Second Act

by Herkness, Nancy

  “Actually, I’d like to tour the center.” He hesitated a moment before saying, “I have a foundation that funds programs for disadvantaged kids. Maybe it could help the K-9 Angelz, too.”

  “That would be terrific. I’ll let Emily know.” She smiled. “I should have guessed you’d be involved with helping kids. Why have I never heard about it? Your PR people should be all over that.”

  “My foundation is not about photo ops. It’s about saving as many kids as I can from what I went through.” His face was tight with annoyance.

  “Hey, don’t bite my head off! I just thought other people might donate money if Hugh Baker’s name was associated with it.”

  “Sorry.” He raked his fingers through his hair, making her remember the satin feel of it against her own hands. “I’ve had to battle hard to keep that part of my life private. The kids shouldn’t be scrubbed and decked out in their best thirdhand clothes before being paraded in front of a bank of cameras so that I look virtuous to my adoring fans.”

  “I get it. You don’t want a cause you care about on a personal level turned into a media circus.”

  He fixed his gaze on his empty plate and spoke in a strained voice. “When I was in the group home and prospective foster parents were scheduled to visit, they made us shower, brush our teeth and hair, and put on our least ratty clothes before they lined us up in the living room. We knew we were on display, and we hated it. The reek of desperation in that room . . .” His voice trailed off and she knew he was lost in the terrible memory.

  Reaching out, she laid her hand over his where it rested on the tablecloth, the sharp bumps of his knuckles pressing into her palm. “Look where you are now. You’ve left all that behind you.”

  He lifted his head, his features hard with the bleakness of his past. “You never leave it behind.”

  Her heart wrenched in her chest. He might have a face that sold millions of movie tickets, but behind it was still Hugh, the man she’d wanted to love for the rest of her life. Feelings she’d thought long gone rioted through her.

  She pulled her hand away from his and pushed back her chair. “May I have my clean clothes so I can go home?”

  He was out of his chair and around the table before she had finished standing up. He gripped her shoulders as he had upstairs and looked down at her. “Stay. Please. It’s so good to see you. I’ve missed you.”

  His voice rumbled, low and persuasive, playing her nerves and emotions like a violin. The strength of his hands on her shoulders sent a thrill of sexual awareness curling through her. The scent of sandalwood and Hugh enveloped her in a sensual cloud.

  She felt her body soften and melt, yearning toward the man she’d given her heart and soul to without reservation eight years before. And madness seized her. It had been so long since she’d felt this way, so cared about, so focused on, so worthy of attention. She wanted to feel it again, just once more.

  She thrust her fingers into the silky darkness of his hair and rose on her tiptoes, finding his lips with hers, feeling the electricity crackle between them as their bodies pressed together. Her breasts ached with pleasure when the hard wall of his chest crushed them.

  “Jess,” he breathed into her mouth before he grasped the back of her head in one hand and wound his other arm around her waist to yank her against him. The kiss exploded into demand and answer, setting her alight with delicious sensation.

  No matter what he had become in the last eight years, her body still knew him on the most primitive level as her mate. And it responded with abandon, desire sliding downward to turn hot and liquid within her.

  She released his hair and shoved her hands up under his sweater to feel the texture of his skin and the springy hair running down the center of his torso. The muscles of his abdomen tightened, and he moaned into her mouth.

  She felt a jerk on her sash and then her robe was pulled open. A brief draft of cooler air drifted across her skin before his hands cupped her buttocks under the sumptuous fabric, his fingers kneading close to her yearning as he held her belly tight against his erection.

  Yanking the hem of his sweater upward to bare his chest, she tore her mouth away from his to tongue his nipples, a touch he’d enjoyed in the past. “Oh dear God, Jess,” he rasped out, his grip on her bottom turning convulsive. She reveled in her power to drive him over the edge.

  For the second time, she found herself swung up in his arms as he carried her to one of the huge velvet sofas that curved through the living room. “I want to feast on you,” he said, lowering her onto the cushions before he ripped his sweater off over his head and stared down at her. “I want to touch every inch of you.”

  His words made her writhe with frustration. “That will take too long. I want you inside me now.” She opened her legs in invitation and knew she would get her wish when his face went incandescent with lust.

  “I wasn’t expecting . . . ,” he said, an expression of near pain twisting his lips. “I don’t have a condom.”

  “The bathroom,” she said. “They stock everything in there.”

  “Of course.” A look of such relief crossed his face that she nearly laughed. Except she was suffering from frustrated arousal as well. He strode toward a door she hadn’t noticed, hauling it open and disappearing while she heard the bang of drawers being opened and closed.

  The noise sent a splinter of sanity through her brain, making her sit up and pull the edges of the bathrobe back together. She should leave now, get away from this man who could fascinate and destroy her at the same time.

  “Found them!” he shouted, holding the box of condoms aloft in triumph as he stalked toward her with long, impatient strides and a look on his face that turned her insides into pure, molten desire.

  She tore off the bathrobe and lay back against the caress of the plump sofa cushions.

