Cherry Bomb: Forbidden Bad Boys

by Clara Leigh

  “Dare,” she counters, holding my gaze, while she rocks her hips, so that her pussy grinds against the front of my trousers. Her lips seek mine, but I tip my chin up so that she fails to hit the mark. Instead, her teeth find and graze my earlobe, and I have to fight not to give in to an appreciative groan.

  “Are you playing hard to get?”

  “I’m not playing at all.”

  “Me neither.” Her mouth finds its way to my neck. Her kisses are mostly light and flirty, but they still raise tingles under my skin. “So, are you going to explain why you’re so grumpy, or do I have to bang it out of you?”

  Lorne’s arrival is announced via his loud guffaw, which also happens to mask the fact that I actually find the notion of her banging me until I smile humorous. Despite his arrival, Flicka doesn’t move from my lap, nor does she stop jiggling, and all of a sudden the way she’s kissing my throat isn’t butterfly like. She’s going to damned well mark me.

  Shamefully, I want her to. Right now. Right in front of the gaggle of onlookers who follow Lorne into the booth and fill up the leather banquette. It seems his delay had nothing to do with pissing, and everything to do with being accosted by revellers desperate to be in the know and part of the in crowd. I scan their faces, but I don’t process who is present – it’s hard to focus when Flicka is sucking the soft skin of my neck in a way that has me straining not to come in my pants – until I see him. The scurvy little weasel that sold us out and damn near ripped us apart for good. Tyler fucking Beauford is in my club. The sheer audacity of this buffoon beggars belief.

  My spine straightens, and my hands curl into fist even before I’ve gently nudge Flicka off my lap. “You,” I bellow, rising and plunging headlong towards him, oblivious to the table full of drinks in the way and the legs of the people who have invaded my private sanctum. Things roll and smash. Cries of “Ow!” and “Hey!” ping pong to the right of me.

  “Whoa! Whoa!” Tyler backs up fast, his hands raised so that they’re crossed before him at head height protecting his pretty face. “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Don’t give me that shit, you fucking creep. You sold us out.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Seems pretty true from where I’m standing, watching him scurry backwards towards the crowded dance floor. The lights blink over the heads of the crowd, and make patterns on their skin. The dancers part to admit him. “You’ve a fucking nerve setting foot in here after all you’ve done.”

  “I swear. I haven’t done anything. I wouldn’t. Why would I? What good would it do?”

  There’s a flurry of activity to my left, and I realise that Jace is here too.

  Actually, not just here, but with this little turd. Nice to know whose side he’s on.

  Steaming hot bodies push in around us. The invasion into my space amplifies my irritation. The only reason I don’t lash out is that Jace is holding fast my right arm.

  “You don’t know that it was him, Dare. Where’s the evidence?”

  Evidence! “He’s the only one with any motive, and the only person who saw us for definite.” It’s hard to make myself heard over the thumping base and discordant twangs, but I know they both understand me perfectly.

  “No,” Jace shouts into my ear. “He’s the only person besides me who challenged you over it. That’s not the same thing.”

  It’s not evidence to the contrary either.

  I know it was him. I know it. He’s been watching us and being an arsehole since the moment I first arrived on set.

  Another hand closes around my left bicep. This one belongs to Flicka. I’m momentarily shocked to find she’s attempting to hold me back, until I realise she’s actually shoving me out of the way so that she can get in front.

  My sweet lady doesn’t pause long enough to ask questions or level accusations. She’s straight in there with a mean right hook that splits Tyler’s lower lip and sends him careening off balance. He ploughs into the line of customers waiting to be served.

  “Watch it!”

  “Hey!”

  He’s sent bouncing off them back towards us, spitting out blood as he staggers.

  “Thanks a bunch, Felicity. This is what I get for looking out for you? Screw you.”

  “For fuck's sake,” Jace let’s go of me in order to insert himself between Flicka and Tyler. “Will you behave?”

  Tyler collides with Jace’s back, which brings him to an abrupt halt. Meanwhile, Flicka gets right up in Jace’s face.

