The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Absolutely not.” His British accent stretched the u in absolutely like melted mozzarella.

“Rory, you know how this works,” said Alexis Li. Her heels clacked audibly as she paced her dinky little office. “You handle the acting, I handle the business, and I’m telling you: superhero movies are good business.”

“They’re no good for the Rory Rao business.” She heard a sharp intake on the other end of the phone line. So he was outside smoking, then. He was far from the only actor who indulged in this town. Some of the bigger names would’ve rathered let their affairs get out than their smoking habits. But on a personal level, it was always something she’d tried to get him to quit. Not that her client ever listened to her.

“And what is the Rory Rao business, exactly?” said Alexis, leaning on her desk. It was one step above IKEA grade, a concession the company had made for her when she’d finally clawed her way up from assistant to junior agent. And even then, she’d had to put the thing together herself. “You do great work in those little indies, hon. But they’re not keeping the lights on anywhere.”

“They’re real, human stories!”

“And so are superhero movies,” Alexis said smoothly. “The world’s shit right now. People want stories where there’s right, there’s wrong, and there’s an incredible guy to come in and tell them which is which. What could be more human than that?” It was her spin on a pitch every agent in town was giving their clients these days. The long-predicted superhero bust was nowhere on the horizon, so everyone was trying to get in while the getting was good.

“I get that this is your job, Alexis. Really, I do.” Another exhale of smoke on his end. “But those things are rubbish. I want to make art that challenges people to think more, not less. Films that celebrate the complexity and nuance of the world instead of simplifying it down to just good and bad. And if I’m not going to find those kinds of jobs here in America, I’ll just as soon go back to the West End.”

Dread flooded Alexis at the very thought. “Look,” she said. “Do you have plans later? I’ve got a thing for lunch, but we should see each other for dinner. There’s a new tapas place in Echo Park.”

“Long as they’ve got vegan options,” Rory said. “And when we go, I don’t want to hear any more about capes and tights, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Alexis sighed, and hung up. She sat down hard in her secondhand desk chair, which sagged under even her slight weight. “Fuck.”

As a brand new agent, her client roster was...well, modest would be a generous term. Rory Rao, indie darling and self-serious British thesp, was her highest-billing client, and he didn’t bill all that high. He was maybe three years away from his first Oscar nom, and things would ramp up for him after that. But Alexis didn’t have that kind of time. The rest of her clients were good for foreign soda commercials and not much else. Rory was her meal ticket, a gem of a start-up where she’d been the one to get in on the ground floor. She wouldn’t be able to find another one like him if he let her go.

She looked around her tiny office. Though she’d earned her position as a junior agent, everything the company had given to her had been begrudging at best. The minor bump in her salary had been enough to invest in some nicer suits and dresses. But they were still cheap compared to her senior colleagues’ wardrobes. Between that and her youthful face, at company meetings she always looked like someone playing make-believe while the grown-ups were talking. And even with that raise, she had only just been able to afford a solo apartment up in the Valley. A far cry from the big, well-appointed houses that every other agent in the game seemed to have.

But it was still better than sitting on a desk outside Lance Castro’s office, taking his calls from six in the morning until ten at night.

She couldn’t go back. She could only go up.

Dinner was reserved for Rory. That meant she had lunch free. And she knew exactly who she needed to hit up.

Hollywood was a messy business, and it so often needed cleaning up after. Enter the humble Hollywood fixer. The cliché was that when your leading man woke up next to a dead hooker, the fixer would roll her up into the carpet. But it went a great deal beyond that. If your starlet needed to blow a line to get herself right before her Oscar-winning take, the fixer had it waiting in her trailer. If someone had dirt on a suit in the studio, the fixer encouraged them to go digging for gold elsewhere. The world over, the red carpet was paved in the quiet work of people with a strong stomach and a tight lip.

“Every agent in this town thinks they’re too good for me,” said the chubby little man wolfing down sushi across from her. “And eventually, they all learn the same thing: you do need me...if you ever want to be good.” He winked at her as another piece of chūtoro disappeared into his mouth. Watching him guzzle fish whole, Alexis couldn’t help but think of a pelican. She winced at how quickly he was eating it all, too. For a favor like this, lunch was on her, and he’d helped himself to top-shelf everything. And that was to say nothing of how much she’d have to hand over for the favor itself.

It’s an investment, she reminded herself, as another $60 of fish slid down Frank Torrio’s gullet.

“Believe it or not,” he said, pouring himself a tall cup of warm sake (The good stuff, of course, Alexis thought bitterly), “yours is actually a pretty popular request. Superheroes are the gold mine.”

Alexis leaned back cooly on her backless bench. “So you’re saying that by coming to you, I’ve got no advantage on anyone else in the game.”

A shrewd gleam hit Torrio’s eye. “I’m saying that by coming to me, you’re still in the game at all.” He glanced at the colorful menu. “How would you feel about a dragon roll? I know I shouldn’t, but—”

“Mr. Torrio.”

His smile didn’t diminish, nor did it put Alexis any more at ease. “You know, you young agents always learn eventually: there’s much more to conversation than business. And there’s nothing more to business than conversation.” From his jacket, he produced four small vials of pink powder. “Space them out, or your client won’t be good for anything anymore. Seen it happen plenty of times.”

She eyed them. Powder already made it difficult enough to distribute. But the color made it even harder. “So conspicuous. They couldn’t even make it white?”

Torrio shrugged. “Necessary part of the refinement process. I don’t ask them much more about it. And if you’re here working with me, you know to follow my lead.” Out of fish to eat, he set about gobbling up everything else on the table: the little troughs of soy sauce, the piles of pickled ginger, even the little globs of wasabi. “You’ll have to get creative with how you dose him, since it sounds like he’s not on board for this.”

His tone carried no judgment. If anything, Alexis heard approval in his voice. For some reason, it filled her with shame. “It’s for his own good.”

“Hey, you don’t have to convince me. And I’m guaranteeing you results...at least, as far as I can. Obviously, once this stuff does its thing, it’ll still be up to him to get the part.”

Greedily, Alexis reached for the vials. But her manicured hand stopped an inch short. She withdrew and narrowed her eyes at him. “No.”

Torrio paused in the middle of licking a dollop of wasabi off his chubby finger. “No?”

“For what I’m paying, I’m looking for a real guarantee. Nothing left to chance. My client rockets into the stratosphere. He becomes box office lightning that studios will claw each other’s eyes out to catch.” She folded her arms over her chest. “And you have steady business from someone who will never, ever forget where she came from.”

