Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story (9 page)

He eased himself away from the counter and came to stand in front of me, putting his large hands on my bare arms. At the contact of his skin against mine, my stomach dropped to somewhere around my knees and my heartbeat accelerated. This man could control my body without even trying; just one slight caress and I was ready to melt into him.

“I didn’t think there’d be any surprises since we know each other so well, but I also hadn’t counted on messing things up so monumentally. Now I feel like every interaction we have is laced with your anger.”

He put a finger over my lips to keep my interruption at bay.

“Just hear me out. You’re still really angry for what happened and I don’t blame you. I’m still angry with myself. But when we were fighting back there”— he gestured toward my bedroom— “this look came over your face, something I’d never seen before, and it shocked me. I realized I’ve never seen you truly angry. Sure, I’ve witnessed your road rage first hand and seen how upset you can get over something your mother has said or done, so I thought I knew what to expect when you get worked up. But what I saw when you were yelling at me just now was something entirely different.” He shook his head sadly. “You looked like you hated me, like you wanted me gone from your life and I don’t think I can live with that kind of hate Sarah”

I was about to deny it, tell him he was wrong, but deep down inside I knew he wasn’t. Despite how wonderful the night before had been – how him admitting he loved me was one of the best things I’d ever heard – I
was
still hurt over his abandonment. Even though now I knew
why
it had happened, knowing his reasons didn’t change the fact that I’d spent the last month of my life feeling wretched and humiliated.

“I’m not trying to be a bitch,” I said, my voice low. “I don’t want to be mad at you anymore, but I don’t know how to make that hurt magically disappear either. You’ve explained
why
you did what you did, but it doesn’t change the fact that it made me question my own self worth and I loathe that. Can you imagine how you would’ve felt if in the middle of making love, I jumped out of bed and left you, naked and alone, and then basically disappeared from your life without a word? Imagine, for a second, what that would do to you? To your self esteem?”

When he tried to interrupt me this time, I stalled him by raising my hand in the universal signal for “now wait just a goddamn minute so I can finish saying my piece.”

“I try not to feel bad about myself, ever. I’m a bigger girl and I know it. Most of the time I love my curves. Hell I celebrate them. But all I could think for those first few days after you left was that I had disgusted you. It isn’t lost on me that guys like you don’t fall for girls like me.”

Cameron pulled me into his arms and told me, quite emphatically, to shut the fuck up.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop apologizing for what I did, but it never once occurred to me you would jump to
that
conclusion. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve always been so self-assured. You’re beautiful, you have to know that. So what if you’re not some stick thin waif? I love everything about your body.” He ran his hands down my arms, his eyes flicking over my chest, trapped under the thin cotton tank top I wore. “Your breasts drive me wild. Sometimes I find myself just staring at them, lost in thought of what I could do to them, and then I’ll want nothing more than to lift them to my face so that I can drown in you.”

He dropped to his knees and placed his hands on my waist before leaning in to plant several kisses over my rounded belly and up my ribcage. “Sometimes during the middle of the day people have been talking to me and I haven’t heard a word they’ve said because I’m so lost in imagining myself on my knees … worshiping you, worshiping your body.”

He lifted the hem of my shirt and trailed kisses along my bare skin in between his words. As his hands slid up under the thin cotton fabric they left goose bumps in their wake. He didn’t stop their ascent and soon he cupped each of my breasts in his warm, gentle hands. Compared to everything we had already done to each other, the gesture was a fairly innocent one, but the combination of his thumbs caressing my nipples and the words he whispered – words that silenced my misgivings and doubt – was so erotic that I felt myself growing impossibly wet and aroused by it. My desire for him pooled between my thighs and I knew if he touched me the way I wanted him to, even through the barrier of my clothes, I’d definitely come.

“Since that first time together … I’ve woken up at night hard for you … wanting to bury myself in you … remembering the sweet, salty taste of you on my lips, on my tongue, in my soul.”

He licked my stomach and I almost collapsed. He trailed his hands down the sides of my body and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of my yoga pants. Sliding them past my hips and down my thighs to tangle at my ankles, he placed a provocative, open-mouthed kiss just below my belly button and then continued licking his way down my body. The sight of him crouched in front of me as he did wickedly delightful things with his mouth was something I’d fantasized about many times but never thought I’d experience. Now I had knowledge of the real thing – his tongue on my inflamed flesh, licking me to distraction – to replace those insufficient fantasies.

