by Pamela Ann
“You’re such a worry wart. Should I be worried? I think we got our roles reversed here.” I laughed, clasping his hand with mine as we started to walk.
A regular July summer was scorching and today was no different, but the trees and the soft breeze made it bearable and less stifling.
Bass guided me towards rows and rows of lemon trees, the citrusy smell made me feel light and cheery, as we weaved around to get to the ruined theatre.
When we reached our destination, Bass was like a kid, all giddy with joy and excitement. He was descending down the stairs until he reached the time-withered stage. “Amazing how acting started out like this. Crazy how it’s evolved isn’t it?” he boomed out, voice echoing around us, as if in a tunnel.
“It is,” I replied, distracted as I started to check out the ruined area of crumbling stones to my left. I was lost in thought, thinking how unfortunate it was that such an important part of history was left unattended. I suppose there were a lot of these theatres scattered in all these islands everywhere in Europe.
“Emma,” he echoed.
I spun around, questioning. “What?”
“I’m so fucking knee-deep, obsessively and passionately, crucial about forever in love with you.”
Biting back a huge smile, I bellowed out, “WHAT? I can’t hear you!”
“I said, I’m falling in love with you!”
“WHAT? You’re appallingly ugly to be with me?” Shaking my head in understanding. “That’s okay. I know I’m too hot to handle!” My laughs couldn’t be held back anymore.
“Emma!” he growled when he saw me running up the steps, away from him and his declaration.
I was running and laughing past the lined trees, knowing quite well he’d catch up to me any second now. Just when I saw the spot where he situated our things earlier, I felt a quick tug of my bikini top, and in a flash, I was topless. Without looking back, I pulled my arm up to cover my breasts, screaming in delight as I ran towards the blanket. Just before I reached it, Bass tugged on the strings of my bikini bottom. Now, I stood there in utter shock of his audacity as he wickedly smiled at me, with his phone in hand and the video camera rolling.
“Stop that! I’m naked!” I started to giggle when I tried to take the phone away from him.
Bass was relentless and had no care in the world. “It’s just us here. Now, be nice and smile for the camera.” He was pushing us towards the blanket until we were sitting on it. “Now say, Bass, I’m crazy about you.”
Seriously? I could do better than that. I bit my lip, blushing profusely, but instead of looking into the camera, I sought his eyes. “I love you.”
He made a guttural sound while shoving the phone to the side, kissing me whilst laughing like we were teenagers. “You’ve made me the happiest man on the planet.” He then planted kisses all over my face. “I’m so relieved to let that off my chest. I thought I was going to suffocate with it. I couldn’t hold off any longer.”
“I’m glad that’s out. I was going batty with it, too,” I managed to say before he devoured my lips again. He started to decline his body until his back hit the blanket.
“Beautiful,” he murmured as his eyes roved over me. “Ride my face, moro mou. I want to worship you with my tongue.”
His hands were holding my hips as I lowered myself against his lips. His hot tongue snaked out, focusing on my sensitive core before he sucked on it, groaning like a famished man. I was biting my lip as I watched him, watching me. Without breaking our gaze, his hands went behind my butt cheeks, gripping them with his fingers as he gently rocked it against his hungry mouth. It felt weird, but good.
“Stop thinking and just enjoy it, moro mou.”
This time when he pushed me down on his mouth, his tongue stabbed inside my wet channel, making me gasp for more. I felt myself get wetter as he grounded in between my hips and I endured the fierce lashings of his tongue. My hips started to move slowly, gradually, as my senses centered on one place. His tongue and the magic it brought out of my body... I threw my head back when the motion became faster. The more I became frenzied, the harder his ministrations became. The heavy knotting of my womb was intense as my body prepared for release.
“Bass,” I yelled as my face burned from the heat of the sun and from the heat my body was generating this instant. I bellowed his name into the sky when his fingers roughly tugged on my nipples, opening the gates to my ecstasy.
