Heart of Change Read online

  True love hides where you least suspect it.

  After the truth comes out about her age, forty-something porn star Simone Sinclair is handed her walking papers, ending a career that has become more extreme sport than art form. The final straw is her long-time partner’s idea to start their own international studio with a marriage proposal tossed in to sweeten the deal. After two decades of waiting for him to deliver the white picket fence, it’s not exactly the offer she was expecting.

  At least she doesn’t need a man to answer the alarm of her biological clock. And when she shares a dance with Geri, one of her lesbian gal pals, she discovers she doesn’t need a man to fulfill other fantasies, either. But Geri’s not interested in touch and tease—she wants more than Simone is ready to give.

  Torn between three dreams—a post-retirement career, a family, or lasting love—Simone retreats to get her head on straight, coming to one conclusion. She can’t have everything. But two out of three is worse than nothing at all…

  Warning: Contains an over-the-hill porn star with a lot of attitude and a biological clock that is ticking out of control, who refuses to admit she's a lesbian until her best gal pal convinces her to cross the lines of friendship. There's bondage in the back of an ambulance, sex on a public picnic table, and a steamy encounter in the back of a limo. There's also some super-steamy strap-on action that will challenge every preconceived notion you've ever had about female-female encounters.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Heart of Change

  Copyright © 2010 by Roxy Harte

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-939-7

  Edited by Laurie M. Rauch

  Cover by Kanaxa

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2010

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Heart of Change

  Roxy Harte

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to YOU.

  My reader.

  I think of you often and fondly.

  I love you more than you will ever know.

  Without you my words would have no life, no meaning, no ever after.

  And not to be too sappy about it…

  Thank you.

  Chapter One

  The studio is dark, with the exception of the special-effect spotlights, and today it seems the set is especially quiet. I breathe in and my breath seems to be the loudest sound in the room. I am cued to look at the camera and I do, though I look past the camera and the cameraman to the director, who seems to be barely breathing as he watches me from the edge of his seat. It’s a good scene. I’d thought that it was, but the look on his face makes me believe it.

  I close my eyes, forcing myself to forget that I am on film.

  I am Simone Sinclair, pronounced with a French accent even though I’ve never been to France in my life. I do, however, have a perfect accent that I can attribute to my past life…not that I believe I am reincarnated. No, my past life refers to all things prior to meeting the man who created me, Simon Kramer, the time when I was a middle school teacher, specializing in foreign languages. Now, I am a porn star and I have succeeded in being the best in the business by believing what is happening to me is real. I don’t act—I react.

  Especially now that porn has become an extreme sport.

  Ten years ago, the emphasis was on the storyline. Maybe an executive and a secretary or a bored housewife seducing a butcher…raw sex with lots of boob and ass shots, moaning…cum. But then there was a subtle shift toward BDSM, with bondage being the especially sought-after kink. I fought it. I liked the purity of sex without the props.

  I gave up the battle of avoidance and started accepting some shoots that involved bondage of one form or another, just one here or there. I didn’t like doing them, I still don’t. But now, a couple of years after I caved in, almost all of my shoots involve restraints of one form or another. I’d like to say I got used to it, that I’m more relaxed now. I can find my happy place.

  Yeah, that’s bullshit. Maybe some do. That’s fine, that’s their kink. Personally, I don’t like being forced to another’s will…and a shrink could probably analyze it for me, but honestly it boils down to control, and I like to be the one in control. So why is it that having to delay my orgasm is the highlight of the shoot?

  I don’t like the way I feel when I’m restrained.

  I strain against the rope that holds my arms tight against my sides. I am strapped to a backboard in unnatural angles, somebody’s novel idea that seems ridiculous in my mind. So an ambulance was driven into the studio. With the doors propped open, we did half of the shoot, but it wasn’t really working because there wasn’t enough room for me and the actor and multiple cameras.

  I admit that the flashing lights and all of the medical equipment are exciting props as part of the scene staging. I even got to play around on the inside, sounding the sirens and pushing lots of buttons. That was fun.

  And really, finding the highlight of the day, the moment that makes me laugh or smile…or cry…the one that becomes a memory, is how I’ve survived my life. And the truth is, and I never believed I’d say this two decades ago, I enjoy my life…I enjoy my job. I enjoy being who I am. Good thing too, because I’ve given up everything that was once important to be who I am now.

  Today, I’m portraying a very hot, very sexy, very bored EMT. At one point, I was even wearing the stiff blue uniform. My co-star is still wearing his as we start to film all of the close angles outside the ambulance that will be spliced in and hopefully make it appear that we were in the back of the vehicle all along.

  The camera pans from the frustration on my face to my breasts, which are also wrapped tightly in rope. They are bright pink from the bondage and appear swollen, painful, although they aren’t necessarily either. However, the rope wrapped around them and anchored to the backboard keeps me from moving the way I want to move, the way I need to move.

  I really need to move.

