Role Play (Silhouette Studios)

by Katana Collins

  Ash sighed and swirled what was left in his scotch glass. “You’re right. It’s not stupid. I get why it’s important, but also in our industry, the lines are very blurred,” he said. “Look, I’m being honest when I said I didn’t know you’d be here. I wasn’t coming to find you. But, I had a nice time, regardless. I promise you, no matter what happens between us, your position on the film and at Silhouette won’t be compromised.”

  Yeah, I knew that. With Uncle Rich as the president, it was Ash who should be concerned for his job, not me. I slipped my straw between my lips and slurped hard. Son of a bitch… I had to learn to stop nervous drinking so much. My head was fuzzy and the lights from the dance floor were spinning around me. “I should go,” I whispered, my voice hoarse.

  I tossed some cash onto the bar, hoping it would cover Andrea for the drinks and a decent tip. And if not, I’d pay her back tomorrow. For now, I needed to get away from this man. Get away from his intoxicating scent and hypnotic voice. As I stood, the room tilted and Ash caught me around the waist. The heat from his palms seared through my t-shirt and I could feel the weight and pressure of his touch against my cotton-clad flesh. My breasts were pressed flush against his hard, muscled chest and my hands landed on his broad shoulders.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. How would that palm feel sliding down between my thighs? Brushing over my swollen clit?

  “I’ll take you home,” Ash said. “You shouldn’t be driving.”

  Well, duh. No shit, Sherlock. I wasn’t even going to pretend like I was fine to drive. It was clear that, with how I had pounded the last two and a half drinks, I shouldn’t be behind a wheel. Even still, riding in a car back to my place with Ash was not happening.

  I shook my head, the movement stirring my brain like a Cuisinart. “Andrea can give me a ride home.”

  “After her shift?” Ash looked back and forth to where Andrea was standing behind the bar. “At what? Two in the morning?”

  Shit. He was right. That was a terrible plan. Especially since I had to be on set at six a.m. A slice of pink slipped between his full lips as he ran his tongue across them in a swift motion. Whether it was a nervous tick, or he was catching a bit of scotch that clung to his lips—I wasn’t sure. But it was one hundred percent sexy. “How about I give you three options. Number one,” he counted on each finger. “I drive you home myself.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he ignored me, talking over me as I started to object. “Number two: Your friend gives you a ride home after her shift and while you wait for her to get off work, you sleep this off in my private room upstairs. You can’t stay out here until two a.m. and be on set at six.”

  Curiosity flared inside of me. What did the private areas upstairs look like? What would Ash have in that room? Tucked into the deepest corner of his drawers and closets? I swallowed. “What’s option three?”

  “I call my driver and he takes you home. I’ll follow behind in your car so that you’ll have it in the morning.”

  Having his driver take me home felt even weirder. Like I was using his power and money for… for luxury or something equally crazy. No. I wasn’t going to use Ash like that.

  I felt like I was being dealt a hand in poker by a card shark. “How about option four… I call an Uber, then come back in the morning to get my car.”

  He dropped his head, frustration seeping from his pores. “How much will an Uber cost you?”

  I swallowed, knowing where this line of questioning was going. If it was an eight dollar ride and only ten minutes away, that would be no big deal. I sighed. “It’s like thirty bucks to get to my place from here.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “So, you’ll be out sixty bucks for two Uber trips? Not to mention, you’ll have to wake up an hour earlier than you need to, then come here and get your car in order to make it on set in time, when you could just get a ride home for free right now? Has the salary for assistants increased exponentially since I was one that sixty dollars is no big deal?”

  I inhaled deep through my nose, floating my eyes briefly closed. “You’re my boss and you just admitted to sleeping with my other boss a few months ago. And there’s a no fraternization policy at Silhouette. You seriously think any of your three options are a good plan?”

  With a heavy sigh, his nostrils flared. “No. But I’m willing to risk both my job and reputation to make sure you get home safely.”

  Heat pooled low in my belly. He was a good man. Sure, he played around a lot. But at his core, that was the right answer. And ensuring my safe arrival home? Even Uncle Richard couldn’t be mad at that. “Are you drunk?” I asked.

