Chapter 26 #2
Distorted words and sounds reached his ears, as if he were underwater. “Ethan.” Someone grabbed his arm, and he wrestled free. For a brief instant, he registered Zane’s alarmed face as his friend reached for him and called his name.
Ethan spun around and pushed through the crowd, breaking into a run for the door.
Blake
“Ethan!” Blake climbed down from the runway, pushing men aside as they crowded around him with dollar bills in their outstretched hands. “Ethan!” Once he’d gotten past the main crowd, he shrugged off his heavy duster and sprinted across the empty dance floor.
When he got to the door, a man with purple streaks in his hair was rubbing Ethan’s shoulder in an obvious attempt to comfort him. “Babe, what’s going on?”
Blake approached them cautiously. He wanted so badly to pull Ethan into a hug, to kiss his hair and apologize for whatever had upset him.
Maybe the show was more graphic than he expected now that the dancers had no rules.
Or maybe he wasn’t prepared to actually see Blake performing for an audience of horny, riled-up men.
Or maybe he knows.
Enzo had introduced him as Dirk Slocum. Ethan didn’t watch a lot of porn, but if that name meant anything to him, then Blake’s worst nightmare had come true.
Blake reached for Ethan, but pulled his hand back when Ethan’s friend shot him a pointed look.
“We’re okay, thanks.”
Ethan turned to Blake, tears welling in his eyes. He ran his hand under his drippy nose. “Zane, this is Blake. The guy I’ve been dating.”
Zane’s eyes widened, and his gaze darted between Blake and Ethan. “You’re dating Dirk Slocum?”
Together, Ethan and Blake snapped, “No!”
“He’s dating me. The real me,” Blake said, realizing his clarification was pointless.
“You’re a porn star?” Ethan asked.
Desperate to make Ethan understand, Blake shook his head.
“Not anymore. I…” There was no more putting it off.
No easing Ethan into it. His boyfriend was now just a Google search away from discovering every lurid detail of Blake’s illustrious career.
He sighed, his shoulders collapsing forward. “I used to be, though.”
Ethan’s eyes brightened. The look of hope in his expression was a stab to Blake’s gut. “Like, a long time ago?”
“My last scene was about a month ago.”
“A month?” Ethan said, his voice rising in disbelief. “That’s how long we’ve been dating. Were you making porn while you were dating me?”
Blake held up his hands. “No! Of course not. I stopped before our first date.” He made a pained noise when he realized that wasn’t true. “I’ve posted some solo videos to SeeMen. But no couple sex.”
Ethan just stared at him, and Blake was pretty sure he clocked the exact moment Ethan’s heart broke.
His lower lip trembling and his voice barely audible, Ethan said, “I let you inside of me without a condom.”
He turned to leave, and Blake tried to stop him with a hand on his bicep. “Wait.”
Ethan took Blake’s hand off his bicep and held it against his tear-dampened cheek. “I don’t know if I can deal with this.”
“Please, Ethan. Don’t go.” Blake’s vision blurred with tears. “Don’t leave me.”
His eyes closed, Ethan pressed a kiss to Blake’s knuckles. His lips lingered a moment, until his breath hitched and his shoulders shuddered. “I need some time.”
He gently released Blake’s hand and, without looking back, hurried through the door.
Zane looked between Blake and the door swinging shut, then called out Ethan’s name and chased after his friend.
Blake stared at the door as it closed, a single tear rolling down his cheek.
“Blake.”
Blake turned to find Tenny and Virgil standing behind him, their faces lined with concern.
Tenny was still wearing his leather shorts and boots, chest heaving slightly.
He’d said earlier he was going to watch Blake’s number from the wings.
When he saw the drama unfolding, he must have bounded down the runway to be at his friend’s side.
With his thumb, Tenny wiped the tear from Blake’s cheek and pulled him into a hug. “I’m sorry, buddy.”
Blake melted into Tenny’s warm embrace, letting his friend’s familiar scent soothe him. The weight of a hundred eyes bored into him. Hollowed out and fighting tears, he dreaded the thought of stepping back under the lights and offering his body to a crowd that had just seen him stripped bare.
A faceless man in the audience started chanting, “Dirk! Dirk! Dirk!” The rest of the men joined in, until his name resonated through the club like a communal heartbeat.
Virgil placed his hand on Blake’s shoulder. “Blake, honey, we can talk about what happened later, but the audience is waiting.”
Blake buried his face in the crook of Tenny’s neck and hugged his friend tighter. “I can’t do this.”
“Have the DJ play Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer,’” Tenny said to Virgil. “Switch to red spots. We’ll be there in a sec.” He pulled back from their hug and cupped the back of Blake’s neck with his thick fingers. “I’m going to dance with you, okay?”
Blake could only muster enough energy to nod.
Tenny took his hand and led him to the stage as the steady opening drum beat of “Closer” filled the club. The two men climbed onto the runway, drawing thunderous applause and cheers from the audience. The spotlights suddenly switched to a moody scarlet.
Tenny pressed up behind him, one arm sliding around Blake’s waist. He leaned in close, his lips brushing Blake’s earlobe as he whispered, “I won’t let you fall.”
Tenny’s hands roamed over Blake’s chest, squeezing his pecs and massaging his erect nipples. “Let the part of you that hurts float away. Be here with me. Feel the music. Let it move your body.”
Blake rolled his hips in time with Tenny’s and let his head drop back to rest on his friend’s shoulder. The adult industry had given him so much. Validation. Money. Celebrity. But tonight it cost him something far more valuable – a chance at love.
He scanned the men clustered around the stage, and for the first time in his career, he hated them. Hated how they gaped at him with glazed-over eyes and slack jaws, drooling for cock, rubbing themselves through their pants as he slutted it up onstage.
Blake wanted to make them hurt, to ache for the body and the man they could never have.
He turned in Tenny’s arms and dropped into a squat.
While he combed his fingers through Tenny’s chest hair, Blake nuzzled the warm, sweaty crotch of his leather shorts.
He rolled his body as he stood, pressing their chests and cocks together.
The audience would read his movements as unbridled sexual desire, but Blake was just running routines in his brain, trying to lose himself in what he knew.
He might not know much, but he knew how to make men want. How to make them hard. He’d give those fuckers the smoking hot scene they’d replay in their minds while they fumbled through hand jobs in a smelly bathroom stall.
Dollar bills rained onto the stage as the crowd bayed for more.
Blake tore away his jeans and palmed himself through his briefs, squeezing and stroking until the friction made him hard.
He spun his friend around and unzipped the back of his shorts.
Driving his hips forward, Blake slipped his cock into the warm cleft between Tenny’s cheeks.
Tenny bent forward, back arched, offering his ass in a wanton display of lust.
This is what Blake was made for. What he was good at. Being a sexual object.
He didn’t deserve someone like Ethan: pure, and smart, and good. A man who saw sex as something sacred and beautiful, not a dirty, sleazy commodity.
Ethan had looked at Blake like he was special. Someone with something interesting to say. He treated Blake like he was worth more than a quick, meaningless fuck.
And now Ethan was gone.
When the final beat hit, the spotlights cut out. The sudden darkness and the deafening roar of applause shielded them from the audience’s prurient gaze, granting them a fleeting moment of true intimacy.
Tenny’s arms tightened around Blake in a protective hug. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Blake crumpled in his best friend’s embrace, sobbing against his chest, as Tenny rubbed his back and gently rocked him.