Pranked himself.
Christ.
Around 4 a.m., he gave up the idea of sleeping and got up, careful not to wake Teela. He needed air. He didn’t bother to wake Rick. He threw a pair of sweats and a hoodie on and took the elevator to the ground floor and walked the short distance to the harbor foreshore.
There were still a few people about, cars, but with his hood up and his head down, no one took any notice of him. It was too early for sunrise and too late for anything to be open, a blue-gray twilight that suited his mood. He walked a while, across Circular Quay, which was square, but whatever, stared at the white sails of the Opera House, listened to bats and gulls own the night.
He’d never had a viable plan B in his life, like Teela did for her business. If he hadn’t made it as an actor he might still be fitting shoes, or bartending, or toting a massage table around town. He’d be a disappointed drunk or a bitter part-time stagehand. A bad husband or a drifter, a man who never seemed to settle into a decent life. It wasn’t that he never thought about failure back then. It’d terrified him. It was that he didn’t know how else to be in the world if he couldn’t tell stories, act them out.
Now he didn’t know how to be in the world with everything he’d gained and not use that privilege to benefit people who couldn’t speak and act for themselves. He’d thought he needed a new strategy for the anti-piracy project, a plan B. What he needed was to be as unreasonable, as stubborn an asshole as he’d ever been to make it in the entertainment business. He needed to tell a better story, tell it louder, and to more people, and keep telling it until he got what he needed.
Plan Bs were what sensible, reasonable people like Teela did to protect themselves against failure. Failure hadn’t been an option when he was seventeen and wasn’t now.
By the time he got back to the hotel it was 5.30 and time to get moving.
Teela looked so comfortable curled in his bed, it was tempting not to wake her. That would be the cooler thing to do. Let her sleep, hit the beach, join her later. He sat on the bed and took her in, dark hair in a terrible tangle, her face smooshed in the pillow, one arm, the swell of her breast and one lovely long leg stretched outside the sheet, the other hooked up as if she’d fallen asleep mid hop.
People could look vulnerable in their sleep. Dad looked lonely, weary. Missing Mom written on his face. Rum looked younger, uncertain. He was a terrible grump first thing in the morning, as if he resented being awake. Rick looked hassled, like he was running schedules in his dreams.
Teela looked careless, strong, calm. As if sleep really did restore her instead of simply lowering her resistance to life and letting her insecurities surface.
He ran a finger down her arm and she twitched. He did it again and she grumbled, words he couldn’t make out. He kicked his shoes off, climbed over her and snugged up behind her, his face in her hair, his arm around her waist.
“If I was a good man, I’d let you sleep. I’d go have that ocean swim alone.” She sighed, but otherwise appeared to sleep on. “But I’m goddamn selfish. I only have you for today, so you don’t get to sleep in.” No movement. He shifted her hair and kissed the back of her neck. Nothing. “Impressive.” He skated his hand up her body to cup her breast over the sheet. She sighed and pushed into his hand. “Teela?”
Not even an eyelash flutter. But her breathing had changed.
He’d made her nipple harden by thumbing over it before she stirred. He got his lips to her neck as her lashes fluttered. “Good morning,” he said.
“Hmmm.”
“Time to wake up. We have an appointment with the beach.”
“Hmmm. What time is it? Why are you already dressed?”
“Secret actor business.” He kissed her neck again, right where he knew she felt it everywhere and her eyes flashed open.
“Ohh. Birdcage,” she said.
He kissed her jaw and she rolled to face him. “My mouth will taste like I’ve sucked on the newspaper at the bottom of a budgie’s cage.”
“Who says I want your mouth?”
She put a hand straight to his sun-saluting cock. She wasn’t asleep now. He could leave her be. He could bring her a glass of water, let her up to brush her teeth. He got the words, “Budgie. My favorite Australian flavor,” out before he licked over her lips and sealed them with a kiss. She resisted, complaining behind a closed mouth, but rubbing her hand over him with considerable enthusiasm.
He needed breakfast before he could deal with such mixed messages. As he went to pull away, she threw her leg over him and held him in place. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To get you a glass of water?”
Her hand went straight under the waist of his sweats. “I don’t think so.”
“Ah.”
And then under his briefs. “There are other things I can do with a mouth that needs freshening.”
He flexed into her hot little hand. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Not that he had legitimate thoughts. All he had was a vision of wrapping her hair around his hand as she teased his dick with her lips and starting the morning with a bang.
“If you’re thinking I make you come in my mouth, we’re on the same page.”
Same page, same chapter, same book, same movie adaptation from the bestseller.
Teela went to work on him, putting her mouth all the places that weren’t his mouth. He focused on getting his hoody off, getting rid of his sweats, socks and briefs and even that level of organization was a strain. She barely took her hand off his cock and that robbed him of a considerable number of IQ points, as well as effective hand-eye coordination.
By the time she sat across his legs in all her naked, flushed, wild-haired glory, he was reduced to squirms and twitches from her nips and licks and sucks. He might well have leaked out everything he had before her mouth went anywhere near the money shot. It’d be embarrassing if he wasn’t so turned on.
