Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)

by C. D. Reiss

  When I heard the shower running I should have left. Obviously. But I went into her room. Peeked. I was making sure it was the shower and not just a faucet.

  Yes, that was it. If it was a faucet, I could go in and talk to her. So I was checking.

  Her jeans were stretched over the floor in the shape of the letter W. And the water sound was definitely coming from the shower.

  A gentleman would leave.

  But I hadn’t been a gentleman since I crossed into LA County in my 2003 Chevy Cavalier. Nope. I was ruled by my career and my dick. Right then, my dick was doing the decision-making, and the door to the bathroom was ajar, and the door to the shower was glass.

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

  Yeah.

  The water and steam obscured my view from full porn-site clarity, but that made the scene even sexier.

  If that was possible.

  She had one hand on the wall in front of her and the other, God help me, between her legs. I could see the shape of her tits and her ass sticking up.

  Head thrown back.

  Ass rotating.

  Skin slick and shiny.

  My dick was at full attention.

  I could smell her soap and hear her just over the sound of the water.

  I’d stepped close to the door without realizing I’d done it. That was the dick doing the thinking.

  She groaned. I saw her mouth open. A dark oval behind the wet glass.

  I was really going to have to go jerk off immediately.

  Then she came, bending the arm that was on the wall until she was pressed against it. A long groan bounced off the tiles.

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  I wanted to see her come for me.

  Like that. For me. Yeah.

  I wanted to fuck her blind. Fuck her open. The dick told me to go into the shower and take her. The dick hadn’t been refused in years. The dick got what it wanted and right then it wanted Cara DuMont so bad I thought the blood rushing to it would break it.

  I had a moment of sense. A moment where I could have turned around and waited in the living room, or outside, or on Mars. And that sense wasn’t overwhelmed by the dick. Nope, I was going to get in my rocket ship and go to fucking Mars, but probably the living room. I was going to leave.

  But the shower door clicked open.

  And my brain felt all the shame you’d expect, but the dick? The dick just saw her soaped-up tits and the length of her slick thighs.

  Did I mention I left my jacket in the main house? I had nothing to hide the eight-inch boner pressing against my leg.

  CHAPTER 18

  CARA

  I was recovering from my orgasm when I realized I needed shampoo and it was under the sink. I was going to be late if I didn’t snap to it, so I opened the door without taking another breath and there he was.

  I didn’t scream because I sucked air in so fast.

  “Shit!” he cried, putting his hand over his eyes like a kid in a scary movie.

  Oh my God, he had a tent in his pants.

  Not a tent. A tour bus.

  “What the hell?”

  I was too stunned to close the shower door. It was glass, so what was the point?

  I covered myself, one arm barely covering my breasts and the other the triangle between my legs.

  “I’m sorry! I was just—” He took one hand off his eyes to point over there, wherever that was.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Nicole! I was going to—”

  “Get out!”

  I took my arm off my chest and reached out to slam the bathroom door. But even with him out of my sight I felt him. His eyes. How they’d gone from my body and shot up to my face before he covered them.

  My clothes were on the other side of the door.

  I was embarrassed and angry. I didn’t want to think about what he’d seen me doing.

  How about that boner?

  I was also tingling from the prospect of him seeing me with my hand between my legs. Everything about this was uncomfortable and weird and arousing.

  I was shaking as I put the towel around me.

  To hell with it.

  I tucked the edge of the towel under my arm and walked out, leaving water footprints behind me.

  He was in the living room, sitting on the couch with his legs crossed.

  “I didn’t see anything,” he said, hands up.

  “Don’t you knock?”

  He lodged his tongue in his cheek and looked away.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “But like I said, I didn’t see anything.”

  A second little voice told me to mention the inhuman size of his erection. That would include me admitting I was looking at his crotch, which reminded me that he was starring in my fantasy. So voice number two told me to shut the hell up. Don’t acknowledge it. Don’t even think about it. The state of his penis was an inappropriate topic of conversation.