  Ash shook his head. “Not at all. This is only my second, and I don’t have to finish it,” he said, tapping his finger to the textured edge of the tumbler. “Come on,” he coaxed. “What would Judy do?”

  What would Judy do? Judy would be able to afford her own freaking limo driver for one thing. As it stood, I could barely afford one thirty dollar Uber ride. I refused to take the extra salary Uncle Rich had offered me with the job and only accepted the typical starting salary for a PA with my level of experience, aka zero experience. After thinking for a moment, I stood taller, swinging my purse over my arm. “Fine… option five,” I said. “You drive me home in my car and then I call you an Uber to bring you back here.” Ash started to object, but I held out my car keys to him. “It’s a compromise, Ash. I’m not going to let you pay for some astronomically priced limo driver to take me home. Doing it this way still saves me money and time because I’ll only need to pay the cost of one Uber… not two. And you’re saving me the trouble of having to wake up at four-thirty tomorrow morning to retrieve my car.” I arched my eyebrows, awaiting his response. When he nodded and held out his palm, I dropped the keys into his open hand.

  “I’m not letting you pay for the Uber,” he said.

  “Yes, you are.”

  He slid the glass back toward the edge of the bar for Andrea to collect. Then, mumbling, he ran his hand through his hair. But I could have sworn that through the thin veil of his downturned mouth and cinched, narrowed eyes, I saw the hint of a smile. “I knew I should’ve asked ‘What would Liza do’ instead.”

  “Liza would have done the same thing. Only louder, more obnoxious, and off-key.”

  Chapter Six

  Lucy

  I slid into the passenger seat of my little Smartcar Fortwo and rolled down the window. Ash stood outside, door flung open, staring at the small space in the driver’s seat. “Here,” he leaned in, handing me a bottle of water he had snagged from Andrea and a brownie from his pocket. “You should drink water and have something to eat.”

  I quirked an eyebrow. “A brownie?” Yeah, not sure how much a giant square of sugar and chocolate was going to help soak up the alcohol.

  “It’s protein infused… a friend of mine is a health nut and also a baker… he gave it to me today.”

  I unwrapped the cellophane and pinched off a corner, popping it into my mouth. It was… holy God, it was heaven in brownie form. “Wow,” I said, chewing. “This is… this is healthy?”

  Ash shrugged. “Hell if I know.” Still standing outside, eyeing the driver’s seat, he blew out a breath, then hunched over, and climbed behind the wheel. It creaked the whole way as he slid the seat as far back as it would go. “Christ, I had matchboxes as a kid bigger than this thing.”

  His knees framed the wheel, and he stabbed the keys into the ignition, turning the car on.

  “If you’re going to complain, I can always call that Uber,” I said. He aimed his scowl directly at me, but I ignored it, grabbing my seatbelt and latching it at my hip.

  “Don’t you dare open that app,” he warned. “I cannot believe this tin can on wheels is road legal.”

  “Don’t you want to save the planet, Ash?”

  “Not at the expense of my back.” But beneath that scowl was the smallest, tentative smile. He exhaled a breath through puffed lips, then threaded his fingers through his dark, tussled hair. With strong hands
, he adjusted my rearview mirror and his eyes immediately locked on something behind us. In the hatchback section of my car hung three of Uncle Richard’s suits that I had picked up from the dry cleaners as a favor to him. His name was printed large on the receipt stapled to the front hanger, and I cringed as Ash spun around and pointed to it.

  “Why do you have Rich’s dry cleaning?”

  I shrugged, potential lies swimming through my brain. “Part of the shitty grunt work of being a wardrobe assistant,” I answered, but it came out more like a question. “He… ran into me in the halls as I was heading to the dry cleaners and asked if I wouldn’t mind taking a few of his suits as well, since I was going anyway.”

  Ash’s brows dipped, but with a small “huh” sound, he nodded and turned back around. “Not sure why he wouldn’t just have Jasmine bring them.”

