by Witt, L. A.
She returned the smile, and it seemed genuine this time. Then she turned toward the cluster of lighting, equipment, and crew members.
Levi cleared his throat. “I guess we should get back to work.”
“You know what? We’ll just shoot with the stunt doubles tonight.” She grinned. “Why don’t the two of you cut out early? Sounds like you could use a little time to decompress.”
“Decompress?” He chuckled. “Is that what kids are calling it these days?”
“I can still change my mind, you know. If—”
“We’re going, we’re going.”
Anna laughed. “Come here, you.” She hugged him. “I’m glad things worked out.”
“Even if it messed up your shooting schedule?”
“I mess that up more than everyone else, so . . .” She shrugged as she drew back. “Just promise me you guys can do this scene tomorrow night without eye-fucking each other the whole time.”
“Deal.”
“Good. Now get out of here.”
“All right, I’m going.”
She started toward the set. “I’ll send Carter your way.”
“Thanks, Anna.”
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
She disappeared over the bluff, and a moment later, Carter came into view, backlit by the glow of the set as he made his way to Levi. The closer he came, the more his features materialized in the low light, and his smile made Levi shiver.
“So I guess we have the night off.” Carter put his arms around Levi’s waist. “You didn’t actually ask her for—”
“I swear to God, I didn’t. She offered.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m serious. But as long as we have the night off . . .” He leaned in slowly, and didn’t care who saw them.
Before their lips met, Carter stopped him with a hand on his cheek. “You know there’s no turning back now, right?”
“Do you want to turn back?”
Carter let his hand slide off. “Fuck no.”
“Neither do I.” Levi pressed his lips to Carter’s. He didn’t know which was more liberating—finally coming out to God and everyone, or resolving things with Carter. All he knew was, he hadn’t felt this good in a long, long time.
Carter met his eyes. “We should get out of here.”
“Your place or mine?”
“Hmm . . .”
Levi grinned. “The marina’s not far from here.”
Carter returned the grin. “Meet you there.”
They didn’t even bother getting out of their costumes. Levi had shed his muddy, bloody jacket, but otherwise, they were still dressed as Gabriel and Max as they stepped from the pier onto the boat.
The second they were in the cabin, they were in each other’s arms. There was no coyness like last time. No uncertainty. They tore at each other’s clothes as they kissed hungrily, and more than once, Levi considered shoving Carter up against the counter, dropping to his knees, and sucking him off.
But the bed was only a few feet away, and there were condoms and lube there, and if he didn’t fuck Carter soon, he was going to go out of his mind.
“Bed.” He nudged Carter back. “Let’s . . . bed . . .”
Carter got the message. He grabbed Levi’s belt and pulled him the rest of the way. They tumbled onto the small bed, half-dressed and already out of breath.
Levi kissed his way down the side of Carter’s neck. “Fuck, I was crazy for thinking I could stay away from you.”
Carter sucked in a breath like he was about to speak, but then Levi gently bit his collarbone, and he shivered.
“I want to fuck you so bad right—”
“Yes, please.”
“I swear to God,” Levi murmured, “I don’t usually skip foreplay.”
“It’s been foreplay since the night we met.” Carter squirmed under him, grinding their clothed erections together. “Just fuck me.”
“Get out of those clothes—” Levi nipped his shoulder “—and I will.”
They both got up and stripped away the last of their clothes. Carter grabbed the condoms and tore one off the strip, and as he tried to put it on, they came together in another breathless kiss. Like last time, it was a struggle to get the condom on while they made out, but they managed, and once it was in place, Carter murmured, “Want me on my knees?”
“I liked how we did it before,” Levi said between kisses. “With you on your back.”
Carter pulled in a breath and dragged Levi down on top of him. They ground together and kept making out, and Levi was in heaven, except he wasn’t inside Carter yet.
Though it meant breaking the kiss, Levi sat up and pushed Carter’s legs farther apart. He put on some lube, but as he started to put some on Carter, Carter grabbed his wrist. “C’mon. I don’t . . . I can’t wait.”
