Remi’s eyes darted to his, and she ran toward him. Before he could get his bearings, she launched herself into his arms, crushing her lips to his. A surge of heat consumed him as her tongue thrust into his mouth, and then all bets were off. He took and tasted, their tongues tangling, his mind spinning. In those few scorching seconds, nothing else existed. But the sound of whistles and cheers quickly broke through his reverie, and his brain began firing again. He tore his mouth away, lowering Remi to her feet, taking in the prying eyes all around them, the fans aiming their phones in their direction. Fuck.
“You’re done here?” Mason said roughly.
Remi’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes wide and wanting as she trapped her lower lip between her teeth and shook her head.
Christ, she was going to be the death of him. “Filming, Remi. That was your last scene for today, right?”
“Oh. Yes,” she said absently, and then a big-ass smile appeared and she bounced on her toes. “I nailed it.”
“You sure did.” And you nailed me, too. “Let’s go.” He took her by the arm, leading her toward her trailer, shielding her from fans with his body. His mind reeled with too many thoughts to hold on to any one of them beyond the most important. He needed to get a fucking grip, because what just happened could not happen again.
Inside the trailer, he walked around her ornaments and paced, trying to wrap his head around the situation. Remi stood by the door with a sexy-as-sin grin, desire practically seeping out of her pores. It took every ounce of his control not to pull her into his arms and take everything he wanted.
“What was that?” he snapped.
She tilted her head innocently and said, “A really hot kiss?”
“No shit, Princess. But this can’t happen. Your brother is paying me to keep you safe, and what happened out there”—he pointed at the door—“that fucked with my head. I wasn’t thinking about protecting you, Remi. I was thinking about . . .”
“Touching me?” she asked huskily, closing the distance between them.
She reached for him, and he grabbed her wrist. “Remi,” he warned. “You’re playing with fire.”
Desire brimmed in her eyes. “I’ve waited twenty-five years to feel this, and you can’t tell me you don’t feel it, too,” she said sharply. “I know you do, Mason. I see it in your eyes. I feel it eating up the space between us.”
He stepped around her and sank down on the couch. “It doesn’t matter what I feel. What matters is your safety.” He gritted his teeth against the emotions stacking up inside him, telling himself her safety had to come first.
“So don’t kiss me in public,” she challenged.
“You don’t want that, Remi, and you sure as hell don’t deserve to be someone’s dirty little secret.”
She looked at him and sighed. “Then what will you do, Mason? Because you’re the one I want.”
Her words sent bullets of desire firing through him.
“No one can keep me safer than you can.” She moved closer, her leg brushing against his. “You told me you were the best person to protect me, and I’ve seen the way you are. You don’t miss a thing. You care about me, Mason. Maybe it started as a job, but you don’t fool me.”
“Remi, you have no idea how dangerous this is.”
“Don’t I?” she said seductively.
She held his gaze as she straddled his lap. He knew he should push her away, stand up and put space between them, but as she sank down on his lap and took his face between her hands, her pleading eyes rendered him powerless to resist her.
“Just kiss me,” she whispered.
He ground out, “Remi,” and he crushed his mouth to hers, taking her in a penetrating kiss, turning all his confusion, all his resistance, into white-hot desire. She dug her fingernails into his flesh as he tangled his hands in her hair, angling her face and taking the kiss deeper. She arched into him, and then their hands were everywhere at once, groping and caressing as they ate at each other’s mouths. She pushed her hands into his hair, moaning longingly. The sexy sound tore through him, unleashing all the pent-up desires he’d been holding back. He lowered her to the cushion, coming down over her, his thoughts a tangle of dark desires.
Her hips rocked against his hard length as he intensified their kisses. She tasted sweet and hot, like sunshine and whiskey, and holy fuck, he wanted to get drunk and live in the sun. The feel of her hands pressing against the back of his hips and those sweet lips devouring his drew him deeper into her. Somewhere in the back of his mind, warning bells were going off. He tried to ignore them, but they only became louder. He forced himself to pull away, but she was looking at him like he was everything she ever wanted, and man, she was that for him.
“Mason” fell from her lips like a secret.
He wanted to know all her secrets, all her lies, all her truths, and all her dreams.
She reached for him as he reclaimed her mouth, more demanding this time, greedily needing her to feel—to know—how much he wanted her. He was vaguely aware of something ringing, but between the blood rushing through his ears, the pounding of their hearts, and the throbbing of his cock, he was too caught up to think straight. He trapped her lower lip between his teeth, and she rubbed against him like a cat in heat, moaning and mewling. He’d been dying to do that since the first time she’d rolled that plump lip between her teeth, and fuuck, it’d been worth the wait.
“Again,” she pleaded.
He captured her mouth in another scorching kiss, and when he tugged her lip, she made a sinful sound that wound lustfully through him. The ringing sounded again. He’d heard about fireworks going off when people kissed, but he’d never actually experienced it until now. Ringing, fireworks . . . His body was ready to explode.
