“You’re on the first row. Second seat.”
“All right.” I swept my gaze over the packed auditorium.
Most were already seated in their comfortable velvet chairs, perusing the contents of their press packets. A few milled about on the front row. No sign of Samuel.
As I registered that relief, the Firelight director, Milton Rothbaum, spotted me. Smiling, he motioned for me to approach. I took a step forward, realized Max was beside me, and started to explain the front row was for cast members only, but Olivia beat me to it.
“VIPs sit here. Bodyguards and support staff like you and me have seats in the back row.” She turned her gaze to me. “We’ll meet you down front directly after the screening.”
I watched her steer Max around. It might only be my imagination, but it seemed like he was reluctant to leave me.
Comforted by that thought, I found my steps were lighter as I moved toward the director, but I froze in midstride when a flash of movement from a familiar figure caught my attention.
“Diesel.” My eyes widened in surprise.
“Hey, beautiful.” He swept his dark gaze over me. “You look nice.”
“So do you.” Amazingly so. His glossy black curls loose, the light indigo tux jacket with the black piping he wore clung to his wide shoulders, and his solid black trousers emphasized the length of his legs. He looked like he’d stepped right off the glossy pages of a Dolce & Gabbana ad.
“Thanks. Just a little something I dug out from the back of the closet since the last Oscars I attended. The one where your sister beat out the Dogs for best song.” His chiseled lips curved.
Beyond the appealing shape and the deep cherry color, I got lost in the fact that the crescent indentation on the right side of his mouth was deeper than the one on the left. That slight inconsistency made him seem less like a player of mythological self-proclaimed proportions and more like a mere man, although one who had a penchant for causing more trouble for me than most.
“Her song was better.” My mouth curved. I found that I very much liked the way he continued to stare at me as if transfixed.
“Um, no offense.” His tone light, he stepped closer, and his tropical scent filled my senses. “But I don’t think a girl with questionable taste in music like yours gets to cast a vote.”
Diesel’s teasing was exactly what I needed after the run-in with my stepfather. Because he had a way of making even the threat of Samuel lessen, and because I’d been wrong to use him to distance myself from Fanny, an apology and an explanation I probably shouldn’t have made tumbled from my mouth.
“What happened at the party . . . when you pushed me into the wall, it reminded me of . . . of something else. I’m sorry. I overreacted.”
“I know.” His dark eyes narrowed, not with suspicion but understanding. “I’ve seen the interviews about your stepfather.” His curls seemed to shiver with irritation as he cast his gaze around. “I heard the asswipe might be here. Thought he might hassle you.”
The angry vibes flowing off Diesel made me take a measured step backward, and I bumped into someone.
“Mr. Le,” Milton said. “Good to see you accepted my invitation.” The Firelight director put his hands on my shoulders. “I didn’t realize you and Hollie knew each other.”
“My sister is dating one of his bandmates,” I said to explain.
“Interesting. Well,” he tipped his head to Diesel, “we’re glad to have you here and your score on the film. That and Hollie’s performance are some things critics agree about. The other is their universal rejection of my debut into science fiction.”
A wry expression on his full face, he ran a hand through his gray hair and gestured toward the two remaining empty seats on the front row.
“If you’ll both take your seats, I’ll attempt to introduce my latest masterpiece to the world. Let’s all cross our fingers that the audience scores tonight will be better than those of the critics.”
I wanted to ask Diesel about the score on the film. The music wasn’t rock, it was classical, orchestral all the way through. But Milton was speaking, so I had to at least feign interest, then stand as I was introduced.
One by one, all the main cast and significant tech crew members stood to receive recognition, including Diesel. Then the house lights dimmed, and I had to pretend to be interested in watching myself on film.
So not.
I couldn’t look at myself objectively. It always seemed to me that I was a fraud. That one day, someone would stand up and say, “Aha, you’re a pretender.” Then all the criticisms Samuel had thrown at me over the years would be proven true, and I’d be laughed out of the movie business.
Only while I was in the moment on set and in character did all the doubts quiet. While the cameras rolled, I was as certain as my next breath that my chosen profession was the right one for me.
The theater screen in front of me suddenly switched scenes. I slunk down in my seat, knowing what was coming next. A love scene. How in the world had I ended up sitting next to Diesel to watch it?
“Those your tits for real?” he whispered, and bumped my knee with his.
A warm, shivery sensation traveled upward to between my legs from that minimal contact from him.
“It’s only a little side boob. Don’t get overly excited.”
The peeks at my body revealed nothing more than I would show wearing a bikini. In fact, I’d worn pasties for the sensual scene, my first sex scene on film. If I weren’t so embarrassed to be sitting next to Diesel for it, I would have been more fully able to appreciate how well it had turned out.
“Can’t help getting turned on with you right beside me.” His fingers skated up my arm.
I drew in a sharp breath. My nipples tightened.
“You have a smoking body.” Diesel dipped his head, his breath warming the skin beneath my ear. His silky curls swished across his brow, shadowing his handsome features. “It’s the second thing I noticed when I first met you.”
“Oh, really? What was the first?”