With a shaky body, I slid off him and rolled onto my back, exhausted. I was panting wildly when Bass decided to whisper into my ear. “You look so beautifully wild and impassioned.”
Gazing up to the man who made me believe again, I felt content, happy and satisfied with him. Out here, just the two of us, with our love and our laughter. I wanted us to stay like this, forever. “You’ve turned me into a sex fiend, Bass. Always aching and throbbing for you.”
“It throbs because I don’t give your cunt time to recover after orgasms. Usually, it takes a couple of days to heal, but I don’t give you that concession. I need it wanting, throbbing and pulsing as it awaits my return.”
I smacked the side of his head with my bikini top. “God, you’re so cocky. Don’t you ever get tired?”
“Hey! Don’t condemn the person who only speaks the truth.”
“Are you insinuating that my vagina is a Basswhore?”
“Only whore to me and no other man’s, Emma.”
“Yep, you are cocky, indeed.”
The rest of the afternoon, we spent eating, swimming and enjoying each other’s company. He even brought one of his aged paperback collections. Reading me A Lemon by Pablo Neruda, delivering it with no staccato.
He preferred the musky scented prints instead of the brand new ones or the e-readers. He even told me that every time he’s in Paris, he usually spent a lot of it in bookstores. Bass was a deep person and, at times, his passionate nature still surprised me. I wasn’t sure if it was the European way of schooling, but I noticed how Dimitris, Taylor and Bass discussed Puccini like it was a normal pastime. For the life of me, I couldn’t picture the guys in my school, like Cooper or Brody, talking about anything other than sports and women.
Just before sundown, we started to pack up to leave this memorable island, but before hopping back on the speedboat, I unceremoniously gave him a hug. “Thank you for this amazing date, Bass. I will never forget this.”
Or lemons for that matter.
From here on out, each time I see a lemon, I will be forever reminded of him and this treasured memory.
Chapter 4
A week later…
“Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.”
- Diane Arbus
Emma
I suppose things were just running too sweet around here, I should’ve expected little waves of arguments between us, but I didn’t and haven’t thought of it because I was in my happy place. However, I was wrong about the little waves because what was coming towards me wasn’t little, it was a blasted, fucking tsunami.
I was in the kitchen, trying to open a bottle of wine, when Bass slammed papers on the counter. Images of Carter and me in the British Museum were printed out in some magazine article headlined New Actress Takes A Break Filming Blasphemous to be with Long Time Beau. Bass looked at me with murder in his eyes, nose flaring, ready to attack. “You’re a great actress, Emma. I give credit where credit’s due. You even had me fooled.”
Oh, fuck. Dropping the metal opener in shock, I started to reason with him. “Bass, this is not what it looks like. I swear to you! Carter surprised me when he wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. That picture—it’s not—I wasn’t happy about it. These photos are deceiving.”
Bass looked me up and down with venom in his eyes before he spun around and left me in the kitchen, reeling.
Distraught, I followed him, yelling, “Bass! Please! Let me explain!” However, he wasn’t listening, he was heading outside to the patio and I just
barely caught up with him when I managed to grab his arm. “Let me explain! You’re not being fair!”
He finally stopped walking and started glaring at me with such profound anger, I started to shake. “You talk about fair? All I have ever done since I met you is play fair. I respected you and placed you on a high pedestal with me kneeling at your feet.” He moved closer to my face, his own darkened with savage ferocity. I swore I could feel the heat of his rage steaming off him. “A few days without me, that’s all it took, and you’re with him. It’s always going to be him, isn’t it? I was that moron who thought you could move on and be with me.” His words pierced me some more before he continued on, “Clearly, I was dreaming and woke up with this fiasco.”
“It’s complicated, Bass. This is—this is difficult for me, too,” I choked out, trying my hardest not to cry.
“Okay, be honest with me here, Emma. Are you still in love with Carter? And don’t you dare lie about it, either. I deserve to know the truth.”
