Fallen star, p.18
Fallen Star, page 18
The real surprise was how unselfconscious she felt. How easy and familiar this felt. His expression was so eager, and his touch so tender, that she felt utterly comfortable spread out before him like this. Spread out for him. She was his, utterly, to do with as he pleased. Instead of making her uneasy, the thought excited her even more.
He licked his lips. “I could look at you like this forever.”
“I hope you plan to do more than look.” She wiggled her hips and spread her legs a little, hoping he’d take the hint.
A smirk danced at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you worry about that.”
As they met each other’s gaze, the tension ratcheted up another few notches. Sparks seemed to jump through the air between them.
She reached up to touch his face, remembering all the times its frozen facsimile had stared back at her from a magazine cover, billboard, or website. It was so different in person. So much more human and vulnerable. The chiseled good looks were still there, but underneath was a tenderness she found far more attractive than any photo shoot pout or feigned bedroom eyes. She was so lucky to get to see this side of him. What a precious gift.
Scott released her hands and tugged her bralette aside, exposing one of her breasts. As he lowered his mouth to it, Grace curled her fingers in his hair, her nails scraping over his scalp as she sighed with pleasure.
He took his time with the first breast before moving on to the other. Only when they’d each been lavished with attention did he slide her bralette up, over her arms, and all the way off.
In the short time they’d known each other, Scott had surprised her at every turn. He’d been thoughtful when she’d anticipated rudeness. Insecure where she’d assumed arrogance. And now, in her bed, he was restrained where she’d expected impatience. Unlike so many other men, his seduction technique was not of the high-speed variety. He seemed much more interested in enjoying the journey than getting to the finish line.
“You’re so beautiful.” His voice was hoarse and raw, and she could tell by the way he was looking at her that he meant it.
Grace pulled him down for a kiss. Their tongues slid together, licking and exploring as the kiss grew deeper. He slid a hand up the inside of her thigh and she opened wider for him, needing his touch like she needed air to breathe.
When his fingers brushed between her legs, she jolted as the sensation shot through her whole body. Her heels dug into the mattress as he touched her with caresses so light she had to bite her lip to keep from begging him for release. He watched her, his eyes dark and gleaming as he weighed her reactions to his ministrations. Studying her. Learning her body and what she liked.
“Scott,” she moaned, tipping her head back.
“Grace,” he answered huskily.
“Are you sure you don’t hate me anymore?”
He answered by increasing the pressure right where she needed it. “What do you think?”
Her toes curled as her back arched with pleasure. She could feel the tension building inside her, but it remained just out of reach. She’d never been quick to orgasm, especially with a new partner, but she didn’t mind. Everything Scott was doing felt so good, she wasn’t in any position to complain.
Sensing she needed more, he slid down her body, kissing her stomach before nuzzling between her legs. A tremor ran through her as he looped his arms around her legs and spread her wider. His head turned to kiss her inner thigh, then he looked up at her, their eyes meeting and holding as his breath caressed her. A sound somewhere between a whine and a pant escaped her, and he smiled as he lowered his mouth to her.
Grace’s ex had never been much into going down on her, which probably should have been a clue where things were headed, but the truth was she hadn’t missed it that much. It had never been her favorite part of sex. There was always a sense that it was a duty to be performed, and in return she had a duty to enjoy it, regardless of how enjoyable it actually was—and too often it wasn’t all that enjoyable.
She’d always thought it was her. That it just wasn’t her thing.
She was wrong about that. So wrong.
When Scott swept his tongue across her, it was with a confidence and desire she’d never encountered before, and it lit up her pleasure centers in whole new ways. Her hips bucked uncontrollably, and he pinned them with a heavy forearm as his tongue worked its magic, kissing and sucking and swirling.
She lifted her head, entranced by the sight of him between her thighs, and he stared back at her, eyes gleaming with hunger. This was no duty. He was getting off on it as much as she was.
When he picked up the pace, she squeezed her eyes closed and tipped her head back. His fingers bit into her thigh as he worked up to a maddening rhythm, and she let her legs fall open even wider.
He added a finger, then two fingers, then his thumb, and she moaned as the tension built and built. Her whole body was crying out for release, but it wasn’t enough. She needed more. She needed him to fill her up completely.
Grace’s hands fisted in his hair and she yanked, dragging his head toward hers as she exhaled his name.
He came willingly, grinning up at her as he kissed her stomach. “You’re a lot of work, aren’t you?”
“I never claimed to be easy.”
His grin turned wolfish. “That’s okay. I like a challenge. Tell me what you want.”
“You. Inside me. Immediately.” She was panting and desperate, a sweaty, heaving mess, and she didn’t care one bit. “I hope you have a condom.” Because she definitely did not, and she might actually die if she didn’t get to have him this minute.
Scott’s lips caressed a spot behind her ear that sent a shiver rippling through her. “What do you think I am? Some kind of amateur?” Untangling himself from her, he crawled over to the edge of the bed and reached for his pants, extracting several condoms from the pocket.
What a good Boy Scout he was. Always prepared.
