Chapter 10
IVY
My eyes almost popped out of my head, and I grabbed Ian’s phone to get a better look. “No way. I’m sorry, baby, you are quite well endowed, but this is porno sized. It almost looks CGI-generated.”
He jutted out his bottom lip. “You don’t have to be that sure that fast.”
I snorted and dropped the phone on his lap. “The idea that random people online actually believe that monster belongs to you, and that you’d DM pictures of it to your fans is ridiculous. Emphasis on the dick.”
“Told you.”
He swept the pictures off his display with a disgusted grunt.
“I have an idea.”
I drummed my fingers on his arm. “Chloe might jump the gun sometimes, but she’s very good at her job. She might be able to do a reverse lookup on this picture and find out if it’s been used before or maybe even find the real owner.”
“And what good would that do me? I’m not going to publicly address this. Oh, hello, Ian Pope here, and I just wanted to let you all know I did a bit of research, and that cock belongs to Harry Dick.”
I punched his hard bicep. “You’re not going to address it at all, but a little army of your fans can. Chloe can start the ball rolling with a few fake accounts reporting that the picture is a phony. Your fans will pick up on it and do the rest of the work. Item debunked and squashed.”
“Chloe would do that? She looked like she wanted to punch me in the face fifteen minutes ago.”
“She’ll do it if I ask her.”
I slid my hand under his shirt and smoothed it across his washboard abs.
He sucked in a sharp breath. “She’s a good friend.”
“The best.”
I hooked my fingers in the waistband of his tan pants and wriggled them close to the dick of the moment.
Closing his eyes, he asked, “What are you doing, Tink?”
“More research. Before I commit Chloe to the task, I have to be absolutely sure this is not the cock in question.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
He crossed his arms behind his head in a relaxed pose, but his chest rose and fell with each heavy breath.
“Further inspection.”
I undid his pants and yanked them down his slim hips. I smoothed my hand over the large bulge in his briefs, and he raised his buttocks from the bed. I took the blatant invitation and peeled down his underwear.
Curling my hand around his cock, I breathed out, “Impressive but not porn star quality. I concur. The dick pick is a fake.”
“I don’t know. You might need to do more to convince Chloe.”
He gasped as I cupped his sac and circled my fingers around his base, squeezing hard.
“I think you’re right.”
I dipped my head and ran my tongue along the length of him. When I got to the head, I wrapped my lips around it, tasting his slightly salty and tangy pre-cum. As I bobbed my head up and down, sliding his cock in and out of my mouth, he tangled his fingers in my hair and hissed.
When I stopped to reposition myself and adjust my jaw, he stroked my face with his long fingers. “Why do you still have clothes on? I wanna be inside you.”
“You were inside me.”
I pointed to my mouth.
“Don’t be cheeky. Get naked.”
“When you put it so sweetly and romantically, how can I refuse you?”
I pulled off his pants, tangled around his ankles, and then scrambled out of my own clothes, throwing everything over my shoulder, piece by piece. Then I attacked his T-shirt, yanking it over his head.
On my knees, I straddled his legs and drank in the sight of his nude body splayed before me, the hard planes and muscles a work of art to rival his ink. The moment had the shimmering quality of a dream, and I almost pinched myself back to reality, but I didn’t want to wake up.
With one hand still behind his head, Ian stroked my thigh with the other, and his eyes glittered below his half-shuttered lids. “I seem to have traded one addiction for another. I can’t get enough of you.”
We always seemed to be on the same wavelength, and an overpowering need to be one with him again consumed me. I moved forward, positioning myself over his erection.
“Wait.”
He felt for the handle of the nightstand drawer, and I shook my head. I didn’t need the security of a condom anymore. “I believe in your six-month celibacy. I believe you, and you can believe me—I’m on the pill, and I don’t sleep around.”
Ian didn’t need any other explanation, encouragement, or proof. He grabbed his cock and slid it along my pussy, wetting the tip, propelling me into a frenzy of longing. I lowered myself on him, holding my breath as he filled up all my empty spaces.
