Read Dirty To Me

Read Dirty To Me

by Robert Lubrican

zbookstore Edition

Copyright 2010 Robert Lubrican

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to zbookstore.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Rights to use cover art purchased from iStock.com

Cover art by Lyric Powers

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Table of Contents

Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Foreword.

While the books I write are all intended for an adult audience, and are firmly in the genre of erotica, they rarely contain language as explicit as what is in this book. The reason for that is because this book is about part of the industry that produces pornography, and the language the characters use had to reflect that. More specifically, when the two characters are doing their jobs (reading a pornographic book onto tape) they will use language that many people might characterize as objectionable. But it's the language of porn, folks. It's down and dirty, because porn is down and dirty. This book, on the other hand, is not intended to be porn. It's intended to be a romance, an exploration of how two disparate people might fall in love with each other and find happiness together. Generally speaking, porn simply doesn't do that. But, when you're finished with the book, we can then have a conversation about whether the book itself descends into the category of porn. I'll put my email address at the end of the book, in case you want to talk about that.

Bob

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Chapter One

It started quite innocently, really. He was a relatively conventional 53 year old man who had knocked around over quite a lot of the world, and she was a 23 year old part time rebel with a Mohawk, tattoos and a child she hadn't planned on having.

What brought them together was complicated, but at the same time, quite simple.

That sounds like a strange sentence, but the key word is "together," which has many levels of meaning. We can start with the simple side of things.

Their first "togetherness" was based on both of them applying for jobs reading books onto tape. It was just that simple. They both needed some extra income and applied for jobs at the same place, which offered both full and part time employment. He had a background in theater and a deep voice, which qualified him. She had the perfect voice for portraying innocence and youth that belied her chronological age.

When they first met he said, "Hi. My name is Bob," holding out his hand to shake. "Well sometimes. People call me lots of other things too."

He was like that. His thought processes ebbed and flowed constantly. He had a philosophical bent and enjoyed examining everything from just about every angle, even when it was as simple as, say, a pencil. If he'd been born a lion, he would have been sitting on the savannah, his eyes flickering from potential prey to potential prey, thinking, "Am I hungry enough to go for that ibis over there? Do I need to scratch that itch, or will it go away? I could use a drink of water right now. Where's that lioness I've been watching? I wonder if she's gone into heat yet. What just moved over there?"

It wasn't that he was scatter-brained. It was just that he wanted to see and do and experience and be part of everything possible, all at the same time. It was a quality that had allowed him to submerge himself into a dozen foreign cultures and fit right in while he watched and learned.

She'd been through the school of hard knocks, though, and was much more pragmatic about things.

"Layla," she said.

His eyes lit up. "What a beautiful name. It motivates me to wax poetic. I'm sure that's what they'll want when we read."

She examined him. He was muscular, but carried a bit of extra weight too. His eyes had that funny quality of looking blue one minute and green the next. He wasn't balding. In fact, the bushy beard springing from his chin and cheeks made her think of a loofah, for some reason. He was looking at her, which she was used to. Most men stared at her. Most people stared at her, for that matter. Her hair was a vermillion shade this week and the long Mohawk it was cut into flopped to one side, drooping down to tickle her right eyebrow. She'd shaved the sides of her head before coming in for the interview, but it was just a tune-up. The sides of her head had been shaved for over a year.

She had expected the interviewer to take one look at her and tell her, "Thanks, but no thanks." He hadn't. He'd simply said, "Your voice is perfect for what we have in mind. You're hired. Be here on Tuesday at eight."

Now this Bob person was looking at her too, but again, his reaction wasn't what she was used to. This man ... this old guy ... this guy old enough to be her father, if not her grandfather, was looking at her like a man looks at a woman. He didn't seem to be at all ashamed to let his eyes flicker up and down her body. Yet, somehow, he didn't ogle her. He looked at her all over, but it was ... all over; not just at her girly parts. On impulse, she looked him all over too, staring at the front of his pants, where there was the inevitable bulge. It looked about like most other bulges she'd seen.

He looked about like most other men she’d seen.

"I guess we're reading together," he said.

'Great,' she thought to herself. 'I'm saddled with one of those masters of pointing out the blindingly obvious.'

That attitude only lasted an hour. But much happened in that hour before it changed.

They were led into a small room. The walls were covered with what looked like foam egg carton type material and the ceiling had those tiles with all the little holes in them. There were microphones hanging from the ceiling on moveable booms and stools to sit on. Layla and Bob were the only people in the room, but there was equipment for four or five. It was both bare and small. The man who had brought them there had a sheaf of papers in his hand. He extended a group of pages to each of them.

"Here's the story we're starting with for you two," he said. "This will just be a run through, to work out any kinks. When we get an actual take, we'll overlay the narrator's part and any sound effects during later production runs. Right now we just want you two to try to get the feel for things and see how it goes. Some people can do this and others can't. You never know until you try."