  Jasmine! His assistant. Of course, I should have blamed her. Said that she asked for the favor… not Uncle Rich. I mentally smacked my forehead.

  “Well… I was going to the dry cleaner anyway. So…”

  Ash chuckled. “That lazy bastard,” he said, but it seemed like he was mostly kidding. He backed out of the spot, pulling up to the red light—the entrance into and out of the LnS parking lot.

  I covered my smile with the back of my hand. He looked utterly ridiculous. His knees were up to his chest, his back was hunched, chin and neck jutting forward; he looked like a cartoon character. “Turn right,” I instructed, “then get on the highway. Head toward West Hollywood.”

  His mouth curved, and he shook his head giving a snort of laughter. “I have to drive all the way to West Hollywood in this thing?” He sighed. “Man, maybe I should’ve let you take that Uber.” He grinned, and holy shit, the sight of his smile knocked the breath right out of me.

  This flirting we were doing—it was hot. Tonight was the most action I’d had in two years. God, that was sad. I was sad. Could you become a virgin again? Wasn’t that a trendy thing … born again virgins? Yeah, Andrea had warned me of that. That if I wasn’t careful, cobwebs would form and sex would be miserable all over again, just like it was the first time I did it with Duncan at senior grad night.

  This banter back and forth with Ash was far better than any foreplay I’d ever had. Which probably had a lot less to do with Ash and a whole lot more to do with the lame-ass dudes I’d dated in high school and college.

  The breeze from my open window caught his wavy dark hair, ruffling it in the wind. The moonlight sliced over his face, casting a bluish tint on it and giving him an almost magical glow.

  Ash merged the Smart into the highway traffic seamlessly. Only in LA could there still be this amount of traffic this late on a weekday.

  Would it really be so bad? Breaking the fraternization rules? They were meant to protect women and people in lower positions from being taken advantage of… but I didn’t feel that way. I knew my position at the studio didn’t rely on whether or not I hooked up with Ash. Hell, I knew it more than he did. And for the first time in over a year, there was a man paying attention to me that actually made me… excited. For the first time in years, I actually wanted to pursue someone. With my history? Maybe I shouldn’t ignore that impulse.

  “You’re staring again,” Ash said, cutting his eyes briefly from the road to look at me. “Not that I mind, of course.”

  Shit. I jerked my gaze away, out the window and swallowed hard. “It’s hard not to stare at you,” I answered, honestly. What the hell? Clearly the vodka still had control of my tongue. I didn’t say stuff like that to men. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. Not even when I was dressing up and putting on cute, glittery dresses and heading to sorority parties. This intense connection—it was like a low simmering heat that the more time I spent with Ash, the more achy and hot I grew. “What made you want to be a director instead of an actor?” I asked, in an effort to get my mind off how acutely attracted to him I was.

  The man could easily be an actor. He looked like a younger, more rugged John Stamos. Why would someone so beautiful choose a life behind the camera?

  He laughed at that, tilting his head to the side. “I thought about acting. I was pretty good at it, too. When I was a freshman in college, one of the assignments was to put together a fake reel. Just as practice. I turned to the guy sitting next to me and asked if he wanted us to help each other—I’d film his, he’d film mine. That guy? It was Jude Fisher. And I enjoyed filming him more than I enjoyed acting in my own reel. I had a knack for the shots. His reel was way better than mine, and I give him shit for it still to this day—it wasn’t because he was a better actor than me, but because I was a better director/cinematographer than him.”

  “And you’ve been best friends ever since?”

  Ash shrugged. “Pretty much. What about you? Why costume design rather than acting?”

  I snorted into the bottle of water I was sipping. “You’re kidding, right? Look at me.”

  He turned a quick glance at me. “I’m looking,” he said slowly. Quietly. The air between us tightened and buzzed to life. “I’ve been looking the whole damn day. So, tell me… what made you choose costume design?”

