Chasing Kings (9 page)

Another chime announced he had a voicemail.

Ethan tilted his body slightly, reaching for the phone with imploring fingers, all the while trying to keep Sam from waking up. She mumbled and stirred, but when Ethan moved back into place, she nestled into him and continued snoozing.

The display told Ethan he’d missed a call from Antoine, Julian’s partner in crime when it came to the sex parties they threw. There was no way hearing from Antoine could mean anything good.

Lowering the volume on his handset, he called his voicemail and listened to Antoine’s message. “Hey, big boy, Jules tells me you might have a little trouble paying up on time. If you need some wiggle room, I have a party planned in a suite at the MGM tomorrow night after the awards. Your participation would be…advantageous. Ta-ta.”

He didn’t need to listen to the voicemail more than once because the message was clear. Show up at the party,
or else
. Ethan had gotten away with skipping Julian’s last party in L.A., but he didn’t think he’d be able to pull off missing a second one.

He put the phone down and tried to focus on the TV but was suddenly a lot less interested in who made the best gazpacho. For a few hours he’d been able to forget his troubles, and that had been all due to Sam. Now his problems had found him even as she slept in his arms. He looked down at her, pushing her hair back so he could see her face, her lips parted in sleep as if waiting for a kiss.

Couldn’t he have this? This nice moment in time, without it being ruined by all the garbage Kelly had sucked him into? And when was he going to stop placing all the blame on Kelly? He’d known it was a bad idea to get into bed with Julian, and now he was proving himself right.

Sam opened her eyes slowly and looked up at him.

“That’s a serious face,” she observed, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

“I want to ask you something.”

“If it’s whether or not I’ve been a bad girl, I think you know the answer by now.” She smiled but was still half-asleep, giving the gesture an unhurried quality he found endearing.

“Tomorrow night is the AVAs. I want you to come with me. As my date.”

Her eyes opened wider, and she bent her neck to better see him.

“Say again?”

Ethan sat up straighter, turning off the television. Seeing his seriousness made Sam sit up and wrap the blanket around her waist so only her bra-shrouded upper half showed. It was sort of cute that she wanted to cover up her lower body, considering he’d had his face buried in it only an hour earlier, but her modesty was one of the things he liked about her.

“Will you be my date to the Adult Video Awards?” he repeated, making sure he was clear about what he was asking.

“Isn’t that a big deal?”

He shrugged and angled his head side to side. “I mean, it’s not the Oscars or anything. It’s not a super high-class red carpet event, but it is covered by bloggers and some different websites. I don’t think your parents are going to see you on TV, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She shook her head. “No parents.”

“Sorry.” And he was. Both his parents were still alive, and though they weren’t necessarily thrilled about him abandoning Stanford to star in
dirty pictures
, as his mom called them, they still loved him and made him come up to Palo Alto every December for Hanukkah. He didn’t know what life would be like not having parents care about you and all the stupid shit you did.

He briefly wondered if he might ask his parents for the money. They
had
it, he was sure of that. But even as the idea flitted through his mind he ushered it back out. There was no way he could tell his parents he needed ten grand to give to some nefarious money-lender. They’d never get over that, nor would they ever be able to look at him the same, and if he had to spend every holiday seeing
more
shame and disappointment in his parents’ eyes, that would be unbearable.

It was bad enough he had to tell his Jewish mother at frequent intervals that he was still unmarried and not meeting any nice Jewish girls in the industry.

He’d lost himself in thought to the point where he couldn’t recall if it was his turn to speak or if he was still waiting for an answer from Sam, so he asked, “What do you think?”

She seemed to be debating it, wearing her conflicting emotions all over her face. Finally she said, “Would I have to dress up? I don’t think I packed anything appropriate for an awards ceremony.”

He grinned and pulled her closer. “Like I said, it’s not a fancy event. Did you bring a dress?”

“Sure, but it’s just a plain one.”

“That’ll be fine. Believe me, you’ll look overdressed compared to some other people.”

“Oh?”

“It’s the Adult Video Awards, Sam. A lot of the girls…well, most of the girls are
really
comfortable being naked in front of an audience.”

Sam wrinkled up her nose. “They won’t
actually
be naked, will they?”

“They’ll be as close as is legally allowed by the state of Nevada.”

She rested her chin on his chest and gazed up at him, big green eyes suddenly full of concern. “Won’t it be weird? I mean, there will be a lot of women there you’ve slept with. Like…
a lot
.”

“Haven’t you ever brought a boyfriend to an event with coworkers?”

Sam smacked his arm. “I own my own business, so no. And don’t even pretend like cocktails with the folks from the office are the same as spending an evening with a hundred girls you’ve had sex with.”

“But it is the same. That’s my job. Those girls are my coworkers. And even if the work might be more intimate than what most people are used to, it’s still just a
job
to us. We know where the line between work and real life ends. None of those girls think I’m dating them. There’s nothing to be jealous about.”

“I’m not jealous,” she replied too quickly, but her tone gave her away. She definitely was a bit put off by the idea of spending time around the other women he’d slept with. Faintly, Ethan was aware that this was a normal reaction for a woman to have, yet it still didn’t compute to him. He knew how to distinguish between the women in his professional life and his private life, so it was hard for him to understand why the women he dated couldn’t do the same.

He’d dated one or two of his costars in the past, and it was the only time he could recall sex not becoming a point of contention. They slept with other men, he slept with other women. But when it came to their relationships, they were monogamous.

