by Tara Leigh
She hesitated, her chin quivering. “It’s ugly, Dax. The truth—my truth—is so, so ugly.”
I spoke slowly, softly. “That was what you were talking about—when we were in the car the other day. Sex before you were ready. Something that’s happened to you, not something you wanted.”
Her thick lashes were the most elegant of fans, fluttering over twin vaults bursting with secrets. “That was an audition.”
Fury prodded me, as harsh and hot as a scalding poker. I winced, shifted uncomfortably in my seat as I stared at Verity through the fog of rage clouding my vision. “An audition? Some fat fuck was…” This time, my voice trailed off not because I couldn’t finish my thought, but because Verity’s expression confirmed it.
“Why?” I confined my question to just the one word, feeling like I was treading on unsteady ground and that at any minute it would collapse beneath us.
Verity looked out the window for a moment, and when she turned back to face me, a bitter laugh gurgled from her throat. “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, Dax. That tape…” She shook her head. “That tape is just a log on the pyre.”
I’d never attempted to be an actor in Hollywood. Never been dragged through the gauntlet of Manhattan talent offices that mainly casted for commercials and print work. Sure, I’d heard about the casting couch. But had I ever given it a second’s thought? No. Not once.
Not to wonder if it existed or to decry the practice at all.
The anger expanding in every atom of my body was painful, like I was being flayed apart from the inside. “Is that Jack Lester?” The bastard would wish he were dead once I got through with him.
She glanced away from my outraged expression. A sweep of red hair fell over her cheek, shielding her profile from me. I went to tuck it behind her ear, and Verity jerked away from my hand. “Shit. Sorry,” she said, her face pinched, the burst of fear already fading as she made eye contact again.
I exhaled, leaning back against the car door. “Not a damn thing in the world you have to be sorry for.”
She gave me a tentative half smile, wistful and sweet. “I’m carrying around a lot of baggage for someone who’s currently homeless. You sure you don’t want to get out of the car?”
I shook my head slowly. “Not a chance.”
It was the truth. The more I knew about Verity, the less willing I was to keep her at arm’s length. Her baggage hadn’t dragged me down. If anything, it made me feel like the shit I carried around was nothing to complain about. And it had me wanting to ease her burden, as much as I could. “So, I’ve gotta ask. Is there a reason you were watching that?”
“The video was e-mailed to me this morning. I guess I didn’t actually shut it down earlier.”
“Who…? Who the hell e-mailed it to you?”
“Someone who thinks ‘Bombshell Rebel’ is a little too revealing.”
My jaw sagged. “You’re being blackmailed because of m—our song?”
“Yes.” The word trembled on a sigh. “Whoever wrote it didn’t realize how accurate those lyrics were. The press is trying to make it into an accusation against my former producer.”
“So that’s who sent the video?”
“Not exactly.” Verity reached around the back of her neck and squeezed, like her muscles were protesting our conversation. “His assistant, more likely.”
I replaced her hands with my own, massaging the strained tendons on either side of her spine, the rounded hunch of her shoulders, the tender skin behind her ears. She exhaled a long groan, relaxing under my touch.
I felt like an ass for not appreciating the gift Verity had given me, not just access to her gorgeous body, but her trust. Her pleasure. Her honesty.
And until now I’d taken it all for granted.
“Millie coordinated his auditions—the ones he oversaw personally.” With her head tipped forward, her words came out haltingly, punctuated by sweet little sighs that belied the ugliness of what she was saying. “She and my mother have kept in touch over the years, and apparently they’re shopping around a new show. If I had to guess, ‘Bombshell Rebel’ is just enough of a nuisance to make getting a commitment from a network a little trickier. Millie sent this video as a warning.”
“But if that video gets out—wouldn’t it kill his career, not yours?”
