by Lara Archer
He groaned and kicked off the bedcovers, pressing the back of his skull into his mattress to ease the dull pounding that filled his head. The space between his ears was dull and woozy, as if he’d been sleeping off the after-effects of being drugged.
Which, in a way, he had been. The moment they touched, Amber hit him like a powerful narcotic, saturating his brain with pleasure so he couldn’t stay rational, or listen to the demands of his own conscience, or follow through on decisions he’d made.
Like the decision never to touch her again.
Had they really done all that last night? With the goddamn cameras rolling?
He couldn’t quite remember why he’d agreed, or even when he’d agreed. In fact, he had fairly distinct memories of telling her what a bad idea it was, and how they shouldn’t be in that room together at all.
Things would so much easier if he’d just dreamed they’d done it. But he knew it wasn’t a dream—a hint of her scent clung to his skin, and the muscles of his hips and thighs still ached from straining up off the bed to get closer to her touch. And his mind thrummed with memories of her kneeling above him, her hair loose, her breasts soft as velvet, and, Jesus, everything that happened after that, her hands and mouth on his cock, everything she’d done to him, driving him beyond control, beyond madness.
And damn if he didn’t want to go do every bit of it again, right now, and never stop.
He was hard as steel again just thinking about it.
He rolled himself out of bed and stumbled into the shower, hoping the steam and spray and then a good scrub-down with a towel would help clear his head, and maybe even drum some sense into his idiot, rampant cock. He turned full-face into the spray until it bleared his eyes and nearly baked his flesh, but it made no difference.
Thoughts of Amber still overwhelmed him.
Had sex always felt like that to him? That intense?
He tried to recall being in bed with other women, going down on them, having them straddle his hips and moan, but the images he could conjure up seemed blurred and vague, as if what happened with Amber had literally blown his mind, and the synapses that held all his old erotic memories had been burned away.
With other women, he’d always felt in control, the core part of him safely held back. But not with Amber. With her, he gave everything away.
And now what? What were they supposed to do?
And what the hell was Amber planning to do with what she’d caught on film?
Last night, when it was all over, Amber had just kicked him out. Told him to go back to his own cabin and leave her in hers. She wouldn’t even let him help dismantle the cameras and lights—which they were going to need today, to get through the five pages of script they were supposed to get filmed.
And wasn’t that going to be awkward?
But maybe work would bring his sanity back. He yanked on his clothes and boots and slapped the sides of his face a few times for good measure. Work. Yes, work was what he needed. Work would help anchor him.
But when he stepped outside into the morning sunlight, Amber was nowhere to be seen. And neither was the rest of the crew, except for Onyx, who was standing outside the Ranger Station with Ranger Donnell. Which she seemed to be doing an awful lot lately—a very strange combination, the punk rock girl and the guy in the uptight, spotless uniform. Onyx was smiling as she talked to him, though, looking almost giddy and girlish, things Onyx usually wasn’t. At all. And the Ranger was leaning in towards her, with a fascinated intensity in his eyes that was definitely something more than professional obligation.
Were the two of them sleeping together?
It seemed absurd, that pairing, but something in the way their bodies were oriented suggested that, if they hadn’t yet, they were damn close to doing it. Nick would bet his best camera on it.
And right there, he had his proof: sex did stupid things to people, took them out of their rational selves, spun them out of control. Desire fooled otherwise sensible people into thinking things could work that any other person with eyes could see was a laughably bad idea.
Better not to mess with sex at all. Or to treat it as a basic bodily function with no connection to emotional relationships. Either way, keep it safely in a box, no one got hurt.
He walked up to Onyx—no doubt doing her a favor by distracting her from her hunky ranger friend, even if she wasn’t clear-sighted enough to see it now. “Where the hell is everybody?” he asked her.
Onyx’s eyes were still focused on Ranger Donnell, and, no surprise, they had a slightly glazed over, mesmerized look. “On hiatus for the day,” she said, distractedly.