He smiled, but it was only with his mouth, his eyes indicating he'd given this speech dozens of times before. He went to one of the hanging microphones and pointed to a switch on the side. “Slide this up when you’re ready. If you have to cough or anything like that, please turn the mike off before you do that, okay?” He didn’t wait for anyone to say anything was okay. “Either one of you can read the narrator’s part today,” he said. “It will be overlaid later, so the only parts that matter are your characters’ spoken lines.”

Layla glanced at the heading on her stack: Adventures in Babysitting. The author's name was "Lubrican." She had to look at it for a while to make sure it didn't say "Lubricant." It didn't matter. Below that was a list of characters. Her character - she assumed she was the babysitter - was named Megan. Below that was a description that said:

Megan is an eighteen year old virgin, raised by a single mother. She is Rod Wilson's neighbor and has known him for many years. He fixed her bicycle when she was younger, and has done other neighborly things for her and her mother over the years. She likes him a lot. She has dated, but not any one boy seriously. She has been kissed a few times, but is otherwise innocent of things sexual.

Layla blinked. That sounded like a setup for something pornographic! She looked further down to see a bold line that read: Mister Wilson/Rod.

The description of him was: 35 year old man who is suddenly raising a three year old boy alone. His wife had a gambling problem and shoplifted to get money for the casinos. She was arrested recently and given three years in jail. He has watched Megan mature, both physically and emotionally, and has a finely tuned appreciation of her body. He is already sexually frustrated by the forced separation with his wife, who also confessed to having an affair with one of the men she owed money to. She blamed everything on Rod, and has said she intends to get a divorce while she's in jail.

She looked deeper into the pile. Words jumped up off the pages ... words like "nipples," "prick," and "pussy."

"This is porn!” she yelped.

Bob was doing the same thing with his script.

“It appears it is,” he agreed. His voice was calm.

Layla looked around. She went over to a microphone and leaned her mouth up close to it.

“Hey!” she yelled.

Bob stepped over and slid the switch on the microphone to the “ON” position. Layla leaned even closer.

“Hey!”

They heard a muffled curse through the door, very faintly.

“This is pornography!!” she yelled.

The door opened and the nameless man came in.

“Please don’t yell into the mike,” he said. “We have a script outside in the sound booth, and can make adjustments when we know a loud voice is coming up. You don’t have to yell. We can compensate for your normal voice.”

“This is a dirty story!” said Layla, her voice level. She sounded dangerous somehow.

“Yes,” admitted the man. “This is for our adult series.”

“If I’d wanted to do phone sex, I would have applied for that kind of job!” she said, obviously upset.

Bob held up a hand. He faced the man.

“Why don’t you give us a few minutes,” he said. “We weren’t expecting this. We need to talk about it.”

The man was only too happy to leave. Bob turned back to Layla.

“There is nothing to talk about!” she snorted. “I’m not reading this crap!”

“Why not?” asked Bob. “It’s just words ... lines. You read them and then you’re done and you get paid. Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

“I have a four year old little boy!” she moaned. “When I told him I was going to read books onto tape, the first thing he asked for was one of the tapes!”

Bob smiled. “Well, obviously you won’t give him this story to listen to. We can make a different tape for him.”

“I can’t do this,” she moaned. “I don't have any experience with this kind of thing. This is ... smut!”

“Oh,” said Bob. “I didn’t know you’d adopted your little boy.”

“Huh?” She looked confused. “Aidan isn’t adopted.”

“Then you do have some experience at ... this sort of thing,” said Bob. “I mean you had to have sex to have a baby.”

She blinked, and frowned.

“Well, okay, but this isn’t like that. This is perverted!”

“What’s perverted about a man wanting to have sex with a woman?” he asked.

“She’s only eighteen!” Layla’s voice was strident.

“Your voice sounds a lot like a girl that age,” said Bob.

“I’m twenty-three,” she pointed out, as if that was a rational response to his comment.

“So you got pregnant when you were nineteen?” he asked.

“Eighteen,” she corrected him. “Wait! What does that have to do with anything?”

“I was just trying to get a handle on how much experience you had,” said Bob. “So you had sex once, when you were eighteen, and Aidan was the result.”

She glared at him.

“Of course not!” she almost snarled. “I’ve had sex more than once, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Naturally,” he said, bowing to her in an almost formal manner. “But you never had sex before that ... right?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She’d been having sex a long time. But that was none of his business either and it didn’t have anything to do with this. He went on before she could frame a response.

“Well, since you barely had sex when you were eighteen, I have to agree that there is no way in the world you could be realistic in your portrayal of a girl that age, who is attracted to an older man, who is also attracted to her. Yes ... I’m afraid this won’t work. I’ll have to tell them to get me another partner.”

“You’re going to do this?” she asked, unbelieving. He had to be in his forties. Men that age were conservative. She was sure he’d be just as outraged as she was.

“I’ve got a house payment to make,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “But I understand that a woman of your high moral standards couldn’t do this, to say nothing of the fact that you have no sexual experience to draw on for the role.”

