Starlight Nights

by Stacey Kade

  With a smile, she complies.

  Watching her take me in, my dick wet from her mouth, is almost as much of a turn-on as the sensation. But as good as it is, it’s not as good as being inside of her. And after only a few minutes, I’m getting too close to the point of no return.

  “Wait, Callie. Wait.” I tangle my hands in her hair, carefully, to get her attention.

  She raises her eyebrows and slows but doesn’t stop. And I can see the glimmer of mischief and challenge in her expression. She wants me to lose control.

  Goddamn, this girl. My eyes roll up toward the back of my head. She’s comfortable enough with me to stand her ground, push back for what she wants, and I might be the only person in her life she feels safe enough to do that with.

  But not now. Not this.

  “Calista, I want to come inside you.” Urgency makes me blunter than normal.

  Eyes wide, she stops immediately and releases my cock, crawling over my body to position herself over me. “Why didn’t you say that?”

  But before she can say more, I roll her over onto her back, then pull away.

  Her head pops up from the pillows. “What are you doing?

  “Trust me?”

  She nods.

  I grab a couple of pillows and stack them, then I guide her onto her stomach, her elbows and knees supporting her. The pillows will provide that extra friction she needs.

  “Eric?” She sounds uncertain, until I stroke the soft, wet folds between her legs and she moans.

  I lean over to grab a condom from the nightstand drawer.

  “Wait,” she says, when I return.

  I stop. “What’s wrong?”

  “I want to be able to see you.”

  Remembering how it felt to watch her suck me, I understand the desire. And fortunately, there’s an easy fix.

  It only takes a few seconds of rearranging so that we’re facing the foot of the bed, and the mirror above my dresser. I grip her hips in my hands, lining us up. She catches her breath. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “We look good. Well, you do.” Her gaze moves hungrily over my reflection, making me feel huge. “I like seeing your hands on me. I like watching the way your muscles work.” Her cheeks flush with the admission.

  I stroke my palm over the smoothness of her ass. “It’s not me, it’s you. You look so beautiful.” And she does, spread before me on her elbows and knees, her hips angled up toward me. Her hair spills forward over her shoulders.

  With a soft noise, she pushes against the mattress and into me.

  I pull back long enough to roll the condom on.

  “I’m on birth control.”

  She says it so quietly, I barely hear her, but my heart almost stops in response.

  “If you want to … I mean, it’s safe that way,” she continues. “Next time.”

  We’re … that would definitely be crossing a line. But just the thought of being bare inside of her makes me harder.

  My eyes meet hers in the mirror, and I push into her. She’s wet but tight, grasping around my cock, and I have to grit my teeth to go slow.

  She gasps once I’m fully inside, her hands clutching tight at the sheets.

  I pull tighter on her hips, my hands locking on, thrusting as she pushes back against me, and the sound of our bodies meeting with a slap only drives me to go faster.

  She shudders, her expression one of fierce intensity and pleasure, and drops her head.

  I love watching her, watching us move in the mirror, the furrow of concentration in her forehead, the way she dips her hips lower to catch the pillows against her clit.

  It’s not long before I can feel the first ripples clutching around me. “Eric,” she whispers.

  “Go, baby, just go.” I manage to hold on while she comes, barely. But then that white-hot heat spreads through my lower back, and I press myself into her as deep as I can, pouring out in jerky spasms until there’s nothing left.

  “I love you,” she says again, sounding dazed, her voice muffled by the pillows.

  I love you, too. The words are there, but I can’t seem to make them come out.

  23

  CALISTA

  The warm glow of satiation fills me and surrounds me as I make my way from the bathroom to the kitchen, trailing a hand along the wall as much for the sensation as balance. My skin feels warm, tingly, even with the rapidly cooling water dripping from my still-wet hair.

  After a shower together that resulted in a lot of water on the floor and a very thorough cleansing with hands and soap in inappropriate places, I’d toweled off and nabbed Eric’s shirt from the floor—over his mock protests—and set off in search of food. I would have stayed, not really wanting to be out of touching-distance, but I’m starving. I don’t ever remember being this hungry, even back in the days of kale-only lunches.

