Finding Acceptance in His Arms (5 page)

Kara
ga
ped at him. She’d never readily admit to anyone
about her having wet dreams, although truthfully, she’d had them regularly
since her sexual awakening. And this was normal, she believed. But admitting it
to a stranger wasn’t normal at all. She couldn’t shak
e
the feeling that there had to be something wrong with him. Either that or he’d
gotten really comfortable around her.

“So
where did you grow up?”

Evan
smiled his charm onto her and opened his arms to indicate the surrounding city.
“Right here in Atlanta.
I’ve found it has everything
a man wants.”

“I’ve
always liked Atlanta,” Kara agreed. She thought of a more personal question she
wanted an answer to next, although she didn’t really know why. “What are your
parents like?”

He
looked down into his lap and to
ok his time smoothing
his tie against his flat stomach. “They were devout Christians. They loved us
very much.”

“Past
tense and plural?”
She hadn’t expected this.

Sadness
flickered across his face and he clenched his jaws before admitting, “I have a
sister
named Bethany, two years older than I am.
She’s a veterinarian here in Atlanta. We talk once a week. She’s the only
family I have left now. Our parents’ deaths were especially hard on her being
we were so young and she had to take on the responsibility of
looking out for me.”

“What
happened to your parents?”

“Same
as yours.
Stupid car accident.”

“I’m
sorry.” She knew there was nothing else to say.

“Don’t
be,” he voiced lowly and took another sip of his water. “It was a very long
time ago.”

“How
long ago?”
She wasn’t about to let this rest.

“I
was nine, Bethany eleven.”

“Where
did you go live after their deaths?” An appropriate question, she thought,
considering he’d asked the same of her.

“An
uncle took us in to keep us out of foster care. He was a very ki
nd man. He died last year.”

“Same
as my aunt who passed away last year,” she whispered underneath her breath in
semi-shock. This paralleling of their lives seemed uncanny to the point of
being almost disturbing. She swallowed down the lump in her throat wh
ile thinking this had gotten way too personal way too fast
for a first date, and especially so for a pretend one. She picked a normal
question next to dial things back down. “Is your sister married?”

“To
a lawyer here in Atlanta.
They seem very happy toget
her. I
really like him.”

“Do
you visit them often?”

Evan
lost the visible clench in his jaws and gave up a smile. “I eat Sunday lunch
with them once a month, and believe it or not, I even attend morning church
services with them on those days. Surprisingly
, I
never feel any guilt while crossing the threshold into the church and the roof
doesn’t ever collapse on my head during the service. So apparently I’m doing
what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”

“Does
your sister know what you do for a living?” K
ara
didn’t know where this question came from.

“Yes.
She doesn’t particularly like it since I have a degree in mechanical
engineering, but she understands my reasons for doing the sex stuff instead.”

“Do
you ever wish you lived a regular life?” This was so
mething
she really wanted to know.

Evan
snorted. “Why should I strive to fit into society by working a regular job and
getting married so I can then fall prey to a mortgage I can’t afford and
children I don’t want? Despite the hype, it’s not for everyone.
So no, I don’t want to ever go back to engineering and
leading a
supposedly
normal life. I wouldn’t know what is
normal now anyway. Besides, I love my life the way it is. I wouldn’t change a
thing about it.”

“But
you can’t have sex for money forever.
You’re going to
eventually get old.” This conclusion only made sense to her.

“You’d
be surprised at how long a man can do this if he’s smart, keeps up his
appearance, and can get a hard-on.”

This
answer made Kara wonder if Evan, like a lot of men, was delu
sional about his natural human limitations. It sounded like
he might be. The next question coming to her seemed fitting, so she asked it.
“How did you get into the business?”

“An
acquaintance introduced me to some people.”

“That’s
really vague. I’ve not be
en vague in answering all
that you’ve asked.” Kara found she really enjoyed Evan being in the hot seat.
She wondered if he’d derived the same pleasure from her answering his
questions.

He
stared at her now, obviously debating how much he wanted to divulge.
He finally shrugged, giving up a wan smile. “A guy at my
work moonlighted as a performer on the weekends for the people that I perform
for now. I helped him out by providing an alibi to satisfy his wife’s nosiness
one night. When I needed some quick cash
a few months
later, he introduced me to some people who requested for me to masturbate into
a champagne glass in front of them, which I promptly did to get the callback.
The very next weekend I fucked blonde twins in a garbage-littered alleyway for
what I
thought was an obscene amount of money. After
I started earning a steady income from performing I quit my day job and I’ve
never looked back.”

“You
needed quick cash?” Kara mused. “Have a gambling problem, do you?”

Evan’s
expression turned extremely
unforgiving, his eyes
becoming two penetrating pinpoints of blue fury. “No, I do not have a gambling
problem or a drug problem or an overspending problem. A year before my sister
met her husband she was diagnosed with leukemia and the hospital wanted the m
oney up front for her treatments since she didn’t have any
insurance. I did what I had to do to get it for her. She’s the only person in
this world I love more deeply than my own self.”

