by Lissa Bilyk
CENTRE STAGE
Lies for a Living #2
By
Lissa Bilyk
KINDLE EDITION
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Centre Stage (Lies for a Living #2)
Copyright (c) 2017 by Lissa Bilyk
Cover image: © conrado | Shutterstock
Kindle Edition License Notes
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Tori and Cameron have spent three blissful months together flying under the radar of the paparazzi while Cameron completes his West End run of Wuthering Heights.
But then the paparazzi mysteriously start getting all the scoops on Cameron's location and expose their secret relationship, bringing up questions about the notorious former playboy's faithfulness while swamping them with obsessed fans who hate Tori because she managed to snag the object of their lust.
Tori desperately wants to trust her man who lies for a living, but has he gone back to his old ways, or are the paparazzi just after juicy gossip?
Meanwhile, a dangerously obsessed stalker might put their liaison to an end once and for all...
Chapter One
When I left the office it was already dark, the mid-February sun long since eaten by a haze of London smog, cloud and starlight. Across the street a silver Jaguar waited for me, at the wheel a beautiful golden man that for the last twelve weeks I’d called my boyfriend: Cameron Campbell. The West End run of Wuthering Heights had ended yesterday after full houses and standing ovations every night, and now that he was between gigs – or ‘unemployed’ as us regular non-actors called it – he’d decided to pick me up after work.
By day I worked as superstar director/producer John Wood’s personal assistant. During productions that meant as his lackey and general run-around, but when John was also between gigs it meant as his actual office personal assistant, fielding phone calls and filing and organising meetings for his next project and making sure he’d eaten something that day.
“Hi gorgeous,” I said as I got in the car. “Sleep well?” I’d left him sleeping this morning in his Notting Hill apartment as I caught the Tube to work.
He took my face in his hands, leaned over, and kissed me long and deep, as if he hadn’t seen me in weeks. “I missed you.”
“I was only at work,” I said, patting his leg. Since John had directed Wuthering Heights, he – and therefore I – was no longer needed once the production was underway. John was already working on putting on his newest production, a brief run of The Glass Menagerie.
“You shouldn’t have to go,” he said. “You should stay home with me.”
“And do what?” I laughed. “I have to work. I have rent to pay.”
“You don’t have to work if you don’t want to. I’ll look after you.”
I looked at him closer. “You want me to just quit my job and hang around waiting for you to come home?”
“I earn enough to look after you, Tori, and I fucking missed you today. I’ve missed you this whole damn run. We don’t get enough time together.”
It was true that even though we split our time between his luxurious apartment and my tiny one, that even though he’d come crawling into bed after midnight and we’d make love for hours, that we didn’t get to spend enough time together. We lived on different schedules – mine was nine-to-five and his had been afternoon-to-midnight.
And we still hadn’t gone public.
He said it was because he wanted to protect me from the media. “The tabloids can be cruel, the gossip magazines even worse,” he’d said at the start of our relationship. “I just want to shield you from that for as long as I can.”
I tried not to think about that time someone told me the average relationship only lasts three months.
“I’ll think about it,” I promised him, even though I’d already decided: I would not quit my job just because his timetable was suddenly open.
“In the meantime,” he said, starting the car and pulling into the street, “why don’t you think about the possibility of bringing Bronte to live with me?”
I snorted in an un-lady-like manner. “But Bronte hates you.” Bronte was my cat, a brown domestic long-hair I’d adopted after starting work for John. She was about two years old, didn’t much like strangers, and had never adjusted to Cameron traipsing in and out of our apartment and disrupting her schedule.
“Bronte does not hate me,” he said. “And if we got to spend more time together, maybe she’ll let me pat her.”
“And I’ll what, go home to an empty apartment?”
He shook his head and gave me a pointed look. “No. The way I see it, the only reason you keep going home is to look after Bronte. So I figure if Bronte moves into my apartment, that means you can, too.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment, but conflicting feelings of warmth and shock trundled through my body. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”
“Yes.”
I hesitated, wishing he wasn’t driving so I could look at him properly, read his face and body language. “But we haven’t gone public yet.”
“There are no rules as far as I’m concerned. Even when I was doing the run I didn’t like you going back to your place. We never knew what time I’d be in, but I hated coming home to a cold house, a cold bed. My bed misses you, Tori. You don’t spend enough time in it, or with me.”
“But you’ll get another job,” I pointed out, unsure of why I was resisting the idea so much. “And then I’ll be all alone in your apartment.”
“Isn’t it better than being all alone in yours?” he said, and I tried not to feel the sting in his words. True, my apartment was so small it fit into his living room. I didn’t have a television or a phone and wouldn’t take money from Cameron, so I constantly worried about whether I could afford the winter gas bill.
“Can I think about this, too?” I said. “It’s a big decision to make.”