As I rode him, he reached up and grabbed my tits, pinching my nipples, causing tingles to shoot through my body. I arched my back and moaned. His eyes never left my face, and his gaze scorched me. I couldn’t bear the intensity any longer, so I fell onto his chest, still moving against him, forward and back.
He grabbed my ass with both of his hands and pressed my body against his, lifting his hips. I rubbed my clit against his pelvis each time we made contact, as he moved in a circular motion, driving me slightly insane. My orgasm started with a buzz in the pit of my stomach, or maybe it had started in my brain or even my heart the moment I saw his defeated expression over the online smear campaign.
Body, brain, heart—they all contributed to the heat that engulfed me as I came. I cried out and sat up again, throwing my head back, going full cowgirl.
His fingers dug into my flesh, and then he exploded inside me. He thrust upward again and again, the cords of his neck visible, his muscles tight.
I fell forward, flat against his body, my hands on his shoulders, descending from his orgasm with him, my lips on his throat, measuring his pulse as it slowed to a steady tick. I released a long sigh and shivered.
Closing my eyes, I nuzzled his neck, a low growl of contentment gurgling in my throat. I didn’t want to move. Didn’t think I could move. And Ian didn’t seem in any hurry to toss me off, as he zigzagged a finger down my spine.
When he got to my tailbone, he started all over again, dabbling his fingers down my back. “Are you uncomfortable?”
His voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d just remembered how to use it.
“No. I could stay here forever. Are you?”
“You’re a lightweight, Tink, like a feather that floated down and settled on my body. I’m still inside you.”
“Mmm.”
He put his hands around my waist and slid me off to his side. I immediately clung to him, resting my head on his chest, my hand covering his heart, and he trailed his fingers through my tangled hair. He said, “You feel it, too.”
“I feel a lot of things, baby.”
I swirled my fingers around his brown nipple.
“It’s like no matter how physically close I am to you—we could be pressed against each other along every line of our bodies, your legs tangled with mine, my arm around your waist, I could even be inside you, and it always feels like I can never get close enough.”
He pulled me tight as if to emphasize his point.
“I do feel it.”
I reached up and dug my fingers into his scalp. “What’s it gonna take? Brain meld?”
With the palm of his hand, he rubbed a circle on my backside. “Maybe something happened that day with Fabio.”
“Excuse me?”
I dug my chin into his hard pec to look into his face.
“I have a confession.”
At his words, my heart skipped a beat. “I didn’t know who the hell Fabio was. I had to look him up, later.”
When my heartbeat returned to normal, I raised one eyebrow. “Maybe you looked up the wrong Fabio because he’s not a magician or a spellcaster, throwing around love potions. In fact, he did a commercial for fake butter a while back.”
A look of confusion arched across Ian’s expressive face, but he decided not to go there. “No, but according to Wikipedia he was the cover model god of romance novels back in the day. Maybe that power put some kind of charm on us. Was it high noon or something when we met? Lightning strike? Venus crossing over the Sun?”
“It was eleven twenty-one and sixteen seconds, not that I took notice or anything. The sky was blue, and I think that transit of Venus is very rare.”
“Then I guess it was just very, very good luck that we met each other, after a very, very long string of bad luck for me.”
“Me, too.”
I kissed the scruff on his chin.
“Can we go out for dinner tonight? Someplace nice for everything you did for me.”
“Can we not? I didn’t do anything special, and besides, we need to strategize with Chloe, you need to keep working on that song, and I need to write a few thousand words on my book tonight.”
“Yeah, yeah. Those are all good excuses, but you really don’t want to go out with me, do you?”
He tugged on my hair.
“I don’t like all that...”
I waved my hands in the air “—paparazzi stuff. It looks terrifying.”
“I think we can find a nice place for dinner, even a trendy place without running into the paps.”
He ran the pad of his finger along my jaw. “You know how it works? Photographers are not usually hanging around celebrity hotspots all day and night. Someone who needs the press or needs to be seen with a particular person will tell his or her manager or PR team to call the paparazzi with their location and time, looking their best, and getting the desired photo in the tabloids.”
