Chapter 12
Jill
During a break in rehearsal the next day, Shelby pulls me into the group dressing room that all the chorus gals share.
“What is it?”
She pats the chair in front of the mirror. “Sit. Time for your hair stylist to work her magic.”
“Braid me, baby,” I joke.
“No. I changed my mind. You need a French twist. Something ridiculously alluring.”
“Does that mean a French braid is too innocent?”
“It means right now I’m in the mood for getting my fingers into a twist,” she says and bumps me with her hip then pushes my shoulders, forcing me to sit down.
“Do your thing then, Miss Broadway Stylist.”
Grabbing a water bottle from the dressing room table, she sprays a bit of mist to smooth out my hair, humming along to the number we worked on earlier today. I watch in the mirror as her fingers weave and thread, twisting and tightening until minutes later, she declares “Ta da.”
She hands me a mirror, and swivels me around. I hold it up and check out the back of my head. A classy, sophisticated twist. Like something a movie star would wear on the red carpet. I hop off the chair, and kneel down in front of her, bowing. “I’m not worthy. I’m not worthy,” I tease.
“Oh, shut up. It was fun. And besides, that gets my desire to style out of my system for the day.”
“You can use me anytime,” I say and we return for another round of dancing and singing and working with the music director, while our director spends the afternoon with the stars. Then, everyone leaves and it’s only Davis and me.
* * *
We are alone in the rehearsal studio.
“Your hair is up.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t have it up earlier today,” he says matter-of-factly, as if he’s merely reporting on his day’s observations. But his observations are about me. Self-consciously, I bring my hand to my neck, nervously brushing away a few loose tendrils. “I can take it down.”
He shakes his head. “Leave it up. It works for Ava.”
“For Ava?”
He nods. “Yes. For Ava,” he says, emphatically, making it clear that this rehearsal is all about Ava. That’s 100 percent fine with me.
He takes a seat at the piano. I’ve never seen him play before. “You play?”
He nods. “I’m not a virtuoso. But I play enough.”
He plays a bit of Für Elise. Perfectly. “Not well, my ass,” I say, because I do far better with Davis when I can tease him, like that first night at Sardi’s. If we’re going to get past our awkwardness, I’ll need to treat him like a buddy, like Reeve. I have plenty of guy friends, and there’s no reason he can’t move into the friend zone. Because when he’s all serious and intense, I feel as if I’m walking on unsteady ground. “I bet you speak French too. And you’re probably a pilot as well.”
He laughs once. “No. I don’t speak French. Nor do I claim a seat in the cockpit when I fly.”
He seems to enjoy saying the word cockpit. Fine, he seems to enjoy saying one syllable in the word cockpit. He watches me from his post on the bench, his dark blue eyes like magnets. He stares hard but with a playful glint, as if he expects me to flinch first. I swallow and look away.
“Nor am I a gourmet cook,” he adds. “In fact, I can’t cook at all. I prefer takeout. I also don’t own a yacht, or know how to work a yacht, or a schooner, or any type of sailboat.”
He’s playing me now. I know he likes to dress people down, to put actors in their place. Part of me thinks he may be berating me for talking back or sassing. But yet, he’s never treated me badly. Still, I go with my gut and keep up the banter since it’s easier than the alternative. “But do you like opera?”
He shoots me the barest of grins, then coaxes out a quick few notes on the piano. I recognize the music. It’s from Carmen by Bizet.
“Habanera. Love is a rebellious bird,” I say, tossing back the common name for the aria he’s playing. “Though, I’m not an opera fan.”
“I don’t care for opera either. I like Carmen though, and the way she moves. I’d like this song better if it were played like this.”
I lean on the piano and watch his hands move over the keys. He has a scar across his right hand, a long jagged worm from the wrist all the way to his ring finger. Like someone cut him. Or he cut someone. I wonder if he even tells anyone how it happened. If he’d tell me if I asked.
His fingers move quickly on the keys, and he’s turned Carmen’s aria into a rock tune, changing the speed, mixing it up, so it’s got this low, sexy beat that sounds like the song he was playing in his office a month ago.
