"I guess." And Sabrina, of all people, would know. Abruptly, Stef remembered their weekends at her parents' estate—the performance artist surrounded by a firestorm of controversy for her NEA-sponsored homoerotic art, the impassioned discussions of clothing-optional resorts and open marriage. And he remembered, oh, he remembered showing up late at a party there, hearing noises in the back and finding people running around naked. Finding her in the hot tub, with some wannabe actor's hands on her as she rose from the tub, nude. He remembered the frozen look of shock on her face just before he turned to walk away. That she could even tell him later that he was being silly, that the guy was just a jerk trying to cop a quick feel as they were all getting out of the tub, had infuriated him perhaps most of all.
He knew about her alternative realities, all right. Alternative realities of fidelity, of respect. Sabrina's idea of normal was like these people's idea of normal—tipped into another universe.
Stef took a deep breath and forced himself to release the tension in his shoulders. It was ancient history. What he had to concentrate on now was working, not the temptation in the curve of her mouth. Maybe some of his fascination for her had persisted over the years, but that was what this doc was all about—burning it out. Just as the image of her standing, naked, with some joker's hand on her breast, had scorched his hope of lasting love.
History best forgotten, he reminded himself with an impatient shake of his head. Then he offered his excuses and went to find the crew.
Setting up the lights took a little more time than he expected, mostly because Mike, the gaffer, kept getting distracted by all the bare breasts and leather harnesses. Kev just grinned and cracked his gum, watching the show as though it had been put together purely for his amusement.
"And here I always thought history was dull. I can't wait to see what our producer comes up with next."
"New York, I think, then Denmark."
Kev glanced over to where Kelly stood, talking into her handheld dictaphone as she watched Mike set lights. "If I'm going to the land of the long and the blond, maybe I should do some warm-up exercises."
Stef followed his gaze. "You'll have your hands full with that one."
"Great. I'd hate to go to Copenhagen empty-handed."
"Yeah, well, get your hands on a camera first and let's take some footage."
"Whatever you say, chief."
* * *
They followed the woman in red, Mary, and her new slave—in reality her longtime lover, Greg—up to the manor house. Nothing was as it seemed, Sabrina realized. Everywhere, people were playing roles and running scripts. Including the auction.
Including playing lady of the manor in an upstairs room, afterward. Tapestries adorned the walls. Candles flickered. Velvet hangings dressed the window and swooped from the canopy over the four-poster bed.
The temptation of going on camera was enough to lure the couple out of character to talk with her about bondage, role-playing and arousal.
"It's an incredible turn-on, when you know you can let go because you trust the person you're with," said Mary, lying back on the bed and sighing as Greg stroked his hands over her body. "I don't know which I like better, being the dominant or being submissive. There's something really wonderful about being tied up. I know I'm safe. I know if I say red, he'll stop everything. I'm ultimately in control, because I can say the safe word that calls it all off. But otherwise, the freedom, the exploration is amazing."
Sabrina watched Greg run the silk tassels over Mary's shoulders. "She loves the feel of the silk," he said, sliding it along her collarbone, "especially right here. I'm just sensitizing her skin a little, bringing her up." There was something so sensual about the way he touched her, Sabrina thought, something arousing about the way he knew just what she liked, the way he could speak so authoritatively about how her body worked. And he was right. Sabrina saw Mary shudder, saw her eyes go opaque with desire.
Had she ever been with a man who'd known her body like that? Sabrina wondered. Had she ever been with a man who made it his obsession to know her every sensitive spot, her every signal of desire? Then she glanced up and caught Stef staring at her, his eyes black and fathomless. Oh yes, there had been one. He'd known her inside and out, played her with a virtuoso flair until she'd been wringing wet.
"It's all about trust," agreed Greg, stripped down to his leggings. "It's about watching her body, seeing what turns her on and knowing when to stop."
Mary lay on the bed and stretched her hands toward the bedposts. At the touch of the silk ropes on her wrists, she shivered a little and stretched in arousal. "It's incredibly erotic just giving up control and worrying only about what I'm feeling," she said as her companion trailed his fingers over her nipples.
Stef watched Mike adjust the lights. It was funny, he thought, as Kev moved in with the handheld—the couple on the bed was nearly naked and well on their way to coitus, but it was Sabrina who snared his gaze over and over. She moved back now to lean against the wall by the door, hands jammed deep in the pockets of her cargo pants, her face carved with intriguing shadows.
Not a good thing for a director, he reminded himself. He needed to focus on the subjects, not the producer. Especially not this producer, even if she had dived into the interviews as though they were the most delicious things she'd ever done, her eyes dancing.
The couple had changed places. Now Greg was tied up and Mary was crouched atop him, trailing a silk scarf over his naked body. She ran her hands down his belly, sliding them down to where his erection leaped and jerked. She ran a finger the length of it, teasing him until he groaned. Stef heard a couple of soft sighs as she slipped Greg's cock into her mouth.
Stef couldn't stop himself from looking over at Sabrina. She moistened her lips and Stef remembered how they'd tasted. How they'd felt on him. Now she stood watching the couple intently. He watched her breasts rise and fall as she took a deep breath. Raising a hand to push her hair out of her eyes, she looked at Mary's red dress where it pooled on the floor. Then she glanced up and their eyes locked.
