Light My Fire (Man of the Month Book 11)

by J. Kenner

  “Oh, look!” A female voice squealed from somewhere behind him. “Isn’t that Damien Stark?”

  Griffin turned around, then followed the direction of the woman’s gaze. Sure enough, the famous billionaire stood with his beautiful wife, Nikki, just a few yards away. Confident and commanding, the former tennis player turned billionaire CEO of Stark International stood in the crowded lobby looking as if he owned the place. Quite possibly, he did.

  “I’ve met him,” Griffin said. “Should we go say hello?”

  “I’m thinking no,” Beverly said. “Not now.”

  He turned, frowning, every insecurity rising to the surface. “What is up with you? You didn’t introduce me to Deaver. You don’t want to talk to Stark. Are you regretting coming with me? Are you regretting letting me out of the hotel in this outfit?”

  For a second she only gaped at him. Then she took him by the arm and tugged him all the way across the lobby until they were standing in an alcove leading to the restrooms. Only then, when they had a modicum of privacy, did she lay into him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Deaver was all over you, and yet I don’t get even a nod? Not as your date, much less as the guy you’re dating now. And certainly not as the screenwriter for Hidden Justice, because why the hell would he care about that?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, leaned back, and looked down her nose at him with the kind of expression that suggested he was the biggest idiot in the world, and she wasn’t sure how to break it to him.

  “You idiot,” she said, proving him wrong. “Are you seriously standing here and telling me that you wanted me to introduce you to the man who is going to be directing your screenplay right now, like this? And then tell him that he can’t share with anyone else who you are or why you’re in disguise? I assumed he was a man you’d want to meet as you—in your hoodie, sure, but as you.”

  “I am me,” he protested, because jealousy was damn hard to let go of. “You’re at a premiere with me.”

  She stared him down, and he sighed, his shoulders sagging as he gave in. “You’re right. I’m sorry. He’s obviously got a thing for you. I was jealous.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “Yeah?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe I’m flattered.” The smile broadened. “And maybe I didn’t want to go see Stark and force you to have to not only explain, but then swear him to secrecy. I mean, honestly, Griffin. This is your charade. Why am I the only one enforcing the rules?”

  “Because I’m a jealous idiot?”

  Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and he watched her, hoping she wouldn’t throw her hands up, tell him he was way too much trouble, and then walk away.

  She didn’t. Instead, she held out her right hand for his left. “Come here,” she said, then drew him close. “You have no reason to be jealous.” She brushed a soft kiss over his lips, and his pulse kicked into high gear, his cock tightening in a way that made him wish the movie was already over.

  “Beverly,” he murmured, but she drew him closer, this time using tongue and teeth for a wild, deep kiss, even as she took his left hand and rested it on her bare thigh, exposed from the slit in her skirt.

  Slowly, she trailed his hand up until his fingers grazed her sex, barely covered in a tiny thong. He moaned against her mouth, fighting the urge to tease her slick heat, but knowing someone could be watching.

  “I’m yours,” she murmured as he withdrew his hand. “Don’t you understand that I’m yours?”

  “I know,” he said, her words filling him. Making him strong. “And when we get back to the hotel tonight, I promise I’ll take what’s mine.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Yes,” Beverly cried as Griffin thrust inside of her, deeper and deeper, the rhythm of their lovemaking building until her entire being balanced on the precipice. And the, when one final thrust, he sent them both tumbling over, their bodies shattering, the pieces spreading out to join the stars and the moon and the planets.

  “Oh, God,” she murmured as he collapsed on top of her, and she trailed her fingers idly over the now-familiar rough ridges of his scarred back and shoulder. “Now that was the best show of tonight,” she said. “Definitely knocks Crypto out of the running. And,” she added, sliding out from under him so that she could stretch out beside him, “although I loved seeing you in that suit, I definitely like this better.”

  She reached out again, gently tracing the jagged, discolored line that marked the border between the semi-successful skin grafts on the right side of his torso and the rest of his skin.

  She relished these moments when he let her explore his body. Relaxing under her touch even when she traced the burn scars. She wanted the intimacy. Wanted to know him as intimately as she knew herself. And when he let her do this, it filled her heart with the knowledge that they really were on the right path.

  “Beverly…”

  She bent to kiss him, hiding her smile. At least he’d given her a few cherished moments.

  “It’s part of who you are, Griffin,” she said, honoring his wishes by pulling her hand away, but not willing to back away from the conversation. “This skin, this body. It's been with you since you were twelve. I love the man, Griffin. And the man has always had this cross to bear.”

  “Love?” His eyes were wide, full of something akin to wonder, and the full impact of what she’d said struck her.

  “I—I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  He held her gaze. “But is it true?”

  She licked her lips. “I think so. I—yes. It’s true. But it’s still new. Fragile. And I’m not someone who believes that love solves everything.”

  She drew a breath, then rolled off him, curling up at his side so she had to tilt her head to see his face.

  “In that case, what do you believe?” he asked.

  She considered not answering. Saving this conversation for later. Things were moving fast with them, after all. Maybe too fast.