“Doubtful. It looks like a consensual sex tape with an eighteen-year-old actress. Trust me. Jack is powerful, and he won’t go down without a fight. He’ll say I lured him into a sexual relationship. That I’m a woman scorned, releasing it now because I wasn’t cast in his new project. Powerful producers like Jack Lester control the narrative, Dax. My career, my second chance in this industry, would be destroyed. Exactly what Millie is threatening…” She exhaled a heavy sigh. “It’s going to take a lot more than sex with a disgraced former actress to bring him down.”
Even now, faced with a deck that was stacked against her, I could see that something inside Verity wasn’t willing to fold. “Is that what you want to do, bring him down?”
She lifted her head and leaned back, rolling her shoulders as she glanced my way. I let my hand drop to the back of her seat. “I kind of do, yeah.”
“Kind of?”
Her lips twitched, then pulled outward, exposing the glint of sharp, shiny teeth. “I want to bury him.”
Verity
My stomach dropped when a photo popped up on my screen. Oh god. What now? I nearly fell over with relief when I saw it was just an overstuffed grocery bag…followed by a text.
Dax: Perfect night for hot dogs and s’mores…?
Having spent most of my afternoon with Travis, recounting my experiences in Hollywood, particularly my interactions with Jack Lester and Millie, and then sitting across from him while he watched the video on my phone—in its entirety—I wasn’t sure that I was fit company for anyone.
But knowing the alternative was spending my night all alone, reliving my fucked-up past in intimate detail…
Hot dogs and s’mores with Dax sounded pretty damn good.
Dax had left my name with the guard at the gatehouse, so this time I was just waved through. I knocked, but when I realized the front door was unlocked, I poked my head in and called Dax’s name.
“Down here,” came his reply. As soon as I shut the door behind me, I heard the rich strains of his piano pulsing through the air. Toeing off my shoes, I left them haphazardly by the door.
As always, the first sight of Dax Hughes was a jolt to my heart. Peering over the railing, I took a moment to drink in the sight of him at his piano, fingers flying over the keyboard, the sounds he was making caressing my eardrums like the richest velvet. Luxurious yet delicate. Each stroke of the keys a resonant note Dax had tamed, crafting into an elegant, complicated web that wrapped around me like a shroud. I was caught, entranced, completely mesmerized.
Despite my unfamiliarity with classical music, it was impossible not to hear the emotions that had been woven into the song. Impossible not to be moved by them. Joy and sorrow, hope and pain, love and hate, desire and discipline. Words were unnecessary.
Music was a universal language.
Without realizing it, I found myself on the stairs, drawn to Dax by the inescapable, undeniable gravity that existed between us.
Walking to the piano, I stood by the curve of the wooden case, spreading my hands flat on the lid. The pulse of the music was a heartbeat against my palms. The rhythm vibrated through my bones, changing the consistency of the marrow inside. Making my limbs feel looser, my body lighter.
Dax didn’t look up. He was in the zone. That place where music took over and you were just a conduit, a means of expressing something bigger and more powerful than you could fathom unless you’d experienced it yourself.
All bristling intensity, Dax was so beautiful in this moment. His passion pure and potent.
He took my breath away.
His hands sped up, then slowed, sped up again only to lift off the keys entirely, a final explosion of s
ound resonating in the stillness of the room.
I couldn’t help it—I clapped as if I were the new president of Dax Hughes’s fan club. Maybe I was. “That was amazing,” I gushed, my cheeks straining from the wide grin splitting my face apart.
An embarrassed flush crept up Dax’s neck. “You hungry?”
“For more of that?” I jerked a chin at the piano. “Definitely.”
He stood, a chuckle rumbling from his chest. “Well, I’m hungry for actual food.” Gently setting down the cover, he stepped away from the bench and threw his arm over my shoulders, leading me toward the kitchen. “Indulge me?”
The two words were wrapped up in sexual innuendo, tied with promise. I swallowed down the heavy knot of want lodged in my throat. “Of course.”
