The row across from us is taken up with two production assistants who are dead asleep, but that’s not to say that whoever’s in the second row couldn’t stand up at any moment and witness what’s happening between Cannon and me.
And it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t. I am appalled. I am horrified at that thought…
…but I’m also turned on.
“That’s right,” Cannon says. “Someone could see. And you would like it.”
I shake my head—no!—but the next moment, I find myself opening my mouth beneath his palm to tease the flesh with my teeth.
“That’s what I thought,” he whispers in my ear, and a hot flush of shame tangled up with desire ricochets through my body, centering in the pulsing space between my legs.
There’s no telling what I might do, up here in the minimal space between earth and sky, so sure of my own death and so sure that this might be career suicide in the event I survive. Cannon—the smell of him, the lines of him—makes me feel wild. Electric.
I put both hands around his wrist and wrench his hand away from my mouth, and maybe he understands what I need, or maybe he just wants it, but his mouth covers mine again, seeking, possessing, teasing, and my chest is filled with an ever-expanding bubble of pure want that presses outward against my ribs, taking up all the available space.
We’re on the precipice of an even greater risk. We’re on the verge of doing something dangerous and destructive, from which there is no coming back, and right now, in the faintest glow of the running lights, I welcome it. Bring it the fuck on. Tear this place to the ground.
Not literally, I think, in case some greater power has heard my thoughts. Keep us in the air.
I reach for my belt buckle. I need to be free of it, to do what Cannon and I are going to do, and—
The lights turn on.
All at once, blazing, burning. Cannon bolts upright with a muttered curse, covering his eyes.
“I’ll begin drink service at the front of the plane,” says the flight attendant.
15
Cannon
Juno sits up when the flight attendant wheels the cart past our row and gives her a wide smile that looks completely feral. “I don’t need anything to drink. Thank you so much.” She’s buzzing with the aftereffects of the kiss. She has to be. I have half a mind to ask the attendant for a bucket of ice to drench myself in. It could take drastic measures to get my cock to stop straining against the ill-advised lounge pants I’m wearing. I did not count on it being this fucking bright twenty minutes into the red-eye.
I did not count on Juno taking things this far.
I thought she might eventually crack. That’s accurate. I thought I’d play her game for the rest of the shoot, and then, somewhere toward the end….
Bless the lord for planes. That’s all I can say.
She takes a careful look around and locks her eyes on the flight attendant, who makes her way through first class at approximately a glacier’s pace.
“Is she ever going to leave?” Juno’s whisper is sensual in my ear, a note of desperation in her voice.
“No.” I twist in my seat. “And I think I’ll call her back for some coffee—”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Juno’s hands come down on mine, pulling it back toward my lap, and in the ensuing tug of war, her knuckles brush against the rigid outline of my cock.
I stop her hand with mine and her eyes meet mine, huge and green in the intense light. “You don’t want to start that game with me.”
She opens her mouth a little, the tip of her tongue darting out to lick her lips. “Maybe I do.”
“Maybe?”
I lower her hand toward the front of my pants again. This is a risky move—I learned that a long time ago at the fondue restaurant—but there’s nowhere to go on the plane, and I’m not holding any silverware. “There’s no quitting this game. Quitting and walking away would be the most unprofessional move you could possibly make.”
“Hmm.” Her hand trembles in mine. “What would be the most professional move I could make?”
“You could let go of my hand right now and spend the rest of the flight pretending to sleep, without sharing so much as my armrest.”
“What would you do in that scenario?”
“Pretend to study script notes on my phone. And I wouldn’t touch you. I wouldn’t hold your hand when we touched down.”
There’s a flare of fear in her eyes and I almost call it off, right then. I almost lean forward and whisper in her ear that I’m fucking with her, that given the chance, I’d touch her every second of the day. I’d pull down every shield that holds her back from me until she was completely exposed, and then I’d make her love that raw feeling.
“No bullshit.” I give her hand a little squeeze. “Is that what you want?”
She takes a deep breath. “It’s what I should want.” Her eyes dart to the side, a quick scan to see if anybody’s looking this direction. I can’t see if they are, and in this moment, I don’t give a fuck.
“What do they matter?”
“They? Who?” Her eyebrows draw together in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Whoever’s telling you what you should and shouldn’t want.” My lip curls in disgust. “Nobody gets to tell you whether you want this or don’t want it.”
“I shouldn’t… deserve it.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It’s too… it’s too risky, career-wise, to even…” Juno looks down into her own lap. “To even touch you. If it were anyone else on the planet, it’d be a scandal of epic proportions. Nobody sleeps with their lead actor and gets away with it without tainting the entire film and everything that comes after it.”
“That all sounds like a list of excuses to deny yourself.”
Juno lifts her chin. “What, exactly, would I be denying myself? If I chose… all that. Over this.” She nods towards our hands, her face impassive, but I notice she hasn’t made any move to let go.
I tilt my head to the side. “It’s hard to put into words.”
“Do your best,” she says, and the thin thread of hope in her voice is like a chime through clear summer air.