When the ringing continued, he realized it was coming from her phone, and forced himself to break away. She tried to pull his mouth back to hers, but his neurons were firing again, and reality hit him like a bullet.
He sat up, both of them breathless, and scrubbed a hand down his face. “That’s your phone. Sounds like it could be important. It might be Aiden.”
Remi’s head was spinning. She didn’t want to think about Aiden, not when she’d just experienced the hottest kisses of her entire life. Her lips tingled, and her body was on fire. She felt primal, fiercely feminine. How could she have gone her whole life without ever once feeling this type of connection, this unrelenting passion for another human being? This was what the stories her girlfriends told her were made of, and she wanted more of it, more of Mason.
She reached for him, pulling his mouth back to hers. But even as they kissed, she felt him pulling away.
He put an arm around her without breaking their connection, bringing her up beside him and into his arms. “Princess, that was—”
“Don’t.” She pressed her lips to his to avoid hearing the words she’d never believe.
He kissed her deeply, eagerly, and when their lips finally parted, her nerves were buzzing like live wires. “I know where you stand, Mason, and I care about your strong moral bearings, but I also care about the unstoppable connection between us. If you say this was a mistake,” she said sharply, “I will never forgive you.”
He kissed her again, slow, sensual, and so sweet she lost her train of thought. He trailed a series of lighter kisses along her lips. His face was so close, she could feel his breath on her lips.
“How do you feel about the word incredible?”
Happiness soared inside her, and she pressed her lips to his again, grinning like a lovesick fool.
“You could never be a mistake, Remi. But this? It’s dangerous and tricky. We need to think it through.”
Her phone chimed again, and as she came out of her lust-filled delirium, she realized her phone had chimed several times. She had to check it, but she didn’t want to move.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out. Until then, we can’t let what happened out there happen agai
n. I have to protect you with everything I have, or I have to quit and bring someone else in to take over.”
The thought of losing him after she’d only just found him brought a rush of panic. She clung to him and said, “No. I don’t want someone else and you. I want only you.”
“You can’t make all the rules, Remi. How about we figure it out together?” He pressed his lips to hers. “After you see why your phone is blowing up.”
Together. She loved the sound of that, and she loved that Mason didn’t treat her like she couldn’t make decisions for herself or like she was just a job. Feeling like she’d won a Golden Globe, she snagged her phone from the table. There were four text message bubbles on the lock screen. The sender’s phone number appeared as all zeroes.
She quickly scanned each text bubble.
I saw you.
This will stop.
He won’t have you for long.
The last bubble was blank.
Panic flared in Remi’s chest as she sank down beside Mason and opened the first message, which caused all four to open. Four images of Remi and Mason kissing popped up, with a single line of text above each one, except the last image, in which Mason’s face was crossed out with an angry red slash.
“Mason! What does this mean?”
“Motherfu—” Mason took the phone and pulled her trembling body into his arms. “We’ve pissed him off.”
“But what does it mean? He wants to hurt you, not just me?”
“I don’t know, Remi. But we’re sure as hell going to find out.”
“I thought this was over,” she snapped, clinging to him. Anger and terror twisted inside her. “How did he get my number? Can you trace the messages? This is all my fault.”
Mason pulled back, holding tightly to her upper arms, his serious eyes boring into her. “This is not your fault.”
“I kissed you in front of everyone! Of course it’s my fault. I was just so overwhelmed with what happened between us, and then I nailed that scene. I did what you said and pretended Raz was you. It’s like the stupid stalker knew I was finally truly happy and he needed to rip it to shreds!”
“Remi, listen to me. Whoever this is, he’s sick, obsessive, and we’re going to stop him—or her. If he didn’t focus on the kiss, he would have found something else, so don’t you ever think anything he does is your fault.”
“I get that his psychotic behavior isn’t my fault, but that doesn’t ease the guilt of knowing I’ve put you in danger. I’ve been such an idiot, thinking the stalker had moved on and I was in the clear. Aiden has been trying to protect me for months, and you, Porter, Merrick, the bodyguards before them . . . Everyone was doing their best to protect me, and I was sneaking out, acting like a spoiled brat. I could have been killed, and I could have put every one of them in danger.”
“You were acting like a woman who didn’t want to live in a box. And I don’t want you to live like that, either. But, Remi, listen to me. We can’t undo what’s done. We can only learn from our mistakes and be smarter as we move forward. Remember those boundaries we talked about? It’s time to start figuring them out.”
The fact that he’d used we didn’t go unnoticed. “Okay. What should we do?”
“Most stalkers use more than one means of approach. There were letters in LA, he broke into your house, and now these texts. He’s getting bolder, showing us just how close he is. We need reinforcements. I’m calling in a team.”
“A team of what?”
“My guys—security, IT professionals, muscle. I want every angle covered. I’m not taking any chances that someone slips through the cracks.” He pulled out his phone and said, “We need to contact the police, talk to the director. The film crew needs to be apprised of the situation.”