“Sure,” he said, though I didn’t believe him. At the same time, I wasn’t sure why I was hesitating. The gorgeous guy I’d been sleeping with for the past three months, the beautiful man beside me who’d given me a key to his apartment and a pass card for the exclusive elevator in the complex, the man who said he loved me and called me his girlfriend and who’d taken my virginity, had just asked me to move in.
Why wasn’t “Yes!” my immediate answer?
Because it can’t last, and you know it, a small voice said to me. You know this is only temporary, and when he tires of you you’ll be stuck with nowhere to go. When he finds out you’re not as interesting or as beautiful as he thinks you are, he’ll go for the next girl lined up for his bed, and you’ll be alone with no one.
Like always.
Back at his apartment we had dinner – grilled chicken and salad – and then cuddled up on his couch to watch a movie. We’d entered this comfortable part of our relationship, and he lay sprawled across me like his own personal pillow as I stroked his hair. It was growing out now, and the look was strikingly different to the shorn man I’d first met six months ago at the start of the production.
“Oh, I forgot to mention.” He looked up at me with his clear blue eyes. “I’ve been asked to take part in a workshop later this week for a new show. Juliet recommended me and I said yes.”
“Oh? What is it?” I
stroked down his forehead between his eyes. They closed in pleasure.
“A new musical about Jack the Ripper. I said I’d lend my voice.”
“Any other news?”
“No, but Carly’s got some auditions lined up for me.”
Carly was his agent, a formidable middle-aged black haired demon of a woman. I liked her.
“What do you normally do when you’re not working?” I said, my fingers lingering over the stubble along his strong, square jaw.
“Just keep up my routine. Work out, read, cook, audition. Hayley’s going to start coming round again – she’s my personal trainer who keeps me fit when I’m between gigs.”
I smiled thinly, squashing down a bead of jealousy that his personal trainer was female – as well as his agent, his manager, his publicist, and probably his lawyers, too. So what if he had a bad boy reputation before he met me, that he’d told me himself he’d been fucking a different girl as often as he could since he was thirteen? None of that mattered anymore. He was with me now. I stroked his forehead again. He closed his eyes.
“Mmmm, that feels nice.”
“Have you slept with Hayley?” I was proud of how calm I sounded.
“No,” he said simply. “I don’t mix business and pleasure.”
I stopped stroking. “You did with me.”
His eyes opened. “I seem to recall breaking quite a few rules with you, Tori.”
I nodded. He’d never brought a girl back to his apartment before me – never let one sleep in his bed – never stayed the night after fucking them – never gave away a key. So many rules thrown out the window once he’d found the girl he wanted to keep forever.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not jealous. I know I’m not the first person to lay claim to your body. I can only follow what hundreds of women have done before me, breathe in the scent hundreds of other girls know. I don’t delude myself that I’m the first girl you’ve been with; though by god I hope I’ll be the last.”
He grabbed my fingers and kissed them. “You will be.” He launched himself up and around and plastered his body against mine, his lips meeting my own, demanding, insatiable. I responded as best I could and wiggled down the couch for a better position. He growled, a noise he didn’t usually make until I was naked, his hands rough on my clothes, tugging, insistent. He pulled my pants down without bothering to undo the button, my panties following, and then he grabbed my legs and yanked me further down the couch. I squeaked in protest at his handling – he knew I liked him gentle, that any roughness brought back bad memories I’d rather forget.
Ignoring my protest he wrenched my legs open and buried his face between my thighs, his tongue lashing at my depths. I was completely unprepared for it and instinctively tried to pull away, but he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer, pinning me down. I gave one more small noise of protest that turned into a guttural groan of pleasure as his tongue washed over my clit. There was something incredibly sexy at this man taking charge, at this glorious, beautiful man unable to hold himself back from pleasuring his lady.
His tongue razed my clit and labia with a ferocity I’d never known. He seemed desperate to wring an orgasm from me as quickly as he could. He needn’t have worried – he knew the exact spot to hit, the way to lay the pressure on, the way I liked it when his fingers delved into me. I felt the orgasm building and only just managed to warn him in time. It swelled over me like a tidal wave leaving me jerking ungracefully and pressing my hips further into his face, moaning his name. His fingers left me as he rose to his knees and yanked his pants down far enough to ram his hard cock into my drenched pussy. I’d gone on the pill once we realised we’d gone through our stash of condoms in a week, and if I was honest I preferred the feel of his naked cock inside me. We’d had the awkward conversation when we decided to go off them:
“Um, Cameron,” I’d said at the time. “I don’t know how to ask you this but… are you clean?”
He’d kissed me, starting at the soft spot under my ear, trailing down my jaw to my neck. “I’ve always used protection and I get tested every couple of months just to be sure. I was last tested four months ago when I first laid eyes on you and decided you’d be the last person I would ever sleep with. Yes, I’m clean.”
The first time we had sex without a condom he’d come harder than ever before, erupting like a fucking volcano, and we’d never looked back.
