Page 61 of Freeze Frame

“Oh no,” I said, injecting my voice with fake concern. “You’re going to have to play with my ass. How will I manage? What will I do? The horror.”

He laughed and gave me a shove, but I didn’t move away. I just laughed with him and held him a little tighter.

“You’ll really let me fist you?”

“Not today, like you said, but yeah, we can work up to that.” My dick disagreed. It wanted to demand that we do it today. Right now in fact. He didn’t care that we were dressed, and vertical, and in the kitchen. He wanted what he wanted, and he wanted it now. Which was why he wasn’t in charge of anything.

“Now all I want to do is take you back to bed and play with that magnificent ass of yours. But I have to work today. Lukas has been busy and has some new footage for me to edit. Plus, I do a lot of the website updates and stuff. I have a bunch of videos to write summaries for.”

“I have the afternoon shifts this week, so I wouldn’t be able to indulge for long before I had to get ready for work.”

“Work is stupid. Money is dumb.”

“Yes, but work keeps the lights on and the lube stocked.”

Josh’s eyes sparkled. “Then you should really get to work. You don’t want to be late.”

“I have a little time, yet.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How much time?”

“Time enough to do this.” Cupping his cheek, I pulled him to me, drawing him closer so I could bring my mouth down on his. Our lips met, and I tasted coffee on his mouth. I tasted coffee and sugar when I kissed him again, deeper that time. “And this.”I said when I pulled away briefly. And then I kissed him again, softer, deeper, longer.

I was almost late for work.

THIRTY

JOSH

If the pastmonth had felt like a dream, today felt like a nightmare. Well, not exactly a nightmare. But more like one of those dreams where you’re back in a situation you used to be in often, but nothing was quite the same.

David was at work, but I sent him a text anyway, partially hoping that he’d text me back and tell me not to do this. He never would, though. We’d talked about this very day a million times, and the conversation always ended the same. David being perfectly reassuring that he understood what I did for a living and me quietly stressing about whether or not he meant it.

Because it was one thing to think of a hypothetical in your head and another entirely for that hypothetical to become a reality. Sometimes the way we thought things would go wasn’t at all how they ended up happening. Ugh. I was a mess.

I’d arrived at Lukas's early so I could hide in one of the downstairs rooms and get ready. It had been a while since I was on camera and some of my camera-ready routine had fallen bythe wayside. Lukas never told people what to do with our bodies, so I could rock the world’s unruliest pubes and he’d roll with it.

I trimmed, though. I usually kept them trimmed short, but my anxiety about the shoot had me living in some kind of weird bubble of hesitation. I questioned every decision I ever made but still decided that I’d have ended up right in this exact position no matter what because there wasn’t anything I would have done differently. There were few things in my life that I regretted, and none of them were things that I did or could control.

I regretted the fact that my parents were bigots who could disown their kids for not fitting into the box they’d shoved them in. I regretted having to rely so much on my sister that it turned her into some sort of pseudo parent. Okay… so maybe that one was on me a bit, but it wasn’t like I had options at the time.

I regretted nothing when it came to David. He made me happy in a way I never thought possible. Somehow, I’d always worried that I’d meet someone I’d fall for, but they wouldn’t fall for me. Or they would, but they’d hate my job and they’d be horrified that I ever filmed porn. And then I met David, who fell for me right back. Who didn’t mind that I had a different sort of job than a lot of people. David, who was handsome and perfect and accepting.

What the hell was I doing here? What if he really did mind? What if he ended up feeling like I was cheating on him or something?

A knock on the door busted up my downward spiral, and Blue walked into the room. That meant that Asher wasn’t far behind. Blue wasn’t my costar today; none of the men in Jax’s throuple were because that would be fucking weird and probably inappropriate.

“Hey. I thought I’d come check on you.” Blue sat down on the bed and patted the spot next to him. “Come here, River.”

River. It had been a while since anyone called me River. At one time, it was the only name I used. I’d adopted my stage name and worn it like a shield. I’d been River to all my friends. River to my coworkers. River to myself. River was confident and sexy. River didn’t worry about other people’s opinions. River was practically godlike.

River was fucking lonely, though. River didn’t let anyone close. He kept everyone at arm’s length. His friendships were casual, surface-level type friendships. The only person he wanted to rely on had been himself.

I wasn’t sure that I was that same person anymore. Or maybe I was, and I was afraid that I was. That underneath it all, I was still the same scared, lonely man that I’d been before I met David. But now I had something to lose.

“Come here,” Blue said again, and this time I listened.

I sat down next to him and let him fling an arm around me and pull me close.