by Vi Keeland
I can see this playing out if I do nothing—I’ll spend it rewinding this moment and putting it on repeat all night long. But I don’t want to go home with only a memory to feed my body, and I can’t stand the thought of this night ending too soon.
I make my choice. There’s only one choice. “Do you want to share?” I ask, praying he lives in the same direction.
“You’re downtown, right?”
I nod.
“Me too.”
Then he closes my door, and I don’t see him as he walks behind the car so I swivel around, watching through the tinted window as he reaches the other side quickly and opens the door, his dark eyes pinning me and sending a rush of heat down my chest and straight to my very core. He never takes his eyes from me as he closes the door, and hits a button on the console that starts to close the tinted privacy partition, telling the driver “Just drive.”
Like it’s a command.
Then he turns and looks at me, and for a long beat we are still, the air between us crackling with the anticipation of what’s next. But I am overcome with want and I can’t hold back, nor can he. As the engine starts, I unbuckle myself just as his hands are on my face, and he sucks in a breath at the first touch. Then, a low growl escapes his throat as his lips find mine with a hungry kiss that ignites something in me.
I grab his shirt, loving the feel of his strong, firm chest. My fingers fist the fabric as I pull him closer, but he doesn’t need any direction from me. Within seconds, his hands are in my hair, and his lips are consuming me, his tongue tangling with mine, and I’m about to burst from all this sensation—from the way he smells so masculine and strong, to the delicious scratch of his stubble, to the calloused fingers that tug on my hair.
He tastes so fucking good that I don’t want to stop. Instead, I want to be devoured by him. I want him—no, I need him, I desperately need him—to do something about this onslaught of desire he’s started in my body that’s become a delicious and needy ache between my legs.
“I want to be under you,” I say, and I’m not even sure how I’m forming words, let alone coherent thoughts, but all I know is what my body is demanding. I need the weight of him on me. I need to feel him pressed hard against me. I take off my jacket quickly, tossing it to the floor of the car, and he does the same. Then I slide down on the leather so I’m lying flat, and he moves with me, hovering over me, braced on his strong arms.
“Who needs jackets anyway?” he says with a wry smile, then returns his lips to my neck, trailing kisses across my skin that make me hot and wet and hungry.
“Jill,” he says, and he’s no longer playful. He’s intense and demanding, as he puts a hand on my chin and makes me look at him. “Tell me you think about me.”
I don’t answer. I just breathe out hard.
“Tell me I get you off when you’re all alone.”
I bite my lip, and my nipples harden from the way he’s speaking to me. I want his hands all over me. I want his hands between my legs. I wriggle under him, arching my hips against him. He moves away, so I can’t feel his erection against me, even though I’m dying to.
“Tell me you picture me doing all sorts of things to you.” His hands roam down my chest, and he cups my breasts through my sweater. I nearly cry out, it feels so good, sparks of sheer pleasure rippling through my entire being. “You do, don’t you?”
“Why are you asking me?” I say in a tortured voice, because he’s tormenting me with his fantastic hands, pinching my nipple between his thumb and index finger and it’s rough, but it makes me feel alive. It makes this moment feel real. I want to feel every single thing right now. Every real feeling.
“Because. I don’t want you thinking of someone else when I make you come tonight.”
“Oh God,” I gasp, and with a quickness that surprises him, I grab his ass and pull him down to me so I can feel what I’ve done to him, so I can know I’m not the only one tumbling towards the edge.
He gives me a daring look, as if he’s impressed that I snagged the upper hand for one delirious moment, but then I don’t care about this battle of wills because he’s so hard and it’s all because of me, and I can’t get enough of the friction. I tug him closer, so I can feel the steel length of him against my thigh.
Before I know it, his hands are up my shirt, and he’s unhooking my bra. He squeezes my breasts, and I swear it’s like wildfire racing through me from his slightest touch. I buck my hips against him. “Please,” I say.
“Please what?”
“Do something,” I beg.
