the name “Robert Redford”?

So I told her who he was, how big a name that is in Hollywood, and repeated my previous warning about it—people would see it as a cheap ploy using Robert Redford’s name to make her more recognizable.

“We’ll have to work on the name,” I concluded, and started to look through more of her resume and photos.

“We? Does that mean you’re taking me on as a client?”

I paused. This wasn’t how we did things at Kevin’s agency.

She must not have liked the pause and seen it as bad news, and said, “I really need this. I got these just for acting.” She started to lift her blouse. “They’re still a little sore—”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “You don’t have to do that. Really.”

That’s the kind of afternoon I had. Oh well. At least I had it in my new fancy office.

“I have to go out of town for a few days.”

The words from Max coming through the phone disappointed me. It was just before five o’clock and I was sitting at my desk, surveying my new surroundings and wondering what I could do with the walls.

I had become accustomed to seeing Max so often, or at least talking to him every day, I knew I would miss him and it would just make the workdays drag on even more until I laid eyes on him again.

“When?”

“I’m leaving in a couple of hours. Got a couple of people scouting locations for a shoot and they can’t seem to agree so I’m going to do it myself.”

“Oh, such a take-charge man.”

“Do I sense a little sarcasm in your voice?”

I laughed. “No, you sense a lot.” I loved our banter, and decided to be playful to relieve my disappointment.

“And you,” he said, “better watch your mouth or I just might spank you.”

My eyebrows rose up my forehead. Thank goodness he couldn’t see them. “It’s about time you brought that up.”

“You like that, huh?”

“My favorite,” I said in a hushed voice, trying to sound sexy. The truth was, I had never been spanked. Never even really thought of it. But there was something about the idea of Max doing it that made my insides stir a little. Okay, a lot.

“I’ll keep that in mind. You should come with me.”

“What?”

“On my trip to New York.”

I’d never been to New York City before. I wanted to go so badly. But I knew I couldn’t. “I have to work.”

“Get out of it.”

“I can’t, Max. Especially since I have my own office now.”

He whistled sarcastically. “Now who’s the big-shot in this town?”

“Still you,” I said. I told him about the office and how Kevin had presented me with it. “So there’s no way I can just take off the rest of this whole week. That would look pretty bad.”

“Fine then. We’ll go this weekend. I’ll come get you and we’ll go. I enjoyed our weekend out of town. Nice, quiet—”

“Not so quiet in the bedroom.”

“I was getting to that.” He chuckled. “So we had the quiet getaway. Now we’ll have a not-so-quiet one.”

Max and I texted and talked on the phone over the next couple of days. He told me all about his trip and I filled him in on how my week was going. But mostly we talked and teased about our upcoming weekend in New York.

Grace called Wednesday morning as I was driving into work. She had done exactly what I asked her to do.

“He’s been to work the last two days,” she said.

Several days ago when I told her I had something for her to do, that’s what I was talking about. All I wanted was for her to find out if Chris was back home, making me feel safe knowing he was no longer in LA, and that’s exactly how I felt upon hearing her news.

“Thank God,” I said.

“I think you mean, ‘Thank Grace.’”

“Uh, I wouldn’t push it if I were you,” I said. “You’re a big part of the reason all of this happened in the first place.”

Her tone shifted to apologetic again, but I told her to forget it.

“Thanks for checking it out,” I said. “You still haven’t told Mom and Dad, right?”

“No way.”

“Good.”

“So,” she said, changing the subject, “have you met anyone?”

I wanted to tell her about Max. I really did. I just wasn’t ready to divulge it to the world yet. And I didn’t want her to fret, like I knew she would. She had been just as skeptical of my new life in LA as my parents had been. While my parents were mostly disapproving, Grace was worried about me. All the more reason not to tell her just yet.

SIX

The rest of the week was uneventful. I was glad I didn’t have any more interviews with prospective clients. I could focus on my work, which mostly involved coordinating with our PR team to make sure our clients’ social media accounts were current. That also involved responding to fans. Before I got this job, I had no idea how much of the interaction between fans and stars was really between fans and PR folks.

When I got home Friday afternoon, there was nothing to do but wait. I had already packed and Max was sending a car for me. He was coming back from Vancouver—all the way to LA to pick me up, then we were off for New York City.

I sat on the couch, using my phone to browse Twitter, all the while thinking about how I had my first flight when I was twenty, and now I was about to take my second private plane ride in as many weekends. What a whirlwind this was turning out to be.

I got a text from Max: Car should be there any minute.

I wrote back: Great! Can’t wait to see you.

Max: I’ll tell the driver to step on it.

Me: Haha. Where are you now?

Max: About to land in Burbank. Are you hungry?

Me: For you.

Damn. I shouldn’t have sent that. Ah, what the hell—it wasn’t like I was playing hard to get anymore.

Max: You’re a bad girl. I like it.

Me: I’m not hungry.

Max: Too late. I already ordered your food. See you in a bit.

A few minutes later I was in the backseat of a black Rolls Royce. The driver was an older gentleman named Samuel. He asked me if I’d like a drink on the way. I declined and he closed the door, then whisked us off toward the Burbank airport.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Yes ma’am?”

“Is this…are you…do you work for Max?”

“No, Ms. Rowland. Not directly. I work for myself, actually. Mr. Dalton is one of my clients.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Sorry to disappoint, ma’am.”

I looked at the review mirror and saw him looking back at me. “I’m not disappointed. Sorry if I sounded that way.”

“It’s quite all right, Ms. Rowland.”

“Call me Olivia.”

He nodded his head. “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. I like my business to be of the highest class, so while you’re free to call me Samuel, or whatever you’d like, I’d prefer to call you Ms. Rowland or ma’am, if you don’t mind.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Garvey.”

“Okay, Mr. Garvey, you may call me Ms. Rowland.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

He didn’t laugh out loud, but in the mirror I could see the corners of his eyes scrunch up, so I had at least brought a smile to his face.

By the time we got to the airport it was dusk. A beautiful sunset was at the end of the runway. Max’s private plane sat on the tarmac, the door open and the steps down. When Mr. Garvey turned toward the plane, I saw Max standing at the foot of the stairs.

He wore a tight white t-shirt, jeans, and black hiking boots. So simple, yet so fucking hot.

Max came around and opened my door, taking my hand. When I stood next to him, he put his arms around me and gave me the kind of kiss you get when someone hasn’t seen you in a long time.

“Wow,” I said, when he freed my mouth from his. “You were only gone for a few days.”

“I missed you. Come on.”

He led me to the plane, up the stairs, and when we boarded I saw that he had several take-out containers from a Chinese place on the table. I really meant what I said earlier—that I wasn’t hungry—but all of the sudden I was famished. It smelled so good.

As the plane took off, Max and I looked out the window. I decided that the best way to watch the sunset over the Pacific horizon was from an ascending plane.

“Let’s eat,” he said.

We ate and talked about New York City. Max knew I had never been there, so he told me all the things he planned to show me over the weekend.

“We barely have two days, though,” I said.

“We’ll make it count.”