He was dismissing her! She felt her blood begin to boil. Adults had been dismissing her for years. Even now, when she had voted four times, people dismissed her. Usually it was because of her appearance, which was none of their business. But this man ... this old man ... was dismissing her because she wasn’t a slut!

“I’ll have you know I have plenty of experience!” she blurted.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. It’s just that you’re obviously uncomfortable with this. I was just trying to make it easier for you to withdraw gracefully.”

“Oh yeah?” she said, unhappy with her last blurted comment. “Then why did you keep me here to talk about it?”

“I like you,” he said.

“You don’t even know me!” she objected.

“I have to know you to like you?” He smiled. “Why can’t I start out liking you, and then change my mind if you turn out to be somebody I can’t get along with? Why should I make you prove something to me before I like you?”

There was a knock on the door. The man stuck his head inside.

“Look, I don’t really care if you do this or not, personally, but we’re burning daylight here. I need to get something on tape today. If you two aren’t going to do it, fine, but don’t do it somewhere else, okay?”

“Shut the door!” yelled Layla. “We're going to do it! We're just not ready yet!”

The door closed with a thump as the man hastily withdrew.

Bob stood there silently, waiting for a few seconds, and then spoke.

“I’ll start as the narrator,” he said, stepping up to a microphone. “Are you ready?”

He’d taken her at her word, shouted though it was. Layla wasn’t at all sure she’d actually meant it. She thought about her own rent. She needed this money. She’d look for another job later, but this outfit paid by the day, and she needed to leave with some cash in her pocket.

“Okay,” she said, somewhat sullenly.

Bob flipped the microphone on and started reading.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Outside, in the sound booth, Charles gave a sigh. It was almost impossible to get anyone stable to do this kind of work. Perverts loved it, but they were impossible to deal with. They always wanted to adlib or change the lines to match their own twisted fantasies. Of the ones who would actually take on a job like this, most just didn’t have the voice for it. The fact was that the average reader was in his or her fifties or sixties, and was usually supplementing a retirement with some added income. The adult books on tape biz promised to be very lucrative, but only if they could get some decent readers to do them.

As he heard Bob finally start reading, he smiled. This one was a narrator, at least. When the girl chimed in with her part, Charles gave another sigh. She was perfect! Her first line, “Hi Mr. Wilson, isn’t it a great day?” made him close his eyes and imagine the girl that lived two doors down from him. She was a cutie, one of the reasons he’d accepted taking on this particular book to produce.

It happened to fit his own fantasy.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When they took a break for lunch, they’d only gotten through twenty pages. Layla’s attitude had softened a bit. Whoever this Lubrican person was, he wasn’t what she’d expected. Well, the text she was reading wasn’t what she’d expected, based on those few words that had jumped off the pages when she’d first looked through the script.

He had made her character into a sweet young girl, happy, but curious, and in a way that didn’t make her seem to be the least bit slutty. And Bob’s part wasn’t the slavering dirty old man she had expected either. His feelings for Megan were complicated, like hers were for him. It was very flirty, thus far. She liked the flirty feel of it. You didn’t get a chance to be flirty very often, without upsetting somebody.

They hadn’t actually gotten to anything patently sexual. There was a lot of teasing by both of them, and innuendo. There was a yearning kind of quality to the story, so far. Both of them were tempted to be naughty, but both of them resisted that temptation, at least to some degree.

When they came to a chapter break, the nameless man opened the door again. He was smiling now.

“Go get some lunch,” he said. “You’re doing fabulously. Take the scripts with you, if you want, so you can look them over before this afternoon. I’ve already got a lot of stuff down that’s perfectly fine for the final production. You two are making amazing progress.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It’s pretty hard to be surly when someone compliments you like that, and Layla was no exception.

“You want to split up or go together?” asked Bob, breaking her train of thought.

“You don’t want to eat with me?” she asked. Somehow, she’d almost believed the lines he had spoken to her ... that he found her interesting, and fascinating, even though he was older and shouldn’t do that. There was a funny kind of blurring of the lines between reality and the story they were reading, because he really was older and he had really sounded like he found her fascinating.

“Of course I want to eat with you,” he said. “I’m just giving you options, that’s all.”

“Well, I choose the option where we eat together,” she said firmly.

“Great,” he said. “Burgers?”

“Ewwww,” she said, making a face. “And put all that grease and blood in this body?”

She almost jerked as his eyes raked over her T shirt and jeans. He was looking at her like a man looks at a woman again.

“Obviously not,” he said, appreciation in his voice.

“Are you flirting with me?” she asked, unbelieving.

“Is that a bad thing?” He smiled.

“It’s totally inappropriate,” she said, almost pouting. “You’re old enough to be my gramps.”

His hands went to his chest and he made his face twist into an agonized mask of pain.

“Ouch!” he said, staggering backwards. “For such a slip of a girl, you sure pack a punch.”

“I’m not a slip of a girl,” she said, trying to stand taller. “I’m five feet eight inches tall!”

