by Christa Wick
Cammie swallowed hard, her brown eyes suddenly swimming with the threat of tears.
"What I do," she continued, "to give my little brothers and sister a better life."
Melanie blinked against her own need to cry. She absolutely would make a decision that took Cammie's situation into consideration. They were best friends and Melanie had dragged her into this mess.
But she needed to know what the real situation was.
"They aren't all your siblings, are they?"
Cammie was a few years younger than Melanie, the youngest of her three "siblings" was a six-year-old boy. If he wasn't her brother, she would have conceived him when she was around sixteen and delivered him when she was seventeen. The next youngest, a girl, would be twelve soon. That was a six-year gap and Cammie was always evasive about which of her mother's children shared the same dad.
"Matt is mine," she confessed and wiped at her cheeks.
"From..." she couldn't bring herself to finish the question.
Cammie recognized where she was going and shook her head vigorously. "No, thank God. I don't know what I would have done -- other than prayed a whole lot hoping I would magically figure it out. No, I went a little mental after the prosecutor wouldn't file charges."
She shrugged. "Figured I might as well slut around if that's how everyone was going to treat me."
She paused for a second then growled. "Fuck, that Shayna bitch really pissed me off...everything about her, but the question about whether you drugged him really makes me want to gouge her eyes out."
Cammie's cheeks burned a bright red as she sucked in fresh air. "Like it's some kind of joke."
Melanie took her friend's coffee away and wrapped her in a tight hug. Pulling back, she kissed Cammie's wet cheeks then dried them.
"Are you okay to be alone for a little bit?" she asked.
Cammie nodded and Melanie gave her another hug.
"Okay. I need to find Declan. I'm going to stay, but he will have to do more than find you a safe place to live while things die down."
Chapter Twenty-Five
Declan had the waffle iron out and a serving tray filled with freshly cut melon and strawberries. Feeling a giant twinge of hunger, she sat on a kitchen stool across from where he was working the iron and bit off the tip of a fat strawberry.
He sighed, the sound colored with dreamy, erotic undertones. She glanced up to see his gaze locked on her mouth, not the iron.
"Your waffles are starting to smoke."
Despite the rough start to the morning, she couldn't help but laugh as he rushed to stop the waffles from getting ruined by his inattention. It reminded her of Cammie just a day earlier coming out of the bathroom to find a real life movie star and sex symbol standing in the dinky living room of her apartment while she had her hair wrapped around a hot curling rod.
Only this time, Melanie was apparently producing the effect on Declan that he had produced on Cammie.
"I hope that tease in your voice means you're staying," he said, his tanned cheeks flushing a light rose.
Sweet heavens, was there a sexier man on the planet?
"I have a few concerns," she started.
Between leaving the bedroom and having him ogle her while she did something so innocent as take a bite of fruit, Melanie had tentatively decided that, if she was going to be crucified by the likes of Shayna, she might as well enjoy the benefits of Declan's company.
"Fire away," he said, giving the waffle iron a quick wipe with a wet paper towel before pouring fresh batter.
"If Cammie or her car haven't already been photographed, I want to keep that from happening. I don't know what I can do about the home address, but I don't want her identified as associated with any of this."
Nodding, he flipped two waffles onto one plate and two onto another. He slid one in front of her and the other toward the empty spot next to her. Reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone, he pointed his chin at the empty spot.
"Tell your friend to come down and eat. I need to make some calls."
Three hours later, Cammie was gone, having been hustled into a sedan with tinted windows dropped off by a rental company. Tucked into her back pocket was the address of a furnished condo in a safe neighborhood that was hers rent free for the next six months. And a certain frighteningly expensive attorney had already called the property manager for their apartment, closing out the lease and reminding the company of the tenant's privacy rights.
But all of the miracles Declan had worked in such a short time couldn't keep Melanie from pacing back and forth. She had done it while Cammie was still there, and it had only worsened once her friend was gone.
For starters, she worried about everything getting back to her mom. Even if her mom didn't follow the kind of sordid gossip Shayna was likely to kick up, some of her friends, especially her Facebook friends in her reading groups, did. So it was a question of how many people might see any of the press coverage and link the Melanie Archer in the press to Nancy Winslow's daughter Melanie.
She only hoped that her mother having kept her maiden name would keep the press from finding her. And that Nancy Winslow's friends wouldn't rat her out. After three years working in LA around the studios, Melanie knew even the smallest fact related to someone as big time as Declan was worth a couple hundred dollars. Heck, she'd had payoff offers while working on the last movie if she could so much as tell them how he liked his coffee.
Other offers had been more disturbing. Corbin Dash at Celebrity Zone had offered her ten thousand dollars to sneak a camera into the fitting area! If a grainy shot of Declan's bare ass was worth ten thousand, what would CZ pay for information about him fucking his chubby stepsister?
Stepping in front of Melanie, Declan placed his hands on her shoulders and gently forced her to stop pacing.
"You need to relax, Mel."
