I crossed my ankles behind his back, wound my arms around his neck and held on for dear life as the sensation of being so close to Ian stole the breath from my lungs.
His hands stroked up my back, one tangling in my hair while the other found the tender nape of my neck and squeezed gently.
I gasped and Ian licked into my mouth with a tortured moan.
Chapter Six
His kiss was like nothing I’d ever imagined. Hot and hungry, almost rough but in a way that made me feel so wanted, so desired, so necessary. As if he’d rather kiss me than breathe.
Breathing was overrated anyway, I decided muzzily, and kissed him back.
Our tongues tangled, stroking and sliding and thrusting the way our bodies wanted to slide and thrust. It was a tease, but a delicious one—and it satisfied something deep in my heart where I’d struggled to believe, despite everything, that Ian Hale really wanted me.
Well, all that was over now. My doubts burned up and blew away like wisps of paper, like feathers, like tufts of dog fur . . .
My eyes flew up and I surfaced from the kiss with a sputter of shock. That wasn’t Ian’s hair tickling my forehead.
It was Bruno, standing over us, dripping and panting and obviously very curious about what game the two funny humans were playing now.
I became abruptly aware of the fact that we were sitting on cold, wet tiles and were both wearing damp clothes. There was no way for my superheated body to actually feel chilled, but there were some clamminess issues.
And now there was dog drool. A lot of it. “Gross!”
Ian dropped his forehead to my shoulder with a thud, his big body shaking with suppressed laughter. “That’s not the reaction I was hoping for.”
“Not you!” I protested, wiping my face on my sleeve. This sweater was basically trashed already anyway. “You are not gross. You’re . . . the other thing.”
“The other thing?” He tucked his tongue into his cheek, his vivid blue eyes laughing up at me. “Eloquent. Have you thought about becoming a writer?”
I swatted his shoulder, momentarily distracted by the iron-hard muscle beneath my hand. He really was incredibly constructed, this man I was straddling in an animal shelter grooming room. “It’s your fault,” I told him. “You burned up a lot of brain cells with that kiss. I’m a little insulted that you’re still so coherent, actually.”
Ian narrowed his eyes. “No, you’re not,” he said slowly, his hips moving in a small, sensual twist that made me gasp.
“I’m not what?” I really needed to get a handle on this conversation, but it was hard to focus when we were still pressed so closely together.
“Not insulted. You look like the cat who got the cream, licking your whiskers and all.”
“Oh, God.” I ducked my head, but he reached up to smooth my hair back, not letting me hide.
“No, it’s a good look on you,” he insisted. “I like to see you smug and confident. Like to know I made you feel that way.”
I felt the blush bloom over my cheeks, but I managed to look Ian in the eye. “You told me how you wanted me, and I wanted to believe you, so badly. But a kiss is worth a thousand words. And a kiss like that? Worth maybe a million. Conservative estimate.”
He grinned up at me, looking carefree and happy and completely irresistible. Drawn to him like a magnet, I bent my head to get back to the kissing—and Bruno shoved his snout between us with a whuff.
“Okay, mate.” Ian surrendered with a shake of his head. “You’re right. We’re here for you, aren’t we?”
“To be fair, he’s the one who interrupted bath time in the first place.” Reluctantly, I disentangled my legs from Ian’s and stood up. My knees wobbled a little, which was an interesting sensation that, up till now, I hadn’t believed really happened outside of books.
The Newfie puppy butted his big head into my hip, leaving another wet spot. With a grunt, Ian stood up and unselfconsciously adjusted himself inside his jeans. As if that wasn’t enough to make my mouth water, I was then treated to a second viewing of Ian’s back muscles tensing and working as he picked up Bruno and heaved him into the tub.
“This really is the best date ever,” I sighed, and went to find the shampoo we’d dropped when Bruno made his big escape.
