Chapter 12
TWELVE
LUKAS
Sawyer was soft around the edges in ways I wasn’t used to.
Maybe I’d met too many jaded people. Maybe I was too jaded of a person, but I found him refreshing.
His candor. His honesty. Hell, the way he cared about the contrast in our lives as if him having things was responsible for me not having them.
Revealing my learning disability to him had been tough.
Most of the time it didn’t bother me, but Sawyer was smart.
Well read. Educated. I didn’t want him to think that I was stupid and, as it turned out, that fear had been unfounded.
Because once I’d told him, not only had a weight lifted off my chest, but Sawyer was understanding.
For him, it filled in some gaps. And his concern about the rest of the world finding out was touching.
It’s not that I wasn’t used to people being worried about me, but for some reason, it hit different when it was him. I liked that he cared about me, at least enough to be concerned for me. I liked him enough to notice the way he looked at me across the table.
That was another thing I was used to. It wasn’t vanity that made me think I had tons of admirers, but my history with people had provided enough experience for me to see someone’s interest in me. And Sawyer was interested. He’d never let himself go there, though. I knew that too.
Was it the porn star thing? Or the fact that I’d hired him?
Either way, it didn’t matter. Sawyer was a professional who deserved the courtesy of me keeping my dick in my pants.
He had a pretty mouth with soft-looking lips.
He seemed like the kind of guy who moisturized often.
And there I was, thinking about his personal care routine like a weirdo.
“I’m sorry you never got to go to that all-boys school,” I said with a smile, grabbing my glass of wine. “I feel like you were robbed of something, like if you had to suffer rich parents, there should have been some kind of payoff.”
“It’s probably for the best,” Sawyer responded, his voice quiet and thoughtful. “I might not have gotten anything done. Or I’d have been an even bigger nerd slash social outcast because I wasn’t exactly the smoothest person on the planet. Or the least obvious.”
“Yeah, but I feel like you don’t have to be smooth when you’re a teenager surrounded by other horny teenagers.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Lukas… do you have some kind of boarding school fantasy?”
A laugh bubbled out of me, and Sawyer’s cheeks turned crimson. “What red-blooded male doesn’t have some kind of boarding school fantasy, whether it’s screwing one of the teachers or getting your dick sucked in your dorm?”
His blush deepened.
“Oh, Sawyer, do you have a boarding school fantasy?” We were clearly headed off the professional relationship path, and I worried—only a little—that I was being far too inappropriate, and that I’d scare him away.
But he was so pretty when he blushed, I couldn’t help myself.
When was the last time I met a man who blushed?
“Like you said, who doesn’t?” Sawyer popped a bite of meatball into his mouth, but his blush didn’t fade.
This definitely wasn’t proper dinner conversation, but I had to at least ask. Maybe he’d tell me. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, I was going to jerk off later thinking about stripping him out of a school uniform and fucking him over a desk.
“I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours,” I offered, taking another sip of wine.
Sawyer’s cheeks were flaming red now. “I feel like that’s super unfair, you know. You probably have this elaborate fantasy that’s going to make mine sound stupid.”
“I promise you that there’s nothing you can say that I would find stupid, or lame, or whatever other self-deprecating descriptor you want to use. But if you want me to go first so you can judge for yourself, I will.”
“Oh, God, no. If you go first, I’ll never be able to follow.” He took a long drink of wine like he needed a little lubrication to get his courage working.
“I thought about it a lot,” Sawyer started.
“For a while, I was a bit obsessed with the idea of it. You know, anything to be away from my parents at first. And then I realized another reason it sounded so appealing. I had a lot of thoughts about it, but my favorite one…” He stopped to clear his throat.
The tips of his ears were red. It was easy to see that he was embarrassed by this conversation, but he wanted to have it anyway.
God, that was hot. I filed that away for future reference as he continued.
“My favorite is… uh… I’m late getting back to my dorm room, and I wake my roommate, and he’s angry, you know. Because I keep messing up. And he warned me what would happen if I fucked up again.”
Despite trying my best to school my features, my eyes widened. If Sawyer was kinky, I might die.
“He… uh… I… he spanks me, and then he makes me suck his dick.” He looked down at his plate like he wanted one of his meatballs to swallow him whole instead of the other way around.
“Sawyer, you kinky little bastard. That’s so fucking hot, dude.”
His eyes darted up to meet mine. “Yeah?”
“Hell, yeah.”
Sawyer ducked his head again, but I could tell he was pleased by my approval. “It’s your turn.”
All my blood was pooled between my legs, making my cock throb like a heart, like it was the thing keeping me alive and not the nest of butterflies in my chest.
“I seduce my tutor. It starts off innocent at first. I’m just blowing off steam, but then he says that if I work hard, he’ll reward me at the end of the session.