“You’d be denying yourself this.” Instead of pushing her hands down toward the thick pulsing length of me, I raise her knuckles to my lips and kiss them. “And this.” One tug of her hands, and she’s leaning forward enough for me to brush my lips against her temples. “And this.” Now I do let go of her hands, but only so I can cup her face in my palm and bring her body close enough to lick the length of her neck. If she’s already forgotten the hot, desperate make-out session we had in the dark, now is the perfect time to remind her.
“Cannon.” She groans the name in a breathy whisper that sounds nothing at all like her director voice. “The lights are on. We can’t—”
“We should care that the lights are on. That’s right. But the seats are tall and you…” I swirl my tongue over her earlobe and she gasps, her body bending to fit the curve of mine. “You’re too delicious not to taste.”
“Do you…” She’s putty in my hands. “Do you say that to all the girls?”
“There are no other women but you. Take a look around, if you want to prove it to yourself.”
“But I’m—” I run a hand down her back, arching her toward me in a way that makes me want to explode. Curse the fact that I didn’t hire a private jet. Curse the fact that I can’t take her into the bedroom and have my way with her. Let her have her way with me. “I’m the director. This is my movie. If anybody sees…” That thought seems to sink in, and Juno struggles to sit up. “Oh, God. If anybody sees, I’m completely fucked. It’s practically broad daylight, and—”
The lights go off again.
It’s a taunting asshole, this plane, but in the surge of darkness, I hear it. The beverage cart rattling into place. The flight attendant sitting down in her jump seat. The even breathing of most of the people around us. They don’t give a shit. They’
re exhausted, and they don’t have anything worth staying awake for.
“Oh, look,” I say. “It’s dark again.”
Juno opens her mouth to protest.
“Oh, look,” I say. “You’re begging to be kissed.”
Before she can say a word, I claim those lips for my own one more time, and Ice Queen Juno Anderson, Director of Homeland and Supreme Worrier About Professionalism, parts her lips and lets me in.
* * *
We get off the plane in California in the dark at the same time, local, that we took off, and by the time the landing gear makes contact with the runway, Juno is back to business.
She uses the camera on the front of her tablet to fix her hair, which I’ve made a hundred times messier on the flight. And not from joining the mile-high club. That was one line she wouldn’t cross.
“There’s a door with a lock on it right there,” I murmured into her ear an hour into the flight.
“There’s a plane full of colleagues and coworkers right there.” She’d pointed in the opposite direction, then tugged me back down for another kiss, as silent as we could make it. She did her level best to keep her clothes from brushing against the seats, to keep our heads below the backrests, and every time the running lights flickered on, she balled my hoodie in her fists and shoved us both upright.
Two hours in, she pulled out a tablet and opened the movie app.
“You’re kidding me. You want to work right now?”
“If anyone looks at us,” she said evenly, “I want them to see us looking at dailies together. At some point, we have to create the illusion that we’re being…” She cleared her throat. “Professional.”
Sure. She was professional, with her lips swollen from my kisses and her muscles trembling from a release I couldn’t give her. Not there, in front of everyone. I wouldn’t bet on her ability to stay silent in the face of my considerable talents.
Not to sound cocky.
I’d adjusted myself in the lounge pants and stared down at the tablet. “You’re not actually going to make me watch dailies, are you?”
“I don’t know. Would you consider it torture?”
“I don’t know. Would you be into that?”
Juno gave me a hard look, and then her nose wrinkled. “No. I wouldn’t be into that.”
It was dark enough on the plane to ask. “What would you be into?”
She pressed her lips together, and I knew that if it were broad daylight, she’d be beet red. “That’s… classified information.”
I’d snorted. “Classified information? What are you, a state secret?”
“I can’t tell you that. You’d use it against me.”
“What am I, an undercover operative?”
“Who knows?” Juno teased darkly. “You might be.”
She was kidding… wasn’t she? I put my hand on hers. “Do you really think I’m out to get you?”
“I think… I think most people want you to prove yourself. And you haven’t really… wanted me to do that. So, I don’t know. Maybe you have some ulterior motive. Maybe you want me to guarantee you a part in all my movies until I get old and die.”
“Please, no.” I let my head fall back against the headrest. “That’s too much seriousness for me. I already miss the romantic comedies. I got to wear suits.”
“You get to wear a suit in this movie.”
“For one scene. I don’t know if you know this, but military isn’t really my look.”
“I beg to differ,” Juno said into the screen of the tablet.
“What?” I put my thumb under her chin and turned her face toward mine. “You like me in that costume?”
She’d frowned, but her smile fought for dominance. “This is a leading question. It’ll bring me right back to what I like in a man. And what I like in a man….”
“Is me.”
Juno had breathed in slowly, letting me take more of the weight of her head in my palm. “That would be a dangerous thing to admit.”
“Admit it. Or”—I lowered my head toward her neck—“I’ll force a confession.”
Her breath had hitched. “No. I won’t say it.”