This was where she felt alive. She was new to this, but she was still an agent, and she loved nothing more than driving a hard bargain. She was petite and Asian and still young, so older men in this town got surprised any time she showed a hint of spine. It was a trick she wouldn’t be able to pull forever, so she figured she’d get the most mileage out of it that she could.

“Heh.” Torrio produced a fifth vial from his ill-fitting suit coat and plunked it down next to the other four. “Then I’ll give you this. But it ain’t free. Think of it as being on credit. And my interest ain’t small.” He lurched to his feet, though he was so short that standing barely seemed to make a difference for him. “Can’t wait to see how it goes for you, Ms. Li.”

Rory Rao had made perfect sense in his gloomy native London. He would’ve made sense in dense, grey New York. But here in sunny LA, his aggressively bohemian look made him seem as at home as a taco at a dim sum place. Tonight he wore a grey knit beanie over his wavy blue-black hair, and a thin layer of black stubble on his pointed chin. A loose, flowy cardigan draped off his skeletal frame, as did the stench of hand-rolled cigarettes.

“Alexis, love.” He threw his skinny arms around her in a hug that somehow would’ve seemed less refined coming from an American. “Same town, and we never see enough of each other.”

Alexis caught herself feeling his bony frame as their embrace ended. If a shirtless beefcake scene was their final destination here, Rory had a long, long way to go.

“Only because I’m busy trying to find places for you to shine,” she said brightly. “I’ve got a few things to talk about, but let’s get some things on the table first…”

For the second time that day, Alexis cringed inside as waiters brought them plate after plate of exquisite and tiny food. She could practically hear the cha-ching in her head as more money fled her account. Investment, she reminded herself. Investment, investment, investment.

“I just really think,” Rory said after their second plate of meatless albondigas, “that if you can get me in a room with Helgasund, I could really blow the doors off the place, you know? Show her that I’m the color she’s been painting without this whole time.”

Inge Helgasund. Swedish. Director of six quietly devastating films, every single one of them adored by critics the world over. And together, Alexis was pretty sure they had a combined gross of about three dollars.

“You know how reclusive she is,” Alexis said placatingly. “I’ve been knocking, and I’ll keep knocking. But in the meantime, the best way to get her attention is to keep doing projects.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said brightly, completely missing her point. “Which, have you heard back from Rothwell’s people about that Henry V film he’s got on? I really think the time’s right for a new, updated take on the character. There’s true complexity to the man that anyone could relate to, even if he is a king. And I know I’m the bloke who can bring it out. I’ve even been practicing some physicalities in my bathroom, like—this’ll probably seem daft, but if I do this…”

Alexis smiled to herself as he went on. This Rory was the one she’d seen doing Faust and immediately signed. He had that keen character insight, that gift of observation that separated a mere performer from an actor. He really did have a gift.

She shoved aside her hesitation. She didn’t need an actor. She needed a movie star.

“I know we said no more talk about the s-word,” she said, reaching into her bag at dinner’s end. She withdrew a large, thick manila envelope and handed it to him. “So we’re not going to talk about it. I just need you to read.”

Rory frowned as he eyed the envelope’s contents. He pulled one of them out, revealing a copy of Savage Man #1. The art displayed an impossibly brawny man in nothing but a tiger skin loincloth. And curiously, the whole image appeared to have a faint pink sheen about it.

He slid it back into the envelope, not noticing the faint aura of pink dust the comic kicked up when it hit bottom. “I told you,” he said warningly. “I told you I don’t want to be a bloody superhero. I have no interest in, in, whoring myself out to aid in the systematic dumbing down of the masses!” He tore his napkin from his lap. A faint pink fingerprint remained on the white fabric. “Alexis, I love you. But if you’re not going to point my career the direction I want, I’ll find me an agent who does.”

The words hit her like a slap in the face. But Alexis steeled herself. She’d prepared for this. She sucked in a breath. “Rory,” she said firmly. “Pick up the comics.”

“No,” he said, picking them up. He looked down at the envelope as if it were about to explode in his hands.

“You’re not firing me,” she told him. “You’re going to go home. You’re going to read those. You’re going to find the humanity in Savage Man. And you’re going to come to me with a fresh take I can shop to the people over at Two-Fisted Studios.”

Rory scowled at her. But he held the comics tight. “Fine,” he snarled, like a child being told to eat his vegetables. “But I’m fucking serious, Alexis: Helgasund. Get me a call with Helgasund, or we revisit the chat you and I were just about to have, got it?”

She let him leave. Much as it had hurt in the moment, the powder seemed to be having its desired effect. She just had to hang on.

Out of curiosity, she eyed the pink fingerprint on the napkin. She knew the powder was potent. She wondered if she would even feel a small dose. Only one way to find out, she said, rubbing her own thumb over the smudge.

The answer ended up being definitely. She could scarcely believe the energy she felt by the time she arrived back at her apartment. She paced and paced. And when that didn’t work, she ended up changing into a sports bra and leggings and going for a run around the neighborhood. Going for a run alone at night was a bad idea as a woman, but for some reason tonight Alexis was certain that if anyone tried to give her trouble, she could outrun them.

She ended up running five whole miles that night, and she still had pent-up energy to get out. She wound up in her bed, cycling through the contents of the long-neglected top drawer in her nightstand. One vibrator, and then another, and then another, until she was on her biggest, the one she normally had to give herself plenty of warmup time to be ready for. By the time she finally worked herself to a toe-curling orgasm, it was nearly 2AM, and she vaguely felt like she could still hop out of bed and do a couple dozen sit-ups.

If this is how a microdose feels, she thought to herself, slick with sweat and pussy juice, then what the fuck did I just do to Rory?

She found out the following week, when a handsome young man with the body of an Olympic swimmer sauntered through the door of her too-small office. If she hadn’t already had the appointment on the books, she might not have even recognized him.

There was no cloud of pink dust as Rory Rao slapped the stack of Savage Man comics onto her desk. She’d spread a vial’s worth across the whole collection, and apparently Rory’s body had absorbed it all.

“D’you know,” he told her, “that these are actually quite interesting?”

Comic books had never been Alexis’ speed, save for their potential for lucrativity. But she had to admit, eyeing Savage Man’s hulking physique, she could see the appeal. “It’s about time you noticed,” she said. She reached into her desk drawer. “Protein bar?”

“Vegan?”

“Of course.”

“Cheers.”

She handed him one, then took another for herself. Though she’d been careful not to overdo it, she’d been unable to resist the temptation of dipping into the supply of pink powder she had left. She barely took more than a few grains on her skin, but that alone had been enough to cut her hours of nightly sleep in half, help her ride rings around her whole spin class, and kick her sex drive into a higher gear than she’d even thought possible. Already, she could feel a difference in how her clothes fit her: loose in the stomach, tight in the chest.

