Rogue Acts Page 8

  Now I’m tumbling into something, head over heels in the most unbelievable way, with a woman who on paper is not for me.

  I knew the night I met her that she was out of my league.

  “You sure I can’t convince you we should have a nap?” I ask, rubbing my calf against hers. “Let me show you just how much I trust you. We can break out fifteenth-date sex acts.”

  Her eyes go big and bright. “I can’t imagine what those are, but I’m game.”

  “You know, the filthy things you eventually get up to…” I trail off, because no, she doesn’t know. Oh. “Okay, well…maybe we can do some story time before our nap? How does that sound?”

  She beams. “Perfect.”

  6

  Elizabeth

  We end up sleeping all afternoon, and when we wake up, something’s wrong. Camilla’s mind is a million miles away.

  “Hey,” I say softly when she tangles her fingers around mine and gives me a grim look. “What’s going on?”

  “I didn’t see this coming. You—” Her eyes search my face, hot and intense. “You were unexpected. And I still don’t quite know what to make of you. This.”

  “I know you have high standards,” I whisper, my heart hammering in my chest. “I want to meet them.”

  “That’s the thing,” she whispers back, her voice cracking. “I don’t really. But I want to. You know, the night we met? Gretchen brought someone home. That’s why I went out, that’s why I was doing that set.”

  I squeeze her hand tight. “That’s really shitty, I’m sorry.”

  “Technically, I’m homeless, because my apartment was wrecked in a fire two months ago, and I didn’t want to sign a new lease.”

  Oh, God. I’m so callous. “Which made last night kind of weird. Shit.”

  “It’s not like that, exactly. I mean, I’ve got some money, and I have options. But I know what it is to be a few paychecks away from nothing. I know what it’s like to know that choices have been stripped away and now you’re a little trapped.”

  “I…” I can’t tell her I understand. I’m horrified and worried and I want to make it better. None of those are the right response, I’m sure of it. “What can I say?”

  She gets a weird look on her face, tense at first, then soft. Beseeching, I finally decide. That’s how she’s looking at me. Like she wants me to understand something important and hard. “I’m leaving New York,” she whispers. “I’m going to Los Angeles in two weeks. I need to give that a go.”

  My stomach twists. No, I want to protest. Don’t leave me.

  But we’ve had three dates.

  Two nights together and a really amazing nap.

  “I understand,” I hear myself say. “That’s an amazing adventure.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Are you going to give yourself some time to do comedy full-time?”

  “That’s the plan. And I can teach out there, too. I like it, you know? Plus a stable job is a good thing.”

  “Right.” Let’s keep in touch. I can come visit. “California is beautiful.” You’re beautiful. I want a hundred more dates and a thousand more naps. “This is going to be great for you. I get it now.” I see you, too.

  She kisses me, a tumbling, rolling kiss that I push into. Teeth and lips and tongues.

  I don’t always get what I want, it turns out.

  And that’s okay—or at least, it will be.

  Eventually.

  7

  Camilla

  It takes me an hour to get from the studio out to the comedy club. I’m still not used to the traffic in L.A. and it’s been six months.

  Other transplanted New Yorkers tell me I’ll never really get used to it.

  I tell myself it doesn’t matter, because I’m going home. I like L.A., but finding teaching work proved harder than I thought, and it turns out, I miss being in a classroom.

  And I like the bits of work I’ve cobbled together, but it all feels painfully too close to the subsistence living I’d confessed to Elizabeth I knew all too much about. I’ve been here, done this, got the well-worn t-shirt because I can’t really afford a trip to the laundromat.

  Poverty is too high a price to pay to be an artist.

  I’ve put my application in for open positions in the New York school system. When I get pinged for one of them, I’m heading back to the east coast.

  But tonight I’ve got a show to do.

  “My last girlfriend was a philanthropist. An honest-to-God lady who lunched and gave more money than I’ve made in my entire life to causes she will never personally experience. When we met, I was living on my ex’s couch—technically homeless—and she took me to a charity gala for an organization that provides outreach to homeless LGBTQ youth.” I wait a beat. “When we stumbled into her bedroom later that night, quite tipsy on the most expensive champagne I’ve had in my entire life, I gotta say, the urge to role-play a very inappropriate Daddy Warbucks kink definitely took hold.”

  I love the burst of surprised laughter when they don’t see the punchline coming. I bite my lower lip and let myself laugh a little, too. It’s funny. I miss her, I want to say, but that’s not funny at all. “Which is really an improvement on the other fucked-up dating stories I’ve got, so I’ll take it.” I slide into the dating straight girls is easy chunk of my routine. It hasn’t changed much since New York.

  Low standards, easy to please, what does that say about me…

  Except then I loop back to Elizabeth. I don’t call her that. She wanted to know if I’d give her a made up name. I couldn’t. And this is where my routine shifts from what I used to do.

  “So for a while, I told myself, hey, self, you may not impress someone with real standards. Better stick to straight girls. And then I met Lizzie, and I lied to her. I told her I had high standards, which was more of a pipe dream than an actual thing. But the wonderful thing about this woman was that she believed me.”

