Montaine (16 page)

“It’s hard to be the one
on the sidelines.” I ran my hand along his sturdy forearm. The glare of a
single overhead bulb struck his tattoos, lighting them in vibrant hues.

I wanted to say more, but
the words caught in my throat.
It’s hard to stand by and watch a person that
you love get hurt.

As if sensing my unspoken
sentiment, Trent lifted my hand and pressed my fingertips briefly to his lips.

“Marcie.” It was a
familiar voice with a slow drawling cadence. Marcie’s eyes bulged wide. Her
head whipped to the left, where Vaughan leaned casually against a railing.

He wore a ratty t-shirt that
looked shredded by claws across the front. His long hair flopped in a curtain
over his face. He stood with one arm draped over the shoulders of a girl who
hugged his midsection and rested her head of bleached ringlets against his
chest. She wore a thin triangle of crimson fabric over her breasts, held in
place with strings across her naked back, and a flared black leather skirt that
ended just below her crotch.

“Hello, Vaughan.”
Marcie’s tone was tired and dismissive. She placed one hand protectively on
Tony’s leg and wrapped an arm around his waist.

“How have you been?”
Vaughan flipped his hair and ran his fingers slowly up the bare flesh of the
girl’s spine. She giggled and cooed into his neck.

“I’ve been great,” Marcie
replied. “Looks like I can’t say the same about you though.” She shrugged.

“What do you mean?” His
eyes had the dull focus of the heavily drugged. His jaw hung slack.

“Well, you’ve clearly
been digging around in the trash.” Marcie jutted her chin toward his date and flashed
a winning grin, her wine red lips stretched taut.

The girl opened her tiny
mouth and stamped her foot like a petulant toddler. She lunged at Marcie, but her
shirt snagged on one of Vaughan’s navel piercings. We all received a brief and
unwelcome glimpse of her pale, bulbous breasts as they swayed from side to side
and squeezed between polyester threads like a pair of strangled water balloons.

“You bitch!” she squealed
in a furious chirp.

“You skank!” Marcie
laughed. She sipped her beer and plunked the bottle onto the table.

Vaughan corralled the arms
of the flailing girl. He dragged her away while she struggled with the ferocity
of a wildcat, her white-blond ringlets bouncing cartoonishly. She emitted
furious squeaks of protest that soon melted into the surrounding crowd noise.

“Nice to meet you,
sweetie!” Marcie threw one hand upwards in a parting wave.

***

“A penny for your
thoughts?”

Trent and I had returned
to his apartment after seeing off Tony and Marcie at the entrance to the uptown
subway. The calm summer night rested on the city skyscape outside his windows.
Soft lights twinkled through a thin haze of humidity. He stood and stared into
the deep blue firmament, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Hmm?” He turned at the
sound of my voice. “Sorry,” he shook his head. “Just a lot on my mind tonight.”

“I understand.” I stood
beside him and leaned my head against his shoulder. “Want to talk about it?”

He sighed heavily. “I
really don’t even know what to talk about. I don’t know what to think. I’m
hoping that Kill just fades away, gets another job, and leaves me alone. I
don’t think that’s likely to happen. I have no idea what he plans to do next. I
strongly suspect he was involved in the Hades fight, but I don’t understand
why.”

I nodded and crossed my
arms, unconsciously mirroring his posture. He reached out a hand and pulled my
wrists down to my waist.

“Kat, I’m sorry for what
happened in that conference room today. I’m sorry that you had to suffer that
kind of humiliation. It’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,
Trent. I am an adult. I made certain decisions. I will face the consequences of
those decisions. But if you want to know the truth, I don’t regret a thing.”

He gripped my hips and
pulled me toward him. “Neither do I,” he whispered. He smoothed a loose lock of
hair behind my ear and pressed his cool palm against my cheek. “Kat, I need you
to know something.” He paused and ran his thumb gently over my lips. “This
isn’t easy for me to say.”

A lump of anxiety formed
in my throat. I tried with difficulty to swallow it. My stomach coiled with
fear.
What is he going to say? Is he about to break up with me?