“And I’m not old enough to be your gramps,” he came back, looking like he was trying to stand taller too. She saw his stomach suck in a couple of inches and almost giggled as he tried to look manly.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she said, getting them back on the subject of food.

“I should have known,” he sighed.

“What’s wrong with vegetarians?” she pouted.

“Nothing, if you’re not interested in taste,” he said.

She knew, somehow, that he was teasing her. She wondered why she found it so much fun to be teased by him, but was distracted by her stomach growling. He laughed and she knew he’d heard that growl.

“We’d better get something in your stomach to feed that thing, before it eats its way out and attacks me.”

He took her hand and pulled her, to make her walk beside him, as she tried to think of a comeback. He didn’t give her time.

“There’s a place up the street that should be able to cater to both our tastes,” he said.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lunch continued to enable her to change her attitude towards Bob. Without being pushy or nosy, he asked her all kinds of questions about her, both her past and present. Somehow she found herself telling him things she had never thought to mention to an almost complete stranger. Like the fact that her love life was unhappily flat, at the present, almost dismal in some ways. Not that she was a raging slut or anything. She just liked sex and always had. She thought about sex as being in roughly three categories. There was “good sex,” which she remembered having fondly. Then there was “just sex,” which was okay if that was all you could get. Then there was “that was a miserable excuse for sex,” which was all she’d been getting lately.

“That’s too bad,” he said, sitting across from her.

She blinked. She couldn’t believe she’d actually told him all that. This weird situation she had gotten herself into, and that stupid story, must have caused her to babble.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said.

 

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” he replied. “I won’t tell anybody. I just think it’s a shame that a vibrant, beautiful young woman such as yourself has to settle for ... what did you call it? Miserable sex?"

"A miserable excuse for sex," she corrected him automatically.

"Well, whatever, it's a shame. You’re at your sexual peak. You deserve to be glowing with sexual satiation, and gloriously and thoroughly pregnant.”

“That’s the silliest thing I've heard in weeks!” she said. “And I’m not getting pregnant again. Once was more than enough for me.”

"Complications?" he asked casually.

There! He was doing it again! He said it so casually, but it was a request for intimate ... private information.

"If you call being nauseous all the time, and being white as a sheet and swollen up like I swallowed a beach ball complications, then yes ... complications," she heard her voice say. Where had that come from? This was none of his business! Why had she answered him?

"That's too bad," he commiserated. "I know all kinds of remedies for nausea. And you may think you were pasty and bulging, but I bet you were gorgeous when you were pregnant."

Layla frowned. Where did he come off saying things like that? Who was he to say she must have been gorgeous? She knew better. She knew she'd been a mess, most of the time, dragging around, never far from a toilet, back aching.

"You're very nosy and ... " she couldn't think of the right word. Her grandmother's speech came to her. "Impertinent!"

"Yes," he said, looking away. "I suppose I am. I've always had that problem. I like getting to know people. Especially fascinating people."

"And that's another thing!" she said, trying to glower at him. She wasn't very good at glowering. Her face was too smooth. "You can't just go around telling women they're gorgeous and fascinating, especially when you just met them!"

"Of course I can," he said. "This is America. Freedom of speech and all that."

"You know what I mean," she argued. "It isn't polite."

He leaned forward.

"Layla, my dear, I think you are gorgeous, and fascinating. I wish I were thirty years younger so I could make a complete fool of myself and beg at your feet for a date." He leaned back. "That isn't being impolite. That's simply telling you how I feel."

"That could be viewed as sexual harassment these days," said Layla, but there was neither heat nor warning in it.

"Am I harassing you?" he asked.

She thought about that for a minute. Really all he had done was pay her compliments. He wasn't actually suggesting anything.

"I suppose not," she finally admitted.

"Well," he said, smiling. "I'll just have to try harder."

She ignored him, picking up the script. She was secretly a little pleased that he was ... interested. It had been a while since she’d felt desirable. He was being silly, but it was still kind of nice. She looked ahead, to what they'd be reading after lunch.

"Ohhhh no," she moaned.

"What?"

"I can't read this," she sighed.

"Why not? You've been doing wonderfully."

"It gets naughty. There are moans and sighs and I can't do those. I'd feel silly."

"Surely you've moaned and sighed while having sex before," he said, looking at his own copy. "Mmmmmm."

"What?" It was her turn to ask what was wrong.

"I'm going to like reading this. That's all."

"Gramps!" she chided. "You're as naughty as the story is! I thought you weren't a dirty old man."

"I'm not," he said. "I'm a sexy senior citizen."

"Ha ... ha," she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

"I don't blame you," he said. "I wouldn't want that nasty thing inside my mouth either." He grinned.

"My tongue is not nasty!" she said, trying to bristle.

"I'd have to be the judge of that," he said instantly. "I'm an expert, you know."

"Now you're harassing me," she teased.

He looked serious, suddenly.

"You can finish this. I know you can."

