Tall Dark & Handsome

by Wilde, Amelia

  I trace the line of his jaw with my fingertip, indulging myself, and then I press a final, quick kiss to his lips. “You’ll have to learn to live with it, pretty boy.”

  I flounce toward the door, waiting for his laugh to echo through the trailer, but instead I’m bathed in cold silence.

  Shit.

  I turn around, an anxious coil in my gut. Cannon looks blank. Irritated. Tired. “Is that what you think of me, Juno?”

  The way he says my name wrenches my heart in two. We’ve met in this trailer at least once a day since our flight from Georgia, and no errant joke has ever provoked this kind of reaction.

  “No?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m completely convinced.”

  “Cannon…” I run a hand over my hair, smoothing the flyaways that won’t be tamed. “This maybe isn’t the best time for a conversation about what it means to hook up with—”

  He takes a big step toward me, the air crackling with his determination. “Let’s get one thing clear. The only reason this is a short series of hookups is because you want it to be that way.”

  “That’s the only way it can be.” I hear the pleading in my voice and hate it, but we’re overdue to be back on set and I can’t risk anyone coming to find us. “You know that, right?”

  “Is that what you knew on the plane when you let me kiss you for three hours in plain sight?”

  “It wasn’t plain sight, and…” I grab for my notepad. “Why are you fighting with me? I’m sorry I called you a pretty boy, but honestly—”

  Cannon’s mouth crashes into mine, forceful and possessive and nothing like the easygoing dullards he plays in most of his movies. When he pulls back, I gasp for breath. “You never know when to stop, do you?” His eyes search mine. “You think it’s about calling me some stupid name? I don’t give a fuck about that.”

  “Then what?”

  “You, Juno. You. I want more of you.”

  I want to believe him. With every bit of my soul, I want to believe that Cannon Hunt has fallen head-over-heels for me. Despite the fact I was a total bitch to him for a lot longer than necessary. Despite the fact I regularly disparage his romantic comedy career. Despite the fact I am in no way on his level. In no way.

  I want to believe him, but I don’t think it’s possible. Not until I have something to offer, and right now, all I have to offer is a risky proposition in my work trailer.

  “Maybe someday.” The words sound pathetic, even to me. “You know, when all this is over.”

  “And what? You and I are both so far out of the industry that nobody would care?” Cannon laughs. “Nobody would care now. The scandal of being together is all in your head. It’s a fantasy.”

  “It would be a nightmare,” I tell him simply. “This movie could be a big player come awards season.”

  “Right. I wouldn’t want to fuck that up for you.” He sighs. “Time’s up. Let’s get back out there.”

  I sense it, humming in the air. This is an opportunity to right course. To spend another five minutes convincing him that this doesn’t scare me, not at all, not on lots of different levels.

  But then I think about the consequences—the real consequences—and I lose my nerve.

  Instead of running back into his arms, I push open the door. “After you.”

  17

  Cannon

  It’s my own fucking fault, really.

  I should have known from the moment I walked into that audition room that Juno and I were on opposite sides. Of the movie, for one thing, but also of life.

  Two agonizing days later, we wrap at sunset and I head back to my hotel room.

  “I’m done with her,” I say to no one, as I stab the key card into the lock and wait for the thing to beep. I’ve been saying it every day since. Every day that she doesn’t meet with me in that fucking trailer. Turnabout’s fair play, but everything in me revolts from the idea.

  My room is blessedly cold—I’ll run the A/C all day if I have to—and I strip down and pad across the frigid bathroom tiles to the shower.

  The water hasn’t even finished heating before my mind swings back to the feeling of her mouth on mine, delicate and fierce all at once. She’s an infuriating spitfire, that’s for sure. One minute, she’s straddling me in the work trailer. The next, she’s acting like there’s no possible way we could ever make things work.

  There’s only one way to find out. But Juno? She’s not interested in taking risks. She’s only interested in climbing as high as she can on that studio ladder, and I can’t blame her. I know what it’s like to keep stepping up, rung after rung, until your hands are blistered and sore, if it only means you won’t have to go back to where you came from.

  Not that she’ll tell me where she came from. I can get five minutes out of her on a good day, and then it’s professional business as usual.

  I’m scrubbing the shampoo out of my hair when I hear it.

  A soft-as-hell knock on the door.

  “Fuck off,” I say smoothly. Whoever it is can wait. If it’s Juno, she can wait even longer.

  I take my time working the soap into a lather across my skin and rinsing it off, turning the heat off until it feels like I’m a new person. If I’m not fully new, at least I’ve been reset so I can go outside this room and give people the Cannon Hunt they want to see.

  I’m rubbing the towel over my hair when the gentle tap at the door becomes a full-blown knock. Someone’s knuckles, rapping against the reinforced faux-wood. To hell with them. If they’re going to be all over me at the end of the day while I’m trying to shower, they’ll get a show they won’t forget.

  “Yeah?” I shout the word at the main door of the hotel room and stomp over to the door.

  There’s nothing.

  I lean down to look through the peephole.

  There’s no one.

  The knock comes again.

  And I realize it’s coming from the door adjoining the next room.