The song I told him I loved. The song he turned off. Now he’s shifting from Carmen to Muse, and it’s as if he’s playing “Madness” just for me, telling me something, using music instead of words. My cheeks feel hot as he plays, his eyes on me the whole time.
He says nothing as the music fills the room, and it feels like it’s spreading through my body, and I have this strange sensation of being his instrument, as if the notes he’s hitting are being played in me. Neither one of us speaks, there is only music between us, but I know the lyrics behind every note, and when he reaches come on and rescue me, it all becomes too much. “You lied. You said you didn’t play well.”
He shakes his head. “I said I’m not a virtuoso. I didn’t say I didn’t play well. But I don’t want to talk about me anymore, Jill,” he says in a commanding voice. He’s turned from playful to powerful. I straighten my spine in response, standing taller, no longer leaning on the piano. He’s all business. I need to let go of my overwhelming need to lighten every situation.
“I want to talk about Ava. And I want to talk about you. I want to talk about how you can become her, find the truth of her, and hold onto it so tightly as you perform that no one doubts for even a second that you’re her. You won’t doubt it, I won’t doubt it, and the audience won’t doubt it. And so, I want you to think of Carmen and Habanera when you work on your part.”
He’s shifted, leaving Muse behind us. I follow his lead, serious in tone too. “Tell me why.”
“Ava is a rebellious bird. She resists Paolo. She resists his teaching, his way of making art. She resists his love too,” he continues in his clear, determined way of speaking. His eyes never stray from mine, and his gaze is so intense it could burn. Then he lowers his voice, softens to a lover’s whisper. “But then she transforms. Love changes her. Love without bounds. Love without reason. She becomes his, and that changes her.”
Those last few words make me feel light-headed and woozy, so I reach for the edge of the piano, holding on.
She becomes his, and that changes her.
“I love that sentiment,” I manage to say and I’m only vaguely aware that I sound a bit breathy. I quickly catalogue my reaction—there are goose bumps on my arms, and there’s a tingling in my belly, and my lips are parted.
It hits me what’s happening.
Because he’s doing it to me again.
He’s f*cking me with his words, and I am turned on beyond belief.
My body is responding faster than my brain can apply the brakes—my skin is hot all over, and heat is flaring through my veins. I know this feeling. I usually only feel it when I’m reading a hot scene in a novel. But now I’m feeling it in real life, and not in my imagination, not from pretending or picturing a make-believe session in the sheets. This is real and it’s legitimate and it’s borne from the fact that I’m craving something I haven’t let myself have in years.
Contact.
My vision blurs for a moment, and I dig my fingers into the side of the piano so I don’t fall.
“Which sentiment, Jill?”
He says my name like it’s dessert. Like it’s something he wants to eat. Even though it’s only a simple question he’s asked, I’m unhinged by my body’s reaction to the way he talks. By the way it feels as if my body is no longer my own, that it’s responding to someone else’s cues.
His cues.
For no good reason.
Because there’s no good reason at all why my head should be so cloudy and my body so hazy, and my pulse racing like a getaway train. I can’t let myself get carried away. That would be unbearably foolish, so I remind myself that he’s good with words, he’s good with people, he’s good with ideas. He has to be. He does what Paolo does. He takes nascent, unformed clay and transforms it into something alive and wondrous, with a heartbeat, with a life force. That’s the only reason there’s an aching between my legs. Not because my director is turning me on again. The only reason I am a tuning fork now is because he’s making me feel like Ava, and Ava is turned on by Paolo.
“All of them.”
“All of them?” He raises an eyebrow.
“The one where she becomes his,” I say quickly. My skin is feverish. The heat is cranked too high in this room. I look around. “Can we turn the heat down?”
He stands up, walks to the thermostat, adjusts the lever and turns back. He’s near to me on his return path, so near that even though I force myself to stare hard out the window, I can sense him as he passes me. As if he’s mere inches from me. For a brief moment, I expect him to trail a hand across my lower back. Make me shiver. I close my eyes as the image flicks by, and then I open them.
He hasn’t touched me though. Maybe he doesn’t have to for me to feel this way, because I’m a livewire already.
