by April Fire
“Well, try and keep your envy in check for now,” I shot back, grinning widely – I just couldn’t keep it off my face. She brought out this kind of attitude in me and I didn’t know how to stop it.
“I’ve been there, done that, remember, Dominic?” she threw back in my direction, her voice simmering with irritation. “I don’t want another go around.”
She turned to Julia and addressed the next statement to her, even though I knew it was meant to land with me, too.
“You’re welcome to him,” she announced, and stalked off, leaving me standing there looking after her and feeling as though she’d just slapped me across the face. I knew I shouldn’t have let that kind of shit get to me, but boy, it was rough knowing that someone you’d cared about so deeply now viewed you with something close to utter disdain these days. Julia paused for a moment before she spoke, as if waiting for the air to clear around us.
“So, you more than knew her while you were training, right?” She raised her eyebrows pointedly. I opened my mouth to shoot back something witty, but found my mind had gone blank.
“They need me on set,” I cut her off. “I should get over there. I’ll catch you later.”
Before she had a chance to get another word in, I marched off to get ready for filming, and watched from afar as Tennessee headed back to the trailer to get her harness removed. Her face was set tight, and I couldn’t help but think about how different she looked compared to the last time I’d seen her before I left our apartment for the last time.
The memory jolted in my head and for a moment I found myself shocked to a standstill. I hadn’t thought about that in… well, since I’d walked out the door and left her behind for what I thought was for good. She had been fast asleep and I had left a note for her near the coffee maker, and then had grabbed the last of my stuff and gone to get one last look at her before I left her. She looked so gorgeous, her hair cropped flat-short against her head and her body sprawled out across the space that I normally took up. And I remembered, vividly, that feeling – the sensation that lanced through my body and told me to stay, that told me I would have been completely crazy to leave this woman when all I could feel looking at her there was love and adoration and admiration and the promise of a future that we hadn’t discussed but that seemed an inevitable part of wherever we were barreling towards as a couple. I adored her and leaving her was harder than I ever thought it would be – that’s why I had to do it while she was asleep and without letting her know where I was going. Because if she’d asked me why I was leaving her, if she’d asked me to stay, I knew I would have crumpled right away and given in to anything she wanted. Because I was so in love with her it felt almost stupid, dangerous – far more risky than any of the crazy stunts we tried to one-up each other with every time we were in training. So I left, because staying felt crazier. Staying felt scarier.
I was pulled back to reality by the sound of my name being yelled by someone back on set; I tossed a hand in the air to let them know that I’d heard them and that I was on my way already and they could stop yelling at me. I stalked off to get myself ready, all thoughts of Julia and the flirtatious little looks she’d been giving me firmly out of my head as my brain filled once more with Tennessee.
Which was dumb as fuck, because if that conversation had underlined anything for me, it was that she didn’t want me. She would never want me again. When I’d left her with no damn notice or good reason or warning, that had been me cutting off any chance I might have had with her. And that couldn’t help but hurt a little.
Still, I had a set full of people to pass the time with. And it wouldn’t exactly be a set with me on it if I didn’t find a way into the pants of at least a few of the cast and crew members. I had a couple of months of this to get through, and I wasn’t going to let some old fling get in the way of my good time.
Chapter Four
Tennessee
I couldn’t believe the kind of asshole he was acting like right in front of me. He must have known that I was still kind of hurt by everything he’d pulled all those years ago, and yet there he was, standing right next to set and brazenly flirting with Julia as though it was nothing. I mean, seriously, of all people, the person I was meant to be doubling for? He couldn’t have sunk any lower. How had he turned into more of an asshole in the time we’d been apart?
Those were the thoughts dancing through my head as Natalie double checked the claps meant to keep from looking like ground beef after the next scene. It had been a few days since I had given him a serious piece of my mind after he’d turned up to try and put me off my work. I was one thing for me to be mad at him and him to keep out of my way, but it was a whole other ball game for him to try and goad me into fucking up. I didn’t know why he thought it had been a good idea, either – he knew that if I got distracted I could end up seriously hurt, or worse. And yet, there he was, watching me work, making sure I could see him flirting away with that girl like it wasn’t going to get under my skin. I hated him. I fucking hated him more than I did when he walked out on me, because now I was old enough to know that he should do better by me and I should expect it.
“Are you alright?” asked Natalie, looking at me with a concerned expression in the mirror. “You seem really tense.”
“I’m fine,” I snapped back, directing some of my discomfort at her even though she had done nothing wrong. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “It’s nothing to do with you. It’s just…”
“Is it him?” she asked, pulling a sympathetic face. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I lied as coolly as I could, but we both knew that I was speaking out of my ass. She rolled her eyes at me.