Hurry up and book this thing, Rory, she thought. Looks like I need to go shopping.

But as profound an effect as it’d had on her, it had done absolute wonders for Rory. There was no trace of the man she’d signed. He didn’t yet have what the industry would call a “working body,” but he no longer looked like he’d just come from a refugee camp somewhere. And despite him filling out, somehow his face was even more angular and striking. Already, she could see the makings of a Savage Man in him yet. But there was still a long way to go.

“I’ve been thinking,” Rory said carefully, “that I owe you an apology for the other night. I see now you were just trying to look out for me. I get so caught up in the art of it all. It’s easy for me to forget that it’s all still a business, and you’ve gotta eat, too.” He smiled at her with tobacco-yellowed teeth. “Friends, yeah?”

“Of course,” she thought, making a mental note to get him a whitening appointment pronto. “So with that in mind, have you given any more thought to the project?”

“I have,” Rory admitted. “And I think, after all this reading I’ve done, I might actually have a take. A way to make this character feel real and human, not just a drawing in four colors, you know?” He pointed to his arm. Even underneath his thick bohemian cardigan, it was noticeably thicker. “I’ve even given the gym a try, just to look a bit more the part.”

Alexis nodded, pleased. Frank Torrio was a creepy little twerp, but there was a reason he’d been able to stay in his line of work for so long.

“I want to be clear,” Rory went on. “This would strictly be a career move. Get me some cred with the mainstream audience. Introduce me to them, and then once the adventure’s over we bring them along for the ride when I go back to doing the real stuff.” He leaned forward, and Alexis noticed the way his legs were bouncing. Clearly, he still had a hell of a lot of pent-up energy. “I think that’s a top strategy, don’t you?”

“I do,” Alexis agreed. Already, she was imagining where in the Hills she’d have her dream home built.

“Also,” said Rory, “when you tell them I’m interested, tell them that I’ll need them to be a bit flexible on the character.”

Alexis’ daydreams ground to a screeching halt. “What?”

“I mean, for instance…” Rory picked up the comic again. “This is a guy who was first drawn in the 1930’s, yeah? So we’re talking about artists using circus strongmen as their models here. But modern audiences, they don’t need to see some buff guy in a bloody tigerstripe thong to know they’re looking at Savage Man. When was the last time any of them even went to a circus? So you let the studio know that we’re gonna make ourselves a modern Savage Man movie. And it’s going to be brilliant. How’s that sound?”

Alexis’ smile became a great deal more forced.

Rory’s own smile dimmed. “You don’t agree?”

“I think,” she said, “that Two-Fisted Studios knows who its core audience is, and that audience has certain expectations when it comes to Savage Man, a character they all grew up loving.”

“Well, sod them.” His fingers twitched; clearly, he was craving a smoke. “Let them feel a little bit of pushback for once in their lives. Look, I like those comics well enough, but they’re still baby books. They’re for kids. And I’ll admit, something’s nice about grown-ups still liking the shit they liked when they were kids, innit? But everyone’s gotta grow up sometime.”

“And you want to teach them that lesson by being their favorite superhero,” Alexis deadpanned.

“Had me a dog back home.” He leaned back in that casually jaunty way that only really beautiful people could pull off. “Had all kinds of heart problems. We had to give him meds every day. And we wrapped them all up in a piece of cheese.” He gestured to his burgeoning body. “Let me be the cheese, and let’s feed the people some real fucking art!”

Already Alexis, adept as she was at working an angle, had figured out how to steer into this skid. She produced from her desk another set of comics. These, she’d meant to give him a bit later on, but she supposed it was all the same powder, right?

“Savage Man had kind of a rough time in the 80’s,” she told him, “until Two-Fisted Comics got Alan Moore to do a run that redefined the character...and to hear the nerds talk about it, the entire medium of comic books. If you want your real art, there you go. I’ll tell the studio you’re interested in a darker, more adult take on the character.”

This time, Rory reached for the comics greedily. Once again, he paid no mind to the faint sheen of pink on the cover. Alexis felt something stir in her as she eyed the way his bicep flexed beneath his sweater.

“Rory,” she said firmly. He looked up, immediately rapt with attention. “Keep preparing for the role. Keep reading these comics. But you need to start showing a side of yourself that’s more in line with Savage Man. That’s how I’m going to sell you to the studios.”

He nodded obediently. It was crazy, how fast this shit worked. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, “that Savage Man is a character defined by freedom. He rules over the jungle, away from the laws of man. And his costume reflects that value. So you need to start updating your look to be more suggestive of that freedom. Start showing more skin. Boho chic is great, but that’s the old Rory Rao. This Rory Rao isn’t just an actor who did alright for himself in Soho. This Rory Rao is Savage Man.”

Rory gazed into the comic cover as if it were a bottomless well. On it, an exquisitely penciled Savage Man was a behemoth of muscle, wrestling a tyrannosaurus rex into submission.

“I reckon I could give this a look over,” he said, getting up. Alexis’ eyes leapt to his tight jeans. The outline of his cock was clearly visible beneath the thin fabric. And as she looked on it, she saw it getting that much stiffer. Her mouth watered.

“We’ll catch up soon,” she said. “And I’ll let you know what Two-Fisted says.”

“Right. Cheers.”

She practically slammed the door after he left. Most of the time she coveted the all-glass offices of her colleagues, but not now. She hiked up her skirt, slid her thong aside, and furiously worked her clit over as a fine layer of pink dust settled on her IKEA desk.

Dating apps in LA were perilous for an agent. Obviously, if you were on them, you were looking for someone hot to meet. But unfortunately, every hot guy in LA had moved there to be an actor. And if they got even a whiff of the idea that you might be able to help them out, there went any other conversation topic. It was my reel this, my audition tape that. Back when she’d been really naïve and let guys know upfront, she’d actually had to sit through an impromptu recitation of the speech from Jerry Maguire over rapidly cooling bowls of phở.

So now, she lied through her teeth about her job. Accounting, educational nonprofit, furniture restoration. Anything boring enough that it’d only elicit polite interest. If a guy made it to date three (and no one ever did), then he’d get to learn the truth.

This guy, for once, was not an actor. He was in finance or something, which Alexis respected well enough. He wasn’t really that hot, honestly, but he was decent looking enough. The word she used for white guys like him was blandsome: not bad to look at, but thoroughly lacking in the kind of specific character that made someone beautiful. And there was nothing wrong with blandsome. Countless unexceptional white guys skated through life on a road paved in blandsome, and they lived like kings.

