Page 107 of For Pleasure Or Worse

“Are you going to invite me in?” She stood and brushed her hands off on her sleek blue suit pants. Her matching blazer was perfectly fitted on top of a white silk tie neck blouse. “I’ve been out here for like twenty minutes.”

“Depends.” I brushed past her to the storm door, wedging it open with my hip and wrestling my keys out of my pocket. “Are you a two-thousand-year-old vampire?”

The lock clicked and I pushed inside the house into the open foyer, dropping the bags onto the small entryway table along with my keys. Bella was on my heels, not taking no for an answer. I hadn’t spoken to her in three weeks yet here she was, unannounced, at my and Mateo’s home for an unknown reason. One I was too afraid to ask about.

Her attention darted around, from the open concept kitchen and living room to the sliding glass doors leading into the backyard. The house was empty, but she was clearly looking for another person to pop out from behind a wall. When she realized we were alone her shoulders dropped from her ears and the rest of her body unspooled itself from the invisible tight wire tugging at it.

“Not what you expected?” I asked.

“Not what I thought a sex dungeon would look like,” she pondered. Her long, sharp fingernails swiped down the counterof the kitchen contemplatively and snatched a lone apple from the ceramic bowl at the center of it.

I choked out a laugh. “Sorry to disappoint you. I’ll make sure the bull whips and bondage chains are hanging from the fucking mantle next time you drop in for a visit. Is this like…CPS for sex workers? You’re filling out a case report on how unfit I am to exist in society?”

“Delightful as ever, Talia,” she shot back playfully, sinking her sharp white canines into the flesh of the apple and sending a spritz of juice to the floor.

I busied myself unpacking the grocery bags, taking the meat to the fridge and restocking an empty drawer with produce. “Sorry if I’m a little confused, I guess. The last time we talked you were walking out of a villa in Vegas basically promising to ruin my life unless I ruined it for myself first.”

“I was making suggestions based on my assessment of your situation.” She shrugged. “If I’m remembering correctly my reaction was tame compared to Camilla.”

“Tame?” I stood from being hunched over in the refrigerator. “You basically insinuated I was so poor I needed to sell myself for money.”

“You’re telling me you do it for the creative freedom?”

“Yes!” I flailed.

Bella sank into a barstool at the kitchen counter with her apple, eyes softening to a doughy light brown. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, and in all my life I’d never seen Isabella struggle to find the right words for what she wanted to say. I’d at least never seen her care enough to use the right words withme. It was so easy for us to fall back into the childish back-and-forth and put off adult conversations, because it was too real, and too uncomfortable, and none of us were raised with that lovey-dovey, sibling gene that some families seemedto have. Serious discussions made my tongue prickle like an allergic reaction.

“Look, if you came here to pick my brain about what I do based on a handful of misogynistic stereotypes I’d rather refer you to a friend. I’m sure they could answer all of your questions without confirmation bias.”

“Do you have a lawyer?” Bella asked.

“What?” A spark of shock zipped up my spine, straightening my posture.

“I think it’s smart to have a lawyer on retainer for your line of work. Especially if there’s contracts involved, the verbiage needs to be airtight so that you can protect yourself. So that if something like what happened in Vegas with that creepy fucker happens again, you have every one of your t’s crossed.”

A baffled noise ripped out of me. It tapered into a confused hum and I steadied myself on the countertop. I’d gone into the conversation with my walls built all the way to my ears, expecting the worst, and hoping to be let down easy, that my body was still in fight mode. Bella had gone from telling me three weeks ago that she needed time to think about how my porn career would affect us, to now offering a legal liaison to lock the shit up like the family jewels. “Did I miss something?”

“I came off cold in Vegas, I know that. But it was because I didn’t know what to do with the information, and I needed to process it on my own, like I said I would. I’m pretty good at playing the pros and cons game, and even if the thought of it dries up my pussy with a burning hot coal, you’re not doing anything morally inept by fucking your fiancé on camera.”

I leaned back against the fridge with my arms over my chest. “It just feels too easy,” I admitted. “This all solving itself.”

“Is it really that hard to believe grown adults can find mature solutions to their problems? I’m thirty, Natalia. I’m afucking attorney. This doesn’t have to be hard. Let yourself have something for once.”

“Mia didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“She was a little gnat in my ear, and Camilla’s. She said you were going to come clean all on your own.” A disbelieving jeer fell from her lips. “Why?”

I threw my hands up. “I thought it was my only option.”

“You’re not the only one who steers clear of our father. You just do it in the most dramatic ways. Trust me, I’d rather contract pink eye from a fucking hotel pillow than drum up a conversation with John Russo about porn.”

A grimace curled my lips and I started pinching the skin beneath my elbow. Bella scrunched her nose. “What are you doing, freak?”

“Making sure I didn’t fall asleep in the middle of the day on the couch again and I’m not being visited by a sleep paralysis demon.”

“The lawyer,” she reminded me with a roll of her eyes.

“Oh, right. No,” I said. “I don’t have one, officially. I mean, Mateo has a lawyer for TechOps, so I figured if we ever needed one he’s there.”

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