Then, I gave myself a mental boot up the ass reminder that this is why I’d hired her. She was one of the best and I trusted her to teach me. I just needed to keep my feelings—and my dick—out of the equation.

“Has anyone ever spanked this ass before?” Elena trailed her fingers lightly from the backs of Melody’s thighs up over her butt to her lower back. She shivered and looked ready to start purring.

“No, Sir.”

“I’m going to be your first then unless you stop me with your safe word. Simply say ‘mercy’ and everything stops.” She lifted her hands away to demonstrate. “But unless I hear that word, we’re going to keep going until I feel you come. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Elena gave her a light warm-up, something I’d read about in the guidebooks, but it had always sounded so clinical in print. In person, the gentle rubbing and light spanking looked like an erotic tease, less a formal requirement and more like foreplay.

Elena demanded, “Beg me for a harder one.” Her voice sounded more forceful now, like there was just a hint of menace lurking in the wings.

Melody complied and Elena brought her hand down harder. I only knew it wasn’t that heavy because she’d told us she would keep it light before she started. They kept the scene going like this, with Elena eventually dragging Melody up by the hair and pinning her against the table. The tension between them was palpable and I was pretty sure half the room was struggling not to get hard, wondering how far they were about to take things.

Elena chose that moment of peak tension to release Melody and step away from the table, nonchalantly looking around the room for feedback, which only proved she was a natural performer.

“Works for me…” Melody said, smoothing her hair and returning to her seat looking flushed.

Everyone in the room turned to our director, who had a face like thunder. In the past he’d always been collaborative, but he looked like Elena was stepping on his toes even though this is what we’d brought her in for.

“Fine. Make the changes,” he said, mouth a tight line. “Now, can we keep moving?”

We wrapped up the table read without any further fireworks, but plenty of work to do before we were supposed to start filming. Elena left in a hurry without engaging with me directly, but we had dinner scheduled for the following evening.

She wouldn’t be able to ignore me then.

19

Alex

Our dinner was scheduled at Fern, one of the current “in” restaurants started by the winner of a cooking reality show that I would normally have avoided at all costs, but Asha had insisted it made the most sense.

At the very least, I would usually have wanted a table somewhere on the periphery, but tonight Asha had made sure we were in the middle of the room.