Blandsome would never be suitable husband material for Alexis Li. But luckily for this guy (Brayden? Jaden? Aidan?), Alexis wasn’t looking for a husband tonight. She was looking to get dicked, deep and raw, in as many holes as he had stamina for.

She’d dusted off some of her sluttier dresses from the back of the closet for the occasion, but she’d been pleasantly surprised to discover that most of them didn’t fit at all. The one she’d settled on was simply the one that did fit: a strapless aquamarine heart-stopper whose bottom hem didn’t reach down to her blue-manicured fingertips. Its silhouette naturally pinched her waist, but she found this time that her waist didn’t need the help. Nor did she need its built-in support for her tits. The girls were doing a perfect job of staying up all on their own. And she knew they were having the desired effect, because his eyes would inevitably drift their way if given long enough.

She didn’t hold that against him. She was having a hard time focusing on what Graydon was saying. Her hormones thudded in her head like they were her upstairs neighbors having a party at 3AM on a weeknight. So when he smiled and got up to go to the bathroom, she counted ten Mississippis before getting to her feet and following him.

He’d just been about to close the door when he saw her. “Alexis?” He frowned, confused. “Did you also want to—?”

She shoved him backwards into the bathroom, then strode in after him with the confidence and poise of a lioness. She threw the lock on the door, then bent over and braced herself against it. “Just fuck me.”

Hayden didn’t take much persuading. Soon enough, his khakis were around his ankles and he was railing her from behind, one hand on her hips and another teasing her hard nipples through the soft fabric of her dress.

In the bathroom mirror, she caught sight of herself. She had absolutely no interest in being on-camera, but Alexis realized that if she’d really wanted to, she could’ve probably at least gotten an audition with her new face. It wasn’t a night-and-day change, so much as an enhancement of what was already there, the way that salt made food taste more like itself. Even with her made-up face contorted in lip-biting pleasure, the hot bitch in the mirror was still recognizably Alexis Li.

Layton did his best, he really did. He came after only a few minutes, but when he tried to pull out Alexis reached back and put a firm hand on his ass. “We’re not done yet,” she said simply. The guy wasn’t under the suggestive influence of the pink powder, but Alexis Li was discovering that she could be quite persuasive when she wanted to be. He kept pounding away at her, causing spikes of pleasure to ripple through her taut, sexy body. She tilted her head back and groaned loudly as she let him pull her hair. There was absolutely no way the other diners wouldn’t know exactly what was going on in here by now. And as she glimpsed at the drenched sapphire g-string stretched between her splayed knees, Alexis realized that she thought it was hot as hell.

But she could feel Jason’s energy flagging. It was clear whatever bro gym routine he did wasn’t up to the task. As he tiptoed her up to the line of climax but never quite across it, she found herself pretending he was a different kind of man. Strong. No, not just strong. Powerful. One who understood what she wanted, gave it to her how she liked it, and delivered every time. She licked her lips greedily at the thought. Once she’d clawed her way up the ranks, she’d have the cachet to find exactly that kind of man.

She felt Mason’s dick start to slide out of her cum-drenched pussy. “Fuck, Alexis,” he wheezed. He put a tender hand on the small of her back, where her skintight dress was bunched up. “I’ve never done anything like—”

She glared at him over her tanned, bare shoulder. “Did I fucking say you could stop?”

Alexis always hated the audition part of the job. She knew it was down to the talent to make the final booking. But she had that control freak instinct, that insistent feeling that if she was just in the room she could be the thumb on the scale that would break things her client’s way. Instead, she could only wait for the call to come through as she tried to get one of her other clients a gig hocking Pepsi in a former Soviet republic that wouldn’t exist in two years.

The phone had barely rung before she answered. “Give me good news,” she chirped.

“Alexis, we were very impressed.” Alexis was surprised to hear not some middle manager on the other end, but Len Pearl, the head of Two-Fisted Studios himself. He had the smooth, calm voice of a man who probably hadn’t had to worry about something since his balls dropped. “I can tell you now, we weren’t sure about this one going into it. There’s a pretty clear idea of who Savage Man is and who the studio wants him to be, and it’s not a one-size-fits-all idea.”

“I agree,” Alexis said. “It’s a one-size-fits-Rory-Rao idea. As I’m sure he showed you just now when he blew the doors off at his audition.” In her head, piles of money were raining down on her already.

“He certainly had a lot of the qualities we’re looking for.”

His voice was cheery enough, but even a junior agent like Alexis knew how to hear the note behind the note. “What didn’t he have? Are you worried about the Indian thing? Because diversity is very—”

“No, it’s not that,” said Len Pearl. “We’ll get our billion from China one way or another. It’s just that he’s not quite physically up to what we’re looking for.”

“He’s working on that,” Alexis said quickly. “Very hard.”

“I know he is. It’s already impressive, what he’s been able to do. It’s just that we’re hoping to go into production by the end of the year on this one, so he can immediately move on to headline Heroes United. And I don’t know if that timeline’s going to work for Rory, with the shape he’s currently in. Especially when Dwayne’s already interested in the part, too.”

Immediately, Alexis went on the defensive. “You’re telling me you want to put this franchise in the hands of someone pushing fifty? That works for now, but how’s that gonna fit your long-term strategy when you’re hanging Savage Man 3 on the shoulders of some geezer who’ll need to sit in ice baths between every take? I’m telling you, Len. You want to cast young here.”

“That’s true,” Len Pearl conceded, though she could tell he wasn’t convinced. “That said, there is another open role Rory might be good for, as the Piranha...”

The Piranha. A classic villain of Savage Man. A juicy enough part, to be sure. Except Alexis knew how Two-Fisted Studios made their movies. The heroes went on to make sequels, and cross over into each other’s movies, and make big team-up pictures every couple years, and get spin-off TV shows, printing money the whole while. The villains always wound up dead in a ditch by the time credits rolled, memorialized by too-online nerds and insultingly scant residual checks. Maybe it could have been a springboard for Rory to move onto something else. But there was another unofficial rule in town: an actor never got used twice in a superhero universe. Hell, they rarely got used in another superhero universe, even if that studio’s movies had absolutely nothing to do with the other one’s.

Piranha was no kind of role for Rory Rao. It wasn’t a cornerstone Alexis could use to build her towering juggernaut of a career.

There was only Savage Man.

“We’re talking about a serious actor devoted to his craft here, Len,” Alexis insisted. “Give him two more weeks, then bring him back in. I promise you won’t even see Rory Rao come through that door. You’ll see Savage Man.”

There was a thoughtful pause on the other end of the line. “He was very impressive,” the studio head conceded. “Alright, then. Two weeks. My people will set it up.”