I tried to hold out, to savor the feel of him between my thighs, but the expertise of his tongue as it moved over my warm, soft flesh was no match for my willpower. On my next breath a deep, shuddering gasp was forced from my lungs and a dizzying climax took hold of my body, ten thousand tiny particles of pleasure exploding out from the red curls between my thighs to dance along my dewy skin.

When my knees gave out, Cameron scooped me into his arms and marched us purposefully to my bedroom where he tossed me onto the bed. Landing with a bounce, I caught my breath on an exclamation as I looked up to see him tearing his clothes off as quickly as possible. Once he was completely, wondrously naked, he joined me on the mattress. 

“I love you,” he growled against my lips as he buried himself deep inside of me in one driving thrust. His tongue invaded my mouth and made seductive, swirling motions that echoed the movements of his cock as he made love to both my mouth and my pussy.

Canting his body onto his elbows, he stared into my eyes as he slowed the pace of our coupling, languidly guiding himself inch by exquisite inch into and out of me. When I arched against him and writhed in need he smiled down at me, knowing full well how the change of pace and pressure affected me. I grinned back and brought my knees up to better accommodate his length, to take him deeper. Never breaking eye contact, he ground his body against mine, moving his hips in slow, unrelenting circles. I pressed my hips against him and rocked in time to the movements of his body.

“More,” I demanded. “Harder!”

He captured my mouth with a hungry intensity and at my insistence he eased out and then filled me again in one hard, driving thrust. He repeated the motion over and over, his hips slamming into mine while the rippling muscles of his powerful back flexed under my greedy hands. I sat up to lick a drop of sweat that threatened to fall from his chin and trailed my tongue down along his taut neck to the rock-hard planes of his chest before capturing his right nipple between my teeth and biting down gently. With a shudder, he drove his cock into me, the pace and force of the motion triggering his orgasm. He convulsed against me, groaning low in his throat, as he spilled himself deep inside of me. As I felt the pulse of his seed flood my core, I followed him in a dizzying climax of my own, throbbing waves of pleasure erupting along my spine as I cried out his name with abandon.

Cameron collapsed on top of me, a gratifying sigh of satisfaction exhaled against the hollow of my neck. We stayed like that for several seconds before he rolled onto his back, his breath coming in rapid bursts. My own breathing came in erratic, shallow spurts as well, and I pulled a few gulps of air into my lungs to help calm the thundering of my heart. I turned to find Cameron staring at me, a gleam of pride and fulfillment shining in his beautiful baby blues.   

“That was …” he laughed and looked toward the ceiling. He lifted his hand and ran it through his hair as he exhaled loudly. He looked back at me, chuckling, “God damn, that was fucking spectacular.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” I closed my eyes and stretched languorously, feeling my muscles ease and the tension from our argument leave my body.

I took a beat to gather
my senses. The bed I laid in was far more comfortable than my own, not to mention the fact that it was on the wrong side of the room. Also, my bedroom didn’t have that window taking up the entire right side of the wall. I trailed my eyes over the room while my mind caught up and I realized why everything was different. That’s when I remembered who I was sharing a bed with and my morning wood grew even thicker.

I rolled my neck and dropped my eyes to the woman sleeping to my left. During the night, she’d kicked off the blanket, leaving only the bottom half of her body covered by the flat sheet. In the watery morning light, she lay on her stomach, arms wrapped loosely around her pillow. Her face was turned toward me in repose, affording me the rare moment to just take her in without making her feel self-conscious at my hungry assessment. I hadn’t had enough of these moments before when I’d been forced to steal glances of her lest my hungry eyes give my feelings away so I cherished them now.

Sarah stirred and even though I didn’t want her to wake up and find me staring down at her like a major creeper, I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Memorizing her face felt as necessary as breathing. I wanted to remember always what she looked when she wasn’t weighed down by the weight of the world, the stress and unhappiness that until a couple of nights ago, had been my doing. As I trailed my eyes from the top of her fiery curls to her turquoise-tipped toes that peeked out from the bottom of the sheet, she shifted again and a breathy moan escaped her lips. It sounded so much like the moans she made when I ran my tongue over her sweet, honeyed clit that my cock twitched at the memory of the taste of her on my hungry lips.