He shoved his underwear down and crawled back over to her, ripping one of the condom wrappers open with his teeth. Hot and impatient, she waited for him to roll it on before she gripped his ass and pulled him toward her.
Weeks of anticipation had brought them to this moment. After all the slow build-up, everything felt desperate, like she couldn’t get close enough, fast enough. Grace had never felt this sort of frenzy before. This insistent, animal hunger for someone else. She didn’t just want Scott inside her, she wanted him everywhere, in every possible way. She wanted as much of him as she could get and then she wanted even more than that.
It terrified her a little, how deep her need for him went, so she shoved it to the back of her mind, concentrating instead on the here and now. The physical reality of their bodies, and the places where he touched her, setting her skin ablaze.
Scott pushed into her with no preamble, filling her completely, then pulled out again before she’d had time to properly appreciate the sensation. She let out a frustrated whimper and his mouth curved in a smile as he bent his head to kiss her. “Shhh.” His breath teased over her lips, warm and full of promise.
He sat back again, cupping one of her breasts with one hand while he palmed himself with the other, teasing at her entrance. Her fingernails dug into his flesh, urging him on as she let out a sound that could only be described as a growl.
“You want it?” he asked, taunting her. Tormenting her.
She writhed beneath him. “Yessssss.” He was so damn close to sliding into her, and she needed him now.
“Say it. Say what you want.” There seemed to be no limit to how long he was willing to draw out this torture.
She was out of her mind. Wild with desire. “You. I want you.”
Watching her face intently, he pushed into her with excruciating slowness, inch by tantalizing inch. “Tell me what you want me to do to you, Grace. I want to hear you say the words.”
“Fuck me. Oh god, please, just fuck me—”
He pulled out and slammed into her with a force that rocked her whole body.
Grace cried out in relief, clutching at him as his sumptuous thrusts filled her up, giving her exactly what she needed.
She was so sensitive by then and so amped up, as soon as his movements inside her started to find a rhythm, she was clawing at him and arching beneath him, pressing into him for more closeness, more friction, more of everything.
Then she was coming as she cried out his name, and he was watching her with those intense green eyes. She was a mess of raw emotions as she rode the crest, all her physical desires laid wide open for him. He peppered her with gentle kisses, and held her with strong arms until she’d come back down.
“Well,” he said as he brushed the hair back from her face, “I guess I know what you like.”
“You,” she whispered, pulling him down for a kiss. “I like you.”
He started to move inside her again, and this time she was able to more fully savor the experience. God, he was so unfairly sexy. The way he held himself above her, his weight on one massive arm, the muscles taut and straining. The way he stared down at the place where they were connected, watching as he slipped in and out of her. The way his abs contracted with every thrust. The way he bit down on his bottom lip, his eyes fluttering closed when she squeezed her walls around him.
Grabbing her suddenly, he rolled them over so he was on his back and she was straddling him. His hands massaged her ass, guiding her down onto him, and she threw her head back, grinding against him and reveling in the sensation.
“That’s it,” he said, his fingers digging into her flesh. “You’re gonna come again, aren’t you?”
The words spurred her to a new plateau of ecstasy, but she had another priority now. She could sense he was holding himself back, and she took it as a challenge. She wanted to see him lose some of that tightly wound control. She wanted to be the one to make him lose control.
She moved her hips, watching his reactions the way he’d watched hers. Learning what he liked. How much pressure, how fast, what angle made his eyes roll back in his head.
He tried to resist, to wrest back control, but she held him down with a hand on each shoulder as she ground harder, faster, until he was shaking and groaning, his breath breaking as he fell apart at the seams.
An unexpected rush of emotion clogged her throat at the sight of him like that, and she bent to kiss him. His hand tightened in her hair as she felt him heave and tremble beneath her, gasping as the aftershocks rolled through him.
Scott’s arms tightened around her, and he pressed a breathless kiss to her temple. “I could never hate you, Grace.”
15
Grace jolted awake in the morning to the harsh, tinny sound of “Pocketful of Sunshine” blaring from her phone.
“Unnggg,” she groaned, her leg rubbing up against a larger and much hairier leg as she rolled toward the nightstand. She felt around blindly for her phone, nearly knocking the lamp over with her flailing, but it wasn’t where she usually left it.
“Make it stop,” Scott mumbled into his pillow.
“Sorry,” Grace said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. She squinted in the direction the hateful sound was coming from and spotted a pile of discarded clothing on the floor. Right. Her phone had fallen out of her pocket last night when Scott peeled off her clothes.
She crawled down to the foot of the bed and fumbled around on the floor until she finally laid hands on the accursed device, breathing a sigh of relief as she silenced it.
Beside her, Scott lay on his stomach with the sheets tangled up beneath him, utterly, gloriously naked. Grace would have loved nothing more than to crawl back into bed and wrap herself around him, but she had a seven o’clock call time and she needed to get up and get moving.
Which was really too bad, because Scott Deacon was in her bed and…damn. She’d always been keenly aware of his attractiveness, but lying there all stretched out and naked, he was fucking breathtaking.