After he hung up, Alexis pulled a vibrator out of her top desk drawer and furiously rammed herself with it while she thought of her next move. The career-making role was practically in her lap. She just needed to prove that she wanted it that much more than everyone else. But it was too hard to strategize when her hormones were in overdrive. So now, she had a selection of vibrators at the ready: in every room of her apartment, in her office, even in her car. Just something to take the edge off. Bring her back to that killer focus that would make her an unstoppable force in this town.

When her pleasure-haze receded, she glanced into the open desk drawer. Next to where her vibrator had been, there were the three remaining vials of Frank Torrio’s pink powder. Space them out, he had told her, or your client won’t be good for anything anymore.

But if Rory didn’t land this role, he wouldn’t be good for anything anyway.

She snatched up all three vials. “Phone,” she said, and heard it chirp to alertness. “Call Rory Rao.”

He’d been on his way to the gym, and had offered to divert himself from his workout. But Alexis said not a chance. This was something she wanted to see.

The Rory that greeted her was utterly different from the man she’d first signed. His bulging muscles were obvious and on full display beneath the slim-cut black tank top and shorts he wore. He was clean-shaven now, and his long hair had been tamed in the absence of a beanie. When he enveloped her in a powerful hug (her hormones going haywire the whole time), she noted the absence of tobacco stench around him.

“Put myself off the stuff,” he told her. “It was getting in the way of my lifts. Can’t have a Savage Man who has to stop for breath after every vine he swings on, yeah?” And he gave her a dazzling megawatt grin, the kind that was destined to light up giant screens the world over.

It made Alexis all the more sure of her path.

She’d intended to just follow him around and talk through strategy while he lifted. But her secondhand doses of powder had continued to leave her with excess energy. So she’d actually changed into a neon yellow sports bra and matching clingy, ass-hugging spandex shorts and joined him, pleasantly aware of how many men were eye-fucking her.

She watched with hungry eyes as he put up plate after plate at the bench press, and shouldered nearly twice her weight at the squat rack. Her mind ran away with the fantasy of what that kind of power could do to her in the right circumstances. And when she deigned to participate in an exercise herself, she was pleasantly surprised by what her new body was capable of. She dropped down from the pull-up bar after cranking out a set of a dozen, and admired the newfound visibility of her abs in the full-wall mirror.

“And how much of the Alan Moore take did you end up using in your audition?” she asked him as they settled into a rowing machine.

“Honestly, stuff went over my head.” His words came out percussive, every few punctuated by a low, many grunt as he ground out reps. “It all seemed clever. But really, I just ended up looking at the pictures. People like that this guy is big and strong, because people want to be big and strong.”

Alexis studied his eyes. They were bright, but she sensed the absence of a certain shrewdness her client usually had. “What about the, I don’t know, deeper humanity of him?”

He shrugged his wide, powerful shoulders. “Who cares? He’s Savage Man.”

She did love hearing the right answer.

For the rest of the workout, he chattered enthusiastically about winning over Two-Fisted once and for all. He was ready to work out four hours a day, and he’d already completely restructured his diet to make it work. To that point, Alexis’ eyes bugged out when he casually produced a stick of beef jerky from his training backpack and casually bit into it.

“Gotta keep my protein up,” he told her. “And honestly, it’s not so bad. I don’t know what I was on about all those years.”

Alexis couldn’t help but lick her lips. Seeing this powerful man standing there, tearing into a chunk of meat...there was something so utterly primal about it. She wanted to be a refined woman of the twenty-first century. But being a liberated woman meant doing what she wanted and liking what she liked. And what she wanted was to stare at this absolute stud.

The effect only increased when he was drenched in sweat by the workout’s end. Where tobacco stink had once followed him everywhere, now there seemed to be an impenetrable cloud of pheromones that set Alexis’ pulse racing. “Here you go,” she said, producing a towel from her backpack. “You can’t trust the disinfecting at places like this.”

He took the pink-dusted towel and immediately began rubbing it all over himself. Before Alexis’ eyes, the powder dissolved into his sweat and vanished. “Kind of a gritty texture,” Rory noted.

“Must be the detergent I used,” Alexis said, her eyes riveted on the growing erection between his muscle-swollen thighs.

“Well, thanks for thinking of it.” He dabbed more sweat away. “And listen. Thanks for pressing me on this. I know I can get up my own arse about the, you know, lofty art-ness of the thing.”

She wondered if this sudden change in eloquence was an immediate effect, or something that had already been brewing.

“But you saw what I was capable of, not just what I wanted to do,” he went on. “Makes you a good agent. Thank you.”

There was only the tiniest shred of doubt in Alexis’ heart. Swiftly, she strangled it.

“Of course,” she said. She stepped in close, knowing that he would be at his most suggestible. “Now, let’s talk about your exercise schedule...”

Len Pearl glanced at his watch. “Any word from him?” His tone was mild, but a man that powerful didn’t have to reveal his impatience to communicate it.

“I’m sure it’s just traffic,” Alexis said. She squirmed a little in her seat. Normally she carried anxiety in her stomach. But of late, it all seemed to center around her pussy. And right now, she had to all but sit on her hands to stop herself from putting her fingers to work calming her down. In their practices for today, she’d noticed a decline in Rory’s ability to memorize the script sides, or to even interpret the intentions behind the lines. A definitely obvious cognitive downturn, and certainly what Torrio had warned her about. But had he really lost enough brainpower to forget how to get here, or to tell time?

I should’ve driven him here myself, she thought ruefully. Never trust an actor.

She forced herself to look on the bright side: she had actually managed to talk herself into a sit-in for the second audition. She was sure she’d been helped in no small way by her enhanced bust, or the way her short hemlines highlighted her toned, coltish legs. But the point was, she managed to get front row seats for the moment the new and improved Rory Rao finally swaggered in.

The man had become a behemoth, with the kind of deeply tapered torso that most men worked their whole lives to achieve. His pecs had a deep, canyonous divide between them, and they strained against a henley shirt that might as well have been a coat of spraypaint. His fitted shorts showcased every twitch and tense of his brutally powerful thighs. And there was no mistaking the long, thick outline of his dick pressed up against them.

Alexis was suddenly gushing. She distracted herself by glancing at the studio’s team to gauge their reactions. And she was quite pleased to see that Rory was getting eye-popping stares from every single one, even Len Pearl himself.

“Well,” he said as Rory took his place at the front of the room. “You certainly seem like you’ve been hard at work, Rory.”

“Course I have,” Rory grunted. “This is my part, innit?”