We managed to finish the giant puppy’s bath without further incident. When Lester came back to check on us, he was diplomatic enough not to say a word about our damp clothes and mussed hair. We took the towels he offered us and spent a little more time hanging out with the pups in the playroom, drying out, before venturing back into the London night.
Ian tugged the ball cap out of his back pocket and jammed it on his head, pulling it down over his brow and flipping up the collar of his jacket. His shoulders hunched, just a little, and I was amazed to realize that while nothing could completely mask his size, Ian had perfected a posture that made him almost invisible. He was still big, broad and tall and lean-hipped, but without the swagger he wore as Zeus in the Mount Olympus movies, Ian Hale could’ve almost been a regular guy.
Certainly the people we passed on the sidewalk didn't seem to notice him. I wondered how strange that must be, to be so famous that you had to come up with a way to hide in plain sight, just to go about your life. And Ian Hale was good at it.
“I’m impressed,” I told him as we walked back toward the tube station. It was the same walk we’d done earlier, in reverse, but so much better. This time, when I shivered a little he put his arm around my shoulders.
“Are you cold?” Ian pressed his lips to my forehead, a tender move that reminded me oddly of the way my mother would check my sister and me for a fever. There was nothing maternal about Ian Hale, but there was a protectiveness I found deeply stirring.
I turned my head into his shoulder, the waxed canvas rough under my cheek. “I’m okay.”
“And impressed,” he said, reminding me of what I’d been saying. And incidentally proving that he’d been listening, which was almost the sexiest thing he’d done so far.
Almost.
“With what?” he followed up.
I poked him in the side. “With you! I mean, I guess this is kind of an obvious thing to say, but I see the subtle way you hide in plain sight on the street here and just . . . you’re a really good actor.”
I expected him to wave it away or shrug it off. He must’ve heard stuff like that before. What I didn’t expect was the way his jaw tightened, a shadow darkening his eyes for a brief second before the practiced smile came out. The fake one he gave late-night talk show hosts and bubbly red carpet presenters.
“Ah, luv, you’re too kind.”
“I meant it,” I said slowly, brow furrowing. “You’re good at going unnoticed when you want to, on the street, and you’re good as Zeus too. You have to know you are—you’re the main reason those movies do so well!”
“Sure, as long as I get my kit off in the first twenty minutes.” He laughed, but I didn’t like the way it sounded.
The arm over my shoulder felt hard, tensed against something I couldn’t quite understand. “I mean, that helps,” I joked, trying to lighten the mood, but as soon as I said it, I knew it was exactly the wrong thing.
Because his arm immediately relaxed all the way off my shoulder. I cast him a swift, sideways glance, but his expression was easy and open. Bland.
Fake.
“Wait,” I said, “that really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“Why would it? I spend hours, daily, working to maintain this body. Literally half my life is lived in the gym. I see my trainer more than I see my closest friends.”
His tone was matter-of-fact, not bragging in any way. If anything, he sounded bored by it. Feeling my way, I said, “That sounds hard.”
Ian shrugged those massive shoulders, hunched against the gathering London fog. “It’s the job.”
I frowned. “I mean, it’s part of it, sure.”
“It’s all of it. My contribution, at any rate.”
A blas
t of cold wind blew in off the Thames, chilling me to the bone. Ignoring the goose bumps, I shook my head. “Ian, no. It really isn’t. You do a lot more in those movies than strip down and flex. You know that, right?”
“Look, I’m not complaining. I know how lucky I am. Playing Zeus changed my life. Before Immortal Wars, I was nothing. I had nothing. And without it . . .”
I’d be nothing.
He didn’t say it, but I heard it in the heavy pulse of silence between us.
I frowned. “But . . . you’ve done other movies.”
“Sure. Other movies with plenty of running, jumping, fighting, and excuses to get naked. In the last ten years, I’ve done exactly one photo spread for a magazine where the photographer didn’t ask me to take my shirt off. But that was with Lilah Rose. She’s high-class all the way.”