“You have no choice.” I let the words trail down the side of her neck and curve up toward her collarbone. “Admit it, Juno. I’m the man for you.”
“No.”
I’d slipped a hand up the front of her shirt, shoving aside her bra and circling her nipple with my thumb and forefinger. It already stood out in a peak away from her skin and she sucked in a loud breath that I caught in my mouth.
“Okay, okay.” Juno broke away, panting. “I admit it. You’re the kind of guy I want.”
“Not good enough.”
“You’re the kind of guy I need. There. Is that enough? Is that—”
I kissed her again then let her show me a movie on her tablet—a romantic comedy.
* * *
In the new hotel room, I stare at myself in the mirror and wonder how the hell I’m supposed to fall asleep.
The bed calls to me, but after the flight with Juno, it seems vast and empty and cold.
It’s just past six thirty.
In the adjoining room, someone opens a door and lets it swing shut.
Christ, I want her.
But when we got off the plane, she’d huddled close to Maggie and started going through the preliminary checklist for the night’s shots. We’d ease into it in the golden hour then hit the schedule hard tomorrow.
I ache for her.
I want to run through the hotel, pounding on doors until I find her room and kick it in.
Instead, I do the professional thing and get some sleep.
The dreams I have, however? Those are utterly filthy.
16
Juno
“Cut.” The action on the set doesn’t stop on a dime, so I shout it again, stepping toward the front of the camera. “Cut, cut, cut, cut. Everybody, take five. Hunt, meet me at my trailer.”
We have been shooting for seven days.
Seven grueling, exhausting days of desert shot after desert shot at the Red Hills Ranch an hour north of LA. I wake up every day impressed at what they’ve got going on—a permanent FOB set, which we’ve been using for all the deployment scenes, and a Middle Eastern village. It looks enough like the mountains to telegraph that way on screen, and when the dailies come in, I’m swept away every time by how closely we’ve captured the feel of it.
But nothing—nothing—can capture the frustration of being so close to Cannon and yet so far.
It’s a frustration I can’t contain, can’t control.
My only option is to give in.
I stalk toward my trailer, scowling at my notepad, and use every bit of my limited acting ability to tell anyone who might be watching that I am furious with Cannon Hunt. That he is exactly what I expected out of a too-beautiful B-List actor and he is on my last nerve.
I don’t look back to see if he’s following. I hear him say “I don’t know, man,” probably to someone on the crew, and let my feet fall heavily on the steps of the trailer. The metal handle of the door is hot under my palm when I yank it open and throw out a sarcastic arm to usher him inside, pulling it shut behind us with a bang.
“You need to step up your game.” I stab my fingers toward his chest, tossing my notepad onto the counter.
“Specifics, Juno. You’re going to have to give me specifics.” His voice is loud, carrying, and it moves right through me.
“Run the scene again. Right. Now.” I stamp my foot a little to make the trailer vibrate, for effect, and then Cannon sweeps me right off the floor.
His grip is crushing, powerful, and I can feel every line of his body against every curve of mine as he manhandles me toward the sofa, mouth hungry on mine.
He is filthy. The makeup we have him in is meant to represent desert warfare, and it’s hot as hell outside. Every inch of him radiates a pure animal energy that I cannot get enough of.
It’s becoming a problem.
&n
bsp; “You are so irritating,” I say into his ear, as I rake my fingers across his back, clutching his shirt in my hands.
“Irritating?” He takes my jaw in his grip. “You are infuriating. Standing behind that camera all day with that look.” He mimics me, narrow eyes and pursed lips. “Jesus. It’s like I can’t do anything right.”
“It’s not like you can just do everything you want. You’ll have to get over that.” I force the words out even while he trails slow kisses down the side of my neck.
“I want to do more of this.”
“I don’t—” Cannon’s hands are everywhere, glancing over the front of my hip bones, pulling me closer by the curve of my ass, and it is so tempting to lock the door and spend the rest of the day in here with him. Screw the hotel. Who has time to go back to the hotel?
He turns and I straddle him, taking his face in my hands, and kiss him again. It’s torture not to be able to bite him, but that might show up on camera, and then we’d both be screwed. Lots of things could feasibly happen to a person in the desert. Getting bitten by your movie’s director is not one of them.
An alarm bell sounds in the back of my mind. Over the course of shooting this movie, I have become ultra-aware of how long five minutes is, and I try my damnedest to run a tight ship. I dip my head down to Cannon’s one more time, tasting the saltiness of his lips, then jump to my feet. It’s only a few steps to the bathroom, where I can make sure my hair is suitably haphazard, and Cannon groans behind me.
“Do you have to be so abrupt about it? Nobody would notice if one day you said ten minutes instead of five.”
“They would, and you know it.”
“I know that this little arrangement is driving me slowly insane.”
“Really?” I prompt. He’s standing in the center of the trailer by the time I get back to him. I reach out and straighten his shirt. “It’s the only thing keeping me sane.”
Cannon studies me, his dark eyes wells of heat and want. “It barely takes the edge off.”
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