Page 26 of The Money Shot

I nodded, gave her a quick smile, and headed to the elevator, feeling like I’d narrowly avoided disaster number one for the day.

Once I was safely back in the apartment, I headed straight to my room and shut the door behind me. Stripping off my shirt, I tossed it onto my chair. The thought of putting on sweatpants and calling it a day crossed my mind, but then I remembered my plans for the morning.

Instead of getting comfortable, I walked to my closet, pulled out the brown paper bags, and dumped them onto the bed. A strange assortment of underwear—way, way sexier than anything I’d normally wear—along with a couple of bottles of oil, a few new toys, and even a pair of fuzzy handcuffs I didn’t remember putting in my cart.

I sank onto the bed and picked up a pair of underwear. Lacy, black, and way too small. My face burned just looking at it.

“How am I going to do this?” I muttered, turning it over in my hands. This was stuff I’d never, ever be caught dead in. But this wasn’t about me. Not the normal me, anyway. This was for… well, Lucien Steel.

I shook my head, still not quite sure how to get from Liam Murphy to this fantasy alter ego. I stared at the underwear in my hand, trying to imagine what kind of guy would willingly put this on—and like it.

Lucien Steel… Lucien was a guy who’d love his body, enjoy showing it off, maybe even be wild about it. He’d be all smooth, confident moves and lazy smiles, right?

The problem was, I was as close to smooth and confident as a cat is to taking a bath.

A bright idea hit me: what if I approached this like an acting role? Lucien Steel could be a character I played—someone completely different from Liam Murphy, the guy who got sweaty palms just from making eye contact for too long.

I laid back on my bed, pulled out my phone, and typed “how to get into character” into the YouTube search bar. Maybe someone out there had a quick trick to go from awkward to whatever Lucien Steel was supposed to be.

The first video was a woman with a British accent and an intense gaze, her background filled with awards and posters. “To fully embody another character,” she said, staring directly at the camera, “you must find the core of their essence. Their thoughts, their passions… what drives them to live the way they do.”

The way she said it made it sound like I’d have to peel off my personality like an old coat and just slip on Lucien’s. But this Lucien guy? I didn’t even know what he thought about, let alone what drove him. I knew about his underwear choices and what his face was supposed to look like in photos—that was about it.

I kept watching, hoping something would click. But her instructions kept getting more elaborate. “Feel the world as they do, inhabit their body, breathe as if you were them.” She was already on some other topic, about becoming one with the character, and I was officially lost.

In frustration, I tossed my phone across the room. It sailed right into my laundry hamper. The video was still playing, the muffled voice now rambling about emotional states from inside a pile of dirty underwear.

I looked around my room, which was still a mess from the police raid. My dresser drawers were half-open, clothes spilling out of them, and there was dust on the desk where I hadn’t wiped it down. If I was going to take any pictures, there was no way I could do it in this mess.

I sprang out of bed and started grabbing clothes off the floor. Then I folded the random clean ones and stacked them in a hurry, thinking all the while: there’s no way I can really do this. No way I can put on sexy underwear and take pictures like I’m some free spirit who loves showing off.

I glimpsed myself in the mirror and pictured myself fumbling through poses, looking as natural as a mannequin in the discount aisle. My skin was prickling with embarrassment just thinking about it.

But as I dusted off the desk and straightened the bedspread, a reminder crept in. This wasn’t some fun little experiment; this was rent money, food money. I didn’t exactly have the luxury of just not doing it. Like it or not, I had to become Lucien Steel—and fast.

With my room finally clean, I stood in the middle of it, heart racing as I took a long breath and looked at the bags on the bed. Time to get my head in the game.

With a sigh, I grabbed my phone from the laundry hamper, half-wondering if I should just toss it right back in there and call it a day. But if I was going to become Lucien, I needed… examples. Models. And unfortunately, that meant diving into Instagram thirst traps.

I stretched out on my bed, thumb hovering over the search bar as I typed in a few random tags. Before long, I stumbled on an account that caught my eye: MrBigDck. The guy wasn’t exactly GQ material; he was a little stocky, maybe a few pounds heavier than what’s supposed to be “hot,” but he had this confidence about him that practically radiated through thescreen. The guy sprawled out on a couch in nothing but a jockstrap, grinning with a “I don’t care if you think this is sexy” attitude. I do. And I’ll admit it—that was hot.

It wasn’t that he was some perfect male specimen; the guy was comfortable, relaxed, fully owning the body he had. I scrolled a bit more, taking in how he looked in every pose. His shoulders relaxed, his grin totally carefree. There was a part of me that wanted to feel that free, to let go of the constant worry that every minor flaw was on full display. And then… I scrolled one more picture down, and it hit me why he’d chosen the name MrBigDck.

“Shit.”

It looked like he’d stuffed a grapefruit down his jockstrap. I mean, the thing was practically its own feature. Glancing down, I tugged at the waistband of my underwear, and couldn’t help the sigh that slipped out. I wasn’t exactly Mr. Big Anything. Not that anyone had ever complained. Even so, the comparison was… well; it was enough to make a guy rethink his career pivot.

A chill of anxiety crawled up my spine. What if people laugh at me? The thought froze me solid. What if this whole idea was setting me up to be the joke of some group chat? Is my… am I… big enough?

I shook the thought off, giving myself a mental slap.

Come on, Liam. It’s like how women are judged for their bra size. This is such BS.

The size thing was a complete non-issue—I’d never felt like anything was lacking before, so why let it get to me now? I kept scrolling, reminding myself that this was all for research, and eventually landed on another profile that looked… almost familiar.

The guy had a lean build, like me, and this confidence that wasn’t exactly in your face but still came through. One shot showed him sprawled on a bed in a speedo, a faint smirk on hisface, and—okay, it impressed me. If this guy could pull it off, why couldn’t I?

I scrolled down to find his FantasyFans link and, taking a deep breath, clicked on it. Apparently, he went by OnlyTopMan there. In the interest of research—and purely research—I signed up.