I knew each second that ticked, he was gauging everything about me. Each reaction my body showed him, he was going to hold it against me. And I had to tell him the truth. I owed it to him. With a heavy gut-wrenching sigh, I spoke, “My heart holds you both… but you more.”
That earned me a cruel laugh. He laughed so hard I was starting to think he was going crazy. “Good God! That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. What in the world are you talking about, woman? Who has the capacity to love two men at the same time? I’m at a loss for words here.”
Good thing one of us found it laughable because I certainly wasn’t laughing. “It isn’t that easy for me, Bass. You haven’t loved anyone before. You don’t understand the difficulty of my situation.”
“I told you in the very beginning, I didn’t do half and half, Emma. I want you to love me the way I love you, completely, devastatingly yours—all yours.” He then touched over my heart before continuing. “This… this can’t have other men in it. I will not settle for only a half of it. I want it all. Every single beat, rhythm, pulse and burn—mine to have.”
“It will. Give me time with my feelings for Carter. It’ll go away, Bass.”
Bass wasn’t in the slightest bit convinced with my retort. “What if it won’t, Emma? It’s been months now and still the result is practically the same. Do you expect me to wait about and see if you’ll only want me this time and not him, again?” Bass screeched with seething anger. I could practically see the outline of his neck veins bulging out. He was red with anger.
“It will. I know it will.” I urged, but miserably failed to convince him. The urge to reach out to him was so strong, I felt desperate.
“Huh, interesting.” He looked away from me for a second before his azure gaze caught mine. “Where did Carter sleep, Emma?”
That killer of a question made me bite my lip for a second before I responded to his interrogation. “Bass… it’s not like that at all…” Fuck! I was messing this up so bad. I was so unprepared for this kind of confrontation. Where do I even begin?
His nose flared as he flashed me a look that shot daggers at me. “No, no. I get it. I was never good enough. No matter how hard I tried to make you happy, I simply couldn’t achieve that… because I’m not him.” His voice was enough to break me, but those beautiful blue eyes, filled with pain, definitely killed me. “Be with him. I’m not going to come in between you two. I’ve done that twice now. It’s high time I stop. You are clearly taken and I was too blinded by everything to see it for what it truly is. I can’t deal with this anymore, Emma.” He started walking towards the beach. “Don’t wait for me.” Those were his parting words before I had even realized what those words truly meant. It was a double entendre.
I waited, though.
For the whole night, I waited, but he never came back. If my thoughts strayed along the lines of Bass spending the night with another woman, I pushed it away, convincing myself that he wasn’t going to do anything drastic. Bass wasn’t like that. Even if he was hurting, he wouldn’t do that. He just wouldn’t. Bass wasn’t Carter. That’s why I liked him, right?
I spent my entire Saturday crying and rehearsing everything I wanted to tell him. How I wished things weren’t complicated with me. It was, though. Wishing it away wasn’t going to help my cause.
Fraught with emotions, I sat on the patio all Saturday night, hoping he’d come home. Even the beautiful scenery and the lulling sound of rolling soft waves didn’t help ease my tension. All hope was lost in me when the time struck one in the morning. I finally gave up and went to bed with a severe heartache. Sleep evaded me, so I laid there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for a sign—any sound—that would indicate that he was back.
I watched the time as three turned to eight in the morning, still with no sign of him. My entire Sunday was unproductive since I pretty much didn’t want to move. I situated myself on the patio again, trying to read a novel to no avail. So, I waited with my thoughts as my companion.
Bass finally came back at midnight, drunk as hell and incoherent, with only his pants on. What the hell happened to his shirt? “Where have you been? I was worried all weekend.”
“Trying to forget you. I don’t want to think about you with him, in bed together. Holding you like you belonged to him because guess what? You were his and I tried to steal you away. You know why?” He started laughing before he leaned against the wall, eyes closed. “Because I was stupid to fall for a woman who had another man in her heart.”
