Caught on Camera

by Meg Maguire

  “Yes,” he whispered, thrusting his hips against her palm as she wrapped her fingers around his cock, sheathed in cotton.

  She whispered against his ear. “You keep me up nights, Ty.”

  He seemed to lose the ability to form words, reduced to primitive sounds—the same ones she’d heard him make two years earlier, ones that had haunted her memory when they were the spoils of some other woman’s victory. But now these sounds were hers. All this animal need was hers to satisfy.

  “Say my name, Ty,” she breathed.

  “Katie.” His free hand grew demanding, forcing its way between them to push his underwear down and release his hard, bare cock into her eager hand. His fingers, stoking the fire in her core, trembled faintly.

  “Did you fantasize about this?” Kate asked, lips against his temple, luxuriating in this tall, powerful body bent close to dominate hers.

  “All the bloody time.”

  Kate tortured him with long, slow pulls. Her own breath became shallow as his fingers coaxed her closer to the edge. She remembered everything that had gone on just a few hours before in the dancing, warming light of the woodstove. Her fingers gripped him tighter, her touch quickening as she handled him roughly, rising to the level of intensity she herself craved—rising to the level of the frantic energy his hips had delivered when they’d made love, giving all that pleasure to her.

  “You felt so amazing inside me, Ty. I’m thinking about it now.”

  He groaned and she felt the damp skin of his forehead on her temple, beading with sweat even in the bitter cold. A third finger entered her, exciting her, driving her toward the free fall.

  “Don’t stop, Ty.”

  “Am I going to make you come?” he whispered. His body tightened perceptibly against hers.

  “Just don’t stop.” Her hips were greedy now, riding his fingers, reliving her memories.

  “Come on, Katie.” He put his own free hand over the fist she had wrapped around him, squeezing it tight, his hips thrusting in time. His forehead pressed against hers. His eyes narrowed with feverish excitement, their blue-green heat burning into her own.

  A tremor of pure pleasure jarred Kate’s entire body in erratic waves, centered against Ty’s relentless touch, radiating out and erupting from her lungs in a feral, otherworldly groan. His touch slowed as her body clenched him tight, but he didn’t leave her.

  “God, Ty.” She gulped for air, trying to regain the use of her limbs. A strong, masterful hand kept her stroking him until she was in control once more.

  “I’m so close,” he moaned, and his fingers inside her trembled, reigniting her excitement.

  “Come on, Ty. Come for me.”

  Her eyes darted from the handsome features of his disbelieving face down between their bodies, at the dark mauve of the head of his cock, the size of him, the thickness, at her own hand as it pleasured him. He lost himself. He slid her palm up to cup his head, squeezing it tight until she felt him come—the scalding, wet heat of his release in her hand—and just as he did she was taken by an aftershock, left bucking a second time against his fingers.

  “Oh, Kate.” He craned his head back as his body stilled. His hands wrapped around her inside her coat, pinning them together. The embrace went on until both their heartbeats slowed again and the heat began to wane. Ty stepped back a pace and drew the zipper up the front of her coat.

  In silence they tidied their clothes, donned their gloves and gathered up the supplies. All at once Kate remembered how cold it was. Ty zipped his own jacket back up and it felt like a door being shut in her face. Their last encounter as lovers. The closing of a brief but overwhelmingly complex chapter. It was almost a relief.

  They walked without speaking for a half mile or more, until Ty shattered the peace, giving a voice to Kate’s sad thoughts.

  “You didn’t answer my question, before.”

  “Which question?”

  “When we get back to L.A.,” he began, cautious, “is it still going to be like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “You know. You and me…”

  “Lovers?” she prompted. “Mmm.”

  Kate made a reckless decision, the choice turning her stomach but seeming the only thing to say. “No, Ty. This was just physical, wasn’t it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “It was. It’s okay. And anyway, I know your schedule. Better than you do. Literally. You’ll be too busy to see me. I’ll be busy, too, working for someone else, if I can’t change your mind. So no. You and me, in the woods—this is all we get.”