  I cleared my throat, trying to find my voice. “Let’s ignore the fact that I’m not exactly the Hollywood standard for beauty—”

  “Well, the Hollywood standard is bullshit,” Ash said. “But that’s beside the point. Because you are beautiful. You are movie star beautiful. But Hollywood beautiful is just a stupid myth that involves contouring and heels and fucking Photoshop. If you strip any of those actresses of their makeup and see them on a regular day in their t-shirts and jeans…” his voice faded and when he spoke again, it was more gruff. “Let’s just say, you put them to shame.”

  A tortuous flame ignited in my core. It managed to be both deliciously satisfying and also terrifying. What was happening here? He thinks I’m beautiful. He doesn’t see a plain Jane and mousy brown hair and giant rectangular specs.

  “So, I’ll ask again,” Ash said. “And I expect an honest answer… why costume design?”

  Vulnerability stabbed through me, rising from my core and ballooning up my chest. “I—I don’t know. I’ve always loved dressing other people. Probably because I was never allowed to choose what I wore myself, so instead, I would dress my Barbies.”

  Ash’s brows tightened. “You weren’t allowed to choose your clothes?”

  I shook my head. “My mom was… strict.”

  He frowned at the statement, his mouth tightening at the corners, but he didn’t press any further. “So… dressing Barbie was your outlet,” he said.

  I sighed in relief that I didn’t have to go further into my relationship with my mom. At least, not right this second. “Yep. I didn’t believe that Executive Barbie would wear a pink suit. So I created a new work outfit for her in navy blue. I just had an eye for it. And when Andrea started to sew, she would make the clothes, and together we would create these characters—these looks from random pallets of fabric that we found in the dollar bin at JoAnn Fabrics.” I chuckled and shook my head.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m just remembering how Andrea would take the clothes my mom made me wear and she would alter them. Like, she took this a-line skirt my mom bought me and sewed these little hooks on the inside so that when we went to school, I could tuck the hem into the hooks and it became this trendy and cute asymmetric skirt.”

  “She sounds like a good friend.”

  “The best.”

  There was a brief pause before Ash said, “So, being on stage as one of the characters never really crossed your mind?”

  “Nope. Never. Besides, I could never give up sweets like this in order to be an actress.” I paused to take another bite of the brownie and moaned. “Oh my God. Seriously… you have to try this. Your friend is ridiculously talented.”

  “Break me off a piece and pop it in my mouth.” He opened his mouth. His lips looked soft, wet, and pliable and I wanted so badly to press mine against them. To close my eye
s and sink into the feeling as they slid their way down my neck, dropping kisses all down my body until eventually they landed between my legs.

  Well, shit. I was staring again, this time at his open mouth. And he knew it based on the way it curved toward his eyes. Swallowing a curse, I tore a section off the corner and reached to the left. The small car made it so I didn’t have to lean far. I wanted those lips. Wanted them so bad, I could already taste them—could imagine remnants of scotch and chocolate from the brownie he was about to eat clinging to his mouth. If this was what desire felt like? I needed more of it. Needed more of the intoxicating rumble of his voice and the soft ripple of lust I felt in my belly.

  With each passing second, I felt my resolve evaporating. As I extended my arm, brownie pinched in my fingers, I reached just a little further than I needed to and brushed my knuckles against his lips. Pleasure kicked through me from the tips of my fingers as I placed the brownie on his tongue, which he extended out to meet my touch. With a flick, his wet, silky tongue curved around my finger as he sucked the brownie from my grasp.

  He moaned a desperate, wicked sound as I withdrew my finger from the tight pucker of his mouth. I crossed my legs tight, squeezing against the throbbing ache in my damp panties.

  “Fuck, that was good,” Ash said, swallowing. And I was pretty damn sure he didn’t mean the brownie. “So… you have a sweet tooth,” he said. “What’s your favorite meal? Like… real food. Not junk food.”

  “Clams,” I answered automatically, then laughed at the look Ash gave me. “I know… it’s a weird answer. But my mom used to make them for me on my birthday. She’d make her own chowder. Or pan fry them with jalapeños and roasted corn. Other times, we’d put them on tortillas and have them as tacos. I could eat clams for every meal and be happy.”