Stuck Landing

by Lauren Gallagher

  Yes, this was definitely too complicated since we worked together. And that was more than enough reason to end this without even mentioning my issues with her being bisexual, so maybe we could body-swerve that entire topic altogether.

  We needed to talk, though. No two ways about it.

  Question was . . . when? I wasn’t directing this episode, but she was working on it, so she was at Simon’s beck and call, and couldn’t stray far from the set without a damn good reason.

  Well. She had breaks like everyone else—eventually—so the best thing I could hope for was to put a bug in her ear that we needed to talk and let her come to me.

  As I moved from meeting to meeting, I kept an eye out for her, ready to pounce on the first opportunity that came along.

  When it did, she was on the set, helping one of the stuntmen with his complex harness for an explosion sequence. We were filming the first few episodes of a new season, and this season was going to be even more amped up than the one before. So the action was getting bigger and more complicated—not to mention dangerous. Natalya and her crew were going to be busy for a while.

  She said something and made a sharp gesture, and another stuntman murmured, “Yes, ma’am,” and jogged off. When she said “jump,” they said “how high, ma’am?” Even the producers and directors didn’t make waves in the stunt department if they could help it—nobody wanted to get on Natalya’s bad side.

  With Jeremy on my heels, I approached where she was working. “Natalya?”

  She spun around, features tight and hard as if she were ready to bite my head clean off. The instant our eyes met, though, she straightened, and her expression softened. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” I managed a smile. “When you get a chance, could you come by my office?”

  She glanced at the rig she’d been working on, and when she faced me again there was nothing but bone-deep seriousness in her eyes. “I’ll be there when I can. Probably an hour.”

  Just as terse and professional as always. Maybe that was a good sign. Things didn’t have to get weird, did they?

  “Sure. Whenever.”

  I left her to her work and headed back to my office. Aside from meeting her there, I had plenty of work to do. Phone calls to make, meetings to schedule, bitchy emails from Finn Larson that needed immediate responses so the whole damned world didn’t end. Anything to keep my mind off the woman who’d been a walking, talking distraction even before I’d seen her naked.

  I glanced at Jeremy to make sure he was there, and he was trying his level best not to smile.

  “Not a word,” I said.

  He showed his palms. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “But you’re thinking it.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who’s accusing me of thinking something.”

  I shot him a playful glare. “Because I know you.”

  He burst out laughing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He glanced past me, and his expression darkened a little. Brow pinched with sympathy, he said, “But I have a strong suspicion the next three words out of your mouth are going to be along the lines of ‘Fuck my life.’”

  I cringed. “It’s Finn, isn’t it?”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “And he’s coming this way?”

  Another nod.

  “Looking at me?”

  Again.

  “Fuck my life.” I took a deep breath, schooled my expression, and turned around just as the be-Rolexed bastard producer stomped up to me. “Good—”

  “Anna, this shooting schedule isn’t going to fly.” He shoved a file folder into my hand. “We need to condense these shoots so we keep the unions happy.”

  And good morning to you too, asshole.

  I rolled my eyes. “The unions? Or the bean counters at the studio?”

  His lips thinned. “Look, we’re already pushing our luck with feature-film-level effects. The budget is—”

  “This show is making the studio money hand over fucking fist,” I snapped. “And for your information, the union loves this schedule.” I shoved the file back toward him. “We’re well within union regs. No one’s working excessively long hours. What exactly are they bitching about?”

  He scowled, and if I hadn’t been so annoyed with him, I’d have grinned smugly. Yeah, busted. He knew damn well I toed the line with all the unions involved with production, and in fact, tended to spread shoots out over multiple days rather than condense them into one long, long shoot. Yeah, it meant more money spent on labor, but it kept my people fresh and happy. And cut down on accidents.

  Finn just didn’t like what it did to the show’s bottom line.