She rolled her eyes at him. "Do you know CZ offered to pay me--"
"Ten thousand for a camera in the fitting room," he finished and planted a kiss on her nose. "Yes, I know. And thank you for reporting the offer to the studio's security team. Did you know your information got the reporter fired?"
Her mouth dropped open. Snapping it shut, she shook her head.
Great, now she had Shayna and maybe that nauseating Corbin Dash out for her blood!
Closing her eyes, she leaned into Declan, her head on his shoulder and her arms around his waist. She wanted to melt when he folded his arms around her in turn.
And that kiss on the nose, how freaking precious was that?
It was enough to make her ovaries break out into the tango.
She nestled closer and tried to keep all the doom and gloom thoughts from creeping back into her mind, but she couldn't.
"You know," she started, hesitating but unable to stop the leaky hole that was her mouth. "This could wind up making your relationship with Roger public."
"I don't have a relationship with Roger."
She didn't feel a shift in Declan's body, but his voice took on a hard edge.
"If it comes out," he continued and planted a kiss against her temple, "that he is my biological father and the relationship he had with my mother, I'll use the coverage to get more of what I want from the studios."
She looked up, perplexed. This was the old Declan in her arms, at least some of him. The one who only spoke to the important people on set.
Looking down at her, his gaze sharpened. "What, Mel?"
"No offense...but you sounded a little like a Hollywood shark for a second there."
His face split into a soft smile and he tilted her head up for a kiss that lasted far longer than the sweet, but quick, pecks of the last few minutes.
"Sometimes, baby, that's exactly what I am."
Chapter Twenty-Six
"So what do you want from the studios?" Melanie asked as Declan steered her toward a set of doors she had yet to pass through.
His hand falling on the door knob, he twisted it. "Lots of things."
; He grinned when he answered. She almost missed the smile as she stared at the room revealed. The black marble flooring was disrupted by sheepskin rugs like the one in his bedroom interspersed with two-inch thick exercise mats covered in what looked like black vinyl.
Near the far wall was some sort of capsule, huge, round and as white as the moon.
"Any particular thing?" she poked as she eyed the object with suspicion. At an equal distance between it and one of the thick black mats was a three-tier table in black lacquer with rolled towels on the shelves.
"Yes." Declan said.
She cut a side glance at him for the cryptic answer. Looking at him, her feet tried to tangle around one another. His arms caught her before her clumsiness got out of hand.
All the tension that had crept into Declan after she mentioned Roger evaporated upon entering the black and white room. His lips brushed over her ear and cheek as she studied her surroundings. Beyond the expensive marble flooring, mats and rugs, and what her imagination had dubbed the moon ship, there were pedestals and sculptures, the black marble bases rising up from their matching floor to be capped by carvings from a variety of white stone.
The walls and ceiling were a bare, stark white, the walls divided into sections by equally white beams that ran their entire height.
She glanced at the moon ship and wondered if it, too, was supposed to be art.
The section facing her had a seam that looked like it could be a large hatch door, its bottom edge located about two feet off the ground. Next to one side of the seam was a silver button almost as big as her fist.
Her fingers twitched with the urge to give the button a push, but she was still distracted by Declan's vague response and the trail his lips were following along the side of her neck.
"Are you going to tell me what that particular thing is -- what you really want?"
She'd heard gossip, of course -- that he had deigned to take the role as an alien warrior in what was an unchallenging movie but sure to be a summer blockbuster so he could jump studios with the promise of getting a pet project green lighted by Paravista.
Apparently more interested in the breast his hand was warmly palming than her question, Declan continued to kiss at her neck, the sensations produced by his warm lips making her body sizzle all the way out to her toes and fingertips.
"Is it that mysterious project people whisper about?"
"Could be," he replied, his hands moving to cup her face and stop her silly questions with a longer kiss, his lips prying hers open with short teases until his tongue could slip inside her mouth. "If you're still curious later, I'll tell you."
"Later?" She repeated, the word fuzzy as it escaped. Her body had started to vibrate from the kiss and the hold he maintained on her flesh. The buzzing didn't penetrate her brain, which felt like it was swimming in warm molasses.
"Yes," he answered, pushing the silver button and coaxing her to the side. "After I get you relaxed enough that I can have my way with you all over again -- and again."
He walked to where the towels were and grabbed three. One turned out to be more a bath mat and he placed that on the floor, the remaining rolled towels resting on it. Wearing a fresh grin, Declan then stripped off his shirt as the moon ship's door finished opening to reveal a hollow interior. Its bottom half was filled with water that stopped a few inches below where the door began.
With the same quick efficiency, Declan shucked off the rest of his clothes.
She pointed at the giant white tank. "Are you getting in there?"
He moistened his lips, rolling them as his brows crawled up and amusement glittered in the gray gaze. "We are getting in there."
Melanie looked at his nude body -- his perfectly sculpted, golden tanned body -- and matched his raised brows. "Do I have to get in like that?"
"Did you bring a swimsuit?"
That she didn't even fucking own a swimsuit shot through her head.
"No."
