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Then there was Jack Boulanger, a slim, lithe man with elfin good looks and blond hair down to his waist. He was a former piano prodigy who had given up his music career to become a movie star. His film roles had, however, tended to be in straight-to-video dramas about piano prodigies or elves. He now played the boy genius on XTV’s high school drama,
South Beach Prep
. He was a glum and laconic man who became delightful company when drunk; at parties he would play the piano and invent scurrilous versions of everything from Christmas carols to Justin Timberlake songs. He was also famous for his expensive suits, the beauty of which was legendary. He had once said that he wouldn’t wear a suit that cost less than a new car.

The third candidate was Jackson Nye, who had been voted the best-looking man in porn at last year’s XTV barbecue. With his blazing green eyes, perfectly molded features, and sculpted body, he looked like the descendant of several generations of supermodels. In real life, he was famous for his monumental laziness; he literally brought a sleeping bag with him to work and would nap between takes. When Valerie had interviewed him for
Pleasure News
, he claimed that he only left his bed for filming and to go to the gym. When he had a girlfriend, she had to accept that all their dates would take place in his bed. He was saving his pennies so that some day he would no longer have to be in movies or go to the gym.

The fourth man was J. T. Allen, a former Navy SEAL and ex-boyfriend of Babylona who was six foot four and all muscle. He still wore his hair crew cut and was one of those men who are devastatingly attractive despite the fact that they lack conventional good looks; his nose was crooked from having been broken, his face was weather-beaten and thin-lipped. Nonetheless, he always had a little fan club of girls following him around. For J.T., the most battle-scarred porn veteran would suddenly begin baking cookies and giggling like a schoolgirl. He had appeared in a few of the XTV shows, but was really just a member of Babylona’s entourage, one of those favorites who trailed her around the world, doing very little with great style.

All four of the men were sneaking speculative glances at Valerie as they played. It made her feel self-conscious, but she also felt a telltale wetness between her legs. Soon she was sneaking speculative glances at them, thinking of fucking each of them in turn.

The director arrived—it was Nan, the woman Valerie had apologized to the week before—and everyone hushed and looked expectant. Jared came toward her. For the interview, he was wearing a suit, which made him look more serious than usual, his chestnut hair groomed, his handsome face composed. At the last minute, as he sat in the similarly gruesome and massive chair beside her, he stuck out his tongue at Valerie.

She laughed and said, “I’m sorry, Jared. About—”

“You’re
going
to be sorry,” he said with a sly smile.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

Then Nan called for everyone to take their places.

Valerie didn’t even have the energy to think of what Jared might mean; she was too conscious of the eyes of all four of the men at the card table trained on her. She felt her nipples pricking, hardening under the attention. Then Nan was pointing at her and she roused herself to start the show, automatically finding the teleprompter with her eyes, scanning the words and smiling professionally at the camera.

“Hello and welcome. I’m sitting here with Jared Vairy, star of
Mile-High Club
and more recently the host of
Meet the Wife
on our own XTV. Jared, welcome.”

“Hi, Valerie.” He gave her a smile. “Glad to be here.”

“So, Jared, today you’re going to come out of retirement from on-screen sex to celebrate our own Babylona Parris’s thirty-ninth birthday. What made you decide to go back?”

Although she was reading the words from a teleprompter, Valerie couldn’t help feeling an inward cringing at the question.
She
had made him decide, with her typical bullying to no purpose.

He said, with a slow, insinuating emphasis, “Well, someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, let’s put it that way.”

“And who would that person be?”

“Oh, Valerie, you know who that person is as well as I do,” he said, and a mischievous gleam returned to his eyes.

For the first time since she could remember, Valerie was keenly aware that she was naked while her interviewee was fully clothed. She had always known intellectually that there was something perverse about it, something subtly dirty that viewers responded to. But this was the first time she responded to it. She noticed Jared’s eyes dipping to take in her body and remembered him saying
You’re
going
to be sorry.