It depends on my mood what the reward is.
Sometimes it’s a blow job. Sometimes he rims me.
Sometimes he gets me worked up and doesn’t let me come. ”
I wanted to tug at the collar of my shirt, which suddenly seemed too tight, but I made myself hold still like Sawyer was a frightened animal who I could easily spook if I moved too fast. If he wasn’t spooked already.
He cleared his throat again and took another sip. His glass was nearly empty, as was mine.
“More wine?”
“Please.” He held his glass out to me, and I poured him another. His eyes met mine, and he offered me a tight smile. “I’m not sure how to segue the conversation away from boarding school fantasies.”
“That’s fine. We probably have more than one fantasy. I bet we could keep going.”
“We really shouldn’t.” Sawyer took another drink, and for a moment the energy between us got super fucking awkward. And then Lara let out a groan, and Sawyer and I looked down at her in time to see her stretch.
“Ignore her. She’s dramatic,” I told him.
He leaned down and scrubbed his fingers through her fur. “She had a big stretch. Didn’t you, Lara?” he said in a slightly different voice, the kind reserved for grown men to use on dogs and other cute animals.
I loved the way he was obviously infatuated with my dog. It made me feel good to see people love her as much as I did. She was an easygoing girl, always had been, but she seemed extra comfortable around Sawyer. It helped me feel extra comfortable around him.
“Did you have more questions for me?”
Sawyer shook his head. “Not tonight. We’ll have to talk about how you got started in the industry next. I’ll have questions then.”
“Well, we could have that conversation tonight,” I offered. “You’re already here, and we have wine. This conversation might require it.”
Sawyer looked at me again, his expression guarded this time, like he was trying to put that professional wall back up.
“It might be easier for both of us to treat it like a conversation between friends and not like… an interview.”
He nodded, then scrunched his forehead. For a moment, he looked worried about something, but then he forged ahead.
“Can I ask why you want to write this book? I’m not saying you shouldn’t; I’m just always curious about the motives of people who want to write memoirs or autobiographies.”
Pushing my plate to the side, I grabbed my wine and leaned back in my chair.
“Well, honestly, this industry has been great and terrible for me, in equal parts. For a long time, I put a lot of the blame on my shoulders for what happened to me, but as I got older, I realized that what happened to me happens to a lot of young men. They don’t know better.
They trust the wrong people. They believe the lines from the studios telling them that they’re like family. ”
Sawyer nodded. “It’s like that in the business world too. My dad uses that line on people. It works more often than it doesn’t. And you wouldn’t think it would, but it’s one of those things you don’t want to argue against. Like, who doesn’t want to be treated like family?”
“God, how easy it is to prey on people. That’s just fucking depressing.” After a generous sip of my wine, I continued. “I guess that’s why I want to have this book written. I want to warn people. Maybe if I put this book out there, there will be less stories like mine. I want to protect people.”
“That’s admirable.”
I narrowed my gaze. “But?”
“But people are going to make their own mistakes.”
“At least I’ll have tried. And it might be good for me to get this shit out in the open. I’ve been to therapy, and I’ve done a lot of work on myself to be okay with what went down, but sometimes I wonder if I’m over it or if I’m just telling myself that.”
Plus now that I’d started the project and had met Sawyer, I couldn’t pull the plug.
I liked Sawyer. He was good at listening, and I never felt judged or like he was only hanging out with me because I might fuck him one day if he was nice to me.
Not that I didn’t want to fuck him. In fact, he was the first person in months that I’d felt even a glimmer of an attraction to.
“It’s brave, you know, to put your whole life out there like that. I could never.”
“I’m not brave, Sawyer. I’m just an old man who wants to tell his side of the story.”
He was quiet for a moment, then he nodded once. “I’d like to hear it.”
“How about I clear the table, and we can take Lara and the wine out back? I have a little firepit on the patio. It’s a warm night.” I realized after I suggested it how romantic it sounded. A fire. A clear night. A bottle of wine. If only it were a real date.
“I’d like that.”
If Sawyer also thought it was a little on the romantic side, he didn’t say anything.
He did, however, excuse himself to the bathroom.
I watched him go and heard the door shut, then I heard a soft thunk, as though he’d leaned against the door after.
I made myself take a deep breath. At least I wasn’t the only one who needed a moment to calm down.
It took all my strength not to follow him to the bathroom like a creeper and knock on the door.
Heck, I imagined talking to him through the wall or slipping a note under the door to let him know that it was okay to want this.
At my feet, Lara let out a sigh. Even she could tell how ridiculous I was being and didn’t approve.
“Judgmental much?” I told her and she rolled her eyes at me, then went back to looking at the bathroom door. “Yeah, I know, girl. I like him too.”