“Tell me I’m the only one you’re going to think of when you come undone in a few minutes,” he says, his voice rough against my ear.
“Isn’t it fucking obvious?” I say through gritted teeth, and my frustrated response earns me the most wicked grin from Davis. I have no idea what he’s going to do to me, but I don’t care. I can’t stand how long it’s been since someone’s hands have been on me. I want to be touched so badly, I can feel it deep in my bones, this need.
I need him.
“Say it.”
“I think of you. I think of you making me come. There. Are you happy?”
“As happy as you’re going to be in a few minutes.”
Davis
I tug off her sweater as she shrugs out of her bra, then I stop for one brief moment to savour the view. She’s topless, her arms over her head, all beautiful curves and gorgeous flesh, and I want to spend hours on her body, touching and tasting her neck, and her breasts, and her absolutely enticing belly. But she’s already panting, and I can feel the heat between her legs, even through the denim of her jeans.
I press hard against her with my hand, and she draws in a breath.
“Oh God,” she says, and her voice is rising. She pushes against me, rubbing against my hand in a desperate frenzy. It suddenly hits me that she’s already close. That I could slide my hand inside her jeans, feel her wetness and bring her to release within a few seconds.
Her face is strained, and her skin is so fevered, but her eyes are closed. “Please. Please make me come. Please,” she says and that last word borders on a cry. She’s arching her hips, and she’s fumbling at the button of her jeans. But I need to know she’s with me before I go further. I press both my hands gently, but firmly, on top of hers, quieting her moves.
“Jill. Look at me.”
She opens her eyes. They are wild with desire.
“I’ve got this. I’ll get you there.”
She nods and drops her hands to the leather, letting me take care of her. Her breath is coming fast, but she stays still. I unbutton her jeans, unzip them and slide my hand between her legs. She is wet through her black lace underwear, and there is nothing that feels better than this, than her being so ready for me, so turned on that the cotton panel of her underwear is damp with her heat. My dick is straining against the fly in my jeans, and I want so badly to be inside her, but this isn’t about me right now, or even about me tonight. This is about whatever desperate need is winding up her body.
“You are so wet and hot. This is all for me, isn’t it?”
She gasps out a sound, as I play with the waistband on her underwear. She starts to thrust her hips up, and I shake my head several times. “No. I told you. I’ll take care of this.”
My fingers inch their way between her legs and I slide them once across her.
“Fuck, Jill,” I hiss out. Then I bring my fingers to my lips and lick off her taste.
“Please,” she says, and she’s crossed some kind of line, she’s wracked with the overwhelming need to come right now, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than be the one to satisfy her. I pull her jeans down past her hips, then tug them off. My hand is back in the promised land, and she’s so deliriously wet that I plan to make a shrine to her for being the hottest woman I’ve ever touched, and the neediest, and that’s fine with me, because this is what I want. Her. This woman. Screw the past. Screw my rules. I don’t care about anything right now but making her
come. I want her to be in some kind of never ending bliss, so I slide two fingers across her, and she moans greedily, as if this kind of touch is the thing she craves most in the entire world.
“God, it feels so good,” she says in a ragged whisper.
I’ve barely given her anything, but she’s already near the edge, so I rub the pad of my thumb where she wants me most, and soon she’s thrusting her hips, and she’s no longer whispering, she’s screaming out, “Oh, God, oh God, oh God.”
That’s it. That’s all it takes, as she comes, her entire body rocking against my hand, hips bucking hard and wildly. She grabs at me, pulling my face to her and kissing me, but she’s so far gone from the orgasm rocketing through her body that it’s a supremely sloppy, though intensely sexy kiss, because I made her come in seconds flat and she’s still crying out.
Her voice can really carry, and the sound of her coming echoes around the car, but the driver doesn’t care. Her whole body is trembling as she starts to come down, and soon she opens her eyes, and breathes out hard and looks at me. Her eyes are dreamy now, and she has a glow that makes her even more beautiful. I want to see that look again and again. I want to be the only one who makes her feel this way.