That distinction didn’t seem to translate to the outside world.

If he was going to continue seeing Sam after they left Vegas, she would need to understand the realities of dating a porn star. And since he
liked
her and would very much like to keep her as a part of his life—in whatever context they could work out—he thought it might be a good idea to introduce her to that side of who he was.

So far she’d only seen him in videos and only knew about his job in a distant sense. Sure, she’d watched two movies now, but it wasn’t quite the same thing as attending an industry event. There was a chance if she saw him with other actors and was able to get him in his element, maybe
then
the whole thing could stop being an issue.

Either that or it would put a permanent wedge between them.

But considering how much shit Ethan was in, it might be best for Sam if she got spooked. At this point it was too late for Ethan to drive her away on his own. He wanted to keep her around too badly.

Sam was good for him. Even if he was no good for her.

Chapter Eleven

The deal was, Sam would go to the AVAs with Ethan, but then she got to arrange for dinner afterwards. The idea of planning a dinner that might live up to anything he’d done for her so far was more stress than actually thinking about the awards ceremony.

She’d seen him watching an episode of
Hell’s Kitchen
and knew there was a Gordon Ramsay restaurant somewhere in Vegas, but would that be enough? Was he watching the show because he was a fan, or just because it was on?

The whole discussion of them going to the awards ceremony and making plans for dinner afterwards had brought their evening to a close without any actual sex occurring. Not that she didn’t count the oral as sex
per se
, especially since it was the most phenomenal orgasm she could ever recall having. But she hadn’t gotten to interact with his famous penis, and it bummed her out a little.

Was he going to want to have sex after an event designed to reward him for having sex? Would her dinner plans be the deciding factor, or could she just ask him to strip for her again?

More importantly, was
she
going to want to have sex with
him
after meeting dozens of beautiful, scantily clad women who already
had
?

It was too much to think about.

Sam was an overthinker by nature, and finding herself in a situation like this sent her poor brain into high gear. She’d woken early when Ethan was still asleep and left him with a note saying she’d gone to her own room to plan for the evening ahead. Now she was pacing the floor of her suite, trying to figure out what she was going to do.

In the shower, beneath the droplets from the rainfall showerhead, she began to relax a little. He’d gone to great lengths to explain to her that all the women he worked with he just considered coworkers. Sure, it was still hard for her to reconcile his job with a normal one, but Boring Kyle had managed to bone one of his colleagues, and that definitely
hadn’t
been his job. Ethan wasn’t hiding the fact he slept with other women and was even trying to put her at ease about it.

What was it he’d said?
Haven’t you ever taken your boyfriend…?

She scrubbed the shampoo in her hair as if she could wash the overly hopeful thought out of her head along with the suds. It was just a turn of phrase, nothing more. He wasn’t calling her his girlfriend. It was a bit premature for those kinds of statements. After all, they’d only known each other a couple of days.

Yet…he was so different from the other men she knew. And granted, there weren’t a lot of options in Edison Falls, but she’d gone away for school, she knew plenty of men her age, and none of them were quite like Ethan. He was brash, cocky and all those other alpha-dog traits she tended to dislike. But he was also charming. And not in a phony way. Ethan Silver, her porno Prince Charming.

She rinsed off but stayed under the water awhile longer, letting the droplets massage her skin and chase off her feelings of unease.

Once she was out, she would call the restaurant and make reservations. She would put on the nicest dress she’d brought, dig out her heels and get her game face on. Tonight she was going to meet about a hundred of the other women Ethan had fucked, and she was going to shake hands and play nice with each and every one of them.

Sam met Ethan downstairs at a quarter to five, so they would be at the event hotel in time for the six o’clock red carpet.

“You know they usually do it here, at the Hard Rock,” Ethan told her. “That’s why the distributors booked a suite here. They usually recommend afterparties. Plus the Hard Rock has an edgier vibe, so the AVAs don’t seem so out of place here. But there was a conflict with bookings, so this year it’s at the MGM.” He made a face when he named the other hotel like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I take it the MGM isn’t as popular with you?”

“Meh, it’s not that, it’s just we got used to it being here, you know? Feels like coming to summer camp every year, where you know the layout, the bars, you know where everything is.”

“How many of these have you been to?”

“Six.”

“How old were you when you started?”

“Are you trying to figure out how old I am in a really unsubtle way?”

Sam blushed. “It wasn’t the goal, but it might be nice to know if I’m cradle robbing. Or if my cradle is being robbed.”

“How old do you think I am?”

She hoped this wouldn’t be like the time she’d incorrectly guessed a patron was “in her thirties” when the woman was still clinging to her late twenties. Sam had learned to simply never offer speculation out loud ever again. The same terror of embarrassment was what kept her from asking even the most obviously pregnant women when they were due.

“Well, you would have had to be at least eighteen when you started. Six years would put you at twenty-four if you started then. Except you said you went to Stanford for three years.”

“Look at you, my little Sherlock Holmes.”

Sam gave him a scolding look for interrupting her as they left the hotel to wait for Ethan’s limo.

“So say you graduated at eighteen. Three years in school, plus six in the business? I figure you for about twenty-seven.”

He gave her a slow clap while the driver got out of the limo and came around to open the door for them. “Your logic is solid, no argument. You were close. I’m twenty-eight. You didn’t factor in my year abroad after high school.” He grinned, letting her get into the car first.

“Sneaky.”

“I get around.”

“I bet.”

Ethan got into the car with her. “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?”