“I like you, Teela Carpenter.”
“You’d say anything to get in my mouth.”
Not wrong. I like you far more than is comfortable. I want to see you again. Safe word. “Birdcage.”
She licked her lips. They were already pink. Her nipples were rosy and raised, her hips under his hands were exactly the grip he wanted on the world. “You are fucking hot.”
“You’re not too bad yourself.”
He had to let go of her when she moved down his body, but he pushed up on his elbows to watch as she put the tip of her tongue to his slit. A lick, a swirl, a kiss and then her mouth closed over the head and his hips left the bed, not enough to dislodge her and she had a firm hold of him, but enough to make her stop.
“Is there going to be any more of that nonsense?”
He gasped. Three nights ago, she’d wanted him to play the dominant.
“Because if you’re going to buck about all over the place, I’d rather have breakfast.”
Now she was the one in control, and mean with it. He groaned. He shouldn’t even be in this desperate position. He should be halfway to salt and sand. “I’ll be still.”
She raised her brows. They both knew that was a damn lie.
He didn’t break when she licked him sack to slit. He didn’t shift when she used that tongue-swirl around his cockhead, or when she closed over him and flicked her tongue against him, gave him a light touch of her teeth. He was vocal though. More swearing than either of their mothers would’ve liked and he did grip her hair, first to smooth it away from her face so he could see better, and when she took more of him inside, her lips meeting her fist, he held on to keep her right where she was.
When his hips did jerk, she quit and so did his breath. “Fuck, please don’t stop.” He dropped back to the bed because watching her and feeling her was system overload. His ears took over then, listening to the rude wet slurp they made together before electric sparks showered over his pelvis.
“I’m close.”
She didn’t back off. She took him deep enough to bump the back of h
er throat and he came with a strangled moan, before sitting to pull her up beside him, taking her mouth finally for the denied kiss that started all this.
“If you’d have kissed me in the first place you could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble,” he said, when they’d finished devouring each other’s mouths.
She pushed her fingers through his hair. “Where would the fun have been in that? Have I made us late?”
He squinted at the bedside clock. It was hard to care. But if they didn’t move now, it would be too risky to hit a public beach. He put his fingers to her pussy. “How quick can you come?” She was wet and swollen. He could smell her arousal and he wanted to taste it.
She groaned in complaint when he moved his hand; she’d started to grind against him. She did it again when he spread her legs and looked down at her.
“How quick can you make me come?” she said with a look that was enough to give him razor burn. It sizzled on his skin. That part where he’d figured he could play it cool with her. Monumentally bad casting.
He got her arching off the bed in a minute with slow licks through her labia and quick sucks of her engorged clitoris. And then he backed off to draw her pleasure out. It earned him a, “Bastard,” growled between clenched teeth as she drummed her heels on his ass.
The sound he wanted from her would only come when he got the wishbone of her whole clit to pulse deep inside her. He needed a combination of mouth and fingers to stimulate her vulva for that to happen. He made her thrash on the bed and right before he got what he wanted she went stiff and pushed out an exhale of shocked delight, shuddering under his hands.
Best sound in the world. Beat applause any day.
When he flopped down beside her she curled into him, her forehead on his bicep, her knees against his thigh. “You know I’m never going to be able to watch you on film again.”
“Because I made you come out of your skin?”
She rubbed her forehead on his arm. “Because you love doing it.”
“Guilty as charged.”
She came up on her elbow, face tilted in her hand. “I’m going to see you on screen and think, there’s that bastard who can make my insides ring better than I can do it myself.”
He laughed. “For a second, I thought you were going to say something mushy.”
“That’s about as mushy as I get.”
Thank fuck for that, because he might have been about to say something mushy himself, given the sight of her was enough to make him lose his sense of direction.
An hour later they were at a narrow beach called Tamarama. It was nestled between the larger Bondi and Bronte beaches, tucked inside two prominent headlands. Opal blues and greens with soft white sand, it was stunning. It was still early, but not early enough to have the place to themselves. They shared it with a dozen surfers out at the break and a scattering of sunbathers. The café was full of folk having breakfast. Rick’s double take at the first set of bikini-free boobs catching rays on the sand was almost comic.
“They don’t call this beach Glamarama for nothing,” Teela said as they trudged to the shoreline. Her bathing suit was simple, black, slicked to her curves, making her legs look impossibly longer. She bent to toss her sunglasses on a towel and the lines of her body, near enough to naked, sent his brain all the wrong signals for a public place.
He didn’t wait for Teela. Hit the water hoping the sudden cold would deal with the inappropriate erection. By the time she’d caught up to him, he had it under control. For the time it took to catch her hand, bring her body into his and kiss her salty lips.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, and since there wasn’t much swell and they were out beyond where the waves broke they could float, heads above the water easily.
“Again?” she said.
“You’re complaining?
She used those goddamn legs to squeeze him and get enough purchase on his shoulders to dump him under. Gave him the excuse to surface from under her, blowing bubbles up the length of her body and passing both hands over her breasts, before pulling her back into his arms, hands on her ass, her tight nipples pressed to his chest, her core on his cock.
