“All I meant was that any man who can walk away from you must be blind.” He swallowed, his eyes skimming my face. “Because I don’t think I can.”
And with that whispered declaration echoing around inside my head, Shaun closed the gap between us.
Chapter Twenty-One
The gentle press of Shaun’s lips quickly overrode logic. I kissed him back, forgetting that we weren’t meant to do this and meeting his tongue thrust for thrust in a dance for dominance. I was losing, but I didn’t care. A hand slid into my hair, cupping the base of my head and holding me firmly in place. Not one to be beat, I ignored his attempt to hold me still. I twisted until I could lean into his hard body, embracing the flames he unleashed.
His kiss left me weak and confused. I was supposed to be fighting this. Instead, excitement rippled in my lower belly and my fingers dove into his hair. My nails scraped at his scalp, eliciting a moan from him, the sound vibrating against my lips.
A shadow fell across us and Shaun lazily raised his head. He stared back at me with fire in his eyes and a smug smile gracing his wet lips. I couldn’t raise the required sarcastic response, so I just let my head fall back against the loveseat and watched him. It felt like a fog had descended, dazing me and blocking out all other thoughts.
A man cleared his throat. Our eyes jumped to a server holding a bottle of champagne and waiting patiently for our attention. He spoke, but I couldn’t focus on the words.
Free of Shaun’s intense stare, my mind turned inward as my fingers stroked my sensitised lips. He was the only one who’d ever kissed me like that, thorough and with purpose. With my ex and every other guy I’d kissed growing up, it had been a fumbling mess that I’d wished would end quickly. Almost like it was an obligation I had to fulfil.
But kissing Shaun was off-the-charts amazing. Addictive.
I could spend days kissing him and never be satisfied… Something I definitely shouldn’t be thinking about doing to my boss. I stiffened as the realisation settled in.
The server left us, thankfully taking the bottle of champagne with him. When it was just the two of us again, Shaun settled into the cushions, lounging against me, his body stretched out, taking up most of the room. “Now, where were we?” Lust deepened his voice.
He leaned towards me and I sank lower on the seat. His brows creased as I avoided his lips so they skimmed my forehead. Straightening up, he gestured for me to explain the sudden shift in my mood.
“I said we couldn’t do this, and I meant it.” I gestured towards his lips, my voice embarrassingly breathy. “That was a lapse in judgement. I should have stopped it. I’m sorry.”
“I disagree. I think I need to spend the rest of the day with my mouth on you.” He leaned towards me again and I pushed him away. “You liked it,” he muttered, his confusion ringing loud and clear.
“I did, but we’ve been through the reasons why this can’t happen.” Under any other circumstance, his blank stare would have made me laugh. “You pay me, and that makes it weird.”
His determination faded until I was left staring at his downturned smile. “I don’t know how to make this end differently.”
I did. I knew exactly how to remove the only obstacle. All I had to do was accept Alys’s offer. Was it worth it, though? I didn’t care about the money I’d lose, but who gave up a high-paying job for a man, for a fling? Because this couldn’t be anything else. He might be home right now, but the day would come when he’d be caught in Hollywood’s clutches again.
“Think about your image,” I said, my voice weak.
“Right now, I couldn’t care less. I want you.”
Fuck. When he fixed his heated, tortured eyes on me like that – like I was the only person who captivated him – reinstating a professional line got exponentially harder.
“The feeling’s mutual, but I was hired to keep you on track and stop your downward trajectory.” My gaze flickered around the thankfully empty terrace. “Making out with your assistant in public, where anyone could snap pictures, is not going to help fix your problems. Sherry would murder us both if we caused you a scandal.”
The colour drained from his face as my words sank in. His hands slipped from my body and he slumped back in the chair.
“Fuck!” He scowled out at the darkening city.
The sun was setting. I’d lost the entire day to him, but I couldn’t say that surprised me. At some point, spending time with Shaun had become easy, even when I had to correct his fuck-ups or deal with him pulling my leg.
He chuckled, the sound bitter. “For some reason I thought getting here would solve everything. That I’d finally be able to be true to myself. Do and say whatever I want. But it’s all pointless. I thought fame was what I wanted, that it would make me happy. I have all this money. Businesses give me free shit.” He tipped his head towards the glass door the server had vanished through earlier. “Women fall at my feet and studios salivate at the thought of working with me. I proved my dad wrong years ago. And yet the one thing I truly want, I can’t have. How fucking ironic is that?”
“You must love something about it. Why put up with the hours otherwise?”
“Habit, mostly. After Lily left me, it was a comfort. Everything is always the same. The faces, locations and material change, but the systems never do. I could walk onto a set in LA and it would look and feel exactly as it does here.”
“It’s reliable.”
He nodded, relief flickering in his eyes.
“Why are you telling me this, Shaun?”
“Honestly?” An appreciative light shone in his eyes. “I don’t know. I feel like I can trust you, and other than my boys, I’ve never really felt like this with a woman. Like I could tell you anything, do anything, and it would always stay between us.”
“Surely you had that with Lily?”