  That gets a few warm laughs.

  I grin. “I know, right? That’s refreshing in and of itself. I said, I wanted to be treated right, and she said, yeah, makes sense.”

  More laughs.

  “And it didn’t work out because…we didn’t have enough time. But it didn’t not work out, because she was lovely. Which isn’t funny, but that’s okay, because you’re still thinking of me in a Little Orphan Annie outfit.” I wave at the room. “You’ve been great. I’m Camilla, and remember—I could steal your girl.”

  It’s a good variation on the old routine. It’s not quite there yet, but something I’ve learned out here is that sometimes, you can only revise a set so much.

  The next one I start working on will be better.

  I hope Lizzie features heavily in it.

  There’s a knock at the green room door as I’m gathering up my stuff. “Hey, Camilla, there’s someone to see you.”

  I turn around, my professional smile on my face, but it drops when I see that it’s not an agent or producer.

  “You’ve changed your set a bit,” Elizabeth says, nervously side-stepping into the room. “I liked it.”

  My mouth drops open.

  She grins at me. “Was I really your last girlfriend?”

  “Hey.” I run my hand through my curls, painfully aware of her gaze following my every move. “Yeah. I’ve been kind of focused on working out here.”

  “I knew you were working hard.”

  We talked a few times after I flew out, but what we’d had in New York had been so physical, so intimate, replacing it with phone calls and text messages had seemed…weak. “You’ve been on my mind,” I admit. “I’ve missed you.”

  Her eyes light up. “Good.”

  That makes me laugh, and I hold out my arms. “Come here?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She leaps at me, and we’re both laughing as we kiss. She finally pulls back enough to look at me. “I haven’t dated anyone else, you know.”

  “Good.”

  “Is this okay? That I came out here? I thought it might be ea
sier to beg forgiveness. You know the saying.”

  I don’t bother to answer her. “I’m moving back to New York.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Yeah? Would it be too soon to ask if you need a place to stay?”

  I laugh again and kiss her. “You really have no sense of boundaries.”

  “Not when it comes to you.”

  “I’d love to crash at your place.”

  “Not on my couch, though.”

  “Nope.”

  “The guardian-ward fantasy was a nice touch,” she whispers after we kiss again. “Is that some of that fifteenth-date sex acts stuff we didn’t get to?”

  “Uh…” I grin. “Maybe?”

  “Because I’ve got a big hotel suite, if my little orphan Cammie wanted to come back and play…”

  I crush her against me, my arms tight around her torso, my face buried in her soft, shiny hair.

  She rubs her fingers over the buzzed sides of my head. “Too much?”

  “No,” I whisper against her skin. “Just right.”

  “I’ve missed you, too, in case that wasn’t clear.”

  I breathe her in. “Good to know.”

  “Cam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we find a bed soon?”

  Hell, yes.

  This time, I’m the one who falls to my knees first. We half-heartedly do the role-play thing, where she “teaches” me how to go down on her, but there’s too much laughing and hugging and kissing in between. Whispers of how much we missed each other.

  She tastes sweet and tangy, familiar and perfect. Like home.

  The hotel suite is big, as promised, but all I see is her. All I can feel is her body moving against mine, her hands in my hair as she guides me between her legs and up her torso.

  Over and over again until dawn.

  Sounds pretty good to me.

  * * *

  THE END

  Thank You!

  If you like this story, be sure to check out my other lesbian resistance romance, Personal Proposal, currently available in the Rogue Affair anthology.

  And if you’re curious to read my other romances, please visit my website at www.ainsleybooth.com

  Other Books by Ainsley Booth

  If you like silly, sexy, over the top fairy tale romances…

  Billionaire Secrets

  Personal Delivery

  Personal Escort

  Personal Disaster

  And how about some Canadian erotic romance?

  Frisky Beavers

  Prime Minister

  Dr. Bad Boy

  Full Mountie

  Mr. Hat Trick

  Retrosexual

  Or you might want intense, off-limits book boyfriends…

  Forbidden Bodyguards

  Hate F*@k

  Booty Call

  Dirty Love

  About the Author

  Mom by day and filthy romance writer by night, Ainsley is super grateful for caffeine, banana and blueberry muffins, and yoga pants. Born and raised in Ontario, she's traveled the world and come back home to write about book boyfriends with maple leaf tattoos. You can sign up for her newsletter HERE.

  ainsleybooth.com/

  Brand New Bike

  Andie J. Christopher

  About This Book

  Billionaire tech mogul Michael Garcia doesn't want to join the president's council on technology, but his team believes it's the only way to save net neutrality and billions of dollars for their company. Jake Lieberman is done selling out his beliefs, which is why he and his friends started a media company with an activist bent. When Jake calls out Michael and the sexy billionaire agrees to defend himself on Jake's podcast, sparks fly and the two men decide to team up inside the bedroom—and possibly out.

  To the podcasters who keep me sane.