"Not if I have to moan and groan. It will come out as laughter. I can't do that. It's just too silly."

"We're a good team," he insisted. "I don't want to have to start all over with somebody else. I'll think of something to help you."

"Like poking me with a pin?" She smiled.

The look that came over his face was startling. It was a leer. There was no other way to characterize it. His eyes went to her modest breasts - she could probably look sixteen if she tried - and he made a growling noise in his throat.

"Oh, it won't be a pin I try to ... poke you with."

She was shocked. He looked so completely different! This wasn't the same man she'd been sitting here with only a few seconds ago. His face showed pure lust, but his eyes were something else. They looked dark green, and seemed to probe deep into her, looking for something that he knew was there. She felt a zing of fright based on his face, and a zing of something else based on his eyes. It was like looking at what you’d thought was a big dog, and suddenly realizing it was actually a wolf.

Then he was back. It all disappeared, somehow, and he was just an older man, with a bushy brown beard. Once again his eyes were light green, with brown flecks in them, and his cheeks rose in a smile.

"That's called acting," he said. "That's what we're doing, kind of. We're putting ourselves into the characters and into the story, and trying to convince people who listen to us that it's all real.”

Layla was shocked to find she was panting. She realized her muscles were all tight, as if she had been ready to run screaming from the restaurant. She relaxed them.

"You scared me!" she sighed.

"I'm as harmless as it's possible to be," he said, taking a huge bite of his cordon bleu. "Like I said, I was just acting. You can do that too. I heard it in your voice, this morning. You just have to put yourself into the role. That's all."

Sitting there, knowing that that wolf hadn't been real after all, and yet feeling the rush of adrenaline that had shot into her veins, Layla tilted her head and looked at him. He had called her fascinating. He was the interesting one. However he had done that, she'd felt the lust, radiating from him in waves. She'd known that he wanted her ... wanted her as a woman. It wasn't sexual harassment she had witnessed. This was more primal. With complete embarrassment she became aware of the dampness between her thighs. Her body had reacted to the fear.

But it had also reacted to something else ... something that caused sensations in her that were anything but fear.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They chatted some more and then left. Now it was her turn to ask him questions about his life. She upgraded him from interesting to full-fledged fascinating. He'd been to fifteen different countries. He'd been a Scoutmaster. He'd worked in the oil fields in Oklahoma, and lived in Alaska for three years. He had children, grown and gone. He characterized himself as a Jack of all trades and master of none.

By the time they got back to the studio, Layla was quite sure she had only scratched the surface. He didn't seem so old, somehow, or carry as much extra weight as she had first thought. He held the door for her and, as she walked through it, put his fingertips in the small of her back. He didn't push her, but she could still feel strength in those fingers. Not that much had changed, really. They were still exactly the same people they had been four hours ago. But, somehow, he had transformed, in that mystical phenomenon that sometimes takes place. Instead of being "that guy"... now he was "Bob."

She was still quite sure that the first time she had to say something like, "Mmmmmm, that feels good, Mister Wilson," that she'd burst into laughter.

She listened to his voice as they started reading again. He was doing the narration, and he used a slightly different voice, that was flatter or something, than the voice he used to speak Rod Wilson's lines. In fact, as she thought back on it, the voice he'd used at lunch – his real voice – was different than either of these. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it was there. His voice wasn't a monotone and he didn't read with a measured cadence. In fact, it didn't sound like he was reading at all. It was more like he was an old time storyteller. She was so fascinated that she missed her lines twice, and they had to go back and do those portions of the story again.

Then it was there. Mister Wilson came home to greet his babysitter after having worked overtime. It was dark outside and he had offered to feed her supper. She had called home and said she'd be late. While they ate, he had asked poor little inexperienced Megan all about her boyfriends and what they had done for her. He had just asked her if the boys had ever kissed her.

She was supposed to stutter and sound shy. The dialogue was clearly written that way. But it seemed so silly to be standing in a little room, talking into a microphone.

"Of course they kissed me!" Layla said, her voice perky.

Bob looked confused and stared at the paper in his hand. The door opened and the same man as before stuck his head in.

"Please don't adlib," he said. "Just read the lines like they've been written."

Layla looked at what she was supposed to have said. It was "Well ... yes ... sometimes ... a little bit, I guess."

He went back and started that paragraph all over again. She managed to get through her lines without giggling, but felt like she sounded about ten, instead of sixteen.

"Did you like it?"

"I guess so." That one wasn't so hard.

"I bet you've never really been kissed," said Bob. "Not a real kiss," he added after a short pause.

"Isn't a kiss just a kiss?" That one wasn't so bad either, and Layla tried hard to remember what her first kisses had been like.

"Not at all," said Bob. He looked over at her before going on. "If I kissed you, I don't think it would be anything like what you've felt before."

Layla grinned and put her hand over her mouth. She was supposed to say "You want to ... kiss me?" The text after that said, "she asked anxiously."