The flight would take a little over five hours so after we ate, we settled in together on what turned out to be an extremely comfortable love-seat. With my head on his chest, I fell asleep, and when I woke up I saw that three hours had passed. Max was asleep, and I tried not to wake him as I got up to use the restroom.

When I came out, he was awake.

“I thought you changed your mind about the trip and jumped out,” he joked, rubbing his eyes and stretching.

“Well, I couldn’t find the parachutes so I went into the bathroom and tried to flush myself down the toilet.”

He looked at me straight-faced, then broke out in a hearty laugh.

I sat down close to him, put my head on his shoulder, and my hand on his thigh. I looked down and saw that his jeans were bulging. He had woken up hard.

I moved my hand closer to it and let my fingers graze along the edge of his erection.

Max raised his hand to my chin, turned my face toward his, and kissed me. When his tongue slipped into my mouth, I moved my hand again, this time putting the palm of my hand over the length of the bulge.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.

“I bet you are. What would you do with this if I wasn’t?” I pressed on his cock.

“Same thing I always do when I’m horny and lonely.”

“You? Lonely? Doubtful.”

He tilted his head. “You make me sound like I’m easy.”

I laughed. “No, just not lonely.”

He kissed me again.

I felt a strange and unfamiliar rush of boldness and asked, “So how often do you…”

I wasn’t making eye contact with him. I was looking at my hand lightly rubbing up and down the length of his erection straining against his jeans.

“Masturbate?” he said, finishing my question for me.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t—”

“It’s okay. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. The answer is: not very often, at least now that I’m spending time with someone I can’t get enough of.”

“So…” I didn’t finish the sentence.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

Max put his finger under my chin again, turned my face toward his, and said, “You were going to say something or ask something, but you’re censoring yourself. You don’t have to be shy with me, you know that.”

I looked into his eyes. He was so serious, so open to me, almost begging me to finish what I was saying.

“I…I don’t know,” I said. “I just wondered…I mean, is it good when you do it yourself?”

I felt kind of stupid after I said it. It made me sound so naïve, so inexperienced, so unworldly or something.

“It can be,” he said. “It’s not as much fun when you’re alone.”

“Well, it’s not like you do that when you’re with someone.” I laughed at the idea.

Max didn’t.

I continued, “Right? I mean, what’s the point?”

As he looked at me a little smirk grew out of the corner of his mouth. “You should get rid of your boundaries.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your sexual boundaries.”

My mouth fell open. “Uh, excuse me, but I think you should know by now that I don’t have any boundaries.”

“None?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Well, almost.”

He laughed. “See? Boundaries. You have them. That’s a shame. You’re missing out.”

Without speaking, he straightened up in his seat, stood and took my hand. We went to the other side of the plane where two rows of seats faced each other. He stopped at one of the seats. I looked at him. He motioned toward it, still not speaking, but clearly urging me to sit down. I sat.

Max took a step back and lowered into the seat directly across from me. His face was a blank stare—no smiling, no grinning, nothing. But, as with other times when he was turned on, his eyes seemed to have endless depth as he stared back at me.

He leaned back in the seat and lifted his white t-shirt from the hem, showing off his flat, taut stomach. Then, with just the one hand, he started to unbuckle his belt.

I took a deep breath after realizing I’d been holding the air in my lungs.

Max got his belt unfastened, unbuttoned his jeans, and opened the front of his pants. He slipped his fingers under the waistband of his boxers and in one fluid motion, he pushed the front down. His cock sprang free—as hard as I had ever seen it—and his balls appeared full, heavy, loaded for action.

Was I dreaming? I had to make sure I wasn’t. The thought of seeing him masturbate for me was making my mouth dry with nervous anticipation while I felt a tingle between my thighs.

Max’s hands were on the arms of the seat. His erection stood straight up.

My gaze drifted from his cock to his eyes.

“Hands free?” I joked.

For the first time in several minutes, Max smiled. He didn’t say anything, though. He just kept looking at me as my eyes fell once again to take in the view of his magnificent maleness.

When he put his hand on his erection, he used a light touch, stroking it up and down using just his fingertips.

It dawned on me for the first time in my life that since I had never seen a man masturbate, perhaps I didn’t fully know what they really liked and wanted. Not that it had ever stopped me from getting results in the past….

Max’s hand dipped down and he cupped his balls, rolling them in his hand. I watched with fascination as I realized he wasn’t as gentle as I was with them.

He then sat forward a little and took off his shirt, revealing what I had seen several times but still made my eyes glaze over, but not enough to miss out.

Max kicked off his shoes and socks, then wriggled out of his jeans and boxers. And there before me was the most gorgeous view I’d ever had—a naked Max. Now he was the one making himself vulnerable to me.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

I was at a loss for words for a moment, and he let me gather my thoughts. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Watching a man jerk off?” His right hand grasped his cock and he slowly stroked near the head.

“Never.”

“Do you want to?”

Inside my head, I screamed: Hell yes! But luckily my filter was in perfect working condition and I gave him the more subdued: “I’d love to.”

Max wasn’t at all shy about his body. And why should he be? He was in shape, had a nice tan that wasn’t overdone as so many are in southern California, and he was well-groomed. Short, neat hair around his cock, not a wild and unruly bush. I knew that from our previous encounters but this was a purely visual experience so it made more of an impact.

I watched the muscles in his arm flex as he stroked up and down. I watched how he tightened his grip near the base, then relaxed it a little as his hand reached the head. There, he made a motion like the was twisting off a bottle-cap.

A droplet formed at the tip of his cock. Max used his thumb to spread it around the head, and more down his shaft. Instant lube.

I wanted to jump him right then and there, but this was something new that he wanted, obviously, so I stayed in my seat. I was starting to squirm a little, though, as I got worked up myself from what I was watching.

Max started stroking himself with two hands, one above the other, still doing that little twist move near the top. I loved it when his hands went down his shaft and the head of his cock poked out from his fist at the top.

“You should join me, Olivia.”

In a heartbeat, I thought. I started to move out of my seat but he stopped me.

“No,” he said, “let me watch you. We’ll watch each other.”

Holy shit. I had never masturbated in front of anyone before. I suddenly felt self-conscious, thinking that instead of being hot to watch, I’d probably look stupid.

“Take off your shirt,” Max said, and that commanding sultry tone of his was all the encouragement I needed.

I unbuttoned my shirt and for the first time since this started, I thought of the pilot. What if he came back here? He hadn’t left the cockpit on our flight to Napa, but this was a long flight. If he had to use the restroom, well, surely there wasn’t one up there. He’d have to come back here.

“Don’t worry,” Max said, once again practically reading my mind.

I didn’t take my shirt off, but I did slip my bra off underneath it, much to Max’s amusement. Then I finished unbuttoning my shirt.

“Beautiful.”

I loved when Max said things like that to me. I pushed my shirt open wider, exposing my breasts to him. I looked down and saw that my nipples were already tightened into hard peaks.

“Touch them,” he said.

I cupped them as I watched him stroking himself with a perfect rhythm. I played with my nipples, pinching them, tugging on them, teasing them….

