by E V Darcy
Marc sat Tyler at the dining table on a chair piled high with cushions. There was a room service cart with a number of covered dishes off to the side of the table, which presumably held their meal for the evening. She dropped her bag onto the nearest armchair and stepped towards the pair, still distracted by the size of the room; she hadn’t even seen a bedroom yet.
Not that she was planning to, of course.
‘I promised he could stay up just long enough to see you,’ Marc said as he turned to face Ellie. ‘He’s already eaten but hasn’t had his dessert. Would you mind watching him for a moment?’ he asked as he gestured toward his torso. Ellie couldn’t help but follow his hands, taking another look at his bare chest. ‘I need to go and get dressed.’ She nodded, afraid to speak in case the only sound that came out of her mouth was a squeak.
‘Thanks.’ He pressed a kiss to Tyler’s head and moved past, his arm brushing hers as he went.
When she was sure the actor had left the room, she took a deep breath, trying to focus back on why she was here. It was merely to placate the little boy sitting in front of her.
I guess you got to spend time with your papa, after all, she signed.
Yeah, but I got into trouble. The boy pouted. I’m not supposed to run off.
It’s true, what if I was a bad person?
But you’re not.
I know that, but what if I was and I was trying to trick you?
The boy seemed to consider her words for a second, his little head tilted to one side as he took her in, his large eyes assessing her. Finally, he told her, You’re too pretty to be mean.
Ellie smiled at the statement, a soft warmth curling within her as she looked at the child’s earnest face. Thank you, she replied, truly touched by the simple heartfelt compliment.
Papa said I have to go to bed soon.
Well, you’re still growing, you need your sleep.
That’s stupid.
Sleep is when you grow the most. The boy’s eyes went wide at this revelation. So if you want to be as tall as your papa, you need lots of sleep.
Tyler nodded his head as his sleepy mind tried to process that new piece of information. He was quickly distracted, however, by the sight of the food cart.
I have chocolate pudding. Papa got you some kind of cake. His nose wrinkled. Pudding’s better than cake.
Is it chocolate cake?
The boy shrugged his shoulders as he picked up his spoon in anticipation of the dessert.
‘No, I’m afraid it’s raspberry cheesecake, I hope that’s okay?’ Marc re-joined them, still dressed in his dark jeans but a white t-shirt thrown on with them.
‘Your button is still…’ Ellie gestured toward his crotch and Marc glanced down. He flicked his eyes back up to hers, a challenge within his gaze as he raised his hands to his waist and slid the button slowly into the hole. Ellie shifted on her feet unable to take her eyes from the action and felt a throb pulse between her legs. She didn’t want them fastened, she wanted them off, on the floor, lying next to her own as he spread her out on the table and—
Ellie are you sick? You’ve gone all red, Tyler signed. Marc burst into laughter and ruffled his son’s hair as she signed that she was fine before she hurried to take a seat at the dining table.
~ ~ ~ ~
Marc tucked Tyler in and watched his treasured boy for a moment as he settled Tyler into his bed. Marc had never seen his son so enthused to have a guest before and he wasn’t sure if it was because Tyler had been able to fully converse with Ellie directly, or if it was simply Ellie herself who had made his son so alive. Generally, Tyler hated strangers, took weeks to get used to someone new in his life and get confident enough to communicate with them, but he had no problems around the Englishwoman waiting in the suite’s living room.
He pressed a kiss to Tyler’s head and left him to what he hoped were pleasant dreams. He padded down the corridor between the bedrooms and bathroom, back toward his guest and stopped in the doorway. The lights were off and the blinds of the windows had been pulled back; the beam of the full desert moon was the only source of illumination. Ellie was at the window, taking in the vista of the anonymous world below. He leant against the door frame as he took her in and tried to pin point what it was about her that made him actively want again.
Sure, he got urges; every man did. There’d been numerous mornings over the last five years when he had awoken to the evidence of his ability to still be aroused sticking to his stomach, but he’d been adamant that he’d never want another woman again as long as he lived. He hadn’t had a conscious twitch in that department until the woman stood before him had come along.
So why was Ellie, this random stranger, who was hardly the most conventionally beautiful woman he had met, making him want to throw his rulebook out of the window?
From the moment he’d laid eyes on her in the autograph hall, he’d been fighting his libido. In the panel room, when he’d stared down into her shocked face, he’d had to leave abruptly after she had started arguing with him because the desire to grab her and haul her up on stage to stop her run-away mouth with his own had been so great.
In his younger years, he’d gone from woman to woman, sometimes twice in one night. He had even taken delight in stealing a girl from a guy just because he could. He saw every woman as being as disposable as his own income, only after one thing when they were dressed up as a walking fuck me sign.
And fuck them he did.
He didn’t want that with Ellie.
He shifted, taking his weight back onto his feet and felt the evidence of how much of a lie that thought was. He had been as hard as a rock all evening since he’d opened the door to the woman in her tight jeans, with her tousled hair that looked like someone had been running their hands through it.
He did want to fuck her, but there was more to it than that. She wasn’t the typical woman he met; most of them only wanted him for his fame and fortune. They didn’t care what he was like as a person, only what he could do for them and their own bank balances.
