He pulled a can of soda out of the small refrigerator and popped the tab open for me. “Gauging by your lack of immediate response, I think you need to be there. This—stuff—is all a part of acting, Taryn, and maybe if you see that it’s nothing more than choreographed pretending, then maybe . . .” His eyes locked on mine. “I just . . . I just don’t want what happened in Florida to ever repeat itself.”
“Ryan . . .” My gut twisted. Memories of standing in a downpour watching what I thought was him cheating on me with Lauren Delaney when in fact he was filming were so vivid I swear I could feel a drop of rain trickle down my spine.
Ryan sat down and took my hand in his. “You had another one of your nightmares this morning and I think I know why. We’ve talked about this already. You’re my soul mate, Tar. Maybe if you see all of the preparations that go into filming a scene like this and all of the people standing around watching us, you’ll know it has nothing to do with sex. It’s just an uncomfortable illusion.”
I swallowed some of my doubt, trying not to have any of it fly out of my mouth, knowing that the black-haired boy with bloodied teeth was the cause of me waking up on a gasp. “I know it’s fake. It’s not like you’re going to go over there and actually do it with her.”
“That’s right. I’m not. It’s all pretend. You know that this is my job and scenes like this are going to be in my movies. I just don’t want you to end up hating me because I have to fake it with other women.”
If only faking it didn’t include actual skin-to-skin contact. We locked eyes. “Truthfully, I don’t know what to expect and I’m a little scared. I can’t help it.”
His eyes softened. His fingers caressed my wrist. “Okay, let’s talk about it. What are you scared of?”
“This is all new to me. I’m not accustomed to the idea of having the person I’m involved with do that sort of stuff with someone else in front of me. And things are good with us now but what if we’re having a rough patch and then you and someone else and the temptation and kissing . . .”
His hand covered mine, softly stroking his thumb over my knuckles. “I won’t be tempted. Trust me.”
On some level I believed him. I’d observed him long enough to know that Ryan never, ever looked at other women, even when they were standing on top of him.
“It’s one of my biggest fears.”
He straightened my engagement ring. “I know. But keep in mind that I’ve already kissed my fair share and now I’ve found the only woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
His playful smile helped me relax.
“Okay.” I grinned.
“So you’re not going to get jealous when I have to kiss someone else?”
I chuckled with uncertainty. “I can’t promise that. My jealousy comes from being madly in love with you. As long as it only happens when the cameras are rolling, I’ll be okay. It’s just . . . I need you to understand if I can’t handle it right away. I mean, I’ve seen you kiss Suzanne and—”
“Stand up.”
“What?”
“Stand up. I want to show you something.”
I slid out of the booth.
Ryan gripped my hips, pulling me closer. “I want to show you the difference between a movie kiss and a real kiss.”
“There’s a difference?”
He nodded. “Oh yeah.” His warm hands lifted my face, his eyes focused on my mouth. “This is a movie kiss. Ready?”
I felt his closed lips touch mine as if he were only kissing me to be kind. When his mouth opened, I followed him. Kissing him like this was kind of weird and actually rather frustrating, like we were doing an unfamiliar dance or an awkward first-date kiss when you were really trying to avoid kissing the guy.
“Uh-uh. No tongue,” he corrected.
“No tongue?” I repeated into his opened mouth.
“Never.” Ryan pulled back and looked me in the eyes. “Now this is how I kiss my fiancée.”
His hand slid into my hair, cradling the back of my head. His kiss consumed me. Desire to suck and chew on his hypnotic mouth had me making little whimpering noises. The moment his tongue brushed and swirled with mine, I felt tingles all the way down to my panties.
“I know you love me,” I murmured, drifting my hands into the back of his pants, underneath the elastic band, and over his amazing sculpted ass, “but it’s going to kill me to see you make love to someone else.”
I felt him tense ever so briefly. “I will never make love to someone else, Tar. Only you,” he purred, his tongue quite preoccupied swirling with mine.
I pushed his pants down low on his hips and scraped my teeth over his bottom lip. “Promise?”
He snickered in my mouth. “It was in the fine print when you agreed to marry me, sweetheart.”
Ryan lifted my ID set badge, separating our kiss long enough to remove it over my head. With a devilish grin, his fingers curled under the front of my T-shirt, pulling it up so it was over my head but still wrapped around my upper arms, cinching them back. “And our contract will be binding.”
He swirled a fingertip under the edge of my lace bra and tugged one side down, seeking out an already aroused nipple with his wet tongue. Fire shot through my body.
“Ryan . . .” I gulped hard from the sensation of his careful attention to both of my breasts. It was difficult to speak.
“Bed,” he breathed his desire, towing me in a rush down the short, narrow hallway.
It took him slightly longer to undress, fumbling to toe off his shoes while stripping off his pants, so I crawled onto the bed and waited. Considering we only had twenty minutes, I had expected he’d want to skip all the foreplay and jump right into it, so it surprised me a little when he took his good old time.