“I’m not good with
feelings,” he continued. “I’m not good at expressing them, at least.” My
stomach began to untie itself. “You are special to me. You’re brave and smart
and beautiful and funny. You’re everything I have been seeking without even
knowing it.” He tugged me closer, brushed his lips against mine, and stared
into my eyes. “What I’m trying to say…what’s not really coming out the way I rehearsed
it in my head…is that I’m falling in love with you.”

Tears formed at the edges
of my vision. Trent dotted them away with a fingertip.

“I’m already in love with
you, Trent.” My voice shook with emotion.

He took my hand and
guided me to his bedroom. He gently undressed me, savoring the smooth slide of
my clothes from my naked body as they slipped to the floor. We made love slowly
and passionately, grinding and writhing in a matching rhythm and clutching each
other in a tight embrace. He kissed me as we came simultaneously, groaning with
ecstatic release as our mouths locked together and our bodies lifted and fell
as one. He smoothed my hair from my face and stared into my eyes while our
breathing and heart rates slowed together.

Neither of us spoke.
Words could not adequately express our feelings in that moment. He lowered his
head onto my chest and drifted off to sleep.

Though we did not yet
know it, our whole world was about to crash around our ears and leave us broken
in two.

I turned the key in my
dorm room lock and pushed open the heavy wooden door. After a homemade pancake
breakfast, Trent had dropped me in front of my building with a warm kiss and a
promise to pick me up again later that evening. I floated up the front steps in
a lovesick haze, still dazzled by the depth of our emotional confessions the
previous night. My mind drifted into pleasant memories of Trent’s body next to
mine and the calming rise and fall of his chest as he slept soundly and
peacefully.

“Whoa! Hey! Hold on!”

I snapped to attention on
the threshold and looked up to see Tony standing at the foot of Marcie’s bed,
naked as the day he was born.

“Holy shit! I’m sorry!” I
shielded my eyes with my hand as if hiding from a glare, but not before I
caught a momentary peek at Tony’s surprisingly well-endowed lower half. I heard
a rustle of sheets, a soft thump, and a cranky groan from Marcie.

“You may open your eyes
again.” Tony sat upright in Marcie’s bed, his back against the headboard and
the quilt pulled up to his bare chest. His face was redder than an apple.

“Umm, sorry about that.
But, congratulations? To both of you.” I lowered my eyes briefly to Tony’s lap
and cocked an eyebrow.

“Is that my Kitty Kat?”
Marcie blinked awake. Her hair was a disheveled and knotted crown. Streaks of mascara
smeared her temples.

“Good times were had by
all, it seems.” I plopped into a desk chair and opened my laptop.

“Fuck yeah!” Marcie held
her palm out toward Tony, an invitation for a celebratory high-five. He obliged
with a grin and a chuckle. The red in his cheeks had subsided to a soft rose.
“Do you want to have breakfast with us, Kat?” She patted and smoothed her
unruly hair.

“Nah, but thanks. I
already ate at Trent’s place.”

My phone chimed from
within my purse. As I reached into the inner pocket, it chimed again, and then
a third time. Simultaneously, Tony’s phone buzzed on the bedside table with
four quick beats. We glanced at each other with quizzical expressions. My phone
had become dislodged from its pocket and fallen into the cavernous depths of my
floppy purse. I fished around the interior until I felt its hard corners.
Before I was able to pull it out and check my messages, I saw the pink in
Tony’s cheeks drain to a stark white.

“Uh, Kat.”

“What? What is it? What’s
wrong?”

“It’s about you. Turn on
the computer.” He grabbed a pair of shorts from the floor beside the bed and
slipped them on under the covers.

With rising anxiety, I
swiped open my messages. The first was from Trent.

We need to talk about
this. I will pick you up in an hour.

The next message was from
my mother.

Call me immediately.

The last was from a
number I did not recognize.

Now everyone knows
what a great “journalist” you are. You’re welcome.

“What the fuck is
happening?” I asked. “What are these messages about?”

Tony leapt from the bed
and stood beside my chair. He leaned over me and pressed the power button on my
laptop.

“I don’t know, but I
received a message that said something about you and a video and told me to
check the
Stawker
website.”

“A video? A video of
what?” My fingers shook as I typed in the web address for
Stawker
, a
notorious celebrity gossip blog. The headline, blazing in bold black letters
across the screen, stopped my blood cold and choked the air from my windpipe.