She couldn't do it. It was just too silly. She started giggling and the man came all the way into the room.

"You were doing so well," he complained. "What's wrong?"

"It's silly!" said Layla, giggling again.

The man rolled his eyes.

Bob held up a hand again.

"We'll start over. I have an idea. Let us work this out, okay?"

The man tossed a hand in the air, but left the room.

Bob turned his microphone off and stood up from the stool. He turned Layla's microphone off and leaned toward her.

"I'd like very much to kiss you, Layla," he said softly. "I look at those lips and they look so soft. Reading this is getting me horny and I want to kiss you."

She sucked in breath and held it. He was so close! He wasn't the wolf again. Not really. But it was clear that he did want to kiss her. She felt shaky inside. Why was he doing this?

"Now," he said. "Remember how you're feeling right now. Hold onto that feeling. We'll just do that one paragraph and stop."

He flicked her mike on and then his own and started reading. Her heart was still pounding. She'd read these lines before, but she paused when her first one came along. Bob waved at her and made his hand go in a circle, over and over. She knew he meant "go on!"

"Well," she said, reading while she felt her heart still pounding in her chest. "Well ... yes ... sometimes ... a little bit, I guess."

"Did you like it?" His eyes looked smoky as he stared at her.

"I g-g-guess so," she said weakly.

"I bet you've never really been kissed," said Bob. His eyes went up and down her body. "Not a real kiss."

He stood up, pulling his mike up to stay next to his mouth.

Layla's pulse was still racing. Was he going to come closer? Again, his hand went in an urgent circle and she looked back at the script.

"Isn't a kiss just a kiss?" She suddenly wondered what it would be like if Bob did kiss her. Would it be like kisses she'd had in the past? She'd never kissed a man his age before. Not a real kiss, anyway.

"Not at all," said Bob. He took one step closer to her, moving the mike with him again. "If I kissed you, I don't think it would be anything like what you've felt before." He emphasized the word "anything." He hadn't done that before, and her heart pounded.

His hand was moving again and she looked down.

"You want to kiss me?" She even sounded scared to herself. She looked up at Bob as she said it. That look was in his eye.

"I know I shouldn't," he said. "But yes. I'd love to kiss you, Megan." His hand went in circles again.

Layla looked at her script. Her next line was one she actually wanted to say right now.

"But just a kiss ... right? I mean you wouldn't do anything else ... would you?" Her voice went up half an octave, and she didn't do it on purpose.

"I'd never do anything that would make you want to leave," he said.

The next line was one she wasn't sure she could force out. She felt her throat constrict and she wanted to move away from him.

"I ..." she started. "I guess ..." She had to pause again, even though there was no pause in the script. "I guess just one kiss would be okay." She had had to rush through it to get it all out. It wasn't right. She knew she sounded terrified, because she felt terrified. She waited for the man to come in and tell them to start again.

Nothing happened. Bob just looked at her. She looked at the script. The narrator was supposed to describe how Mr. Wilson took the girl in his arms and kissed her. There were "mmmmmm" sounds she was supposed to make, and he was supposed to make them too. Then she was supposed to say "Wow!" and "I liked that! I liked that a lot!"

Bob went to the door and opened it.

"Can we pause, to get ready for the next part?"

"Sure," said the man's voice. "That was great. She did a tiny bit of adlibbing, but it was perfect."

Bob closed the door.

"You okay?" he asked.

"No," she moaned. "How do you do that?"

"I told you, it's just acting."

"No, I mean how do you make me feel like you're about to eat me up?"

"I was just trying to get you to act," he insisted.

"It seemed so real," she said. "Like you really wanted to kiss me."

"I do," he said. "But that doesn't have anything to do with this."

She goggled. "You do want to kiss me?"

"Do we have to go into this again?" he asked. "You're a good looking woman. I'm a man. Of course I want to kiss you. I'm old, but I'm not dead."

Put that way it didn't seem so ... scary. In fact, the calm way he said it made her feel better for some reason. He was just a man, acting like men do sometimes.

"How do you feel about the next part?" he asked. "Can you do it?"

"I don't think so," she said. "How do you go mmmmmm like you're kissing somebody, when you're not kissing anybody?"

"Could you do it if you really did kiss somebody?" he asked.

"What?"

"If you kissed me, could you make those sounds?"

"You're just trying to get me to kiss you!" she yipped.

"Maybe a little," he admitted. "But we need to get through this. You've been kissed before. I don't have any diseases. If it helped you make the noises, what harm would one little kiss do?"

"I just met you this morning!" she said. "I can't just kiss you like that."

"Think of it as acting," he said. "Screen actors do it all the time. We're not going to swap spit or anything. Just put your lips up against mine and make the noises. You can kiss my cheek if you want. I don't care. I just want to get past this point. You've done so well. Let's not blow it all because of some kissing noises."

"Okay!" she said defensively. "It's just weird, okay?"

"It can be weird all day long, as long as you make those noises," he said.