Just as Max was teasing me with that big, beautiful cock. I wanted to drop to my knees and take him into my mouth. Please him. Drive him wild. But he was clearly getting off on this exhibition of mutual masturbation.

“Get naked for me, Olivia.”

My heart went to my throat. This was exhilaration beyond anything I could have imagined.

“I need to see your perfect legs. Your perfect pussy. Show me.”

I showed him, quickly getting out of my pants and settling back into the seat.

“Put your legs up on the armrests,” Max said.

He was now stroking it with just one hand, gripping the head firmly, then sliding down his length, all the way to the base. When his hand reached that point, Max extended his fingers and caressed his balls.

I moved a hand down between my legs to my now-wet folds.

“That’s it. So sexy,” Max said in a low, gravelly voice.

I watched as the muscles in his chest and arms flexed as he stroked himself. He had become even more wet himself—at one point he gripped his cock just below the head and large bead of precum emerged, running over the back of his fingers. He spread it around the head and all over his shaft.

His upper body wasn’t the only part of him flexing. His muscular thighs were tight, the lines of the muscles clearly visible. Same with his calves.

I worked my hand faster, using the tip of my forefinger to make circular motions around my engorged clit.

Damn. I wanted to straddle him and ride him until we both exploded. But I knew I’d get my chance to do that, hopefully many times. And this mutual exhibitionist/voyeuristic getting off was definitely breaking down a boundary that he clearly knew I had.

“Come with me, Olivia.”

It didn’t take much more encouragement than that. I felt the orgasm building in me, quickly, and I shut my eyes.

“Watch me,” he said. “I want you to watch me come while I watch you come.”

I opened my eyes and locked them with his.

Just in time, too, because the first spurts of come were jetting out of his cock, landing on his belly. Then more, some ending up on his thighs, and also his chest where it pooled for a moment, then ran down his chest in a stream.

My breathing was loud. I couldn’t help it. I was so close.

“Come for me,” he encouraged—demanded—again.

And I did as he said.

SEVEN

“You didn’t think that was odd, did you?”

I looked at him. “No. It was…”

“It was what?”

I smiled. “It was hot as hell, is what it was.”

We had cleaned up, got dressed, and were snuggling in a window seat together.

“You know,” Max said, “we probably flew over your old neck of the woods while we were doing that.”

It was an odd thought: flying over my old hometown, my parents down there somewhere, while I was thousands of feet in the air above them, having a mutual masturbation experience with a hot, rich guy who liked me.

I pinched his nipple through his shirt. “Don’t make me think about that.”

“Sorry,” he said, laughing, and pushing my hand away. My head was on his chest and I loved hearing that deep rumble within him.

An hour later we landed at JFK airport. Max had arranged for a limo to be waiting for us, and soon we were in the heart of New York City. It was close to 2 a.m. local time, but to us it felt like only 11 p.m.

As we drove through the city, I looked out the window, trying to peer up at the huge buildings. LA isn’t exactly a small town, but to me it was nothing like NYC. The streets were still fairly crowded with people. I figured most of them were going from one bar or club to another.

We got to the hotel, crashed, and I slept soundly until around nine the next morning. The only light in the room was soft and bluish, a thin ray streaming in through the window. From what I could see, it was cloudy, but not raining. I lay there for a few minutes just looking at Max. His shirt was off and the white sheet was bunched around his waist. He was on his back with one arm behind his head.

It’s a bit much to call someone perfect, and I’m not naïve enough to think that of anyone. But this situation couldn’t be more perfect. I was with a beautiful man who had a heart of gold. He had protected me when I could have been in danger that night when Chris showed up. He had whisked me off for an amazing weekend getaway in Napa, and now here we were in New York City, which promised to be just as amazing.

I thought about what we did on the plane. What a turn-on it was. How Max had done something so private in front of me, and how he had gotten me to do the same. I’d never let my walls down that much. Never shared something to intimate—so fucking hot!—with someone before.

When Max finally woke up, we lay there together on the cool sheets, with our bodies providing a soft warmth. I could have stayed like that all day, maybe all weekend, but Max was eager to get me out in the city and show me around.

We had brunch at an outside French café. We went to the Museum of Modern Art, walked past Radio City Music Hall, took a stroll through Central Park, and had a late lunch at a small Italian place, in the basement of a building, completely tourist free. It was just like the NYC Italian restaurants I’d seen in so many movies about mobsters. I didn’t see anyone who looked suspiciously like they stepped off the set of The Godfather or Goodfellas. At one point I started to say something about that, but Max gave me a wide-eyed look that told me to wait until we were out of the place.

Later, back at the hotel, Max said he wanted to take me to a Broadway show.

“Seriously?” I think my voice went up an octave or two, making me sound like a kid who’d been promised something.

Max laughed. “Get dressed.”

“I didn’t bring anything nice.”

He walked over to the armoire, opened the two doors, and showed me a gorgeous white dress.

“I ordered this for you yesterday.”

“I was with you. How did you get it in here without me noticing?”

Max grabbed the hanger, removed the dress, and walked over to me. “I had them bring it up here. I’m just glad you weren’t curious enough to look in there at some point.”

“It’s beautiful.”

I leaned in to kiss him. “Come on. Let’s take a quick shower and get dressed or we’ll be late.”

We had a hard time taking a quick shower together. Max lathered me up, spending quite a bit of unequal time on my breasts. I commented on it and he plead guilty.

I gave him the same treatment, only mine was probably more cruel: I had him hard as a rock by the time we were rinsing off.

“I want to fuck you right now,” he said.

With my hand wrapped around his fully erect cock, I shook my head. “Later.”

“Tease.”

I was smiling as he kissed me. “If I tease you now, maybe we’ll get back here later and you can fuck me senseless.”

“You shouldn’t challenge me,” he said.

But he took the challenge, and held off. A part of me wanted him to pick me up, take me to the bed and do me hard and fast. But I was sure it would happen later.

The dress fit perfectly. With Max in his tux, we looked like we were going to dinner at the White House or Buckingham Palace.

The limo ride was short. Lucky for us. What little time we had in the car was spent teasing each other more. I almost suggested to Max that we skip the Broadway play and just ride around NYC, having sex in the limo. I don’t know what got into me at some point in the day, but I was as horny as I could remember being in a long time.

The limo pulled to a stop. I hadn’t even been looking around, so I didn’t notice where Max was actually bringing me.

Hundreds of people were gathered beneath the marquee. Flashbulbs were going off like bursts of lightning. The path from the curb to the entrance of the building was a red carpet.

“Sorry,” Max said. “I lied about the play.”

I looked up at the marquee, saw the movie name, and in large letters: “PREMIER TONIGHT!”

Max took my hand in his. “I thought I’d surprise you by taking you to your first red carpet movie premier.”

Wow. I’d had high hopes for seeing my first Broadway play, but this was even better.

Before I could process it all, the limo door was opened by a guy in a tux. Max stepped out, taking me by the hand and helping me out after him.

“Just keep up with me,” he said, and started down the red carpet.