“Obviously,”
Kara mumbled, embarrassed by how wrongly she’d misjudged
him. She also couldn’t help thinking of how humiliating it
must have been for him to have to subject himself to that kind of degradation
to save his sister’s life. There was certainly more depth to Evan Lars’s
character than she’d previously believed.

“So
what’s the most humiliating thing you’ve ever done
for another person?” he asked, as if tapping into her thoughts.

Kara
certainly knew the answer to this question. She just didn’t want to say what it
was since it would reveal something repugnant residing d
eep within her sexual makeup. She shrugged noncommittally while casting
her eyes down at the tabletop.

“Come
on,” he pried. “If it’s sexual, then I guarantee there is absolutely nothing
you can say to surprise me. Furthermore, I won’t ever repeat it.”

She
swallowed hard, her pulse rising along with a blush.
She looked at Evan. “Please bear in mind that I don’t really know why I do it,
only that I feel compelled to because she sometimes needs me to let her do it
to me.”

“Go
on,” he mumbled, leaning his elbow
s back on the
table, head craning forward, curiosity written all over his face.

Closing
her eyes to not witness his forthcoming disgusted expression, she voiced lowly,
“I let Jennifer pee on me sometimes. I let her dominate me also.”

Stark
silence greeted
the confession. She kept her eyes
closed while waiting for the expected negative verbal reaction.

“And
you like it.” Awe encompassed his voice.

“Yes,
I do.” She nodded within her self-imposed blindness.

“Open
your eyes, Kara, and look at me.” These words w
ere
spoken softly, intimately.

She
did, and was rewarded by an expression of compassion etching his handsome face
and eyes.

“I
promised you I would never judge you for enjoying yourself. And I always keep
my promises. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of in adm
itting
to me that you like it. So you have a slant toward degradation and humiliation.
What of it? It’s no one’s business but your own. And in our business, it will
give you a real advantage over your competition if you are successful in
transitioning into
porn and eventually choose to
pursue high-end fetish porn instead of mainstream glamor porn.”

“How
does it give me an advantage?” she asked, almost not believing how his easy
acceptance of her sexual anomaly took away all the bad embarrassment she
harbore
d inside about it.

“Do
you know how many girls are in porn just for the money? The average porn
watcher might not see through all of their fake oohs and
ahs
, but the connoisseur instinctively knows when a woman is
enjoying herself. He or she always recogni
zes the
telltale signs of a woman experiencing real orgasm instead of having to fake
it. The people I’m referring to are the directors and producers of features. If
you put away your inhibitions and truly enjoy yourself in your regular
performances then it
will only elevate you further up
the mainstream hierarchy. Most men go ape shit crazy over stuff like that, no
matter what they tell their naïve wives and girlfriends to the contrary.”

“Really?”

“I
once masturbated into a champagne glass in front of an au
dience and I kind of got off on the exhibition aspect of
doing it. Directly afterward, my life was changed for the better. So I think I
am an authority on the subject if anyone is.”

“That
makes sense.” And it did. Yet, even if she really possessed the ambi
tion to pursue pornography, she didn’t think she would ever
want to exploit her urination fetish for money. It was kind of only her and
Jennifer’s thing. She’d never done it with anyone else.

“Now
that we’ve shared a few things and gotten to know a little
about each other, I need you to do something for me.”

“What
is it?” Kara asked, unable to discern what his serious expression portended.

Evan
pulled out his wallet and withdrew a ten dollar bill from inside. “Behind you,
there’s a corner grocery store at t
he end of the
block. I’d like for you to go pick me up some breath mints. You choose whatever
kind you like best. After you pay for them, ask the clerk if you can use the
restroom. While in the restroom, take a few pictures of your body with my
phone. Plea
se make them explicit and to the point
while keeping in mind that if I wanted to be teased I would have requested for
you to buy me a bikini catalog. I’d like to see what I’m going to be working
with this coming Saturday if you and I continue to get along.
”

Kara
rose to her feet, extending her hand for his phone and the money. She could do
this, most certainly. Besides, she wouldn’t mind getting a man’s opinion
concerning the aesthetics of her genitalia.

Evan
placed the ten-dollar bill and his phone into he
r
hand. “Do you understand how the camera works?”

“Yes,
I have the same type of phone in my purse.” Kara turned and walked gracefully
down the sidewalk to the corner market.

Upon
making her entrance, an older man sporting a balding head and kind eyes welco
med her from behind the counter. She engaged him into
frivolous conversation about the weather while buying peppermint
Altoids
. A minute later, she stood hidden away from the world in a
small restroom located within the store’s storage room.

She
nibbled on
her bottom lip in the mirror above the
sink. Although this proposed exhibition on her part excited her, she couldn’t
help being a little concerned about where exactly these pictures might end up
after she gave the phone back to Evan. Especially since he b
elieved she honestly wanted to get into porn.

A
terrible flaw in her plan now glared at her. She simply could not allow her
associates in New York to ever learn of this sexual indiscretion on her part.
She would have to move back to Atlanta and resume her
old
job in advertising if that happened.