by Anna Bloom
His eyes widen a flash before narrowing into catlike slits as he edges closer. "Slightly above standard? And what standard are you measuring me against?"
Squeaking, I dodge his hands as he grabs for me but I’m not quick enough and his fingers find purchase against my stomach. We rugby tackle to the edge of the sofa, bouncing onto the floor. My hip stings but it’s easy to ignore as his lips crash against mine, his hand sliding around my neck and tilting my head. God it’s sexy, so fricking sexy. I open my mouth, giving him full entry as I wrap my legs around his waist, a burning heat already pooling at the apex of my thighs. I want him. I’ve never not wanted him. It’s an intense, blistering heat which makes me wince with pleasure and pain. I grind my pelvis into his, desperate to generate a friction that can ease the burn, although my thrill at finding him rock hard beneath me makes the burn even worse.
"Fuck, Sophia," he grinds my name through his teeth.
I reel at the tortured gasp of my name and dig my fingers into his shoulders, pulling the soft knit of his jumper into my fists, dragging him closer. Our breath mingles, hot and furious as we circle one another, testing and probing. He tastes of all things. Hot, sweet, mint, tea. Everything all at once.
My skin flushes. All over. Warm and needy, I need his bare hands on every inch of it.
But then there’s the date.
Groaning, I pull away. His lips resist, sucking my lower lip back into his mouth, sliding his hot tongue along the length of mine. My eyes roll back in my head and I shiver impulsively, my heart hammering foolishly within the confines of my chest.
I’ve never felt so alive. It scores through my veins as if I’m feeling sensations for the very first time.
"So that date?" My words muddle. More of a "mwhoof mwhoof shate," than the sentence I’m aiming for.
He grins, and damn if it doesn’t light the room, my heart even. "A date," he says the words as if testing them. I’m wrapped in a cocoon of kissing euphoria and just mumble ahead regardless of how stupid I sound.
"Yes, a date, you know, dinner, drinks." I give a wink. "Sparkling H20 for me, maybe a dance, and then I don’t know." I fan my face, cooling down the hot flush still lingering from his kiss. His eyes sparkle and he grabs for me again. This time I’m fast enough and I roll out of reach. "No, no, no, a date remember…?"
His eyes darken to that unique hue of desire and my stomach quivers. "I’ll take you on a date, Sophia Jennings." He folds his arms across his chest. Man, how that jumper hugs his torso. His erection is all too obvious through the dark denim of his jeans. "But then you’re mine."
"In your mother’s house?" I feign an air of innocence. We both know I’m not that innocent. We both know I want him to take me apart, spread me into the tiniest of pieces like he’d done the day before.
"I’m moving you to the outhouse." Tremors ripple through me, his look is so galvanising. He sees, a smile curving his lip. "And then you are mine, my possession."
My knees weaken with the trembling of my limbs. I know he means it. And God I want him to mean it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sophia
"Sophia, where the bloody hell are you?" I should have known never to pick up the unknown international number.
The girl in the mirror looks different to the one who’d got on the plane a few days before. My hair sits in a knotted, wild beehive on the top of my head and my eyes are bright. And well, I don’t want to look too closely at my cheeks; they are so flushed I look like I’ve been slapped a few times.
"I’m away."
Johnny Fairweather is going to kill my buzz quicker than anything, which is ironic considering he used to be the one to provide it. I offer a polite smile to Amanda perched on the end of the bed in Blake’s not quite bedroom. I follow the ridiculously impersonal smile I normally offer to press, not the sister of my possible boyfriend—I can’t think of the possible boyfriend status it’s too much for my brain to contend with—with a full eye roll. She giggles and continues to rifle through the few bits of makeup I brought over from LA. When I left Blake to get ready for our date, with him muttering about needing to do some things, it had only taken a few minutes for Amanda to make her way to my room and plop herself on the bed. It’s nice.
"What do you mean away? We are supposed to be on set together, now. Like in five bloody minutes. Please tell me this is a fucking joke?"