For a long, breathless instant, the room receded. Everything else became irrelevant. Everything but Sabrina.
Then she turned and slipped out the door.
Following her was something he did without thinking. Work, he reminded himself as he stepped into the dim hallway. It was just work. But all around them, behind closed door after closed door, he could hear the sound of sex. "Where are you going?"
She stopped and turned to him, her eyes dark in flickering mock gaslight in the dimly lit hall. "I don't know. It was … I just needed a break."
"You don't like watching?"
Sabrina moved her shoulders and leaned back against the wall. "Yes. Do you?"
"There's one thing I keep finding myself watching here." Stef stepped closer. "I keep finding myself watching you." He reached out to run his fingertips down her bare shoulder.
"We're no good together, Stef." Her words were barely audible, so that he had to lean toward her to hear. The subtle scent she wore, the one that haunted his dreams, drew him nearer, and then he was too close to break away.
"I know one way we were always good," he whispered, his mouth a hairbreadth away from hers. It was a touch and not a touch, the intimacy of mingled breath, the undeniable closeness of shared heat. And it would have taken a better man than him to turn away from bridging that almost nonexistent gap.
Her flavor was hot and sweet, her mouth tempting. At first, her lips were still as though she were just absorbing the sensation, and then she began to kiss him back. He tightened at her touch, but it was the soft, involuntary sound she made that tore at his self-control. When her lips parted, he plundered, driven by the friction of tongue against tongue.
He'd never been able to entirely banish the memory of what they'd been together. He kept expecting that the present would pale in comparison to that, but it didn't. It hadn't. The intensity that sliced through him now shocked him; the urgency catapulted him beyond any
thing that he'd felt before. The want, the need, the desire drummed in his veins.
He ran his hands down her flat stomach and over her hips, sliding around behind her to fit her tight against him until he could feel her breath.
Until he could feel the beat of her heart.
Behind a door someone groaned; that was followed by a woman's throaty chuckle. Down the hall, a rhythmic thud whispered of sex; a soft gasp murmured of desire. Seduction infused the air. Their straining toward each other at that moment was a reflection of the eroticism that choked the atmosphere.
Sabrina's fingers were in Stef's hair as his edged up under the thin sweater to the smooth lines of her back until she began quivering helplessly. She shivered and bit back a moan. He'd always known how to touch her—a stroke here, a brush there, a slight pressure that made her quiver.
He'd always known how to drive her crazy. A voice in her head told her it made no sense, but she couldn't seem to make it matter. It was the setting, she thought feverishly as she nipped at his lower lip, the sense that they were in a play world, that nothing that happened here could be real.
Then his hand slid further to cup her breast and she groaned. Oh, no, it wasn't play. This felt real, this heat that jolted through her. The tease of him on her tongue, the squeeze of his fingers on her nipple arrowed together to start the slow, sweet tug between her thighs. And she melted against him.
In the room behind them where Mary and Greg lay, deep throaty cries started up. The cries of sex, the exultant sound of desire made flesh. Then the shouts reached the groaning crescendo of orgasm, one before the other, before subsiding into murmurs.
Sabrina pulled away, breathing hard. "What are we doing?"
"I'd say that's self-evident," Stef replied, watching her closely.
"We've got to be out of our minds. There's a lot on the line here, too much to be messing around like this." From the room behind them came the sounds of laughter, the clicks of equipment being taken down.
"Why did you walk out here?"
"I wasn't expecting you to follow me."
"Are you sure of that?"
She stared at him, her eyes huge and questioning as the film crew stepped into the hall. "A truce is one thing, Stef. I'm not enough of a masochist to go round two with you."
Just then, Kev stepped into the hallway. "Hey, you want to come review this footage? They said if it doesn't work, they'd be happy to let us film round two."
Stef held Sabrina's gaze. "Sometimes the second time around is the best of all."
* * *
The late hour filled Stef with exhaustion as he walked down the main staircase leading to the manor's entryway. The case of lighting equipment he carried felt like it weighed a ton. It had been a long shoot, but they'd caught some solid footage. Still, something about it felt unfinished, and his documentary habits prodded him to get more.
Below him, Sabrina reached for the doorknob, satchel over her shoulder.
"Sabrina, hold on," he called, and she turned to look at him. "I was thinking," he began and stopped, peering closely at her. "Are you okay?" She'd begun looking tired as the night had worn on. Now, though, her face was drawn and a bit pale.
"I'm fine," she replied, but she still seemed distracted. "What do you want?"
"Look, I know we've stopped shooting for the night, but I'd like to do some more. We should stay up here and catch some events tomorrow, the jousting and the human chess match. Otherwise, we're cutting ourselves short."
"We can't afford it."
"Don't need to. The owners have offered to let us stay."
Sabrina shook her head. "That's a line we don't want to cross."
"Why not? We're not filming the ranch owners, we're filming the players. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with getting close to your subjects. This isn't exactly investigative journalism. If it bothers you that much, let's get a motel."