“That was…” she trails off.
“That was what?” I ask, because even though I’m pretty certain she enjoyed herself immensely, I’m a guy. I still like hearing it from the source.
“That was the fir—” then she stops. “That was amazing.” And she pulls me in for another kiss that makes my brain go fuzzy from the heady taste of her lips, and the way she smells even sexier after she’s just come. I can barely process what she was going to say, and I’m not sure it even matters right now. I nip at her bottom lip, and then break the kiss.
She reaches for me, trying to touch my cock. But I stop her hand.
“What? Why can’t I touch you?”
“Because this was about you.”
“But I want to.”
“Yeah, and trust me, there’s nothing I want more than for you to know what you do to me. But I already know that you’re the only one I’m thinking of. And I’m not going to let you touch me until I’m certain that I’m the only one you want to be touching.”
She gives me a questioning look, but there’s no bending here. I’ve already chucked my one hard and fast rule, and now I’m not only caught up with an actress, I’m caught up with an actress who’s told me she’s in love with someone else. Double the obstacles. So I answer her by pulling her close and kissing her forehead softly. “You know it’s true. But you also know that he’s not the one who made you come tonight. I am. So the next time you’re alone, I want you to picture what I did to you. And then I want you to imagine all the things I’m going to do with my tongue when I taste you for the first time. And then you’re going to tell me if it’s as good as you imagined when I go down on you sometime soon. Sometime very, very soon. Because you taste fantastic.”
She shudders, bites her lip once then breathes out, hard. “Yes.”
Then I push her hair away from her ear. “Do you want to come again now?”
She nods against my chest, then whispers, “I don’t know if I can though.”
“You can,” I tell her, and this time I pull off her underwear and she’s completely naked and beautiful as I slide two fingers inside her and she rocks against me, coming apart once more.
Chapter 13
Davis
Clay holds the punching bag, and I slam a cross into it. Then I administer my best hook. Jab, cross, hook—I repeat this combination, grunting hard, putting everything I have into each punch. I feel the burn in my stomach and shoulders from the exertion. I end with a final flurry of hits and cap it off with a punishing uppercut, feeling simultaneously sated and charged.
I finish, and Clay pats the bag once, then claps me on the back. I breathe out hard, panting.
“Nice,” he says. “Picture anyone in particular this time?”
“Me? No. Never.”
I don’t think of anyone when I hit. I don’t need to picture someone’s face to hit like this. There’s a store of coiled-up tension already inside me from working so much, so hard, so long. This is simply the release.
“C’mon. Not your least favorite executive producer in the world? Don was a prick to deal with. Tried to pull all sorts of shit with your contract.”
“I know. He’s still a fucking prick. Showed up the other day at rehearsals and told me to go easy on Alexis.”
“I bet you wanted to hit him then,” Clay says, half joking, half knowing me.
I pretend to consider that, as I unwrap my hands. “Hmm. You know, maybe I did. You got me there, Clay.”
We walk over to the water fountain at the boxing gym where we work out. It’s a Tribeca gym, so it’s full of men like us: guys who spend their days working in the shade, who wear white collars and ties, who make deals for a living. But still, it’s more my speed than one of those 24-hour gyms with the cardio machines. I’d rather lift weights, and punch the life out of a bag to burn off the day. It’s an old habit, and one I don’t plan on letting up. One I took up when I was younger, and one that helped me deal after I lost my parents.
Everyone grieves differently. My way through the pain was to punch it out. It worked, and I made it through taking care of my sister and sending her off to college. There wasn’t anyone else to look after us; it was just me.
I take a long cold, swallow of water. I grab my gym bag, pull on a sweatshirt and head out with Clay, the cold January air the perfect end to a workout.
“So is the show coming together?”
Clay isn’t only my closest friend from college. He’s my lawyer now too, the best damn entertainment lawyer in the business. He handled all the negotiations with Don Kraftig, once Stillman chose him to produce.