  He knelt over her with one knee between her thighs and a foil envelope between his teeth as he jerked his belt buckle open and unzipped his trousers. She reached up to take the condom from him and pull it out of the packet while he stripped off the rest of his clothes.

  “You’re so beautiful,” she said, stroking the condom down over his cock before she traced her fingers over a bulging muscle in his thigh. His body was more defined now, all youthful roundness honed away.

  He came down on top of her, braced on his forearms, his hips between her thighs. “You have the beauty,” he said. “Inside and out.” He lowered his lips to hers and slid into her at the same time.

  Her mouth opened on a cry of delight and his tongue drove into it as his hips flexed in the same rhythm. His weight held her in place while he moved inside her at a relentless pace, the exquisite ache within impelling her body into an upward arch, her nipples brushing the soft hair on his chest.

  “Hugh,” she said on a moan when he lifted his head to look down at her, his jaw tight with restraint. “Please!”

  “You liked this,” he said, shifting so he could slide his hand down between them. He found her clit with his fingertip.

  Her focus drew in so that all she felt for a long moment was his touch on that one tiny, intensely sensitive spot. Then the sensation exploded outward, shooting fireworks into every nook and cranny of her body while her muscles slammed into orgasm around him.

  “Ahh, Jess!” he shouted as his climax pumped in counterpoint to hers, amplifying every twinge of pleasure.

  And then they collapsed into the sofa, gasping and panting and quivering with release. Hugh lay partly over her, so she could feel his heart pounding against her while his breath whistled past her ear. Shudders of after-pleasure trembled through her as she sucked oxygen into her depleted lungs.

  “I was not expecting that.” His voice came out in a rasp from somewhere near her shoulder.

  “You said that already.”

  “I did? I can’t remember anything before the cataclysm that just hit me.”

  “It was a good one,” she said on a breathy laugh.

  He rolled so that he lay on
his side with his back against the sofa’s cushions, his head propped on one hand. “Watching you come always set me off.” He smoothed some damp, clinging hairs off her forehead.

  The present broke over her. Despite his earlier vulnerability, this was not the Hugh Baker she had once fallen asleep with every night. This man was rich beyond belief, had a face recognized by hundreds of millions, and was a lover of glamorous women. His burning ambition for all those things had destroyed their relationship. What the hell was she thinking?

  Goose bumps rose on her arms as she felt the chill of reality. Yet when she lifted her gaze to his, he smiled like a cat who’d found a whole pond of fat goldfish. If it was an act, it was a darned convincing one.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” he said, tracing a line along her collarbone and down over the swell of her breast.

  Her skin seemed to shimmer wherever his finger roamed. “What if I’m thinking that you’re the greatest lover of all time?”

  He snorted. “Then you wouldn’t look like someone just threw a bucket of cold water over your head.”

  It was that actor’s eye, always watching other people in case he could use something from them in his work. It made him far too perceptive when it came to reading her.

  “What’s bothering you, Jess?” His finger gently circled her nipple.

  An arrow of arousal shot from her breast to the V of her thighs. “I can’t think when you do that,” she said with a gasp.

  His smile was pure wickedness. “Then my plan worked.” He bent to suck where his finger had been playing, his hand moving down to rest on her belly.

  “Hugh!” Her hips lifted without any conscious thought on her part.

  “An invitation,” he purred against her breast, skimming his hand lower to curve between her legs.

  “I can’t . . .” But her body belied the protest, her muscles loosening and opening to him.

  He stroked her with a featherlight touch, dipping one finger just barely inside her when she began to pulse her hips. Then he shifted down the couch in a display of flexing muscles that made her breath catch even before he touched her clit with his tongue.

  And then she lost the ability to care about anything but the feel of his mouth on her. Until she came again, crying out his name while heat and satisfaction rolled through her in waves.

  When he lifted his head, his eyes were glazed with desire as he licked his lips. “Your taste hasn’t changed,” he said. “And it still goes straight to my cock.”

  “Finish inside me,” she said. “I just can’t promise to help.”

  He shook his head. “You’re still coming down from your orgasm. And every good actor knows that building anticipation makes the final climax all the more intense.” He moved up beside her again, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her satiated body against his. His erection nestled between her buttocks, making her nerve endings quiver despite their overload.

  He’d succeeded in scattering her worries, and she decided to leave them that way. Feeling like this was so much nicer than being virtuous. For today, she would pretend that she was having a brief, meaningless sexual fling with her ex-fiancé, not with a world-famous movie star.

  It wouldn’t change anything about her life.

  Hugh savored the feel of Jess’s luscious bottom cradling his half-erect cock. The fragrance of expensive cosmetics rose from her hair and skin to waft past his nostrils, but under it he could still detect the familiar, distinctive scent of Jess herself. When he’d been inside her, when he’d tasted between her legs, it had felt like a homecoming.

  He hadn’t been lying when he said he hadn’t expected this, hadn’t even hoped for it, although she’d been in his thoughts whenever he wasn’t involved in shooting a scene. His dinner invitation to her had been a nostalgic whim mixed with curiosity and guilt. He wanted to know what had happened to her in the years that he’d refused to be a part of. However, seeing her curled up on the dog bed had triggered such a powerful reaction that he hadn’t cared about anything except taking her as far away from there as he could get her.