  Behind me, still in the bathroom, Eric belts out the opening of an old theme song, Gilligan’s Island, I think. Just to make me laugh. The man is gorgeous, but he can’t sing. Never could. During those movie nights when he would tickle me to wake me up, he would also sing—for the express purpose of torturing me, I think.

  I stop in the hall, my hand flying up to my mouth to block the giggles. “Eric, stop!”

  I don’t know if he hears me, but he sings louder.

  Tears from laughter dampen my eyes. Is there such a thing as sex-drunk? Because if so, I am. Even the thought—sex-drunk!—makes me giggle again. Apparently, good sex leads to giddiness. Definitely a new experience for me.

  I take a deep breath, steadying myself, and continue to the kitchen. I love him, I love being here. I love imagining that this could be our every Thursday. Or, at least, our every Saturday.

  In the kitchen, I head immediately to the refrigerator, my stomach rumbling. It dawns on me when I touch the handle that I hadn’t had dinner the night before. No wonder I’m hungry. Not that it had occurred to me until my other needs were well-addressed.

  I feel a too-satisfied smile pulling at the edges of my mouth.

  Yanking open the fridge, I brace myself for the blast of cooler air wrapping itself around me while I search the contents.

  The cold is still a shock, as is the inside—in that there’s nothing here. Condiments in the door. A few bottles of beer and a magnum of expensive champagne with the cork already popped. A single egg of indeterminate age or source rests directly on the glass rack, next to an open but mostly empty carton of Chinese food.

  Whoa. How does he survive like this?

  Then it clicks. He doesn’t. He wasn’t living here. He was staying at Katie’s. He’d had a fiancée. Until, from the sounds of our conversation, last night. Maybe the day before. The champagne … is it from when he proposed? Surely not.

  But the chill—from the refrigerator or that thought—makes me shiver.

  I love you. I heard my own breathy voice echoing back at me, and I squirm in discomfort. It sounds so yearning and needy.

  I was making declarations of love, offering sex without a condom, and he hadn’t even had time to restock his fridge between ending his engagement with Katie and starting … something with me.

  Cringing, I feel my face flush hot with embarrassment. It’s not that he can’t have two serious relationships in quick succession, but …

  Has he even fully moved out of her place? I don’t remember seeing boxes anywhere. I’d like to believe that it’s because he packed light, somehow having a sense that the relationship wouldn’t work out. But he had proposed to her.

  Suddenly I’m feeling vulnerable, exposed in a way that has nothing to do with the shortness of this T-shirt and the fact that I’m not wearing anything under it. Yes, he said last night that I’m the only person he’s ever felt this way about. But what does that mean in Eric-land? Are we going to reach a certain point where he panics and does whatever it takes to extract himself? God, am I that “whatever” for he and Katie? Am I his panic-reaction to cold feet?

  I want to trust him. I want to tru
st the choice I’m making, the choice I made to be with him. But it feels like I’m out here all by myself, like I’m the one taking all the chances, giving up all my control. By my decision, of course, but that doesn’t reassure me. My track record for personal decisions includes those that would have led to actual track marks. So.

  “Hey.” Eric steps into the kitchen, wrapping his arms around me, startling me. In spite of my worries, my body immediately responds to the warmth of him behind me. His bare chest against my back, the velvet of his worn jeans brushing against my legs.

  “Hey,” I manage.

  “What’s wrong?” He twists around to look at me.

  “Yeah. Just … no food.” I tip my head toward the empty refrigerator.

  It takes him a second, but understanding registers in his expression, a faint tightening. “Yeah. I, uh, had a food service before.” He runs his hand through his damp curls.

  “When you lived here.”

  “Yeah.”

  We’re silent for a moment, and everything we’ve been ignoring rushes in to fill the void. Like how this thing between us happened very quickly—or years too slowly, depending on your perspective—and it doesn’t really change anything. My mother is going to push me to sign with his father, and his father is attempting, with this same move, to assassinate Eric’s one and only project. His future.