  “You always get hard when you don’t see anything?”

  So much for voice number two.

  He looked me right in the eye, leveling his gaze in utter seriousness.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss.”

  Now it looked like I was suffering from wishful thinking. He was infuriating.

  “You’re a dick.” I said it with enough venom to kill an elephant.

  He looked at his watch. “I came to tell you Blakely’s coming tonight. You have the night off.”

  “Well played, Mr. Sinclair.”

  I shut the bedroom door so I could get dressed without his eyes working me over.

  “I’m sorry!” he said from the other side of the door.

  I didn’t answer. Eventually he left.

  CHAPTER 19

  CARA

  You should quit.

  I was still on severance from the Heywoods. Money wasn’t the issue. This was borderline harassment. I lay on my bed in the dark, looking up at the ceiling.

  You should quit and sue him.

  Blakely had come back at a quarter to ten and gone right back out, leaving Nicole’s monitor with me. Brad had stayed at the event.

  I didn’t tell her about the shower. I wasn’t afraid, but I didn’t want her to think badly of him. I didn’t know why it mattered to me. Maybe I didn’t want her to think he was another Josh Trudeau.

  Really, what did I want out of him?

  I must have fallen asleep at one point, because I had another Brad dream. I had my hands on the shower wall and he was fucking me from behind.

  Get it deep. Harder. Give it to me.

  There were pool balls on the floor, and I tried not to step on them, because they’d roll under my feet and I’d fall, but the closer I got to orgasm the harder it was.

  He tapped on the shower glass in my dream, loud enough to wake me up. The feeling of his shaft between my legs disappeared, and the sound of rain and tapping continued.

  “Cara, waaaakeeeee uuuuuppppp . . .”

  His voice far away, but real. Not dream real but real real. I bolted to sitting.

  He was tapping on my bedroom window.

  “IIII’mmmm knoooockiiiiiiingggg . . .”

  It was 2:17 in the morning. The rain was the sound of the sprinklers.

  “Jesus Christ.” I shook the sleep away. Was I dressed? Yes. Sweatpants and black T-shirt. I got out of bed and slapped the window open. He practically fell through it. I swallowed a laugh. He was adorable in his wet tuxedo and red eyes.

  “I am so sorry,” he slurred, reaching his whole arm in the window, finger pointing aimlessly. “I . . .” He put his hand on his chest. “I am an asshole. I should have knocked. And I should not have enjoyed the view so long. I am a—” He swayed. Gripped the windowsill. “—I am a pig.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I’m sorry sober too.”

  “Drunk apology accepted. I’ll accept your sober apology in the morning.”

  “Okay. I like you. I don’t want you to be mad at me. You should be mad at me, but
I don’t want you to be. I want you to like me.”

  “Go to bed.”

  He leaned back out the window, paused. “Do you like me?”

  “Against my better judgment, I do.”

  “Okay.”

  He was so drunk he could barely stand.

  “Please go to bed.”

  “Okay. I will apologize tomorrow. And the next day. And . . .” He swayed. “And the next day. I wasn’t raised like that.”

  “Go. To. Bed.”

  He gave me a salute and walked right through a sprinkler, toward the front house. I closed the window.

  This job was the worst I ever had. I really should quit.

  But I couldn’t. I didn’t know if it was Nicole, or Blakely, or Brad that kept me there, but I felt a pull to see it through. Or at the very least, decide later. I went to the bathroom, did my business without turning the light on, and walked back to the bedroom. I could hear the sprinklers, and the motion-sensor light was still on. I reached for the drapes to shut out the light.

  Brad was lying in the grass facedown, arms and legs in a big X, getting sprinkled on.

  I could leave him out there.

  The sprinklers turned off.

  I could, he deserved it. But I couldn’t.

  I put on sneakers and a hoodie and went outside. He was face-first in a mud puddle.