  “I see.” He was impossible to read.

  “Don’t worry, Ty. Like I said, it was the hottest sex of my life.”

  “Well. Glad to know it meant something to you.”

  She nodded absently.

  “And that’s all it was to you, then? Satisfying a curiosity?”

  “So what if it was?”

  Ty frowned. “Jesus, Kate…”

  “What?” she cut in.

  “I wish, just once, you’d let me see you with your bloody armor off.”

  “Like how?” she demanded.

  “Just…be vulnerable in front of me. Let me think that there’s some depth to us.…” His eyes roamed her face, pleading. “I want so badly to think that this is more than just professional. And now sexual. You’re my best friend, you know. I trust you more than anybody else in the whole world. Nobody’s as much fun as you, or knows me as well as you do. It kills me that you don’t feel the same way. Just tell me there’s something special here, because I’m starting to think I imagined it all.”

  Kate started. It was exactly how she’d felt that morning. It stirred her. And, oddly, it calmed her.

  “I do think you’re my best friend. I know you are,” she amended. “And it’s not that I don’t trust you…I dunno. I’m just careful.”

  Ty sighed, sounding so defeated it broke her heart.

  “What do I mean to you, Katie? Honestly?”

  The question ripped through her, left her feeling flayed wide-open, exposed. She thought about it, and the word everything was all that came to mind, though it was also far too much to say out loud. Still, all the emotion she’d been suppressing was building, aching to come out before it consumed her. Ty was being straight with her and she owed him a taste of that in return.

  She opened her mouth, hesitated, closed it, then opened it again. “Do you…?” Her throat tightened.

  “Do I what, Kate?”

  “Do you remember, a couple years ago, after we wrapped the first season…?”

  “Mmm?”

  She exhaled a loaded breath, concentrated on her trudging feet. “There was a party. You got tickets from someone at the network to this cocktail party at a trendy bar, after a premiere of some movie or other. We went together because whoever you were dating was out of town and you didn’t want to miss out on free shrimp.”

  Ty smiled. “I remember.”

  “We danced, that night. I was about half-drunk and we slow danced to an old soul song, and it was like prom night for me, for a few minutes.” Her body warmed at the memory. “You were dressed up. You had on a white dress shirt, one I’d bought for you for some other event. You took your tie off about ten minutes into the party and made me put it in my purse because you said it was strangling you. And the top couple buttons of your shirt were undone and your sleeves were rolled up, and you’d shaved. I had heels on but my chin still only came up to your collar, and I rested it there and you smelled…” She had to close her eyes and take another steadying breath from the mere memory of it, even now.

  “You smelled so amazing. It was just your cologne or aftershave, but you smelled like…I don’t know. Like the 1950s. Like Scotch and cedar or something else. Like a film star. You were the best-looking man in the whole bar. In the whole world, and I was dancing with you. It was as if I was in a movie. And you were so warm and you were holding one of my hands and when the song ended I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom
because I thought I was going to cry.”

  Ty didn’t reply, his eyes looking cautious as they darted over her face.

  “And that was the best and worst night of my entire life,” Kate concluded. She shuddered faintly, surprised that sharing this hadn’t hurt the way she’d assumed it would. She tugged on her earlobe, waiting for Ty to make fun of her, but feeling prepared to handle it.

  He cleared his throat and stared off beyond her shoulder, thoughtful. “It was ‘Cruisin,’ by Smokey Robinson.”

  She blinked. “Pardon?”

  “That was the song that was playing. I bought the album the next day. You were wearing a dress the color of…I dunno. Something red, but redder. With little sparkly things near the neck. Your hair was down. It looked so shiny under the lights that I thought my drink must have been spiked.”

  She blushed and stared down at the slushy ground. “I don’t remember what I was wearing.”

  “I do. And you smelled like lilies. Your hands and the skin between your shoulder blades was insanely soft, and when I got home that night I thought about taking that dress off of you and making love to you in my bed. I thought about burying my face in your hair and burying myself deep inside your body and feeling you come against me. And afterward I felt like a complete bastard and I knew I had to break up with Angie when she got back to the city.”