And that was just the women in the business.
The fans, he shuddered, were a whole different story. They idolised him on his looks alone, a simple hello from him was embraced like the word of God, and some… Well, the less said about some of the things he had found on the internet the better.
But Ellie, she was a conundrum.
She was a fan of the show, but utterly unimpressed by the success of his career, wanting him to prove his worth beyond his fame. She was uninterested, it seemed, in money; she was surrounded by it every day in her job for the King of England, Lord Muck, or whomever it was she worked for across the pond.
She seemed more taken by the fact he was a father to Tyler. That was a huge factor, Marc reasoned, in any attraction he could have to a woman. His son came above all others, and if he decided to get involved with someone again, they would have to love his son as much as he did. Ellie had certainly shown that was possible, as the image of her earlier in the evening, a sleepy Tyler curled against her, came back to him. She’d smiled at Marc over his son’s head, her cheeks pink and her eyes sparkling with mirth at the fact his boy had fallen asleep while protesting he wasn’t tired.
No, Ellie wasn’t simply taken with his son, she clearly adored Tyler.
Kelly, on the other hand, had tried to kill him.
He shook that unwanted thought from his mind as he took a quiet breath and moved towards the woman across the room, still lost in her own little world as she looked down at the burst of simulated starlight that was the Las Vegas strip.
‘Penny for them,’ he whispered as he stood behind her. He drew her hair back and pushed it over her other shoulder as he breathed in her soft perfume. God he wanted her. Wanted to take her right here, against the window. Strip her down, bend her over and slide into her while the world went by below. Make love to her, while all the other fan girls were scurrying around, dreaming about him doing this to them…
His hands gently he
ld her hips as his lips brushed against her neck, he wanted to taste it properly, to—
Ellie jerked her neck away.
~ ~ ~ ~
She pulled away from his lips and turned in his arms, pushing him back to give herself some space.
‘I’m not going to sleep with you,’ she told him firmly. Marc blinked down at her and the moonlight allowed her to clearly see the surprise on his face.
The conceited bastard had probably never had anyone turn him down before, and in all honesty, she didn’t want to either. Her body was on edge, alive with a desire she hadn’t felt in years. Or to put it more plainly, she was ready to drop to her knees if he so much as gestured that way again, but she bit her lip and held fast, prepared for the lines he undoubtedly held for those who liked to play “hard to get”.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said, ‘Okay.’
Ellie frowned.
So she wasn’t a supermodel or even a catalogue model. Hell, any picture she took was awful, but she had expected a little bit more of a reaction to her refusal than a simple okay. After all, she had felt he was definitely up for it.
‘Is that it?’
‘You said no, and I respect that.’ He turned away from her and tried to inconspicuously adjust himself before he began to move across the room.
‘Seriously?’ she asked.
‘What?’ He switched on the lamp at the side of the couch. ‘You want me to beg?’
‘No, I just—’
‘Thought that I wouldn’t take no as an answer and sexually assault you,’ he snapped.
‘No!’ she protested. ‘Well, actually…’
He stared at her in disbelief. ‘What the fuck?’
‘No, let me rephrase that.’
She rubbed her forehead, this really wasn’t going the way she thought it would. She thought she’d had him pegged after that little display at the suite door earlier. She’d heard the stories of girls being sweet-talked into bed by famous men. Hell, she’d heard men telling the stories of the girls they’d charmed into their beds in this kind of situation. She’d figured that while he’d invited her to dinner to please Tyler, he also had an ulterior motive; after he’d put Tyler to bed, he was going to come out and do this whole seduction routine, use any trick in the book to get between her legs, and she hadn’t wanted to be one of those fans.
‘I’m waiting.’
‘I didn’t mean you were going to force me, it’s just…’ she searched for the words. ‘You’re Marc Matthews!’
He folded his arms across his chest, clearly unimpressed.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she sighed and threw up her hands in frustration. ‘You’re… you and— and you’re famous and—’
‘And that instantly makes me an asshole?’
‘Ye— No!’ She growled in annoyance. ‘Will you stop putting words in my mouth!’
They stared at one another across the room, Marc raising an eyebrow, a clear challenge for her to try and dig her way out of her verbal hole.
‘It’s like I said, you’re Marc Matthews and you could probably have any woman in this hotel tonight—in the whole of Vegas! Doesn’t matter if she’s single or taken, she would happily spread her legs for you if you asked her, just because you’re Marc Matthews. And so with that, a guy gets the expectation that all women will act that way and thus should be grateful if you pay them a bit of attention.’
She was rambling, she knew it, making no sense at all. Part of her was screaming to shut the hell up, that she was making it worse, but her mouth wasn’t cooperating.
‘And so because it’s expected that a girl will just drop her knickers at your command, if she says no then really she means yes, as she’s acting coy or somethi—’
‘Fucking hell!’ he exclaimed, interrupting her word vomit. The part of her that had been begging her to stop cheered him on. ‘I’m not a fucking rapist! I get that no means no!’
‘I— I—’
‘Perhaps we should just call it a night,’ he huffed as he dropped down on the couch and rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Shit, I knew I was out of practice, but I didn’t think I’d be so bad that I’d come off as… as…rapey.’