He was shaking his head before her name left my mouth. “Never. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t on edge with her, waiting for the walls to start crumbling. She was always this bright star. Even before The Brightside took off, she was the flame that powered them, drew people in like moths. With my shitty home life, I felt grateful, like she’d done me a huge favour by offering me her friendship. We were never on equal footing. But with you—”
“We aren’t equal either, boss.” The more I said the word, the more I hated it.
Shaun studied me, and soon a light bulb went off and a sweet smile curled the edges of his lips. I bit my cheek to stop an answering one from forming on my face.
“We could wait until after the show wraps,” Shaun said, “then you won’t be my assistant and absolutely no one could butt their noses in where they didn’t belong.”
“You’d want to wait that long for a fling?” I asked, my tone measured. If he said yes but he’d sleep with other people in the meantime, I might brain him with a glass.
Which was not the reaction of a person who wanted a fling. Oh my god. Why are feelings so confusing?
“Yes.” He nodded firmly. “You’re like a drug I can’t get out of my system.”
I rolled my eyes. “What a lovely description. No wonder you’re gasping for sex.”
“You know what I mean. I can wait. We’ll get through the production and then fuck it out of our systems before the next job starts.”
My core clenched at the way he said fuck. I was a goner. This was a terrible idea. I’d never last the entire production.
“When does the next job start?” Distraction, that’s what I needed. Normal conversation.
He shrugged. “No idea. They’re all waiting to see what happens with the show.” He grinned, catching my hand and raising my fingers to his lips. “But there’ll be plenty of time to enjoy this spark.”
He nibbled on my fingers, the scrape of his teeth against the soft tips raising goose bumps along my arm. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his mouth, couldn’t bring myself to take my hand back.
This is never going to work.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I was seriously sleep deprived when I unlocked his trailer the next morning. It was the only excuse I had for missing the fact that his table had been taken over by a desktop setup. In fact, it took me making coffee to notice the shiny new iMac.
Shaun walked in moments later to find me stood in the middle of the room eying the thing like it was a bar of Vego white chocolate. He laughed, taking the rapidly cooling coffee from my hands. He sipped it, and I didn’t even care. Right then I only had eyes for the pretty, shiny new thing.
“Can’t have you straining your eyes for me,” he said, tugging the end of my ponytail.
He led me to the table, pulled the chair out and guided me into it. While I powered up the machine, he made more coffee, placing it and a plate stacked with a cooked breakfast on the table at a safe distance from my new keyboard.
I couldn’t stop petting it. He spent an hour regaling me with tales of his early action days with his best friends Jackson Levi, Nathan Logan and Finn McCarthy, and through it all, my hand stayed clenched around the mouse. You’d think I’d never been given a gift before. The fact he’d noticed I was struggling with only the tablet softened the ache in my chest.
His eyes kept dipping to my lips, reminding me of his tongue brushing mine and his fingers twirling my hair as the sun set. Every now and again, he’d drag his bottom lip between his teeth and a knowing smile would light up his face when I tracked the gesture.
When the runner turned up to take him to make-up, I almost cheered. I needed to get a grip if I actually planned to last the five months until production wrapped.
Lunch came and went and I achieved zilch. Every time I tried to update his social media, the words blurred together, replaced with a replay of his lips on my skin. I composed multiple emails, but I forgot how to string a sentence together.
A runner appeared with a veggie burger, fries and salad. The fact things were so weird and he was crazy busy on set but still thinking about me did funny things to my heart.
And then Sherry sent me a message and guilt stabbed at me yet again. She knew nothing, but it lingered. And the more I sat with it, the bigger the crack grew until I could barely stop myself from pacing the trailer.
I didn’t know what was causing my restlessness. Guilt or impatience?
If it was guilt, well, no one knew and we were both consenting adults. If Sherry found out, the damage was minimal because she’d hopefully keep it to herself. If it was impatience, then I’d better settle the fuck in because the next five months were going to be a hell of a bumpy, frustrating road.
Alys’s offer popped into my head, but I brushed it away. I would not be the girl who gave up a job for sex. And even if I did quit, how would it look? All it took was one reporter finding out and the headline would still be that he couldn’t keep his hands off the staff.
During a short break in his day, Shaun sat with a chair pulled up close, invading my personal space and begging me to read lines. The fact he picked the only mushy love scene in the entire show did not help. And then he kept bumping my leg with his knee, as if I could forget his presence.
He used this chance as the perfect opportunity to show me what I could have.
“I need you in my life,” Shaun whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion as he read his line.
He stared at me like I had the answers to all his problems. Like the character did. I swallowed, my eyes falling to the piece of paper in front of me.
“Your sister won’t like it,” I read, clutching the sheet. “I can’t lose my best friend.”
“We’ll talk to her. She’ll understand.” He caught my hand, pulling my focus from scanning the next line. His green eyes settled on me, and I forgot what I was doing. “How do you expect me to go on, knowing how your lips feel against mine? Knowing how my heart races when I think of you?”