Cameron gripped my hip with one hand and pinched my clit with the other, and I howled in pleasure, throwing my head back. I opened my eyes to see his face contorted in concentration.
“You’re the only one for me,” he growled, fucking me hard, and deep, and slow. “You’re my one and only, my everything. You’re mine, Tori.”
I whimpered in pleasure, my fingers curling around nothing.
“Say it!” he demanded.
“I’m yours,” I gasped.
“Fucking right you are,” he snarled, grabbed my hips, and slid us to the floor. We knocked aside his coffee table, and the mail he’d collected earlier scattered. Now we were chest to chest, me settled on top of him, shockingly intimate. His hands yanked off my shirt, tore at my bra. I was naked, but he still had most of his clothes on. I tried to slide his t shirt up over his body but he slapped my hands away, then gathered both of them in one of his and held them behind my back. He still pumped into me and I tried my best to match his frantic, desperate rhythm.
“I’m yours,” he insisted, and bit my neck. I squealed but he clamped his hand harder around my wrists. “No one else,” he continued between licking my neck. “No one but you.” Then he jammed his free hand between our pulsating bodies and drew a second orgasm from me, mercilessly making me scream in pleasure, helplessly atop his rock hard cock. At the same tie he shuddered violently and curled into my body as my orgasm pumped his cock and demanded his own in response.
Spent, I came back down to earth and clambered off him, my knees shaking, feeling dizzy and tingly all over. I wondered what that had all been about – usually we made love in one of our beds, not madly fucking in the living room. I wondered if he was trying to prove something.
I pulled my clothes on as gracefully as I could while he lay on his back, watching me, a half-smile lighting up his face. The film still ran in the background, forgotten.
“I love you,” he said out of nowhere, reaching out to stroke my ankle as I moved past him to pick up the fallen mail.
“I love you, too.” I straightened up the discarded papers and felt the weight of a glossy magazine among them. Curious, I pulled it out. It was one of the many tabloids distributed in the UK. I was about to replace it when I noticed Cameron’s name on the front cover, below a smiling celebrity who’d lost ten pounds and couldn’t be happier:
CAMERON CAMPBELL’S SECRET LOVERS.
Chapter Two
My heart rate shot up and anxiety flooded my veins. It said ‘lovers’ plural.
I almost called to Cameron as he got to his feet and wandered away for a shower. I let him go and fled back to the couch, flipping the pages until I spotted his smiling face. The article read:
Cameron Campbell, the love rat – three’s not a crowd!
Normally we manage to keep a pretty good eye on the girl of the week for notorious love rat Cameron Campbell, Australia’s most eligible London-based hottie, but he’s been hiding away during his three month West End run of Wuthering Heights – in which, so we hear, he played a scorching hot and sexy Heathcliff to Juliet Elmore’s Cathy. But never fear, dear readers! We have been combing the streets for our hidden hottie and can now reveal his secret liaisons with three women that he’s tried to keep under wraps.
And no wonder! It must be exhausting keeping three women happy!
Then underneath the little story were three pictures of Cameron with various women. The first picture was big and grainy and horribly lit – and familiar. Several months ago, right when we first got together, a stranger in a pub had taken a phone camera photo of us as we sa
t in a small, dingy Australian-themed pub. I recognised the moment instantly – Cameron and I were leaning over the table in the private booth, our lips locked. It was difficult to recognise me as my brunette hair was falling over my face, although Cameron’s side-profile was obvious. Cameron had threatened to sue the random guy who’d snapped it, but I guess he felt safe now, or maybe the magazine had kept the picture on hold while they dug up more dirt. Either way, I should tell Cameron so he could get his manager on to tracking down the scumbag who’d profited from us.
The second picture had obviously been taken with a long-range lens and showed Cameron in workout clothes jogging with a thin, pretty woman with a long blonde ponytail. The third picture showed Cameron in the city outside Harrods with his arm draped over a woman with short dark hair wearing a long dark coat and oversized sunglasses, her features obscured.
I closed the magazine. Cameron seeing two other women? Was it even possible? Could he possibly keep that hidden from me?
Yes, a small voice said to me. He’s basically unemployed now and you’ve gone for hours, days not seeing each other.
Why did he ask me to move in? I wondered. Did he want me to help him go straight? Was this just the rocky part of our relationship and he needed to see other girls for a while? Was it the serial cheater’s version of a beard?
Or was the end nigh?
My heart pounding, I entered the bedroom and hid the magazine under my side of the bed. I would ask him about it. I would. But first, maybe I just needed to convince him to stay with me. To give him a reason to want me. He seemed to enjoy dominating me tonight; maybe in future I could be more adventurous in bed. Branching out wouldn’t be the death of me, and being at his mercy hadn’t hurt me. It had only made me feel anxious – but if I willingly gave up my dominance, maybe I could be better.