  “Look, I know you don’t give a shit about the money,” he said through his overly whitened teeth. “But the studio—”

  “Excuse me?” I stepped into his space and looked him right in the eye, distantly aware of Jeremy bristling behind me, as if he were bracing to step in. “I don’t give a shit about money? How about you don’t give a shit about the people who bust their asses out here and—”

  “They know what they’re—”

  “Finn. Jesus.” I barely kept my tone within the realms of professional. “Both of those scenes are incredibly physically taxing on the talent and the crew. We’ve got two dangerous stunts, and we’re dangling three people from a goddamn rafter. I’m not exhausting everyone to the point that mistakes happen and people get hurt.”

  “Yeah, fine. Whatever.” He opened the folder and stabbed a finger at the schedule. “But look at this. You’ve got two fourteen-hour days for footage that could easily be filmed in one day. The way you have it, we’ve got to pay makeup artists twice as much, and—”

  “And we won’t have to go back and reshoot because it was done sloppily thanks to everyone being rushed and fatigued during production.” I put up a hand. “Save it, Finn. You lost me when you tried to make me think the unions were unhappy with this. If the brass are bitching, go suck their dicks until they’re happy again, and then they’ll—”

  “For fuck’s sake.” He shook his head and turned to go, shoving the folder under his arm as he went. I thought he muttered a choice name or two under his breath, but I let it go.

  “I really think you should report that guy to OSHA,” Jeremy grumbled.

  “Eh. Nothing he proposes is actually a violation of any codes or anything like that.”

  “No, but I think he qualifies as a workplace hazard.”

  I laughed. “Okay, that I can get behind.” We exchanged glances and chuckled. Then we continued toward my office.

  Though the new soundstages had plenty of office space, I still had my rickety trailer outside the warehouse we’d been using when we first started shooting. Out here, I was separated from the noise and chaos of the set, and if a meeting got heated—which they often did, considering some of the egos involved in this production—the set was insulated from us too. Though that probably didn’t help the speculation that if Finn Larson ever turned up missing, they’d find his body in here.

  Not far from the truth if he keeps being a dick.

  I keyed us into the office. There were three scripts stacked on my desk, each with about four billion brightly colored tags and sticky notes sticking out from between the pages. Probably revisions for the episodes we’d sent back to the script writers a few weeks ago. Though they wouldn’t be filmed for quite a while, we had all learned how long the script writing process took with Hunter Easton involved, so we started working on them way in advance.

  And Hunter had obviously had a look at these, since the tags were his trademark. Better than half of them probably said No, Fuck no, and Are you fucking kidding me? The sticky notes had likely come from Kevin and were slightly more diplomatic expression of No, Fuck no, and Are you fucking kidding me?

  I laughed as I carefully arranged the scripts on top of all the other stacks of papers and folders amongst the clutter on my desk. The other produc
ers usually tore their hair out when Hunter and Kevin dug their heels in over something. I didn’t mind it. In fact, I usually agreed with most of their comments, so it made my job a hell of a lot easier when the resistance came from them instead of me. God bless Hunter for having the foresight to demand approval of every script for every episode.

  What do you want me to do? I could innocently ask Finn with a straight face. Hunter won’t sign off on it if we do things your way. I know his vision is more expensive than yours, but if he won’t budge . . .

  Some days, it was almost worth it to work with the asshole when I got to make him sputter like that.

  “You know it scares me when you do that, right?” Jeremy jarred me out of my thoughts.

  “Hmm? When I do what?”

  Eyebrow arched, he gestured at me. “When you’re smirking like that for no apparent reason. It’s kind of terrifying.”

  I laughed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Mm-hmm . . .” He regarded me suspiciously, but let the subject go.

  I dropped into my chair and picked up one of the scripts. Since I wasn’t meeting with anyone for the moment, Jeremy hung out in the office, lounging in one of the chairs and playing on his phone while I read through the script and the myriad I don’t fucking think so notes from Hunter and Kevin. He faced the door, and he could roll to his feet in a heartbeat if someone came in here who didn’t belong.