My eyes were flitting from left to right, looking at all the paparazzi and onlookers. They of course had no idea who I was, so all the camera flashes must have been for Max. But then I remembered he told me wasn’t “that kind” of famous. He wasn’t of great interest to the entertainment press. As successful as he was, he was known among them, but he was no Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino in terms of fame in the public eye. And, from all that he’d confessed about being sick of the business, he was glad it was that way.

The frenzy of cameras wasn’t as great as it was for the couple ahead of us and when I got inside I realized why. It was Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban. There were other stars milling around in the lobby, and Max introduced me to a few of them, including Kiefer Sutherland. I had to pretend that I knew what they were talking about when Max brought up something about the show 24, but I’m not sure Mr. Sutherland cared either way.

Mostly, my head was buzzing as I scanned the lobby and spotted other famous people I’d only previously seen on TV. At one point, when I saw Morgan Freeman, I squeezed Max’s hand so tightly he asked if I needed to use the bathroom or something.

“No!” I said, hitting his arm. And more quietly, I said, “Look who’s over there.”

“Olivia,” Max said, without a hint of condescension in his voice, “if you’re going to work in this business you’re going to have to get used to seeing famous faces. In fact, it would do you some good to learn how to be cordial without letting them know you’re impressed. Trust me.”

He knew what he was talking about. He wouldn’t have made it this far in the business if he didn’t. Plus, I saw him put that advice into action the rest of the time we spend in the lobby drinking champagne and mingling. I stayed with Max the entire time. Or, more accurately, he tethered me to himself with a firm lock on my hand. I guess he didn’t want me wandering off and making a fan-girl fool of myself. Again, he knew what he was doing.

“Do you know all these people?” I asked later, after the movie, as we attended the after-party in the grand lobby.

“Some.”

“Even the ones you haven’t worked with.”

He sipped from his White Russian. “You meet people lots of different ways. By the way, I’d like to compliment you on leaving your phone in your purse all night. That shows a lot of self-control.”

I squinted my eyes at him. “Maybe I’ll whip it out now and start snapping pictures.”

Max leaned toward me, his lips against my ear. “Maybe I’ll whip something else out and fuck you right here.”

He pulled away, keeping eye contact with me, and taking another sip of his drink.

I took a few steps toward the middle of the room. “How about right here?”

Max’s hand went to his belt buckle. “If you say so…”

I burst out laughing. A little too loud, it turns out, because I attracted the attention of a few people around us. Luckily it was no one famous. I stepped toward Max and threw my arms around his neck. “Will you please take me back to our room and fuck me?”

EIGHT

“I thought you said elevator sex was cliché.”

“This isn’t sex,” Max said. “And I can’t resist you, so cliché or not, we’re going to do this.”

I had my back against the wall of the hotel’s elevator car. Max had both hands against the wall, over my shoulders, caging me.

“Touch me,” he said.

My palm glided down the front of his shirt. I felt his hard chest and stomach beneath my hand.

My heart started beating faster as my hand reached his belt buckle. It was still fastened and I wondered if I should undo it, but as I explored a little farther, I realized that he had simply unzipped.

His erection was pointing upward a little, as if waiting to greet me.

I felt the soft, fleshy head of it. First with my palm. Then I closed a few fingertips around it. The tip was wet. Max was extremely turned on.

He was sucking on one of my nipples as I touched him and he said, “That feels amazing,” through a breathy sigh. “ What are you thinking?” he asked.

I had to remember to breathe. I kept holding my breath, not even aware of it. I took in some air and said, “I can’t believe what I’m doing.”

“Holding a big cock in your hand?”

“More than that,” I said.

“Standing here with your tits out, getting your nipples sucked?”

His hot talk was turning me on. Hearing him describe what we were doing in such a blunt way got me even more excited. I said, “You’re so hard.”

“Because of you.”

He kissed me fully, our hot and wet mouths meeting, our tongues sliding along each other’s with incredible passion.

I took him into my hand, trying to wrap my fingers around his hard-on as much as I could. He was long and thick. I stroked him from the base, up the length of his shaft, to the tip, then back down again. He was as hard as I could imagine a guy getting. The skin was warm and soft, almost velvety, especially around the tip.

A drop of semen gathered at the tip and it got on my hand, serving as a lubricant as I stroked him.

“We should leave,” I said, as reality and logic suddenly snapped me out of the haze I’d been in for the last several minutes.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

“What?” I was baffled at the risk he was willing to take. “They’re going to find us here. Someone is.”

“That makes it better, doesn’t it? Besides, I haven’t felt all of you yet.”

“Max, I’m serious.”

“I know you are,” he said. “You’re also wet.”

I was. I could feel it. I was wet and hot and my inner thighs were almost tingling.

He started kissing my neck, one of my weaknesses. I was very aroused and it was made more vivid by the risk we were taking and by the fear of getting caught in the elevator.

I felt Max’s cock getting harder as I stroked him faster. I felt it pulsating in my hand. I felt it pumping. Then I felt his hot come on my thigh, running down my leg.

When he started to spurt he pulled his hand out of my underwear and put it on the wall, so both hands were on either side of my head. He leaned on the wall as he had his orgasm. He moved his hips back and forth, as though he were fucking my hand, and then I felt his semen spurting out and then more, and more.

“Fuck,” he said through a heavy breath.

I was totally embarrassed. Which is what I knew he wanted. When he finally did finish, he moved back a little, put his cock back into his pants and zipped up.

“That was incredible,” he said. “I think there’s some on your dress.”

Oh no. Stupidly, or perhaps just because of the circumstances, I hadn’t even thought of that. “I need to see it in the light,” I said, frantically situating my dress back over my breasts. As I straightened the lower part of my dress, I felt it for sure. Splashes of his semen on my dress, rivulets of it succumbing to gravity and making its way down to my legs.

Max took his pocket-square out of his jacket and wiped it up as best he could.

“When we get to the room, I’m afraid you’ll have to take this dress off so we can let this spot soak.”

I smiled. “How convenient.”

“This could get complicated,” Max said, sliding the card into the lock when we got to his hotel room.

“How so?”

He took a deep breath. “Complicated in the sense of…” His voice trailed off. “Well, let me put it this way. Can you stop?”

“Stop what?”

“Stop what we’re doing,” he said. “If I told you in the next ten seconds that we would never again do what we’ve been doing, the way we’ve been doing it, would you be okay with that?”

I had to think about it for a minute.

The silence prompted him to speak. “I think the answer is no.”

I said, “What makes you say that?”

“The pause.”

“That pause could have been me figuring out a way to tell you I do want to stop,” I said.

Max laughed. “I don’t think so, honey.”

There was a cockiness in his tone. Normally I’d be the first to roll my eyes and dismiss a guy who was so sure of himself. But Max was different in so many ways.

He continued, “I think you’d start it up on your own if I stopped.”

Dammit. He was probably right. I didn’t want to admit it, though.

He said, “Can you go back to life before me?”

“I can live without it,” I said, taunting him.

This time it was Max who paused before saying, “I’m sure you could live without me. But the question is: Would you want to?”

That was indeed the question, and the answer was no.

When I told him, he took my hand and led me to the bedroom.