“Your eyes. Took a while before I registered anything else, if you recall. You stole my breath away.”
“It was morning.” I did remember. I didn’t think it was possible to forget. “You startled me. Ash didn’t say anything about you coming over.”
“Morning, yeah.” His voice low, Diesel held my gaze. Just like it had then, if felt like we were the only two people in the world. “But the color of your eyes is like the moon rippling over the surface of the ocean. And now your hair’s an accessory to the theme.”
“How’s that?” I whispered.
“It’s the color of a moonbeam. Sexy as hell combo. Like a siren or some shit like that. Enough to wreck a guy, for sure.” He took a strand of my hair, skimming the skin of my shoulder before he lifted my hair and rubbed it between his fingers, making me shiver. “Always wanted to touch a moonbeam.”
My scalp tingled, and other parts of me too. Maybe all of Diesel’s sexual bragging was true.
“Let go of my hair,” I said huskily. He had barely touched me, yet I was panting for air. I also noticed my costar on the other side of Diesel was watching us, although the music pumped through the theater’s speakers drowned out our hushed conversation.
“No.” Diesel brought the strand to his nose and sniffed it. “Strawberry. I wonder how the rest of you smells. Wonder how you taste.”
“Stop flirting with me,” I hissed, trying to cover up how turned on I was, imagining Diesel’s lips on me.
“No.” He treated me to his double-crescent smile, and it threw me for a loop. It seemed more potent in the dark.
“You’ll end up linked to me in the tabloids.”
“Don’t care.”
“They’ll say we’re an item.”
“Let them think whatever the fuck they want.”
His attitude was refreshing. “That might be okay for you. But your world is vastly different from mine.”
“Not so different.” His gaze was so intent on mine, I
could see the flickering glow of the screen reflected in his eyes.
“You’re antiestablishment. You revel in your reputation. Your conquests. I have an image I have to uphold.” That image seemed to be all I had.
“Fuck ’em. Stop trying to please everyone and just be yourself. Your acting’s kickass and speaks for itself. Keep putting out quality work, and they’ll keep coming to watch you.”
“How do you know my stuff’s good?” I narrowed my eyes. “You’re not paying a bit of attention to the movie.”
“Seen it a hundred times. Had to in order to get the music right. Jacked off to you at least that many times watching this scene.”
“Diesel, don’t.” My face flamed.
“You’re turned on.” His fingers skimmed up my arm, leaving a shimmery sensation in their wake. “Stop denying it. Stop denying me.”
Max’s face suddenly flashed in my mind. My bodyguard, not my boyfriend.
What I was to him might be up in the air, but what he was to me wasn’t.
“I’m not free. I’m with Max.”
“The bodyguard?”
I nodded.
His tone turned icy. “Knew he would try to stake a claim on you.”
Had Max claimed me? I certainly didn’t feel claimed at all.
Diesel frowned. “You should’ve said something earlier.”
I could feel the coolness of his displeasure. It extinguished the heated awareness between us.
“I’m saying so now.” I lifted my chin.
“Yeah, but I’m wondering why you didn’t say so before.” His gaze slid away, and he went silent.
I tried to watch the film like he seemed to be doing, but his words joined all the other unsettled stuff rattling around inside me.
“He must’ve not done it right.”
“What . . . what do you mean?” I said, afraid I did know.
Diesel turned his head and dipped it to rake his gaze over me. “If I had you in my bed, you wouldn’t want to ever get out of it. You wouldn’t tolerate another man’s touch. Wouldn’t react like you do right now to me.”
“I didn’t react.”
“Don’t know what game you’re playing, but that’s a definite lie.”
“I don’t know why I even try to talk to you,” I huffed. “You don’t know me. You don’t know my mind.” I pressed my lips together and turned my attention back to the movie.
“I don’t think you know your own mind,” he whispered.
I stiffened when Diesel touched me again, a glide of the back of his hand down my arm all the way to my fingertips. Just a soft caress, but the warmth of his skin on mine made my pulse fly.
“When you figure it out,” he said low, “come see me. And maybe, if I’m not otherwise engaged, I’ll give you what you want.”
Max’s gaze practically scorched me as I circulated among the celebrities, media reps, and fans after the screening. He was never more than a couple of feet away, even though the event had its own security.
I told myself his eyes burned so brightly because he took my protection seriously. But I noticed a definite rise in intensity from him whenever a man drew near me, however fraternal.
It set me on edge, and when Olivia touched my arm to tell me it was time to go, I was relieved in more ways than one. I’d weathered a run-in with my stepfather, Carter Besille, and Diesel, all with my bodyguard at a distance when I really wanted him close.
He and I really needed to talk.
The exit from the theater was uneventful. The drive back to the condo was quiet and tense, not a single word beyond niceties until we were dropped off inside the parking garage.
“Max . . .” I gave him a determined look as he took my outstretched hand to help me from the limo.
“Not here.” He glared at me, his gaze more intense now than it had been with the men at the premiere after-party.
“Why not here?” I tugged my hand free to gesture around wildly. “Who’s here to see? To know? To care but you and me?”