“But it’s probably one of them! I kissed you right by the set.”
“One of them, maybe. But that’s one person out of everyone out there—directors, producers, makeup and costume staff, film crew, runners, craft services. The list goes on. Better to have all those people looking out for you than to keep it under wraps. It could be someone on set, yes, but the picture could have been taken by someone on the sidelines. Hell, there were plenty of fans watching. Any one of them could have taken it, posted it to social media, and the asshole could have downloaded it.”
“That fast?”
“That fast. We’ll check out every angle. Lots of people had their phones out. If the picture has already surfaced online, we’ll do what we can to shut it down. But my gut tells me the guy we’re looking for took this particular picture, and if I’m right, he’ll probably keep it to himself. He wants you, Remi, and typically obsessives don’t share. They hole up in a basement somewhere.”
“That creeps me out.” She tried to swallow the bile rising in her throat as images of a Remi Divine shrine slammed into her.
“It should. We need to get moving. Somebody might remember seeing someone strange or unfamiliar take a picture of us kissing. I also need to meet with campus and set security and get online to start tracking down where the text originated. That’s easy to mask, so I don’t hold much hope for it leading us to the culprit. If it’s the same guy who broke into your house in LA and disabled your home security system, then he knows his way around technology and security.”
“Mason, what if he gets into the house?”
“I’ve got that locked down tight, with several layers of security.”
“But you just said—”
He pulled her against him, one hand on the back of her head, the other around her waist. “I’ve got backup security on all the windows and doors, Remi. I will never, ever let anything happen to you. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” she croaked out. “But if he’s here, on set, he could be anyone.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple and said, “We’ll find him. But I need you to promise me you will not go anywhere without me. Got it? No walking into trailers without me checking them out first. If you have to go the bathroom, I’m right there with you to make sure it’s clear.”
“Okay,” she said against his chest.
“You’re not going to like this, but no more signing autographs for a while. Remember the guy who tried to grab you?”
Ice-cold terror flared in her chest. “You think it was him?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
He brushed her hair away from her face, his expression softening the slightest bit, the first crack in the granite armor that had overtaken him the moment the threat arose.
“Listen to me, Princess. I’m going to arrange for you to have a new phone by tonight. I need this one. But I don’t want you giving the new number out to anyone other than Aiden and your closest girlfriends, and they need strict instructions not to share it. Anyone else can call my number to reach you. Got it?”
She nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“Good. Now, I assume you want to help catch this guy?”
“Oh my gosh, yes!” As scared as she was, she was still thrilled not to be treated like a damsel in distress.
“We’re a team, so I’m glad to hear that. I need you to get on the phone with Shea and tell her to quash this story. We don’t want it hitting the tabloids. Pay them off . . . Do whatever you need to do—just get it shut down.”
“Okay. I’ll call Naomi, too.”
“Good. I need to get online and put these plans into motion. Can you pick up your crafts? If you need to use them to ease your nerves, then please do it in the bedroom. We’ll need this space. Your trailer is about to become our headquarters.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“COME ON, YOU fucker, give me something,” Mason seethed through gritted teeth as he scanned reports on his laptop. Beside his bed was another laptop with live feeds from the home security system, streaming videos from each of the cameras.
It had been the longest day of his life. After meeting with local police and security, he’d assembled a team of eight of his best men, who would be on set whe
n Remi was filming and available at his beck and call to accompany them anywhere Remi wanted to go. He’d brought Porter and Merrick back and explained to Remi that they’d previously been under strict orders from Aiden to keep their distance. She seemed okay with bringing them back and irritated with Aiden for making her seem off-limits for even normal conversations. He didn’t blame her, and he’d already corrected that situation with his men. He’d connected with his top IT guys, who were not only running the gamut on the text messages but were also retracing the steps of the initial detectives who had handled Remi’s case in LA. His recon team had pulled social media posts with recent pictures of Remi and were tracking the origination of the photos, though they had yet to find the exact picture that had been sent to Remi. He also brought in a photography expert to review the picture in the text to try to discern the possible location of the photographer.
Mason had already spent hours going over campus security footage that covered the parking lots near the set, looking for anything out of the ordinary, and he’d been racking his memory for the faces he’d cataloged since the night of the fundraiser. There were too many possibilities. He needed a fucking bread crumb. One clue as to where the asshole was holing up.
When he found him, he was going to tear him apart.
He rested his head against the headboard, eyeing his open door and thinking about Remi. His chest physically ached over how brave she’d been as her world was turned upside down. She’d vacillated between fear and anger throughout the afternoon and evening, with a hundred other emotions surfacing in between. By the time she’d turned in for the night, she was emotionally and physically exhausted. He’d wanted to take her into his bed, to hold her in his arms and make sure she was safe. But he didn’t want to increase her fear or inadvertently put pressure on her about their budding relationship. She needed to know she was safe in the house and that she had control over whatever happened—or didn’t happen—between them. Lord knew she needed control of something.
This is Love Page 14