Authors: Piper Vaughn
would know I’d tried.
I started toward his table. He didn’t look up
until I was standing right next to him. Those brown
eyes locked onto mine, and for a moment I froze.
Then, somehow, I managed to shove out one word:
“Hi.”
He gave me a once-over, those eyes tracing a
thorough, unhurried path from my face to my feet.
By the time he was done, I could feel heat
crawling up the back of my neck, and my breathing
had gotten all jittery.
“Well, hello to you too,” he finally said. His
voice was playful, smooth, kind of sexy… and for
some inexplicable reason, not what I’d been
expecting. I couldn’t say why—he’d only said a
handful of words to me that one day, and on a
noisy, crowded street no less—but the voice I
remembered was different.
Of course, it was entirely possible it had
morphed in my head during all my obsessing, but
that wasn’t the only thing that seemed off. That
feeling, that shock of lust and rightness and
yearning, the thing that had stolen my breath and
left me speechless… it was missing. Puzzled, I
held out a hand, hoping his touch would bring it
back. “Hi,” I said again, dumbly. He smiled
slightly, and I plowed ahead before I could wuss
out. “I’m Dusty. I wanted to apologize for not
saying thank you that day. You totally saved me
from making a fool of myself. I tried to find you
after, but I lost you in the crowd.”
All I got in response was a blank look, which
was there and gone in a flash, and then his smile
was back. He took my hand in his and shook it
briefly. “Well, you can thank me now,” he
murmured, his thumb brushing over one of my
knuckles. “I’d love a phone number to go along
with that name, and I’d love to take you out to
dinner too.”
I laughed breathlessly as he repeated the
touch, his thumb circling slowly. It wasn’t anything
like the first time, not even remotely—no sparks,
no goose bumps—but he was beautiful, and he was
staring up at me with those remarkable brown
eyes, and even if it wasn’t a repeat of that moment
from before, even if it didn’t make my heart and
body sing, it still felt good. Really good. Enough to
remind me of exactly how long it had been since
I’d been touched with anything even resembling
desire. God, did I miss it.
“I’d like that.” I forced myself to pull my
hand away so I could reach into my tote bag and
withdraw one of my business cards. It’d be simple
enough to just scribble my cell phone number on
the back. “What’s your name?”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” he said with a chuckle.
“Guess I forgot my manners. My name is Archer…
but you can call me Arch.”
Asher
JESUS Christ.
I sat up in bed, bleary at first, unaware of
what had woken me. Then I heard it. Laughing.
There was always laughing. I wondered what
could be so funny in a life spent barely working a
retail job and drinking all weekend… but it was
Wednesday.
Damn.
I dragged my tired ass out of bed to the living
room, ready to shut down whatever miniparty my
brother had going on. Our building was mostly
older people and professional types. The last thing
I needed was one of them calling the cops or our
landlord.
Last minute, I remembered to drag on some
sweats before I hit the door. I’d been so hot after
my shower I just passed out on my bed with a
towel. The momentary thought of walking out into
the living room stark naked so Archer’s friends
could laugh at me in that way they did, that laugh
that said they were so much better than me with
their expensive clothes and lack of real work,
made my stomach quake.
Arch and his friends were out in the living
room, just as I’d imagined, lying on the couch in
various states of inebriation, laughing at nothing at
all. Archer had a joint in his hand, and he was
about to light it—like that was okay in any reality.
“What the hell, Arch? It’s the middle of the
week. And weed? Do you want one of the
neighbors to call the freaking cops?”
“Hey, your brother’s hot too,” a boy on the
couch said. And I thought of him as a boy because
the kid couldn’t have been much more than legal.
“Do you two ever hook up with guys together?”
All right. Party’s over.
“Out!” I barked.
“Ooh, he’s a grumpy one.” One of Archer’s
friends elbowed the other. “The grumpy ones are
sooo
hot in bed. You take Arch, I’ll take him.
What’s your name?”
I stalked toward the couch, hand out. “I’m
serious, you two need to leave. My brother has
work tomorrow, and this is a quiet building.”
“
Fuck
, Ash. You are such a buzzkill.” Archer
peeled himself off the couch and headed to the
door. “Sorry, guys. You probably should go. I
wouldn’t want Asher to break something trying to
yank out his bunched-up panties.”
I felt a little bad. It’s not like I liked being
called a buzzkill. Fun was good, friends were
good, but not all the damn time. And Archer never
seemed to have time for anything other than parties
and pretty people. That was his problem. And
because of proximity, it became mine.
Friends shuffled out the door, Archer flopped
onto the couch. “Why did you have to come in here
acting like a stick-up-the-ass grandpa, Ash?”
“I don’t want to act like that. You kind of
force me to when you refuse to be even a little bit
responsible.”
“I don’t force you to do a damn thing. I have
friends, unlike some people in this room, and I
choose not to spend my entire existence working. I
don’t see anything wrong with having a social
life.”
I didn’t reply. It’s not like I had any sort of
defense for having to act like an adult… oh, wait.
We were adults. At least one of us was.
“Subject change. Guess what?”
