Chapter 16

Well, the palpable joy of Mel resting in my arms sure answered the question “Do I feel better with this lady in my life?“ with a resounding ‘yes!’.

Now it was a matter of seeing how we could make this thing work. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion, by any means, but I knew I felt attraction, not repulsion. Bad things had been done TO her, not BY her.

She stirred after a short while and smiled up at me as she realized she was still being held close. I kissed her forehead gently. “You okay, sweetie?”

She raised a hand to touch my face and sighed. “Not at all good to have to relive those days, but awesomely great to finally be able to share it, to let it out at last. On balance, thank you. Can you take some more of my venting?”

“Absolutely. Glass of wine first?”

“Please. Better check on my babies too, that they haven’t eaten Max.”

They hadn’t. They were tucked up on their pet bed, he was in his favorite cardboard carton. They all welcomed another trip into the yard, though Max did show a little too much interest in Mel’s naked form and had to be bought off with a second bedtime snack dog treat. Perhaps the bathrobe would have been a better option, not that I was complaining. Lord, she’s gorgeous! Instead of wine, we made ourselves a herbal tea to relax, and went back under the covers once we’d drunk it. I held her close as she started speaking again.

There was a whole load more shit she needed to release. Stuff that she’d been bottling up all these years. It just poured out of her and kept on running. Like Helga and Clifford had predicted, she was holding nothing back, cleansing herself of things she’d never been able to share with someone else.

She’d had enough offers of repeat work from California studios to take the step of moving out to the West Coast, convinced that she could make a good living from doing porn. Then reality had hit. How much more expensive it was just to live in LA than in Atlanta. Things she’d needed to agree to do to raise the money to pay the rent. No, she’d never actually whored herself out, never accepted money from a total stranger for sex, but she’d come pretty close. If she hadn’t had waitressing experience and been able to pick up enough casual shifts to keep her head above water, she might have had no choice but to sell her body. She’d always set herself two limits, never to do anal, and never to do escort work and start on the slippery slide towards prostitution. She’d quickly added a third, not to EVER do hard drugs. They were freely available in the circles she was moving in, but she’d already seen what they could do to people back in Atlanta, and she wasn’t going to even risk going there.

I knew that there had been some high-profile deaths among adult performers. I almost interrupted her here, but as she was on a roll, I left it and hoped I’d remember my question later.

She continued her tale: There were plenty of guys in LA who could get her work, but they always wanted something in return. A blowjob, her pussy, or both. Often it was easier to pay the price; it didn’t mean anything to them, and after a while, it didn’t mean anything to her either. Like tax, part of the price of doing work. She did learn to avoid the sleazier ones, the types who suggested that she might like to party with them and their friends that weekend.

There were more scenes with two or more guys, more gangbangs, some humiliation and the start of BDSM. Like I thought, most of the BDSM scenes had been faked and that was okay with her; the restraints were never over-tight, the light floggers used on her didn’t sting or leave a mark, and she found that she quite enjoyed the feeling of lying trussed up with rope and being helpless. There’d been one scene she remembered well; she’d pretended to wake up on a flat padded bed, hogtied, a blue ball-gag in her mouth, and a vibrator strapped to her pussy. I also remembered that one; the setting had been ‘abandoned industrial’, but the black pad of the bed was clearly straight out of the packaging, the blue cord ruler-straight with exquisitely neat loops and knots. It wasn’t a cheap and hasty scene, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it ‘just so’. Although ‘defenseless slave’ isn’t my thing, I’d been highly impressed with her grace and beauty as she’d screamed and squirmed her way to an orgasm, her incredibly flat and toned stomach flexing as the muscles below took control, and I told her so. She grinned self-consciously as she admitted that her orgasm had been more intense than usual, the total subjection to the machine being quite the turn-on. “Uh, it was such great fun that I ... signed up to another two! And you know something? We got TWO awards for that, best ropework scene and best sex machine scene of the year!”

I almost chuckled; not only did her voice betray that she still felt some pride in that achievement, but I realized that I was feeling proud that she’d been recognized for it! The exact same emotion I’d felt when I’d watched my sister Katelyn pick up an award at high school for some submission that her study group had researched. Effort and hard work being acknowledged.

“Would you show me the award winners sometime? Talk me through them?”

Her eyes snapped into focus; she stared at me suspiciously. Remembering what Clifford had told me about needing to build up her self-respect, not destroy it, I quickly got myself out of that mis-step, “No, sweetie, I’m not gonna get off on seeing another guy fuck you; I just want to hear that enthusiasm in your voice again. You’re a film professional, you did good work which got recognition from your peers, and I’d like to share that.”

That earned me a kiss and a hug, then an embarrassed look as she told me she needed a potty break. That was a good idea; I got us both a glass of ice water while she was in the bathroom. She came out looking refreshed; she’d washed her face and her hands were cool on my shoulders as we got back into bed to continue her disclosures.

Mel had quickly discovered that she actually liked being seriously dominated occasionally; but she’d also experienced some harder ‘masters’, and that hadn’t been a whole lot of fun. Some of the spanking and squeezing had gone beyond what she’d signed up for; she’d been genuinely face-fucked on a couple of occasions, and that had been incredibly unpleasant. I’d seen a scene for the Brutal-X studio where she’d damned nearly been raped on camera; I mentioned it and Mel said that it had just been acting that time, but she did volunteer that she’d learned the hard way with another studio to read the offer and contract very carefully before signing it. That brought back some other bad memories, and her face fell.