“You’re staring at me,” she murmured, eyes remaining closed.

“You haven’t even opened your eyes. How’d you know?”

“I could
feel
you staring at me.”

I laughed. “Shit, I thought you wouldn’t know.”

She rolled over and stretched her body. On a deep sigh, she remarked, “It’s okay. I would have done the same if our roles were reversed.”

“What are your plans for today?”

I would have liked nothing more than to stay cocooned in this room making love to her until neither of us could walk, but that didn’t seem like the most productive use of our day off.

“I’ve been thinking, before all this”—I gestured between us— “we’d hang out all the time, just doing whatever. You’re my girl now, but I’ve never taken you on a proper date.” Her eyes twinkled. “So you tell me what you want to do today.”

Sarah went from relaxed sleepyhead to kid-in-a-candy-store in two seconds flat. “Ooh, there’s a new exhibit at The Getty I’ve wanted to check out! Can we do that?” She grabbed her phone off the nightstand, punched some information into the browser, and tossed it my way.

My brow furrowed, I scrolled through information about the exhibit. Honestly? I didn’t get the appeal, but then again, modern art was seriously not my thing. I could sit through lectures on Renaissance and Baroque painters if forced – I knew this because Sarah
has
forced me to – but there was just something about all these lines, squiggles, and blotches that made absolutely no sense to me. I know beauty was in the eye of the beholder and all that, but this stuff wasn’t even pretty. At least those Italians had transformed the way regular, everyday people saw the human form. This stuff though? Just messes on canvas as far as I could tell. And yet, when I darted my eyes back to Sarah to see if she was fucking with me, she looked so excited about the idea of us going to the exhibit that I didn’t have it in me to tell her I’d rather get my chest waxed. Which, incidentally, I’d once had done for an ad for some high end resort wear (which I actually wore very little of in the photo) and vowed right then and there that was never happening again.

“Yeah, sure. That sounds great.” I pasted an exaggerated grimace-slash-smile on my face when I handed the phone back to her.

“You’ll love it, I promise.” Laughter filler her eyes. She knew I wouldn’t love it, but she’d pretend otherwise for as long as necessary to convince me to go.

“Sure I will.” I rolled my eyes. “But I love
you
, so let’s do this thing.”

In one smooth movement, she sat up and crossed her legs in front of her. “I’ll tell you what. You spend the afternoon at the museum with me and I’ll take you to dinner to celebrate, anywhere you want.”

Last year, one of the gaffers on a show I’d had a short-lived story arc on had turned me onto La Rosita, a tiny Mexican restaurant on Ventura Boulevard his cousin’s wife’s mother owned, and I’d been hooked on their tacos and Micheladas ever since. I rarely got a chance to stop in any more since my character had been killed off in a revenge murder plot and wasn’t on that side of town much otherwise. But since La Rosita was close to an exit off the 101 we’d take to get to and from The Getty, I knew immediately where I wanted to go.

As it turned out, wandering The Getty hadn’t been a completely terrible way to pass the afternoon, and while I hadn’t loved the exhibit Sarah was thrilled to have seen, walking hand and hand through the courtyards and museum hallways had been a lovely experience. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to being able to touch her and hold her without making up some excuse as to why. It gave me a thrill to know from now on I could do this whenever and wherever I wanted. No more pretending or hiding my feelings from the world. If the happy smiles she tossed my way throughout the day were any indication, she felt exactly the same. 

I know she’d expected to go somewhere fancy or upscale, but she didn’t complain when I dragged her to the hole in the wall Mexican joint to eat off soggy paper plates while sharing a table with ten of our closest non-friends. In fact, she let out a few moans of delight once she’d gotten a taste of Rosita’s el pastor super burrito, which was when I’d had to throw a few “don’t even think about it” death glares to our tablemates. Focused entirely on her food, she remained oblivious to their furtive, heated stares, but I hadn’t. When a guy,
any guy
, spied a beautiful woman moaning like that while her lips were wrapped around something long and thick, his mind went to one place and one place only. When she moaned again, I flipped our plates and told her I wanted to switch meals, something we often did so it didn’t look suspicious. Once she was happily devouring my carne asada tacos and I was inhaling her burrito, the men kept their eyes trained on their own meals. 

