Chapter 6
Callan
I hated that she had to live here with me.
She deserved better. Every daughter deserved better.
But her mother never had a single ounce of protectiveness in her, and I didn’t need to read Lana’s script to know it.
You could tell by the way she carried herself around my world that it was way different from hers.
Lana was quiet, cautious, and careful not to take up too much space, despite this house being huge.
Being the way she was wasn’t something you learned in a happy home.
She moved around the house like she didn’t belong—because she didn’t.
Lana was always polite, always hesitant.
Even when she was laughing or making some sarcastic remark, there was a shadow behind her eyes.
She was holding herself back but still tried to seem strong.
And I hated seeing it because it made me feel guilty for keeping her here.
Lana’s mother had always been about herself.
Selfish, dramatic, full of charm that faded the second she got what she wanted.
When I met Eden, I thought she was just a little wild.
I didn’t realize she was empty and lacked genuine empathy.
I didn’t realize she’d drag her daughter through her mess just to avoid being alone.
However, Eden was never really alone. She liked male attention, sex, and money.
Something I had given her blindly and now regretted deeply.
Lana grew up in Eden’s chaos. She learned early that love came with conditions.
That she had to be easy to handle, quiet, undemanding, and grateful for scraps of attention.
And now, she was nineteen, living in my house with a sharp tongue and tired eyes, still trying to prove she could survive without needing anyone.
I told myself I was only letting her stay here until she finished college and found her own place to live.
But that wasn’t the truth. The truth was, I didn’t want her to leave.
It was selfish, and I knew I probably wasn’t giving her what she needed either, but staying here was better than sending her off to some random apartment somewhere.
College dorms were an option, too, but I knew what college was like, and I hated the idea of her sleeping in a place where guys always looked for trouble.
I truly had no business being this concerned about her, but because she never had this kind of protection, I felt the urge to be the one to give it to her.
Still, she shouldn’t be here, surrounded by people who had no shame or sense of boundaries, and I was one of those people.
I wasn’t a perfect man. Hell, I fucked and made millions with it, and while I treated all the women who worked with me with respect, I never really cared much about them unless they could make me come multiple times a day.
Lately, though, it hadn’t been the same unless I had Lana’s eyes on me.
Half the time, this house felt like a revolving door of idiots. Drunk and self-absorbed people who thought the world revolved around their next paycheck or orgasm. Again, I was one of them. I’d made this place exactly what it was: A house of pleasure.
And yet, Lana still walked into it every day like she could handle it. As if she weren’t disgusted or annoyed. She just adapted like she always had. That was the part that got me the most. She’d been neglected her whole life and still managed to hold her head up.
When I first saw her script sitting on the counter, I didn’t plan to read it. I shouldn’t have. It was personal and private. But I did anyway. I picked it up, told myself I’d only skim a few lines, because, honestly? How good could a nineteen-year-old’s script be?
It was everything.
An emotional masterpiece, telling her story in a real and painful way.
The story was raw and real, and I got emotional reading it because I knew not a single word of what she wrote was a lie.
Every line came from experience, not imagination.
She wrote about loneliness as if it were an old friend.
She wrote about a girl who kept waiting for her mother to notice her, even after she stopped believing she would.
By the time I finished, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years. Shame. Even if I hadn’t been there when it all went down, I had seen enough in the past year to know Lana hadn’t made anything up. She shouldn’t have had to write something like that. Not at her age. Not with that much truth in it.
As much as I wanted to be good to her, to show her that I truly accepted her in my house, I couldn’t just change overnight.
I wasn’t an easy man, and I had shown her that many times before.
She always stood up for herself when my behavior got out of hand, and she always showed me that I didn’t intimidate her.
She deserved better than this. Better than me or the noise and constant sex happening around her.
But when I thought about her leaving, I felt something twist in my chest. It was selfish to keep her here, and it was wrong to feel attracted to her.
Not just because of how much younger she was, but also because I had made the mistake of marrying her damn mother.
Lana was too pure for me, and she was too damn smart to give in to me.