  What the fuck?

  We’ve been shooting in California for seven days, and not once have I heard a sound from the next room.

  “Just a second.” I hear it through the wall, a little muffled, but unmistakably Juno.

  Is she kidding?

  I’m at the adjoining door in an instant, resisting the powerful urge to press my ear to the crack to listen. It ends up not being necessary. The hotel is decent, but it’s not nice enough to have thick walls. In the next room, her main door creaks open.

  “Mr. Greene, come on in.”

  His voice is lower and I can’t hear everything he says, but I catch “—sorry to intrude, but I wanted to deliver the news in person.”

  Juno says something unintelligible, and then he continues.

  “—studio is very impressed with the work you’ve been doing.” Milton Greene, for an executive producer, isn’t very loud and blustery, damn it, so all my spying only nets me “Roger nod” and “outside parties” and “keep up the good work.”

  Before long, the door opens and closes and the room sinks back into silence.

  It’s too fucking much.

  Juno has been dancing around me on the set for days, and never once mentioned that she has the adjoining hotel room?

  I toss the towel around my waist and open my side of the adjoining door then raise a fist to hers. This time, there’s going to be no mistake. I don’t even hesitate; I just pound on it. “Juno, open the fucking door.”

  It swings open an instant later, and there she is, red-faced and annoyed. “What are you doing? Everyone is going to hear you. Milton just left.”

  “I don’t care if everyone hears me.” I’m too loud and I know it, but fuck backing off. Fuck playing the professional game. She’s been holding out on me. “I don’t care at all. We’ve been here over a week and you didn’t think to mention that you’re in the next room?”

  “Of course I didn’t mention it.” Juno looks indignant, arms crossed over her chest. “I didn’t want to cross any lines.”

>   “Cross any lines? It’s enough for you to tackle me in that fucking trailer twice a day, but at night, you’re hiding in here just to fuck with me?”

  “It’s not to fuck with you, Cannon, and I resent you saying that.”

  “Well, I resent your bullshit. And it’s all bullshit, Juno. You have to see that.”

  “What’s bullshit?” She looks warily toward the door of her room and juts out her jaw. “Wanting to make sure my career is safe?”

  “Wanting to hide behind professionalism and still fuck me in a trailer?”

  This pisses her off. “We haven’t done that yet.”

  “And why the hell not?” I growl at her. “You think I can’t satisfy you in five minutes?” I hold a hand up when she tries to speak. “I know why it is. You’re scared.”

  “Scared of you?” She tries to scoff at me, but I see her chin quiver.

  “No. You’re scared of what will happen if you let somebody see you stripped down to the core. You’d rather let somebody you can’t stand feel you up on a plane than get over the fear and fly by yourself.”

  Juno steps closer, eyes blazing. “I hate you.”

  “I hate you.”

  I see the words hit her, and then we’re both closing the distance, a warm front and a cold front colliding to form a hurricane. I sweep her off her feet, dropping the towel in the process, and bite down on her shoulder, drawing the sweetest gasp I’ve ever heard.

  “Fuck you, Cannon.”

  I take her jaw in my hand and lift her chin so she has to look into my eyes. “Say please.”

  She shakes her head, a tiny movement in my huge hand. “Never.”

  “Oh, Juno. Don’t you know?” I dart my tongue out to lick her lips and her eyes flutter shut. “I never back down from a challenge.”

  First things first—we’re not even.

  I put her on the floor and strip her clothes off. I’m not gentle about it, and every time I yank off another article of clothing, there’s a hitch in her breath.

  Once she’s fully, gloriously naked, I pull her to the center of the room and stand in front of her.

  She’s a fucking masterpiece of smooth skin and curves leading to dark places that, very soon, she’s going to beg me to explore. I start at her shoulders and work my way down, pausing at her nipples, her belly button, and the cleft at the top of her legs. The softest kisses. They have her in pieces by the time I spread her out on the bed and run the flat of my palm over the rise of her hips and between her legs. My fingertips make contact with silky folds, already wet, and Juno closes her eyes.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “Open your eyes.”

  She bites her lip and obeys, staring toward the ceiling.

  “Look at me.”

  She does.

  “Are you afraid right now?”

  A small nod.

  “Of what?” I stroke between her legs, and she might have some secret reservation, but she’s so wet, her thighs open another fraction of an inch with every passing moment.

  “Of you… seeing me.”

  “I can already see all of you.” I run my gaze over her body. “I fucking love what I see.”

  “Of you seeing me if I lose control.”

  I press a kiss to her collarbone. “You think it’ll make you less in my eyes.”

  Another nod, but she doesn’t dare take her eyes off mine. “Yes.”

  “Never. But you know what? None of that matters.”

  “Doesn’t—” Another stroke, and I play at her entrance. “Doesn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m going to make you lose control. I’m going to watch you while it happens. And you’re going to love every second.”

  I still my hand and Juno groans, spreading her legs wider. “Come on, Cannon, this is… this is torture.”

  I take each of her wrists in one of my hands and pull her arms over her head. Her hands curl around the edge of a pillow, the pose lifting her breasts in a way that’s completely obscene and utterly perfect. She has no idea that she’s already mine. No idea at all.

