My cock inside her had now transformed her sobs to sounds of joyous pleasure. So much better. So much better than crying or feeling pain or sadness. Maybe I couldn't fill the empty space in Ricki Hamilton's heart over her lost mother, but at least I could do this.
I made love to her gently, with no hurry until she neared a peak, and then I pushed her forward until she came apart with pleasure, losing herself in it. I watched her eyes close-not clenched in frustration but merely closed in pleasure as the sensation took away her troubles and her pain. My Ricki. I pulled free then and massaged her with my hand, intending to jerk myself off quickly and be done with it, but her hand found my shaft and took over. Her eyes opened as she worked me experimentally at first, getting the feel of me. I gave her a nod of encouragement, leaning on my hip to make it easier for her to please me. Her fingers wrapping around me felt like a new intimacy. I stared into those warm brown eyes, then groaned deeply as she struck upon a rhythm and motion that pulled me suddenly closer to my own peak.
"Mm, Ricki, you-" I threw my head back as she looped her thumb over the slippery tip.
"Is it okay?" she asked, as if worried she was hurting me.
I was too close to orgasm to speak at that point. Too close to explain. Instead I closed my hand around hers and held it in mine while we both pumped my cock to the inevitable result. Having come once already not even an hour before, I didn't make much of a mess this time. Only a dribble.
Her hand was still around my cock-now mostly soft-when she said, "You don't trust me."
"Just being careful," I murmured, as I found a dry corner on the towel. "An accidental child isn't something I could deal with right now." Whether I could even deal with a full-time relationship was another story, but I didn't really want to bring up that question.
"Sensible."
"I can be when I really try." I took her hand in mine. "You feeling better?"
She let out a breath, looking at the ceiling. "I think so. Sorry about that."
"Ricki, you don't ever have to apologize for crying."
"I don't know. This week is the twentieth anniversary of her death. You'd think I'd be over it by now. I mean, I certainly thought I was over it."
"You seem pretty wound up, though."
She nodded unhappily. "That's true. Because of the anniversary The Tinseltown Tab has an article coming out tomorrow about it and I'm dreading what it might say."
I brushed her hair off her forehead. "Can I ask? How did she die?"
"I have a lot of questions about that, too." She hesitated before going on. "All they told me when I was a child was that she had an accident. I heard it was on a film set. But my grandfather eventually told me more. My parents had flown to Italy to hang out on the set of some art film no one cared about and somehow her death involved ropes, possibly some kind of bondage scene. I suspect it was my father's fault. He's been drinking himself into a stupor ever since."
She said all that almost emotionlessly. I supposed she was all cried out. If anything, once she was done giving me the explanation, she seemed relieved. I smiled at her and a tiny half-smile flickered onto her face in answer.
I shifted a little more onto my back and draped her arm across my chest. "Wow. No wonder."
"No wonder what?"
"No wonder you're so skittish about BDSM."
"Tsk. I'm not skittish about BDSM. I'm just … not that into it."
I managed to keep from laughing out loud. She wasn't joking. She really believed she wasn't kinky. I refrained from pointing out that me tying her wrists had practically sent her instantly into orgasm that time in the limo. "Ricki. Just what exactly is it you are into, then?"
She rolled over and draped her chin on my chest instead. "You, you insufferable bastard."
"Uh-huh. So you only get off on being bossed around, humiliated, and taken to the point of surrender because I'm into it? If so, you deserve an Oscar for great acting."
"It's complicated," she admitted.
"It always is, which is why it's fun." I petted her hair. "I'm glad you're not running away now. Hard-to-get isn't one of my fetishes."
"Yeah, well, who am I kidding? It wasn't you I was running away from. It was … all the crap in my head."
I asked as casually as I could. "What are you really afraid of?"
"Well, for one thing, how much longer are we going to be able to keep the dungeon a secret? It was easy in the fifties when there were only three TV stations and no Internet and no cell phone cameras. Now? I don't know what's going to happen."
"What happens if people find out, though? They titter about it for a while and then what? It's not like you pay an actual shame tax. How does it actually hurt you?"
"Maybe it's different when you're a male rock star and everyone expects you to fuck everything that moves," she said with a little wistful smile at me. "But when you're a woman, and you're in the entertainment business, getting tagged with the 'slut' label instantly invalidates you as a person. You become a second-class citizen."
"If you care about what other people think, yeah."
She gave me a be serious look. "I have to care about what other people think. Because what they think is important for my career. When I go into a development meeting I need people to listen to me, not be thinking, why is the slut talking? Or worse, stealing my ideas because they think they're morally superior and so it's okay to do that to me."
"Well, okay, but why do you work at Blue Star, anyway? Ricki, if there's a movie you want to make, don't you have the money to bankroll anything you want? Or am I wrong about how much your family's worth?"
She pressed a kiss against my pec. "I don't trust you enough yet to tell you."
"Touché, that's fair. You know I've been sworn to silence about the dungeon, though. That lawyer of yours, man, he's scary."
"Scary in what way?"
"It was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that crossing him means ruin. When he says, 'you'll never work in this town again' he can make it happen."
"Schmitt is a total pain in my ass, too." She gave another of those heavy sighs. "The terms of my grandfather's will are pretty strict."
"Please tell me they don't prohibit letting horny rock stars tie you up and torture you," I joked.
"Nope. In fact-" She paused as one of our cell phones rang. "That's my ringtone."
"Mine, too." I grudgingly got up and determined it was my phone in the pocket of my jeans on the floor. Christina calling. I answered. "Yep."
"Where in the heck are you?" She always said it that way: "in the heck."
"Um, nowhere. Where are you? Was I supposed to be somewhere?"
"You disappeared without saying good-bye!"
"Sorry about that, Chris. The thing went good, though, didn't it? Did you make lots of money?"
"Yes, but-"
"Great. Call me tomorrow."
"Don't forget that thing at the Capitol Records building is tomorrow!"
"Don't worry. I'll be there. Gotta go now, bye." I hung up before I could get sucked into any more.
But Ricki had looked at her own phone and was now texting madly with someone. It seemed talk and cuddle time was over.
RICKI
I told him. I told him and it didn't kill me. That was the thought going through my head as I scrolled through about a million increasingly frantic texts from Gwen. I'd been dreading talking about it for so long, and all that happened was … I found out what a loving and caring guy Axel could be. My phone buzzed in my hand: another one. Paul this time, with an urgent question. I texted him back quickly while looking for my shoes.
I met Axel's eyes. "I need to go."
"I know." He hadn't put his clothes back on yet and held his phone in his hand against his bare thigh. He stood up and slipped a hand around my waist as if he didn't want to let me go until he really had to.
"We're still on for Saturday?" I asked.
He brightened immediately, his brilliant smile making me want to kiss the upturned corners of his mouth. "You bet."
I kissed the upturned corners of his mouth, said "See you then," and then hurried out before I could be tempted to stay. The real world was starting to press in on me again and the longer I waited to catch up with all the people who had chosen the moments while I was alone with Axel to text me, call me, e-mail me, and so on, the worse it would get. I got into my car and plugged in my phone so I could control it from the steering wheel.
The first person I called, before I even got the car moving, was Gwen.
"Ricki!" She picked up on the first ring. "Where did you run off to? Or should I say with whom?"
"Oh no, was it that obvious?" I checked for hickeys in the rearview mirror and found none visible. Good. I eased the car to the exit of the parking lot.
"No, silly, only to me and Sakura, since I was looking for you and she was looking for Axel. I take it you guys made up."
"What do you mean, made up? We were never fighting." Me telling him to get lost was not the same thing as fighting, after all.