Levi wasn’t going to argue—Carter knew his own limits.
He guided himself in, and they both moaned as Levi found a slow, easy rhythm. Carter took him easily, and then Levi was fucking him good and hard and deep, and thank God they had more condoms because they weren’t going to need this one for very long.
But then Carter drew him into a kiss. And Levi slowed down. And then he stopped. And just like the first time they were together, Levi was too overwhelmed to do two things at once. When he focused on kissing Carter, his rhythm fell apart, and when he focused on fucking him, he couldn’t remember how to kiss at all. He didn’t care. They were touching, they were moving together, and if they weren’t multitasking like porn stars, then oh fucking well.
Carter broke the kiss with a gasp. He arched under Levi, eyes shut tight, and Levi moved faster, his own head spinning as Carter’s face flushed and his whole body trembled.
“Oh . . . fuck . . .” His fingers dug into Levi’s shoulders. He rolled his hips just like he’d done the other night, nearly driving Levi out of his mind.
Carter whimpered, and suddenly he was so fucking tight, Levi could barely move inside him, but he did keep moving, and it felt so good, so goddamned good, so perfect, he didn’t even fight it as his orgasm took over. He kept thrusting until he couldn’t move anymore, and then sank down on top of Carter.
“Jesus,” Carter breathed, stroking Levi’s hair.
“Uh-huh.”
They got out of bed long enough to clean themselves up, and then collapsed onto the mattress again. Though it was a warm evening, Levi pulled the sheet up over both of them, and for a while, they just held each other.
This time, those worried voices in the back of his mind were silent. Though there would be fallout, especially once the studio caught wind of this, Levi didn’t regret a thing. Lying in bed with Carter, their skin still hot from sex, was perfect. How the hell had he thought he could walk away from this?
Levi turned on his side, and Carter mirrored him so they faced each other.
“I’m sorry,” Levi whispered. “I should’ve—”
Carter kissed him gently. “Don’t. I understand why you did it.”
“Still.” Levi ran his fingers through Carter’s hair. “I’m sorry.”
“Everything’s forgiven.”
They both smiled, and Carter was just starting to draw Levi closer to him when a text message beep turned both their heads.
“Is that yours or mine?”
“Mine’s on vibrate.” Levi had kept his ringtone turned off after he’d hung up with his parents—he didn’t even want to know how many missed calls and texts he had now.
Carter grumbled something and reached for his phone. “Oh. It’s Anna.” Then he laughed and turned the phone so Levi could see it. The message read, Couldn’t resist. Don’t worry—it won’t go public. Deleting after it’s sent to you. P.S. You guys are HAWT together.
Below that was an attachment to a video. Carter hit Play, and the footage made Levi’s heart stop. He could see the exact moment he’d broken character, when he could no longer hold on to Max Fuhrman and he wasn’t looking at Gabriel anymore. It was Levi, not Max, who spok
e, and the words came through on the video clear as day:
“I love you, Carter.”
He kissed Carter’s shoulder as the video kept playing, and Carter found his hand and grasped it.
“Jesus,” Levi whispered.
“She’ll delete it,” Carter said. “I trust Anna not to post something like that publicly.”
Levi chewed his lip. After a moment, he leaned over the edge of the bed and searched through his pants pockets for his phone. Then he lay back beside Carter again. His phone was vibrating and showed a shitload of missed calls and texts, as he’d expected, but he scrolled past them, searching for one in particular. Sure enough, Anna had sent the video to him too. “You have any objections to this getting out on the internet?”
Carter laughed. “What? You think I have a problem with the whole world witnessing Levi Pritchard breaking character to tell me he loves me?”
Levi chuckled. “Well, in that case, here’s one tweet to end them all . . .”
Carter slid closer to him, and Levi wrapped his arm around Carter’s shoulders. With his other hand, he texted Anna: Tweet this on your secret account. Title it “The wolf has landed.”