“Hiatus?” he said, brows rising. “What the hell? Amber knows how tight our schedule is. We have to—”
“It wasn’t Amber,” interrupted the ranger, who, noticeably, had to tear his eyes away from Onyx to address Nick. “The order came from me. I’m really sorry, but we have to suspend your outdoor filming permit for the day. Safety reasons. We’ve got some pretty violent weather on its way.”
“Violent weather?” Nick looked up at the sky, which was blue and bright with morning sun. Maybe last night had muddled his mind more than he realized, but he certainly didn’t see evidence that a storm was brewing. “What are you talking about? It’s a beautiful day.”
“For now,” said the ranger. And he pointed to the west, at the sky behind Nick. “See that huge cloud there? See how tall it is, but flat and black along the bottom? Like an anvil? That’s a classic thunderhead. A big one. And any time now, it’s going to rip open and dump some pretty serious damage on this whole area.”
The cloud loomed across the horizon, very dark at the bottom, it was true, but fluffy and white above, with sun gleaming bright along its upper reaches. It didn’t look particularly threatening.
“That’s one cloud,” Nick pointed out. “It could just pass over.”
“It won’t,” said the ranger, tucking his thumbs into his belt loops and staring at the sky, giving it an expert, accessing look. “It’s going to get nasty. Lightning. Rain. High winds. Hail, probably. Flash floods, definitely, given how high all the creeks are right now. Not safe to be out in that.”
Nick didn’t care about safe. Out was precisely where he wanted to be. Moving. Not standing in one place where he had to think. Thinking meant trying to make sense of what he felt about Amber, and he didn’t like where that was taking him.
He was all but climbing out of his skin.
“We’re smack in the middle of Hail Alley here,” said the ranger firmly, no doubt noticing Nick’s restlessness. “We get some serious golf balls raining from the sky in summertime. All those fancy cameras of yours would be toast after five minutes in the open. Not to mention humans don’t fare so well getting hammered in the face with those things.”
Damn it. Amber sunk every penny she had into the new Alexas, and they couldn’t make this film without them. At the moment, he didn’t much care what happened to his skull, but the cameras he couldn’t risk.
Onyx gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Tough luck, camera guy. Amber already gave everybody the day off. Told them to rest up so we can do double-time tomorrow.”
“Great,” said Nick. “Resting up.”
He was willing to lay bets Onyx had plans to do some resting up with her ranger friend while she had the chance. Meanwhile, Nick’s leg was jumping and energy seemed to be jolting its way up his spine, and he had no way to discharge any of it.
“Oh, and Amber’s doing some editing in her cabin,” said Onyx. “She said nobody should interrupt her. Not even you.” She gave him a suspicious look. “She was very insistent on keeping you out of there. Which means there’s a serious disturbance in the Force. You finally going to tell me what’s up with you two?”
“Nothing’s up,” he said. “She’s working on something independently, that’s all.”
“Independently, right,” repeated Onyx, skewering him with a glare. “That’s just not natural.”
Oh, On
yx had no clue about natural. Nick’s nature wasn’t something he was proud of. And that was precisely why he didn’t need a warning—he had no intention of going anywhere near Amber’s cabin, or of being alone with her anywhere anytime soon. No way—he just couldn’t trust himself.
So instead, he got some coffee and a bagel from the Ranger’s Station, rooted in his backpack for a paperback novel he’d been meaning to finish, and flung himself down in an Adirondack chair under a beautiful old Ponderosa pine.
He skimmed a page. Then another, realizing pretty quickly he hadn’t absorbed a word. Taking a lungful of sweet morning air, he tried to clear his mind and force himself to relax.
It wasn’t working.
A gust of wind ruffled the pages of his book and made the pine branches whisper accusingly. He shifted in the chair, struggling to get comfortable on the hard wood.
Damn it. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to look inside himself.