  He takes a deep breath. “Calista…” he begins, his hands falling away from me.

  “If you had more eggs or ramen,” I say quickly, closing the refrigerator door like it’ll close the door on whatever he was going to say, “I can cook the shit out of ramen.” I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now. I just want this bubble of blissful ignorance to last a little longer.

  His eyebrows shoot up. “Ramen,” he repeats slowly.

  “You know, the curly noodles in the styrofoam cup?” I prompt.

  His lip curls up in disgust.

  I laugh in spite of myself. He’s such a snob. “Poor college student here,” I remind him. Actually, poor person in general. The years before Lori married Wade and my career took off, we survived some pretty lean times. Vegetables came in the form of chicken pot pies we ate for dinner, sometimes for weeks in a row. I think that’s partially why she’s gone so crazy in the other direction … because she can.

  But thinking about my mom makes uncertainty and guilt rise up in me, and that, in turn, makes me angry and frustrated.

  “Let me take Bitsy out while you get dressed, and then we can go get something,” Eric says, but it sounds more like a question. His gaze searches my face.

  Bitsy, hearing her name, comes scurrying in from the bedroom, where we left her sleeping. Apparently, we’d kept her awake last night. She paws at him, and he bends down to scoop her up, which makes my heart ache and kicks off a yearning that has nothing (and everything) to do with wanting him. Handsome man being responsible and taking care of something little and helpless, it’s a genetic predisposition. I can’t help it.

  I nod, and naked relief shows on his face.

  “But it’s Thanksgiving Day,” I point out. “And not everyone has your antipathy toward holidays. A lot of places are closed.”

  He snorts. “Nice vocab word, college girl.” Hesitation flickers, then he asks, “What do you normally do for Thanksgiving?”

  The pulse of love I feel for him in that moment almost takes me to my knees. Because I can guarantee that if I told him we usually ate raw octopus while sitting on the roof of the Capitol Records building, he would try to find a way to make that happen for me. Even though he hates the holiday. All holidays. Except, as he’s fond of saying, Arbor Day. Just to be a jackass.

  I shrug. “Lori cooks. I’m allowed double calorie intake, usually, if I promise to double up on a workout the next day,” I say mockingly. I try to smile, but it feels too tight on my face.

  Eric shakes his head in disgust.

  The worst part is, I’ll miss it. I hate Lori controlling me, but living without it feels like walking on a tightrope. Blindfolded. Above a tank of starving sharks.

  And I have to wonder if she’s pulling the same crap on Zinn today. With that callback next week? Probably.

  That thought makes the guilt in my chest throb that much harder. Damnit.

  “If you want to go home, I can—”

  “No,” I say sharply. Then I shake my head. “No,” I say in a softer voice. “I’m exactly where I want to be.” I hope. I think.

  Eric loops his arm around my neck, pulling me closer, and Bitsy pushes her cold nose to sniff my elbow, making me jump and him laugh. “We’ll find something. Brunch. People eat brunch on Thanksgiving, right?” He kisses my forehead, sending pleasant shivers through me. “We’ll figure it out.”

  * * *

  After one Bitsy walk—she gets her revenge for her sleepless night and me in Eric’s bed by taking forever to find the perfect place to pee—we’re off to what is likely the only brunch place in Hollywood that’s a) open and b) not serving some version of the traditional holiday meal. The promise of cream-cheese-filled waffles and bacon is more than enough to convince me.

  The sun is shining, the palm trees are rustling in the breeze, and the haze hasn’t kicked in yet. It’s one of those perfect Southern California days. Made even better by the fact that it’s Eric behind the wheel, day-old stubble on his jaw, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses but his mouth quick to smile. His hand rests on my knee as he drives, and he laughs when I point out the typo on the sign in front of a boutique store that changes it from advertising a sale to something vaguely pornographic and kind of confusing.