“Going to be the best production to hit New York in years.”
“That’s what I love most about you. Your humble nature.”
“Damn straight. And you?”
“Squeezing money out of all sorts of producers for all sorts of clients like there’s no tomorrow. I’m wrapping up a deal for one of my show runners for a new network sitcom this week. His fucking agent was a loser. He had to can the agent, so I did it all.”
“Yeah. You’re a modest one, too. I’m sure you’re hating doing all that work when you see your hours add up.”
“One of the producers even sent me extra tickets to the Broadway Cares auction in a few weeks because he was so damn happy the contract was finally done. They want you to say a few words about the fundraising efforts Crash the Moon will be doing. You want some extra tickets too? To take Michelle?”
“Sure. She loves going to all those galas.”
“Listen,” he begins, drawing in a breath. “I heard from Madeline’s agent.”
My shoulders tense. That’s a name I didn’t expect to hear this morning. “Yeah?”
“Sounds like she’s coming to New York soon,” he says as a cab squeals to a stop at a nearby light.
“That so?” I say, trying to keep it cool.
“Hasn’t been announced, but her agent just signed her for the lead in the new Steve Martin play that starts rehearsals in a few weeks,” he continues as we walk past early morning runners, focused looks on their faces. “Anyway, I thought you might want to know since the play will be at the Belasco.”
The Belasco Theater. One block away. I sigh heavily, but steel myself. Madeline is the past. I won’t go there again. “I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”
“Hey, Davis? Have you met my friend Davis? He was the guy who was wrecked by this gal in San Diego three years ago.”
But I’m not wrecked anymore. Not by her at least. She’s in the rearview mirror, and maybe that’s why I’ve been loosening my rules.
“Would it make you feel better if you procured her rehearsal schedule and emailed it to me so I could plan my day around it?” I joke. “I’m sure you could even get my sister involved and the two o
f you can devise new routes to work for me.”
“Just looking out for you, man. Someone has to.”
“I’ll catch you later,” I say, as we reach my loft.
* * *
Ava chases Paolo and grabs him before he leaves the classroom.
“I see you’ve changed your mind,” Paolo says with a daring look in his eye, challenging Ava to make the next move.
“I need you, Professor Paolo.”
“Don’t call me professor.”
“What should I call you?”
“Don’t call me. Kiss me.”
Then she cups his cheeks in her hands and kisses him, a long, slow, wet kiss.
It’s a fantastic kiss, full of believable smoulder and so much longing. But something’s missing.
Alexis and Patrick pull apart, break character and look at me expectantly, awaiting notes. This is the tenth time they’ve worked on this scene today.
“It’s still not coming together,” I say.
Alexis sighs audibly. “Well, I flossed and brushed beforehand, so it can’t possibly be my fault.”
“I would never think it your fault that a kiss isn’t working,” I say, to placate her.
“So what’s the problem them?”
“I’m trying to figure it out.”
“I’ve never had to work this hard on a kissing scene. The audiences all love my kissing scenes,” she continues in a haughty voice.
“Of course they do,” I say, and I hate that she’s right. But she is. She’s beloved by the fans. They have no clue what she’s like to work with. All they know is she’s a force of nature on stage and she possesses far too much of that most precious resource—charisma.
“Are we supposed to kiss all day?”
“Alexis, you make it sound like it’s such an awful task,” Patrick huffs, and I half want to commend the guy. He rarely has a sharp word for anyone, but I’m glad he’s rising to the occasion here.
I wave them off. “It’s not the two of you,” I say as I pace around the studio, trying to work out what’s missing. I rewind briefly to Jill’s audition when she performed this scene perfectly. What was so different about it? I let myself picture her grabbing Patrick, kissing him like her life depended on it. Even though there’s a weed twisting in my gut at the recall for so many reasons—especially since that kiss was half real now that I know she’s in love with him—the kiss isn’t the problem.