He sits down at the bench, and plays the opening notes to Ava’s signature song, Show Me The Rebel. “Show me the rebellious bird in you, Jill.”
“But,” I say, stammering. This is so unlike me. I know the music. I know the song. I have never been afraid of performing. Acting has been the thing I love most. But something’s different now. “It comes in the middle of the show. It’s not even her first song.”
My protests fall on deaf ears. He says nothing.
“Can’t we start with something else? I haven’t even practiced it before. ”
There’s a glint of a smile on his lips. “That’s why I’m rehearsing you,” he says, and his voice is like whiskey and honey. Rough and smooth at the same time. “So you can practice. I want you to be able to blow the audience away. I want them to melt for you. I want them to fall for you. You can start by trying to make me feel that way.”
I feel wobbly, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m rehearsing with an award-winning director in my first Broadway show, or if it’s because his words are all laced with subtext and innuendo. You can start by trying to make me feel that way. But as off-kilter as I feel right now, I have to use this emotion. Because Ava feels the same way when she begins this song. She doesn’t know what to make of Paolo, and I don’t know what to make of Davis.
I pick a point on the opposite wall, a random little nick in the plaster, and I sing to it. I serenade the nick on the wall with a flat, empty-sounding melody. I make my way through the first six lines of the song when he stops his accompaniment.
I turn to him, waiting.
“Is there a reason why you’re staring at a spot on the wall?”
“Um…”
“Is there?” he asks again.
I shake my head.
“Do you sing the song to a spot on the wall?”
“No.” My face flames red.
“Do you sing it to the audience?”
“No.”
“Do you sing it to the floor?”
“No.”
“Do you sing it to a random, distant point in the balcony?”
“No,” I say through gritted teeth, and now I want to smack him for the way he’s making me feel stupid.
“Are you mad at me, now?” He asks, but his tone never wavers. He’s like a law professor quizzing a student, dressing her down. He doesn’t anger, he doesn’t rage. He simply peppers her with questions ‘til she’s unnerved. Screw being turned on. Now I’m pissed off.
“No,” I lie, looking down.
He rises from the piano, stalks over to me, and stands mere inches in front of me. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t lift my chin with his hand, or grip my shoulders. He doesn’t have to make contact for me to respond, to raise my face, to meet his eyes. I do it anyway, looking up, meeting him because I can’t not. His midnight blue eyes give away nothing right now except power, confidence, and absolute f*cking control. Maybe it’s the ions, maybe it’s electricity. Or maybe there is just a current between us, and it’s one that he alone controls. I bite my lip briefly, and he breathes out, hard. He makes an almost imperceptible sound that borders on a growl, then speaks. “Are you mad at me?”
He doesn’t use my name this time. Nor does he use Ava’s. I need to know who he’s talking to. “Are you asking me or are you asking Ava?”
I’m greeted by the tiniest grin of satisfaction. He nods approvingly, as if he likes the question.
“Jill,” he says slowly, my name taking its time on his tongue, crossing his lips, turning into sound in the charged air between us. “I’m asking you as Jill.”
“I’m saying no, as Jill.”
He shakes his head, narrows his eyes, seeing right through me. “Don’t lie to me. About anything. There is no right or wrong answer. There is only the truth, and I want yours right now. Tell me your truth. Are you mad at me?”
I breathe out hard. Then I admit it. “Yes.”
“Good.”
“Why is that good?”
“Use it. Use it for the song. Ava is headstrong. Ava is passionate. Paolo makes her crazy. He manipulates her. Or so she thinks.” He raises his hand, balls his fingers into a fist, and gestures as if he’s grabbing something. “But he does it to reach down deep inside her. To help her find her true self, her true art, her true creativity. Everything he does, he does because he believes in her.”
“But why? Why does he believe in her?”
“Because he knows. He knows in his heart—” he taps his chest “—in his head—” now his forehead “—and his gut.” He hits his fist against his flat stomach. “He knows. Start from the beginning. And take your anger and use it. But don’t sing it to the wall, or the lights, or the chairs. Sing it to Paolo. Look in his eyes. Let your anger carry the song. Let your frustration take you through. Then let go of it, and let it fade away.”