Max said: “All afternoon I’ve been thinking about how I couldn’t wait to get you naked and make you come all over my cock.”

He hadn’t done this much dirty talking since I met him, and it was beginning to have a strangely intoxicating effect on me.

He lowered the zipper on my dress, quickly shoved it down my body, and I stepped out of it. I was standing there with my back to him, wearing only a bra, panty-hose and shoes.

The shoes didn’t last long. Neither did the hose. Max removed them and, still with my back to him, he finished undressing me.

Last to go was the bra. His hands went for it, and in seconds it too was on the floor. I was completely naked.

“Turn around,” he said.

I was turning, but apparently not fast enough for him because he helped spin me around. The next thing I knew I was on my back on the bed.

Max was hovering over me, licking my nipples. I watched his mouth as he clamped onto each nipple, trading off, back and forth, taking each one fully into his mouth.

He kissed the area between my breasts and then started down my stomach and finally stopping right as his mouth made contact with my clitoris.

I felt his tongue flicking on it.

I put my hands on his head.

I was squirming a lot and Max said, “Do you want to come like this?”

“Yes. Yes…” I could barely get the words out.

“Maybe later,” he teased.

Without saying anything, he stood up, reached out for my hand and I took it. He pulled me to a sitting position, stood in front of me, fully clothed. He even still had his jacket on.

Still silent, not warning me at all, his hands went to his pants zipper, and all of a sudden I was sitting there and Max was holding his fully erect cock right in front of my face.

He gave it a few strokes. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

“I want to see what you look like with a cock in your mouth,” he said.

I closed my eyes and leaned forward, my lips pursed tightly. I kissed the tip of his cock and felt that slick fluid sticking to my lips.

“Put your hand down,” he said, and I dropped the hand that was holding it in place.

He started moving his hips back and forth. I moved away when he thrust forward because the first time he did that it went in too deep.

He brushed the hair away from my face. I opened my eyes, looked up at his, and saw him craning his neck to the side a little so he had a full view of himself sliding in and out of my mouth.

“You look amazing,” he said. “So hot. I love fucking your mouth.”

I felt the veined ridges of his erection on my lips. I felt how much bigger the tip was when he squeezed and made it bulge even more.

He was starting to throb more and more, and frequently. At once, I wanted him to come in my mouth, but I also didn’t want any of this to end.

He pulled it out of my mouth, put his hand on his erection and gave it a few light strokes. I tried to get my jaw to relax. It felt like it was cramping.

Max put his hand on my shoulder, directed me onto my back. “Move back more,” he said.

As I moved farther back on the bed, he stripped naked. I watched him take his clothes off and drank in his tight, hard athlete’s body as though it were the first time I was seeing it. As he stood there naked for a few seconds, I again looked down and saw his hardness. I was only seconds away from having it inside me.

Max knelt before me and stroked himself with one hand, his other hand between my legs, rubbing me up and down.

“You look so hot,” he said. “I have to taste you again.”

He lowered his head between my legs.

“Touch yourself,” he commanded.

I moved my hands up and down my legs, going closer to my pussy with each pass, finally getting my fingers in place. I spread myself open, giving him a close-up view of my excited clit.

“Beautiful,” he said. “Show me how you do it.”

I circled the pad of my forefinger around. He told me to stick my finger out, and when I did he took it into his mouth, sucked on it, then pulled away, leaving my finger dripping with his saliva.

I circled my clit a little faster, then slipped one finger into my hole, joined a second later by another.

“I love watching you finger yourself.”

I looked down and saw how close his face was. Inwardly I was begging him to lick me, but I couldn’t ask for it. I’d have to wait until he was ready.

Which didn’t take long.

His head lowered again and he turned it a little to one side, pushing my hand away. “All mine.”

He slipped a finger into me, turned it up a little, massaging my soft inner walls.

And his tongue had stopped teasing—it was now right where I’d been dying to feel it.

I positioned myself up on my elbows a little so I could look farther down and have a clear view of what he was doing to me. He moved both of his arms under me to lift my pelvis up. I had a perfect line of sight now and watched his every movement.

“You like watching?” he said, between licks, and looking up to make eye contact.

I nodded.

“Tell me.”

I took a breath and said, “I love watching you bathe me with your tongue.”

“Nice, Olivia. Very dirty.”

His fingers parted me. His tongue swirled around my clit, like he was polishing a fine pearl.

His finger moved a little faster, now making circles inside, matching the rhythmic movement of his tongue.

I said, “Do it, right there, oh yeah…”

“Ask.”

“Please,” I said, having momentarily forgotten my role.

He started flicking his tongue up and down on my clit, just the end of his tongue making contact with me, trying to heighten the sensitivity, and tease it a little.

My hips were moving up and down.

He slid one finger into me, and he asked me if I wanted two. I said yes, and felt them go in a little tightly, but I was slick and soon each finger was buried in me.

Then a third entered me. But not where I expected. Without warning, he had turned his hand to face down, two fingers in my pussy, and his thumb had entered my ass.

I felt the warm walls of my pussy twitch and tighten, then relax, then tighten again. A perfect rhythm started, and my legs closed around his head.

I was coming….

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah…” Over and over I said it, unable to stop.

Moments later, he leaned down over me and kissed my lips, feeding me my own taste.

Then he went for my neck, then lower, and started sucking on my nipples again. I felt his erection on me now, between my legs, just outside of me. He lowered himself and started sliding his cock around on my pussy—my wetness mixing with his.

“Max.”

He looked deeply into my eyes.

I said, “Don’t use a condom.” We had discussed the fact that I was taking birth control, but still played it safe…until now.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Do it. Just do it.”

“I love when you beg me.”

Without warning, he slid into me. I gasped. He was stretching me as he pushed in, farther, deeper, slowly at first and then he plunged it all the way in. I felt his balls against my butt—that’s how close we were, with him all the way inside of me.

He pulled out, not all the way but a long stroke retreating from me. Then, back in, this time faster and just as deep. There was a little pain that went along with it. Not much, but just enough on the edge of the pleasure I also felt.

He sat straight up, his cock deep within me, looked down at me and started rocking his hips back and forth.

“You feel so fuckin’ good,” he said. He looked down. “I wish you could see this.”

All I could do was breathe heavily. I didn’t have anything to say. I also didn’t want him to stop.

“Do you love my cock?”

“Yessss.”

“Say it.”

“I love your cock.”

“Tell me you love my cock fucking your tight cunt.”

“I love your big cock in my cunt.”

I felt Max’s erection twitch, then pulsate more, twitch again and then he said, “Fuck, I’m gonna come, Olivia.” He had been lying right on top of me after my orgasm and he was really going at it.

I had my hands above my head on the bed by this point. He went back to the sitting position and I watched as he looked down at himself going in and out….

Then I felt his hot semen spurting, filling me. Max trembled as he pumped his orgasm into me—shot after shot, like he would never stop coming.

But when he finally did, he collapsed on top of me, and I loved the heavy, hot, sweaty weight of him on me.

We didn’t talk for a few minutes. I still had no idea what to say and he was trying to catch his breath.