I remembered those shots, I thought. Moody and arty, they’d hinted at hidden depths below the surface charm that was Ian Hale’s stock in trade. “What kind of movie would you want to do, if you had your pick? I mean, the Mount Olympus movies can’t keep you tied up for the rest of your life.”
He grimaced. “You’re right about that. My career very definitely has an expiration date on it, which is why I need to work as much as I can, doing what I’m good at, while anyone still cares to watch me do it. Other projects can wait.”
Leaving aside the fact that men in Hollywood generally had many more opportunities for long, varied careers than women did, to say nothing of actors of color, of any gender, what concerned me in this conversation was the sense I had once again that Ian was repeating words he’d been told by someone else—someone who clearly didn’t want him to think about branching out, away from the big-budget action adventures that had made him famous.
“Who told you that?” I demanded.
He glanced at me, surprise lifting his brows. “My agent.”
“No offense, but your agent sounds like a jerk.”
That startled a laugh out of Ian. “Well, he’s not as big an arsehole as, say, Jeffrey Greenwood,” he said, casually referencing a media mogul as if he were a mutual acquaintance, “but yeah, Philip can be blunt. Doesn’t mean he’s wrong. And it’s not been much of an issue, anyhow. Nobody’s beating down the door with offers to play Hamlet, looking like this.”
A thousand thoughts tumbled through my brain. It had literally never occurred to me, in my life as the fat girl, the funny friend, the sassy sidekick, that the hero of the story could hate his body too.
Or maybe “hate” was too strong—I didn’t hate my body, at least not all the time. On my good days, I could see how healthy and strong it was, and appreciate the way it sheltered me and got me from place to place.
But on worse days, it felt like my body was the first and only thing anyone who looked at me saw. No one cared to look deeper. My size and shape defined me. Confined me.
Erased me.
I had to admit, part of me wanted to snap back at him, “Oh, boo hoo, you’re the absolute pinnacle of everything society calls beautiful and healthy? That must be awful for you.”
But he wasn’t saying it was awful. He’d called himself lucky, and I was pretty sure he believed it. At least as much as he believed that the size of his muscles and the attractiveness of his body were the sum total of his value in the world. I felt sick when I realized I’d unconsciously reduced him to nothing more than his hotness in my mind before I met him—and probably even after, for a bit.
That sucked. Because I knew exactly how shitty it felt to be seen as a body first, and a person second. Or not at all.
So I said what I wished someone would have said to twelve-year-old me. “You’re more than your body. Don’t let your body put limits on what you want to do.”
That body, all six-foot-plus of toned, hard-won muscles and coiled tension, came to a full stop. Caught off guard, I was still moving forward when he snagged my hand and pulled me around to face him. Ian stared down at me, his fingers wrapped tightly around mine and his eyes burning with something I couldn’t name.
Awareness arced between us like heat lightning, crackling and shocking and sparking. The rest of the world fell away until we were the only two people in the universe. Ian gave my fingers a tug, and we crashed together in a kiss that swept my legs out from under me and stole my breath. His hands came up to cradle the sides of my head, holding me still for his hungry, devouring mouth—but he didn’t need to worry about me going anywhere.
All I wanted was to get closer to him.
My arms wound around his waist, under his jacket, the whipcord lines of him tempting my fingers to dig into his back and try to pull him into me. He was deliciously warm. His tongue stroked mine roughly, and his stubble rasped my cheeks, and the tension in my core spiraled tighter and tighter and tighter until—
“Is that Ian Hale?”
He jolted at the sound of his name, and the flash that followed it. In the next instant, Ian had grabbed my hand again and pivoted toward the road. Dazed, I followed blindly as passersby slowed and turned, staring and pointing their phones at us. Some of them started to come closer and Ian picked up the pace until we were practically running and diving headfirst for a sleek, understated black car I hadn’t even noticed idling at the curb.
Ian deposited me carefully on the back seat and folded himself in behind me, slamming the door shut with a sharp, “Drive. Now.”