My mouth went dry, hearing those words fall off his lips. They weren’t directed at me, but I could imagine they were, wish they were.
The deep timbre of his voice did strange things to my body. The soft look in his eyes as he focused on me and only me made my chest tighten. Under the guise of practising, he stroked my cheek, the gesture so reverent it made my eyes burn with tears.
“I couldn’t have gotten through the last year without you, and I’m not willing to go another day without you by my side,” he whispered, his eyes shining and his voice hoarse. “There’s no one else for me. I love you, Liv.”
And when he leaned towards me, speaking his last line so close I could feel his breath on my lips. I didn’t pull away. He transfixed me. Safe in his trailer, locked away from prying eyes, I had no defence against his sneak attacks.
“How was that?” he asked, resting his forehead against mine.
But for the rasp of his breath, silence stretched around us, creating a bubble that sheltered us from the outside world. Inside the bubble there was no press, no noisy crew members and no agent who would skin me alive.
Tingles spread down my neck where Shaun stroked my jaw, and my hands shook in my lap. Not trusting my voice, I nodded.
He searched my face, hunting for something. The obliteration of my resistance, perhaps. A triumphant gleam entered his eyes when he found it, snatching my breath and making my head spin.
I don’t know who reached for who first, but suddenly, our lips slammed together and desire clouded our minds. Each of our frustrations added pressure to the glide of our tongues. Shaun’s hands grasped my hips, pulling me to the edge of my chair. He slipped onto his knees, using his body to force my legs apart and make room for him. He pressed us together until we were plastered against each other, lost, found, groaning.
There is a reason we aren’t meant to be doing this yet.
Nip.
We–I said it was a bad idea.
Lick.
Sigh. Why did I say something that felt this good was bad?
Caress.
We are waiting. There is a good reason for it.
Frowning against Shaun’s lips, my mind chased that reason until Shaun sucked my bottom lip into his mouth, scattering my thoughts.
A bang on the trailer door jolted us apart. We were both panting, wide-eyed and dishevelled. Shaun’s hair stood on end, and his shirt twisted at odd angles around his body. I probably looked like I’d been thoroughly kissed too.
The bang came again and the horror set in.
What if the person out there had been new and opened the trailer door without permission? What if it was one of the producers?
No one could see me like this – lips swollen, cheeks reddened and eyes dazed. I rushed to the bathroom, catching Shaun’s concerned eye before I locked the door. Through the plastic barrier, my heart in my throat, I listened as he spoke to someone in a low voice. The door shut seconds later and Shaun wandered over, knocking softly.
“Mona, are you okay?” he called, his words level and clear. He’d recovered already, while I still stood there panting, my heart racing like a fool.
Because getting caught would do nothing to him. But it would destroy me.
I sighed. How many times did I have to toy with the fire before it burned me and I learnt my lesson? I didn’t want to learn too late.
“I’m fine.” I swallowed hard, forcing a calm I didn’t feel. “Do they need you on set?”
“Yeah. The runner’s waiting.” Regret dripped from his words, and they sounded really close, like he was resting his forehead against the door. “Are you coming out before I go?”
Not likely. I needed a new plan. Ours wasn’t logical. I was all for trying impossible things, but when the stakes were so high, I’d take a pass.
“No, I need a minute.”
“Okay. We’ll talk about this later?”
“Sure,” I whispered with absolutely no conviction.
I pulled out my phone, clicking on Alys’s number. I was crying as I typed out a frantic message. Was I making a mistake? Who knew? But it was better than sitting back and letting the mistakes happen to me.
&
nbsp; Chapter Twenty-Three
“Mona, what a surprise. Is everything okay?” Sherry asked, curiosity dripping from her cheerful voice.
I sucked in a deep breath. It was now or never, and never wasn’t an option.
“I need you to let me out of my contract.”
The silence on the other end of the phone could deafen the dead. In fact, I think she might have stopped breathing.
“Sherry?”
She laughed, but a tremor belied her confidence. “I’m sorry. I thought you said you wanted me to let you out of your contract.”
“I do.”
“And I must have heard you wrong because I thought things were going extremely well,” she said, steamrolling over my confirmation. “Shaun hasn’t tried to chase you off in a while, and he’s actually been rather nice to deal with for a change. So, what’s the problem?”
“I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity you’ve offered me, but I can’t do this anymore. I have to quit, Sherry.”
There was no way she wouldn’t read more into my words. I didn’t know how else to force her to acknowledge that anything but a “yes, of course” wasn’t going to fly. There would be no bribes, no tickets to awards dinners, no pay rises. I was done.
She sighed. “I can’t talk you out of this, can I?”
“No. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it’s the right one.”
I couldn’t keep toeing this line with Shaun. Even though Sherry employed me, he still acted as my boss. No matter what he or my sister might claim, we were different to everyone else on set.
He might have been their leading man, but he couldn’t stop the crew, and the world for that matter, from dragging me over the coals. These things always turned back on the women. The press would say I’d ensnared him, call me devious, paint me with motives I couldn’t fathom. I wasn’t delusional enough to believe they would treat me any differently.
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