by Force, Marie
But the studio rejected it as too simplistic. Like that’s not the whole fucking point. I fought for our title to no avail, and we’ve spent weeks trying to come up with something better. Flynn and I are so married to our original title that we can’t see our way to considering anything else. Just what we need so late in the production, and now we’re under tremendous pressure from the studio to name the fucker so marketing can do their thing.
Name the fucker. As if it’s that easy. Snap my fingers and solve a problem they caused by rejecting the perfect title for no good reason.
I scroll through images on one of three massive screens that I use to do postproduction work, usually in close collaboration with Jasper, my cinematographer, and a team of editors and sound technicians who add polish to what I give them. I’ve still got a lot to do, but I can’t find my usual zone. I do my best work after filming is completed, and a lot of people are counting on me to get it right. Yet all I can think about is the taste of Addie’s sweet pussy and the way it gripped my dick in a tight, hot fist of pleasure.
My cock hardens as these thoughts pass through my mind, one on top of the other until I’ve checked out completely from what I was doing. As much as I might want to forget it ever happened, my brain refuses to go along with my plan, torturing me with images and memories and sounds I’ll never forget. I’m already picturing her in the playrooms in both of my homes. Oh, the things we could do…
No. Stop. Not happening.
I’m sorely tempted to whip out my cock and take the edge off. Only the possibility that I might not be completely alone in the Quantum building stops me from acting on the sharp pang of desire. I had her five times, and it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.
But it has to be. I can’t do this to her, to our friends, to myself, not when I can never be what she wants, and she can never be what I need. It’s pointless and fruitless to have let this happen in the first place, but to continue it would be a recipe for disaster. I’ve had enough disasters in my life. The last thing I need is another one.
My phone chimes with a text that I glance at, double-taking when I realize it’s from her.
Where’d you go?
Such a simple question with no simple answer. I stare at those three innocuous words on my screen for far longer than I should with everything else I need to do. Where did I go? I came to work, one of two places in my life where everything makes sense. The other being Club Quantum, where I’m allowed to be my authentic self, the man the rest of the world has never seen—the man Addison York has never seen and will never see, if I have my way. And I always have my way. I lead my life by my own rules, and no one, not even precious, beautiful Addie, is going to change that.
It’s better to put a stop to this before it gets started. It would be better still to have put a stop to it before I fucked her, but that ship has sailed now. There’s no going back to who we were to each other only yesterday.
Ignoring her text, I put the phone on my desk, telling myself it’s better this way.
I don’t hear from him at all on Monday, even though I know he received and read my text. I get up for work on Tuesday still aching and more than a little heartsick that he’s blowing me off. I’m disappointed in my friend Hayden. At least, I think we’re friends. If so, my definition of friendship and his differ wildly.
This, right here, is why smart people keep business and pleasure separate. Clearly, I’m not as smart as I think, because today I have to go to the office we share. I’ll have to see him and possibly talk to him and act like nothing happened, when everything happened. I’ll have to pretend in front of Flynn and the others that I’m fine when I’m not fine. I’m not fine at all. I feel broken inside, permanently changed in ways I’ve yet to fully process.
I finally got what I’ve wanted more than anything. I didn’t expect to feel so hollow afterward, but then again, I didn’t expect him to leave without a word either.
“What did you expect, Addison? Hearts and flowers and sonnets?”
Now he’s got me talking to myself. I didn’t expect any of those things, but is it crazy to wish that he’d at least said good-bye before he left? Was it too much to hope for that he might check on me yesterday after turning my world upside down in the course of a few sensually charged hours?
Or maybe what we did is so commonplace for him that it didn’t occur to him that he needed to check on me. Maybe silence afterward is his routine. If so, his routine sucks donkey balls.
I turn the key to engage the dead bolt on my front door and take the elevator down to the parking garage to the sleek Audi R8 that my wonderful boss surprised me with for my birthday last year. Working for a total “car whore” has its advantages, and I still can’t believe that this amazing car is all mine. Flynn being Flynn went all-out with a top-of-the-line V10 in a gorgeous metallic blue with black wheels and features I’m still discovering months later.
The biggest issue I have with the car is keeping an eye on the speed limit when I’m on the highway. I’ve already been stopped once for speeding and given a warning. Thank goodness, because that ticket would’ve been beastly.
I slip into the black leather seat, wincing at the dull pain that still resonates from between my legs. Closing the door, I breathe in the lingering new-car scent, which reminds me to count my blessings. I have a great home, a hot car and a job that make my high school and college friends green with envy. I’m friends with or acquainted with most of Hollywood’s A-list thanks to my connection to Flynn, Hayden, Marlowe, Jasper and Kristian.
My internal pep talk, while a nice reminder of how blessed I am, doesn’t do a damned thing to assuage my wounded pride or aching heart. How can he do this to me? I’m not just any random hookup. It’s me. Addie, his friend, his colleague, his…
The biggest mistake I’ve made is thinking that I matter more to him than I do. I thought there was something special between us. I thought what we did the other night was special. It was to me, anyway. I guess it wasn’t to him. I have the time it takes to drive from home to the office to convince myself I’m okay with that. So what if it didn’t mean anything to him? It meant something to me, and I can hold on to that while I try to put my infatuation with him in the past.