* * *
I didn’t bring up the elephant sitting in a corner of Dax’s deck until after we’d washed down our hot dogs with icy cold beer straight from the bottle and devoured an entire bag of marshmallows and chocolate and graham crackers, licking the sticky mess off our fingertips. “Remember when I told you that what you saw—”
“On your phone?”
I nodded. “I said it was just the beginning.”
“Only a log on the pyre,” he added, parroting my own words back to me.
My mouth formed an echo of a smile. “Yes, that.” A barely there smile that died as I tried to put words to my thoughts. “What do you think happens to a girl who discovers that ‘no’ isn’t an acceptable word? At least, not in Hollywood. Not if she has any chance of landing a role she’d been groomed for practically since birth. Singing lessons, dancing lessons, audition after audition after audition.” I took a breath. “And now this is the audition—one that means the difference between having a job and a paycheck and a family and…having nothing.”
Dax was studying me closely over the flames of the firepit, the dancing orange light illuminating the severe bone structure and strong lines of his face. The man reminded me of the gorgeous guitars he hung on his walls. Alluring and mysterious. “My experience being a girl is a little limited, so I think you’ll have to explain it to me.”
I lifted my bottle in a mock toast. “Well, since the girl we’re talking about is me, I can tell you. She learns that sex is a commodity. Something given with the expectation of getting something in return. There’s no emotion involved, unless you count a lingering feeling of shame, of worthlessness. At least, until she severs that mind/body connection entirely, for her own sanity. That girl goes on to have partner after partner, knowing she is being used, justifying it by telling herself that she is using them, too. Until the cycle feels so relentless, so meaningless, she doesn’t see any point in living at all.”
The words flowed from my mouth on autopilot, a spill of sewage that wouldn’t turn off. I watched Dax’s face as he listened to me, his expression tightening as I lay my toxic waste at his feet. “After that first role, what were you getting out of it?” he asked.
“Escape. Once The Show ended, I couldn’t get out of L.A. fast enough. I wanted to get away from Jack, from Millie, from my mother. At first I told myself I would get my GED and take classes at NYU, be a college girl for a few years, get my head on straight. But it was so much easier to spend my nights partying and my days sleeping. I didn’t have to think about what happened in L.A. What I’d allowed to happen. Life was a merry-go-round of parties and private jets, drinking and drugs and shopping on someone else’s dime. Rich guys who were only too eager to pay my way.”
“What made you get off the ride?”
I knew the question was coming. My basket. My bread crumbs. I’d led Dax here, to the truth. But I still hesitated. My truth was more of a gash, an untreated wound.
That videotaped audition hadn’t even been the beginning of the trail. Where had it started, exactly? The first time I’d sat for a head shot—a six-year-old wearing lip gloss and eyelash extensions? Or with casting directors who thought it was appropriate to tell a twelve-year-old to act sexy, to flirt like I wanted to be kissed. Maybe at industry parties where I was just one of a dozen other young teens wearing skimpy bikinis around a pool, letting forty- and fifty-year-old men play with my hair and spread sunscreen on my skin. A pretty prop to boost their egos as they crowed about their latest deal.
Draining what was left of my beer, I stood up. We’d finished the last of the s’mores an hour ago and now my stomach was churning from the salty-sweet mess that had tasted so good going down. “I think I’m going to get my feet wet.” Only Dax’s watchful eyes followed me. Maybe he realized I needed some distance.
I did. I needed to splay my toes in the sand, feel the bite of the cold ocean water on my skin, the bracing wind against my face. I picked my way down the steep trail that led from Dax’s stunning home to the beach, sucking in deep lungfuls of salty air, humidity coating a throat that was parched and sore from all the ugliness I’d forced through it today. My eyes absorbed the sheer, undeniable beauty of the seascape, needing it to counteract the video I’d seen this morning, the memories that had been flashing in my mind ever since.
The unremitting current was a balm to my fraught nerves. The tension in my neck and shoulders gradually easing with each step, each lick of the tide. Calm and gentle one minute, ferocious and lethal the next, the sea was a powerful, affirming force.