  “You call that looking out for me? You screwed everything up. Everything, Tyler. You damn near destroyed my career, my relationship with my sister, what I have with Dare…”

  Damn, she’s gorgeous when she’s roused. Right now she’s raging. Her eyes are ablaze, and the UV lighting makes the white of her teeth almost blinding. There are a lot of teeth on show as she snarls.

  “I thought we were friends. I trusted you. Flo trusted you. But you shafted us both anyway. You knew what would happen with Chinchilla if my relationship with Dare came out. I hope the cash injection was worth it.”

  He might be spending it on plastic surgery if she’s gets in close enough to hit him again. The split she’s already put in his lip his rapidly swelling.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Tyler curses around the base of his hand, as he attempts to put pressure on the wound. “Will you open your damned ears? It wasn’t me. Why would I? What possible benefit would it gain me?”

  “Exactly,” Jace adds, shoving his weasely mug into Flicka’s line of sight again. Maybe he thinks she won’t hit a guy in glasses. “Why would he? If he screws things up for you, then he risks the film falling apart.”

  “I’m hardly going to sabotage my first major role.” Tyler strains on tiptoes to see over the top of Jace’s head, though I’m not sure how effective that is as Flicka is several inches shorter. “You know what this means to me, Flicka.”

  “Maybe you didn’t think it’d play out quite the way it did. Maybe you weren’t thinking about consequences at all, just about putting one over on Dare because he has more talent than you’ll ever have, and I dared to like him more than I did you. You were jealous on awards night, and you’ve been petty ever since.”

  “Or maybe you just don’t have a fucking clue,” he hollers, adding an eye roll up to the ceiling at the end and raising his hands as if entreating God to intervene might actually achieve something.

  Seeing his defences lowered, Flicka goes in for the kill again, dodging, and ducking beneath Jace’s arm. But this time Tyler gets his hands up in time to defend himself. A mad scramble ensues. Flicka seeking any means of dishing out punishment, while Tyler spins around keeping his guard up, but avoiding any kind of retaliatory blow. It’s nice to know he’s not utterly without saving graces.

  “Flick, I’m not a moron. I know when I’m out of the running for something, and I realised I was out of your running weeks ago. The problem here isn’t me. It’s that you’re so convinced the world revolves around you that you haven’t noticed I’m not gooey over you. I’m seeing someone else.”

  “Flo,” she blurts. I’ve still yet to be introduced to her sister.

  Tyler scowls. “No, not your sister. I’ve been seeing Trisha from make-up. Nice of you to notice I have a life. We’ve been together six weeks now.”

  That kinda explains a few things.

  “No you haven’t.” Flicka’s mouth screws up tight into a vexed moue. “Don’t lie and make stuff up.”

  “I’m not lying. The problem is you’re not listening. Go on, admit it, you don’t even know who Trish is.”

  “She’s the woman who does your hair,” Flicka sucks the fullness of her lip after the words are spoken, betraying her uncertainty. It’s a lucky guess, and we all recognise it as such, which rather makes Tyler’s point.

  Someone passes him a tissue, which he uses to mop his red-stained chin. “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened to you and Dare. It’s hideous that you had your private life exposed like that
. It sucks that it’s stirred up shit with Chinchilla too and that Flo got muddled up with it, but I’m not the one who initiated it. Someone sold you out, Flicka, but it wasn’t me.”

  Dammit! Might have known that bastard would realise that it wasn’t Flicka who gave that interview. He knows them both too well to mistake one for the other. That only makes my inability to spot the difference even more contemptible. What sort of guy can’t tell the love of his life from her sister? She is that. Several days face down in a pillow trying to convince myself that she never meant a thing proved the exact opposite. Somehow Flicka Caine wriggled under my skin.

  “Who was it then? Who else even knew?” She’s still fired up and out for blood, but I’m actually beginning to think the guy might well be telling the truth. The only sticking point is the lack of an alternative culprit. Only a handful of people were definitely aware of our relationship in addition to Tyler Beauford. I automatically rule out Jace, Lorne, and Flicka’s little sister. Trevor the lighting guy could easily have put two and two together, but I don’t believe he was hanging around waiting for an opportunity to lynch us for mucking up his rig. Poor bugger was too busy fixing it.