Thank God I managed to contain those three little words that were on the tip of my tongue during every cataclysmic orgasm the other night. I cringe at how close I came to saying them more than once. But I didn’t, and now he’ll never know how I really feel about him. His loss.
My chest tightens and my eyes fill with tears I refuse to indulge. No matter how heartbroken I might feel, I’m not going to cry over Hayden Roth. I wanted him, I had him and now my feelings for him are in the past, or so I tell myself. Through rush-hour traffic, I focus on driving and the day ahead that will include a board meeting for Flynn and Natalie’s new childhood hunger foundation, as well as training Marlowe’s new assistant, Leah.
Everyone is excited to welcome Natalie’s former roommate from New York, who recently relocated to LA to work for Marlowe. As soon as Marlowe offered Leah the job—and offered to buy her out of her contract—Leah resigned from her teaching position at the Emerson School.
Flynn asked me to help train Leah to be Marlowe’s “Addie.” I know it’s a huge compliment that Flynn and the other Quantum principals think I set the gold standard for Hollywood assistants, but today I can’t seem to muster my usual enthusiasm for my job.
In the thirty minutes it takes me to travel four miles to the office, I have myself convinced I can handle being in the same building with him today. I can pretend everything is fine, that I’m not shattered by his callous disregard after life-altering sex. I want to call it lovemaking, but that’s not what it was for him. If he loved me, if he cared about me at all, he wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye. He wouldn’t have let more than a day go by without a word.
So screw him. Screw him every which way to next Tuesday. He can go fuck himself, because he is never going to get another chance to fuck m
e if this is how he handles the aftermath. No wonder he can’t seem to maintain a relationship. He’s an emotionally stunted fucked-up disaster area, and I’m better off without him.
Having moved from devastated to furious in the time it takes me to get to work, I pull into the parking lot and into my space next to Hayden’s black Range Rover with the HAR license plate. Hayden Anthony Roth, named after both his grandfathers, and I hate that I know that, because I hate him, and I don’t want to know every little thing there is to know about him.
I don’t want to know the details of his hideous childhood or remember the photos of him with every hot young actress to come through the Hollywood mill in the last ten years. I don’t want to think about him anymore. I’m done.
Grabbing my messenger bag and purse, I head into the building and use the palm scanner to gain access to the elevator. During the ride to the fifth floor, I go over the plan for the day—act normal, pretend like nothing is wrong, smile and under no circumstances show him that you give the first shit about him. Got it. I can do that.
The elevator doors open and who do you think is standing at the reception desk, chatting with our receptionist, Mackenzie, and laughing like he doesn't have the first care in the word? Yep, you guessed it, the man himself. And isn’t it just my luck that he’s wearing sexy faded jeans that hug his perfect ass, the same ass I clutched two nights ago as he slammed into me with that big—
Stop! You’re over him. You’re done with him and his big… thing.
“Morning,” I say cheerfully, keeping my focus on Mackenzie as I manage to avoid looking at him at all—other than the ass shot, of course. I’d have to be dead not to notice that, and I’m done, not dead.
“Hey, Addie,” Mackenzie says. “I put a few calls through to your voice mail this morning already, and you’ve got two deliveries in your office.”
“Thank you.”
“Addie,” Hayden says, “could I have a minute?”
“Can’t right now,” I say, breezing by him. “Got a conference call in five minutes that I’m not ready for.”
“Oh. Okay. Later, then.”
“Sure,” I say, though I’m thinking when hell freezes over. This might be a good time to mention that while Flynn is my boss and my number-one priority, in addition to what he pays me to be his beck-and-call girl, I also collect a salary from Quantum to assist the other principals as needed. So technically Hayden is also one of my bosses. Technically, however, he can kiss my ass. I’ve got nothing to say to him, even if my nipples tingled at the sound of his gruff voice saying he wanted to talk to me.
Fuck. Him.
I go into my office and shut the door, hoping he and everyone else stays out and leaves me alone until I get my shit together. I wish I had a conference call to lose myself in, but I have nothing on my calendar until the ten-o’clock foundation board meeting and I took care of everything for that on Friday. Damn my blasted efficiency.
It occurs to me then that he’ll be able to tell I’m not on the phone when the red light for my extension isn’t on. I pick up the phone and press the button for an outside line and then hit the mute button before placing the receiver on my desktop. Whatever it takes to avoid him.
I dive into my email, which includes a long one from our publicist Liza, outlining the four million interview requests Flynn has received since winning the Oscar. He did several of the big ones yesterday, but there are many more who want him. I print a copy of the email to give to him when I see him so he can choose what he wants to do—and what he doesn’t. There will be far more in the latter category, as he’s been burned by the media so many times that he’s extremely choosy about who he talks to.