I nod. I don’t think I can speak. I can only feel. The anger at Davis for dressing me down. The frustration at myself for not getting the character right. Then what Ava feels—the spark of hope, the possibility of becoming the person, the artist, the woman that he believes she can be. I take a deep, quiet breath, imagining all those feelings living inside of me, so I can become her.
He returns to the bench and resumes the music, the notes pouring forth, falling on me like rain. Then I’m Ava and I turn and meet my director’s gaze. Only he’s not Davis anymore. He’s Paolo. He’s the man I’m mad at, and mad with, and most of all, mad about. He’s the one I’m singing to. Not the wall, not the floor, not the audience. But him. Just him. The man who drives me crazy with his perfectionism, with his sometimes inscrutable side. But I need him, I need him not only to succeed as a painter, but to break free of all the loneliness I’ve felt my whole life as Ava. And I sing every word, every line, every note to him.
He watches me the entire time. Lets my words, my story, my tale become a part of him. He takes what I have to give. He absorbs all my music, all my passion, all my pain. He is the reason I’m singing, and I give it all to him because he knows what to do with all I have.
Because he accepts me for who I am, and because he makes me feel again.
And as I sing, something deep inside of me loosens. It’s like a brittle piece of my make-believe heart that I’ve been gripping so hard for so long rattles free, and tumbles away. I don’t even try to grab it, to glue it back on. I let it go, because I’m ready for it. For a fleeting moment, I feel buoyant, unencumbered from my past, and it’s an unfamiliar feeling, but such a welcome one. It’s like a reprieve, and my voice hitches on one note, hitting it wrong and raw, but that’s when his eyes light up the most. Then I finish the last note of the song, and take one step closer to him. “I need you, Paolo,” I say, shifting from sung words to the spoken ones in the script that cap off this song. Shifting too from calling him Professor to calling him by his name. “I need you to make me whole again.”
“I will, Ava,” he says, in the softest whisper, but one that carries, reverberating throughout the whole rehearsal studio as he delivers lines that start to bring this hard-edged, mercurial man closer to falling for this woman. “I promise.”
* * *
After several more rounds, I’m sweating. I’ve shed my sweater and I’m wearing only a tank top with my jeans. It’s a workout singing for Davis, and I’m not even dancing. I’m merely standing, and singing. But the way he directs, insisting, and requiring everything I have feels like a workout. I pull at my navy blue shirt so it doesn’t stick to my chest.
“Ready to go again?”
“Any time you want.”
He laughs once, shakes his head. “I was only teasing. I think we can call it a night.”
“Oh, I can keep going,” I say. “But if you need to stop…” then I trail off.
Davis rises from the piano, closes it, and grabs his jacket. “I don’t really think there’s any question about whether I can keep going. And I don’t need to stop. Ever.” Then his eyes rake over me, as if he’s memorizing me for later. “I’m choosing to call it a night.”
Okay, so now my chest is hot again, and I’m ready to take the sheet music and turn it into an accordion to fan myself. How is it that everything that comes out of his mouth is a double entendre? Does he even intend to talk this way? Sometimes, I think I have him figured out, but then he looks at me with those bedroom eyes, or says something that’s so sexy, and I’m back to putting the puzzle pieces together. I revert to humor to find my way out of the innuendo because I’m not quite sure what to do with all this double-speak, especially when he made it clear I’m not his type. Not to mention that teensy tiny little detail about me being crazy for someone else.
I point to his coat. “So you do own a jacket.”
“I’m not entirely impervious to the elements.”
“Aha! He is human. I’ve learned the truth,” I say, and I’m glad to be back to teasing, to toying. It’s familiar footing, and I can handle it so much better than the wobbliness I’ve felt most of the night. Besides, there’s a part of me that’s bordering on punch drunk from singing my freaking heart out. I feel spent in the way that a good, hard run can wring you dry, but leave you surging with adrenaline too.
