more time for editing, and providing a budget for pre-release marketing, maybe even organizing a premiere, if this continues as it has done.”
This would excite me, if it wasn’t coming from him.
And it wasn’t porn.
And considering the fact I was undercover and I could not be out in the real world with this, for more than one reason, so there was no way I could go to a premiere or do any interviews or shit like that.
Benito kept talking.
“I already know one competitor who’s scrambling to produce films of like quality to ours. Before he even finds the capital, we’ll corner the market.”
“I’ve read the business plan, Benito.”
“And it doesn’t include gay porn.”
“Your target audience is women,” I reminded him.
“As you said, you’ve read the business plan and outside your obvious talent, my target audience is one of the reasons you’re sitting in that chair.”
“Right. So trust me on this. Women want m/m love stories and more, they want m/m sex scenes.”
He stared at me.
“They’re hot,” I said.
He stared at me longer, and I was about to say something when he said, “You have interest in them?”
I had no interest in porn on the whole. I didn’t judge, it just didn’t do anything for me.
But porn wasn’t about reality.
Porn was about fantasy.
In most cases, it didn’t really have anything to do with what you got off on in the real world.
I mean, I had no doubt men wanted to have sex with the slutty nurse with lots of lip gloss and her uniform undone down to her navel.
Or three slutty nurses done up like that.
But he knew it was never gonna happen.
So it was about what you got off on mentally.
And right now, either way you swung it, gay or straight, it was produced for the mentality of dudes.
Now a hot guy going at a hot guy and make that hot, but also a love story?
“Absolutely,” I answered.
He again stared at me.
I took it.
Finally, he nodded.
“Make it a ménage,” he declared.
Oh shit.
That was too close to the bone.
“I—”
He slithered off his stool in the only way a slimy reptile could.
“Have the script rewritten, make it a ménage. I’ll read it and consider it.”
It hurt a lot to say it.
But I had to say it.
“Thanks, Benito.”
He stilled and studied me in that way that creeped me out. Partially because I was worried he’d figured me out, as in, I was there to inform on any little thing I’d seen or heard that might put him behind bars, and partially because I worried instead that the asshole actually liked me.
“Please do not ever hesitate to bring your ideas to me, Tallulah. I mean no offense when I say I honestly had not expected this, but I find our collaboration very rewarding, and not just monetarily.”
Yeah, it was the second.
And yeah, that totally creeped me out.
“That means a lot, Benito.”
Damn, but I was proud of myself I got that out without choking.
“I’m glad it does. Now I hope whatever that distressing call was about you get it sorted out.”
I wondered how much he heard.
I really had to be more careful.
“Family stuff,” I muttered.
“Always difficult,” he muttered back.
If he had family, that would surprise me. He seemed the type to kill his mother and eat his young.
“Sadly, I have things to do,” he went on. “Perhaps we can have dinner some night?”
Oh God, no.
“That’d be cool.”
He smiled his oily smile, tipped his head to me and slunk away.
Gulk.
I decided to come in early the next day and go over my notes.
In other words, get the hell out of there.
I didn’t take this work home with me.
I lived alone, so it wasn’t like anyone would see it.
I just didn’t want it at my house.
I was on my way home trying not to think of my chat with my mother, my chat with Benito or the fact that I somehow had to pull off a tender “first time” sixty-nine scene the next day when my car rang.
I looked at the dash, closed my eyes, opened them because I didn’t want to kill myself in a car accident, and instantly decided after this was over to take a vacation somewhere there were no phones, no Internet, no television (so no porn channels), just a beach, a hut and mai tais.
Lots and lots of mai tais.
Then I took the call, feeling guilty that I didn’t want to take the call.
“Hey, Amy.”
“Hey, doll. Dinner this week?”
My mother was a lunatic who thought she could “reprogram” my brother.
And Amy was