Exposing Alix Read Online Free PDF Page B

sexy films. Films that took age-old stories and
imbued them with a living, breathing sensuality. Films that he’d been watching
and rewatching all week. Films that had been made by a woman who lived in total
seclusion and managed to hide her beauty behind a pair of big glasses and
dreadful clothes.
    Who was Alix Z? Sexless recluse or sensual Hollywood
powerhouse?
    He flipped through a number of scenes in the idle DVD,
stopping at one that looked interesting. A woman began to crawl on hands and
knees toward a man who lay, outstretched, on a silky red comforter. A lazy
smile played around the corners of his mouth, but there was nothing lazy about
the way he looked at her, passion oozing from him in visible waves. The camera
caught the golden skin of her back and the curve of her naked bottom, lingered
on the man’s face and torso, and then flashed to soft white cloths holding his
arms to the posts of a four-poster bed. Every shot was perfectly cropped to
expose just the right amount of skin to tantalize the viewer but not attract
the attention of the rating censor.
    “Is this my punishment?” the man on the screen murmured.
    The woman laughed. “This is only the beginning.”
    The plot of Candy Fever, Alix Z’s first film, was
simple. The heroine of the film made expensive chocolates, truffles, and other
sugary confections. Her treats were imbued with a sensual magic that could
renew old flames or start a new love. Yet she herself lived alone, unable to find
a man who could contain her sexual appetites and still satisfy her need for
love. She was eventually won over by a quiet neighbor who lived a double
life—nerdy software engineer by day and sexual dynamo by night.
    It was a trite story, full of clichés, yet there was a
powerful, heady sensuality about it, along with a blatant romanticism that
pulled in thousands of viewers. The veneer of art-house chic was
thin—clearly, it was a fairy tale from beginning to end—but it was
a fairy tale with lots of sex. Beautiful sex. Sex shot with a creativity and
imagination he’d never seen before.
    “Mmmmm.” The man closed his eyes as the woman trailed one
hand along his inner thigh. She crawled farther between his legs and then
dropped her head in a motion obscured by her long, dark hair.
    The man on the screen groaned.
    Ryker’s fingers tightened around his beer.
    “Do you like that, darling?”
    The man nodded, his response garbled. He pulled against
the cloths that bound him, but only in a halfhearted way.
    Ryker hit Fast Forward. He’d watched this movie once
already this week, and the scene he wanted was near the end, where the hero and
heroine finally declared their love. When the DVD landed on the same woman and
man on a beach, the man removing her bikini top while she reclined on a white
blanket, he stopped and hit Play.
    The soundtrack played something low and jazzy while the
camera moved to her face, her eyes drawing closed as pleasure creased her
mouth. The woman tangled her fingers in his hair, moaning softly.
    Ryker searched her expression for a hint of what Gunther
thought he needed to add to Salva’s Revenge. Yes, she looked aroused,
but that wasn’t hard to duplicate. Gunther couldn’t say he didn’t have that.
But more than aroused, she looked—he studied her face more closely, trying
to determine the exact nature of the emotion he saw there—she looked
ecstatic. But to his eyes, it was like watching a cartoon with human actors. It
was overdone. Trite. What he was trying to do—keep the emotion real, even
in the midst of sex—was far more difficult.
    He thought about the critics who had complained that the
sex scene in Garden of Eden came across as cold and unfeeling, just
because he refused to capitulate to the Hollywood version of romance. Was that
really what had kept him from winning the Oscar? If he could give them what
Alix Z delivered, would he finally make it to the top?
    “You’re so beautiful,” the man on the screen said,
lowering