by Em Petrova
Her mind shifted to the rally and all the high excitement. Her biggest realization today? She failed to feel the same passion for film that she had when she began. That was normal, right? People started their degrees and got burnout. They switched majors. Since she’d already done that and believed film to be her path, her new mindset left her feeling…lost.
Maybe River would be waiting for her and she could share her worries and fears with him. Funny how she’d known him forever, yet they hadn’t really come to that stage of intimacy yet.
Lying in bed with her lover talking about the old days or her hopes and dreams and getting her documentary seen in schools or even on the big screen, she hadn’t confided her fears. Voicing them aloud would be worse.
Jostled side to side as the bus lumbered across town, she stared out the windows at the fading daylight. She still hadn’t worked out the weather in Alaska, and her day was pretty confusing as well. She’d go home and fix a cup of hot tea. Sitting at her desk with warm lights on and a mug of tea while working on her new footage boosted her morale a little.
When she got into her apartment, she placed all her things on the table and went straight for the teapot.
As she began sifting through her footage, she experienced a thrill.
It stunned her at first—it’d been so long since she felt that leap of excitement at sitting down to work.
But time ceased to matter, and when she straightened from the keyboard and stretched, three hours had passed.
She shot out of her seat and would have spilled her tea if the mug weren’t empty. She felt like doing a victory lap around her apartment. When was the last time she worked for three solid hours without getting distracted by emails or even watching the footage Ethan shot?
Stiff from slumping in her seat so long, she grabbed the mug and went to refill it. Looking out the kitchen window at the dark, cold world, she couldn’t help but think of River out there and what he might be doing to protect the world from unseen dangers.
Her insides warmed at the thought of him last time they’d been together…how the tenderness in his eyes had flared to a bright burn echoed in every beat of her heart. As she added a squirt of honey to her tea, she replayed every soft kiss he’d pleasured her body with.
Cradling her tea, she returned to the table—and almost threw her mug in alarm. Her computer screen was black. Where was her work? Did she even save it?
She scrambled into the seat and realized she still held the tea. She set it in a safe place where it couldn’t spill and began working to get her system up and running again. It had experienced a total shutdown. Why? Oh God, now what? She couldn’t recall saving her work at any point—the most rookie error ever. Anyone with a brain would save every few minutes just for peace of mind.
“Please come back!” Her fingers shook over the keys as she brought the system up again.
It crashed immediately.
She cried out, growing more frantic by the second. No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. When she ran out of her house in Texas, she hadn’t taken the time to unplug her computer tower and carry it with her. Her setup had been elaborate, with backup systems for her backup systems. But when she left, she figured her laptop RAM would be all she needed.
“Nooooo!” The screen blacked again, and she dropped her face into her hands.
She could take it for repair. Sometimes files could be retrieved. But her last three hours’ worth of work might be forever gone.
She could live with that. What she didn’t have time for was splicing together all the footage she’d had finished up to that point.
Her eyes blurred with unshed tears. Her frustration boiled over.
Of course, her mind chose that moment to inject that things could always be worse, but that didn’t make her feel a damn bit better.
Staring at her phone, she thought about calling River. If he was able to talk, he would. If not, he’d let her go unanswered. Did he even carry a phone? Distracting him from some danger could spell disaster.
She could call Maggie. Nobody would sympathize as much as her fellow classmate.
Compressing her lips against the cries that wanted to burst out, she slowly stood and carried her tea to the sink without taking a sip. It sure felt as if life was trying to tell her something.
She didn’t like the sign. Not at all.
Chapter Nine
Hepburn climbed out of the cab and cradled the bouquet of flowers to protect them from the wind snapping at his jacket and even a few American flags hanging in the neighborhood.
As he reached the central sidewalk leading to Sascha’s door and then branching to several others in her building, someone approached, a guy in glasses and a wool coat, scarf knotted against the wind.
Out of courtesy, Hepburn raised his jaw in acknowledgement.
The guy nodded in return and continued to the street. Hepburn reached Sascha’s door and knocked. Behind the wood, he heard a squeal as she obviously saw him through the peephole. She whipped the door open and leaped into his arms.
At the last moment, he jerked the flowers aside so they weren’t crushed. Her scent filtered into his head, and her warmth shot through his groin.
He walked her into her apartment and closed the door.
“River! I wasn’t expecting you. And you brought me flowers.”
He held them out to her, and she buried her nose in the blooms. When she looked up at him, his heart thumped faster.
Damn. Of course he’d known it all along, but finally accepting the blow that he was in love with her temporarily blanked his mind.
Holding the bouquet in one hand, she slipped her hand around his nape and went on tiptoe as she drew him down for a kiss. The crush of her plump lips brought his mind back into play.
He loved her. He wanted more with her—so damn much more.
In a blink, he saw their lives spread out before him. Putting a ring on her finger. Anniversaries, holidays… Babies.
Fucking babies? Am I really thinking this right now?
Goddamn, he was. The guys would razz him for the rest of his life. They’d fill his locker with gender reveal balloons. Pool their money and buy him one of those baby packs guys strapped on to carry their kids. They’d harass the hell out of him.
