by Lucy Lambert
It was nothing like the flight I’d taken from Bangor to L.A. when I started my degree.
Until this point, that was actually the only time I’d ever been on a plane. Still, this was something totally different.
“There’s so much room!” I said, marveling at the way I could almost stretch my legs out all the way and still not touch the back of the seat in front of me.
A skirted stewardess came back to see if we needed refills on our drinks. I shook my head. Vance already coaxed me into having two champagnes, and I didn’t want more than the pleasant warmth in my head.
“See? Fame and money aren’t all bad,” Vance said. He took up his own big seat like a large, predatory cat spreading out over his space.
I still felt like all of this was part of some crazy super-extended and realistic dream. Like maybe I really had fallen from that ladder while hanging those banners and was now in a coma or something, imagining all of this.
But then Vance reached over and put his hand on top of mine. His hand was warm and large and strong and oh so very real.
“I’m glad you’re coming,” he said.
I’d sent my parents a quick email, promising a call from London. Back at my apartment, I’d almost changed my mind.
But Mandi and Sam helped. I owed them both postcards, actually.
I glanced around the cabin, still nervous. There were maybe a dozen other occupants. When we first stepped on the plane Vance got some attention. He got attention everywhere he went, and I knew that even if he wasn’t famous he would.
But no one had immediately whipped out their phone to start snapping pictures.
Maybe this can be a new start, I thought.
“Me too,” I said.
I looked out over Vance at the oblong window. Through a white wisp of cloud I saw the sprawling expanse of the Atlantic sliding away beneath us.
Even this high up the sun glittered off a million little wavelets.
London, I thought. The word caused a prickle of excitement in the pit of my stomach.
Vance squeezed my hand.
Vance, came the next thought, supplanting the previous one.
Vance leaned over so that his shoulder brushed against mine. He wore a dark blazer and the material of it was smooth against the bare part of my arm.
“I wish we were alone,” Vance said. He said it good and low.
The arm he brushed immediately burst into goose flesh, along with the rest of me.
“I already told you what I thought of our… time together,” I said, that prickle of excitement in my stomach melting away at the heat inside of me. I squirmed against the lumbar supports of my seat.
“I’m pretty good at changing minds, as you already know,” Vance said.
He referred to the whole thing where I hated his guts when we first met. He was mostly right, but I couldn’t let him get away with everything, could I?
“The jury’s still out on that one,” I said, giving him a pointed look.
“I’m pretty sure I have that jury in my pocket,” Vance replied without missing a beat.
I wished we were alone. We did have some privacy, there in first class. But nothing real.
Chapter 21
VANCE
We stayed at the Lanesborough Hotel, over in Knightsbridge.
The studio had the rest of the crew over at the airport Hilton. And Erin ostensibly had a room over there, too, shared with one or two other female members of the crew.
But she came with me.
It was a palatial suite, probably approaching the size of her apartment back in Brentwood. Except I didn’t think her apartment came with twenty-four-hour room service and its own butler.
A four-poster bed with a high canopy, king-size of course, sat against one wall, giving a great view of the huge flat-screen mounted against the opposite wall. Aside from those accents of technology, the place felt like a room out of some nineteenth century palace.
“This is incredible,” Erin said.
As soon as we came in, she went right over to the leaded glass window to look out over Hyde Park. In my opinion, it was inferior to Central Park. But it was still quite lovely. Lakes, trees, gardens, all of that. The lot of it crisscrossed with straight paths. It swam in greens of varying shades.
Some of that vermillion tide swaying in the breeze had begun turning rust colored.
I preferred the view of Erin, however. Her curly, dark hair bounced on her shoulders while she looked back and forth, taking in the view of the park and the view of London beyond that.
The way she leaned against the sill accentuated her hips, and the curve of her back.
Hot, tense desire coiled low in my stomach.
“Incredible,” I repeated.
“May I show you the amenities, sir?” The butler said. He still stood by the open door. He was an older man in a three-piece suit, his thin grey hair slicked back over his scalp and white-gloved hands clasped in front of his hips.
“No, that’s fine,” I said, “I’ve stayed here before.”
I almost reached for my wallet before remembering that tipping wasn’t a thing in the UK. I thought I should anyway, but he’d left and closed the door behind him.
I’d just leave some cash on one of the many antique dressers or tables when we checked out, I figured.
But now Erin and I were well and truly alone.
It was quiet in the room. Just the south of the wind against the building, some traffic noises very distant behind that.
“I never thought I’d get to London,” Erin said, still staring out through a window. “It just never seemed in the cards, you know?”
She reminded me of a house cat, entranced by the view of the outside world, wanting to see everything at once, attention grabbed by the smallest details.
Instead of saying anything, I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist. I clasped my hands just below the button of her jeans.
She leaned back against me, turning her head to look up at me. There was a rosy blush in her cheeks that sent an electric tingle down the front of my stomach.
“You’re here,” I said. “We’re here.”