I can’t say I blame him, especially after the recent feeding frenzy that erupted when Natalie’s painful past was sold to the highest bidder. Natalie’s father murdered the unscrupulous lawyer who sold her out to the media. I’m still trying to get my head around that part of the story and how her father killed the lawyer for besmirching the man who attacked Natalie. Speaking of fucked up…
How she can be the generous, thoughtful, beautiful person she is after what she endured as a teen is admirable, to say the least. They are so blissfully happy together, despite what they both went through before they met. She’s absolutely perfect for him, and their story gives me hope that someday I might find the man who’s perfect for me.
One thing I now know is that man will not be Hayden Roth. And I’m fine with that. A tingle of sensation between my legs takes me right back to the early hours of Monday when he was deep inside me as I writhed under him, seeking relief from the almost painful pleasure of his possession. And just that quickly, I forget all about my plans to forget all about him.
Dropping my head into my hands, I focus on breathing, on thinking about anything other than him. I hate him. I love him. I want him. I hate him. I love him. I’m a hot fucking mess over him, and I hate that most of all. I don’t go crazy over men, and I never have. It isn’t like me to obsess over one of them when there’re so many to choose from. So what is it about Hayden that makes me nuts?
Before Monday morning or since then? Before Monday, when I thought of him—far too often—it was always his eyes that got to me. One minute so icy blue and the next minute hot and passionate, and then just as quickly, wounded and fragile. You have to know him, really know him, to ever catch a glimpse of his wounded or fragile side, but I’ve seen it. I know it’s in there while the rest of the world mostly sees the ice.
Since Monday, I’ve got a whole new set of images to add to my mental library, none of which will be helpful to my forget-he-exists campaign. As much as I loved it as it was happening, I wish with every fiber of my being that I never slept with him. This crush or obsession or whatever you want to call it was bad enough before I knew what it was like to kiss him and touch him and…
A moan escapes from my tightly clenched jaw. I can almost feel the intense stretch and burn of him burrowing into me, ruthless and relentless and yet somehow tender at the same time. It had been earthy and erotic and dirty and sexy, and God help me, I want more of it. Maybe it would be enough to be his fuck buddy if it meant getting down and dirty with him once in a while. Wouldn’t that be better than nothing?
No, it wouldn’t be better.
Someone knocks on the door, forcing me out of my increasingly desperate thoughts to remember I’m at work. Hoping it’s not Hayden, I say, “Come in.”
Mackenzie sticks her head in, notices the receiver sitting on my desk and then looks at me. “Flynn is wondering if you’re coming to the board meeting.”
“Crap, is it already ten?”
“Ten after.”
“Ugh, tell him I’ll be right there.”
I begin gathering up the agendas and other items I printed at Natalie’s request on Friday and rush out of my office where I crash into someone in my haste. Him. Of course I crash into him, and my papers fly out of my hands, and it’s all I can do not to break down right in front of him. At least I didn’t drop my laptop, too.
Squatting, I gather the papers, thankful that I stapled everything on Friday, so it isn’t a total disaster.
He squats next to me, helping.
I want to tell him not to bother, that I’ve got this, that I don’t need his help or anything else. Remember the part about him being one of my bosses? Yeah, that’s why I don’t say any of those things. Rather, I take the papers he hands me without actually looking at him and mumble my thanks.
We both stand.
“Addie—”
“I’m late for a meeting.”
I brush by him, hating the way my body reacts to even that slight contact. I hate him. I hate myself. I hate walking into the conference room now twelve minutes late when I’m never late for anything—ever. That’s Hayden’s fault, too. Everything is his fault. I hate that Natalie, Flynn, his parents, sisters and the other Hollywood heavy-hitters he recruited for the foundation board stop their conversation when I enter the room probably looking
as frazzled as I feel.
I’m never going near him again.
And then he walks into the room, smiling as if he hasn’t a care in the world. “What’d I miss?”
I hate him.
Chapter 5
She won’t look at me. I know this because I haven’t taken my eyes off her since I came into the conference room to officially join the board of Flynn and Natalie’s foundation. I wasn’t going to attend the meeting until I saw an opportunity to be in the same room with Addie for an hour to gauge what’s up with her.
She’s ignoring me. That’s what’s up with her.
And why does that bother me so much when it’s exactly what I want her to do? It’s what I need her to do. Except, the thought of losing my friend Addie is excruciating. Goddamn, I fucked this up so bad by having sex with her in the first place, then sneaking out and going silent on her afterward. I suck. I know I do. But better she find out now that I’m no good than to let her think I’m someone I’m not.
Now she knows exactly who and what I am—someone who would fuck his friend and then go silent on her when I know she has feelings for me that go beyond friendship. I’ve known that for a long time. Hell, I have those feelings, too. I feel more for her than I have for any other woman. She’s amazing and smart and scary efficient and beautiful and so fucking sexy she makes me drool—and that was before I had the sublime pleasure of seeing her naked and losing myself in her.
