Page 17 of Dirty Like Me
CHAPTER 5
KATIE
His molasses-dark gaze melted over me, his lips parting as he drew a shaky breath. I could feel the tension of his restraint in his hard, muscular body hovering over mine. His skin was getting slippery. A bead of sweat rolled slowly down his temple; I wondered if the camera caught it.
I clung to him, my fingernails digging into his muscled back as his hips pressed me to the bed. He moved against me, thrusting his hard length against the softness of my inner thigh, nothing but the soft cotton of his underwear between us. Then he did it again. Harder. Slower. My breath caught as the tip of his cock brushed my clit through the lace of my panties. Rihanna’sRude Boystarted playing.
My eyes opened with a jolt.
Next to me, my dog nuzzled into the crook of my knee.
Fuck me.
I was doing it again. Reliving every steamy, breathless, lip-biting moment of my fake make out with Jesse Mayes at his video shoot, in my dreams.
I let out a hard sigh and rubbed my eyes. At least this time I didn’t come in my sleep.
My dog continued to molest my knee with his sloppy tongue to the tune ofRude Boy.
“Ugh. Max.” I rolled over, tussling Max’s ears and giving him a gentle shove off the bed.
My best friend’s ringtone stopped abruptly.
I groped around on my bedside table for my glasses, then my phone. Devi had texted me when I missed her call. It said simply,Number One, Baby!
Devi had been tirelessly tracking absolutely everything to do with theDirty Like Mevideo since its release two weeks ago. If anything even remotely related to my appearance in that video was mentioned in some random, dusty corner of the internet, Devi had a Google Alert for it.
And no, the video wasn’t “Number One.” Not exactly. But…
I opened the text that had come in last night from Maggie, who’d also been keeping me updated, on a more casual but factually accurate basis. Her text included a YouTube link and a more specific report.
Just surpassed November Rain.
My heart did a weird sledgehammer thing, which it’d been doing a lot lately.
I flopped on my back and stared at the big crack in my bedroom ceiling, the one that occasionally leaked and my landlord kept promising to fix. I swore it was kind of wiggling around. The whole room was vibrating, like a tiny freight train was doing circles around my skull, which was pretty much how I always felt after drinking red wine.
It seemed premature, to me, to be celebrating when we weren’t actually “Number One,” but Devi had all the excuse she needed to break out several pitchers of Sangria last night.
“Slash,” my drunken best friend kept saying. “You beatSlash.”
She was totally pumped about the fact that, according to Maggie, Guns N’ Roses’November Rainwas the most-watched rock video on YouTube, like, ever—until a certain video starring Jesse Mayes and, um, me, came along.
Now,Dirty Like Meheld that honor.
I texted Devi back.Work now. Talk later.
Her response buzzed before I could put the phone down.Meet you there! You’re a star!!!!!
That was followed by about fifty happy face emojis with stars in their eyes.
I groaned and tossed my phone aside. Then I stretched my achy, probably-still-a-little-drunk body and sat up.
Unlike Devi, who was dreaming up all the fabulous modeling jobs I should try out for, I was in denial about this whole thing. It was just too much to wrap my head around the fact that I was now holding company with the likes of Rihanna and Adele—other women whose videos were watched as much as mine was, and oh yeah, were so famous they went by only one name. Kinda like Jesse Mayes’ real girlfriend, Elle.
Not that I was that famous, but still.
Fucking weird.