She rolled her head the other way, looking out the window over the park and city again, exposing a delicious stretch of throat.
I put my lips against that sensitive skin, smiling when it rippled with goosebumps at my touch. That low, constant tingle I felt swelled to a buzz when she moaned lightly.
“I’ve been thinking about this since the terminal back at LAX,” I whispered against her skin. Skin I kissed, tracing a line from her neck to her shoulder.
I hooked my thumbs down into the waistband of her jeans, reveling in the silky feel of her body. Her moan became more pronounced, and she pushed herself harder against me.
She put her hands on my wrists, her fingers pushing into me.
“Have you?” she asked.
“You have no idea,” I replied.
Our tryst that weekend at my hideaway apartment had played over I don’t know how many times in my mind since it happened.
And she maddened me by continually refusing an encore. Maddened and intrigued and fascinated. I didn’t get refused often. Especially not after a woman got a taste.
One of her hands slipped away from my wrist. It moved between our bodies, came to rest over the hard ridge at the front of my jeans.
I let out a groan of my own.
“I think I might have some idea,” she said.
She squeezed. Not enough to hurt, but enough to cause some shivers of my own.
She spun in my grasp, turning so that she faced me. My fingers rested on the swell of her butt. She looked up at me, bedroom eyes hooded. My desire swam inside of me.
I leaned in to kiss her. She leaned back so that our lips just grazed.
“I want to…” she said.
“You want to, but…” I said. My insides twisted at the denial.
“But I still feel like I don’t know what this…” she took my h
and off my shoulder and moved it in a circle to indicate the two of us, “…is. I mean, I still feel like all this is so fast. And I don’t understand it. And it scares me when I don’t understand something I’m involved in.”
I thought of Rudy, of the photographers, of all the articles. Of Sandra. Some guilt settled in, dampening some of my fire.
Just tell her, I thought. But I didn’t. Because I thought I knew Erin, then. I thought it would drive her away, and that was the last thing I wanted.
But I was an actor. And despite what some critics said, a pretty decent one.
I gave her a trademarked smile. “I think you know exactly what this is, but that you’re afraid to admit it to yourself.”
She stepped away from me then. She wrenched my heart out along with her, but I didn’t let her see that.
She was magnetic. I felt the pull to go to her again, to wrap her up in my arms and kiss all her doubts away. But I resisted that pull, because I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do.
“Okay,” I said.
“What does that mean?” She leaned against the window, arms crossed beneath her breasts. She tried hard not to look at me.
I turned my back and walked over to the bed, where I sat. The memory foam mattress cushioned my weight.
“I want you to know that you can trust me,” I said.
She looked back from Hyde Park at me. “And how are you going to do that?”
“I’m going to tell you the truth,” I replied.
She flicked her hair back, looked around the room. I could tell she was interested. I could always tell when a woman was interested.
“Well,” she said, “I’m not coming to sit beside you on the bed. Too dangerous.” She offered a smile of her own.
“Fair enough.”
Outside, another gust of wind brushed past the hotel, barely audible through the window.
“I took up acting after that visit to the western set at the studio because it helped me forget who I was,” I said.
It wasn’t the truth, but it was a truth. I couldn’t tell her the truth. Not yet, at least.
“What was wrong with who you were?” She said.
Her attention turned from the park to me, regarding me from across the room.
I smiled. A real smile this time, but not a happy one. “My dad could be a great guy. Taking us from New York to LA for family vacation. Taught me how to ride a bike, how to win a fight, how to stop a leaky faucet, that sort of thing…
“But sometimes, more than I like to think about, really, he wasn’t such a great guy. Sometimes he was other, worse, kinds of a man. Like when he was a drunk. Or when he gambled away the rent money and then told me and my mom to shut up with his fists.”
Even this was harder than I thought it would be. I gripped the mattress hard, the memory foam compressed beneath my fingers.
I didn’t like talking about this. Didn’t even really like thinking about this. Even though I knew it was one of the things that made me who I was.
Erin raised one hand to cover her mouth, “Vance, I had no idea! I’m so sorry…” she started towards me, but I raised a hand to stop her.
“When he found out I wanted to act, he broke a beer bottle and threatened me with it,” I said, that taut smile still pulling my cheeks. “I remember how I couldn’t look away from the jagged edge of the glass, and the way the light coming in through the window moved along it.
“So I left home. And when I thought I could, I went back and kicked him out of our lives. I haven’t seen him in almost ten years now. He stays quiet about the whole thing, what with the hush money he gets.”
Erin, hand still over her mouth, shook her head. I watched the way her curly hair bounced on her shoulders.
“Everything about you says your parents always supported you,” she said.
I shrugged. “The other story, the true one, doesn’t give the right impression. According to my agent, anyway.”
“You must hate him so much. Your father, I mean,” she said.
Another shrug from me. “I used to hate him so much it kept me up at night. It would leave me shaking. Not so much anymore. Now I pity him. He was always a weak man, I know that now. Too afraid to do what was right, too weak to deal with his feelings without lashing out.”
