Bad Decisions Good Regrets (Social Experiment #2) Read online

  Bad Decisions Good Regrets

  Social Experiment Series

  Sherelle Green

  Copyright © 2019 Sherelle Green

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, incidents and characters are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to business establishments and events is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be reproduced or copied without written permission of the author Sherelle Green.

  Editor: There for You Editing

  Cover Design: Sherelle Green

  Manufactured and Printed in the United States of America

  Huge thanks to my Book Euphoria sisters who are always there to help me when I need an extra push!

  Special thanks to my lit sis, Anita, for taking all my calls and messages about this book, lol. I appreciate you!

  To my husband, Henry, for listening to me rattle on about this series every day, yet, continued to hype me up!

  To my sis, Nikki, for coming up with this great title and my girl, Kay, for brainstorming with me about the Hood brothers!

  Dear Reader

  For those of you who read Single AF, I hope you enjoyed the kick off to this series! In Bad Decisions Good Regrets, you’ll meet Ivy and reconnect with Theseus Hood of the Hood brothers who you met if you read The Contingency Bid (Distinguished Gentlemen Series).

  I’m a fan of missed opportunity love stories, yet, I haven’t written one in a while! I hope you enjoy the journey of Ivy and Theseus while reading the second installment in the Social Experiment Series!

  Bad Decisions Good Regrets

  IVY

  It all started off as a social experiment. A way for me to do something outside my comfort zone. The problem is, I never expected to run into him. The beautifully tatted man who oozes masculinity and sex appeal. The first time I met Theseus Hood, our chemistry was instant. Yet, I’ve never known what to do with a man like him. The dark, dangerous and way out of my league kind. Unfortunately, I’m in way over my head and can’t think of a better person to help me with my experiment than Theseus. If only I could find the courage to ask him.

  THESEUS

  I fell for Ivy Ashwood the day I met her years ago. Now, she’s in my tattoo shop looking more delicious than the last time I saw her. I can always sense when she’s overthinking something, but she doesn’t want to ask for my help. Lucky for her, I consider myself an Ivy-expert. I’ve never been good enough for her, but there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for this woman. So, when it comes to helping her out, the plan is simple … Convince her that I’m the only man for the job and finally make the move I should have made years ago.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Would Love To Hear From You!

  Single AF

  Excerpt: Single AF

  About the Author

  Also by Sherelle Green

  Chapter 1

  “If it isn’t draped in diamonds and laced in fourteen karat gold, keep it in your pants.”

  ~ Layla ~

  IVY

  At one point of my life, I remember praying to the sex gods that I’d be able to get dicked down so good, I wouldn’t be able to walk the next day. I’d craved some male attention. I’d watched Power when it first released—my all-time favorite television show—and had dreams about Omari Hardwick taking me on my kitchen counter.

  Sex dreams are far from my norm, but I’d been lonely when I’d initiated that prayer. It was right after I’d heard a few women chatting in the laundromat about livening up their sex lives and it was at that moment that I realized I didn’t have one. At least not one that compared to what they were discussing.

  A few years ago, you never could have told me that I’d be okay if I never saw another dick again. I never would have thought that I would be more used to a man grabbing his junk than grabbing my hand. Yet, here I was, sitting at a conference table in some random suite I’d rented in downtown Chicago, finally acknowledging that I was at my breaking point.

  “Do you like it, baby? You like the way this dick looks?”

  Eww. Case in point, the creepy-voice sounding, wearing too much damn baby oil, wanna be pretty boy currently standing in front of me. “Whatever it is that you think I’ll like, I won’t.” The way he was licking his lips, while rubbing his hands over his abs and swinging his dick in circles as if we were at a freaking rodeo, made me nauseous.

  Rolling my eyes at the clueless muscle man, I inwardly vomited at the sound of yet another asshole who didn't understand to keep his dick in his pants when auditioning. “Please, stop doing that and do the assigned poses that I instructed you to do earlier.”

  At my words, he started twirling his penis even more. It looked stupid. He looked stupid. And unfortunately, I’d seen this mess way too many times in my thirty years.

  “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this shit,” my friend Layla murmured, a shell-shocked expression on her face. “I swear, if you weren’t my girl, I’d walk out of this room and not give a damn about the money.”

  “I feel you,” I said with a laugh. The first one since auditions had started.

  I didn’t blame her for feeling that way. In fact, I felt the same way. On some days, I spent more time dodging protruding penises than actual work. But this was the price I paid for working at Black Lush Entertainment, one of the biggest adult entertainment agencies in the country.

  Right out of college, I’d landed a one-of-a-kind internship working for the head of recruitment under the most hard-working woman I’d ever met. She showed me the ropes, and after a few years, I’d moved up and was now a regional location and recruitment manager.