“We’re very excited about a great range of possibilities here,” said Len Pearl. Beneath his words, Alexis heard the looming threat of Piranha. No fucking way, she thought. “Now, I believe you’ve got the material prepared for us?”

“Yeah, I read it,” Rory said. “And I’ll tell you what: I think it’s rubbish.”

Alexis, who had been bouncing between fantasies of her future mansion and fantasies of a rugged musclehead waiting on her inside it, crashed back to reality. “What was that, Rory?” she said.

“I tried reading the lines, but they’re just words,” Rory went on, ignoring the disapproval rippling through the studio execs. “Like I said: rubbish. You can dress it all up with your big lines all you want, but we’re talking about a superhero here.” Alexis could hear a difference in the way he spoke. His vocabulary hadn’t suffered, but something about his tone had changed. It was like looking into a pool and seeing the sunlight hit three inches below the surface.

“I think what Rory is trying to say—” Alexis began hastily.

Len Pearl sat up straighter in his chair. “I understand if you have problems with the script,” he said with a kind of fuck-you diplomacy. “And those are certainly things we would address...with the star of our project. But if you didn’t bother preparing with it, then I have to ask: what did you prepare?”

There was a dull but cunning gleam in Rory’s eyes. “Lines are for actors. Reading is for actors. I’m not an actor. I’m fucking Savage Man. And I prepared...to show you.”

He flexed every muscle in his body all at once.

It wasn’t a gradual ripping, seams slowly coming undone thread by thread. His clothes exploded off his body.

Overhead lights glinted off muscles like armor plates, showing off deeply divided abs and an impossibly trim Adonis belt. His biceps swelled to the size of pumpkins when he flexed them on either side of his head. His thighs were thicker than Alexis’ newly svelte torso, and looked like they contained enough raw power to kick the conference table out the window. And his huge, swollen cock was just barely contained by the indecent tiger-hide loincloth he wore.

Decades of comics covers flitted across Alexis’ lust-addled mind. And in all of them, she found herself transposing Rory’s face over every single drawing.

He was Savage Man.

The one female exec of the group appeared to share Alexis’ difficulty in processing what she’d just seen. As Alexis watched, an actual tendril of drool seeped out of the corner of her mouth as she ate up the sight of Rory’s perfect body. And she wasn’t alone. Alexis had no idea how many of the male execs were gay. But from the way they all stared at her client now, she wouldn’t have bet against any of them.

Rory turned to her. Suddenly, the brutality vanished, and he looked at her with the eyes of a golden retriever. “Did I do good?” he asked her.

Alexis wrestled herself back under control, even as his raw sex pheromones threatened to choke the sense out of her last two brain cells.

She grinned at the studio team. She clasped her hands on the table, if only to keep them from reaching for her sopping wet cunt. “You have five minutes to talk me down from twenty million.”

There were probably ethical boundaries to be considered when letting a client put his cock inside her. But by the time any came to mind, they’d long ago disappeared in the rearview mirror.

Neither hers nor Rory’s place was close to the studio, and after that display Alexis was not at all in a waiting mood. So for yet another investment, she threw down the money for a suite at the nearby historic Hotel Trumbull. Bogart and Bacall had sipped martinis at its bar. Welles had spent hours perfuming its booths with his cigar smoke. George had sat Steven down for lunch there, to tell him about this whip-and-fedora character he’d been kicking around. And now, it was the site of the most monumental fuck marathon in the long and seedy history of Hollywood.

They’d had to borrow branded clothes from the studio just to get Rory out the door looking decent. But even the XXL Two-Fisted t-shirt clung to his massive frame for dear life, and the jogging shorts were absolutely no match for his iron glutes. The two of them drew stares as they walked through the hotel lobby together. No one recognized Rory, but a guy didn’t go around looking like that in this town unless he was either Somebody, or on his way to that destination. Alexis grinned to herself as she led her docile client to the elevator. Let them talk. They’d all know his name soon enough.

And then they would all know hers.

The suite was a two-room with a California king and a floor-to-ceiling window with a commanding view of Hollywood Boulevard. Naturally, Alexis wanted to be fucked in front of it, in full view of the world. She wanted curious tourists down there to look up and see how her big, firm tits swung and bounced with every thrust from the absolute animal behind her. And she certainly wanted every other guest on the floor to know that she was having a better afternoon than they were, so she made sure to be loud as his powder-engorged cock tirelessly pounded into her pussy.

The difference between sex with Rory and sex with Peyton was the difference between sex and no sex at all. The extra inches Rory had packed on seemed to knowingly reach for all her hot spots. When she looked back over her shoulder, she could see the way his cut abs tensed with each powerful thrust, and it just made her that much hotter and wetter for him. And in seemingly no time at all, pleasure was engulfing her like a high tide.

“Oh god, yes! Fuck! Yes! Fuck me! Cum inside me and fill up my hot, slutty cunt!”

Right on command, Rory’s huge body stiffened. The sensation of spurt after spurt of his hot seed unloading into her was enough to roll her eyes back in her head as she came immediately again. It was all so viscerally, electrically hot, feeling the sheer strength of his hands as he gripped her by the shoulders, hearing the wet slap of his hips slamming into her tight, toned ass...It was primal. It was savage. It was right.

His cum still dripping down her leg, she led him to the bed, balancing on her sky-high platform heels. She’d left them on while he fucked her standing up, since her client was now a solid foot taller than her. But at the bed, she kicked them off and pointed to the covers. “Lie down.”

He grunted in assent. The huge bed groaned as his big, dumb body laid itself down with control and grace. Alexis caught her hand straying to her cum-drenched pussy just looking at the fuck toy she’d turned him into. She’d never thought she would be so hot for a wall of muscles, but she couldn’t imagine being with any other kind of man now. Even though his cock was still slick with her juices and freshly-spilled cum, it still throbbed needfully for her. And how quick he was to obey...That had been the tradeoff of three vials at once. Initiative and volition went out the window. But in exchange, she’d finally gotten herself a superhero, a cash cow client, and a cock that was worthy of her bottomless, slutty need. The stage had lost a bright light, but the West End’s loss was Alexis Li’s gain.

She crawled across the bed, enjoying the feeling of letting her newly built muscles stretch out. Even the little doses of powder she’d enjoyed had left her with a body that a yoga instructor would envy. Her bigger bustline was just a bonus, though it certainly gave her something to admire in the mirror each morning. She hadn’t had a chance to properly show it off yet. But once the first checks came in, her new wardrobe would advertise to Hollywood that the hottest new agent in the game was also a world-class piece of ass.