I was a pretty persuasive guy. It was part of my job, and I had fucked many young women who wanted to make a name for themselves in the porn industry. But Lana was nothing like them.
She wouldn’t let me use her, wouldn’t lower her standards, and I hoped she never would.
Still, I couldn’t shake the fucking fact that her face had helped me reach climaxes lately. I had no damn clue what had happened to me, but my body didn’t react to the usual women I had sex with anymore. Nothing did the trick. No blowjobs, no sex, no crazy position. And no number of women.
Lana’s face had been what got me off the last two times, and I was afraid it would keep happening.
That’s why I was being selfish.
I needed her there so my body and mind wouldn’t go blank.
It had been a couple of hours since she left.
I told myself I wasn’t keeping track, but I knew exactly how long she’d been gone.
I’d checked the clock three times. I’d looked out the window once or twice, just to see if she was back.
But she wasn’t. She was still out there, probably reading in whatever park she thought was worthy enough of her presence today.
Truthfully, it was a blessing being around her. The calmness she radiated had often kept me calm when all I wanted to do was shout at people. Of course, Lana knew nothing about the way I felt, and I would never admit to it.
I sat at the kitchen counter with my phone in one hand and a half-empty cup of coffee in the other. I didn’t feel like working today, and I also had no intention of having anyone over for the weekend. I was tired, and even my social battery would occasionally run out.
When a call from Rocco came in, I just stared at the screen, trying to figure out if I had enough energy to talk to my best friend.
But if I’d had let him go to voicemail, he’d show up at my door ten minutes later.
I sighed and picked up, putting him on speaker so I could continue to scroll through my social media apps aimlessly.
“You alive?” he asked, his voice as cheerful as ever.
“Barely.”
“That’s good enough,” he said. “Listen, I got something. We’re putting together a new video series. The studio wants a small cast, just a few new girls. They want you to pick the girls. You’re good at spotting the ones who’ll actually be good on camera.”
I rubbed my temple and leaned back in my chair. “You got anyone in mind already?”
I didn’t have the time to visit the studio we worked with to personally meet all the new faces who wanted to make a name for themselves in the industry. There’d be too many, and not even a fifth would make it big.
“A couple of brunettes, a blonde, and a redhead. I just sent you the pictures. The redhead’s cute as hell, probably twenty-one. Got that shy look you like.”
I got his message and opened it. There were headshots but also a couple of professionally shot nudes, and I looked at them half-interested until I got to the redhead.
“Hm, yeah. I can work with the redhead.”
Rocco snorted. “Of course. You always go for the redheads.”
“They work well on camera,” I said flatly.
“Yeah, sure. And it’s totally not because you’ve got a certain redhead living under your roof that you’ve been secretly lusting after.”
“Don’t start,” I warned.
“I’m just saying,” he said, trying not to laugh. “I’ve seen you look at her with that hungry look. She’s innocent.”
Too damn innocent. And pure. And smart.
God, too damn smart for me to use her face to get off.
“You’ve been different lately,” Rocco continued. “You don’t even hit the clubs anymore. The other night, Xena told me she called you, and you didn’t pick up. That’s a first. You always pick up when sweet Xena calls.”
“I was busy.”
“Doing what? Folding laundry?” he snorted.
“Filming with Karlee.”
“Right, and how’s that working out for you?”
He knew Karlee was difficult. She was demanding, clingy, and jealous, which, in this industry, wasn’t very fitting.
I didn’t answer because I would’ve only made excuses. I had also become a bit lazy since, well…since my dick didn’t work the way it used to.
He sighed. “Look, man, whatever’s going on, maybe use it. Put it into the work. Write something new. You used to actually give a damn about the stories.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I used to.”
He changed the subject because even for Rocco, this conversation was getting too sentimental. “So, the shoot next week. We’ll do a casting video first. Want me to book the studio?”
“We’ll do it here.” Come to think of it… “No, book the studio.”
“Got it,” Rocco said. “You sure you’re good?”
“Always,” I said, even though we both knew it was bullshit.