  While he played Angry Birds or whatever, I had work to do. Calls to make. All the shit that piled up while I was directing one episode and had to be caught up before I started directing the next one. Sometimes I thought the period between episodes was the worst—instead of the long hours on the set, it was long hours of wanting to choke someone through the phone or give Finn Larson a lethal paper cut in between slogging through reams of forms and crap.

  The air conditioner hummed in the background, the fan clicking intermittently. That click usually drove me nuts, but today I could barely hear it over my thumping heart. Natalya would be along eventually. And I had things I needed to do, and I needed to concentrate on them now, but would I be able to focus with this conversation hanging over my head? Would I be able to focus afterward?

  God, I was a mess. What the hell? So we’d had sex. I’d had one-nighters before. Levi and I had even dated while working on a film together eons ago, and that might’ve worked out if we’d been straight. There was no reason it couldn’t work. Right?

  Except this was a steady gig for both of us. This wasn’t a film that would be over soon, something we just had to ride out for a few more weeks or months. Wolf’s Landing was in for the long haul, which meant we were probably working together for the foreseeable future.

  I’d deal with it when she got here. In the meantime, work to do. The showrunner was on my ass to finish some camera blocking for an episode we were filming in a few weeks, and Finn . . . well, Finn was always on my ass about something.

  A sharp knock at the door brought a string of curses to my lips. Now what? Fuck. No rest for the weary in this business.

  I turned the page in the script I was reading. “Come in.”

  The door opened, and the script nearly tumbled out of my hands as I sat up.

  “Oh. Hey, Natalya.” I cleared my throat. “I, um . . . wasn’t . . .”

  She glanced at Jeremy, then turned to me as she pulled off her thick work gloves. “You asked me to come see you.”

  “Right. Right, I . . . I did.”

  Jeremy rose. “I’ll, um, be outside.”

  “Thanks,” I murmured.

  As she tucked her work gloves into her belt, he slipped past her and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Once we were alone, Natalya said, “All right. I’m here.”

  Yes, you are. You . . . you are indeed here. And there was a reason for that.

  I came around the desk, and as I did, I allowed myself a quick down-up, drinking in the sight of her through eyes that now knew what she looked like naked, out of breath, trembling . . .

  She cleared her throat. When I jumped, she cocked her head. “You wanted to talk?”

  “Yeah, I . . .”

  She took a step closer, and my train of thought vanished.

  Wasn’t I supposed to say something about last night being an isolated incident? And how we needed to keep things professional and . . . and . . .

  The grin playing at her lips drew my attention to them, and whatever I’d wanted to discuss was replaced by memories of all the things those lips could do.

  She cocked her head. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Honestly?” I gulped. “I . . . can’t remember.”

  “We don’t have to talk.” The grin came completely to life, and her eyes narrowed just right to remove words like “professional” from my vocabulary.

  “We should, though.”

  “About what?” Her hands curved over my hips and pulled me against her. That smile made my knees wobble, and suddenly, I was leaning into her just to keep from melting to her feet. She squeezed my butt, and our lips nearly brushed as she murmured, “Doesn’t seem like there’s anything we need to talk about.”

  Oh there is. There so is. And it’s . . . And we . . . And this . . .

  But then she kissed me, and my mind went blank.

  There were distant echoes of things I’d been stressing over, of reasons why this was wrong and things I should’ve been doing instead of losing myself in her kiss, but one touch of her lips rendered all of that irrelevant. It was all there somewhere. On some plane, it all still mattered.

  But in this moment, as her hand slid into my hair and her tongue slid under mine, it was like someone pressed Pause on everything outside this tiny room.

  I wrapped my arms around her and gave in. Drawing a deep breath through my nose, I shivered—she smelled of coffee, solder, leather. The scents of her job, of the sometimes grueling work she was ditching to be in here with me now. The scents of . . . her. Everything that screamed Natalya even when I’d closed my eyes, as if there was any possibility of me forgetting whose lips were teasing mine and whose breasts were pressed up against me. God, this woman.