I wasn’t a scared teenager anymore. I was done being verbally threatened and physically assaulted.
Done expecting the worst of all men because I’d seen the worst in some.
So done.
I couldn’t change the past.
But…what about my future? What did I want it to look like? Who did I want to spend it with?
I didn’t feel Dax’s footsteps on the sand until he was standing directly behind me, the scent of him mingling with the briny ocean breeze. My breath hiccupped in the back of my throat as his long, elegant fingers curved over my shoulders in the lightest of holds. “Okay if I join you?”
My heart squeezed at the consideration implied in his question. I inched backward just enough that my back was flush with his chest, my ass tucked between his solidly planted thighs. My arms lifted of their own accord, my hands sliding over Dax’s, our fingers interlacing. “Yes.”
We stayed like that for a while, both of us looking out at the sea, absorbing its strength through our pores, our breaths synchronized with the rhythm of the waves. The California coastline was timeless and eternal, a barely there blur of distinction between sea and sand and sky.
Eventually I shivered, and Dax wrapped his arms around me, drawing me closer as his shoulders curved around me, their bulk shielding me from the scrape of the wind. I let out a contented sigh when he rested his chin on the top of my head. This felt so good. So right. A comfort I’d never known possible. Contentment I’d never believed I deserved.
“Tell me something true.” I flipped the question on Dax, my voice riding on the crash of the waves, rippling in the breeze.
Wanting to see the moonlight on his face, I turned in his hold. He blinked at me, one corner of his mouth kicking up in an ironic slanted smile. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here with you, tonight.”
I exhaled, entwining my fingers at the base of his spine. “Thank you for inviting me over.”
“I’m glad you came. And I owe you an apology.”
“An apology? What for?”
He glanced over my head for a moment, his chiseled jaw clenching and unclenching as he mulled over his thoughts. “Everything,” he finally said, returning his gaze to mine. “For being a dick before I knew anything about you. And for being no better than the others who used you for their own pleasure, took without giving.”
I tried to laugh off what he was saying with an easy tease. “Don’t sell yourself short. You gave as much as you took, believe me.”
The energy between us rose several notches, spiking and swirling like the charged air of an impending storm. Dax’s hands traveled along the wings of my shoulder blades, finger
tips pushing through my hair at the nape of my neck and holding my skull in his hands. His eyes traveled over my face, studying every plane and curve and hollow like a map. With infinite precision, he tilted my head just slightly, as if the exact angle was important, and then he leaned down. Slowly, so slowly, his lips captured mine in the softest of kisses. Just the barest brush of his lips over mine. A breath, really. The kiss of an angel, dispensed by a man whose dark looks and mysterious smile were pure devil.
Sin had never looked so damn sexy.
Once, twice, three times Dax kissed me. Light and sweet. The passion that lay just under the surface kept firmly in check.
Meanwhile, mine was raging out of control. A moan traveled up my throat, skating through my lips as a raspy whine. My fingers unlocked, sliding up Dax’s back and kneading the muscles corded tightly on either side of his spine.
“Verity.” My eyes snapped open at the sound of my name. It wasn’t a groan or a plea or a tease. It was a pay attention. “I took a swipe at your confidence, at your worth, every time I walked away from what you wanted to give. In my mind, I was comparing you—your ambition and drive—to a woman whose name doesn’t deserve to be spoken in the same breath as yours.” He planted a kiss on my forehead, the softness of his lips lingering there. “I’m so sorry, Verity. I really am.”
I had to blink back the tears stinging my eyes at his heartfelt confession. Because that’s what it was, a confession as much as an apology.
More than that, it was a gift. As if Dax had sliced himself open to reveal what was hidden deep inside. A place that had never been exposed to the light, let alone another person.
Dax’s anxious expression studied mine as he pulled away. I gave him a soft smile. “You didn’t have to say that—” I put a finger over his full lips when Dax looked like he was about to interrupt me. “But it means so much to me that you did.”