What was in there just wasn’t good. He’d seen this pattern with his parents too many times—they’d go high, high, high with someone, so blissful, so connected, and then it would all crash and burn, the glowing ecstasy turning to something noxious, something vicious. The more intense the passion, the uglier the damage.
Sex just confused everything.
He tried stretching out his legs, but that increased the strain on the overused muscles in his back, and thinking of how they got that way in bed last night only made things worse. He tried bending his knees and jamming his heels onto the edge of the seat, but he was too damned big to fit. Getting up, he turned the chair to a different angle where he could prop his feet up on a mossy old tree stump, but then the sun was in his eyes and made his head ache. How was he supposed to get through a whole day out here with nothing to do but let the pressure of dangerous thoughts build inside his brain?
And, dear God, the thoughts were overwhelming. He could almost feel the heat of Amber’s mouth on his cock, smell the musk that came off of her, hear her little gasps and moans and cries, taste her slickness on his tongue.
The feeling he’d had when he finally came inside her last night—he’d never experienced anything so overwhelming in his life. It felt like the top of his skull had blown off, like every nerve in his spinal column had exploded, like his internal organs had spontaneously burst into flame and his balls erupted into new universes. It was so completely insane he’d almost been surprised to return to normal consciousness just a few minutes afterwards, and to find his body still in one piece on the bed.
Even the memory of the sensation was so strong, it took him a while to notice that someone was shouting his name right now.
Onyx, he realized.
“Nick! Hey, Nick! Where’d you go?” she was yelling. “I need you!” She came running towards him from the direction of the Rangers’ Station, her black boots kicking up gravel, one hand waving frantically in the air and the other pointing back toward the entry road. “The rangers at the entry gate just radioed to say we’ve got company driving in.”
He stood, strategically covering the front of his jeans—and the evidence of his recent thoughts—with his forearm and the novel he still held in his fist. “Company?”
“A dozen four-wheelers with rental plates,” said Onyx, panting for breath. “Rangers had to let them in—day passes, not overnight. Wanna guess who’s coming?”
Nick had lived in Hollywood too long to have any doubts. “Paparazzi,” he said, and spat. “Goddamn paparazzi.”
He shook his head to clear away the last tendrils of sensual memory that still clung to him. Well, he’d wanted a distraction—a ravenous horde of paparazzi to fight off from the film set would certainly provide one.
Within minutes, a heavy line of SUVs came bumping and rumbling down the gravel road, moving faster than was safe for either any passing campers or their own rear axles. Even with sunshine gleaming on the windshields, he recognized a couple of the drivers on sight—Donny Lempert from the Hollywood Hot Sheet and Vilma Wilson from Celebrity Secrets. The tabloid press descended quite literally like vultures, parking in a ring and emerging from their cars looking hooded and hungry and eager for carrion.
Donny Lempert was the lowest of the low—a short, wiry little man in a Hawaiian shirt, with a shaved head and gray eyes that darted constantly. His stock in trade was paying the neighbors of movie and rock stars to let him crouch at whatever window gave him the best view into the celeb’s bedroom next door, or bathroom for that matter, and let him snap away. That was how he’d gotten pictures of Nick kissing that Sports Illustrated cover model whose impending divorce hadn’t been announced to the press yet—a nice little payday for Lempert, no doubt, and a whole lot of pain for the human beings involved. The model had two little kids, for God’s sake, and one of them saw the photo in a drugstore checkout line.
Nick tried to remember the model’s name.
How had they even gotten together? He couldn’t recall a single conversation he’d had with her. He could remember what her ass looked like in a bikini, but he had trouble remembering her face.
A sick feeling swirled in his stomach.
Well, he really had no business judging the paparazzi. They were his people, his tribe, the very essence of L.A.’s vapid, heartless, look at anything that glitters culture.
Maybe if he’d been born somewhere else—a farm in Vermont, maybe, or some crunchy neighborhood in Portland—he might have become a different sort of man. Then again, his mom was from small-town Kansas, and she’d hopped a bus first chance she got and took a role as a teenage temptress on an afternoon soap, and it was all plastic surgeries and drunken pool parties from there.