Carter snorted. “Really?”
“You have a better title?”
“No, but good God. That is a terrible pun.”
“It is. You sure you don’t mind if I post it?”
“As long as you never accuse me of coming up with that horrible title.”
“Deal.” Levi hit Send. “And with that, I think we may have single-handedly broken Twitter and Tumblr.”
Carter laughed, but then his brow furrowed. “You’re really sure about this?”
“There’s no taking it back now, is there?” Levi gestured with his phone, then set it on the nightstand before wrapping his arms around Carter again.
Carter touched his face. “I didn’t mean you had to blow the doors off the closet. I . . .”
“It was long overdue,” Levi whispered. “And I’d rather be out to the whole world than be without you. You’re the first person I’ve let in since . . . God, I don’t even know.” He ran his fingers through Carter’s hair again. “I just didn’t want to lose you.”
Carter smiled, but it faltered. “And your family really knows now?”
Levi nodded. “I told them this morning.”
Carter’s drew back a little, eyes widening. “You didn’t know if we’d get back together, though.”
“I know. And I was scared to death you wouldn’t take me back. But I’ve kept way too much of my life hidden because I didn’t want to offend them. If they don’t like it, that’s on them.” He caressed Carter’s cheek. “I let their bullshit cost me way too much already.”
“How did . . .” Carter searched Levi’s eyes. “How did they take it?”
Levi flinched recalling the disgust in his mother’s voice. “It doesn’t matter. Honestly, out of everyone I had to show my cards to today, the only reaction I actually cared about was yours.” He kissed Carter lightly. “That’s how I knew I was doing the right thing.”
Carter smiled and pulled him into another gentle kiss. “God, I love you.”
“I love you too.” Levi smoothed Carter’s hair. “We don’t have to keep it a secret anymore. All we have to do now is take it a day at a time and enjoy it.”
“I like that plan. A lot.”
“Me too.”
They lay there in silence for a while, just holding each other and letting the boat’s gentle rocking lull them to sleep. Carter’s breathing slowed down. His body relaxed against Levi’s. Levi couldn’t even keep his eyes open anymore, and was starting to doze off too.
Then his phone buzzed. “Fucking thing.”
“Huh?” Carter lifted his head.
“My phone.” Levi almost shut it off, but then saw the message was from Anna.
Just a heads-up—I had to fight HARD for it, but you’ve still got a job. YOU’RE WELCOME.
A second later, another message followed: And you’re going to hear from Finn. Dude is pissed.
He laughed. “Well, I’m not fired, but Finn is fired up.”
Carter chuckled. “When is he not?”
“Right?” Levi set the phone facedown and wrapped his arms around Carter again. “He’ll get over it.”
“Eventually.” Carter grinned. “So how many condoms do we have left?”
“More than enough.” Levi kissed under Carter’s jaw. “When we run out, there’s plenty more at my place.”
“Mine too.” Carter ran a fingernail along the center of Levi’s spine, making him shiver. “Think we should put another one to use?”
Raising his head so he could look in Carter’s eyes, Levi pressed his growing erection against him. “What do you think?”
Carter didn’t answer. He pulled Levi down into a dizzying kiss.
Even wrapped up in Carter’s arms underneath the sheets, Levi could hardly believe they’d made it back here. He couldn’t believe Carter felt the same for him.
On top of it all, he couldn’t believe that for the first time in his life, he wasn’t pretending to be something he wasn’t. He wasn’t afraid of people finding out he was gay. He was acting again. He was in love with the most amazing man he’d ever met, and instead of trying to keep it a secret, he wanted the whole world to know about it.
And lying there with Carter, Levi had never been so thankful that Hollywood came to Bluewater Bay.
The End.
Just Another Day
Just Another Day
As Levi turned off Highway 112 onto the road that would take him home, he breathed a sigh of relief. The day was finally over.
It hadn’t really been a bad day. The morning had started in front of a camera for an upcoming magazine spread before he’d hurried to the set to reshoot a brief scene with Carter. Now that clusterfuck of an episode was on its way to postproduction. Thank God.