She fiddled with the strap of her satchel. "The budget won't take it."
"Give me a break. It's twenty-five bucks a night for six people. I'll pay it out of my own pocket if you're that hard up."
"We've got enough footage, Stef. The shoot's over."
Something was up and it bothered him that he didn't know what. "With docs you never have enough footage, you should know that. Remember our discussion about you doing your job and me doing mine? Well, let me do it."
Sabrina's face set. "I said it's enough. We're not shooting tomorrow, and that's final." She looked away. "I have plans. It's a family thing."
"We'll film without you."
"Think again, Stef. It's my doc. I've got creative control."
"Then cancel your plans."
"Listen to me. We're not shooting."
"What is it? A wedding? A confirmation? What can't you get out of?"
"It's none of your business."
"None of my business? Of course not, I'm just the director … boss." He eyed her with irritation. "Why work tomorrow when you can spend the day yukking it up with whoever. The rest of us will just sit around and wait for you to get back to us."
Sabrina's voice shed icicles. "I don't owe you an explanation, Stef."
"No, but we're on a deadline here and you owe it to the project to put this ahead of some party crap."
She went white as if he'd hit her. "You have no idea what you're talking about," she said coldly, turning to open the door. "We're not shooting tomorrow. Get over it."
* * *
He always had jumped to the worst conclusions about her, Sabrina thought as she drove down the lit highway, Kelly asleep in the passenger seat. She remembered that hideous day when things had fractured forever between her and Stef. He hadn't been willing to trust, hadn't been ready to understand that nothing had happened—that it was just a dip in the hot tub with friends that she'd known from elementary school, from when they'd romped on the beach in their birthday suits, practically. All except for the guest, who hadn't taken no for an answer.
Stef had been good at no for an answer. Even when his anger had evaporated, he'd been miles away from her. They were two different people, from different worlds, he'd told her. She didn't value the same things that he did. And he was doing the same thing now, she could see. He'd classed everybody at the event as "out there." He couldn't look beyond the surface and see that they were all human, that they were hairstylists and insurance agents, construction workers and computer technicians. He didn't see the role-playing as a fun part of their lives, but as what defined them.
Just as he'd always seen her environment and her friends as what defined her.
It shouldn't matter to her what he thought. So maybe for a couple of hours things had almost seemed easy between them. And the kissing … she shied away from dwelling on it. It had been a mistake. They had to find a way to work together, but that didn't mean she needed his okay for everything she did. His approval didn't matter to her, not a bit.
Besides, she had other things to think about.
* * *
8
« ^ »
The narrow old diner wasn't glossy and retro like the kind you'd find in L.A. The chrome was original, though the shine had long since dulled. The red metallic vinyl seats had permanent sags from the many customers who'd plumped themselves down for eggs, bacon and coffee, staying long enough for refills. Rolando's was the kind of no-frills place that engendered loyalty, from the kind of people who came back again and again.
A waitress stopped at the table with a menu. "Coffee, hon?"
Stef nodded and watched her fill his cup. She didn't say it like she'd seen it in a movie and was trying on a role. Then again, she didn't look like she'd be taking the next day off to go to an audition. It was refreshing, he thought. Sometimes you just had to get out of L.A.
He'd woken shortly after dawn. Hit with a restlessness he couldn't name, he'd taken the top down on his Jeep and headed north along the Pacific Coast Highway. He'd cruised along the twisting road, with the sapphire-blue sea on his left and rugged bluffs on his ri
ght. Malibu had given way to Oxnard, Ventura to Santa Barbara, and still he kept going. Finally, north of Santa Maria, he'd finally stopped for gas.
Pismo Beach, the sign had read, complete with a giant concrete clam. Or oyster maybe, it was hard to be sure. At any rate, it had made him register the gnawing in his belly, so he'd tooled around until he'd stumbled on the diner.
It was Sunday, and still early enough that the place was only lightly populated. That suited him just fine. He was still disgruntled from the night before and not all that crazy about being around a crowd of people. Space and peace. It was why he'd sought the road.
That, and because he'd found himself unable to get the image of Sabrina's pale face out of his head.
"Figure out what you want?" It was the waitress.
Stef didn't bother to open the menu. "Scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, sourdough toast."
"Any orange juice with that?"
"Sure. You sell any newspapers around here?"
"Vending machines are just outside the door."
He fished some change out of his pocket and bought a copy of the San Luis Obispo Sunday Tribune. He'd driven farther than he'd realized to be out of the range of the L.A. papers.
Not far enough to get away from Sabrina, though. They'd learned years ago that they didn't fit, would never make it together. This interlude was just supposed to finish the process of clearing her out of his head once and for all. Instead, he kept coming across flashes of change in her that fascinated him. And, of course, the moments of vintage Sabrina—the mischief and fun in her eyes at the fair, the dark promise during those fevered moments in the hall.
The chalk white of her face at the end of the night.
He hadn't meant to hurt her, but to make her think. It was the way it had always been between them, no matter how she insisted she'd changed. He wanted to work and get the job done; she wanted to play. He'd been a fool to think this would be any different.
But her face haunted him.
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