“Oh, honey that’s so wonderful! June fifth it is. I’ve already written it down on the calendar and I’ll tell your father to put in for that week off from work. Your sisters will all be so excited!”
‘”Calm down mom; the wedding is still a long way off.”
Chapter Three
I came home from the gym feeling happy and invigorated. My physical trainer had switched up my routine and the changes had been fun and empowering. Now I was ready for a hot shower and a quick lunch before heading to the studio for the line readings of this week’s script. We were building tension towards the finale and the plot was getting juicier, with lots of dramatic arguing and I would even get to slap one of my co-actors and kiss another. At first I had worried that on screen kissing might be a problem for Dimitri, but he was a professional actor too and wasn’t the least bit threatened by such things.
“Trust me, honey. It’s not the least bit romantic,” I assured him after my first day of onscreen kissing with a different man.
“Don’t worry; I know how screen kissing can be. I’ve kissed plenty of women on film and none of them sparked the fire in me that you do. I’m secure enough in our love to trust that you feel the same way about me,” he said. Despite his understanding, it took me a while to get comfortable about it, but after one particularly trying day when I ended up having to kiss my costar repeatedly for hours, I finally quit feeling awkward about it and looked at it as just another part of my job. It was no different than getting my hair done, or taking down blocking notes from the director.
I felt really lucky to be engaged to a man who understood what it was like to be an actor. Dimitri never resented it when I came home three hours late from the studio and we missed our dinner reservation. He was never jealous when people recognized me on the street and asked for my autograph. He supported me with unconditional love and understanding, and I was grateful for it every minute of every day.
As Legal Briefs gained in popularity, there got to be more demands on my time. I was asked to be on the cover of several magazines and everyone wanted to interview me. I go to be so busy there wasn’t time to plan our wedding, which was quickly approaching in just a matter of months. Finally, at my agent’s suggestion, I ended up hiring a wedding planner. It felt weird handing over so much of the wedding preparations to someone else. Ever since I was a little girl, I always imagined taking care of everything myself and having my family be involved in everything from making the decorations and cooking the food. The wedding planner, Gloria, assured me that a celebrity wedding required the utmost level of sophistication and grandeur. The price quote she gave to Dimitri for everything she had planned was nearly half a million dollars, but he was willing to pay it as long as it was what I wanted. The thing was, I really wasn’t sure. Gloria assured me a wedding was a once in a lifetime experience and that I shouldn’t feel guilty.
I did feel a little guilty that my career was going so well while Dimitri’s seemed to be at a standstill. Since wrapping up the movie he’d been filming when we first met, he hadn’t had a single job. His agent kept sending him scripts, but none of them were right and so Dimitri kept turning them down.
“I don’t want to act in this piece of shit!”
His angry voice echoed off the imported tile of the floor and the stainless steel appliances as he threw the last one in the trash.
I plucked the script from the trashcan and read through the synopsis while he poured himself a drink. Then I said tentatively, “Maybe you’re being too hard on this script. It sounds like a cute comedy. I bet you’d be great in it.”
“Forget it. I’m done with cute comedies and cheesy action flicks. I want another drama. I want a film that really has something to say. Why isn’t my agent sending me any of those? I’m calling him and telling him not to send me anything without depth, or he’s fired.”
In the weeks since that fight, very few scripts had arrived to the house and the ones that did weren’t what Dimitri was looking for. I could see he was growing more and more frustrated, while my show kept growing in success and was now the number one rated new television drama in the country.
Dimitri had taken to sleeping in later and later and when he did finally get out of bed he left the house and was gone for hours. That’s why it surprised me when I came home from the gym to find him pacing in the kitchen with an excited look in his eye.
“Dimitri, want to join me in the shower and help me make lunch?” I asked him with a happy lilt.
“Not right now. This is it! This is the one I’ve been waiting for!” At first I thought he’d simply had too much coffee, but then I realized he was genuinely exhilarated about something for the first time in a long time. He was holding a script in his hand and I listened as he summarized it for me from beginning to end. It was a mesmerizing story and as I envisioned him in the lead role, I knew he’d be amazing in it.
“That’s a great role. You have to do it!” I kissed him happily.
“It’s more than just a role. It’s the true story of an American soldier and a war hero. In making this movie I would be paying tribute to him and honoring his sacrifices. This is the kind of meaningful work I’ve been looking for. The country needs to hear this man’s story so they appreciate the pain he went through and appreciate what so many soldiers have had to endure. I want this role more than I’ve wanted any role in my life!”
He was pacing the kitchen floor with excitement and I was thrilled for him that he finally found a project he was passionate about. Dimitri was still wound up the next day when his agent and lawyer came to the house with the offer from the movie production studio. As he read the contract, his agent said, “The salary is the highest you’ve ever been offered. You’ll have to go through rigorous training and maintain a specific weight, but the studio will provide a trainer. The filming schedule will be tight, since the location permits were difficult to obtain. There can be no negotiating on the schedule.”
That’s when Dimitri suddenly lost the spark of enthusiasm in his eyes. He handed the contract back to his lawyer and said, “Forget it. I’m out. I can’t do the movie.”