  Juno bucks her hips against my hand, frustration growing on her face. “Come on.”

  “I’m waiting for the magic word.”

  Understanding flickers through her face. “You bastard.”

  I lean in close to her ear and test her earlobe with my teeth. “You love it.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You know, Juno, I have all night to drag this out. If that’s what you want.” I remind her what she’s missing with a feather-light stroke between her legs.

  “It’s not…. I don’t—I don’t usually give in,” she says, even while her thighs tremble with the effort of keeping them apart.

  “It can be so”—two fingers at her entrance—“so”—I press them inside—“good.” I tease at her clit with my thumb, and it breaks her. Juno arches back, desperate for more contact. “Don’t break the rules. Eyes open.”

  Her eyes meet mine, green wells hungry for me, starving for this, and I know I have her, because the next word out of her mouth is a desperate “Please!”

  I let her have it.

  18

  Juno

  I’ve always loved thunderstorms.

  Even as a kid, I got a heady rush of anticipation when the clouds would lower and darken, the foremost edge of the storm rushing inland over the lake. When I learned to drive, I’d break the speed limit by five miles to beat a storm home and throw myself inside before the downpour.

  Nobody can fault you for closing your eyes to the whipping wind, to the crackling electricity arcing down from the sky and striking the tall trees.

  Cannon isn’t a passing thundershower. He is a hurricane.

  And he does not relent.

  He gives no mercy.

  There is no shelter—not from his eyes, not from his hands, not from his mouth.

  I have spent my life trying to prove I am worth seeing. Now, even in my unworthiness, he devours me with his gaze. There’s nowhere left to hide. The hurricane becomes me.

  I’d never fucking say that in my real life, but to describe Cannon as merciless is not an understatement. He makes me come first with his fingers, and it’s very nearly gentle, like the first droplets of rain spearing the lake’s surface.

  It’s been a long time since a man pushed me over the edge like that.

  And Cannon?

  He keeps pushing.

  I crest the top of the release and swing downward, panting underneath him.

  “You can do better than that,” he murmurs.

  “Did you just…” I suck in a breath. “Did you just scold me over an orgasm?”

  “You closed your eyes.”

  “Those aren’t real rules.”

  “They’re the only rules.” There’s that hand on my jaw, firm and solid. “In this bed, my word is law.”

  God help me, I want more of them. I want more of him. I shake my head.

  Cannon laughs. He laughs as he moves over me, low and sultry. “I love that about you.”

  “What?” I prompt in my most contrary voice.

  “How you get off on being a brat.”

  “I… I—” He moves against me, the head of his cock teasing at my entrance, and I lose track of what I was going to say. I lose track of everything. I forget. I close my eyes.

  Cannon goes still, and frustration sweeps over me like an overheated bed sheet. “Eyes open,” he orders.

  His face is too much. It’s too gorgeous, too handsome, too dark, and being this close to him overwhelms all my senses. I want to bite him, but that would be a mistake. I want to scratch him, but I settle for digging my fingertips into his back. But I keep looking.

  “That’s better.” He lowers his head, catching my nipple between his teeth, and through my resulting gasp I hear him say “real trouble.”

  “You are trouble.” It’s a real effort, keeping my eyes on his while he pushes himself over
me, abs flexing and flashing in and out of view.

  “Listen more carefully,” he murmurs into my ear. “I said that if you close your eyes again, you’ll be in real trouble.”

  Normally, I’d call him—I’d call any other guy, too—on his bullshit, but when Cannon says the words, a gold thread of pleasure twists and twines its way down my spine.

  “Oh. Oh.”

  “Discover something?” He’s been working himself into position all this time, in this dance of caresses and torturous pleasure, and the weight of his hips against the inside of my thighs makes me shiver with anticipation and retreat. Because honestly, what the fuck have I been doing, denying myself this? What price wouldn’t I pay to feel the way I feel right now?

  “Yes.” I breathe out the word onto his lips and wrap my arms around his neck, loosing them from the pillow.

  “There’s more,” he says, and then he moves into me, and I. Am. Destroyed.

  I thought he was a hurricane before. That was nothing compared to the way he takes me now, his hands somehow on every available inch of my skin, inside me with an earth-shattering thrust, and fuck, fuck….

  “Don’t break the rules,” he warns, and I look directly into his eyes while I come apart around him for the first time. I’m a livewire, a shuddering mess, and Cannon thrusts again and again until nothing else matters. The hotel doesn’t matter. The movie doesn’t matter. All that matters is riding each wave of pleasure up to its crest and crashing down the other side.

  He sees it all.

  He takes it all.

  I am left with nothing.

  With peace.

  There are no roaring doubts in my mind, no gratuitous fears about my reputation or my career, only a blinding pleasure that ebbs and flows, getting hotter and cooler by the minute, but always, always ramping up. Again and again and again.

  “Admit it,” Cannon commands.

  My lips move, but nothing comes out except a low collection of moans.

  “Do better than that.”

  “I… can’t—”

  “Can’t what? Say it, Juno. Say it.”

  “I can’t live with… without this. I can’t live without you.”