Nan gestured for her to go back to the teleprompter, and Valerie read aloud, without understanding a word she was saying, her mind still fixed on the meaning of Jared’s hints, “At this point I’d like to remind our viewers that all proceeds from this broadcast are going to Zemblan Famine Relief, and we’re accepting contributions to our relief fund at our XTV famine hotline.” When she finished reading the toll-free number twice, she turned back to Jared, but he spoke first.

“But, Valerie,” he said, “what I’m doing isn’t half as daring as what you’re doing after this segment.”

“Um, right,” she said. “That’s nice of you to say.”

“It’s obvious to everyone,” he said with a certain languid tone that put her on her guard. “You’ll be having sex for the first time—in front of a camera. Most of us are terrified having sex for the first time, or doing it in front of a camera for the first time. Both at once—that’s huge.”

For a second, she thought he was trying to frighten her, but then he winked at her and she just said, “Well, I’m trying not to think about it.”

“And I’m not letting you.”

“Let’s get back to you,” she said hastily. Friselle Belesci laughed, and then J.T. added his deep laugh to hers. Valerie shot Friselle a dark look and said to the camera, “That laughter you hear in the background is from some of our friends from XTV, who are here to cheer us on—”

“And laugh at us,” Jared put in.

“That’s right, and laugh at our mistakes,” said Valerie smoothly, smiling at Jared.

He said, “So, who’s the lucky man?”

“No, getting back to you,” she said pointedly, “who’s the lucky girl?”

“Oh, that would be telling.”

“Yes, telling is often a component of an interview,” she said. “But let’s try this: I’ll make a guess, and you can tell me whether I’m right.”

“Good,” he said, with that infuriating smile. “I love games.”

“There’s been some talk of a new love in your life,” she said. “A girl some of our viewers may know from
Home of X,
Zaza Jeresky. I don’t suppose there’s any chance that she’s your choice.”

“No chance at all,” he said.

There was a faint stir of reaction from the people watching. A few people glanced at Zaza, who stood smiling imperviously.

Valerie cocked her head. “Very interesting. So give me a hint. If she’s not your new lady love, and by the way, she is very beautiful and charming . . .”

“Always means more from someone who’s never met her,” Jared said, “but as a matter of fact, that’s an understatement.”

“If it’s not her, could you tell us whether this is someone you’ve chosen or is it someone who’s been visited upon you by our birthday girl? I think many of our viewers will know that Babylona can be very controlling about these things.”

“Oh, that’s an easy question,” Jared said. “Neither one nor the other.”

“Very cryptic. What do you mean?”

“I mean you asked me yourself.”

Valerie balked. “Sorry?”

Jared stood up. Valerie already half suspected, and felt her heart pounding. He said, “You asked me to fuck you, Valerie. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

He was standing very close to her, looking down at her. She found she couldn’t meet his eye. “I remember,” she said.

He bent down and took her chin in his hand, lifting her face to look at him. “So we have the answer to both of our questions.”

A voice in the audience said, “No way!” and was quickly hushed by the other onlookers.

Valerie made herself look Jared full in the face—just as he kissed her on the lips. The touch of his mouth was a shock, his lips so soft. Immediately, her body responded, even as she was thinking that this couldn’t happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

But he was touching her cheek, his fingers slipping down her throat lightly. As he began to kiss her in earnest, his tongue invaded her mouth. His hand caressed her neck, the strong fingers molding to the shape of her throat. Then the hand was gone, and she was barely conscious of him pulling off his jacket and letting it drop to the floor, him unbuttoning his shirt. She should be stopping him, reminding him that this was business. . . . But she was already weak with desire; her body was lit up with the anticipation of
this
particular man. She could feel the darker insinuation in his teasing now, his awareness that he was going to fuck her. That she wasn’t going to be able to stop him.