Layla looked at him. He wasn't acting like he wanted to kiss her very much. All he seemed to be interested in was getting her to make noises. Fine! She'd show him! She'd give him a kiss he'd remember for years! She stepped toward him.

"Hang on, girl," he said, grinning. "We have to get the mikes ready. You only want to have to do this once, right?"

He went to the door and opened it.

"We're going to make a bunch of noises. You guys can cut and paste, or whatever you call it, right? We'll just make the kissing noises and eventually get back to the dialogue, okay?"

"Great," came the man's voice.

She was ready for him when he got back. They put both mikes together, right by their faces. He was two inches taller than she was, so she had to look up slightly. He had his papers in his hand and looked at them again.

"As soon as we make the noises, we go right back into the dialogue, right?" he asked.

"Sure," she said, flippantly. She was in control again. She was going to teach this man a lesson. She could kiss. She loved to kiss. And this time, when something went wrong, it was going to be because they were going to have to call the paramedics to help him recover from what she was about to do to him.

Chapter Two

He didn't cooperate. He turned his cheek to her as his face neared hers. He had said she could do this, but she wanted to teach him a lesson. She couldn't do that if all she kissed was his cheek.

She had no choice though, at least not at first. Her lips pressed to his cheek. His beard was in the way, but it was soft.

"MMMMM," she buzzed loudly. At the same time her left hand went up and cupped his chin, with her fingers on his right cheek. She pressed with her fingers, and was suddenly kissing the corner of his mouth. His moustache was tickling her nose. "MMMMMM," she buzzed again. It sounded like she was trying out for a soup commercial, to her anyway. She pulled at his chin again and his lips slid onto hers.

Her eyes were open, because she wanted to see the look in his when she pushed her tongue into his mouth. Her peripheral vision told her something was moving toward her face, on both sides. His hands captured her head. Half his fingers were on the clean shaven parts of her scalp and the rest mussed her hair. They were warm, and she suddenly had the image of an NBA basketball player holding a ball that was dwarfed in his hands.

His lips moved fully onto hers, parted slightly, and they nipped at her suddenly slack ones.

"Mmmmmm," he went through his nose. He sounded like he meant it.

His tongue flicked lightly between her lips, licking her upper lip, and then moving to her lower one. It wasn't in her mouth, exactly, but its touch was so soft and so tentative that it was somehow more intimate than if he was trying to lick her tonsils.

He pulled her face against his. She could feel the strength in his hands, and she knew instinctively that she couldn't possibly get away from him without kicking and screaming.

She didn't feel like kicking and screaming, though. This was a very nice kiss.

Her tongue flicked out all by itself and pushed lightly at his. His lips sucked at the tip of it, closing.

"Mmmmmmm," he went. He wasn't playacting. The receptors in her brain that evaluated that noise said, "He really does want to kiss you!"

His right wrist had pressed against her hand, where it held his chin. Her other hand came up and she held his bearded face as she started kissing him back.

"Mmmmmmmm," she moaned, as his lips opened back up and his tongue came out to play.

Then it was a hundred and twenty seconds of "Mmmmm" and "Uhhhh," said into each other's open mouths, as they had to breathe, and one kiss turned into a series of six or seven. His hands slid down to her shoulders, still heavy on her body, still warm, and still pulling her toward him.

Now she could push him away though, if she wanted to.

She didn't want to. She was dizzy with the excitement of these kisses. She couldn't remember the last time a man's lips had told her so forcefully, but so tenderly, that a kiss was precious, and something to celebrate.

He finally pulled back.

"Wow," she breathed, her breath a rush of air that emptied her lungs in that one syllable.

He looked past the left side of her head, and she turned it to find his script right there, in his hand. It must have been pressed to her head first, and then her shoulder, and she'd never felt it at all!

"Now that was a kiss," he said.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Her next line was supposed to be "Can we do that again?" but they stopped, because she was panting too hard, and was in both no shape and no mood to read from the script. Both reached up and turned their microphones off again.

"That was very good," he said. "I told him we'd take a break after that. You okay?"

"No," she sighed softly. "I was going to teach you a lesson. It didn't work out that way at all."

"Sorry," he said. "I got a little carried away." He actually blushed. "You sounded really good, though. I think it helped." The part of her brain that determined the truth or bullshit factors at play in discussions like this threw up a big white "TRUTH" flag.

"That was ... surprising," said Layla, tilting her head and looking at Bob, her right eye almost covered by her hair.

The man opened the door and walked in. His mouth was hanging open.

"I've never heard anything like that," he said. "How in the world did you make that sound so real?"

Bob opened his mouth but Layla cut him off.

"We're actors!" she said.

The man brushed his hand over his forehead, almost like he was wiping away beads of sweat.

"Well if you keep acting like that, I can guarantee you work for the next three years!"

"I'll remember you said that," said Layla.