  Kate’s heart pounded, as hard as it had when she’d been in the cab with him on the way back to their apartments that night, drunk on the evening and the champagne and wondering with shameful excitement if he might try to come up to her place. He hadn’t. He’d just said good-night and thanked her for being his last-minute date and said he’d see her the next day for work.

  “You’ve ruined every relationship I’ve tried to have since we met, Katie.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “No, I know. But you did. And you’ll keep ruining them. I won’t even bother trying anymore, actually. There’s no point. I won’t be able to leave the house for a night, anyway, in case it might be the night you decide you’re finally going to come over and be with me again.”

  She swallowed, afraid of everything he was saying. “Don’t.”

  “I can’t be without you, Katie. I’m so lost when you’re not around.”

  “You’ll find another PA,” she said.

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

  She paused. “It won’t work, Ty. We only work now because we’re both in charge.”

  His eyebrow rose. “And what does that mean?”

  “It means the way things are now, we both get to be in control. You’re my boss. But I tell you what to do. You’re going to take away my power and I won’t be able to be this way with you.”

  “I’ve never thought about us that way.”

  “Well, I have. It’s the reason we work. Worked. You only get me if you let me keep this job,” she said, laying her cards on the table.

  “Oh.” She expected a further challenge, but he didn’t offer one.

  “So I guess it’s an ultimatum.”

  “I can’t chance losing you again,” he said.

  “You can’t leave something to chance? That’s a riot, Ty.” The bitterness in her voice shifted the atmosphere between them like a spike in the air pressure.

  His eyes narrowed. “Maybe some things are worth trying to protect. You know, I think a lot of people would say we’ve both got pretty buggered-up priorities, but maybe I’m capable of changing mine.”

  “You know how I feel about change,” she said.

  He frowned outright. “So what do you want, Kate? You want to end up with some man who lets you boss him around and run his life? Is that what you’ll settle for because being the one wearing the pants is so bloody important to you?”

  “It’s your fault I have to settle in the first place.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She warmed to the debate. “We could have been everything together. Partners, lovers, friends. Everything. This could’ve been perfection. You and me, traveling the world, having great sex and a fantastically fun time together, getting paid to do it all. And we still could, if you’d just let me keep my job. Let go of your ridiculous fear about my safety and we can still have an amazing couple of years together before the show wraps.”

  Ty shook his head. “I don’t want you on terms, Kate. I need to believe you care more about being with me than having these…power dynamics.”

  “Yeah, well, this is me. This is how I am. And I won’t change for you or for anybody. I can’t change. Trust me, I’ve tried. I thought I’d buried the old me, left her behind in Massachusetts when I moved to L.A. But I get it now—I’m still her. Different clothes and résumé, but here I am, still following some man around like a masochistic puppy. It’s all pointless. People don’t change.”

  “So you keep reminding me.”

  “Just like you can’t help but try to prove to everybody how brave you are, to make up for what happened when you were a kid.”

  Ty’s posture hitched, as if he’d bumped into an invisible obstacle. “That’s what you think I’m about? That I’m always trying to prove something? You meant that?”

  “That’s what everyone thinks, Ty. And it’s true.”

  “You don’t know me at all,” he said, quiet and stony.

  “Then why? Why, if you don’t have some need to show everybody what huge frigging balls you have now; to make up for what happened?”

  He stopped walking. “I do it because I need to know that I’m not supposed to be dead yet.”

  Kate stopped, too, and furrowed her brow. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means I should’ve been the one who died that day, instead of my sister. And yeah, if I’d been brave enough to take her dare, she’d probably still be around, not me. So every chance I get, I throw myself in front of the bus, because I don’t know if I’m even supposed to be here. And I keep. Bloody. Not. Dying.”

  Kate stared at him, confused.