The agent and lawyer looked shocked.
“Why not!?” I asked.
“I’ll have to be out of the country on June fifth. That’s our wedding date.”
“Wait, there has to be a way to make this work,” I said. “Maybe we could get married on location or you could fly back home for a day.”
Dimitri shook his head, “No, it’s being filmed in a very remote area in the middle east. We can’t get married there and it wouldn’t be practical for me to fly all that way just to have to leave again right after our wedding. Marrying you means more to me than that and I want to do it right.”
I knew how much this movie role meant to him too. As touching as it was that Dimitri was willing to sacrifice the movie for our wedding, it was my worst fear being realized. What kind of wife would I be if I let him throw away his dreams and his career to cater to me? Suddenly I knew just what I had to do.
“Well then, we’ll just push back the wedding day until after the filming.”
“What? You don’t want to do that. You’ve been planning this wedding for months and I know what it means to you.” Dimitri looked truly touched by my offer.
I kissed him tenderly on the lips and said, “Gloria has been preparing for months, but this isn’t the wedding of my dreams. I don’t want a big wedding with an overblown budget and lots of publicity. I want a simple wedding with just our family and close friends, and I want the man I love to have just finished filming the greatest film of his career. That’s what I want.”
“I love you so much,” Dimitri beamed at me. “I’ll do anything to thank you for this.”
“Good,” I grinned, “because you can be the one to call everyone and tell the date’s been pushed back.”
“I know one person who will happy about it: my mother.”
The next few weeks the tabloids were filled with speculations about why
we had cancelled our wedding in June. Pictures of me kissing my costars were blown up and cross-sectioned with images of Dimitri glaring with a brooding frown. His mother was quoted as saying, “Good. I’m glad my son has finally come to his senses before he made the biggest mistake of his life by marrying that stripper pretending to be an actress.”
Rumors circled that Dimitri and I were fighting constantly, cheating on each other, and there was even one claiming that I was pregnant with another man’s child. I was devastated and came home crying with a copy of the tabloid wadded up in my hand.
“You can’t let them get to you like this, baby.”
Dimitri poured me a tall glass of Merlot from our wine fridge and I drank it down in noisily gulps between sobs.
“You have to develop a thicker skin against these asshole tabloid journalists. It’s their job to make up lies about celebrities, and the crazier the lie the more magazines they sell. Just ignore it and eventually the story-line fades away. Everyone who knows us understands that we’re still happily together and just doing this until my new movie wraps.”
“I just wish the stupid tabloids new it too,” I sniffed pitifully, but I knew what a huge mistake it would be to tell them. Dimitri and I had decided to release the fact that we had cancelled the June wedding, but we were keeping the new wedding date a secret. We wanted it to be a day just for ourselves and our closest loved ones. There would be no wedding planner or publicized fanfare. I was beginning to understand the price of fame, and privacy was definitely part of it.
Dimitri rubbed my back, soothing away my misery. His loving hands combined with the alcohol in my system and I began to relax. Downing the last droplets from my glass I said, “I wish you weren’t going on location tomorrow. I’m really going to miss you while you’re gone.”
“I’m going to miss you too. This will be the first time we’ve been apart for more than just a few days. I promise to call and Skype as often as I can.”
“I know you will, but it won’t be the same.”
I pouted. Dimitri cupped my chin with his strong hand and lovingly brushed his thumb across my protruding lip. I tilted my head in response to his touch and he brought his face towards mine and slowly kissed me. It wasn’t the quick peck on the lips I was used to now that we’d been living together for so long. It was the long, slow, drawn-out kiss of a man burning with desire and trying to quench it by drinking a woman in.
All my self-pity melted away under that fiery kiss and I ripped at the buttons of his shirt, wanting to feel the skin of his bare chest with my hands. As my manicured nails raked sensuously over his muscles, I heard him groan with pleasure and felt his erection pressing against my hip.
“Make love to me, right here in the kitchen,” I moaned as he slid his hands around my hips and squeezed my buttocks. In response to my words, he hoisted me up onto the kitchen counter and buried his face in my cleavage. I peeled away my blouse and the pink lacy bra I had on underneath and flung them onto the kitchen floor. I leaned back on my palms with my arms stretched behind me on the cool granite countertop, moaning as Dimitri suckled my tits. Then my caught sight of the bottle of Merlot beside me and I got a naughty idea.
Stripping off my skirt, I lay flat on my back along the entire length of the counter and poured a teaspoon of the Merlot into my navel, inviting Dimitri to drink it.
Putting his lips to my ticklish tummy, he slurped the red wine with his lips and then licked my sticky flesh clean. We made a game of it; I would pour small amounts of wine on my body and he would lap me clean. Then it would be mine turn to lick it off his cock. Back and forth we went, until Dimitri had a devilish idea of his own.
Taking the bottle, he yanked off my panties and then poured the bottle over my pussy. I gasped with surprise and pleasure. It was shockingly cold against the hot flesh of my inner body and yet strangely erotic. Then Dimitri put his lips to my pussy and licked the sticky wine clean. Finally he put his mouth to the opening of my tunnel and began to lick the wine from my body.