“Don’t tell anyone though. Wouldn’t want to ruin my badass reputation,” he says, stopping to sketch air quotes, and I like that he lets me tease him. That he doesn’t seem to mind at all that I’ve figured out he likes the image he’s created for himself—take no prisoners, hard as hell, impossible to get to know. Sure, he is tough, but there’s more to him, too, and I don’t think he lets many people see his other sides. Maybe that’s why he seems to enjoy it when I see through him. Almost as if he wants me to. Maybe that’s why he talks to me this way. Because we can be friendly enough. We can move past the weirdness.
“Oh, you’re still badass in my book,” I say, as I pull my sweater back on. For a moment, I wrestle with the neckline, so I can’t see him as I’m stuck under my clothes.
When I emerge, he’s stepped closer, and he’s all serious and smoldering again. The whole dark and broody look is back in full force, and I can’t take my eyes off of him when he’s like that. It scares me how my whole body feels like it’s waking up when he looks at me. “Am I? Badass in your book?” He asks in a voice that’s low and smoky, and makes me want to say yes to him over and over, and to anything he’d ask.
That’s precisely why I can’t answer his question. Because my body’s going one way, but the rest of me is my usual messed-up, mixed-up, f*cked-up self, and I have no idea what to do with these veiled questions that feel a lot like foreplay.
Besides, I have Patrick this weekend. I have the chance to finally get to know him for real, like I’ve always wanted. I take a steady breath and jam my arms into my jacket, then cinch it closed. I need to shift gears and focus only on my job. “So how did I do tonight?”
Davis seems to sense the change. To respect it. “You were everything I wanted you to be,” he says, returning to his crisp, professional voice. He stops to lock the door, then we head down the carpeted hallway to the elevator. Once inside, he pushes the button for the ground floor. I glance at his hand, noticing his scar again. I point to it, my finger mere inches from his hand, so close I could touch him, could trace the raised line of the mark on his body. “How’d you get that scar?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and I wonder if I’ve crossed some line. I hold my breath, as I wait for an answer or an admonishment. The gears whir as the car begins its descent. This might be the tiniest elevator ever made because I feel as if I could crash into him if it stops suddenly. I can picture it. Being jolted, being caught. His arms around me. Our bodies so close. That moment when everything can change, when time freezes, and you’re either colliding or you’re not. Maybe I do want more of his innuendo. Maybe I do want the elevator to slam me into him, so my body can take what it wants right now.
But the ride is smooth, and we both stay in our places.
Then, he holds up his hand, regards it as if he hasn’t seen it in ages. “This? Punched the glass window of my front door when I was seventeen.”
“You did?”
“Couple of days after I found out my parents died.”
He says it in the most offhand way, but my heart leaps to my throat and I want to comfort him. To wrap my arms around him, tell him how unfair it is when people you love die too soon. I reach out and lay a hand on his arm. His eyes jerk to mine, but then he quickly looks away and I remove my hand, because I shouldn’t be touching Davis for so many reasons. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, me too,” he says in a low voice, sounding wounded for the first time. Letting down his guard.
I’m about to ask what happened to them, but that feels too personal, too much, too soon.
The car stops at the lobby and the doors crank open. We step out into the cold, biting night, the sounds of New York traffic hitting my ears. It’s the familiar soundtrack to my days and nights in this city.
We walk down the steps to the sidewalk. A cold wind whooshes by and I pull my coat tighter. He moves closer to me and for a second I think he may drape an arm over my shoulder, pull me in close and keep me warm. But he doesn’t. Instead, he points to a town car waiting at the curb.
“For you,” he says.
“Me? You got me a car service?” I shouldn’t be excited over a car, but I am. I’ve only acted in a few off-Broadway shows and a couple of commercials, and I didn’t even warrant a cab in my contracts for those. I was subway, all the way.
“If I’m making you work late, it’s the least I can do,” he says, as he opens the door for me, and I slide inside.
He leans into the car, reaches for the seat belt, and pulls it across my chest, buckling me in. He’s inches from me, and he smells cold like the night air. But he also smells the way a man should at the end of the day: a little bit of sweat, a lot of work, and all raw power. He brings one hand behind my head and unclips my hair, letting it fall over his fingers. I tremble from his touch as a shiver runs down my spine. “I like your hair up and I like your hair down,” he whispers to me, breaking down all my resistance in an instant.
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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.
“F*ck, 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.