“Not. Here,” he repeated in a low voice through gritted teeth, fastening his fingers around my upper arm and steering me toward the door to the elevators. “Cameras.”
He lifted his chin to point to a spot above us before pulling the glass door open and gesturing for me to precede him inside.
“Okay.” I frowned as he hit the call button, and we waited. “But I really don’t think those have sound on them.”
“They do.”
“How can you be sure?”
“It’s my job to know.” He sounded and looked irritated. “My job to take care of you.”
“Yeah, you made that perfectly clear tonight in front of my stepfather what your role with me is.”
Max’s fingers tightened around my upper arm as the elevator dinged and opened. Inside, they loosened a bit. By the time we reached our floor, I almost thought I felt him stroking my skin with the pad of his thumb. But when the door slid open and he grunted at me as if I were his underling, I decided I’d only imagined it.
“Move.” He glared at me when I didn’t immediately get out.
“You’re not the boss of me,” I grumbled, but went along with him nevertheless.
“Yes, I think that fact got through to me this evening as I stood and watched every other guy make a move on you. Thank you very much.”
“Now, wait a minute—”
Get inside, Hollie.” He unlocked and pushed open the door. “Now!” he barked when I hesitated.
“All right, you don’t have a right to be so irritable. You’re the one who decided to be the bodyguard tonight.”
As I stepped inside, he closed the door and pulled me into him. My front to his front, I had to crane my neck to maintain eye contact. What I saw on his handsome face wasn’t irritation anymore, but desire.
“How,” he muttered under his breath as he stared down at me. “How am I supposed to do this?”
“Do what?” I licked my lips. They had suddenly gone dry from the way he looked at me.
“Resist you, with you dressed like that and other guys throwing themselves at you right and left, and that asshole Diesel trying to seduce you away from me right under my nose.”
“He didn’t. I mean, he couldn’t.”
“He wants to fuck you, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.” My cheeks flushed.
Max reached up and stroked my blushed skin with his fingertips, and I melted from the tenderness of the gesture and the matching expression on his face. “He doesn’t even know who you are.”
“Who am I?”
“Not the type of girl you fuck. The kind you do right by. The kind you do your best to protect. The kind, if you do things right, you get to keep.”
“Max.” I breathed out his name in an awe-filled whisper. “How did I get so lucky to have you in my life? I was afraid you’d changed your mind about me. That I had it wrong about what we were. What I want us to be, I mean.”
“We want the same thing, shug.”
“To be together?” There seemed to be nuances under the surface of everything he said that made it imperative to clarify.
“Yes.”
“But we’re not together.”
“We are right here and right now.”
“Yes. But what about out there?” I inclined my head toward the door. “I didn’t like being separate tonight. I don’t like pretending there’s nothing between us.” I gave it to him raw and real, exactly like I felt after everything that had happened tonight.
“You pretend for a living.”
“On film. In front of a camera. Not with you. Not with something so important.”
Was Max having doubts too? I searched his gaze as he continued to stare at me with a hunger and possessiveness that was a little frightening.
“I told you how I feel.” He raked a hand through his hair. “What more do you want from me?”
“I want to know where I stand.”
“You have me in all the ways that matter.”
�
�But not that anybody knows.”
“Give me some time on that, shug. All right? Just a little more time.”
I nodded, though I was afraid of myself and how little I was willing to accept when it came to him.
“Good girl. Beautiful girl. My girl.” He pressed soft dewdrop kisses on my forehead, the tip of my nose, and eventually my lips, where he lingered. “Let me in.”
He urged against my mouth, and I opened it, grabbing hold of the lapels of his jacket as his tongue swept inside.
Deepening the kiss, he ran his large hands down my back, stopping at my ass. His fingers dug in, lifting both globes and pressing my aching center into his cock.
He was so hard and hot. I could feel him through my dress and his trousers.
Desire rolling through me, my legs weakened. My back arched. My nipples pebbled. I longed to be joined with him again. It seemed ages since I had.
“Max.” I ripped my mouth from his.
He continued his passionate assault, firing potent missile strikes of heat along my jawline and then down the column of my neck.
I moaned, and my grip tightened on his lapels. “I want—”
“I know.”
“You naked. Us back in the bed.”
“I’ll get you there. But I have to do something first.”
He lashed the strained tendon of my neck with his ruthless tongue. Wet heat rushed to my core. He lifted his head, his eyes lit up like blue torches.
“Watching you put on this dress was a tease. I know every single item missing from underneath it. And the shape and feel of all that the dress barely conceals.”
He reached for the clasp at my nape, and when he released it, the strips of satin with built-in support fell to my waist. The cool room air barely registered before his hands were on me. His skin was warm, his caresses wickedly right. He lifted my breasts in his capable hands, and I buried my fingers in his silky hair as he dropped his head to lick and suck one nipple and then the other.
I moaned each time his tongue grazed the tips. They were so taut, even the contrast between the warm wetness of his mouth and the cooler temperature of the room air as he took turns between them increased my desire.
“You’re so beautiful.” He groaned and nipped at me.
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