  Then again, they’d been friends for months and had spent hours side by side as they worked on the script. She knew what she knew. What she felt.

  She only hoped that he felt the same way. “I want to try,” she said. “I want to make this work. I think I’ve wanted that from the first moment I met you. Maybe before. When I saw your heart poured out in your work.”

  He rolled over to face her, then took her hand and slowly lifted it to his lips. “I love you, too,” he said, his smile spreading slowly, just as hers did.

  With a deep sigh of happiness, she moved onto her back, her hand still tight in his. “Can we just stay like this all week? Or do I really have to do all those interviews?”

  “I’ve got your back,” he promised. “And every night you’ve got me in this bed.”

  Laughing, she turned her head. “I can live with that.” She started to roll over when her phone rang. “Hold that thought,” she ordered, then sat up and grabbed it off the side table. “Evelyn,” she told him. “She probably wants a summary of today since she’s stuck in New York.”

  “Hey,” she said after answering. “It went well. I’m sorry you’re out of town.”

  “Then you haven’t seen.”

  Beverly sat up straighter, her brow furrowed as she turned to Griffin. “Seen what?” She raised her brows, silently asking Griffin if he had a clue. He shook his head.

  “I’ll text it to you,” Evelyn said. A second later, Beverly’s phone pinged.

  She put the call on speaker so she could see the screen.

  “Breakfast tomorrow, Bev. We’ll talk about how to dodge questions about who your mystery man is.”

  “Mystery man?” Griff repeated, climbing to his knees so he could see the screen too. Beverly hesitated, then tapped the phone. Immediately, an image filled the screen. Beverly herself, her eyes closed, her expression rapturous. And the back of a costumed Griffin, leaning in for a kiss, the shot taken at just the right angle to show Griffin’s hand sliding up her thigh, but thankfull
y not so high to make the image NSFW.

  The headline, of course, was the kicker: Sexy Plunder. Who is Martin’s Masked Marauder?

  And that, she knew, was the question that everyone was going to be asking.

  As far as Griffin was concerned, it hadn’t been hard to hang out in the penthouse at the Stark Century Hotel before the premiere. After the photo of him and Beverly started making the rounds, it was even easier to stay hidden away in the room.

  Beverly, of course, still had to go out daily for interviews, public appearances, and meetings with various teams from the studio. But Griffin had the luxury of hiding inside, and he was perfectly fine with that.

  He worked on the script for Hidden Justice. He watched movies. He read books. When Beverly returned in the evenings, he’d go over his changes on the script with her. In turn, she’d entertain him with stories from the day’s appearances. And each and every day, she’d have at least one story to share with him that featured some reporter asking her about Griffin.

  “You’re like a mythical creature to them,” she told him one evening in bed. Then she grinned and started to kiss her way down his chest. “Then again, that’s pretty much my opinion, too.”

  Even from the safety of the penthouse, Griffin knew she wasn’t exaggerating. When he read an article about the movie on the Internet, the mysterious man at the premiere was mentioned. In the mornings, he’d watch clips from late night television from the night before, and invariably Beverly was fielding the same question. It was ridiculous to him how obsessed the town was about finding out the identity of the mystery man. And he feared that the collective will of the people in the Los Angeles area might end up being enough to put a name to his persona.

  More than that, he feared that the fascination might be equally virulent in Austin. Thankfully, that proved not to be the case.

  As planned, they returned to Austin after a week in Los Angeles, and they dove immediately into final revisions on the script, because Beverly would be starting a nationwide press tour on Thursday of the following week.

  “I think I want to cut the scene with Hammond and his sister,” Griffin said one afternoon when they were working at her house by the lake. They’d gotten a lot done over the last few days, and they’d treated themselves with a change in venue.

  Now, they were in her backyard, and he was lying in a hammock with his laptop on his stomach while Beverly edited a printout of that day’s work at a nearby picnic table. Or, at least, that’s what she was supposed to be doing. Instead, her mind was elsewhere.

  “Bev? Earth to Bev.”

  Startled, she looked up at him. “What? Sorry.”

  “Where are you? I’m thinking it’s not with Angelique and Hammond.”

  “Sorry, I—nothing.”

  He sat up, the put the computer on the small table beside the hammock. “What?”

  She drew a deep breath and decided what the hell—the worst he could do was say no. “I don’t want to leave. Not now.“ She was scheduled to hit the road on Thursday, right after she finished emceeing for the Man of the Month Contest.

  “Because of the script?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because of us.”

  “Oh.” He grinned. “Is it bad that I like hearing that? Because I don’t want you to leave either.”

  “Then come with me. You can record the podcast on the road. We can write on the road. It’s a whole month, and I don’t want to be apart. So why don’t you just come with me.”

  For a moment, he simply stared at her. Then a slow smile touched his lips. “I like the sound of that. But if I’m with you, we’re going to end up dealing with the mystery man bullshit all over again. And we haven’t seen much of that since we’ve been in Austin."