“
EXCLUSIVE! TRENT
MONTAINE SEX TAPE!
”

Directly below the
headline was a still photo from a video that showed my back, naked down to my
waist. Trent’s hands gripped me tightly. I straddled his lap, my head thrown
backwards in the throes of orgasm, my distinctive auburn hair cascading freely.
The setting was Trent’s office.

“No,” I croaked weakly.
“No no no no no.”

I scrolled below the
picture and read the attached article.

Breaking news from Stawker!
We give you one of the city’s richest and hottest bachelors caught on camera in
a very compromising position with a very lucky young lady. Trent Montaine,
founder of KTFO Magazine and certified fuckworthy stud, seems to enjoy bossing
around his sexy new intern. Word has it, the girl in the video is Kat Raney, a
21-year-old journalism student who got more than she bargained for when she
went to work for the media mogul this summer – a whole lot more! A source at
the magazine says that Trent has been granting favors to Miss Raney since
hiring her last month and has even promised the fledgling reporter/lapdancer a
cover story in the next issue. Well, we can see why. She is clearly
very…um…talented? And she is clearly also very interested in pleasing her boss
(cough, cough). Since we are a family site here at Stawker, we’ll only show you
some stills from this exciting office fuck romp. But, we’re sure you can find
the full video somewhere on this great worldwide web of ours (wink, wink).

I scrolled through a few
more photos. One showed my naked behind as I stood with my legs on either side
of Trent’s hips. Another showed the top of my head as I arched backwards,
Trent’s face buried between my exposed breasts, my nipples ever so slightly
blurred in a weak attempt at censorship. The last photo was not from the video,
but was instead a shot of me in front of the entrance to
Squirrel
the
previous night. My eyes were wide and startled amid popping flashbulbs. Trent’s
tattooed arm was just visible as he pulled me toward the doors.

My fingers flew over the
keys. I opened the browser and searched for “Trent Montaine sex tape.” A slew
of links immediately appeared. The video was everywhere. With a sudden nagging
nausea, I opened one of the links and pressed play.

The video began with
Trent seated in his office chair. From the angle of the shot, I surmised that
the video had been filmed from his desk.

“Close the door,” he said
in the video. A door clicked shut in the background. “Lock it,” he said. A
pause followed. “Now come over here.”

“Is everything alright?”
My worried, high-pitched voice came from behind the camera.

“Everything is about to
get a whole lot better,” Trent replied. After a few seconds, I appeared in the
frame, clothed in a pink skirt and ivory shirt.

I couldn’t watched it anymore.
I closed the link. I instantly knew when this video had been taken. I thought
back to the day several weeks earlier when Trent had emailed me with supposedly
urgent business that turned into a satisfying lunchtime quickie in his office.
My mind raced. His laptop had been open on the desk the entire time. The angle
was exactly correct. The video had been filmed from Trent’s computer.

***

“Hop on.”

Trent sat astride his
motorcycle, parked at the curb in front of my dorm. He tossed me a helmet,
lowered his visor, and gunned the engine. I settled behind him, wrapping my
bare knees around his thighs and grabbing his stomach as the tires squealed
with a burst of acceleration and tore away up Amsterdam Avenue.

Within minutes, we found
ourselves in a quiet spot on the banks of the Hudson River in far northern
Manhattan. On this sunny summer day, the river flowed calmly, a soft breeze now
and then furrowing the smooth gray water. A few seabirds pecked at weeds
between the seams of the cobblestone path. Trent parked the bike and dropped
his helmet onto the seat.

“No one will bother us
here. My apartment was swarming with paparazzi.” He jutted his chin toward an
empty park bench that faced the water. “Come on. Let’s talk.”

His head was thrust
forward as he walked. The muscles in his arms flexed with tension. I followed him
to the bench in silence.

“The video was taken from
your computer,” I said after several moments spent gazing at the sun-speckled
river and watching the swift bubble and ripple of a surfacing fish.

“So? Do you think I took
it?” His tone was angry and defensive. I flipped my gaze toward him and saw
that his eyes glowered darkly.

“No! For fuck’s sake,
Trent. Of course I don’t think that.”

