Stage Left (Bright Lights Billionaire #1)

by Ali Parker

  "Fuck," I growled and drove into my tight grip until I was shaking. "I need to get laid, or get a beer. Or both."

  A knock at the door had me cursing. I grabbed some jeans and pulled them over my legs. My dick was sticking out of the top of the pants too far to play it off. I growled and pulled a t-shirt over the top of my head before jogging down the small steps to the trailer door. I opened it to find Riley standing at the bottom in a pretty dress, her eyes filled with hurt.

  "Do you really think I meant to do that today?" Her lip quivered.

  Damn.

  "No." I reached down and grabbed her hand. "Come here."

  She walked up into the trailer and sat down in the first seat she came to, crossing her hands in her lap and watching me. I felt like a different man around her, one that wanted to give a shit about life, about people, about her.

  "I would never do that to you. I'm not one of those crazy bitches who licks your picture poster outside of the movies. I'm a starting actress, trying hard to play this game and impress someone." Her eyes filled with tears. "Anyone." She glanced down at her hands as a soft sob left her. "I should go."

  "Hey. You really saw someone lick my poster?" I moved to kneel in front of her and touched her hands. "That's fucking awesome."

  She laughed and wiped at her tears. "Yeah. I got pictures of it."

  "Let me see." I reached up and wiped at a tear as it rolled down her soft cheek.

  Kiss her. Now.

  Damn, I wanted to, but it was what would have happened in the movies, not in real life. I was tired of following a script. She and I would be working together side by side for ten months at the very least. We had a lot of untapped angst and passion that was sure to make a great movie, but I needed to be careful. Really careful.

  "No, you're not seeing it. It will just make your head bigger." She laughed again and wiped her eyes. "I'm really sorry. I would-"

  "Me too. I was being a dick because I was turned on, but it wasn't you. It was Trish. She came in before you, and I've had a hard-on for that woman since I was ten." I forced a fake laugh, hating myself for lying to her.

  She glanced up and nodded. "Oh. Yeah. Absolutely. She's so incredibly talented."

  She was hurt by me taking back the power she might have thought she had over me. She stood, half knocking me backward.

  "Anyway, I just didn't want you to misunderstand. I'm here to hopefully get a part in this movie, but if not... It just wasn't meant to be." She squared her shoulders, and I realized I'd fucked up. I'd lost her again.

  "You'll get it, and we'll protect each other like I promised you up there. Half the joy of working with someone you connect with is teasing each other and having fun." I slid my hands into my jeans pockets and shrugged. "Just remember it’s all part of the show. It's not real, you know."

  "Of course. Thanks for seeing me." She walked toward the door as indecision tore me in half.

  "Wait."

  "What's up?" She turned from the bottom of the stairs, her expression deadpan as if she were talking to a drive-through attendant.

  "You want to grab some dinner or something?" I pulled my hands from my pockets and crossed them over my chest, hoping to hide how badly my heart was racing. Was I asking a girl out for the first time at twenty-four?

  Yeah, I was.

  "I appreciate it, but I have a date. Thanks again for today. Nice to work with you, Mr. Lewis."

  I rolled my eyes. "This again? Are you not ever going to call me Ethan?"

  "The first time I see a human emerge, I'll be sure to call you by your name." She shrugged as she pulled the door open. "Until then, you're what everyone thinks you are. High and mighty, but me... I'm just one of the little people."

  "Riley." I walked toward her as the door shut. A growl ripped from me. How had things gotten so fucking out of control over nothing?

  I kicked the chair in front of me, breaking my toe and sending the thing to bounce around the front of the trailer.

  "Fuck!" I yelled and walked to the back room, dropping down to the edge of the bed and sliding my hands over my face. The script would tell me to go after her, to catch her in the parking lot and pull her close. To kiss her perfectly soft lips and grip her with my strong arms. To tell her that I want her, that we would work things out...

  "Work out what? She's a fucking stranger." I laid back. "What's wrong with me?"