“Dominic,” she illuminated me. “If I’ve been hearing the stories about him then you can’t have gotten away from them, either.”
“What stories about him?” I furrowed my brow at her, genuine this time. I actually hadn’t heard much about him, but maybe the fact that my face transformed into a storm cloud every time anyone brought him up had scared everyone off telling me what they had clearly been telling Natalie.
“I heard he’s been hooking up like crazy.” She lowered her voice as though she was telling me some sacred secret. “Like, that he’s been through half the cast and crew already.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” I shrugged and tried to let the news roll off my back, but instead it stuck itself into my brain and made a home there. Was that really still who he was? I knew we weren’t together, that he could hook up with anyone and everyone he wanted, but I had assumed that by this age he would have left behind the urge to do that with everyone he met on every set he came across. I thought when I saw him flirting with Julia that it was just a reflex action because she clearly thought he was cute and he couldn’t find it in himself to turn down attention from a hot young thing, not because he actually had any designs on her. The thought was… eww, no. The thought was wrong. And yet, it still spent hot shivers of jealousy up my spine. I hated this. I hated the fact that I was still so deeply attracted to him. I hated how badly I needed him and wanted him, physically more than anything else. I hated that he made me feel like this again, all fluttery and full of chemistry that couldn’t be ignored. Natalie finished, but just before I turned to head out, her phone began to buzz in her pocket. She whipped it out, looked down at the screen, and groaned.
“Can you give me a minute?” she asked, wrinkling up her nose apologetically, and I waved a hand to indicate she could go whenever she wanted. She left the trailer and I leaned up against the counter, catching my thoughts before they spiraled out of control. And then, of course, someone else came to join me in the cabin.
“Fuck,” I breathed to myself as Dominic stepped inside the trailer and looked around. His eyes fell on me and I could see his shoulders slumping with distaste.
“Oh, hey,” he greeted me. “Where’s Natalie?”
“She’s ou
t taking a call,” I waved my hand in the direction she’d just left in.
“I need to get in my gear,” he sighed, then looked up at me expectantly.
“Oh, hell no,” I held my hands up. “Do it yourself. I’m not helping you out with that shit.”
“Come on, Tennessee,” he implored me. “No-one else here has a clue what they’re doing when it comes to stuff like this. Give me a hand.”
“Fine,” I muttered, and pulled everything we needed from the cabinet above the door. He swiveled around so I could begin to dress him, and I paused for a moment before I went any closer. This felt dangerous. Seriously dangerous. I knew I shouldn’t be letting it get to me, but I was and it was and I hated the feeling of heat that was building in my stomach as I got closer to him.
“Don’t worry,” he met my gaze. “I’m not going to pounce on you as soon as you touch me.”
“I know,” I snapped back and moved towards him to begin. He was watching me in the mirror and I was so aware of his gaze and how it felt to be the subject of it once more.
“I didn’t mean to put you off earlier,” he remarked. “With the whole Julia thing.”
“If you flirting with somebody put me off then I wouldn’t be able to get any work done,” I pointed out.
“Fair point,” he grinned at me in amusement as I reached around him to tighten the nylon strap around his waist. I looked at us in the mirror for a second; we used to stand like this a lot, my chin hooked over his shoulder. He smelled the same, the same aftershave wafting from his neck – or was it something a little more expensive this time around? Was I just projecting what I remembered on to him? It was so hard to tell and I didn’t want to let my memories get the better of me. I pulled myself away and glanced down at the gear on the floor, taking a deep breath and clearing my mind again.
“Are you seeing anyone on set?” he asked, almost conversational, but I knew this was something more.
“No, I’m not,” I shot back. “Not all of us feel the need to fuck everyone we work with, believe it or not.”
“I don’t need to,” Dominic protested. “It’s just a lot more fun this way.”
“Yeah, well, I like to keep focused on work,” I muttered back, and wanted to kick myself at once for how weak that comeback was.
“Jealous?” Dominic asked, just like he had with Julia, and I met his gaze in the mirror.
“Why, do you want me to be?” I shot back.
“Maybe I do, yeah.” He turned around and suddenly we were face to face, only a few inches apart, our bodies so close I could feel the heat pulsing between them.
“You know the offer is still on the table with us, right?” he murmured, lowering his voice to something close to a growl. I parted my lips, all rational thought leaving my head just like that. I couldn’t resist him. I didn’t want to. It was just like it had been back before, when we had been in love and living together and with each other, and now he was offering me all of that again and I wasn’t sure I had it in me to turn it down. I closed my eyes, trying to block him out, but it only made it worse. Instead of pulling away like I knew I should have, suddenly, I found our lips meeting, and anything that had been keeping us apart dropped away just like that.