Hollywood trash was in his blood.
And the mob of reporters could apparently smell it on him—within seconds of emerging from their vehicles, most of them were hurrying his way.
“Hey, Nick!” called Vilma Wilson. She was a pretty redhead with a guileless face and a Midwestern sweetness in her manner, but he knew from experience her beak was as sharp as that of any of the rest of the vultures, and she carried the same general stench of death. “How’s it going? This is some beautiful spot here, huh?”
“Beautiful,” he said, watching her warily. None of these people spent any time in nature voluntarily, except to hide under bushes waiting for Kate Hudson or Jennifer Lawrence to come out of a restaurant or walk down their driveway to take out the trash. There was probably some dank cave somewhere where they all gathered when they’d finished stripping the latest carcass of the day.
Cameras were already flashing in his face. For a short, shamed moment, he thought that somehow they knew about him and Amber, that pictures of them in bed together were going to show up with strategic pixilation on Entertainment TV, with some moronic headline: “Making Whoopie, Not Movies” or “Naked Cameraman Caught on Camera!” But of course the press didn’t know about that. They couldn’t. There hadn’t been any Nick and Amber before this trip to the wilderness started.
No, this had to be about Ruby Torres or Jake Hultensaalt, who were pure Hollywood tabloid gold. Especially the two of them together, especially if something scandalous might possibly happen. Only star power like theirs could lure the vultures into the middle of nowhere, where they had no chance of catching Britney Spears having a meltdown, or Miley Cyrus flashing an excess of side-boob. Someone must have learned something really juicy to draw this mob out here.
Luckily, Ruby and Jake were nowhere in sight at the moment.
“Hey, Nick!” called an unfamiliar young guy in a fedora and a short hipster goatee. His buddy-buddy tone made Nick’s hackles rise. “How’s the shoot going? Pretty intimate set, huh? What’s it like working so closely with Ruby Torres?”
Ah, that last bit had an insinuating edge, but clearly the guy was just fishing.
“She’s very talented,” said Nick. “Amber’s thrilled with what’s she’s doing in the role.” As if anyone of them gave a shit about the artistic integrity of the film.
“How’s Amber?” called another woman. Jane Kersey. She was from England, with a lovely accent and a reputation for never taking pictures of celebrities with their kids—a major sacrifice, given what those kinds of shots were worth. She was also known for catching unflattering “No Makeup” pictures of models and actresses going about their normal lives, but she was maybe a little closer to human than the rest.
“Amber’s great,” he said, flashing a smile. “Everything’s going smoothly here. Nothing more dramatic than a few mosquito bites. Don’t even have any poison ivy to report.”
Amber’s cabin door creaked open. She must have heard the commotion, and she came out looking furious. She wasn’t used to having her sets invaded—but then again, she’d never had big name stars before.
Her fists were clenched and her jaw was tight in a way Nick knew was bad news for anyone who stepped into her path right now, but the paparazzi were fearless—most of them surged forward to surround her before she could even get fully down the steps from her cabin.
Taking advantage of that distraction, Nick waved Jane Kersey a few feet away from the crowd, and she was savvy enough to come with him. Nobody waved over a tabloid reporter unless they had something useful to share. None of these people were trustworthy, but Jane was maybe a little more decent than the rest. “What brings you all out here?” he asked her. “Needing a little fresh air?”
Jane gave him a friendly smile, though no doubt she was calculating just how much she might be able to squeeze out of him in exchange for anything she revealed. “Truth is,” she whispered, “I haven’t the foggiest notion. There was lots of chatter yesterday—Donny Lempert got drunk at the Venom Lounge the night before last and let something slip about having an amazing lead on a Ruby Torres scandal. Big, nasty, even-the-mainstream-press-will-run-it kind of thing. You have anything you can tell me?”