  She shrugged. “I’m good with spending most of our free time in the hotel. And it’s not like the press in Idaho or St. Louis is going to be following me around. So long as we don’t announce where we’re going, we can grab dinners out, the whole thing. No way will any of the places on the junket be as crazy about the mystery of who I’m seeing as folks in LA. No one in the rest of the country cares."

  “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “But I’ll agree they care less. And they’re a lot less crazed.”

  “Exactly. And if anyone asks who you are, I’ll just say what I’ve been saying—that a girl has to have some secrets.”

  “And it is a way to not hold up the script. The studio’s going to have one more round of revisions,” he said. “They always do. This way we wouldn’t have to work by phone.”

  “See how brilliant I am?” she asked, coming to him. She climbed into the hammock with him, careful not to send them both tumbling. He curled his arm around her and she snuggled close. “I don’t want to go away. Not when we’re so new.”

  “New doesn’t mean fragile.”

  “I hope not. Because I don’t want what’s between us to break.”

  He kissed her forehead. “We won’t. I promise.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “You were serious when you said there’d be no work today,” Beverly said as they walked hand-in-hand down Congress Avenue. They’d just finished a fabulous brunch at the Four Seasons, and now Griffin was leading her somewhere else. He just hadn’t told her where.

  “I’m glad you told me to wear flats. Are we walking all the way to Dallas?”

  “Funny,” he said, though she thought the question was reasonable. Brunch had been near the river, which was essentially on Second Street, though it was now called Cesar Chavez. They’d been walking perpendicular to the river, and now they were approaching Sixth Street.

  “Are we going to The Fix?” she asked.

  “No. Wait and see.”

  She didn’t have long to wait. Griffin soon drew them to a stop in front of Austin’s historic Paramount Theater, a beautiful venue that had celebrated its centennial just a few years before.

  “What’s going on here? Is there a show?”

  “We’ve been working so hard on our movie, I thought we should go watch a couple of classics. Okay?”

  She turned to him with genuine pleasure. “Are you kidding? I love classic movies. What’s playing?”

  “Double feature. The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. You up for it?”

  “Do we get popcorn?”

  “Popcorn, wine, whatever you want.”

  She grinned, absolutely delighted with his plan for the afternoon. “I am totally in.”

  “Good. And after the movies, I have one other place I want to take you.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  They got their tickets, hit the concession stand, then grabbed a couple of middle seats, which as far as Beverly was concerned, were the best seats in the house. Griffin had timed brunch and the walk perfectly, so they only had to wait a few minutes before the trailers began.

  Beverly munched her popcorn, her hand occasionally brushing Griffin’s, the contact sending nice little frissons of pleasure coursing through her. By the time the first movie began, they were halfway through the bucket. He put it on the floor, then took her hand. He lifted it and kissed it gently, then flashed her a quick smile. “Buttery goodness.”

  She laughed, then leaned in for an even more buttery kiss.

  She'd seen both movies before, but it had been years, and she became quickly absorbed in the film noir storyline. So much so, that when the intermission between the movies came, she had a hard time believing that they were halfway through the afternoon already.

  By the time the second movie ended, she wished there were even more on the program.

  “Did you like?” he asked as they left the theater.

  “Are you kidding? They were great. That’s what I want to do,” she added as they headed back toward the Four Seasons and his car. “Make movies that last. Movies that have that kind of resonance.” She paused on the sidewalk, catching his eyes. “Do you think ours will have even close to the merit of those films?”

  “I
don’t know,” he admitted. “But I want that, too. The script is solid, and Deaver’s talented.”

  “Now he’s talented?” she teased.

  “Since you swear he doesn’t have designs on you, yes. He went from asshole to filmic genius.”

  “Maybe we should—”

  But she didn’t get to finish the thought because he pulled her to a stop with a sharp, “Dammit.”

  “What?” she asked, watching as he bent his face and pulled his hoodie more forward. Then she saw the answer. There, across the street and standing by the local landmark sculpture of a woman shooting a cannon, was a burly photographer with a long lens, doing his own kind of shooting. And his camera was aimed right at Griffin.

  “So where are we going now?” she asked, after they’d been driving in silence for at least ten minutes. She knew that he was upset about the photographer, but as she’d pointed out on their walk back to the car, it may have only seemed as if the lens was aimed at her and Griffin. Maybe the guy had been photographing the historic facades along Congress Avenue.

  “I don’t think so,” he’d said in response to that suggestion. And since then, he hadn’t said another word.

  “Griffin,” she pressed. “Either talk to me or take me home.”

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and for a second she feared he’d take her up on the second option. But then he relaxed. “I’m sorry. I know you’re right. It might just be coincidence. But I’ve managed to live my life without being tossed into the spotlight, and I don’t really want to go there now.”

  “I know.”

  They reached a red light, and he turned to face her. “I know you think I should just say screw it and stop wearing the gloves and the hoodies. And I know,” he continued before she could jump in, “that my scars don’t bother you.”

  “They don’t,” she whispered, and he reached for her hand, the leather of his glove cool against her skin.

  “I believe you. But even then, it was my choice to show you. And those damn social media whores are trying to take that away from me.”