Take the Leap

by April Fire

  Not to mention the fact that if I got to go and tell everyone, I would have to break the news to Dina, too. It wasn’t that we hadn’t spoken since then, but rather that we had kept everything pointedly above-board, not discussing anything too serious beyond the best kind of coffee to keep you awake all day. Maybe if I could get her by herself, it would be different.

  I made my rounds, pointedly going to everyone but Dina first so it wouldn’t look like I was hustling to see her again, and then made my way to the make-up trailer. I paused for a moment outside the door, lingering in that tantalizing moment before I actually laid eyes on her, and then lifted my knuckles and knocked.

  “Come in!” Dina’s voice came from inside, and I opened the door. She looked surprised to see me.

  “Oh,” she raised her eyebrows, looking flustered and grabbing for a couple of brushes as though trying to seem busy. “Hi. Hello.”

  “Hey,” I greeted her. “Look, we’re hoping to shoot later on tonight once it’s dark and I was wondering if you’d mind staying on to help us out later?”

  “I…” She trailed off, and I knew what she was thinking. That as long as we stuck with only seeing each other during the day, we could hang on to this strict little thing we’d built where we pretended that nothing was going down between us. That if we could cling to the delusion that we were completely platonic, then we could make it to the end of the shoot without anything happening. She rested her teeth on her bottom lip, a gesture so insanely cute I had to fight the urge to wrap my arms around her and pull her against me at that moment. I cocked my head, patiently waiting for her answer.

  “Yeah, of course I’ll do it,” she nodded, rolling her shoulders back, suddenly the picture of professionalism, and the moment of chemistry between us had skimmed on by. “I’ll get paid overtime, right?”

  “And here, I thought you were just in this for the experience,” I teased. She rolled her eyes but grinned at my crappy jokes.

  “Experience don’t buy me coffee in the morning,” she shot back, and I leaned against the door, relaxing into our usual banter. How was it that I’d only known this woman a few weeks? It felt like she’d been part of my life for so long, an ever-present feature in the back of my head no matter how hard I tried to shake her.

  “Maybe I could?” I raised my eyebrows, and she looked up at me with a flash of amusement.

  “Get me one for tonight,” she suggested. “I’ll need it.”

  “Will do,” I promised, and found myself searching for a reason to keep the conversation going. I couldn’t come up with one off the top of my head, but neither of us seemed ready to give up yet.

  “I guess I’ll see you back on set?” I suggested, not sure how to keep talking without making it obvious that all I wanted to do was spend the day in here with her, talking shit about coffee and gossiping about everyone else on set and who was dating who and what was going on between us. I wished I could have invited her back to my place, wished I could have found an excuse to bring her to my trailer and fuck her senseless.

  I had never desired so much from a woman before in my life – I wanted to talk to her, to hold her, to kiss her, to fuck her, to show her off to the world as well as sequestering myself away with her. It was confusing in the best possible way, and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how I’d gotten by without her before now.

  “Yeah, I’ll catch you back there in a bit,” she nodded. I went for the door, but before I could get out, she spoke again.

  “Will-” She cut herself off before she could finish her sentence, but I turned around at once, my heart bouncing up in my chest as I heard something else in her voice, something deeper, something that acknowledged what was happening between us. I met her gaze, and she regarded me with something between excitement and regret.

  “I’ll see you later,” she shook her head, silently letting me know that I wasn’t going to get to hear anything that I really wanted to. I managed a smile before backing out of the trailer, leaving her with her brushes and her mirrors and the memory of the kiss that we’d shared barely a week before. And the week before that. Shit, how hadn’t we ended up in bed together before now? It seemed so obvious it was almost stupid.

  The rest of the day went by as normal, with the handful of crew members who could use the money sticking around after the light outside started to dim, loading everything up into a truck so we could drive out to a new location, and setting up for the next bit of filming. It was a key scene, and Derrick had been right to suggest that we set it at night. The darkness, the dramatic shadows, the cool air around us – all of it seemed to fit the mood so perfectly. I took a deep breath of the beautiful, still night, and watched as the crew got everything ready for shooting. The scene was short, and in theory it wouldn’t take long, but I would have been happy to spend the whole evening out here.

  “Will?”

  I heard a familiar voice from behind me, and turned to find Dina standing only a few feet away. Even at that distance, I felt a pull in my belly button and took a step towards her to sate my desire to be close to her at all times.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” I looked down at her, and her gaze flipped ever so briefly down to my mouth before she looked into my eyes.

  “I was just wondering where I should set up my crap,” she gestured to the bag in her hand, stuffed full of everything she needed to do her job. “I don’t want to get under anyone’s feet.”

  “Here, let me,” I leaned down to help her with it, and our fingers touched for a split second – it felt as though someone had pressed an open wire to my skin, the sensation darting up my fingers and making me shiver despite the warm evening air.

  “I’ll get you set up over here,” I turned away quickly, hoping she wouldn’t see the way my face flashed with surprise at the sensation of her touch. She blinked up at me a couple of times, and I knew that she’d felt it too.