As stated before, Layla was a pragmatic girl. She was intelligent too. What she was feeling at that moment was something complicated, but simple at the same time. She had liked that kiss ... those kisses. She had liked kissing him a lot. That it had been with this man who she'd only just met was one of the things that made it complicated. That she didn't know his last name registered with the part of her brain that recognized the complications inherent in what was going on. So did the fact that he was much older than she was, and that she didn't even know if he was married or not, and that she had a little boy. He'd talked about his grown up children, but had said nothing at all about a wife.

But the simple part was really quite simple.

"We're ready to go on," she said to the man.

"Right!" he said, almost scurrying back out into the mixing booth.

Layla turned to Bob.

"If there are any more kissing noises ... we kiss, okay?"

His eyes widened a bit, but not for long.

"Got it," he said.

There were more. Whoever this Lubrican person was, he liked to make things build up slowly. When Megan asked if they could do that again, Mr. Wilson said he'd be happy to help her learn to enjoy kisses to their utmost.

They spent another fifteen minutes speaking lines, broken up by kisses. She loved them. It was obvious he did too. The hard part was keeping from adlibbing. Once she said "I could do this for hours," which wasn't in the script. The man didn't come yell at them, though, and they went on.

Then, suddenly, Bob said "You'd better go home, Megan. We don't want your parents to start worrying about you, and ... I feel like teaching you more than just kissing. Yes ... you'd better go now."

Layla reacted like it was real life. She didn't want to stop. She wanted the kissing part to go on for two more chapters. She really could kiss him for hours. His hand waving at her and pointing to the script made her jerk. Her eyes went to the lines he had spoken and she saw her next line at the very bottom of the page.

"Okay," she sighed softly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It turned out that studio time had been allocated on a per chapter basis. They had already gone over the allotted time for the two chapters they'd read through, so the man, whose name turned out to be Charles, told them they were done for the day. He also asked if they could both come back the next day.

They looked at each other. Bob nodded, and then raised his right eyebrow, an obvious "Is that okay?"

"You got a phone?" asked Layla.

"Sure," said Charles. He took them into a small office where there was a phone on the desk.

Layla picked it up and dialed.

"Julie?" she said into the phone. "Can you watch Aidan tomorrow too? It went pretty well today." She listened and then said, "Okay, great." She put the phone back and said, "Tomorrow is fine."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They walked out together, but it felt different somehow. All the doubts came rushing back. She didn't know him. She had spent what amounted to twenty minutes making out with him ... but she didn't really know much about him. She suddenly felt awkward. What did he think? Was he thinking that she'd throw herself at him? Did he expect things to just escalate?

"I'm starved," he said. "This acting stuff is hard work."

She blinked. It sure didn't sound like he was hot and bothered. She couldn't help but glance down at the front of his pants. The expected lump was there, but his pants were loose, so she couldn't tell much about it. She was horrified to feel the urge to reach down and feel, to see if he was hard. Her panties were … humid. There was no doubt of any kind about that. She'd been turned on, back there in that studio.

"Could I buy you dinner?" he asked, looking straight ahead. "I feel like I should compensate you for pushing you into all that."

"You didn't push me into anything!" she said, wanting to retain as much independence as she could, under the circumstances. Those circumstances played back through her mind, though, and she felt a little ungrateful. "Well, okay, you pushed me a little bit," she said. "But it wasn't so bad."

"It wasn't anywhere close to bad," he said.

She saw the ends of his moustache rise and knew he was smiling. She'd never realized how much a beard could hide facial expressions.

"You're very naughty," she said. "You know that, don't you?"

"I know," he said. "Thanks for not getting mad at me. I really appreciate that."

"Yes, you can buy me dinner," she heard her mouth say. Her mind raced. "But you have to buy it for my little boy too. He's been at the sitter's all day and I don't want to leave him there any longer than I have to."

"I'd be delighted to meet him," said Bob.

Layla's built in lie detector waved another white flag.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Dinner" turned out to be a trip to Chucky Cheese's, by Layla's choice. That was primarily because Aidan could play there, as well as eat. It also made it easy to talk, or to refrain from talking, if that was how things turned out. Having Aidan with her did the same thing. She could spend time taking care of him, if things got weird.

They didn't. At least not at first. Bob was friendly toward Aidan, but no more so than toward Layla, really. He was relaxed and seemed just the same as he'd been at lunch. He told a few stories and asked a few questions.

While Aidan was playing in a net full of colored balls, burrowing down under them to pop up somewhere else and yell, "Here I am!" Bob pulled out his now somewhat bedraggled script.

"Have you read ahead?" he asked.

"Not yet," she said. "Getting through today was enough for me."

"It gets ... um ... well ... there are more noises to make."

"What kind of noises?" she asked.

"Kind of ... explicit," he said, frowning.

"You mean they have sex," said Layla.

"Yeah," he sighed. "It is an adult novel, after all."

"Do you want to have sex with me, Bob?" she asked.

Now where had that come from? she wondered.

"What?" He looked pale and his eyes were wide.

"I didn't mean to ask you that," she said, blushing. "I don't know why I said that."