Her hand dropped. I could see her biting her lip again. It slipped out from between her teeth and I knew she’d come to a decision.
She came over to the bed and sat down on it beside me, our thighs brushing.
“You didn’t have to share that with me. I can tell it’s painful.”
There’s more, I thought, so much more. But I still couldn’t bring myself to tell her the rest.
“I did, though,” I said. “Because I know I can trust you with it.”
She looked away from me again. “I try so hard because I know I’m not good enough, but I don’t want anyone to notice.”
I frowned. “That’s ridiculous. No one on the set, aside from Linda I guess, ever said anything about you but good things.”
She still looked away. “That’s because I try so much harder than anyone else. I have to. Twice the effort for half the reward. I keep thinking that someone’s going to notice at any time. They’ll see me and know that I’m just faking it all, that I don’t deserve the scholarship, the internship, anything. And then I’ll be back in Lincoln with nothing.”
“Erin…” I said, I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. When she looked at me, her eyes glistening, I spoke again. “That’s called impostor syndrome. It’s something that lots of successful people deal with. You deserve what you have because you’ve put the work in. Real work. And that’s what people see.”
I knew this, because I played a shrink in a romantic comedy called Psycho Therapy a few years and I liked to do my research.
I also saw how vulnerable it made her to admit this. She always put on this confident exterior, like she knew exactly what she was doing.
“They’re not going to notice you faking, because you aren’t,” I said.
She turned towards me again. “I’ve never told that to anyone before, either.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I wrapped one hand around her waist and pulled her against me. The other I cupped her cheek with, tilting her head back. She trembled against me, eyes flicking from side to side as they searched me.
There was no refusal in those eyes. Only desire. Desire to echo and mirror my own.
I kissed her, and she didn’t pull back.
Chapter 22
ERIN
His mouth fit so perfectly against mine.
His palm burned against my cheek. His other hand held me hard against him. I could feel the hardness of his body through his shirt.
I thought I knew something more about the real Vance now, after he told me that story. And at that moment, I wanted to know the real Vance as well as I could.
I climbed onto his lap, for once looking down into his face instead of up. I took that face in both my hands, his stubbled cheeks rough against my palms, and kissed him again.
He held me close, arms wrapped around me.
His mouth slipped away from mine and found my throat. He kissed his way down it, pausing briefly at the sensitive hollow at the bottom, then starting back up.
I pushed my hips down against him. He thrust back up against me, the ridge of his desire making my breath catch in my throat.
“Tell me again,” I said, “tell me you’ve been thinking about me.”
“Since the terminal,” he said, his breath hot against me. “Since that weekend. Since the first time I saw you.”
His hands moved up between our bodies, cupping my breasts. He squeezed, lightly at first, then harder. I ached for him, inside and out.
Then he pulled off my shirt, exposing my heaving chest and shoulders. He kissed and nuzzled down along my throat and shoulders again, the heat of his mouth teasing along the tops of my breasts.
I pulled off his shirt, eager to run m
y hands along his sculpted pecs and shoulders. His skin was so smooth and warm, and when I felt those muscles clench at my touch I throbbed for him, deep inside.
Quivering heat filled my stomach. Excited heat that shivered up my back, down my arms to my fingertips, down my legs to my toes.
We kissed again, this time so hard our teeth clashed. Neither of us minded. The moment of pain made the pleasure all that much nicer.
When he slid my bra off his hands once again found my breasts. He squeezed them. His fingers found my nipples and squeezed those, too.
“Oh!” I said, less a word and more a noise, an expression.
Again, that moment of pain swelled the pleasure inside of me.
He rolled us onto the bed, pushing my down on my back. His kisses became savage, ravishing my neck, my shoulders, my chest.
His mouth worked down from there, my back arching up off the bed. I felt like I could float away if he stopped holding me down.
“I can’t wait any longer,” he said. “I need you.”
“Then take me,” I said. I needed him, too. Needed him like I’d never needed a man before.
He undid my pants and hooked his fingers into the waistband, snagging my panties at the same time.
He wrenched them off, the legs turning inside out as he peeled them down my calves.
We did the same with his slacks, unbuttoning them and shoving them down his legs.
Somewhere he found a moment to grab a foil wrapper from the luggage and roll the contents on.
In that moment before he entered me, the throb of my passion almost overwhelmed me.
He pushed my knees back, strong hands holding them in place. I parted around him, the heat of our bodies intermingling.
Again, my back arched up off the bed. I put my hands flat against his abs, my fingertips making little white pressure spots against his skin.
We picked up our rhythm as though we’d been making love for years. It ached and felt incredible, all at the same time.
I couldn’t get enough of him, and he couldn’t get enough of me.
My hips rose to meet his again and again. He showered me with kisses until my lips throbbed. But still I wanted more. I wanted all of him, and he wanted all of me.