He could think of worse things.
All this washed through his mind in the time it would normally take him to gauge windspeed needed to snipe a target.
He deepened the kiss, flattening his palm on her spine and drawing her up against him. She moaned into his mouth, and he swept her sweet interior with his tongue. Massive bonfire flames of need shot between them. He’d carried a torch for her for years—these flames wouldn’t be extinguished.
Slowly, he withdrew and smiled down at her. “What a greeting.”
She gave a throaty laugh. “Hello.”
“I’ve got something else for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two tickets.
Her brows shot up as she saw the rock band headlining the concert. “Oh my God, River! You have the evening off? What did I do to deserve this treatment?”
He reeled her into his arms. “You’re you. That’s enough.” He pressed a tender kiss to her lips while simultaneously squeezing her ass.
“Ah!” She twisted from his hold, laughing.
He looked over her attire of sweats. “Do you need to change?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not going out in sweats. This was just my sitting alone in misery attire.”
He narrowed his eyes on her, on sharp alert. “What happened?”
“A big computer crash. I took it to be repaired, but…”
“But?”
Without a word, she turned and led him through the apartment to the table where her equipment sat. She had her project on the screen, a boy’s face in the frame, paused with his lips twisted as if he was midsentence.
“I lost half of my work.” Her dead tone of voice worried him more than anything.
“Sascha. Damn, that’s a har
d blow.”
“It is.” Again, her voice lacked the fire he’d expect from someone who lost a project she’d been working on for months. “The file was corrupted. Some was salvaged, though.”
She leaned over and clicked a button to run the entire film. As the first time he watched it, he couldn’t help but feel it lacked something. Her filming was excellent. Her transitions smooth. But it failed to pull him in half as much as those makeup videos she’d been so proud of back in the day.
She didn’t seem to be putting her all into it. Or even half of herself.
As the film ended, she said, “The last twenty minutes is what I lost. I threw together some footage to fill the gap.”
“Sascha.”
She turned her stare on him.
“You don’t seem to be very upset.”
She shrugged. “What can I do about it? It’s lost and I have to start over on that portion.”
“That’s not it exactly…” He floundered for a way to tell her that her film lacked her personal expression. Who was he to critique her work? He protected the US for a living. What did he know about filmmaking?
She waited for him to continue. No getting out of it now.
He blew out a breath. “What’s holding you back?” he asked at last.
She blinked. “Holding me back?”
“There’s no fire in your voice, and maybe that’s just because you’re resigned to having lost your work. But I don’t think that’s it.”
She stared at him for several seconds, her eyes wide like a deer in the headlights. Did she understand what he meant? Was she upset by him speaking at all?
He grabbed her waist and pulled her into him. “You know what? Let’s go have fun tonight.”
To his relief, she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. If she was upset by his statement, she remained silent. If she did mention it, he would always be here to pick her up and encourage her to go on with the work.
When they went into the bedroom for her to change clothes, he tried not to eye the bed or pay attention to his stiff cock nudging at his fly even though he could almost feel her moving under him.
She turned to a mirror that she’d added since last time he came. She held up a red polka dot top and a fuzzy pink sweater. “Concerts are usually hot. But if I wear the sweater, I don’t need a coat. I won’t have to worry about forgetting it there.”
He walked up behind her and peered over her shoulder at their reflections in the mirror.
When he dipped his mouth to her ear and nibbled at the lobe, a shudder ran through her. “Keep doing that and we won’t be wearing any clothes,” she whispered.
“That sounds like the best idea,” he husked.
Then he straightened. “I want to take you out, though.”
“Wine and dine me?” she teased with a glint in her eyes.
“Somethin’ along those lines.” He tossed her a crooked smile.
She pulled on the fuzzy sweater, jeans and boots.
He watched as she leaned in to smear lipstick over her plush lips. “I passed a guy when I was coming in. Glasses, peacoat. Does he live in your building?”
She threw him a look in the mirror. “I haven’t met my neighbors yet. If the weather wasn’t freezing, we could have a cookout or something. Why?”
“I just like knowing who’s around you.”
She pivoted from the mirror and slid her arms around his neck. “Bless your heart, River. You’re the only one I care about.”
Unable to stop himself, he claimed her mouth. The urgency rose up between them, immediate and raw. Passion overflowed inside him, and he clamped a hand on her ass, grinding his erection against her without planning to.
“Moan that way again and we’ll never get to the concert. I’ll strip you, bend you over the bed and make you watch me in that mirror while I fuck you.”
Her breath hitched. “River!”
To keep from doing exactly that, he stepped away from her and raked his fingers over his head. “Damn, you’re so beautiful, Sascha. Even more beautiful than you were that summer. And those boots are almost as sexy as your cutoff shorts.”
She threw him a smile. “I’m getting close to caving in to your sweet talk.”
“Sweet? I thought it was dirty.”
“I think you can do better.”
Her sassy reply caught him off guard, and he tossed his head on a laugh. She grabbed a purse, which she dropped her lipstick into and then slipped the strap across her body.