  The image of her above me, sliding along my shaft as she enjoyed herself rolled over me, and I began to question the scene. Was she enjoying herself or was she just that good? Her moans and the tight press of her fingers into my back as she undulated her hips and pretended to work me said she wanted more of me. All of me.

  I groaned and pressed my hands tighter to my face as anger burned through me. It was a lie. All of it. My whole fucking life was a set of lines that could be erased with the pink end of a pencil.

  "She was wet." I jerked up and took a sharp breath. "She was wet."

  Getting up, I jogged to the front of the trailer and pulled the door open, almost running into Deza. I gripped her arms and let out a short laugh. "She was wet."

  The guard beside us choked on his soda, spitting it out on the ground beside him.

  "What are you going on about?" She popped me in the face softly. "Get it together. We have a press conference tonight at the Marriott. It's over the tryouts and our plans to continue to involve new and upcoming stars. Fix your hair and get that pinstriped suit that makes you look like a god. Now."

  "Deza." I got in her face and pressed my forehead to hers. "Riley was acting like that scene didn't mean shit to her, and yet... she was wet."

  "Are you really telling me this like I want to know how you know that she was wet?" She pushed at my chest a little. "I told you that you're not crossing the lines."

  "I'm not. Her fucking panties slid over during the scene. That's why I stopped it, thank you very much." I moved back and put my hands on my hips. "Thank you very much, Ethan, for being a gentleman."

  She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and shook her head. "We can't make this shit up, right?"

  The guard chuckled beside us as I smiled. "All I'm saying is that she's not immune to me."

  Deza jerked her head toward me as she narrowed her eyes. "It's irrelevant."

  "Agreed. I'm not doing anything about it, BUT... she was wet."

  "Say it again and I'm casting you as the sex slave in Dani's next Barbarian film."

  I pretended to zip my lips and turned, jogging back into my trailer to get ready for the press conference. No matter what, Riley was getting the part with me. It was almost exhilarating to think about teasing her to the edge of need and never once touching her.

  Game on.

  *

  "Mr. Lewis. Can you tell us how you got your start in the acting business? I know a lot of us have heard the story, but we would love to hear it again." A dark-haired woman in the front row of the crowd stood and addressed me.

  Deza sat on my right and Frank on my left. The rest of the cast from the last movie was there. Everyone but my last co-star. They hadn't offered her the part in the next film, so she was rather upset and unwilling to play friendly at all. I wasn't sure what the poor girl wanted us to do. She was offed in the last film. No way in hell were we pulling a daytime soap opera move and bringing her back from the grave. My lip lifted at the thought.

  "Sure. I had an audition for a grape juice commercial when I was a kid, and my parents thought I was a funny little guy, so they took me up there, and I got it." I glanced up at the screen to my left. "Guys, can you get the commercial up? Just a bit of comic relief for us."

  They played the commercial, and the whole room made funny sounds over me being so cute. I swallowed my sarcasm and smiled, trapping the real me behind the tight clasp of my teeth.

  "Thank you," Deza whispered.

  "Another question?" Frank called out.

  "Me." A tall gentleman stood. "Gerald Bismalt from People Magazine."

  "Hi G
erald." I pressed my hands to my slacks beneath the table and tried to remind myself that we had another forty minutes and then I could get the fuck out of there. I loved acting, but being the center of a live event was exhausting. It required me to pay attention, act right and address people in a professional manner. No, no and no.

  "Word on the street here in Hollywood is that your newest co-star for Down Low might actually be a first-time actress. Can you confirm or deny that claim?"

  Deza jumped in, standing up to gain everyone's attention, including mine.

  "I'll address that, as Ethan and the rest of the crew are under a confidentiality contract. We are having a great time with some new innovative ideas for this upcoming film. One of those things was to have an open casting call for this new movie. We received over four hundred thousand applicants by the time we stopped taking applications. We narrowed it down to ten, and now we're at three. We'll be making our decision over the next two weeks, but yes, one of the candidates is a first-time film actress. She's a student at UCLA and we're very proud to have met her if nothing else."