With practiced expertise, she slid his cock into her mouth and down her throat, inch by inch. It was slow going at first, but soon she was practically dribbling her head up and down on his meat. She would spend far more time getting pleasured by him, but the new and improved Alexis loved to suck dick. And what was more, she was fucking great at it. And why not reward her star client for landing such a big gig?

So she lovingly teased every inch with her tongue, running it along the sensitive underside of his hard, swollen cock head. She tasted the sweet hints of precum leaking from him, which only encouraged her to suck harder and deeper. And then the entire bed shook violently as Rory, unused to his new strength, thrashed in the throes of another orgasm. Bursts of cum, each as sweet as royal icing, shot straight for the back of Alexis’ throat. And because Alexis was a champion and a winner who got shit done, she easily swallowed every last drop.

She didn’t crawl up his muscled body, so much as climb it. He looked up at her with dull wonder and excitement as she lowered her hips down onto his. She impaled herself on his thick cock and began to rock against it. Her whole body shuddered with electric pleasure.

At her command, he did more than just lie there and let her ride him. He thrust upward, breaking with her every swell, treating her to the sight of his beyond Adonis-level physique tensing and flexing with each little movement. “Alexis,” he said urgently. “I’m gonna—”

“Do it,” she growled down at him, just before he came with a guttural roar. The amount of spunk he still had left to pump into her shouldn’t have been possible. But a triple dose of pink powder seemed to work more than just one miracle. As she rode a fresh wave of ecstasy, she made a mental note to get every morning after pill she could get her hands on after this. There was no way seed this animalistically potent hadn’t already gotten her instantly pregnant, and motherhood was where the career woman meekly shuffled off to die.

For hours more, they fucked and fucked and fucked. Even with a fraction of his dose in her system, Alexis found herself indulging a truly unending hunger for sex. And to be able to command it so immediately from someone so outwardly powerful...the feeling was its own aphrodisiac. The sun had long set by the time the two of them finally fell away from each other, and her slutty little cunt felt like it had been truly fucked raw.

She ran a hand over Rory’s sweat-sheened pecs and abs. “Rory,” she said, “what did you think of that?”

There it was again, that dimness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. It was pleasant enough, but to remember that spark was to miss it, no matter what she got in exchange for it.

“It was good,” he said. His huge, muscular chest heaved as he took a deep breath. “Very, very good.” He nodded to himself, pleased, as if the two verys had done an excellent job of articulating his thoughts. “Do you want me to fuck you again?”

As someone who worked with actors, Alexis thought a lot about line readings. The question Do you want me to fuck you again? could have very easily been tossed off with roguish confidence. And certainly, she could have pictured that delivery coming from the bohemian British beanpole she’d used to know. But this Rory had asked it solicitously. As if he were a well-trained dog, eager to please.

And Alexis had learned in a very short span of time that nothing quite did it for her like a powerful man who did as he was told.

She’d thought that she was tired. But at the question, she felt her pussy starting to grow wet again.

She lay back against the headboard and spread her legs. “Pick me up and slam me against the wall,” she said. “Show me how much power you have in that perfect body of yours. Show me Savage Man.”

The docile, pliable fucktoy she’d made gave way to that animalistic lust he’d put on display in the audition. With ease, he scooped her up and plunged his thick, pulsing rod right into her waiting pussy for the umpteenth time that day. Greedily, she wrapped her legs around his trim waist and dug her nails into his broad, muscled back just as he whirled her into the nearest wall. His brutish body could have easily crushed her into it. But Rory Rao had control. And he knew how to obey her commands in a way that made the danger feel delicious.

She arched her back and gasped as his cock plunged deep, deep inside her. Over his shoulder across the suite, she caught sight of herself in a mirror. In the warm hotel lighting, Rory seemed to glow like golden statue. His striated back and indented ass flexed and released, flexed and released, flexed and released.

And once again Alexis shuddered with pleasure as she held unbreaking, adoring eye contact with the beautiful reflection staring back at her.

The red Tesla’s gentle purr died away as Alexis stepped out onto her driveway. It was a sleek, elegant thing, beautiful as a conflict diamond. It had been one of the first purchases Alexis Li had made when her fortunes started going up. Of course, it hadn’t been the only one. There had been the clothes, all top-of-the-line and designed to flaunt the centerfold body with which she’d been blessed. Or rather, with which she’d blessed herself.

And of course, there had been the house.

It was in the legendary Hollywood Hills, home of winding roads and secluded star retreats. She’d opted for one of the Brutalist white, flat-roofed mansions that had an overlooking pool deck and a facade that was all window. She’d filled every room with sleek, expensive furniture, hung art on every wall, and made sure to host parties with all the right people on the guest list.

The clothes. The car. The house. They were all badges of her status as a Hollywood power player on the rise.

But none of them compared to the trophy husband.

She luxuriated in the sight of him coming out of the pool as she strode out onto the deck. The water gushed off his muscles in rivulets, and a slick wet amethyst speedo clung to his cock and ass, brilliant against his beautiful brown skin.

“Babe.” An easy, empty movie star grin, followed by a hungry kiss that she eagerly returned. “I was just waiting for you to return. Dinner’s almost ready.”

The house was spotless inside, and the unmistakable smell of pot roast was everywhere as they walked through. When he wasn’t away on shoots, Alexis had him here, keeping everything in line and having food on the table for when she came home. And of course, she wanted him at the ready whenever she was in the mood.

When he appeared, he’d only changed from his shiny purple bikini briefs into lime green ones. It was another rule she’d imposed. She wanted her husband dressed sexy for her at all times. And in her mind, nothing was sexier than an outfit that let her constantly admire every angle of the body she’d gifted him with. It had been tempting to have him nude all day long. But in her experience, presents were always better when they could be unwrapped before they were enjoyed.

He served her a plate of perfectly prepared pot-au-feu, then patiently rubbed her feet as she enjoyed its deep, rich flavors. The cock alone was enough to get her to speed home every night Rory was in town. But after the cooking classes she’d put him through, his dinners were a very close second.

“I’ll be shipping out to Atlanta to do Savage Man 2,” he said. “They say I’m gonna get to fight the dinosaur in this one.”

“That’ll sell a lot of toys,” Alexis said, as she imagined her man laying out a monster with a single powerful blow. He’d already been captured performing all kinds of impossible heroics in the one-two blockbuster punch of Savage Man and Two-Fisted Heroes United. Nearly a two billion total gross between them, China be damned. At this point, Alexis was pretty sure audiences would lap up her husband doing anything in the sequel. The fangirl contingent certainly would. They posted incessantly about him with naked thirst, endlessly gif-ing their favorite glory shots of Rory Rao in a loincloth that was somehow more modest than his daily home wear.