His last task had been an interview for a Wolf’s Landing podcast, which had wrapped up half an hour ago. Alfonse, the bodyguard who’d recently been assigned to lurk menacingly behind him and Carter whenever they were away from the house, had also gone home. Thank God for that. Levi resented the need for a protective presence. He hated the constant reminder of how much their celebrity status put them at risk—especially Carter, who’d had the run-in with an asshole fan that’d prompted the studio to hire Alfonse.
More than anything, though, Levi was ready to escape the fucking Valentine’s Day bullshit. Since fucking sunrise, he’d been reminded incessantly that Valentine’s Day—today—had invaded the town in full force. Every window of every shop was festooned with seventy-eight shades of red and pink. On the Wolf’s Landing set, everyone had been chattering between takes about their plans for romantic dinners, their reservations at B&Bs from Victoria to Astoria, and which flower-delivery services could be counted on to drop the ball on their most important day of the year.
Every mile down the long, winding road loosened up the tension that had been building in Levi’s shoulders. He loathed this damned holiday like Ebenezer Scrooge loathed Christmas, and being bombarded with it all fucking day had driven him insane. Bah fucking humbug. Especially now that he was actually around people all the time—he’d been a happy recluse until relatively recently—and now that he was in a relationship. Seriously, if he’d heard “Do you and Carter have big plans tonight?” one more time, he would’ve screamed. That, or given a detailed description of everything he planned to do to Carter in bed tonight, regardless of what the calendar said.
That thought made him chuckle as his Jeep continued down the leaf-littered road.
Eventually, he made it to his driveway, and followed it up to the house. Carter’s beat-up Ford Taurus was parked outside, and as the garage door opened, it revealed the red Porsche in the middle bay. Funny how quickly they’d become normal fixtures here. Usually, Levi got twitchy if someone’s car was in his driveway for more than a couple of days, but it was hard to believe there’d been a time
when the Porsche hadn’t been there beside his remaining Corvette or the Taurus hadn’t been sitting outside on top of an ever-spreading oil slick on the concrete.
Levi pulled into the garage next to the Porsche. As the door closed behind his Jeep, he released a breath and whispered a prayer of thanks that he was finally home. With any luck, by the time he returned to the real world, every scrap of Valentine’s Day would be torn down and shoved into the clearance section. The St. Patrick’s Day stuff would be front and center—Levi welcomed the annual arrival of all that tacky green horror. It meant the pink and red were gone for another year.
He got out of the Jeep and headed inside. He opened the door leading from the garage to the main part of the house . . .
. . . and his heart sank.
The smell of pasta carbonara wafted from the kitchen. It was faint in the garage, but as soon as he stepped into the house, the air was thick and warm with garlic and bacon.
Levi loved the way Carter cooked the carbonara dish. Had since Carter first made it for Levi’s birthday. And then he’d made it a second time to celebrate moving in together.
Please tell me you’re just making it for the hell of it tonight.
He put on a smile and went into the kitchen. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Carter looked up from stirring the sauce, smiling back. “Right on time.”
“Am I?” Levi craned his neck to see into the pot. “For what?”
“I was making some pasta carbonara.”
“So I can smell. What’s the occasion?”
Carter hesitated, holding his gaze, and then shrugged. “Does there have to be an occasion?” He gestured at the thin, creamy sauce. “You like it, don’t you?”
“I do, yes.”
“There you— Link, buddy, you need to move before you get stepped on again.” He wagged a finger at something beneath the kitchen island, and Levi didn’t have to check to know what was there. Link and Zelda, his Maine coons, were helping as usual. Zelda usually rode on Levi’s shoulder while he cooked, but Carter had never quite managed to maneuver around the kitchen with a twenty-five-pound cat riding shotgun. Eventually, she’d decided she could supervise from one of the barstools on the other side of the island, which was where she was now, peering across the countertop with an expression of pure feline disdain.