I don’t know where it came from. Maybe just unfiltered honesty. Making myself emotionally vulnerable to him, now that I’d made myself physically his. Regardless, what came out of my mouth was: “This is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Max rolled onto his side and pulled me close to his warm body.

“Wait ‘til you see what comes next.”

NINE

Sunday evening, back in LA, I entered my apartment to find it empty once again. Krystal was hardly ever there. If it weren’t for Max, I would have felt pretty lonely much of the time. That, or I’d have to go out and make friends, which never came easily to me unless someone else did the introducing.

I did my weekly check-in with my parents. Mom said Dad had been sick all week with some kind of stomach bug and was sleeping so I didn’t get to talk with him.

We talked about my week, and I made up a lie about my weekend. I told her I’d been resting and watching TV and cleaning the apartment. The boring nature of the lie was deliberate, so as not to spark any questions from her. Something as simple as saying I went to dinner and a movie would leave me having to remember more false statements.

Then she said, “Your father and I have been talking about taking a trip out there to see you. Just for a few days.”

I didn’t see that coming. I was silent for a few seconds and said, “Really?”

“Well, don’t sound so excited about it.”

“Sorry.”

“If you don’t want us to come…”

“No, Mom, it’s not that. It’s just a surprise, that’s all.”

Surprise was actually a mild word for what I was feeling. I hadn’t even considered the idea that they’d come all the way out here to visit. We’d never discussed it, and they weren’t much for traveling. On top of that, I immediately wondered how I would handle the whole thing with Max. I hadn’t mentioned a word to them about him, and to do so now, as they prepared to come for a visit, would look more like a confession rather than a happy announcement that I had a boyfriend. For now, I decided I should keep quiet about it and figure it out later.

“Well, would that be okay with you?” she asked.

“Of course it would. When were you thinking about taking the trip?”

“Maybe at the end of the month,” she said.

“Is Grace coming?”

“We haven’t talked to her about it yet.”

I really hoped my sister would come. I wanted to see the baby, for one thing, but also having Grace around would lessen the intense parental pressure I’d feel. No doubt there would be an inquisition about my living arrangements and my entire new life in LA.

Mom said we could talk more about it next week when I called. I told her to pass along a “Get well” message to Dad, and we ended the call.

I was exhausted but also craving a snack, so I filled a small bowl with fresh blueberries and settled down on the couch to flip through the channels and wind down a bit. When the TV came on, there was a still picture on it. I couldn’t tell what it was and thought the cable was out and had frozen on a channel, but it turned out the DVD was on and paused.

I pushed PLAY on the remote, then found myself sitting there with two blueberries in my mouth, unable to chew, shocked by what I was watching.

It was Krystal having sex with two guys.

I probably should have hit STOP, or maybe even dropped the bowl of fruit and run out of the room in total astonishment. But the truth is, I couldn’t stop looking.

Krystal was naked, except for a gold chain around her waist that attached to her belly-button ring. She was on all fours, her ass just off the edge of the bed. One guy stood behind her, fucking her, while another guy knelt in front of her as she sucked his cock.

It didn’t dawn on me at first, but this wasn’t simply Krystal and two guys taping themselves having sex. Someone was operating the camera. The video also switched from different angles and skipped ahead to different scenes—Krystal on her back with one guy fucking her, another guy kneeling just behind her head with his cock over her face while she licked and sucked him; Krystal riding a guy reverse cowgirl style, with the other guy standing on the bed with his cock in her mouth; and the finale: Krystal on top of one of the guys and the other one behind her, fucking her in the ass.

I’ve always had a nosey, curious side to me, but this was probably the worst example of lack of self-control on my part. I wish I hadn’t watched the entire fifteen minutes, but I did.

My earlier suspicions about Krystal having a waitressing job were confirmed. She was doing porn for a living. No wonder she never asked me to help her get representation from an agent. What kind of aspiring actress would have a roommate who worked for a Hollywood agent, and never once float the possibility of using that connection to get her foot in the door?

It wasn’t my place to judge her, but I was sure I wouldn’t be able to look at her the same way for a while.

I jolted upright off the couch, realizing that if she walked in, she’d find me looking at the DVD. I didn’t want her to know, didn’t want that kind of awkwardness. I grabbed the remote and ran the DVD back to the point where I thought she had paused it before. I turned off the TV and went to my room to try to get some sleep.

But it wouldn’t happen. My mind was racing. I had to tell someone. I couldn’t tell Grace. For one thing, it was almost 2 a.m. back in Ohio. Plus, I couldn’t be so sure that she wouldn’t freak out, blurt it out to my parents, and then I’d have to deal with a ration of shit about living in Hollywood with someone who does porn. No doubt my parents would project that on me and think I’d gone down a one-way street to Hell.

I called Max, who answered almost immediately. “Everything okay?”

“Fine. Why?”

“Just making sure you didn’t have any unwanted visitors.”

I sighed. “Let’s not bring him up anymore. I told you, he’s back in Ohio.”

“He better stay there.”

“I have something pretty wild to tell you.”

When I finished telling Max about the DVD, he said, “Typical.”

“Huh?”

“It happens to a lot of girls who come here looking for stardom. They end up in low-budget porn. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times.”

I said, “Really?”

“Don’t get any ideas.”

I laughed. “Uh, you don’t have to worry about that. I’d never do that. Besides, I’m having the best sex of my life right now.”

“Right now? Who’s there?”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do. And anyway, you’re not breathless like you usually are when you’re doing it.” He chuckled, and then there was silence, which wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. I had hoped he would agree and tell me that he was having the best sex of his life, too. But he didn’t say it.

It was a good thing that I didn’t confess to the other feeling I had developed. I was falling in love with him.

TEN

I’m standing with my back to the wall, and he has me trapped. He’s backlit, and all I can see is his silhouette, standing about two feet in front of me. I have no escape. My body shakes with fear. Adrenaline is coursing through my veins. I could try to run, but I know he’d catch me. I see the silhouette’s right shoulder dip and pull back. Then the more frightening thing I’d ever seen: he has made a fist and he’s cocking his arm back for the punch, level with my face.

I awoke from the dream in a cold sweat. I was drenched, and so were the sheets. I was shaking. Scared. My heart was racing. My mouth felt as dry as cotton.

It was the same dream I’d had about Chris many times. It never varied. It was always one-hundred percent factual, almost not like a dream at all, but a memory burned into my subconscious emerging every once in a while to haunt me.

But this time there was a difference. Not in the setting. Not in the lighting. Not in the order of events. This time, the person raising his fist was Max.

What the fuck did that mean?

The clock read 3:38 am. There is no more lonely place than the middle of the night when you’re awake, by yourself and scared, sad or both.

I got out of the bed, ripped the sheets off and tossed them to the floor. At some point I had pushed the comforter away, so it had escaped the sweat. I pulled the t-shirt over my head, slipped out of my panties, tossed them in the hamper and went to the bathroom where I toweled off my damp body. I got back on the bed—on the harshly uncomfortable bare mattress—and covered myself with the comforter as I shivered.

Somehow I managed to fall back asleep after about thirty minutes of being afraid to let myself fall into that dream again.