There—his hand on her breast, playing with it, appreciating its shape. The palm grazing her nipple and making her tense for the next touch. She reached up and found his chest, the smooth muscles flexing as his other hand moved down her bare belly. He turned his hand and drew the backs of his fingernails over her lower abdomen, making her squirm and kiss him more deeply. Then he stood back from her to take off his pants. She opened her eyes and saw the people watching, some of them actually with open mouths. In the first instant, she almost wanted to laugh: shocked porn actors! In her peripheral vision, she noticed that Friselle Belesci had already managed to remove the pants from one of her tamed interns and was nuzzling his erect cock with her cheek while she met Valerie’s eye. Then she saw the poker players looking wry and disappointed. She couldn’t help noticing that Liam had the biggest pile of chips after all; he would have won.

The concentrated attention made her feel every sensation Jared had given her again, amplified by the arousal she saw on the faces behind the cameras. And behind the cameras, the people who would see this later at home. She looked up at Jared but ended up looking at his cock. It was already fully erect, longer than Liam’s and a deeper mauve, its straightness making it look harder. It was magically beautiful to her at that moment, and she was reaching for it without meaning to—and then allowing herself to reach for it, to grasp it in her hand as if claiming ownership. She licked her lips and looked up again to meet Jared’s eyes, to find his face distracted and tense.

He put his hand over hers and moved it up and down his cock, his eyes growing distant. She let her hand be guided by his, her breath coming faster as she felt the hardness of him, the sweet skin there hot and dry. At last she couldn’t wait any longer; she stood up and pressed herself against him, trapping both their hands over his dick. He didn’t kiss her but leaned forward to nip her ear. He whispered, for her only, “I always wanted to fuck you, Valerie.”

She whispered back to him, “So why don’t you?”

At that, he turned her around and he was embracing her from behind, his hands moving on her breasts, his dick pressing into the cleft between her buttocks. He whispered to her, “Put your foot on the chair. It will hurt less from behind.”

With a twinge of conscience, she realized he was still thinking she was a virgin. But she did as he said, letting him guide her so that she had one foot up on the seat of the huge chair and held its back with both hands. She was keenly aware of her pussy spread and exposed to the cameras. And then he began to stroke it, teasing the edges of her pussy lips with his fingers, pressing down on them gently to spread her farther. His thumb passed lightly over her clitoris, making her gasp. Then it dipped into her cunt and circled back, slipping wetly over her tender nub, making her grip the chair and moan.

For a minute she was poised that way, Jared playing with her cunt and brushing his dick lightly against the inside of thigh, arousing her beyond all consciousness of the watching people, who had fallen into a stunned silence. At last she felt the tip of his dick pressing against her, into her. She cried out, and there was a suppressed gasp of response from the audience. He was pushing into her carefully, slowly, spreading her open with his dick. It was all she could do not to drive herself back onto him. Her cunt was in an agony of sensation, and his dick seemed to be carving through the pleasure he had aroused in her, moving far too slowly. She needed him, needed him to just fuck her. To fuck her hard and long. Every way.

At last his cock eased into her all the way and he bent over her, embracing her from behind. Again his hands were on her breasts, holding her against him. He began to move his cock in and out of her. Valerie let herself moan, feeling the people watching, wanting her to fail somehow, wanting her to succeed. Wanting her. He built up to a harder, more aggressive rhythm, his body taking over from his intentions. Her body answered his, pushing back onto his, her back arching to bring him in deeper. With every stroke now he was hitting a point inside her that resounded with lust, that sent shimmering aftershocks of pleasure through her that shattered as he hit the spot again. As he fucked her harder, the length of his dick became almost too much; every stroke seemed to push her to the point of pain and stop just short, making her cry out with panic and lust and pleasure. She was crying out in a high, helpless voice, “Oh, God. God, fuck me . . . please.”

As if out of contrariness, he pulled out of her. She immediately, instinctively turned to him to reclaim him, and he pulled her around, sitting in the chair and making her spread her legs to straddle him, her back to the audience again. She saw what he wanted and guided his cock into her again, sliding slowly down it, feeling it come back at a different angle, awakening a new chord inside her. Then he was fucking her from below, fondling her breasts, and saying, “Valerie, yes. Yes,” his voice hoarse.