  "Wow. That's great. I'll let someone else have a turn." Gerald sat down as I stood up and smiled.

  "Bathroom break for me." I turned and walked off the stage before worming my way through the horde of reporters standing just outside the room. "Excuse me."

  I kept myself in check the whole way to the restroom, though it was the last thing I wanted to do. I needed a quick break before I faced any more of their probing questions.

  I thought about texting her to alert her to the fact that she should check out the press conference since she was mentioned, but decided against it. She was on a date… or so she said. Why the fuck was I even trying anyway? Her mood swings were almost as bad as mine, and I could barely stand myself.

  Besides, the girl who shed a few tears in my trailer today wasn't Riley Phillips. It was just one of her many faces, and she'd played me, much like I'd done her.

  We would be a smoking hot match made in hell.

  Chapter 15

  Riley

  "Hey. You okay?" Charlotte reached over and touched my arm. I hadn't realized that I was trembling until she said something.

  "What? Yeah. I'm good." I forced a smile and turned the radio on as she dropped her hand from me.

  "It's me, dude. No putting on that fake-ass mask and pretending. Are you overwhelmed because it was Ethan Lewis or is it something else? That was a smoking hot scene. Are you just turned on? Because I'm turned on."

  I laughed at her. She was talking a million miles a minute, which was nothing new. She always did when she was nervous.

  "I'm trying to process everything." I shrugged, forcing myself to calm down. "Ethan is insanely hot, but when I was up there on stage, I wasn't me, Char. I was Stacy Develin, the woman that was completely in love with the sorry bastard beneath me. I slipped into her skin. The passion and heat are all part of it. It had nothing to do with Ethan until he acted like a child about it."

  "Was he upset about something he did or something you did?" She turned to face me, tugging on her seatbelt a little. "Him storming off was weird."

  "That's the real him." I pulled up to the ice cream shop just down from our apartment. "I'm thinking a sugary treat is in order. You in?"

  "Of course. Duh." She got out and met me at the front of the car. "I'm still reeling over how intense the love scene was. I could have sworn that you were madly in love with him, and him with you."

  She let out a dreamy sigh as my insides tightened. I wasn't in love with Ethan, but every time I saw him, whether on the big screen or in person, I wanted more. He was like a drug, and Eon Films was his pimp. Everyone was happy with the deal, the viewers especially.

  "That means that he and I are perfectly matched for the parts." I opened the door and held it for her. "There was a moment up there where I felt like I could rip his black undies off and eat him alive, but I think that's the buildup of the emotion when you're acting."

  "Did you get to see it?" She moved up and ran her fingers down the glass covering the ice cream. "The cup?"

  "Yeah. It's a cup. I told you it was." I smirked and glanced up at the wide-eyed teenage boy who was watching us like, 'what the fuck?'. "I want a scoop of chocolate and another of strawberry."

  "Cup or cone?" His monotone voice didn't fit the expression on his face at all.

  "Cup, please." I walked to the register as Charlotte ordered. She joined me and pulled out her wallet.

  "My treat. You just made my dreams come true today. I owe you for a while." She turned and blew a kiss to me.

  "I didn't do that so you would owe me. I did it because you're my best friend." I nudged her to the side. "I got the ice cream."

  "No. Really." She handed the guy her card as he glanced back and forth between us. "Ring it up."

  He nodded and I turned and found a seat, not happy about her paying, but not wanting to stress the guy out. I leaned back as my thoughts returned to Ethan. There hadn't been a cup, even though he should have worn one. Talk about not being professional. He knew he had a huge cock. Was he expecting it not to get hard because he wasn't turned on by me?

  Well, truthfully, he wasn't.

  It was Trish that had him turned on. Pain ripped through me as I inhaled deeply and shoved a large bite of ice cream in my mouth.

  "So, do you think the audition went well? Analyze it for me. I thought it was brilliant." She sat down and took a bite of her chocolate ice cream as she watched me with awe. It was weird to see her so taken with me. We'd been friends since we were little, and yet she'd never really thought too much of my acting ambitions. Now that Ethan Lewis was involved, she was riveted.