Why Max? Why had my brain allowed that to happen?

6:45 am, the alarm woke me. Thank God I hadn’t had a continuation of that terrifying dream. It still lingered, though, and I thought about it way too much as I showered and prepared for the day.

By the time I left my room and made my way to the kitchen to get some juice and fruit, Krystal was just coming in the door. She looked awful. Her hair was ragged. Her skin was an ashy pale color. She had bags under her eyes. She looked like she had aged fifteen years.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She yawned and said, “Fine, yeah, why?”

“Just making sure.” I could barely even look at her. Not just because of her appearance but also because her porn video was running on a loop in my mind.

On the way into work, I didn’t play any music. I spent the entire time trying to process why I might have had that awful dream about Max.

He had never done anything to make me feel the least bit threatened.

Physically, anyway….

Maybe the violence in the dream was a manifestation of my being afraid of him hurting me in some other way. The entire time we had been seeing each other, I’d been having those lingering thoughts that I wasn’t cut out to be with someone like Max.

Later, at lunch, we talked on the phone but I didn’t dare tell him about the dream. It would have opened up all kinds of possibilities for conflict, and I didn’t want to do that. After all, I’d pretty much figured out the source of the dream, so why burden him with an issue I needed to get over myself?

Not to mention our conversation was going so well. He told me he had a great time in NYC and I told him it was amazing.

“But,” I said, “maybe this weekend we keep our feet on the ground.”

“Does that rule out me carrying you to my bed?”

“I’d never rule that out. You know that.”

“Okay, so we stay in town. But I want you to myself all weekend. No going out. I’ll cook, we’ll talk, watch movies…” His voice trailed off.

“And?”

“And what?”

“That’s it?” I said playfully, and I knew he could probably hear the smile in my voice.

“Some things go without saying,” he replied.

I didn’t say anything. Just thinking about what we’d done in that hotel room on Saturday night, and Max’s comment about me waiting to see what comes next…well, it just had me vocally paralyzed.

I avoided Krystal all day and the next, which wasn’t difficult. She wasn’t around that much. I heard her coming and going late at night, but never saw her because I was in my room most of the time.

Max called me early Wednesday morning and said he was going to have to cancel our dinner plans. I was disappointed, but figured it might be best. For one thing, I kind of liked the idea of the anticipation building. On top of that, he was becoming something of a distraction, consuming all of my thoughts that didn’t have to do with work. Actually, he was consuming some of those, too, whenever I talked to Jacqueline Mathers, who was turning out to be a pain-in-the-ass client.

She called me twice on Monday. The first call was to find out if I thought she would be asked to do the late-night talk shows, and if so, could I make sure he was booked for Letterman? “If I’m going to get on Howard Stern’s show, I better not go on Leno.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Howard hates Leno!”

Apparently she thought she was on a first-name basis with Howard Stern. She filled me in on the feud, and I did all I could not to nod off during the boring story.

I told her I wasn’t sure it was time yet to think about booking appearances, and when the time did come, we’d have to ask Kevin about the Howard Stern idea.

“But you think Letterman’s a possibility?”

I really had no idea, but I said, “Sure. Of course.”

The second time she called, later that afternoon, she asked me if she’d have a driver to the studio and various set locations when shooting started.

I talked to Kevin, who told me: “Get used to it. They get one film and they think they’re the hottest thing in town. And for our sake, we better hope she is. Tell her we’ll make it happen.” He shut his laptop and shook his head. “Jesus.”

I felt better now that I knew Kevin had the same thoughts I was having about Jacqueline.

ELEVEN

I stopped at a Starbucks on Friday morning on my way in to work. There was a bounce in my step and a flutter in my chest. I was thinking “TGIF” not just because the weekend was coming, but because I would be spending the entire weekend with Max.

In the shower earlier, I thought about what it would be like to live with him. I imagined myself as the wife of this incredible man—not just professionally, but personally as well. I thought of the great sex we’d already had and would have much more of over the weekend. I had mental images and matching warm feelings of comfort thinking about how safe and desired I felt when he held me in his arms.

I’d had all week to get that stupid dream out of my head. More to the point, I had all week to work through my self-limiting fears of whether I was worthy or not. Of course I was. I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me I wasn’t, least of all myself.

When I got to work, Kevin was waiting in my office. That had never happened before. I looked at my watch to make sure I wasn’t late, and sure enough I wasn’t.

I walked in and he said, “Have a seat,” as though I had walked into his office. His voice was flat and he sounded concerned. He had his iPad in his lap.

I sat down and said, “What’s going on?”

“Olivia, can you explain this?”

He held up the iPad. I looked at the screen and saw a picture of Max and me on the red carpet at the movie premier in New York. Well, it wasn’t exactly a picture of us—it was a picture of Gwenyth Paltrow, and Max and I were in the background. The photo was snapped just as Max and I were emerging from the limo.

Damn. If only the background had been just a little more out of focus, I wouldn’t have been sitting there facing this inquiry.

I decided to be quick and blunt with the truth. Why run from it?

“I went to New York with him over the weekend.”

“When did this come about?”

“It started a few weeks ago.”

He sighed and looked at the picture again.

“I don’t have to tell you how bad this could be,” he said. “Do I?”

I shook my head. I knew all the ramifications of this for Kevin professionally, and by extension for me as well. I had thought it through early on when things started with Max. But in the meantime, my only concern had become for me personally, and the emotional wreckage that I might become if I let myself get too close to him. Too late. I was already there, and there was no going back.

Kevin continued: “Look, I understand if you got swept off your feet by Max Dalton. But you should have at least told me you were seeing him. This could complicate our working relationship.”

I wondered if he meant his working relationship with Max, or with me. Was he thinking of firing me? No, that would be a stupid move. He’d just landed his biggest deal with a major Hollywood producer, so how could he possibly fire his assistant who was dating that major Hollywood producer? The notion was fraught with career suicide for Kevin. And it was all just dawning on me. So I relaxed.

I didn’t say anything, though. I just let him finish. “Be careful.”

I hoped the ominous tone in his voice was unintended. The warning sounded like something more than an admonition to play things safe for the sake of his agency.

“Careful?” I asked.

Kevin looked down at his iPad without saying anything. He touched the screen a couple of times, scrolled down, then turned it so the screen was facing me.

I was looking at a tabloid website. There was a large photo of Max with a tall blonde woman under the snarky and typically unprofessional headline: “SOAP STAR’S BABY DADDY”.

Holy shit.

I read the first two paragraphs of the story. The woman was a soap opera actress named Liza Carrow. Rumors had been swirling for weeks, apparently, about her being pregnant and how they would work it into the show. And, as always happens in celebrity news, the major question was about who the father was.

The photo was taken two days ago outside a Thai restaurant in Los Angeles. The story named Max and told readers who he was, but the focus of it was really Liza Carrow. At least, that’s how the tabloid had intended it.

For me, the focus was Max.

It’s not often that you can shoo your boss out of your office, but that’s pretty much what I did. “I need to be by myself.”

That’s all I had to say. Kevin got up and left.