  Voices outside raised the hairs on my neck. I broke the kiss and looked past her, out through the tiny slits between the venetian blinds. Jeremy stood behind the steps. A producer and a couple of assistants wandered past, everyone carrying coffee and frantically tapping their phones.

  Slowly, the rest of the world started moving again. Became relevant again.

  A sinking feeling tugged at my stomach. We didn’t have time for this. And my office wasn’t the place for it. We were colleagues. We were—

  “Anna?” She touched my chin and turned my head so our eyes met again.

  I swallowed. “We . . .” Shouldn’t. God, your eyes are beautiful. And the things you can do with that mouth. And the way your hair gets all messy when you—

  “We what?” She tilted her head slightly.

  I moistened my lips. “We don’t have much time.”

  “We don’t need much.”

  Excitement surged through my veins. “Guess we should make the most of it, shouldn’t we?”

  “Mm-hmm.” With a single, swift motion, she had my belt unbuckled.

  Holy shit. We weren’t just making out, were we?

  “We shouldn’t . . . do this . . .”

  Her hand stopped. “Why not?”

  “Because we’re . . .” Horny. Wet. Alone. Together. I licked my lips. Those were not reasons why we shouldn’t. Those had all vanished from my brain. “My bodyguard, he—”

  “He won’t hear a thing.” She kissed me. “Long as you’re quiet.”

  Quiet? When you’re—

  Oh my God . . .

  She pushed my slacks and panties down past my hips, then spun me around and bent me over the desk. I landed on my forearms, sending scripts and files fluttering to the floor. Her hand drifted over my ass, and I was already out of breath.

  Oh holy shit.
>
  “Did you really want to talk?” she asked in that husky, sharply accented voice. “Or—”

  “This is . . . this is good.” I closed my eyes, biting my lip when she squeezed my bare ass. “Really good.”

  She laughed. “Thought so.”

  “Guess that answers that question. About if you wanted to do it again.”

  Natalya’s hand drifted between my thighs. “Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

  For all the millions of reasons I had called you in here to talk about, every one of which completely escapes me— Oh my God . . .

  Her fingertip ran along the outer edges of my pussy, her touch light but still more than enough to take my breath away. I gripped the edge of the desk and parted my legs as much as I could with my slacks and panties pooled around my ankles.

  Natalya took full advantage too. I barely had my head around what we were doing before her fingers slid up inside me. Her breath huffed across my neck, and then her lips touched the same spot, simultaneously warm and cool against my skin. Her fingers moved slowly, in and out, and it felt amazing. Torturous—overwhelming, but still a tease. If I could have formed words, I’d have found a way to tell her how much I wanted her to turn me around so I could lie back on top of all my papers and let her go down on me. Her fingers inside me made me ache for her lips, her tongue, her fingers—something on my clit.

  Kneading the edge of the desk, I swept my tongue across my lips. “If I . . . if I turn around, you can . . .”

  Fuck . . .

  “I can what?” she asked.

  “Your mouth. On my . . . God, Natalya . . .”

  She laughed softly and kissed the back of my neck as she moved her fingers faster. “Touch yourself.”

  “Touch my—”

  “Yes.” Her commanding voice made my pulse race. “Touch yourself.”

  Some voice inside my head tried to tell me how far out of my comfort zone this was, but my body and the rest of my brain were more interested in Natalya’s touch and my unbearable need to come. So I shifted onto one arm, snaked my other hand between the desk and my body, and . . . and I touched myself. At her command, I started circling my clit with two fingers, and as if she could feel every surge and pulse of Oh fuck yes radiating through me, she adjusted her speed to match mine. As I worked my clit, she fucked me with her fingers, and this shouldn’t have been nearly as hot as it was. Masturbating because she told me to? With my back to her instead of facing her? What the hell were . . .