I don’t answer. I don’t need to. He carries on.
"Please tell me this isn’t about the other night? You wanted to get high, Fee, it was your choice. You need to get over yourself and accept who you are."
"It’s not the drugs," I snap, my voice reverberating around the bare walls. Amanda raises an eyebrow but keeps whistling to herself as she tests my face creams on the skin under her eyes.
"Is it me?" His voice tightens like string on a violin.
Spinning away from Amanda I muffle my response. "It’s not clear cut is it, Johnny?" I sigh. "It’s not right, what we do. You know that."
"It’s just fun, don’t be so bloody precious. We all need to escape this hamster wheel we’re on."
Fun.
"That’s not fun. Can you even remember the night we overdosed? Do you know what happened?"
There’s a deliberate pause, I can sense it. Hesitation hangs suspended between us. "No, do you? We were out of it." Johnny gives a nervous laugh and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
"Listen, I’m just taking some processing time. I need to be clean, you know? I don’t want to lose control."
There’s another pause. "Sure, babe. I get it." He breathes out and I can all too easily envision the plume of smoke surrounding him. Is it cigarettes or weed? I’m beginning to think Johnny’s idea of clean is very different to mine. But then I’m also thinking his moral set is on a different level too.
I need to work that out.
I wish I could remember. Then I could just deal.
"When are you coming back to finish this movie, Fee? You know I can’t do it without you, we are the golden ticket."
My lips meld into a tight smile. I don’t want to be anyone’s golden ticket. "Well, I’m in Wales so I don’t think I’m going to make it to filming today."
"Motherfucker, fucking Wales?"
"Listen, Ted Stein knows. It’s all in hand."
"Sure, Sunshine," he sounds dejected and for a moment I almost feel bad. Then I recall the night neither of us can remember.
"You know, Johnny?"
"Know what?"
"You know that night. You know I was trying to kill myself?" I don’t care if Amanda hears, I want him to know. I want him to know how desperate I’d been lying on that bed, lost.
Amanda’s dark blue eyes land on my face, but it’s the response down the line I’m waiting for. My fingers slip against the phone. "I know."
That’s it.
I have nothing left to give the conversation and I stare at the screen, hitting the red button.
"Sophia?" Amanda walks across the mattress on her knees. Her face is covered in various shades of make-up, a rainbow of beige but it can’t quite make me smile. Instead I dash at tears as they splatter along my cheeks. "It’s okay." She gathers me tight into her arms. Being held by a stranger should be weird, but then real affection is something I so rarely experience it’s strangely soothing. "That explains so much."
"What does?"
"Why he ran back." Her fingers rub my arms with that soothing pattern I always imagined a parent would give.
"What do you mean, ran back?"
"The woman who came here… after she left, he grabbed his stuff and said he didn’t know when he’d be back."
I struggle from her embrace. "He left straightaway?"
Amanda nods. "Yeah, he had a job lined up, but he bunked it."
"Bunked it?" This isn’t an American expression I’m used to. In any other circumstances, I would have found it funny—I’m not even bloody American.
Amanda’s expression draws into pensive l
ines. "What happened, before he came back here? When he left you, the first time. It must have been bad. Mam would never tell me, all I knew… I mean I was only a teenager, the same age as you I guess, but he was mad. He didn’t talk to anyone for weeks when he came home."
That wild thrumming in my heart returns, fluttering at my ribcage until the bones could snap with the pressure.
"I kissed him." I whisper it low. "Then I ran away, and he found me." That look on his face as he’d dragged me from that bed, it haunted me, not dissimilar to when he’d pulled me from Johnny a few days ago. What had I done to him? "He beat up Johnny Fairweather, broke his nose trying to protect my childish virtue. It was the last time I saw Blake."
So many secrets of the mysterious Blake Henderson slot into place. But the fact he would leave, would just up and go because he knew I was in trouble. That. That very fact. It blows my mind.