Sitting in the back seat of a cab with Sascha proved to almost tempt him beyond his control. But he managed to keep from giving the driver a good show on the way to the concert.
The packed arena left him with the urge to chain her to his side and act as her bodyguard, but for one night he hoped to act like a normal boyfriend. Or as much of one as possible.
The music began shortly after they arrived, and they spent three hours rocking their hearts out. He hadn’t been to a concert in ages, and throwing himself into something that didn’t involve hunting down a terrorist, bomber or shooter felt damn good.
Sascha stood with the rest of the crowd, swaying her hips to the beat. He’d been hard the entire evening. When he grabbed her hips and yanked her ass against his hardness, she stilled.
Twisting her head to look at him over her shoulder, she lifted a hand to his jaw. The look on her face had him grabbing her hand and hauling her out of the crowd.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “Are we leaving?”
He whipped her to face him, cupped her cheeks and crashed his mouth over hers. She moaned and went boneless against him. At one end of the wide hallway, he spotted a wall that probably hid offices.
In a heartbeat, he weighed his options—break all the rules he’d never dare to in his everyday life or suffer with the pain of blue balls the entire way to her apartment.
He clasped her wrist and towed her toward the wall. As soon as he whipped her behind it and pinned her arms over her head, plundering her sweet, tempting mouth, she swallowed down a cry of want.
That noise burned through him, and he slid his hand under her sweater to cup her breast. She rocked into him. And ground her hips. His cock throbbed and stretched toward the waist of his jeans.
In seconds, he had her nipples hard under his fingers, squeezing them, applying just the right pressure to make her scream for him.
“River!”
Footsteps sounded. He threw out his senses, aware that a guard probably approached, and they were about to be tossed out of the arena for making out. The guys would really never let him live that down.
Hepburn hauled her around the corner of the wall just in time.
“How do you know how to not get caught?”
He grinned. “Years of practice.”
Their gazes locked. Sparks flew between them, heightened by him recognizing that he loved this woman beyond compare. He’d do anything for her. Kill for her.
“Lemme at that zipper,” he burst, reaching for her fly. Delving his tongue into her mouth, he shimmied her zipper down an inch. It stopped, and he jiggled it.
“What’s happening? Hurry up and get your fingers in my panties!” she hissed.
“Your zipper’s stuck. Goddammit, I think I’m cock-blocked again.”
A snorting laugh escaped Sascha. “We don’t even have a car to get into the back seat. We’ll have to go to my place.” Her chest heaved with her panting breaths.
“No fucking way. I know a place.” He’d been in the arena once before on a call to sweep the area for a possible bomb. He knew some hallways that were left unsupervised and they could easily slip into for a quickie that might hold them off until they got to her apartment.
Grabbing her by the hand, he led her around the wall again. Soon they were in some isolated corridors leading to various entrances that provided access for repairmen.
As soon as he drew her into one, she ran her hands under his shirt and over his chest. Her light, skimming touch on his nipples lef
t him throbbing even harder. In a few moves, he managed to get past her jammed zipper, had her jeans down, his cock out, and Sascha’s chest flattened against the wall.
Her fingers splayed on the cool tile. Hepburn covered her hand with his own, pinning her.
Her breaths came in surges, alternating with her holding her breath as he kissed her neck and simultaneously slipped his cock head into her folds.
She twisted her face toward him. “Take me!”
He plunged inside her in a single thrust. Her inner walls engulfed his length to his balls, and he issued a hot growl as he swung back and filled her again. Sex in public was never his thing, but with Sascha it wasn’t about the taboo. She needed him now—as much as he needed her.
Churning his hips, he filled her deeper, his swollen head nudging her innermost spot. Her wet pussy gripped at him. He latched onto her throat and kissed it as if this was their last moment together.
Fact was, it could be. He couldn’t guess when his number was up. And he’d long ago learned that he got one chance and should take every opportunity he had to enjoy life.
A tingle began at the base of his spine. His balls felt heavier, fuller. She soaked his cock with her juices.
She went on tiptoe as he thrust into her again and again. Dropping her head forward on a shudder, she came in a long, silent wave. The tension in her body and her sweet shivers had him shooting off his own load. The first spurt of cum burst inside her. Stars flickered behind his vision as he filled her with jets of hot cum to the rhythm of her squeezing him tight.
She hung forward against the wall, hand still locked beneath his.
“We’re…crazy,” she whispered.
“That’s love.”
She stilled, and he was oblivious to what he’d said for another moment. Being inside her stole away his control. No wonder he’d blurted that out.
“Sascha,” he whispered.
She turned her head to eye him. “Do you love me?” The question came off as a rasp.
Christ, how to answer that? His momma taught him to always tell the truth, but years evading capture by enemies and running from danger had told him otherwise.
She could reject him. But he wasn’t a pussy who ran from a woman’s rejection. If she told him her feelings weren’t the same, then he’d give her time. Keep trying. Show her that she was his world and he didn’t want to go on without her in his life.