  I was surprised the first time my body responded on camera. I didn’t expect it. I thought I would be too embarrassed, too shy, or too tense, to ever orgasm. And when it happened, I didn’t know what to feel—surprise, sure, but also terror at what that said about me. Slutty. Dirty. Whore. I cried for a day. And then I got over it.

  There’s much to be said about the power of a woman’s scorn. It reshaped who I was.

  Now, I expect to orgasm. One of the perks of the job. And the punk-ass kid holding the vibrator is pissing me off. I try to arch my hips up, but the ropes won’t allow me to push up high enough to meet my target, the vibrating wand. That part is truthfully frustrating, but not nearly as frustrating as the whiny moan emanating from my throat. I look at the man holding the vibrating dildo inside of my vagina, making sounds for him that I fight not to make as I try to remember his name. He’s the new guy. That’s what I remember. I try to forget that he is younger than me by about two decades. I beg, “Please let me come!”

  “You want to come?”

  I whimper, mewing like an infant, or a cat in heat. “Yes, yes, yes!”
r />   He pulls the vibrator away from my clit. “No.”

  Smart-ass. I wail in frustration, my hips bucking against the wood board they are tied to, my body fighting against the rope. “Please!”

  “Please?” he teases.

  “Please, please, please.”

  He focuses the vibrator directly on my clit and my body responds, seemingly no longer interested in what my brain has to say about it. I need to be in control, but I’m not in control of this as the lifting spiral of my orgasm begins.

  He pulls the vibrator away and the promise of release plummets unfulfilled. You fucking ass!

  He laughs and I get angry, my body tense, spiraling out of control. My brain is not in control of my mouth as I beg, “Let me have the vibrator! Let me come! I need to come!”

  He brings the vibrator just close enough to tease—or so he thinks. It is enough, just enough, for my orgasm to wrap me in bliss. My entire body trembles as the first wave hits and then I am convulsing in the rope, wave after delicious wave cresting over my bound body. My muscles strain to be free and it hurts because I am bent in an unnatural position. I feel the burn in my arms and chest, in my thighs, and I know that I am going to pay for this in pain for days, and I am going to regret doing yet another extreme movie, a bondage role, but right now, in this second, the burn intensifies my orgasm, lifting it a notch, and even though he has yanked the vibrator away, I don’t stop coming. I ride the wave and the film keeps rolling, catching my every gasp, curse, scream.

  For my faithful fans and other viewers of this latest film, I look at the camera—eyes wide open through each orgasmic wave—letting them see me. This I share with my audience, even though past lovers have never gotten this close.

  For this chapter of my life, my only lover is the camera. The actor is just another prop.

  I feel a swat on the top of my thigh, a sting, and it takes a second for my brain to register that it was a riding crop (yeah, I know, a riding crop in the back of an ambulance…who knew?), or that the man is yelling at me, “Did I give you permission to come, slut?”

  I roll my eyes. I can’t help it, because suddenly the lights and cameras are back, suddenly I am just a woman in a porn movie and this scene just became as ridiculous as all the bad porn out there. The moment is lost.

  I’ll leave it to the director to try to salvage what he can, but for today, I’m done.

  The kid, who is honestly in his early twenties, isn’t believable as my top. Who cast him anyway?

  The director yells, “Cut!”

  I fall back, at least as far as the ropes will let me fall, and relax against the hard board my ass is strapped to. My head stretches back to rest on the wood, even though my shoulders are still pulled too far forward to make true relaxation possible. “Could someone please get me out of this?”

  “The scene isn’t finished!” my co-star whines, pouting.

  One of the riggers starts the process of undoing rope. It will take him ten minutes at least and I tremble, freezing, as I wait for my freedom. “Can we get some warming towels?”

  My head jerks up and I catch the gaze of the rigger, knowing he made the request. He whispers, “That was an intense scene. I don’t need you to go into shock.”

  “I’m fine,” I grit out between chattering teeth. “It’s just adrenaline making me shake.”

  “Yeah, that too,” he says, winking.

  That too? I don’t ask, I don’t want to make the mental jump that I am getting special treatment because I am old…like a mare ready to be put out to pasture. I’ve never been paranoid about my age, not even after I hit my thirties, but now, because of Howard Stern’s on-air proclamation last week that I am the sexiest forty-something he knows, everyone knows, because word is out. I am not thirty-something. I am forty-four.

  Even Jay Leno found room in his script last night for an over-the-hill-porn-star joke. I cringe to think what the Saturday Night Live crew will do with it. In my mind I can see the skit, gray hair, sagging boobs…and sadly, that is my real-life nightmare. Every morning that I manage not to sag too much, not to wrinkle too much, I am thankful for another day of filming, because the girls in my industry are getting younger and more beautiful every year. At least that’s what I tell myself.

  It is hard for me to believe I was ever that young, beautiful or innocent, but when I watch myself in the archive videos, I know it is truth. Twenty-four to forty-four doesn’t seem that far, at least not far in my memories, but compare my photos from then to now…

  The difference is striking.