  Self-reproach gnawed at him even as he tightened his embrace on her waist. Had he somehow pressured her into making love without realizing it? No, she had initiated this. Of course, that didn’t mean he had been forced to go along, but as soon as she tunneled her fingers into his hair and touched her soft lips and body to his, he had lost the ability to stop.

  But he didn’t want just her body. He wanted to know everything about the past eight years, even though he had no right to pry into her life anymore. He was the one who’d let their lines of communication lapse, even knowing that as his fame increased, Jessica would feel less and less comfortable trying to get in touch. He had been damned if he was going to reach out when he had been hurt. She had given up on him, so he would show her just how far he could go without her.

  Back then he had been young and blind to everything but his drive to reach the top—and so very stupid. When he’d thought he needed a sophisticated pretender on his arm on the red carpet, he had really needed Jess. She’d loved him with everything in her, no reservations. He’d loved her in return with all the intensity of someone who had never been loved fully before. Yet he’d somehow found a way to damage her feelings for him without understanding what he’d done.

  Now he was consumed by the need to know why she had broken the engagement. Because Jess didn’t quit easily.

  He shifted restlessly as he faced the truth. His refusal to reach out to her through the years had nothing to do with Jess or her actions and everything to do with his childhood.

  He had felt abandoned . . . again.

  Hours later, Jessica lay beside Hugh in the rumpled bed, their arms and legs intertwined, watching the lights of Manhattan blaze through the windows. The weight of reality settled on her shoulders while she admired the bird’s-eye view of her adopted city with its soaring, glass-skinned towers and gridded streets winking with red taillights. This was what New York looked like from Hugh’s perspective. She belonged down where you could see the grimy, cracked sidewalks and the weariness on people’s faces as they stomped through the gray haze of winter. He stroked her bare shoulder with his thumb, almost as though he didn’t realize he was doing it.

  “I don’t think I can move,” she said.

  “There’s no need to.” He hooked his knee around hers to angle her closer to him.

  “Ever again.”

  “You can stay in this room as long as you like.”

  “What time do you have to go back to work?” She splayed her hand on his chest to feel his slow, steady heartbeat.

  “I have to leave here at four in the morning.”

  “Are you riding into the rising sun or something?”

  “No, I have to get back to Boston.”

  She levered herself up so she could see his face. “Wait, you aren’t filming in New York anymore?”

  “We moved to Boston two days ago.”

  “I—but—that’s a long way to go for dinner.” He’d traveled to New York because she was here. That probably wasn’t a big deal for him. His assistant had undoubtedly chartered a helicopter or jet or something.

  “I wanted to see you.” His simple statement burrowed into her heart, a place she no longer wanted him. “We’re filming virtually nonstop for the next few weeks. They aim to get the movie out for next year’s Christmas season, given the theme. So I foresee quite a bit of air travel in my future.”

  Did he mean air travel in order to see her again or to get to the different locations? “Where else are you shooting?”

  “DC. Miami. Prague. Dubai. Singapore. Palau.” He ticked each one off on his fingers. “I’ve missed one somewhere, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll find a way to get back here as often as I can.”

  “I . . . Hugh . . .” She didn’t know how to explain. “I thought this was a one-night-stand kind of thing.”

  They were so close together that she felt his body go rigid. “I know you,” he said
, “and you’re not that kind of woman.”

  “I just . . . I mean . . . you’re you and I’m me. If anything, the differences between us have only increased.”

  “So what was this?” His voice was a growl.

  “A day out of time and reality.”

  He untangled himself from her in swift, efficient movements before he swung his legs off the bed and stalked away, his bare skin all light and shadow in the glow from the buildings outside. He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, making the powerful muscles of his shoulders ripple, before he pivoted toward her. “Isn’t it possible that we’ve both changed?”

  She sat up, clutching the covers tightly to her chest with one hand, and swept her other hand around the huge room with its glittering view. “It would take a seismic shift to accommodate this.”

  “I don’t care about this,” he snapped. “It’s just a way to buy the privacy that other people take for granted.”

  “Exactly.”

  He let his head fall back and blew out a long breath. “I’d forgotten how stubborn you can be.”

  “Not stubborn, practical.” She rolled to the side of the bed and stood up, dragging the coverlet with her. “We’ve had this conversation before, and we both know how it ended. I think it’s time for me to leave.”

  “No. Please. I’m sorry. Let’s not part this way.” He held out one hand, palm up. “Come back to bed. Just to sleep.”

  Regret and sorrow showed in the stark angles of his face. A sting of guilt pierced the flood of old emotions that swamped her better judgment. She hesitated. She didn’t want to leave on an unpleasant note, either.

  He seized the sheets in one hand and flipped them back in an invitation. “A few more hours.”

  “All right, but I’ll leave when you do.” She unwound her makeshift sarong and dropped it on the bed before slipping between the covers. Hugh slid in beside her, his weight rolling her toward him, even as he snaked an arm around her waist and snugged her back against his chest.