  “Brad?”

  He didn’t move. I’d moved big drunk men before. In Scotland there had been a boy who had no idea when to stop drinking. Then in college, more than one boy, more than one time.

  I pulled his arm until he was on his back, then pulled both wrists and pulled forward. If I’m making it sound easy, it wasn’t. I slipped and fell in wet grass, and grunted like a tennis player. But I got him to sitting. Half his gorgeous face was dotted with mud.

  “Brad?”

  No answer. I slapped him. Nothing. Slapped again, harder. He groaned.

  Then I pulled my arm back and really hauled off and whacked him.

  “Ow.”

  “You have to wake up. I can’t carry you.”

  “That hurt.”

  “You deserve it.”

  I crouched, getting my shoulder under his arm.

  “Okay, I’m going to count to three. On three, stand up.”

  “Do you know you’re beautiful?”

  “One.”

  “And you smell like a fruit cup.”

  “Two.”

  He looked at me, the weight of his head tilting his face at an angle to mine. “You’re the queen of the house.”

  “Three.”

  We lurched up. Took a step left. Adjusted. Stood steady.

  “Can I just sleep here?”

  “No. Nicole isn’t going to find your drunk ass on the lawn in the morning.”

  “Shit.” Despite his alcohol saturation, that word held a ton of meaning.

  I forgot I had to think about my daughter.

  I didn’t think about her finding me.

  I’m going to have to change.

  No one should count on the authenticity of drunken emotion, yet there was something so deep about the tone of that word. Even if he didn’t remember how he uttered it the next morning, there was something inside him that knew he had to fix this.

  “Lean on me,” I said.

  We took one step forward, then two. I held his wrist with one hand and his waist with the other. The front of his tuxedo shirt was brown with mud. I got wet wherever his clothes touched me.

  “Thank you,” he said when he stumbled.

  “No problem. Step up here.”

  He stepped up to the pool patio.

  “You hurt my feelings,” he said without hurt in his voice. As if he was just stating a fact. “When you called me a dick.”

  “I’m not sorry.”

  “I don’t blame you. Do you have fantasies, ever?” He ran the question into the statement as if they made sense together.

  “Like about what?” I asked. His arm around me, his breath soft in my ear. Even his dependence was kind of a fantasy.

  “You know what bothers me about fantasies?”

  “Watch this chair here. Whoa.” I pulled him left, narrowly missing tripping over a lounger.

  “You never know if you’re getting it right,” he said.

  I turned to him, and found his eyes taking up my entire field of vision and my nose two inches from his.

  “What do you mean?” Up ahead, the screen door was wide open. He must have come out that way.

  “Like when I fantasize about fucking you.”

  We almost tripped on the entrance. I swallowed my lungs, stomach, and heart in one gulp. He was drunk. He didn’t mean it. He never thought about fucking me. Not Brad Sinclair.

  And he was my boss.

  “Step up,” I said, turning back. My face burned red hot.

  He stepped up. We were in the back room. I was never going to get him up the stairs to his room, so I pivoted toward the guest room.

  “Do you come with a dick?” He slurred, but I wasn’t mistaking the words or meaning. “Just a dick? Or do you need a little help?”

  “Brad, really?”

  “I have this one fantasy where you come without help and one where I touch you.”

  “This is totally inappropriate.”

  I kicked open the guest room door.

  “I want to know which one’s right, then I won’t ask again. And what do you call your . . . you know . . . girl parts?”

  I ducked and let his weight drop. He fell to a sitting position, soaked clothes sticking to his beautiful body. White shirt exposing his nipples and the hair on his chest, eyes a third lower, seriously asking me what term I used for my genitalia.

  “I’m assuming you talk dirty,” he said. “I shouldn’t assume. But it’s my fantasy and I’m keeping it.”

  A drop of water fell from his cuff onto the wool carpet.

  “The jacket has to come off.”