  I think I am more beautiful, age and wisdom has made me sexier than I ever was. At twenty-five, I knew nothing, and it shows in the depth of my eyes in those old archive videos.

  As warmed towels are wrapped around my shoulders and draped over my stomach and over my knees, I relax, despite the fact that the rigger is taking too long to untie me or that the next scene is being set up. The new guy is flirting with the model for the next scene. I know she is eighteen, she has to be eighteen by law, but damn if she looks a day over twelve. The sight of her makes me want to vomit. I refuse to retire so that she can take my place. I look at her again and am disgusted by her perfectly round, fake boobs, her shaved mons decorated with a garish tattoo, and her sprayed-from-a-can tan, but then I have to ask, what is happening to me? I’ve never been so petty before. I refuse to turn into one of those bitter, reclusive, retired porn stars who hides behind closed doors, her biggest fear being photographed with wrinkles.

  The jarring alarm wakes me from a dead sleep, making me jump, then moan because my everything hurts. The taunting beep, beep, beep grows annoying, but moving isn’t worth the pain until I become conscious of how badly I need to pee and moving seems my only option. I smack the alarm clock as I roll over, then grunting—okay, screaming—I stand up. “Oh shit!”

  My room is dark, the walls purposely painted the deep, full-bodied blend of reds and purples that make up an expensive merlot. Equally dark are the windows fitted with blackout shades, because it isn’t always night when I fall in bed to sleep. And though normally I could walk the straight line from bed to bath with my eyes closed in seconds, this morning it takes minutes. The twenty steps across the room seem like a hundred and every muscle screams each step of the way, letting me know that I pushed myself too hard yesterday.

  I knew the bondage pose I was tied into was a physically challenging one, I even suspected I’d be a little sore, but this morning’s pain wouldn’t constitute little or sore by anyone’s definition—I’m in agony. I guess the endorphin high masked more than I’d thought.

  As I sit down to pee, I realize that any filming in the next few days will be impossible. I may just sit here for days…maybe for the rest of the week. The phone rings beside my bed. Oh hell!

  I pee, letting the phone ring. The truth is I couldn’t get to it before the voicemail picked up anyway, so why bother trying? When I finally decide that sitting on the toilet all day is probably not an option, I stand up, but not on the first try, or even the second. My body shouldn’t hurt this fucking much! It does.

  Standing in front of the mirror, I have to face facts. I’m getting old…at least for a porn star. Maybe if I’d just stuck with straight porn instead of trying to compete in the kink arena—or maybe I should just face facts and call it a wrap—permanently. Honestly, I’ve had a good run. Twenty years. I shake my head, hardly believing that it has been that long since I met Simon Kramer, but the lines that have formed around my eyes don’t lie.

  I’ve been in the business long enough to not hate him as much as I once did.

  For a while, I hated him enough to wish he was dead, but I’ve gotten over that. We’ve had our ups and downs, but twenty years later we’ve covered all the ground two people can—lovers, haters, antagonists, friends—and through it all, partners. He’s managed my career since the beginning, creating a somebody out of a no one.

  The phone rings again, this time my cell, which I was smart enough to tote into the bat
hroom with me. Seeing it is the devil himself on my Caller ID, I answer with annoyance. “What?”

  “Is that any way to say hello to your favorite man on the planet?” Simon asks.

  “I don’t know, baby, I worked with the new guy yesterday and his eleven inches may have just bumped you down a notch.”

  “Ouch,” he says. “You hurt me, Simone.”

  I laugh. “What do you want Simon?”

  “Not on the phone. Come to my house.”

  I snort. How many times have we had this discussion in twenty years? “I am not coming to your house!”

  “Come on, babe. I need to talk to you and I want it to be a private conversation.”

  I sigh. Privacy? The only reason he would want privacy is because he thinks that I am going to make a scene… Oh, hell no, as in if he thinks he’s taking someone else to Tokyo…

  “Are you backing out of our deal, Simon? Because I am going to Japan. You promised.”

  “I don’t want to back out, Sarah.”

  Sarah? He hasn’t called me Sarah in twenty years. What the fuck?

  Simon and I go way back. Everything I am today is a result of Simon Kramer’s effect on my life. He loved me, he destroyed me, he recreated me, and in order to best haunt him and remind him every single day that he is responsible, my stage name is Simone. He despises my choice with a true passion and I love it that he does. It says something that I know him so well that I knew just what to do that would make him the most insane. The name change did it.

  The funny thing is, I’ve never thought of Simon as a nice guy, or even a likeable guy—maybe a dangerous guy—but love doesn’t care if you like someone first. That’s the beauty and the really ugly of falling in love. It’s what makes it possible to love one minute and hate the next…

  I met him at my old day job, a fourth-grade teacher at Wright Middle School. It was my second year teaching and I’d learned to handle most parents, but during a requested conference with him, I was out of my league and I knew it. He reached out his hand and, against my better judgment, I shook it. He was Simon Kramer, father of the demon spawn who was making my classroom a living hell.