  That leaves dozens and dozens of potential cast and crew members with no obvious motives besides greed, and no easy means of eliminating them to find the actual culprit.

  “If you’re seeing someone, then how come she’s not here,” Flicka demands. She looks around for Tyler’s date, as do several of the folks rubbernecking, but there’s no sign of the little brunette from make-up. “Can’t be very serious if you’re not out with her.”

  “I am. She’s here.” His head turns from side to side too, but strangely enough, he also fails to locate her. “She must have nipped off to the ladies.”

  Possibly, but in my experience, women are psychically attuned to trouble involving their other halves. It doesn’t matter what they were doing, they always manage to magic themselves into the centre of any brouha.

  “Did you tell Trisha about us?” I scrutinize Tyler’s expression as I hook my arm around Flicka’s waist.

  “I don’t know, maybe. Not specifically. I guess I might have been ranting a bit after Jace gave us that drilling about the lighting rig getting damaged. But so what, she wouldn’t have done anything.”

  “Yeah, are you sure about that?”

  “She’s still a student. Why would she? She’s going to do something like that and muck up her future employment chances.”

  Yet a swift reccy of the premises soon establishes that Trisha is no longer in the club, and that the last time anyone saw her was right before I went for Tyler’s throat.

  “Call her,” Flicka insists. “Find out where’s she’s gone. It’s what I’d do if I’d lost track of someone.”

  Tyler pulls out his phone and dials, which leads to an intense buzzing coming from his back pocket. His mouth falls open. “Damn, I forgot. She gave me her phone to look after, so that she didn’t have to carry a purse.”

  “Do you have her keys and her lippy too?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “She put those in her bra.”

  That just says everything. I never trust a woman who stores anything beside her assets in her brassiere.

  Tyler swipes Trisha’s phone screen to unlock it, only to be presented with a numeric key pad. “I don’t know the code, but…” He angles the phone so that the fingerprints on the screen are visible. He tries one thing, then another, and finally gets it right on the third attempt. “It’s her birth date.”

  The recording of Flicka and I going at it against the side of Jace’s trailer is right there amongst her saved videos.

  “It could be she just downloaded it,” Tyler proposes in her defence.

  “Or she could have recorded it –” It’s labelled with a precise timestamp that correlates exactly to when the event occurred. “– and, sold it for a nice wodge of cash.”

  “Shit!” he crows a second or two later. Another dozen or so videos of various members of the cast in compromising or embarrassing situations are filed right alongside the one of Flicka and me. Seems Trisha was highly motivated to collect dirt. Numbers for various gossip rags are stored in her contacts list.

  “I think I’ll take charge of this.” Jace claims the phone. “I’m not sure there’s much you can do in the way of legal recourse, or even if it’ll be worth it, but there’s evidence enough here for me to terminate her contract and make sure anyone else thinks twice about hiring her to work in the entertainment industry again. The woman’s a security nightmare.”

  Flicka grumbles softly, “That isn’t enough. She’s benefitting from creating misery.”

  “She’ll pay, Flicka. If Jace puts the word out she’s never going to get near another movie. Hence, bye-bye career.”

  “I know, but…”

  Lorne throws an arm around her shoulder. “Look at it this way, honey. She did you a favour. You’re in a better position than you were a few days ago.”

  “Maybe if you ignore the gazillion pound lawsuit hanging over my head.”

  “We’ll get Monty working on that,” I mumble.

  Lorne fans the air in front of her face. “Pfft! It’ll blow over. They’re not going to want to draw it out and risk you exposing their shit to the world.”

  “I’ll go on the stand for you, if it’ll help,” Tyler says.

  Flicka leans over and kisses him thanks on the cheek. “Sorry about your lip.”

  “It’s okay. It’ll save me a few hours of make-up. I’m supposed to look all roughed up in the next few scenes we’re due to shoot. Sorry about my girlfriend.”