  However, before my promotion, I’d only been doing executive assistant type work. Meaning, I had no idea how insane the job really was until I had to head to my first city and manage an entire pornographic film from start to finish. Instead of talking about the latest Starbucks flavored drink, I was chatting about the perfect deep-throating method to be used for a particular scene I was shooting. Instead of working on the itinerary for bi-weekly meetings, I was prepping my team for our bi-curious segment. Instead of spending my day compiling data and reporting the results to the team, I was studying the male and female anatomy as I auditioned people for some of our top clients in the adult business.

  I covered the entire Midwest and then some. The shit was stressful. In the past two years, our company had changed the entire way we do business—therefore, making us the busiest and most sought after adult entertainment agency in the country. We didn’t just book the talent. We found the location, set up the scene and set, and produced and directed the entire video. When a client booked with Black Lush, they were guaranteed to get a one-of-a-kind product. Our package was all-inclusive. You set the budget. We make the fantasy happen. In other words, we did every damn thing you could think of to bring a high-class adult film to life.

  Some of my girlfriends from my Detroit hometown would think I’d have my pick of the crop. But oh how wrong they were. So fucking wrong. I may have felt like I’d mastered men when it came to setting the vision for my clients, but the truth was, even being surrounded in a world of dick and dildos, I was horny
as hell and hadn’t had a date in years.

  Even my girl, Layla, who was still turning up her nose at muscle-man since he was now doing a full-fledged my-dick-is-still-out dance that I recognized from Magic Mike XXL, couldn’t believe that I’d stopped dating altogether after diving fully into my career.

  It wasn’t just the sex that I missed, since men had to make it to the eighth date for me to even think about having sex with them. It was the act of dating. A man picking you up, paying for a nice dinner, taking you to a great movie, then you end the night with a romantic stroll downtown in whatever city you’re at. That’s what I missed. The wining. The dining. The courting.

  I’m a hopeless romantic and always have been. I lived for that fairytale ending. I believed that there was a such thing as Prince Charming. I believed what I read in romance novels and watched on cheesy movies and having my dating rule ensured that I didn’t make many bad decisions. I saw what bad decisions did to people and I wasn’t trying to be “those” people.

  But I also didn’t believe in living like a nun. And I didn’t know why the thought of actually falling in love, and not just the idea of love, sometimes made my skin crawl. True, not many men made it to the eight-date mark, but at thirty years old, one thing was becoming very clear to me … I needed to figure out why I was still single. And I had to make time to date even if that meant changing my Facebook status to “Open for business. Only real men need apply.”

  Granted, that status may give men the wrong impression, but I was tired of watching my life pass me by. I worked too damn much and in my line of work, I didn’t just meet porn stars, I met some of the top adult businessmen in the world. These men oozed money and a good time. Of course, there were the fuckboys who had sex with anything in a skirt and discarded women quicker than you could blink an eye. Then there were the in-the-closet dudes who acted like they were into women in hopes of getting more business, but in reality, they spent more time checking out the men.

  However, surprisingly, there were quite a few who were class-A marriage material. Those who had been married for years, even decades, and had wives who not only understood the business, they respected it.

  I’d gone on a few non-committal dates with men I’d met in the industry, but nothing had worked out for a second date. Especially since I constantly seemed to choose the wrong men and was thinking more about what I had to do the next day on dates, rather that listen to them talk about topics that didn’t interest me. While most people were spending their Friday night watching Netflix and chilling, I was usually at work until well past midnight. While some couples spent Saturday night at dinner and a movie, I was usually taking the little free time I had to binge watch a television series while polishing off my favorite bottle of red wine.

  I was barely in the same state for long, so building any type of serious relationship with a man wasn’t likely to happen unless he worked on my production team and I wasn’t going down that route. I didn’t shit where I worked. Point blank, period. I’d watched too many co-workers go through that type of heartache, so I wasn’t going down that road.

  Now that the holidays were over and it was a brand new year, I’d decided that this year would be the one that I do something different and outside of my comfort zone. This year would be the one that I stopped making excuses. This year, it was time for a new Ivy Ashwood, and although we were already well into the year, I refused to let myself fail at my personal mission.

  However, I couldn’t even think with Mr. Swing-a-Ling taking up space and time for a useless audition since there was no way we were hiring him. “Sir, we want to thank you for coming in, but this audition is over.”

  He stopped mid dance move, then began shimming toward me and Layla.

  “Stop right there,” I said, raising one hand and pushing up my fashionable yellow glasses with the other. “If you swing that thing at us one more time, I’m stabbing it with the heel of my stiletto.”