Ellie watched as he dropped his hands to his legs and leant his head back, staring at the ceiling. Her mind ran over the night from start to finish, trying to find anything he had said or done that justified her pigeonholing him into the conceited sex god role she’d somehow conjured up.
It drew a blank.
There’d been that moment of sexual frisson when he’d opened the door to her, a blaze of heat when he’d fastened his forgotten button, and once or twice his hand had brushed hers, sending shivers of electricity through her. He’d smiled and laughed with her, shared a joke, encouraged her and Tyler’s conversation, but not once had he acted inappropriately.
Bollocks.
‘You didn’t,’ she said as she stepped around the furniture and sat gingerly on the opposite end of the large couch. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye but didn’t say anything.
‘I had this notion, I guess, that you were some conceited pig, because… Well, because you come off that way in public. You act like you’re above everyone and that we little people aren’t worthy of your notice.’ He clenched his jaw but remained silent.
‘I was a fan of yours when I was younger. Typical teenager that I was bought all the teen mags, had posters on my walls. Thought you were gorgeous, still do.’ She felt her cheeks warm as she confessed her attraction to him. ‘I remember you’d have a different woman on your arm every week and they were always stunning. Skinny, beautiful and just picture perfect with you.
‘I guess I just kind of thought you were still like that, but more discrete now you have Tyler to think about…’ she trailed off, unsure of how to continue with the fact that she believed he’d picked her, a plain Jane because she’d bask in the attention he paid her and throw herself into his arms. Perhaps that had become his thing now; a quick easy roll in the sack with someone who’d be grateful to be the centre of his attention for the night.
He sighed heavily. ‘You’re right. Well, at least right about how I used to be. When I was younger I went for women like… Well like that Ashley. Tall, leggy and utterly gorgeous. Made up to the nines and dressed so every man wanted to fuck them and, well, I guess that was part of the thrill; that it was me getting to screw them, even if only for the night.’
‘What changed?’ Ellie asked, genuinely curious as to what had happened to change him from bed-hopping playboy to devoted dad.
‘I think I was twenty-one, twenty-two -ish when Sonya signed me to her agency. She put up with me for a while, covered my ass for a couple of years before she finally pulled me in and made me toe the line. She said I was a big name, but I was missing out on pieces that could propel me to the accolades of the Oscars because directors or studios didn’t want to take a risk on me. They were frightened by the fast life I was portraying in front of the media, figuring if they took a chance on me, I’d screw it up somehow and cost them millions.’
Ellie frowned as she tried to mentally piece together the history of his career. He’d appeared in television shows as a child and moved towards films as he hit his twenties. There’d been a car accident and a lot of kerfuffle around that. He took on a few smaller roles, then, before disappearing for a couple of years and suddenly turning up on Destiny. She couldn’t pinpoint what had caused him to vanish from the limelight; she’d been too caught up in getting her own life back on track, but vaguely recalled there being something in the magazines about him finding love and settling down. It must have been a year or two before Tyler was born.
‘So… now you’re selective?’ she said hesitantly. She had an idea this was somehow linked to the woman who could claim to be the mother of his son.
He laughed bitterly. ‘If you call five years of living like a monk selective, then, yeah, we can say that,’
If her eyebrows could have flown off her head, they’d have
hit the ceiling at the revelation that the man in front of her, the star of prime-time television, an Oscar-nominated, three-times Emmy and two-time Golden Globe-winning actor, hadn’t had sex in five years!
He finally lifted his head and looked at her. ‘Surprised?’ he asked.
‘Quite frankly, yes. Have you seen you?’ She waved at him. ‘Like I said, any woman.’
‘But not you.’
Ellie shook her head slowly as she bit her lip. ‘No, not me,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t do one night stands.’
‘There’s a story behind that rule?’ She made to speak, to tell him to sod off and that it was personal but closed her mouth. He’d opened himself to her and she doubted he was so honest with anyone outside his entourage.
‘C’mon I shared, and as I always tell Tyler—sharing makes you feel good.’ She snorted with amusement.
‘Fine,’ she relented. ‘I tried it a couple of times while I was at university, but felt like crap after each one. You see, my ex-husband liked to have them.’ Marc raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow but didn’t comment.
‘With a one-night stand, you never know if you’re unintentionally hurting someone. All I could think was what if they have someone waiting for them at home? What if I’m the bit on the side?’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t cope with that feeling, this great big ball of guilt ate me up for ages each time; it affected my studies, so I stopped. Promised myself I wouldn’t have sex again until it was with someone I was involved with.’
‘You say that as if you’re still waiting.’ She must have paused too long because it was now Marc’s turn to wear a look of disbelief. ‘How long?’
She sighed. ‘So long I think I count as a virgin again.’
‘Aww, c’mon, I told you mine!’
‘Fine, about eight years.’
‘Eight!’
‘Yours is five!’
‘But I have Tyler; you’re footloose and fancy-free!’ They stared at one another for a moment before something seemed to click for him. ‘Wait, you got married before you went to university? How young were you when you got hitched?’