  “Find somebody better.”

  “Yeah, I’ll try that.”

  “Speaking of films.” Jace removes his glasses and cleans the lenses. “I’ll expect you all back on set, ready to roll, bright and early the day after tomorrow. We’ve lost days to enough to relationships dramas.”

  “Urgh!”

  “Slave driver.”

  We all complain, but none of us mean it. We all live for being in front of the camera making movie magic, and actually, there’s a sort of camaraderie developing between us as we stand here bruised and battered by events that didn’t exist before. I think the rest of the shoot will pass by all too quickly.

  “What’s the damn rush, Jace?”

  Our illustrious director eyeballs me, even though Lorne, not me, is responsible for the question.

  I half tune out, expecting a rambling reply about budget constraints and such like, but instead he say only as single word, “Bold.”

  “What?”

  “We need to wrap on time, because we need to prepare for the Bold shoot.”

  We, not he.

  Jace holds out his hand to me, and shakes mine vigorously when I accept his. “Congratulations, you got the part. That’s what I came here to tell you.”

  “How? I didn’t do the audition,” I remind him. I’m pretty sure my screen test got cancelled the moment the video footage of me banging Flicka emerged. My antics are supposedly what’s resulted in my typecasting for the last umpteen years.

  Lorne kicks me in the shins and gives me the look. I get it. Keep my mouth shut and don’t question the good fortune, except in this business it pays to question everything.

  “Why, Jace? Surely I’m the antithesis of what you’re looking for: wild reputation, untried in that sort of role, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “I told you, it’s not my decision. Be thankful for that. But it turns out the producer has a soft spot for bad boys who don’t whine when they get their fingers burned, and who don’t blab to the press even in their own defence. Your smoking hot bod might have swayed it a little too.”

  “When you say the Bold role, you mean as a character in the franchise, right? Not the actual role of Jack Bold?” Flicka asks. Her gaze zaps back and forth between my expression and Jace’s.

  It’s hard to say which of us gives the game way, but it’s probably my epic grin.

  “You’re going to
be Jack Bold? Oh Em Gee!” She bounces up into my arms and kisses me long and hard. “You’re going to play the lead. You’re going to be Jack Bold.” Her excitement makes me dizzy, especially when she takes me by the hand and turns me in circles. “That’s awesome, Dare. It’ll be your first leading role.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Congrats.” Tyler offers me his hand to shake, and a bro hug. “That’s awesome dude.”

  “So how the heck did you pull that one off?” Lorne enquires once the initial round of congratulations is done, and we’ve managed to evict the ne’er-do-wells from our private booth, leaving us with a core group of five. In my mind that’s still three too many.

  “It might have been something to do with the reporter you decked at Arrietty’s party,” Jace says with a wink. He sniffs at the leafy green drink he’s ordered and takes a tentative sip. “Albertine has had a run in or two with him before. It predisposed her to you. Allowed her to look beyond your wayward charms to the acting talent she’d be procuring.”

  I’m not complaining if something good came out of the episode. As far as birthday parties go, it was an unmitigated disaster. Also, it makes a pleasant change not to automatically be labelled the villain of the piece. That reporter deserved everything he got.

  “So have you seen the script?” Flicka is clearly excited by the news of my new persona. “Where are you going to be filming?”

  “Nope, and don’t know,” I reply.

  “Beautiful places,” Jace tells her with a wink. He leans over and shakes my hand again. “Don’t screw this up.”

  “As if.”

  Lorne lifts his feet up onto the table among the collection of empty glasses. “The only thing he’s screwing from hereon is Flicka Caine. His bad boy days are done. He’s going all goody-two-shoes leading man on us. Just wait, he’ll be wearing nice jumpers and beige slacks by next week.”

  “Fuck you,” I say, snatching the Talisker bottle from him before he gets the chance to pour. “They’ll be camel coloured, and you’re the one with a closetful of patterned pullovers.”

  Flicka’s arms wrap around my neck, and she sets herself astride my lap. “Hey, you know I’ve never done it with a secret agent before.”