And she’d had sex with him last night.
This was the moment of truth. In the harsh light of the morning after, would they make vaguely apologetic faces as they thanked each other for a fun night—then spend the rest of the shoot pretending to be buds without dwelling on the fact they’d seen each other naked? Or would their one night of fun stretch out into multiple nights?
Grace certainly knew which option she preferred—the latter—but Scott’s MO was as hazy as a Magic 8 Ball.
“Are you staring at my ass?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“Maybe,” Grace said. “It’s a really nice ass. And I like the way it looks in my bed.”
“C’mere.” Scott rolled over, reaching for her, and she let him pull her down for a kiss. “I have to tell you something,” he said, pulling back and looking at her very seriously.
Grace froze, her heart stuttering to a stop. “What?”
“Your bed sucks. Next time we’re sleeping in my bed.”
Next time.
He’d said next time. Which meant there was going to be a next time. Booyah.
Grace crawled on top of him and kissed the ever-loving shit out of him.
“Don’t you need to get ready for work?” he asked, shifting his hips suggestively beneath hers.
“Screw work,” she said. “I can be late.”
Grace was late.
She hated being late. Not that it hadn’t totally been worth it, but now she was paying the price, having to rush through all her preparations for the day’s shoot.
“Morning!” Dominic said cheerfully, holding the door to the soundstage for her.
“Morning,” she muttered, hurrying past him with her head down.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone could tell, that it was written across her face like a giant, blinking neon sign: I slept with Scott Deacon last night, ask me anything!
Also, she was pretty sure she was walking funny. It had been a long time since she’d been that…active, and she was definitely feeling it this morning.
Without making eye contact with anyone, Grace made a beeline for her chair and busied herself setting up her laptop and marking up the script pages for the first scene of the day.
Scott strolled in not too long after, and the first thing Grace thought when she saw him was that she knew what he looked like under his clothes. Every inch of him. Not only that, but she knew what his skin tasted like, and the sound he made when he came, and that he liked it when she used just a little bit of teeth.
Today was going to be…interesting.
He took his time making his way over to her, stopping to chat with a few people before finally heading in her direction. “Morning,” he greeted her brightly, like they hadn’t just seen each other an hour ago. Naked. Super naked. Totally, totally naked.
“Morning,” Grace mumbled, feeling herself color as she ducked her head.
Thanks to their morning activities, they hadn’t had a chance to talk about how they were supposed to act around each other at work. How to play this. What this even was.
She wasn’t even sure what she wanted it to be. Scott was sooo not her type, and there was a lot of baggage there. It was difficult to imagine him in a long-term relationship. The chances of him wanting something like that seemed so remote as to be inconsequential, and after what had happened with Chris, Grace wasn’t super keen to jump into anything serious again anytime soon.
“So…” Scott started uncertainly, and Grace looked back up at him. His eyes roamed over her face like he was trying to decide whether to say whatever was on his mind.
Then Joe walked up, clapped Scott on the back, and asked Grace a question about the first shot. Scott drifted away with an apologetic smile as she tried to concentrate on answering Joe’s question coherently.
Scott was ninety-eight percent sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Grace.
He’d never felt this way about any woman, ever, and it scared him shitless. Like, shook him right down to his core. His stomach had been doing all sorts of acrobatics all morning, leaving him pinging disconcertingly between nausea and giddiness.
But then he’d look across the soundstage at Grace, and he’d remember the way she’d felt in his arms, and the way she’d clung to him as she breathed his name, and he couldn’t imagine ever letting go of her. He felt like a different person when he was with her. A better person. Stronger. More hopeful. She gave him a reason to look forward to the immediate future instead of dreading it. He liked his life a hell of a lot more with her in it. Also, he’d slept better last night in her crappy-ass bed than he had in the last three years.
Yeah, he was a goner.
What Scott was far less sure of was what to do about it.
A few short weeks ago, Grace hadn’t been able to stand the sight of him. He suspected it would be a bad idea to go all in this early in the game. Life wasn’t a movie with a happy ending waiting at the end of the third act, and problems didn’t magically disappear with a dramatic declaration of love. If he pushed for too much too soon, Grace might just run like hell in the opposite direction.
Better to hold back, at least for now. Stick to the tactic that had gotten him this far: slowly winning her over until one day she looked up and realized she couldn’t live without him.
Once more, his gaze found her across the soundstage. She was conferring with the on-set dresser, clutching to her chest the thick binder that held her copy of the script as they discussed some continuity detail. As if sensing his eyes on her, she glanced his direction and her mouth curved in a subtle smile. Scott’s stomach did a somersault.
They hadn’t had a chance to talk privately all morning, and it was killing him. He was itching to get her alone, even just for a minute. He needed to touch her.
As soon as Dominic called the next fifteen-minute break, Scott made a beeline to Grace’s side before anyone else could demand her attention.
“Come with me,” he said, taking her by the arm and sweeping her out of the stage, down the hall, and into an unused storage room. As soon as the door closed, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into a kiss.