By the time we pulled into her driveway, I realized the day hadn’t been too different from all the other times we’d hung out, which was a huge relief. Sarah had exposed me to art – her field of expertise – and I’d introduced her to the best damn tacos in L.A. All told, it had been an excellent first date.

Some guys might have taken their very hot new girlfriends somewhere fancy or expensive, but that just wasn’t who I was. It wasn’t who Sarah was either, which was what made us so perfect for each other. Give me the choice of eating someplace off the beaten path where the owner-slash-chef recognizes you the moment you walked through the door – not because of whatever TV show or movie you were in, but because you were a valued, loyal customer – or a night spent rubbing elbows at a glamorous Hollywood hot spot, seeing and being seen, and I’d choose the “no muss, no fuss” place every single time.

That I didn’t ever try to work the room or play the game made me an anomaly in this industry, but so much of my life was spent being somebody else that I guarded my personal time jealously. Once my first two years out here had passed and the shine of Tinsel Town had worn off, I’d made a concerted effort to do the things I actually enjoyed versus those which I was supposed to do to build my profile. Some would argue this approach had negatively impacted my career, but since I’d just landed the most sought after role in the biggest movie of the year, I’d kindly tell them to fuck right off.

***

We’d fallen asleep, naked and sweaty, and when I woke up I wasn’t sure how long we’d been out but it had to have been a few hours. Sarah’s side of the bed was in deep shadow, while a shaft of light from a street lamp outside cut through the window to illuminate mine. The light must have been what woke me: I’d forgotten to close the blinds before passing out.

Wordlessly, Sarah scooted across the open expanse of the bed and settled down alongside me, her arm resting across my torso and her head over my heart. Neither of us spoke for a handful of seconds, our breathing the only sound in the room. I closed my eyes and fell into a semi-conscious state where I wasn’t quite asleep, but not exactly awake either.

In my mind I relived all of the wonderful things I’d done to her just a few hours earlier, the way her body had felt in my hands. The pure, profound love I felt for her. I couldn’t imagine it got any better than that. It had been both passionate and tender and we’d both given as good as we got. I’d always wondered how it would be between us and now I knew it was explosive. I was gasoline and she was the match.

My eyes still closed, Sarah leaned over me and placed a gentle, lingering kiss on my lips before moving away to plant a series of kisses and bites along the rest of my exposed skin. She started at my ear, sucking the lobe into her hot, wet mouth and then clasped it between her teeth and tugged. I felt that tug in other parts of my body as well. I’d never been into biting before, but with Sarah it turned me the fuck on. That first time she’d sank her teeth into me had shocked me, but immediately she’d soothed the ache with flicks of her tongue and I’d been done for. Now I looked forward to feeling the sting of her teeth on my flesh.

I rolled on top of her and held her arms above her head, my hands wrapped around her delicate wrists like a vice. When her eyes went wide, I wondered if she’d like it if I tied her up. Again, something I’d never been into before, but for her, I’d do it and happily. I smiled wolfishly down at her and kissed my way down her jaw, past the slope of her neck to the soft, curving flesh of her plump, rose-tipped breasts. When I captured a nipple between my teeth and bit down, she moaned and closed her eyes. Moving to its partner, I licked and lathed and Sarah’s eyes locked on mine. I pulled her nipple in my mouth and sucked it hard, sending a jolt through her body that made her cry out and arch her back in response.

“We shouldn’t,” she whispered, her body trembling all over. “I can’t go again,” she said as I continued exploring her body with my mouth. “I’m spent. How can you still want more?” I pressed my hard cock against her, showing her just easily I could go again.

“You’re a fiend,” she said on a laugh.

“Only for you.” I captured her lips again for a long, drugging kiss that had her whimpering below me before I moved back to feast on her nipples, my tongue swirling around and around those aching, swollen tips.

Her head fell back onto the pillow and she ceding her body to my desire.

“Lay still. Let me love you.”

“You already did,” she reminded me. “And quite thoroughly too.”

“Then let me do it again to make up for lost time.”

The reminder of the time we’d wasted not telling each other how we really felt would likely remain a sore point between us for quite some time. The wry twist of her lips before she relaxed her face told me she’d thought the same thing. Briefly, I wondered if she was also thinking about how I’d unwittingly kept us apart and hoped that wasn’t the case. If she could only trust me not to break her heart again, we could be so happy.