  “Ouch,” he groaned, cupping his junk. “Oh come on, sweetheart, it’s my best asset. Don’t you want to see what I can do on camera?”

  Layla cringed beside me, neither of us impressed by the piercing he had on his penis either. It didn’t even look like the type of dick a man would want to flaunt. Clearly, Layla agreed with me when she whispered, “If that’s his best asset, I think he betta do some soul searching.”

  I laughed before telling the man, “Nah, we’ve seen enough. Put it away. Now.”

  Smirking, he twisted his hips as if he was going to thrust it even more, but before he could even twist his hips, I warned, “I will call security to escort you out if you don’t tread carefully with whatever it is you’re about to do next.”

  Reluctantly, he tucked it back into his pants, cursing under his breath as if he didn’t just make us sit through twenty minutes of pure penis torture.

  Before he left, I tried to hold onto one shrewd of professionalism and assured him that we would call if he got the position, which was a resounding hell no. Because, let’s be for real, no man who swung his dick around in circles during an audition was good enough to get the part with any agency, let alone one of our caliber.

  “So this day was a bust,” Layla said. “I don’t see how you do this shit all the time.”

  “It’s not for the weak at heart, “ I told her, standing to gather the portfolios of the handful of decent men we’d auditioned today. “Or those easily offended.”

  “You can say that again. I had to check myself several times because I was sure I was giving all the face after the first few men auditioned. I hope it wasn’t like this when the women auditioned yesterday.”

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a woman come into an audition and completely strip down naked as if that’s all we want to see, but that doesn’t happen often. Most of the time, I have to remind myself that we’re different and more professional than other adult entertainment businesses, therefore, most entertainers aren’t used to how we do things.”

  Layla stood and helped me collect the reject pile. “After today, will we have to have more auditions this week?”

  “Yeah, but I know you got to go to work sometime.” Layla was an amazing interior designer, but back in college, she used to work on theater sets all of the time. So, when I heard I was gonna be working on a project in Chicago—where she currently lived—I extended her an offer to be my set designer. She didn’t need the cash like she said she did. I knew my bestie made some good ass money. But she wanted to work with me, and I was dying to introduce her to my world. Why not enjoy being in charge if you didn’t get to hire your friends for some projects?

  “Girl, I told you I was on a much-needed vacation for the next two weeks. I have to pop into the office every now and then, but I’m at your disposal as long as you pay me these coins.”

  I laughed as I replied, “I got you, sis.” I locked up the suite we’d reserved through Airbnb for the audition and left the key at the front desk as instructed. We made sure our jackets were zipped all of the way since Chicago weather was nothing to mess with, even in the spring.

  Layla’s condo was in South Loop and was only a five-minute walk away, but my mind was already thinking about which day this week I could spare some time to get additional male entertainers in for auditions.

  “I think you told me, but how long are you staying in Chicago?” Layla asked.

  “For at least a couple weeks. I only have a month to get this video done, which is less time than I’d like considering I still have to nail down the talent, find a location, and get the entire thing recorded and edited by the client’s deadline.”

  “That’s a quick turnaround.”

  “I know, right!” I dug in my purse for my iPhone. “Most of the scenes for this video need to take place in a tattoo shop, so my intern sent me a list of locations to check out.”

  Layla glanced my way with a pouty face. “Damn, you really will be busy the entire time you’re here. I was hoping we could try out somethi
ng together.”

  “I’ll have a few hours here and there,” I said. “What did you have in mind?”

  I knew I wasn’t going to like her response when she flashed me a sly smile and raised her eyebrows, which usually meant we were about to get into some bullshit together. Always fun, but often illegal because Layla didn’t know how to half-ass anything.

  “I don’t like that look.”

  “Just hear me out,” she said, slightly unzipping her coat as if it wasn’t drizzling outside. “I heard about this new thing that I want us to sign up for. And the source is a really good friend of mine. It’s at least a two-week commitment, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s unconventional as hell, but I think we’d be great for it.”

  Oh lord. I knew that tone in her voice. “Layla, you may be positioning this like you’re asking me to do whatever it is you want me to do, but, girl, I know your ass. You already signed me up, didn’t you?”

  Squealing, she clapped her hands. “Yes, I signed us up and we were picked for the next round because, like I said, I got connections. I’m so excited for us to do this! Our first informational meeting is in two days. We’ll get $5,000 for completing it if we’re chosen. The catch is, we can’t tell anyone we’re doing the YouTube series until our episodes air.”

  I stopped walking immediately. “Did you just say YouTube series? As in, if chosen, we will be videotaped?”

  “Not really,” she replied with a sheepish grin. “We’d have to video tape ourselves selfie style.”