“That makes sense, but my excuses are still valid. We have our own PR campaign to launch.”
I had to make a move, or I’d want to lie all night next to him on this bed, talking silly, falling fast and hard. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the mattress, planting my feet on the hardwood floor.
“Does this PR campaign mean your further research convinced you that the dick pics aren’t me?”
Tilting my head, I tapped my chin. “I don’t know, baby. Your package is substantial.”
He crawled on the bed behind me, lifted my hair and kissed the back of my neck. “Porn star substantial?”
“Okay, maybe not, but that’s what’s gonna save your incredibly sexy ass.”
I hopped off the bed before his kisses could lure me to stay because he might not be as well-hung as Johnny Pornstar, but he had something much more habit-forming...and I was hooked.
***
After we ate our pizza and with the heavy scent of garlic in the air, Chloe and I sat on the loveseat, heads together, while Ian reclined in the chair across from us on his laptop, working on his new song.
It had taken a little more effort to convince Chloe that Ian never took or sent those photos to his fans and after a grudging apology to him, she agreed to help with the rescue effort.
Chloe pulled her own computer onto her lap, sharing the screen with me. “This should be a piece of cake—that’s cake, not cock.”
She snorted at her own joke while Ian caught my eye and winked at me. It warmed me down to my toes, and I smiled back at him.
Chloe saw the exchange and jabbed me in the side with a sharp elbow. “Pay attention. “I’ll just download the image to my computer and do a reverse image lookup. I’m surprised nobody’s done it, yet.”
I hovered over my friend’s shoulder, as Chole’s fingers flew across the keyboard, clicking, tapping, snipping at lightning speed. “Ah-ha!”
Chloe jabbed a finger at the screen. “This particular...member...belongs to one Duke Hammer, two-time AVN award winner for best actor in a feature film.”
Ian glanced up from his laptop. “AVN?”
Chloe’s mouth dropped open. “You’ve never watched the AVNs? They’re the porn Oscars. And you call yourself a bad boy.”
“Must be an American thing.”
Ian shrugged.
“I’ve never watched them.”
I bumped Chloe’s knee with mine. “You’ve never watched them.”
“Just fuckin’ with you, but it does stand for Adult Video News, and they hand out awards, just like any other self-serving industry.”
Rubbing my hands together, I said, “That’s perfect. It’s the same pose and everything, Ian. Do you want to see it?”
He held up a hand. “I think I’ve seen enough dicks for today, thanks.”
“Is that even possible?”
Chloe widened her pale blue eyes, framed with her fake black lashes, and we laughed until tears streamed down our faces.
Ian shook his head. “Now that you’ve identified the owner, what next?”
“What next, you say.”
Chloe laced her fingers and cracked her knuckles. “Now we create several fake social media accounts—don’t worry; I know how to make them appear legit with posts and friends and followers. A few of these accounts will start posting about how gullible people are. Don’t they know this is a famous picture of the incomparable Duke Hammer. How could anyone possibly believe this is Ian Pope’s dick. In fact, Ian Pope is rumored to be quite average in that department.”
“Whoa, whoa.”
Ian sat up abruptly, almost upending his laptop. “You don’t have to go overboard.”
“Ah!”
I grabbed a throw pillow and whacked Chloe on the head. “That is not true. While Ian won’t be winning any AVNs anytime, soon, we hope, he is anything but average-sized.”
“Thanks, Tink.”
Ian threw me a kiss.
Chloe stuck her fingers in her mouth. “You two are sickening. I’m just kidding about that last part, but not the first part. This is how we start a reverse PR campaign. Soon enough, Ian’s fans will pick up on this narrative and push back.”
“You’re a genius.”
I grabbed Chloe’s face and kissed the side of her head.
“Joking aside, I really appreciate this, Chloe. It sounds like a lot of work. Send my accountant an invoice like you would any other client.”
“I don’t need to be paid. I will do this out of the goodness of my heart and because you make my bestie happy.”
She tapped her chest twice. “I just ask for one thing in return.”
“Name it.”
“Treat my girlie right and don’t fuck up.”