"Where’s this date?" My demand is loud and shrill, excitement pitching my voice.
Amanda startles but then a slow grin spreads across her face. She’s a softer version of Blake, her nose a feminine upturn, her lips a natural blush. "Sophia, this is the smallest village in Wales."
I’m backing towards the door with her words. "So, I don’t need to get dressed up, worry about my make-up, hair, clean jeans?" I run a hand down the dirty jeans I’ve been wearing for two days straight.
"Uh, no. You are Sophia Jennings. You’re going to cause a traffic standstill, regardless."
"Good." I pull on the door, pacing down the hallway and sliding down the stairs.
"Don’t tell him I told you anything," Amanda calls after me but I’m too busy running to answer, too busy running to Blake.
I slip out the back door of the kitchen, surprised to find the room empty. Since I’ve arrived the only place the Henderson’s seem to sit is in the old farmhouse kitchen filled with the warmth of the range cooker. A blast of wind sweeps my cardigan back and I struggle to catch the edges and wrap it tight around my body.
Down the end of a sloppy muddy path I find a courtyard surrounded by outhouses which must have once been stables. Only one of the converted buildings has a light on so I pound on the door. "Blake, let me in."
A heavy thud echoes from inside and the door swings open, the shape of Blake looming in the door frame surrounded by the warm glow of naked artificial light like a guardian angel.
"Sophia? What’s the matter?" He steps forward, his expression creasing with concern but I grin it away.
"You came back for me?" It’s stupid standing here in the wet gusty courtyard saying such a thing but the revelation has changed the very foundation of my life.
He lifts an eyebrow, a small smile hitching the left side of his lips. "You know I did." He slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His T-shirt clings to his chest and his nipples harden through the thin material in the chilled air.
God, he’s hot. But that isn’t the crux of my epiphany—I already know he’s hot. I’ve known that since I was a young teen and used to fantasise about him kissing me, making love to me. Those fantasies have come true. He’s mine because he came to find me when I needed him.
"No, I mean, you found out I was in trouble and you came without any other thought. And it wasn’t to do with the letters either. It was because of me and what I was doing. What I did to myself. Why?"
In one stride he’s gathering me into his arms, his lips delivering the powerful answer. I know what that answer is. As my mouth opens under his, willingly welcoming him, my arms cling tighter and tighter until I hold him in a death grip of a hug. His own arms tighten, his hard body pressing against mine until we are all meshed together.
He loves me.
He always has.
When he pulls away his endlessly deep blue eyes gaze at me, their depths swimming with emotion. "Don’t you dare say it until I’ve taken you on a date."
I love you.
The words tingle my tongue but I grin and hold them in. "Take me on that bloody date, Blake. Please."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Blake
"What is this?" she asks.
We are outsides the village pub. The sign painted with a red rose swings above our heads. We walked down the lanes to get here, her hand in mine like any other couple. Like she isn’t one of the most famous women in the world. No one had looked, no one had stared. Okay, no one’s been out because the weather is so shit, but still, it was nice. Just to be normal. A guy and a girl out for a walk to the pub.
"It’s the pub," I state obviously, staring between her and the door of the local.
Sophia glances at the leaded windows lit from within by lamps. The diamond shaped glass shines an array of warm tones. "The pub? I can’t drink."
I groan and pretend to be shocked. "Well, duh, they sell soft drinks." This isn’t my comfort zone. Dating isn’t in my zone. I’m more of a loose hook up in a bar kind of guy—if the need takes me. "Are we going in or not? Because right now I’m just freezing my bollocks off in the street."
Sophia snorts. "Okay."
Holding her hand, I push through the door. A responding cheer meets our chilled ears. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom and then I see them. My family. All of them. What a bunch of fuckers.
They’re all laughing, Shayne slapping the table as if he’s told the funniest joke of his life. Like he could tell a bloody joke.