After he hung up, I set my phone down and stared at it. The house was quiet for once, without naked people running around. It was nice, and I thought that Lana would like it too. The only problem was that she wasn’t here right now.
I tried not to think about her, but she was always somewhere in the back of my mind lately. Whether I wanted her to or not, her beautiful face, fiery hair, and blue eyes were a constant image right in front of me.
Shit…she just didn’t fit in here.
She was too calm for this place. Too normal.
And I was the opposite.
And, still, I had to turn it all into a perverted little game.
I picked up my phone and opened Instagram.
I’d looked her up before, but her profile had been private.
The only thing visible had been her profile picture.
All I could see was her back turned to the camera, standing in front of a wall of books.
To anyone else, it would’ve looked ordinary.
To me, it wasn’t. The way her shoulders were relaxed, her hair pulled into a loose braid.
It told me exactly who she was. Even in that damn picture, it looked like she didn’t want to take up too much space.
I typed her name into the search bar, and when her profile appeared, I stopped. It wasn’t private anymore.
For a second, I didn’t move. My thumb hovered over the screen. It wasn’t like I’d never seen her before. She lived here. But scrolling through her world like this felt wrong.
Still, I started to scroll.
The feed wasn’t big. There were only five pictures, a few with her friends, some random shots from campus, and one was a selfie. I tapped on it and just stared like a fucking creep.
She definitely didn’t post like the girls I knew. There wasn’t a single attention-seeking pose, no filters, no cleavage. No half-naked posts to attract men. But I shouldn’t have been surprised about that. She wasn’t a damn porn star.
I forced myself to scroll to the next picture.
It was a candid photo someone had taken of her sitting outside a café.
Her head was tilted down, her fingers holding a half-open book, and there was a soft smile on her face that made my fucking dick twitch inappropriately.
Her hair looked brighter under the sunlight, and so did her eyes.
She wasn’t looking at the camera, but she didn’t have to to make an impression.
She stood out without trying, and that was a talent in itself.
I stared too long, and my stomach tightened. So I kept scrolling, thinking it might help, but I encountered the same problem. Every photo she was in made my heart act up.
I shouldn’t have been doing this or feeling this way. I wasn’t a damn teenager. I knew better. But it was too easy to justify. To tell myself I was just curious, just making sure she was doing fine outside this house.
Except that wasn’t the full truth.
I was admiring her through a screen because doing it in person wouldn’t be right.
It would scare her off. Make her feel uncomfortable.
Though I had managed to make her feel that way earlier at the store when I asked her to call me daddy again.
She had meant it mockingly, but to me, it had made me feel better than the damn blowjob Karlee had given me that morning.
My cock twitched again, and I reached down to cup it with my free hand. I went back to the selfie, and from that moment on, my mind shut off, and my body took over.
I stood up from the chair and walked over to the couch, where I sat down and leaned back before reaching into the sweatpants I had changed into after returning from the store.
My cock was already hard, and I started to stroke it while I looked at Lana’s face on my screen.
I’m going to hell, I told myself. Yet, I didn’t stop.
“Fuuuck,” I groaned, squeezing my tip with my forefinger and thumb, then slid my hand down my length again. Parting my legs, I gave myself more space. The tight pull in my balls made me want to put the phone down and massage them with my other hand, but I needed to keep looking at her.
“God, that mouth feels good around my cock,” I praised, even though it was just my damn hand. But I had a grand imagination, and right now, I decided that it was Lana’s lips sliding up and down my shaft.
“Fucking beautiful. Keep those pretty eyes on me.”
I rubbed harder, never taking my eyes off her picture.
My cock started throbbing, and just like this morning, getting off was easier than it ever had been thanks to Lana.
I groaned louder, moving my hand faster, and tightening my grip around my cock until my legs tensed.
My body was urging me to let go. To come in my damn pants like a fucking teenager who couldn’t hold himself back.
And the craziest part of it all was that it was just a picture of her making me feel this much. She had a hold on me like no other woman ever had, and when relief finally came, I held on to the image of her kneeling in front of me, sucking my cock.