  The rest of the shoot went quickly, breezing by easily – we got everything we needed, and even captured a couple of really cool moments from the leading man. Derrick and I exchanged a look, and we both seemed to accept that this was about as good as we were going to get it, considering how tired everyone was after a long day of work.

  “Okay, let’s head back to the set,” Derrick announced, getting to his feet and clapping his hands together. I leaned back in my seat and grinned broadly, stretching my hands above my head and letting out a satisfied sigh. Everything was going so much better than expected. Better than I ever-

  “Oh, shit, sorry,” I turned around as my hands bumped into someone walking behind me. As I swivelled in my seat, I realized that it had been Dina.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” she shook her head, the enormous bag tucked under her arm. She looked distracted – annoyed, even, but it didn’t seem directed at me.

  “What’s up?” I asked, getting to my feet.

  “I forgot my damn keys this morning,” she replied, pulling a face. “I need to call my landlord but my cell is out of charge.”

  “You could charge it back at my trailer,” I replied without thinking, and then corrected myself, not wanting to sound too forward. “Or I could charge it for you. No big deal.”

  “That would be great,” she sighed, running her hand over her face as though trying to wipe away the stress of the last couple of hours. “Would you mind?”

  “Of course not,” I shook my head, and realized that she would be coming back to my trailer – the start of all the fantasies that I’d been having for the last week. I had to push that thought out of my head, reminding myself that just because I wanted it to happen didn’t mean that it was going to.

  “Here, I’ll give you a lift,” I gestured over to the car I’d brought down which was parked just across from us. “Derrick will be fine to keep an eye on everything down here while we pack up.”

  “Thanks,” she blinked up at me, and there was a flicker of something in her eye – a promise, maybe, a hint. I did my best to ignore it. I wasn’t going to get anywher
e fantasizing about shit that I couldn’t be sure of actually happening. I had been burned before with Dina’s mixed signals, and as far as I was concerned, I would go into this completely neutral. Or at least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

  We climbed into the car, Dina propping the bag up on her lap and winding down the window so she could dangle her arm out of it. The air whipped her ponytail around, strands breaking free and framing her face in the most painfully appealing way I’d ever seen in my life. She tucked them behind her ear as best she could, and I wished I could have been the one doing it for her.

  We arrived back at the trailer after a few minutes, and I helped her put her bag inside and she quickly pulled out her phone and plugged it on to charge. Dumping her bag on the couch, she leaned up against the table, and for a second I had a powerful flashback to the last time we’d been in here together. I forced the image from my head. No, I had to be good. I had to be.

  “Do you remember?”

  Her voice cut through the chaos in my head like a hot blade, and my eyes flashed over to hers. She couldn’t be talking about what I thought she was talking about. Could she? But when I met her gaze, I knew precisely what she was referencing.

  “Remember what?” I replied. I needed to hear her say it.

  “Remember when we were in here last,” she shot back, crossing her legs. Her tone was neutral but in her eyes, I could see a sharp, stark desire that seemed to overwhelm everything else in the room. Nothing else mattered, the details in the corners of my vision fading to nothing as I looked at her. I took a step towards her, staring down at her, and she didn’t break my gaze once, head tilting back to look at me once more.

  I reached out and tucked my hand behind her head. She didn’t move. Her lips parted, and she shifted her hips forward so they were pressed against mine, that thick strip of skin calling my name. I traced my fingers over it before locking them down on to her hip, and her mouth parted slightly. Shit, this was happening. This was really, truly happening.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dina

  I leaned up to kiss him, knowing that after everything we’d been through, he would need me to make the first move. As soon as our lips met, I knew that I had made the right choice – as soon as he’d offered me the chance to come back to his place to charge my phone, I’d had an inkling of what was going to go down.

  His fingers sank into my flesh and he pulled me close, tight against his body. He moaned into my mouth, slipping his tongue past my lips so that the kiss was more intense than before. I could feel him hardening beneath his jeans, but before I knew it he was kissing down my neck, popping open the buttons of my shirt and exposing me as he drew each nipple into his mouth, one at a time. It almost felt like a relief as I reached down to grip his head, holding him in place and tipping my head back.

  How had we waited this long for this? He was moving fast, both of us were, as though at any moment one or both of us might remember all the reasons we’d had for not doing this in the first place and back out – but there was already a slick heat between my legs that was demanding his attention. Attention, it seemed, that he was all too willing to give. He moved down, kissing across my stomach, glancing up at me with heat in his eyes that told me where this was going.

  “I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he panted as he lightly bit the skin that peeked out over the top of my jeans. The shock of pain felt so good that I had to plant my hands on the table next to me just to stay standing as I watched him work his way downward, his deft fingers popping open my buttons and pulling down my zip as I wriggled out of the cumbersome jeans. He knelt on the floor below me, and the look he gave me for a split second reminded of the expression he had on the poster I kept on my wall when I was a teenager – I closed my eyes, the odd mix of déjà vu and utter, total desire overwhelming me all at once. I couldn’t take this any longer – I needed him to make me come.

