I look up, and I swear the earth stops, or I think it does. My arms come up as I try not to run over the woman with long auburn hair walking out of the opposite elevator. If you put glasses on her, she’d look like one of those sex kittens. I don’t even know what I say to her, but I think I just asked her to wait for me. She turns and walks away from me, and then I give her my trademark smirk. A smirk that makes sure I don’t go to bed alone. I watch her walk away, and I was not wrong when I said it was a good view. Her tight ass in that tight as fuck skirt causes my cock to spring to half mast. Her long hair is swinging side to side. I’m going to bury my hands in her hair, wrap it around my fist, and slam my cock into her.
“Jeff is waiting for you,” Sylvia says to me. I’ve met her twice before when I came for meetings here. I nod at her, and she turns to walk away, but the view is definitely not the same as the sight of heaven I just witnessed. We walk down the hallway to the conference room, and when she opens the door, Jeff looks up and sees me. He gets up, coming over to me, and he’s wearing a business suit, like always. When I turned eighteen and found out I had nothing left, I went to his office. I had seen him around on set when he visited other clients. Sitting in his office that day, I told him everything. Every little detail. He sat in the chair beside me facing his desk. He got up and then slapped me on my shoulder and said, “Let’s get it all back and then some, yeah?” And from that day on, he was like a brother to me. I even spent holidays at his house with his wife and kids, no questions asked like I’ve always been there.
“Hey, you are right on time,” he says to me. He isn’t giving me his regular smile. No, his look is bleak, and my stomach falls. Fuck, did they cancel the deal?
“Right on time,” I say, looking at him. I’m trying to read his eyes, but I see nothing. When he turns away, I see Ryan sitting at the table in a suit without a tie. The top two buttons are open. He sits at the head of the table with two other suits next to him—I can’t remember their names—and then Sylvia sits beside them. Jeff takes a seat in front of them, and I pull out the chair next to Jeff.
“So,” Jeff starts, looking at the contract in front of him, “there is an adjustment to the contract.” His thumbs tap the table, so I can tell he’s nervous about it.
I put my glasses on the table, trying not to show that I’m irritated or better yet pissed. “Really? Exactly what kind of adjustment?” I ask, leaning back in the chair and putting a hand on the armrest.
I look at Ryan, and he looks back at me. From what I heard, he took a chance and started this production company when he was twenty. The first couple of movies were literally handheld equipment that he filmed himself, and now he’s the richest person in Hollywood. He has his hand in everything that has to do with Hollywood. He is a key player, so bottom line, you want him on your side.
“Let’s cut to the chase. Your last release didn’t kill it like we wanted it to.” I sit up now, and I’m about to say something, but he puts his hand up. “It did great. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is it could have done better.” I’m about to say something, but Jeff puts his hand up so Ryan can finish speaking. “With that said, we think your reputation is what is stopping you from going from here,” he says with his hand halfway up, “to here.” He raises it higher.
“Reputation?” I ask, confused. “I come to work each day on time, and I do my job. I don’t pull any stunts, nor do I sit in my trailer and pout until I get my way,” I say of another actor that is known to do that. “So I’m confused on why my reputation isn’t getting me here,” I say, putting my hand up to where Ryan just had it.
“It isn’t your reputation on the set,” he says, leaning back in his chair more to one side. “It’s your reputation out there.” He points his thumb at the window. “It’s the partying every night. It’s the girls. That kind of lifestyle really turns people off, which translates into people not wanting to go see your movies.”
“Wait a second.” I’m annoyed now. “I’ve never been drunk or on drugs,” I tell him, and I’m not. When I was nineteen, I blacked out more times than I could count, so I stopped drinking. Period. Cold turkey. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I mean, I do, but so what if I get laid every night or twice a day?
He looks over at Sylvia, who opens her folder and takes out a picture from last night and then another one from the night before and before then and a couple from last week. “This is just in the past couple of weeks.”
“So I like to date,” I tell them. “There isn’t a law against that.”
“You’re right,” Ryan says, “but it pushes a huge chunk of your fan base away—specifically, the female audience—from the movie if they think you’re a douche.” I roll my eyes. “If you want a sampling, we actually did a survey on video, and we asked a hundred women what they thought of you and your movies.”
“This isn’t Family Feud,” I snap back, and now Jeff talks.
“Okay, Ryan, we get it.” He folds his hands on the table. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Carter, but he’s going to do whatever is necessary to make sure that this movie kills it.”
“I am glad you said that,” Ryan says, looking over at me, and I look at him and then at Jeff. “Who is going to tell him?”
Jeff smirks and then looks at me. “For the next sixty days, you need to live the life of a monk, so you can’t have sex.”
“What?” I shriek. “What in the fuck?”
Ryan laughs. “And for the next thirty days, we are going to rebrand you.” I shake my head, hoping I heard wrong. Surely, I heard wrong.
“I don’t understand,” I say, looking at Jeff and then finally snatching the contract from in front of him. Surely, they can’t stop me from having sex. Is there a law against stopping someone from having sex? That’s not actually a thing, is it?
“Well, we are going to be working with you on how to polish your image like a shiny nickel,” Sylvia says. “And we have Erin, who is going to work with you on doing just that.”
“Before we do that,” Ryan says, “you need to sign that contract.” I look over at Jeff who nods his head and then leans over to me.
“This is the deal of a lifetime. We are talking multi-movie deals with royalties,” he whispers. “Don’t let your dick fuck it up.”
I nod at him and grab a spare pen lying on the table to sign on the dotted line. I toss the pen on the table. “There, I’ve signed it.”
Ryan looks at Sylvia and nods his head. She leans over, picks up the phone in the middle of the table, and says, “You can come in now.” She hangs up the phone, and then she looks at me. “She is the best that we have, and if anyone can rebrand you, it’s her. We were working on this all morning long, and she has some great ideas.” She stops talking when there is a knock on the door. When she walks in, I suddenly know that I’m most definitely going to be in breach of this contract.
“Erin, I believe you’ve already met Carter.”
She looks at me, and I was wrong before. She isn’t hot; she’s smoking. Not only is she smoking, but she’s hands down the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. And let me say I’ve met a lot of them. Her perfect and round eyes look like they are blue with a splash of green. Her perfectly plump lips have a coat of just clear gloss on them. But fuck that her body is so fucking smoking has my cock already hard. I look down and then look up with a smile. “Erin, what a pretty name,” I say smoothly and hear Jeff groan beside me.