At his command, the car pulled smoothly away from the gathering crowd of excited faces and phones poised to record. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, the purr of the car’s powerful engine loud in the sudden silence. I couldn’t catch my breath.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked stupidly.
“Are you all right?” Ian ran his gaze over me, as if searching for hidden injuries.
“I’m fine. They were just fans, right?” My brain was coming back online.
He sprawled back in his leather seat, a sardonic twist to his lips. “Sure, just fans. And every one of them with a camera phone and a Twitter account.”
I looked around the luxurious interior of the car, from the ridiculously spacious, buttery soft seats to the polished burled wood console between them, to the discreet privacy screen separating the front seat from the back. “This is not a cab.”
“No, luv.”
“This is your car.” I tipped my chin toward the invisible front seat. “That’s your driver.”
“Yeah.”
His hooded gaze regarded me from across the two bottles of fancy imported fizzy water nestled into the console cup holders. He was still, like a predator tracking a threat, and he wasn’t wrong. Because I was starting to get a picture of what was going on here, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
“So you had your personal chauffeur following us that whole time, in case . . . what? Your Clark Kent disguise failed and people recognized you?”
Ian shrugged, but his eyes were careful. “Partly.”
I swallowed against a sudden surge of nausea, but forced myself to keep going. “Which would be bad because of cameras. And word getting out. About you kissing some fat nobody on the street.”
The privacy partition whirred shut just as Ian lunged across the console separating us and hauled me into his lap. I squawked, horrifically aware of the heavy, awkward sprawl of my legs. I had to be crushing him, but he gave no indication that I weighed more than a single rose petal.
“That’s not what this is about,” he said fiercely, directly into my no-doubt shocked face. “That will never, ever be what this is about. I don’t want to hide you away. The exact opposite, in fact.”
My poor heart was on a roller coaster ride that seemed to be turning corkscrews in midair. Curling my arms around his neck, I allowed myself to settle my weight in his lap and trust that he could take it. “Okay. So why rush us out of there like your hair was on fire?”
“I was protecting you.”
“From what? Someone taking my picture? And what, selling it to a tabloid?” I laughed, but it was dawning on me th
at he was entirely serious. That this was a thing that could happen to me. What even was my life?
With one big hand, Ian tenderly brushed my hair out of my face, the dark curls clinging to his fingers and making his lips tick up at the corners. “The British tabloid press—it’s not the same as what you have in America. It’s worse in every possible way. And once they get a whiff of you, they will hound you to the ends of the earth.”
It sounded awful, but I couldn’t believe anyone would care that much about me. I mean, it wasn’t like a high-profile public romance between two movie stars. In practical terms, I was a nobody. And maybe that was a good thing.
“I’m not afraid of them,” I said, daring to reach up and kiss the serious line of his lips. “If . . . if we’re really doing this, if we’re really a thing—people are going to find out sooner or later, and I’m sure there will be some interest in who I am and how I caught the eye of the great Ian Hale. But it won’t last! I’m boring.”
“You’re the farthest thing—”
I cut him off with another kiss, indulgent and sweet as sticky toffee pudding. “I don’t mean it like that. I only mean . . . I’m not going to sell tons of copies of the Daily Mail or whatever. They’ll lose interest. It will be fine.”
He shook his head, eyes as dark as the sky over the Thames outside, but I kissed him again.
“I’m not afraid of them,” I insisted, feeling as brave as I ever had in my life. “As long as you’re not ashamed to be seen with me.”
“Mallory.” My name was a low groan, and between us I felt the thick, unmistakable length of his hard cock. It reassured me like nothing else could have. “Any man would be proud to have you on his arm.”
Clearly untrue, but equally clearly, Ian believed every word. I was utterly charmed. “And I can prove it,” he continued, staring into my eyes. “There’s this gala I have to attend in a couple weeks. I’d like it very much if you’d be my date.”
Naughty Brits: An Anthology Page 30