  He hooked his fingers around my panties, pulled outwards, and tore them off my body in one motion. My jaw dropped – no-one had ever done anything like that before. And, without further ado, he pressed his face against my pussy, moaning against my aching flesh as his hands snaked around my ass to hold me upright. I parted my legs and his tongue finally found my clit, and I tipped my head back, staring at the ceiling, as the pleasure took me over.

  I’d had a lot of guys eat me out over the years, but nothing that felt even remotely as good as this. He sealed his lips around my clit and sucked lightly, not even touching me with his tongue for a moment as he groaned against me, sending vibrations all up and down my body. Then, he tilted his head to the side and sucked on my outer pussy lips in turn, using the mildest amount of pressure but making my hips lift off the table with the intensity of it all.

  “Fuck,” I gasped, and he looked up and me again, smiling as he returned his attention to my clit and slipped a finger inside of me to match the lazy pace of his tongue. He ate me out like pussy was getting taxed in an hour, like he hadn’t eaten in days and was trying to stock up while he could. He sucked and licked and fingered me with such passion that all sense of time and place and decency vanished from my mind.

  I found myself gripping his head so I could grind up against him as he curled his finger around to hit my g-spot. Every inch of my body felt like it was packed full of static, my muscles tensing and my eyes squeezing further shut as he continued mercilessly. It was right on the edge of too much, my body flooded with feeling and sensation, and then, suddenly, finally-

  “Ah!” I cried out. The orgasm ripped through my body like someone had set me on fire, almost painful in its intensity – my cunt clenched around his finger, my clit pulsing under his tongue, and my muscles turning to jelly so badly he had to fight to keep me upright. He pulled himself away from me, just close enough that I could still feel his breath on my pussy, knowing that I’d be too sensitive for anything more.

  The feelings coursed through me, a resolution to the ridiculous back-and-forth we’d had over the last couple of weeks. I’d never felt anything like it in my life, my body practically giving up as the sensations consumed me. His strong hand kept me upright, my body shivering and shaking beneath his touch, my clit already almost painfully sensitive as he pulled back and let me feel nothing but his hot, hot breath against my aching flesh.

  The orgasm had cleared my head, the haze of attraction and obsession beginning to fade away into something a little closer to reality. I felt like I was clambering up out of a hole, squinting against the onslaught of the light. He looked up at me, panting hard, his eyes still hungry and hot for me. He briefly ran his hand over my butt, as though taking me in. As if he knew what was coming next. I couldn’t do this to him again, could I? Could I? I heaved in a deep, shaky breath, and something in my face must have switched up because disappointment clouded his face at once.

  “We shouldn’t do this,” I reasoned with him. “You’re…we’re completely different. I don’t want this to get in the way of the production-”

  “We’re not different,” he got to his feet, staring at me hard and dragging the back of his hand over his mouth to wipe away the wetness that I had left glistening on his lips. It would have been hot if it weren’t for the circumstances.

  “You know there’s something between us,” he pointed out, running his fingers through his hair. “We’re the same. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but you can’t make like you don’t feel it too.”

  I looked away from him. He was right; blisteringly, obviously right, and I wanted him so badly at that moment that I had to hold back a scream of frustration knowing that I shouldn’t. I ran through all the reasons I’d given myself when I’d first laid eyes on him – he went through women like wildfire, I’d be dumped in a week, we had so little in common when it came to our lifestyles. We didn’t fit together. And yet, standing here like this, it felt as though he formed the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle that made up me.

  I forced myself to shake my head, going for the door, grabbing my pho
ne as I did so.

  “I’m sorry, I should never have come back here,” I apologized, knowing that I was apologizing for more than just that. I was saying sorry for everything that had never happened and never would. I wanted him, viscerally, but the feelings were too intense now for me to risk getting my heart broken. I looked at him, really looked at him, and tried to imagine how hard it would be to have that man walk away from me. What I was doing now was wrenching, but that would have been a thousand times worse.

  “I’ll see you back on set,” I muttered, and headed out the door, clicking it shut firmly behind me and tilting my head back to look up at the stars above. They were glimmering softly, distantly, half-lit by the glow of Devina not far away, and I forced myself to head for the street and start the walk back to my place. I didn’t have keys, but I would find somewhere to stay for the night if I had to. Anything but sticking around a moment longer in that trailer.

  Chapter Twelve

  Will

  I rolled out of bed and made my way over to the enormous picture window that took up most of the back wall of my bedroom. Man, it was good to be home.

  Shooting had finished up on the movie a week ago, and I had flown back out to Los Angeles to start on post-production. It was odd, actually – most of the time when I had finished shooting, that was the end of my involvement and I could walk away. But here, I was a part of the process every step of the way, and it was way more exciting than I had imagined.

  I glanced over at the bed, and felt a twinge when I saw that it was empty. I knew that I was being crazy, but part of me had half-expected to glance over and see her in that bed. Dina. The name danced in my head like a prayer, the word on the tip of my tongue as I traced it out loud. I missed her.

  I had no idea where she was going when production finished. She had declined to tell me, throwing me some vague answer about heading back home and picking up some freelance work. I knew she was trying to keep me at arm’s length. Ever since I ate her out in that trailer, she had avoided me like the plague, as though I was bad for her.