Amanda squeals and bounces up to Sophia, hooking her arm through hers and dragging her to a corner table. Sophia turns desperate eyes to me, but I just shrug. There isn’t anywhere else to go within walking distance and apparently I’m not going to be allowed to have my first date in over a decade in peace. Amanda’s blabbering on at a thousand decibels as she sits Sophia at the dark wood table. "Welcome to the pub." She gestures her hand around as if the pub is Buckingham Palace and I snicker.
Sophia looks around. "Mm, it’s nice." She purses her lips, which is fricking sexy. "It’s very old man like."
The whole family bursts out laughing, again.
The pub doesn’t need to be nice because it’s the only place around. The entire village would come here if it was nice or not.
I groan, dabbing at my forehead which springs with alarmed sweat.
The whole village is going to come.
They’re all going to come on Sophia and mine’s first date. I just know it.
"Sorry." I mouth the word at her as Amanda carries on, excitedly throwing her hands around pointing out sights of interest—which is a joke in itself. Until I see her point to the stage—then it’s not so funny anymore.
By the time I’ve ordered two diet cokes from Sally behind the bar and given her the chit chat about the weather and the fact I’m on a date with a famous actress, in her pub of all places, the space behind me has started to fill. Roger Farris has put the TV on in the corner and the premier league late afternoon match is filling the air.
This has to be the most unromantic date of all time. Sophia may win Oscars but I will definitely win an award for this. Shit Date of the Decade, or something like that.
I perch on the stool next to hers and brush my lips along her neck as I hand her the iced coke. She flushes a beautiful warm pink, and it makes my dick twitch, which isn’t good considering my mam’s sat across the table.
"Nice one, guys, you, as always are truly supportive." I gulp back a glug of my own coke.
"You don’t need to stick to soda for me." Her eyes glance at Shayne and even I double take when I notice the pint of beer in front of him.
"Is that a good choice, Shayne?" I ask, shooting him a questioning glance.
He shrugs and takes a draught. There’s no point saying anything, Shayne does his own thing until such a point that he crashes and we all step in again. I could do without a full on bust up with him during my date. Instead, I lean closer to Sophia, "I don’t mind a coke. I could probably do with it."
"What do you mean?" She clinks her glass so the ice batters against the edge.
"Wh
at he means," Darren smiles above his dog-collar, "is that Blakey here sunk a few too many beers after his return from Tinseltown and now has to be a good boy just like his younger brother." He dips his orange juice at her in salute and grins. She smiles at him politely, before turning her face to me, her mouth poised into a shocked ‘O’.
"It’s nothing, ignore him," I say.
Sophia holds up her hands. "I am not getting between you guys, you are all too boisterous for my liking."
Mam tuts. "You should have been here when they were growing up, black eyes were a weekly occurrence."
"Wow." Sophia sounds awed which probably isn’t the response Mam was going for.
"You’re an only child, yes, Sophia?" Mum sips at her glass containing a short brandy. She doesn’t drink much, but when she does a drop of the hard stuff is her tipple.
"Yep." Sophia’s response is clipped. "Mum and Dad only had enough energy to turn one child into a star."
I knock her knees with gentle knuckles. "I don’t think you were born, and they decided that’s what you were going to be. You just happened to be born with the talent."
Sophia purses her lips again. "I wouldn’t be so sure. I think Mum was practising her fawning in the hospital."
The pub is crammed, a steady stream of locals making it their afternoon business to come to the pub and stare at Sophia. It won’t take long for the dam to fall and for people to start coming over but she doesn’t seem troubled. My bodyguard persona is almost on a shut down. We are so very far from being the people we are in LA. There are no threats here—excluding that of overcrowding in the local pub. She’s relaxed here, happy. I want to keep her untouchable in this little Welsh village forever. We wouldn’t even go as far as the big smoke of Cardiff. We’d just stay here—together.
I want so much to be alone with her. The longer we sit in the pub with her being all sweet and natural—the girl I used to know—the more I want her.