  We have to park a few blocks away, and when we amble up the sidewalk, which is virtually deserted thanks to the holiday, Eric reaches out and takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. The simplicity of it, how natural it feels, steals my breath.

  I’m still trying to recover when a photographer comes out of nowhere, stepping in front of us on the sidewalk to snap pictures as he walks backward.

  Eric tenses, his whole body going rigid and his hand tightening on mine, which only makes me realize how relaxed he was a few seconds ago by contrast. “Leave. Now,” Eric says, moving to block me from view as best as he can without letting go of my hand.

  “Are you guys together now?” the paparazzo, in his forties and Australian by the sound of the accent, persists. “Eric, aren’t you engaged to someone else? A doctor or something? How’s rehab, Calista? Are you still clean? Want to roll up your sleeves and show me?” He’s trying to get a reaction.

  I clamp my jaw shut, my teeth squeaking in protest. I’ve been trained too well, at this point. This has been Eric’s life as Rawley’s kid, probably for as long as he can remember. But I was dropped in at the deep end with Starlight, and those were hard lessons I don’t have any desire to repeat. I know how the game works now, and the media is always harder on girls. Especially girls like me, the ones who’ve made mistakes. They’re always easier on the guys, even when they misbehave. That’s macho. When a woman does it, she’s a bitch. Or an attention whore.

  Back in the day, Eric and I would have had to coordinate to keep Chase from punching guys like this. And then sometimes the two of them would ignore me and go after photographers on my behalf, which didn’t help. That’s where the second season rumors about the three of us sleeping together—all of us at once—came from, I’m fairly sure.

  As if the pap can read my mind, he switches gears. “Have you seen Chase Henry? He’s here in town with his new bird. Some kind of Starlight reunion in the works?”

  Almost in unison, as if we’d planned it, Eric and I raise our free hands, middle fingers up, in front of our faces. Eric sticks his directly in front of the guy’s camera, which is, admittedly, not quite as bad as hitting the photographer, but definitely more aggressive. It’s not just a rude gesture; it’ll make the pictures unsellable in the US. Decency laws, I think. I don’t remember the exact terminology anymore.

  What I do remember: To win against the paparazzi,
it’s always best to hit them where it hurts—right in the dollar signs.

  The pap groans. “Oh, come on. Just a couple more.”

  But we keep walking toward our brunch destination, our fingers up until he finally gives up and drops back.

  “Asshole,” Eric mutters as he pulls open the door to Buttercup. “Are you okay?” he asks as the noise from the surprisingly large brunch crowd inside drifts over us.

  “There’s probably a high-value catch in here somewhere,” I make myself say with a shrug. “He was just killing time.” But the pain from his remarks still sizzles, like the aftereffects of a hand accidentally pressed to a stove. No matter how many years have passed, if I’m still at all in the public eye, I will be remembered for my mistakes rather than my (albeit limited) successes. Oh, and whatever plastic surgery I might or might not have had. And who I’m currently sleeping with, of course.

  It’s this kind of thing that makes me long for my imagined life as an accountant. To be fair, I don’t know exactly what it’s like, but I’m betting no one whispers about Botox or asks you to roll up your sleeves to look for track marks.

  Eric pulls me closer, wrapping his arms around me, pressing his mouth against the top of my head, and I shut my eyes, letting the familiar comfort of him—this is something he would have done even before last night, though we would likely have been more careful about maintaining some distance—ease some of my tension. I bury my face against his T-shirt, wishing I could be even closer. I’m wearing one of his shirts with my yoga pants from yesterday, but it’s not the same. More like I want to crawl inside with him. Crawl inside his skin and live there, perhaps.

  “Two, please,” he says over my head to the hostess.

  I tilt my chin up against his chest, on the verge of suggesting that we order something to go and retreat to the safety, sanctity and solitude of his bedroom, when he stiffens, his arms going taut around me.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  But his attention is fixed on something—or someone—in the distance, deeper in the restaurant.

  Uh-oh. My mom? His dad? Oh God … Katie?