The activity drove me wild with desire and I grabbed onto him, pulling him onto the sturdy counter and wrapping my muscular thighs around his waist, drawing him towards me. His cock sunk into me easily and we began to thrust and undulate as one. My orgasm came quickly and I writhed on the counter, screaming out his name loudly and bucking my hips.
Before the waves of my climax had even ebbed, Dimitri pulled me from the countertop and bent me over the kitchen table, spreading my thighs wide as he did so. He plunged into me from behind, fucking me with wild abandon until I came again. The waves of my second orgasm came swelling right on top of the first one, so I could barely tell them apart. Then, just as suddenly, he flipped me around to face him and hoisted me up so I was lying on top of the strong oak table. He climbed on top of the table with me and sunk his cock into me again, this time moving slowly and with a deliberate sense of purpose.
“I love you so much. I want to remember the feel of your body when you orgasm and carry it with me to sustain me through the lonely nights,” He whispered as he kissed my hardened nipples succulently with slow movements of his tongue.
He ran his hands over every inch of my body with conscientious movements of his hands, memorizing my every curve. I did the same to him, dedicating to memory the feel of his washboard abs, the sinew of his biceps, the slope of his shoulders, the dimple of his knees, and even the firm roundness of his butt cheeks. All the while we undulated and thrust together in fluid synchronization; our bodies flowed together as one. My third orgasm was even more powerful than my first two had been combined and I recorded every moment of it in vivid color in my memory to hold onto while he was gone.
It would a long hard couple of months without him, but we would both have this afternoon of wild abandon in our kitchen to sustain us. And when he finally returned we would get married; we could both wait that long.
Chapter Four
It was exactly two years later, and I was standing in front of a large mirror staring at the reflection of the beautiful bride looking back at me. Today was the day I had been waiting for, not just for two years, but for my entire life. Dimitri and I were more in love than ever before, and every day it just kept getting stronger. His work as a soldier in The Sands of Afghanistan had earned him an Oscar at the Academy Awards last January, and my work as Veronica Briefs had earned me an Emmy nomination. We both reveled in the praise of being honored for our talents, but that was nothing compared to the nervous excitement and joy I was feeling as I prepared to walk down the aisle.
“You look absolutely beautiful, sweetie.”
My mother smiled at me adoringly as she fluffed the folds of my dress. My entire family had come down from Utah for the wedding and was staying in the house with me while Dimitri had volunteered to stay in a hotel.
“It will be romantic to get married when we haven’t seen each other or been able to make love for an entire week,” he explained to me. “It will heighten the anticipation and make our honeymoon something even more special.”
“We can still get together for a quickie now and then before the wedding can’t we?” I teased him, but he shook his head.
He teased me back, “Who’s being the naughty one now? Enjoy this time with your family. We’ll have the rest of our lives to be together; unless I come to my senses like my mother wants me to and I use this one chance at freedom to disappear.”
We both laughed at the joke and then kissed each other goodbye. The following week was busy as my sisters and I worked frantically to complete all the last minute details of the wedding. The days flew by, but the nights without him were long. Now, the day I’d been waiting for was finally here.
Looking at my reflection I touched my hair gingerly to make sure my long blond hair was secure in the elegant bun my sister Ariel had given me. Soft tendrils had been left loose, curling around my face to frame it to perfection. My sister Angela had done my makeup, carefully applying mascara, eye-shadow, and lipstick to my face, but I didn’t need a
ny rogue for my cheeks because they were already glowing. My younger sister Ashley came running up with my veil in her hands and handed it my mother.
“Here it is Avery! You’re going to look so pretty in Mommy’s veil!” she said, bouncing up and down excitedly the way little girls do. Ashley and my youngest sister Alyssa were both going to serve as flower girls for the wedding and looked adorable in their white organza dresses with princess sleeves and pale blue sashes. A wreath of flowers in pink, blue, lavender, and yellow sat atop their blonde heads, and their baskets of flower petals were ready in the corner, just waiting for the ceremony to begin.
My mother placed the veil of delicate lace upon my head and tears of emotion sprang to her eyes.
“Don’t cry, Mom.”
I patted her hand. “If you do, then I’ll start crying and it will ruin my makeup.”
“I won’t. I’m okay now.”
My mother, blinking the tears back as she embraced me tightly, crushed the bodice of my dress which was made of silk flowers. My slightly younger sister Alexis saw us hugging and pushed us apart, growling in a bossy tone, “If you’re going to cry, take off the dress first. Vera doesn’t create an exclusive design for just anyone and when she offered to give me a job as an intern, I promised her that I would protect that dress! Now no hugging or you’ll ruin the bodice and wrinkle the silk organza layers of the skirt!”
“Sorry.”
I tried to hide my grin as my sisters snickered around her. My slightly younger sister Amy handed both mom and me a handful of tissues to dry our eyes and I dabbed at my face as gently as could, trying not to smudge what was left of my mascara. As Alexis fluffed the layers of my gown, I teased her by saying, “I forgot you’d been turned into the fashion police.”
Stripped Love #6 (BBW Alpha Male Romance) Page 2
