Pornstar (Club Radiant #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

ATHENA

“No,” I mumbled to myself, pacing around in our kitchen and shaking my head.

The mahogany hardwood was cold underneath my feet, and the low hum of our central heat did nothing to calm my racing heart.

I crossed my arms over my chest to hide my taut nipples.

“It can’t be Charlie. I … I can’t believe it. ”

No way was my best friend an adult entertainer.

Heat swelled in my core, and I gripped the kitchen island until my knuckles turned white.

He was the definition of puppy dog with big blue eyes—the nicest, sweetest man I had ever met.

He’d help me with anything I asked, and he wasn’t one of those rich snobs just because he had come from a wealthy East Coast family.

I squeezed my eyes closed, replaying the moment last night when I had realized that the man I had been gawking at for months now was not only my best friend, but also my roommate.

What was I thinking?!

When I recognized his room in the background, I should’ve closed the tab immediately. But instead, I rewatched every single one of his videos to make sure that it was really him. Charlie never showed his face, but I knew his body too well. Those tattoos and his scar.

I even paid him to grunt and growl my name last night because I wanted to hear it so badly. He had said my name many times before in person, so softly spoken, but last night, it had been fucking wild, rowdy.

“Morning.” Charlie yawned from the doorway with his sun-kissed skin, light blonde almost-white hair, and sculpted muscles taunting me.

After leaping up in surprise, I twirled around and backed up into the counter. He rubbed his eyes the way he did every morning when he woke up, tired from staying up all night.

“Morning,” I squeaked and hurried past him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked almost immediately, catching my wrist before I could escape.

When he turned me around, another squeal left my mouth. I held my hands over my chest to hide my aching nipples and attempted to come up with an excuse. Any excuse. Something that would be believable at the very least!

“Um … nothing. Why?”

His gaze dropped down to my hand-covered chest, and then he lifted it back up to mine, his jaw twitching. God, he was screaming all kinds of trouble this morning!

He gently tightened his grip on my wrist. “What’s wrong, Athena?”

I needed to get out of here. Now!

“Nothing!” I exclaimed and hurried toward the door. “Nothing at all.”

“Come on, Athie.” Before I could make it three feet past him, he wrapped his hand around the nape of my neck and gently tugged me backward against his muscular body. “I know you. You can tell me if something’s—”

“I think I forgot something, um …” My gaze snapped around the hall. “In my room!”

After escaping his grasp for good, I sprinted past him and down the hall to my bedroom. What was wrong with me this morning? Why couldn’t I get my-damn-self together around him? I had touched myself one too many times to his videos, but I had never reacted like this …

Maybe it was because he’d said my name last night. Or that I now knew it was him.

Once I reached my room, I slammed the door and ran to my computer because my dumb ass had fallen asleep to his videos, and I realized that I had never closed the tabs. I whipped my fingertips along my touchpad to turn it on.

The screen glowed, and my favorite video of Charlie’s lit up.

Fuck, what is wrong with me?! Why didn’t I close all these tabs?!

“Can I come in?” Charlie asked while opening my bedroom door, his blue eyes huge.

I snapped my laptop shut and stood in front of the computer. “U-um … ye—no.”

He walked into the room anyway with a smile so soft that I couldn’t believe the man I had watched last night was really him. There was no way in fucking hell that it was him. The man in the video was vicious, dark, filthy-mouthed, and … loved choking.

The Charlie I knew apologized if he accidentally bumped into me.

“Fuck,” I whispered, nipples aching.

“What is it, Athena?” he asked, moving closer to me. “Sierra, Heather, and Sun aren’t supposed to be over for another hour or so, right? We have time. You can tell me what happened. Why are you acting so weird?”

“I can’t,” I whispered, heart pounding the closer he came.

“Why not? Did something happen at the bar last night?”

“No.”

He grimaced and looked past me at the laptop. “Is it something on your computer?”

“No!”

My quick and rushed response did nothing to convince him. Actually, the opposite happened as he stepped past me and grabbed the laptop from behind my back. “I swear, if someone is harassing—”

“Wait! Don’t open th—”

Before I could reach for it, he opened my laptop. The video of him pounding his cock into another woman’s throat, slapping her tits, and spitting on her face began playing on full blast because my earbuds weren’t connected anymore and I hadn’t gotten a chance to close all the damn tabs!

“It’s not what it looks like!” I shrieked, slamming the laptop shut. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

We were best fucking friends, and I had been touching myself to him, thinking about how it’d feel if I were the one he was face-fucking like that. It was exactly how it looked, and I felt so guilty for it.

I turned my head and averted my gaze, my chest and face suddenly burning. “I’m so sorry. I found it online, and I … I knew it was you. You have the same tattoos, the same scar on your finger. And I …”

Oh God! This was going to ruin our entire friendship!

Seven years down the drain.

Suddenly, he wrapped his hand around my throat and pinned me to the nearest wall. I sucked in a breath and stared up into his dark eyes, my heart pounding inside my chest and my pussy clenching.

“You what?” he growled. “Found out it was me and decided to touch yourself to it?”

While I opened my mouth to protest, only a whimper escaped my throat.

A low, deep chuckle rumbled from his body, and then he drew the pad of his thumb across my lower lip. The submissive in me sucked in another breath and stared up at him, waiting, anticipating his next move.

“If you wanted me to treat you like a dirty little fuckdoll all this time, you could’ve said so,” he said, slipping his thumb between my lips and watching as I sucked on it. He cursed under his breath, his gaze hazy.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, sucking on it harder. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop myself.”

“Fucking hell,” he snarled, shoving me to my feet.

I landed on my knees, my pussy aching and desperate, and I stared up at him through wide eyes. He reached down and pinched my hardened nipples through my tank top, tugging them as hard as he could.

“It was you last night who paid me to moan your name, wasn’t it?”

“N-no.”

He pulled on my nipples harder. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”

“Yes, it was,” I cried. “It was me!”

He released my tits and slid his hands up to my jaw, shoving his fingers into my mouth to wet them, drawing them all across my face, lightly tapping my cheek, as if to test what I really liked, how far I really wanted to go with him.

“That’s what I thought. Now be a good girl for me and open your mouth.”