Alexis wasn’t the jealous type. She loved knowing that the entire world was dying to be her.

“Clean this up,” she said casually. With a cheerful grunt, Rory cleared her plate, put away dinner, and loaded the dishwasher. Meanwhile, Alexis changed into yoga pants and a midriff-bearing crop top. She blew herself a kiss in their bedroom mirror. It pleased her to know that a fast-tracked-to-glory agent like her could still believably pass for a sorority girl when she bothered to dress the part.

The phone rang while she was checking herself out (Landlines were so last century, she knew, but this high up in the Hills it was good to have one in case of earthquakes). She heard the low rumble of Rory’s voice as he dutifully answered. Out of curiosity, she drifted back into the cavernous living room to hear his end of the conversation.

“Listen, I’m sorry, there’s been a bit of a mix-up here,” Rory was saying. “I’ve never heard of you in my life, lady. But I’m super glad you’re a fan. I’ll have my people send over something nice I signed, yeah? Cheers.” He hung up. “Bloody barmy, that one.”

“Who was it?” said Alexis.

“Some bird called Inge Helgasund.” There was something exquisite about how thoroughly he butchered the name. “Said she wanted to work with me. Know her?”

“Some small-timer from Europe,” Alexis said smoothly. “No one for you to be concerned about. You’re a superhero, remember?”

“Yeah…” He trailed off a little. But then a handsomely dopey grin crept back onto his rugged face. “Yeah, I am.”

She grinned lustfully at her perfect living sex toy. She jerked her head back the way she’d just come. “Carry me to our bed,” she instructed him. “And pleasure me.”

Marriage hadn’t dulled the spark of their lust. And though it had been years since either of them had dosed, Alexis found she still had the kind of stamina that would’ve put almost any other man in the hospital. But not her Rory. He would work singlemindedly every time to make her feel good, no matter how she wanted it. And tonight was no exception. For two glorious hours they rutted like animals, surrounded by utter luxury. It was the life that Alexis had always been owed. The life she’d earned herself, as the well-deserved return on all her investments. Just thinking about her undeniable success, and the successes still to come for her, was enough to make her cum.

Though Rory’s powder-enhanced cock certainly helped.

Usually, the two of them would doze after one of their marathon fuck sessions. But tonight she found herself oddly sleepless. So while her lunk of a husband spread-eagled on a bed that was practically the size of her old one-bedroom apartment, she wandered out onto her pool deck in a yellow silk g-string and a flowy robe so brief it could have believably been classified as a kind of scarf. Two pieces of slight, sheer fabric, and between the two of them, a price tag of nearly five grand. It felt positively indecent to use something that valuable just to show off her ass. But then again, her ass was worth far more than that now.

Her phone headset buzzed, and she answered it. She didn’t know who was calling, but not just anyone had this number. If they could reach her here, at this time of night, it was someone worth picking up for. “Go for Alexis,” she said curtly.

“Alexis Li, the young gun.”

Alexis hadn’t heard that voice in years. “Mr. Torrio,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“I felt bad about how I haven’t been keeping up with an old friend like you,” said the fixer. “So I thought I’d give you a call and congratulate you on all your success. Goes to show that you can achieve a lot...even when you ignore good advice.”

She had no patience for his self-satisfied sniping. “He hits his marks, says his lines, and eyefucks the camera to the tune of a billion dollars,” she snapped. “That’s all he needs to do.”

“Now, see, I don’t know if I can agree with that.”

“Oh?” Alexis said impatiently. “And why not?”

“I’m just saying a man like Rory Rao—especially the Rory Rao we’ve all come to love at the—could have other talents. Other uses.”

“Are you going to be this cryptic all night? I want to know if I have time to mix myself a drink.”

Torrio sighed. “I really thought you would’ve learned by now: conversation, Ms. Li. It’s the only way anything worthwhile gets done in this world. For instance, I was just having a very interesting one about Helena Kuznetsova. You, of course, know who Helena Kuznetsova is.”

The name rang zero bells for Alexis. “If I don’t, it’s because she’s not worth knowing.”

“Of course she is,” said Frank Torrio. “You just don’t know it because you Hollywood types think too small. You forget how big the world is, and you act like yours is the only game people are playing in it.”

“You’ve earned a lot of patience from me for your early confidence,” Alexis said. “But now I’m at a point where I need to hear a point.”

“Helena’s father is Arkady Kuznetsov, the man who basically owns every telecom operation allowed to operate in Russia. Sometimes, being old school buddies with the president goes a long way.” He chuckled. “Point is, Arkady loves his daughter, and he wants her to have anything her heart desires. So when she tells him that for her eighteenth birthday, what she wants is one night with the movie star of her dreams at her complete beck and call…”

“...He’d be willing to pay top ruble for it,” Alexis finished.

“He certainly would,” Torrio agreed sagely. “And what’s more, lately he’s been getting his head turned by the glamor of Hollywood. If he has a positive experience or two with a young, bankable star, I bet it wouldn’t be hard for him to get some funding together on an exciting new project.”

Alexis was already running the math in her head. Two-Fisted paid well, but their contracts were a bitch. They locked an actor in for years at a time, and forced him to hop on planes at the drop of a hat to go shoot a cameo in Phantom Mask 3 or whatever. Another set of movies, fully financed, and ones where Len Pearl wouldn’t be able to close his jaws around even a tiny slice of the pie…

She glanced at the adjoining hill, slightly taller than the one she stood on now. She thought about the view the owners of that handsome old manor got to enjoy every morning as the sun rose. She wondered how it compared to hers.

“Now, I know he’s your husband,” Torrio was saying. “But there’s business, and there’s Business. And this, Ms. Li, is capital-B Business. Do you understand?”

Alexis paced her pool deck, her six thousand-dollar platform heels clicking with each step. The cool night air fluttered through her sinfully scant robe. “Mr. Torrio,” she said. “Let me make myself perfectly clear. I understand you feel you have a right to come to me looking for something, given your early support of my career. But for you to seek this kind of extraordinary service, you need to know right now that Rory will do no such thing—”

“Ms. Li—”

“—for less than three million. Dollars,” she added, for clarity. Three million rubles amounted to about the combined gross of Inge Helgasund’s whole filmography.

Torrio paused, then chuckled again. “You have learned a thing or two.” He sounded delighted. “Tell you what. I’ll take that back to Arkady. Only I’ll start at five, and see where we land. Sound good?”

Alexis glanced back into the house. Through the big window, she could see the hulking, mouth-watering form of her loving and devoted husband fast asleep. She smiled at him before turning back to look out over the glowing city below. Her pretty little mouth stretched into a cunning grin.

“Try for six.”