  "It went good. For both of us to remain locked in the parts enough to have a good fight after the audition, I'd say it was a winner. If you can shake off the part like it never happened, then you didn't dive in deep enough." I licked my spoon. "It's like when you have a really terrifying dream and you wake up. It takes a while to shake it, right?"

  "Yeah, I get it. That's cool, and yet a little scary. I heard that chick from The Exorcist had trouble shaking off the part she played as a kid." Charlotte pulled her phone up and squealed. "Oh my God. Did you know that Eon Films was having a press conference tonight?

  "No." I grabbed my phone and lifted it to read through the details. "What time is it happening?"

  "Now." She smirked. "You should totally be there."

  "They haven't decided yet, and it usually takes a while."

  "How long is a while?" Charlotte didn't look up from her phone.

  "Couple of weeks?" I set my phone down and turned my full attention back to my ice cream, which was far more rewarding than reading more about Ethan.

  "Wow... you should see the number of hits that Ethan's name gets when you Google him. There are fan clubs everywhere and a haters club too." She smirked. "Oh fuck. It's here in LA."

  "You gotta be pretty special to have a haters club. Do they meet regularly? Throw darts at his perfect face?" I smirked and tugged the phone from her hand, reading through the entries as my stomach soured. "Ugh. These are girls he's slept with."

  "Or they say that he did." She pulled the phone back from me. "They're lying. Obviously."

  "Why do you say that? Just cause he's some big-name actor doesn't mean he's not fucking every hot girl that walks his way." I rolled my eyes at her being naive. With the way he teased me the two times we were together, I had no doubt that at least a handful of those stories were legit.

  She laughed and pressed her fingers to her lips. "Oh my God. Listen to this one."

  I sat back and nursed my ice cream as I watched her enjoying herself. She needed a boyfriend or an office fling. Something to give her a real-life man to focus on. Ethan wasn't real at all, nor did he truly seem alive inside. Something sat at the edge of his personality that nagged me. Maybe it was the few times I'd seen him talk down to someone, or the way he moved from happy to pissed to ornery in a matter of minutes. I wasn't sure I w
anted to unpeel the onion over the next ten months as his co-star. Who knew what I would find out?

  "Listen to this… Ethan Lewis is the biggest jackass in the world. I was working on one of the sets of Down Under as an extra in the bar scene, and I guess he saw something he liked." Charlotte laughed and held the phone toward me. "Look at this tramp. You really think Ethan Lewis would go after her?"

  I shrugged as she continued. "He asked me out for drinks, which was really just an invitation to come back to his trailer. He is sweet as pie and so complimentary as he's stripping you, but the minute you can't please him... he's a jerk."

  "Can't please him?" I lifted my eyebrow.

  "Let me see." Charlotte ran her finger down the screen and yelped. "Oh man. It says here that he has a monster dick, and the girl... fuck, all of these girls couldn't fit it inside of them. Gross."

  "Whatever. That's stupid." I licked at my ice cream as my stomach turned. He did have a monster cock. How did they know that? I hadn't until a couple of hours before. There was very little doubt in my mind that he had slept with some if not all of them.

  "They're totally making fun of him." She glanced up with disgust on her face. "This is so stupid. Monster cock? Get real."

  "Can you imagine if he did?" I couldn't help but push it under the false pretense of wanting to be silly. "The poor guy would be fighting off women left and right." I laughed, but she didn't. I reached across the table and touched her arm. "You're being ridiculous. He doesn't have a monster cock."

  "I know, but if he did..." She glanced up and shrugged. "It would be miserable for him too, you know? Remember that kid in high school, Barry? He was so damn nerdy, but his dick was huge. He couldn't get laid to save his life, and he was so depressed about it."

  "That's just gross, and if I remember correctly… he was too." I got up and dropped the rest of my ice cream in the trash.

  "Even though it's gross, it still sucks." She stood up and put her phone in her back pocket. "Imagine not being able to have sex because your body was deformed."