  He nodded and went for his lapel, but even that messed with his balance and he nearly tipped over. I grabbed him and pulled him up.

  “You know the best part of them?” he said. I tugged his cuff so he could get his arm out. “The part when I spread your legs.”

  I sucked in a breath. My nervous system fired, dropping all sensation and urgency to my core. I had to pause to breathe before I pulled the other cuff.

  “I’m looking in your eyes and you say yes,” he continued. “You bend your knees.”

  I tossed the jacket over a chair.

  “And I . . .” He put the backs of his hands together and moved them apart. “God.”

  I didn’t have to take his shirt off. Didn’t even have to stay in the room with him. I could have left. But maybe this was a little bit of my fantasy too. Maybe his attention was something I craved, even if he wasn’t supposed to be drunk or muddied.

  He looked concerned for a second.

  “Do you shave? Landing strip? I don’t care, but I want to get it right.”

  I undid the top button and took the studs out of the front of his shirt. I had to kneel to get to the bottom buttons.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I got to the last button. His head tilted down to me, and I looked up at him.

  “Just tell me that.”

  I reached for his cuff links, but he pulled his arm back and did it himself.

  “My fantasy is about you.” He pointed to me. “If I don’t know this stuff, it’s about some random woman.”

  He dropped the cuff links on the carpet.

  “How I manage my hair depends on my mood,” I said, grabbing his cuffs. I pulled his wet shirt off and put it over the jacket. “I’m not attached to any one way of doing it. I really hope you forget this tomorrow.”

  “I still have to memorize the third act,” he said. “I bet you taste like strawberries.”

  I pushed him back, and he fell like a sack of potatoes, arms out, bare chest breathtaking in the moonlight. I wanted to put my hands on it. Claw at the skin. Feel t
he nipples get hard under my fingers. Talk filth until he got hard.

  I got back on my knees and took his shoes off.

  “Thank you for taking care of my daughter,” he said as I picked his legs up by the ankles and swung them around until he was straight on the bed.

  Only a guy midblackout could go from subject to subject like that. It meant he was forgetting things as soon as they were happening.

  “I talk during,” I said matter-of-factly as I put the blanket over him. “And dirty. And dick. And even though it’s inappropriate and against all the rules, I’d love for you to bury yours in me so hard it hurts. I dream about you fucking me like an animal three nights a week, and the other four you fuck me like you own me.” I patted the blanket.

  “I’ll never work again,” he mumbled, half inside his drunken dream world. He couldn’t have been talking about burying his dick in me. “No one will want me if I don’t show up. Everything will be gone. All sad faces.”

  “Good night.” He murmured a response. I kissed him on the forehead.

  When I came back to put a glass of water and aspirin on the night table, he was passed out.

  CHAPTER 20

  CARA

  I got up early and went to the gym. I ran, climbed, did sit-ups and a spin class, but nothing worked Brad’s words out of my mind.

  He fantasized about me. That was the bottom line. I imagined his voice telling me what he wanted to do to me and replayed it over and over while I pedaled myself into a mass of sweat and burning muscles. On the screens above, DMZ flashed Brad on the red carpet with Nicole in his arms.

  They were adorable, and Nicole hadn’t been out that late. Blakely wasn’t in the photos. I would have called the entire evening a success if he hadn’t shown up at my window in a wet tuxedo.

  It was Blakely’s shift until after dinner. When I got back from the gym, Brad was working with Paula by the pool, doing whatever the thing was that they did. Nicole was underfoot with her toys; the space under the table was her own unique world. The ponies lay among Brad and Paula’s feet. Nicole made one of the ponies kick a ball, and it rolled out of the protection of the table. She went to get it. In the meantime, with the girl’s back turned and her father reciting a line, Paula lifted her leg and quietly crunched the Lego horse stable under her heel, dislodging the lilac plush pony that lived there. With a flick of her foot, she brushed it toward the wet drain on the other side of the table.