  Ty went on. “I should have died about a thousand times now. From rubbish I got up to as a kid, and climbing accidents or rushing into other people’s fights, or any other mad thing I’ve done. I’ll do anything, as long as nobody else has to depend on me. And now you—you depend on me. And on this trip I let you down for the first time. I’ve been tempting fate, but now it’s after you. And that’s not okay.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Kate said. “The universe isn’t out to get me, and you’re not, I dunno…immune to dying. You’re wrong, Ty. I mean, if you really believe this is some kind of destiny bull or whatever—and don’t take this the wrong way—why don’t you just kill yourself?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “What doesn’t work what way?” she asked, exasperated.

  “I value my life. But I have to keep testing it. I need to know that it’s okay that I’m still here.”

  “Well fine, Ty. You are supposed to be here. Obviously. The universe wants you alive, so deal with it. Have a happy, safe life and stop torturing yourself.”

  Ty’s eyes scanned the woods, restless. “I really thought you knew me, Katie.”

  “Like I said, I know you. I just don’t understand you. Not the you that you don’t show everybody. But I…I like you when you’re a mess. When you come knocking on my door and you can’t sleep. I wanted to think that I was the only person who got to see that.” She ran her palm over her heart, trying to ease the fear tightening her chest. “I wanted to think you needed me. Just me. Nobody else.”

  He met her eyes. “You don’t think I do?”

  Her foot hit a rock hidden under the snow and she tripped, the cold spray of slush worsening her already lousy mood. “I don’t feel like I know anything anymore,” she said. “But if you’d see my side of things, at least one of us would get our way, Ty. And our lives could just go on the way they have been.”

  “Haven’t you ever messed up, Kate? Hasn’t anything terrible ever happened because of s
omething you did, or something you didn’t do? Haven’t you ever lost anyone close to you and had to plead with the universe to make sense of it?”

  She stopped walking and whipped around to face him. “I’m about to lose someone, yes. And I don’t plead for things, but if I did I’d be on my knees, begging you to see what a huge mistake you’re making.”

  “Haven’t you lost someone, though? Anybody who meant something to you? When your dad left? When your fiancé ditched you? Didn’t you wonder what you could have done to prevent it?”

  “No, Ty, I didn’t. My dad was never really there, even when he was. I lived with my mom for almost twenty years and she wasn’t there, either.” Kate locked her arms around her middle, feeling naked. She watched Ty’s throat move as he swallowed.

  “Was she abusive, or…?”

  “She wasn’t mean…. She just wasn’t…there. She was like a ghost or something. She’d already hemorrhaged whatever love she had in her for eight ungrateful kids and a deadbeat disappointment of a husband. There wasn’t anything left by the time I showed up. I literally went weeks without her even making eye contact with me,” Kate said, hating the unsteady sound of her own voice. “But that wasn’t my fault—it’s just the crappy hand I drew.”

  “But it made you how you are,” he said. “All self-sufficient and independent.”

  Kate gave a cold laugh. “Made me into a smothering, clingy psycho in high school, more like. I befriended and dated anybody who gave me any kind of attention, and all that taught me was that pathetic, needy girls scare the living crap out of people. I don’t miss anyone I’ve left behind, or who’s left me.” And if you leave me, she thought, it’ll be the first time I’ll have to say goodbye to someone who matters. But don’t expect me to grovel. “So there you go. There’s me in a sad little nutshell. Boo hoo.”

  Ty didn’t respond, just held her gaze for a few seconds before he started walking again, taking the lead.

  Kate pushed a long sigh through her nose and felt some relief in the wake of the rant, her anger dissipating in tiny measures along with the vapor of her breath. There were other things she’d have been tempted to tell Ty if he hadn’t backed her into a corner. She’d have wanted to tell him that the fun they used to have on the road was like compensation for all the irresponsible joy she’d missed out on as a child. That those nights he came to her room to be soothed and distracted were the first and only times she’d ever felt needed or valued or wanted in her entire life. With a shake of her head she dismissed the impulse to tell him these things. It was bad enough that she’d let him in as deep as she had.