I tried not to sigh out loud. How could he
have already forgotten we were having an
argument about actual, real things? At least I was
trying. “What, Arch?”
“I met this cute little bottom boy the other
day.”
I sighed into a long descent onto the couch.
Sometimes
my
brother
made
me
insane.
“Seriously? I’m trying to talk to you about real
shit, and you want to talk about some trick you
picked up?”
Archer elbowed me. “I haven’t picked him
up. Not really. He just came up to me all cute and
said he thought we’d met before. And he has this
accent like he’s not from around here. I’m so gonna
get with that.”
“What does that have to do with anything we
were talking about? Like work? Responsibilities?”
I stared at him, hoping to get a response other than,
well, the typical. Should’ve known better.
“You know….” Archer got up and turned to
glare at me. “Maybe if you went out and got laid
once in a while you wouldn’t be such a fucking
drag, you know?”
Maybe. Maybe if I saw that guy again.
I’d
been thinking about him a lot. More than I wanted
to admit. Sometimes I thought I saw him in a
crowd on the street—that compact little body, not
tan enough to be a California native, blond, spiky
hair, sweet, dark eyes, sunny smile. It always made
my heart beat all crazy in my chest, and I’d go to
say something to catch his attention. But it was
never him. And since I hadn’t seen anyone else that
even came close to that kind of appeal, I was
alone.
“You know I’m not like that—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Archer made a prissy face. “I
have to be in
looove
to want to fuck a guy because
I’m so much better than anyone else,” he recited in
his most obnoxious mocking voice.
“You’re an asshole.”
“You’re boring. I’m going to crash. It’s late,
and apparently some of us have to work
tomorrow.”
“I’m glad you’re going.”
Archer made a gesture that I really didn’t
want to know the meaning of and stumble-walked
down the hallway in an odd interpretation of a
straight line that ended with a full but crooked
pirouette at his door, a curtsey, and a less-than-
gentle slam.
Night, Arch. Glad we had that talk.
“OH, FUCK me harder. I want your cock in my
pussy sooo deep.”
I groaned, but not in pleasure. My ears grated
at the obvious falseness in her voice. There it was
again. Those dead eyes, that fake pleasure.
Sadness. I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. I
had to watch the whole scene from the viewfinder
of my camera.
“Destiny, why don’t you get on your hands
and knees,” the director ordered. “I want to see
some doggie style for a while.”
Destiny, real name Sarah Colosky, dropped
the act and waited patiently for her costar to pull
out. Then she rolled over and fanned herself.
“Can we get five, Dominic? It’s hot in here.”
“Sure thing. Back in five!” the director
called. Sarah flopped back on the bed, and I took a
relieved break from behind the camera, wiping the
sweat off my forehead. It
was
hot in the studio. The
place needed better air conditioning. The shoot
was almost done, thank God. I hated them,
honestly. It was nothing like the work I wanted to
be doing—shooting for
Vogue
and
In Style
,
rubbing elbows with supermodels and Anna
Wintour, but it paid the bills and then some, and I
knew if I wanted to not be living with Archer when
I was forty, I needed some cash in my savings
account.
“Why can’t it be you, Ash?” Sarah asked. The
question threw me off guard for a minute. Then I
chuckled. She was harmless, even if she did
proposition me on a regular basis.
“You know why it’s not me. It doesn’t have to
be you either, Sarah.” We’d been over it. Quite a
few times.
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’m Destiny here. And
can you really see me making sandwiches at
Subway, ’cause that’s what I was doing before
Dom gave me a chance.”
I wanted to see her doing anything but what
she was doing, sandwiches included. “I guess not.”
It was easier than getting in an argument.
“And so what if you’re gay? Lots of straight
guys do gay porn, you know. I’m sure it can work
the other way.”
Aw, Jesus, Sarah. Can we not have this talk
when Dom is standing right here?
“It’s still not
my thing, hon.” I gritted my teeth. Porn, one night
stands… I had no idea why I was such an anomaly.
Archer would’ve been all over it if the porn thing
didn’t involve pussy. He was already all over the
one night stands. I heard them regularly. My
expensive headphones had been a sanity saver.
“She’s right, you know,” Dominic added from
the other side of the room. I’d been hoping he was
too distracted to hear Sarah. It wasn’t the first time
he’d said something about it to me. I had to keep
from rolling my eyes. “You’d make a killing in the
boy-next-door role. Those big ol’ eyes, and you
look so sweet and innocent.”
“Dom. We’ve talked about this.”
“I know. Just making sure you remembered,”
Dom replied with a grin. “You good, Destiny?
Ready to get started again?”
I was pretty sure I heard a sigh, but like a
seasoned pro, Sarah got on her hands and knees
and assumed the “fuck me now” face that had
nothing to do with being turned on and everything
to do with the fact that she wanted to be a history
teacher but couldn’t afford college. Sometimes I
thought that getting to know the girls made the
whole thing worse.
I got lost after work in the only place where I
ever really felt at home other than the little
bedroom studio in my apartment—the art museum.
Only there could I wander around in near silence
and stare at the paintings and photographs, beauty