“I’m not going to forget this weekend for a long time,” she said, running her index fingers over his brows.
“Is that you being mushy?” Her hair was a wet plaited rope and, there were droplets of sea on her eyelashes. He followed a stream of water cascading down her neck, covering it with his mouth, making her rub on his cock and groan. “Again?” he said.
She shoved him away, laughing, ducking under a wave and surfacing a little way off.
Teela wasn’t going to be easy to forget. He watched her flip to her back and float. What if he flew her out to meet him? Somewhere halfway? Hawaii, where he was shooting, was roughly halfway. Another weekend like this. Sun, sex. Easily doable.
He was still thinking that when a rogue wave caught him in its foaming wash, dragged him under and pinned him down on the sea floor, pummeling him with volumes of water. He came up sandy, spluttering, out of breath. He’d been dragged well outside the safety flags.
It was a useful reminder of what could happen when you got distracted. You could fucking drown.
Another weekend was the beginning of an arrangement and it was only sixty-two days till he was back on set, he had work to do on the anti-piracy project and Teela had a full calendar herself.
He wasn’t going to forget her, but too much of her and he might run out of breathing room altogether.
ELEVEN
The last time Teela was on a boat on Sydney Harbour it was a ferry ride from the city to Manly with a thousand other people. She’d never cruised the harbor in a private yacht and picnicked and swum at a beach only accessible by water. And it wasn’t likely she ever would again. It was a wonderful experience: the glamorous boat, frolicking in the sea with a man who looked amazing wet, the incredible lunch, even though halfway through the cruise Haydn disappeared down below to take a phone call.
When he joined her again, it was with an apology. “That was the call I thought I’d blown. I have to go take a meeting.” He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple. “I’m sorry to cut this short.”
This? Did he mean the cruise, the weekend? He left her in wet swimmers with her heart dragging around her ankles to go talk to Rick.
Two days ago, she’d been ready to send the Sexiest Man Alive on his way when he arrived in her office with his one-night stand extension offer. She watched him talk animatedly with Rick. He didn’t look like a man who was sorry to have to shoot back to the hotel and climb into a suit on a Sunday afternoon.
Now her first instinct was to wonder how long he’d be and it made her stomach turn over.
In two nights and one and a half days, she’d gone from it’s not a good idea to spend more time together to how long till I can touch you again.
Clouds might as well have covered the endless blue sky. The sea might as well have lost its sparkle and turned gray and choppy, seagulls rained bird shit on them. The bad weather was in her head.
You big dope. You knew this would happen.
She’d fallen for the whole Haydn Delany world of romance. It should’ve been comic. Feeling like you might toss your partially digested lobster lunch back into the sea was funny, but it was also tragic.
He was going to be impossible to get over.
The thing to do was not to add to the problem. Not to wait around for a few more hours of his attention. No matter how tempting one last orgasm might be, she hadn’t planned to stay the night. With a full day in the office Monday, she needed proper sleep to be on her game. Starting the week with a walk of shame, even an epically Hollywood-proportioned one wasn’t best practice.
Better to say goodbye when they got back to the hotel. That way she’d have time to hit the supermarket and stock up on all the snack foods necessary to soothe an own-goal heartache. A session with a tub of Maggie Beer’s honeycomb, caramel and burnt fig
ice-cream was as good a way as any to start her recovery process.
That and a recount of the weekend’s highlights for Evie to start getting Haydn out of her system.
She really would never be able to watch him on screen again without thinking of him sucking her clit and making her come.
Bugger it. He was utterly unexpected, and he would never be entirely out of her system. The movie he’d star in now would be the one running on an endless loop behind her closed eyes as she made herself come.
They traveled back to the city with the sails down under motor. Haydn joined her at the bow, sitting behind her to bring her against his body. She leaned back into him as they pulled past Fort Denison and approached Woolloomooloo Wharf, where Hassan would be waiting.
“You’re thinking about Monday,” he said.
“Returning to the real world.”
“Will you wait for me? Have dinner. Stay the night.”
The sun glinting off office towers was near blinding even behind her sunglasses. Made her eyes water. “I should go.” She had to cough first to get those words out.
He buried his face in her shoulder and neck, hugging her a little tighter. “What if I beg?”
She reached back and ruffled his hair. “I’ve had an amazing weekend. We both know that’s all it was ever going to be.”
He put his hand to her throat, brought her head back to his chest and spoke softly against her ear, making her shiver. “This is me begging, Teela. I’m not ready for this to be the end. Wait for me, please.”
She turned to face him, threading her legs under his raised knees, looping her arms around his neck. He wore boardshorts, his sunglasses were pushed to the top of his head, his hair had gone a little mad and stuck up in places from being full of salt water, and his pale blue eyes were fixed on her.
“Your begging could do with some workshopping.”
He tucked a strand of hair that was blowing about behind her ear. “I’ve not played this role before. I can do better, if you give me the chance.”
One Night with the Sexiest Man Alive (The One Book 1) Page 11