She scowled at the interior. What the hell was he thinking anyway? The water was too deep to lie down in like a bath and too shallow to cover her breasts if she sat instead. And even if the interior remained unlit, with just the light through the open door, she'd still have to get naked to get inside.
She much preferred the near dark of the screening room and the low lights of Declan's bedroom.
"Why would I want to get in there?" she asked despite the obvious answer standing so close to her, its muscles flexing with anticipation
He plucked lightly at the hem of her blouse. "To begin with, floating in there can be transcendent and..."
Going from the metaphysical to the very physical, he guided her hand to his cock. In the two minutes or so since he had stripped, Declan had grown fully erect. Her hand, with an aching reflex, squeezed softly at the beast of a cock at the same time her pussy contracted.
Offering a fleeting kiss, Declan pulled away, stepped into the tub and quickly lowered himself into the water, his legs almost instantly popping up to the surface when he leaned back.
"It's filled with pounds upon pounds of salt," he explained. "You don't even have to work at floating. I've fallen asleep in here for hours."
She stood in front of the door, staring in at him.
"Pitch black with the door closed unless we want the mood lighting on and soundproof for most noises unless we want something playing over the speakers."
We, we, we.
Melanie exhaled a shaky breath. She didn't need a lot of salt to be buoyant. Her jiggly bits made her that way naturally. And what would those jiggly bits do with their buoyancy increased?
Heck, she'd look like the Pillsbury Doughboy -- from when he had starred in Ghostbusters!
"Come on, Mel," Declan coaxed. "You'll love it once you're in here. I'll keep my eyes shut until the door closes if you're going to get all shy on me."
"I don't need you to close your eyes."
The words came out waspish, exposing her lie. She mashed her lips together, hoping he hadn't noticed her tone but certain he had.
"All the better then, baby girl." Swooping one arm, he turned his body inside the tank so that his head was near the door and he was looking up at her, the dark blond brows waggling above the mischievous gray gaze.
With a long-hemmed blouse and years of experience from high school gym class and college dorms, she managed to get her bra, pants and underwear off without exposing anything above her upper thigh.
Drawing a deep breath, she nutted up and stripped the blouse away before shooing Declan from the open and stepping in. She wanted to shield herself, but she wouldn't give in and admit he was right about her wanting to hide.
"Just what do you think is going to happen in here?" she asked as he moved to close the door.
He pulled down on the hatch, the light in the tank disappearing to thin lines at the edges and then nothing but black filled the space as the door clicked into place.
"Pure relaxation," he answered. "Otherwise I'd have to replace all nine hundred pounds of salt."
Finding her hand, he guided her toward the tank's center. Feeling him maneuver onto his back, she did the same.
"Wow" with an exclamation point flashed inside her head. He had been right about not having to work to float. She experimented by trying to turn over but the water pushed back at her. Feeling completely weightless, she wanted to cry.
Declan squeezed her hand.
"Let me know if you feel claustrophobic."
She laughed. "That's kind of something you want to ask first, but I'm not. It's kind of like the screening room."
"Yeah, I've been trying to figure out how to mold the two into something tank size. The curved display is a little tough, but protecting the circuitry is the real problem."
"You're not just a pretty face," she whispered and squeezed his hand in return.
"I hope you noticed that before now." His hand moved up to her wrist, his thumb stroking lightly at her flesh.
"Yes. But I wanted to acknowledge it."
/> Her lips pursed together. It was hard reconciling this version of Declan, the one with the giant-sized ideas but who had helped Cammie, with the man she had dressed on set.
"You said I'd been giving you sleepless nights for two months." She tensed at the can of worms she was trying to open up and her body threatened to sink for a second before the salt condensed beneath her and pushed upward.
"At least a dozen times you caught me looking at you in the mirror," he answered. His hand shifted again, this time to allow the back of his fingers to caress the side of her breast. "Each time you studiously returned to your work -- after rolling your eyes at me."
Her mouth opened in a small "O" of horror. She had rolled her eyes all the times because she thought he was admiring his reflection, not hers. She never thought he would see the eye rolls or, consequently, interpret them as some kind of rejection.
"I thought you were looking at yourself," she confessed.
"No, Mel. I was looking at you."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Reaching along the wall of the tank, Declan pressed at a control panel. Noise began to filter through unseen speakers. She recognized it as part of the soundtrack from the screening room and smiled.
"You did bring part of it in here."
Waves, the song of whales, the subtle but constant churn of the ocean's depths -- they listened together, floating and holding hands with no more words exchanged. She may have even drifted off to sleep as he claimed he had done so many times before.
Finally, she gave his hand a small squeeze.
"Does that mean you're fully relaxed?" The question issued in a sensual drawl, like a man whose bones had sloughed away from too much loving.
"Yes."
She was fully relaxed and falling deeper under Declan's spell. She knew that, but didn't want to escape at the moment. She wanted what he had promised would follow -- him having his way with her.
Shifting his weight, Declan moved from floating to kneeling in the water. His hands reached out and secured her hips so she couldn't float away from him.