Forget me, how? “Can we please move past this and start over?”
Bass made a light snort at my suggestion. “You clearly have a big heart. So big, you forgive people easily. So big, you hold two men in it, but mine isn’t that big, Emma. Nor is it forgetful.” He spoke with a scathing tone before releasing a shattered sigh. “I’m done talking about this farcical subject. Goodnight.” He uttered with profound finality before heading towards his bedroom.
I get that he was angry, but was he really going to throw what we had away? I tried to convince myself that he needed time, but as the days went by, I was losing hope.
E
“Cut!” the clapperboard woman called out in the background.
Bass instantly let go of me like I was diseased. His eyes were stormy and menacing after that heated kiss we just played out. The scene today was about Angela and Logan getting into a fiery fight because he wanted her to leave her husband for him, but she was hesitant and scared to do so. Shooting it was emotional because Bass was truly channeling his anger on that score. Somehow, it felt like Bass was directing the words to me, to our personal relationship, and not the characters that we were portraying.
We had an hour break before we started filming again. I had just plopped in Ant’s chair, ready for my touch-up, when he tsk-tsked me with a raised brow. “What?”
“We need to get you some ice, sweetie. Your lip is bleeding.”
It was? I wondered as I pushed myself closer to the mirror to inspect the wound. True enough, there was a teeny cut. My entire lip, though, looked seriously swollen. Odd, I didn’t even feel a thing.
Ants strode towards me and handed me an icepack. “Too passionate, perhaps? He’s never done this before.” Of course Ants would know. He’s been doing my make-up since the beginning. So he knew this was clearly personal.
“Come sit. I’ll do your hair first,” he said, tapping the chair for me to follow him. He was humming quietly as he fluffed my hair and got to work. I was lost in thought about the encounter with Bass earlier when Ants interrupted my train of thought. “Emma, I really like you. I think you’re a genuine person and I feel somehow protective of you. You know that, right?”
Why was he using a tone that was going to bring bad news? “Thank you, Ants, but will you please finish what you were saying?” I rushed out, anxious.
“There’s a lot of speculation around here as to why Bass left you. Since you two weren’t really official, the rest just speculated. When Bass started hanging out
around the rest of the other actors and the crew, it’s practically fair game. The women here are getting competitive to see who can get Bass to have sex with them first. This is a common thing around Hollywood. Bass Cole is a young, hot piece of ass that’s loaded with millions.” He paused and looked straight at my reflection in the big, lit-up mirror. “If it’s worth fighting for, then get your man back. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
A bet to get Bass in bed… did any of them succeed? My blood ran cold as the heavy feeling in my stomach started to drop while my heart pounded like I just ran for miles. “We had a fight… he’s not talking much. He tries to ignore me whenever possible.”
“Well, honey, just look at your lip, hmm? Is that an act of a man who doesn’t want you? He still does, Emma. Use that to your advantage. Do what other women do to get their men back.”
“I’ve begged, but he’s not listening. I don’t know what to do, Ants. I feel helpless.”
“I’m talking about sex, silly. Use that as a weapon. It’s a trick done since the beginning of time. Just get on your knees and blow him like he’s your master. Make him feel wanted. Make him feel special. Men love to see their partner submit to them, in exchange, he’s going to be the same with you. Give and take, you know? Totally an easy plan.”
Not easy, nope, not from where I’m standing. How do I even approach him with that kind of offer? “I don’t know if it’ll work,” I whispered with uncertainty.
“Girl, you won’t know if you don’t try.”
Ants had a point. It was worth a shot.
E
When I heard the loud thud of the door being opened and closed, I knew right then and there that he’d been drinking again. Where does he go? At one of the tavernas or in someone’s bedroom?
Provoking thoughts prevailed over reason when I decided to get out of my bedroom and confront him. Without knocking on his door, I drastically yanked it open. “How many women have you nailed since me?”