I sat there for a few minutes, stunned. Then started feeling stupid for letting myself get into this so deeply. I knew I shouldn’t have. My instincts were right.

My cell phone rang. I got it out of my purse and looked at the screen. It was Max, of course, no doubt calling me about the story that had been broken by the tabloid. I let it ring three times, and then decided I needed to hear his voice. I needed to hear his explanation. Avoiding him wouldn’t do any good.

“Hello,” I said, flatly.

“Olivia. I need to see you.”

I stayed silent for a moment and then decided to play along. “Is something wrong?”

“We need to talk. In person.”

“Max, what is it?” I said, pulling off the fake surprise and worry pretty nicely, I thought.

He sighed, but didn’t say anything.

A part of me wanted to scream at him—scream that he had betrayed me, lied to me, kept something hugely important from me, as we spent more and more time together, and all the while he knew I was feeling closer to him. Bastard.

“I’m coming to pick you up,” he said.

“When?”

“Right now.”

My throat was starting to tighten up as I held back from crying. “I…I’m working.”

“I need to see you, Olivia. It can’t wait. I’m pulling into the parking lot now.”

He hung up. Fuck.

I immediately grabbed my purse, stopped by Kevin’s office and started to tell him what was going on. He was looking out his office window. “Go do what you need to do. Take the rest of the day off.” There was sympathy in his voice. I knew he was being genuine.

“Thanks. And I’m sorry.”

Kevin just shook his head. “Go.”

I turned to leave the office and thought about Kevin’s phrase: “…do what you need to do.” Hell, I didn’t know what I needed to do. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, either. What I really wanted was for none of this to happen. I wished I had never gotten involved with Max. Wished I had never trusted him. Wished I had never let my feelings for him grow.

When I got outside, he was standing next to my car.

“Get out of my way,” I said.

He didn’t move. “So you know.”

“Of course I know. And you want to know how? My fucking boss saw a fucking picture of us in fucking New York, then he showed me the picture of you and your pregnant…girlfriend or fuck-buddy or whatever she is.”

“Olivia, calm d—”

“No! You don’t get to tell me to calm down. You don’t get to tell me anything ever again.”

I pushed at him, moving him out of my way so I could get into my car.

“Jesus, Olivia. Let me explain!”

I didn’t respond. I closed the car door, locked it, put the key in the ignition, threw the car into reverse, and tore out of there as fast as I could.

Fuck him and his lies, I thought.

TWELVE

I was so glad it was Friday and I had the whole weekend to stay in the apartment and not have to go anywhere. This was supposed to be a romantic stay-inside weekend alone with Max, and now it had turned into a stay-inside lonely pity party. Amazing how things can change in the blink of an eye.

I was pretty sure I’d have the place to myself. It was the weekend and Krystal would be off doing…whatever it was that she does. And, frankly, I didn’t care.

I didn’t sleep much. I spent a lot of time lying on my bed, looking up at the ceiling, wondering how much worse my trust issues would be after Max. They were already so damaged before he came into my life, and now he would be leaving my life, a path of emotional destruction in his wake.

I don’t even think I could have sorted out how much of my feelings were from anger and how much came from sadness. It was all a horrible blend.

I turned my phone off when I got home and left it off until Saturday afternoon. I expected Max to be knocking on my door, but that never materialized. Maybe he’d just given up altogether. Maybe it would be better that way.

Saturday morning, I did a Google search for Liza Carrow. She was an up-and-coming star in the soap opera world. I never watched them so I had no idea who she was at first. Her IMDb page listed no other credits. But there were lots of photos, and she was stunningly gorgeous. My heart wrenched when I thought of Max on top of her, fucking her the same way he did me, or her on top, riding him.

She was four months pregnant, so there was a possibility that Max hadn’t slept with her since that time, well before we met. I’d have no way of knowing, no matter what he said. Was he with her in public simply because he was the father? Or was he still sleeping with her?

I could find no other stories from the rumor mills pointing to anyone else as the father.

I wanted to vomit, but luckily I hadn’t eaten anything all day.

I closed my laptop and lay on the bed, once again staring up at the ceiling. I needed to close my eyes and go to sleep, but any hope of nodding off into escapism vanished when there was a knock at my bedroom door.

“Olivia?”

It was Krystal’s voice.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

Shit. No, I need to be alone right now. That’s what I should have said, but I’m not sure it would have made a bit of difference. When I didn’t answer, she said there was something she needed to give me.

I got up and opened the door. Krystal stood there looking rested and nicely dressed. I hadn’t been expecting that. She handed me a large manila envelope with my name on it. “This was on the front porch.”

My name was definitely written in Max’s handwriting.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Let me see what this is.”

“Okay, well I’m getting ready to leave, so I’ll see you later.”

I closed the door and went back to the bed. The envelope was thick and heavy. Did I want to open this right now? Not really, I thought, but I just had to look.

I opened it and pulled out what looked to be a movie script—typed, and fastened with the two brackets, as they always are.

Attached to the cover page was a note:

Olivia – Please read this. I wrote this script when I was 22, but the movie was never made. I never thought I’d meet anyone who was anything like the female lead character I made up for this script. Then I met you. Read it and you’ll understand.

You should let me explain everything that happened this week.

I’m not going to give up easily.

I hope you won’t, either. -Max

I spent the next two hours reading the script. I’d never read one before, so it was my first experience with reading something in that format. So much of it was dialogue, brilliant dialogue. It was a beautiful love story—a guy who is starting to feel lost in life, a girl who comes along and shows him that while there’s plenty of be cynical about, she is not among those things. She’s real. She’s genuine. She’s not corrupted by the world that the guy is so used to.

Near the beginning of the script, there’s paragraph explaining the female lead’s motivation, and in Max’s handwriting were the words: Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I wondered what that meant, so I Googled it and smiled when I discovered that it was a term used to describe the female lead in one of my favorite movies: “Elizabethtown.”

I loved that story and I loved the character played by Kirsten Dunst. I remember the first time I saw it, thinking it was the quirkiest and most romantic movie I could remember seeing. It was all real-life situations, but it truly was a fairy-tale love story and a story about a man finding out who he really is…with the help of a girl who appeared out of nowhere just at the right time.

When I got to the end of the script there was a note from Max, directing me back to that paragraph, just in case I had missed it. He wrote:

You’ll see why I never made this movie. Someone had already done one like it. But this remains my favorite thing I’ve ever written. You’re the only person on the planet who has seen it. – M

As much as I loved and admired her, I really had never thought of myself as anything like the character in “Elizabethtown.” But maybe to Max, that’s exactly who I was.

His dream girl.

That’s what he was telling me.

Shit. I had retreated too quickly. I hadn’t given him a chance to explain. Maybe there was nothing to the story. Maybe it was just another tabloid piece of junk journalism.

I felt so stupid. I at least owed it to Max to let him explain. I just had to.

I scrounged around for my phone, turned it on, and dialed his number. I waited through three rings….

….and then he answered: “Hello, dream girl.”

~~~

Olivia and Max’s story continues in the conclusion to the FADE series…

FADE INTO ALWAYS

(coming soon in September 2012)

~~~

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