  1

  Instead of staring down his two closest advisors, both poised to tell him that he was a nut job for the third time today, Michael Garcia very much wished he was getting his dick sucked. Nothing like a blow job to clear things up—whether they be testicles or business objectives. He’d celebrated his first angel fund investment by getting a blow job from a random hipster bartender in the Tenderloin. The triumph of knowing that he was actually going to make something of himself was in perfect symmetry with the sensation of shooting down the guy’s throat.

  And last year, he’d nearly ruined his longest-running friendship by getting blown by his best friend’s ex-boyfriend. Skylar had been thoroughly done with said ex-boyfriend, but the guy had been out to hurt her, and Michael had lent aid and comfort to the enemy in that pursuit.

  Luckily, Skylar had a short memory when it came to Michael’s fuckery. She’d forgiven him on the condition that he start seeing a therapist, which was a real hoot.

  Not.

  The therapist had suggested that he might benefit from cutting down on blow jobs from random strangers, and the new limitation made him feel like his balls were constantly being pinched. And it wasn’t like he could just clear the pipes himself whenever the spirit moved him. He had a billion-dollar business to run, and he couldn’t jack off every time he got stressed out.

  Like now.

  “You can’t serve on an advisory panel,” his COO, Valerie, yelled, making a cutting motion with her hands. “His approval rating is in the low thirties, and people will think you’re a fascist.”

  Aidan, his CFO, nodded. “But with the rollback on net neutrality, there will be a cataclysm.”

  Michael rubbed the rapidly wrinkling patch of skin between his eyebrows. His chest tightened at the idea that everything he’d worked for—everything he’d done to prove to his parents that he wasn’t worthless—would disappear if he couldn’t keep the government from allowing ISPs to—essentially—determine what people could access on the internet.

  “None of our lobbyists made any headway?”

  Valerie shook her head. “Apparently, our lobbyists are no friends to the folks over at the FCC. Once upon a time, they all worked for the ISPs, not the content providers like us.”

  “If the ISPs start holding access to the app ransom, forget about growth.” Aidan leaned on Michael’s desk. “We’re done for.”

  This was truly a clusterfuck. Could backed-up semen cause a heart attack when combined with extreme stress? His skin was too tight and the glass walls were suddenly claustrophobic. On a clear day, he could see all the way to the San Francisco Bay from the window of his office. Today, the atmosphere was clogged with smoke from fires in the hills.

  God, maybe he was going to puke. “Is there any other way to get to the chairman?”

  “No.” Valerie was emphatic.

  After hesitating, Aidan shook his head.

  “Do I really have to call the fucking president?”

  “Welcome back to the pod. This is Jake Lieberman, and today I’m going to take a minute to talk about something that matters to all of us—net neutrality.

  “Now, I can hear you groaning all the way from the studio. Like, the world is ending, who the fuck cares about what evil plot your internet service provider is up to now? Just think about how upset you’ll be when your favorite porn is buffering while you’re on the precipice of climax.

  “Yes, I talk about porn when my business partners are on vacation. Because I can!”

  Jake paused for the laughter he knew would come from listeners. His timing had gotten better since he and his colleagues had started their burgeoning media empire. Usually, his partners were there to play the straight men—in more ways than one. Jake was the resident comedian and also the resident homosexual among the group of former White House speechwriters who had formed Wayward Media after the 2016 election.

  Today, without the co-founders, Teddy and Jason, he could rant with impunity. “And you’ll never guess who’s joined in on the plan to slow down your porn—” Another pause for effect. “Michael Garcia, your least favorite tech entrepreneur, the one who got dinged by the last FCC head for data mining in 2012.” Jake
slapped the table and hoped the sound engineer could remove the noise. “He’s now serving on a technology presidential advisory council. Fucking traitor.”

  Jake couldn’t wait for the comments on whatever that smug Garcia fuck would post about his involvement on the council. His mealy-mouthed response would get savaged by podcast listeners.

  In the year following the election, his podcast had become the antidote to right-wing media on the left. Sometimes, like when they and their army of listeners were able to influence special elections, he felt drunk with power. The podcast he and his two best friends had started after the election had become a phenomenon. They’d gone from Teddy’s kitchen table to the boardroom, and they could get any progressive politician they wanted on the pod.

  After leaving the White House, they’d all floundered a bit. Jake had gone into television writing, only to see his show canceled after a few episodes. Teddy and Jason had tried screenwriting and political consulting, but they’d missed being at the center of power. Sure, they had genuine concerns about the direction of the country, but they liked having a seat at the table almost as much. And mobilizing podcast fans against assholes who spouted progressive values and then worked with the fucking evil empire at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was just frosting on what was turning out to be a lucrative cupcake.

  Taking down hypocrites like Garcia was a very nice bonus. The man was damned attractive. And, according to rumors, a demon in the sack. Not that Jake would ever find out. He wasn’t about to get into a high-profile relationship with a guy who couldn’t even stand up for basic human values. A guy who was likely going to be pocketing billions of dollars from the tax plan just passed by Congress.