He tasted so damn good – sweet and musky and totally, utterly of himself. His hands slipped around my waist like they were made to fit there, and my back arched so I could press myself against him completely, so he could feel my body against his. He let out a soft groan into my mouth, something that sounded almost like relief, and I knew precisely how he felt – my body was melting, my brain turning to mush in my head as all I focused on was the sweet feeling of his lips on mine, of the way his tongue pushed into my mouth, of the -
Suddenly, I became aware that there were footsteps heading up towards the trailer, and I heard a hand on the lock outside. We sprang apart, so fast and so far that we practically ended up on other sides of the trailer. Natalie walked in a few seconds later and came to a halt, glancing between us with her eyebrows raised.
“Everything alright in here?” she asked, and I could tell that she could sense she was on to some serious gossip. Both of us made sounds close enough to affirmative that she wouldn’t ask again.
“I was just helping Dominic with his harness,” I muttered. “While you were gone. He was in a rush and I didn’t want him to stick around waiting.”
“Right,” Natalie replied, shooting me a cock-eyed look that told me she was going to get the truth of this situation out of me at some point, whether I liked it or not. “Well, I’m here now. You can go if you want.”
“Yeah, I have to get to set,” I replied, as though she needed to hear those words to believe me. She gave me a funny look and waved her hand, dismissing me, because for some reason I was still standing stock-still in the center of the trailer. As though I wasn’t quite ready to go yet. As though I didn’t want to. Dominic was looking at me in the mirror, his eyes heated and hungry, and even just the feel of them on me was enough to get my pulse pounding once more. I shot him one more lingering look, treating myself to an extended glance at his face that I knew was asking for trouble, and then headed out back on to set to get my shooting done.
As soon as the bright sunlight hit me, the reality of the situation suddenly came crashing down on top of me and I wanted to scream at myself for being so stupid. What the fuck had that been? He’d been on set barely a week and I had already given in to his charms once more? And God knows how many women he’d been pulling similar stunts with in the last few days – if Natalie was to be believed, and she certainly had no reason to lie, then it wasn’t like I was some exclusive interest of his in any way, shape, or form. I was probably one of a half-dozen women he’d made out with since he’d arrived on set. And yet.
And yet, that kiss still felt special. Maybe I was just projecting, or maybe there really was something more to it. I couldn’t be sure, because all my emotions were still so tied up in everything that had happened between us over the years. I felt like everything that I had fought so hard to let go of back when he dumped me the first time around was crashing back into my life, into my brain, and there was nothing I could do to get rid of it. I had known this would happen if I let something go down between us, and yet I had been dumb enough to think that it would be a good idea. I couldn’t believe how naive I’d been, couldn’t believe how stupid I’d let myself become in his presence. Would he always have this effect on me, the effect of making me do stuff that I would instantly and endlessly regret?
I marched on to set and did my best to shove the thought of him from my head. I had to stay focused if I wanted to get through this shoot without getting hurt. Even if that meant ignoring the hungry feeling that had woken up deep in my stomach, and paying no attention to the need that was pulsing through every one of my veins in tandem. I had a job to do, and I wasn’t going to let Dominic get in the damn way of it.
Chapter Five
Dominic
That kiss had, without a doubt, been the best and the worst kiss of my entire life.
That was the only way I could think to describe it. It was, at once, the hottest thing I could imagine – the two of us making out in that trailer with the entire crew just beyond the door. The way her tongue tasted, the way her body felt – it was so familiar and yet brand-new at the same time, and the combination was crazy-hot. I loved the feel of her against me, and it wasn’t until that moment that I’d realized just how damn much I’d missed it. How much I’d missed her. I had fucked plenty of women since the last time we had kissed, but none of them had come close to switching me on with the electric fire that Tennessee did. There was just something about her, something indescribable, that kept me coming back for more. And now that we had kissed again, the floodgates were opened, and avoiding each other was going to be that much harder.
Because if I had my way then I would have just started up with her again. I knew we couldn’t pick up where we left off, or not quite, but we could sure as hell give it a sho
t for as long as we were on set together again. It seemed stupid to deny ourselves that, when the universe had been so intent on shoving us back together once more. It wouldn’t last for long, but then, it hadn’t last time, but it had been by far the best relationship of my life.
Maybe that’s just what I was trying to get back? And maybe that’s what she was trying to avoid. Because I had left her, I had forfeited any right to want her or to flirt with her or to feel that hot, burning need for her that felt as though it was carried in my blood. I had left things too badly to pick up where we left off, but I was young and so was she - surely she could cut me some slack on fucking up?
I wished I could have asked her all this outright, but every time I got near her she would find some excuse to put some distance between the two of us. I couldn’t say I was surprised. That kiss had been so hot and so promising that it felt like if we got within a ten-foot radius of each other we might both go up like gunpowder.