A sob rose into my
throat. I had so far been too stunned to cry. My mind still had trouble adjusting
to the new reality. I was now the unwitting star of an internet porn video.
Everyone had seen it – my friends, my classmates, my professors, even my
mother. My life would never be the same. I would never escape this humiliation.

“Sorry.” He kicked at the
thin tufts of grass with the toe of his boot. “It’s been a rough morning,” he
said with an edge of sarcasm.

I reached into my purse
and clutched my phone. I opened my messages and pointed to the unidentified number,
thrusting the phone in Trent’s face.

“Whose number is this?”
His features slackened with a budding realization. He nodded his head as if
confirming a suspicion. “It’s Kill, isn’t it?”

Trent nodded again. “He
has keys to my office. He must have set up the laptop to record in the hope of
catching something incriminating.”

I remembered running into
Kill that day in the hallway after I left Trent’s office, when he’d noticed
that my skirt was askew. He had probably retrieved the video from Trent’s
computer later that night.

“Lucky him. He hit the
jackpot.” A jogger ran by, oblivious that she had just run past the centerpieces
of New York’s newest and most salacious sex scandal.

“Kat, I won’t let him get
away with this. I’ll make things right.”

“How?” I swiped at my
tears in frustration. “How are you going to make this right? It’s too late.
It’s already done. It’s over. There is no way to make this right anymore. My
career is finished. No one will ever take me seriously again. I’m just the
bimbo intern who fucked her boss. You’re the stud, but I’m the slut. That’s how
these things work.”

My raised voice attracted
the attention of a man dressed in a warmup suit and walking a golden retriever
along the waterfront railing. He turned briefly in our direction and then resumed
his walk without a backward glance. I sniffed and watched a single tear fall
into my lap and leave a spreading blot on my blue linen shorts.

“I understand that, Kat.
But you’re not being entirely fair. This is terrible for me too. I’ve been
working my ass off trying to build a serious magazine for the past three years.
Now I’m nothing but a sleazebag who thinks that banging an employee is more
important than running my business.
KTFO
was my dream. Now it’s a
punchline.”

“Wow, I feel so bad for
you. My life is completely ruined. You might lose a few magazine sales.
Meanwhile, every hot babe in the city is probably lining up for a ride on your
office chair. You’ll come through this just fine.

“Kat, come on---”

“I never thought I would
say this, but I’m glad that my father is not alive to see this.”

The dam of restrained
tears finally broke and sent rivulets flowing down my cheeks. I coughed with an
escaping sob and buried my face in my hands. I lowered my head and felt the
tears squeeze through my fingers and drop wetly onto my bare knees.

“Kat, it will be
alright.” Trent spoke gently and placed an arm over my bent back. He pulled me
toward him on the bench and pressed his palm against the side of my head as I
continued to sob and hiccup, trying to gain control of my breathing. “I promise
that I will fix this. I promise.”

He kissed my hair and
rested his chin on the crown of my head. My chest shook with racking sobs. I no
longer cared if I attracted attention. To anyone watching, we were merely two
lovers in the midst of an emotional spat.

“You know the worst part
of all this?” He hooked a finger under my chin and lifted my tear-dappled face.
“The worst part is watching you get hurt. They can do anything they want to me.
I can deal with it. But I let you down. I put you in a position that is not
your fault, but it is a position that causes you pain.”

He lightly kissed my damp
lips and wiped away my tears with the pads of his thumbs. I sniffed through a
few final sobs.

“I will not rest until I
have fixed this, Kat. You have my word. Do you trust me?”

I nodded limply and
grasped his hand.

“You ask me that a lot,”
I said in a weak attempt at humor.

“Have I disappointed you
yet?”

He gave me a rakishly
charming grin and another soft kiss. Somehow, despite all odds, Trent Montaine had
become the person I trusted most in the world.

***

Later that night, I sat alone
in my darkened dorm room. Marcie and Tony had kindly invited me to dinner. They
understood when I expressed a preference for solitude. I’d turned off my phone
hours earlier. The incessant ringing and buzzing was sandpaper on my frayed
nerves. The only illumination came from my laptop screen as I perched in my
desk chair, my knees raised to my chest. With great hesitation, I typed my name
into the search bar. My stomach flipped with queasiness when I saw pages and
pages of results.