It was so sensual, him kissing me like this, allowing me to pant in his mouth as if he needed my sighs to breathe. He drew my bottom lip into his mouth, grazing it through his teeth, cradling me in his arm while his thigh had my leg pinned. I was so aroused by his touch, fingers gliding with deliberate effort while the heel of his hand applied just the right amount of pressure. His thumb danced in a firm circle, then heel, then thumb again. I wanted to explode then and there.
God, if he actually had to go film a real scene like this with Nicole I’d have to fucking kill her with my bare hands first. For a split second I actually envisioned doing that. There would be no way in hell I’d ever allow another woman to feel his expert touch.
I could hear my own moans getting louder, more breathless, as I writhed with each slip. I was just about there, seconds away from spilling over the edge, when he withdrew his fingers and stopped. What?
Nooooo! I mentally cursed him for not finishing me off first. And I was so close, too.
But instead, Ryan grabbed my thigh and shifted my hip so I was on my side, his chest warming my back, replacing the void with something much longer, thicker. I reached back, running my hand into his hair, feeling his groans, his breath on my neck as he pressed tenderly, allowing my body to adjust around him.
“Oh God you feel good.” His forearm squeezed my rib cage and his hand palmed my breast, stroking into me with renewed force, returning me dangerously close to that edge again.
His left hand twined with mine, unifying us as one as he made love to me. Just when I thought he would slip out and roll me somewhere else on the bed, he pressed back in. Slowly, methodically, from tip to total; over and over again, driving me crazy.
His moistened fingers returned and splayed me open, rolling swirls over my sensitive skin with each thrust.
As he picked up the pace, I held the breath in my lungs, unable to breathe at any normal rate, feeling the intense sensations of my orgasm rolling to a peak.
“That’s it. Let it go. Come on baby . . .”
I was giving myself a headache from squeezing my eyes so hard, feeling the crescendo of orgasm. His deep thrusts were unrelenting, pounding into me over and over again. I cried out from the sensations breaking over me in waves, practica
lly choking myself as they hit. I coughed out onto the comforter as I
buried my face into the bed.
Ryan’s presses slowed; his fingers continued to rub, milking additional shudders out of me.
“Ah . . . good one,” he crooned softly, proudly, still swirling gently inside of me. He kissed my shoulder softly.
I turned back to him, receiving a long kiss before he slipped out and relocated my body to the edge of the bed.
“You have no idea how incredibly beautiful you look right now,” Ryan growled. His hands gripped my legs below the crease of my knees, pressing my thighs back, staring down at me with both admiration and lust. He rocked my legs, lifting my rear and raking my insides at different glorifying angles.
But the clock on the wall told another story, one of him being out of time. Sure enough, a few minutes later someone rapped loudly on the outside door. I watched the pleasure on his face harden as he slammed into me with more vigor.
“Hang on!” Ryan yelled out over his shoulder. “Son of a . . . I just need five more minutes,” he breathed out, pumping harder. His hands hit the mattress, pressing my thighs back as far as they could go, practically bending me in half to climb up inside of me. A light sweat beaded on his forehead. “Can you go again?” he asked, breathing hard, clasping one hand around my ankle.
I couldn’t believe his question! We were in the midst of filming a multimillion-dollar movie, someone was banging their fist on his trailer door to escort him to set, and his greatest concern was whether I could achieve another orgasm? God love the man for trying.
I pushed his hand away and flipped over onto my knees. “Don’t worry about me. It’s your turn.”
Ryan’s voice cracked and pitched when he yelled again, “Give me five minutes!” over his shoulder toward the door. His hands palmed my rear, digging fingertips into my flesh. I squeezed down on him with everything I had left, tightening my grip like a vise. Just as I started touching myself, Ryan moved my hand out of the way, replacing it with his own.
“That’s mine,” he growled, rubbing me with demanding ownership, bringing a second orgasm on like wildfire. My body bucked and shook while he continued to punish me with each thrust. His soft whimpers and grunts turned into one deep, guttural groan as his body released and stuttered everything he had into me.
Even behind Mike’s dark sunglasses and stoic face, I could still see the hint of guy smugness on his lips as he walked us to makeup. He didn’t need to utter a word to Ryan to congratulate him on getting laid mid-afternoon; the hard pat on Ryan’s shoulder spoke volumes.
Ryan chose this time to tease me, casually drifting his fingers under his nose as if he still wore my scent. I chuckled at our private joke when he licked his finger and raised his brows, savoring a phantom taste of me.
One of the male makeup artists, a slightly pudgy and excessively hairy man we had been introduced to before by the name of Buckley, was busy fashioning a “cup,” for lack of a better word, over Ryan’s exposed privates.
“It’s called a merkin.” Ryan answered my questioning gaze, pressing the sides of the cup into his skin to assure its adhesion.
I envisioned him popping that thing off like a tent way too small for its support pole. The adhesive would surely, painfully rip a few hairs from his skin. Ouch.
Nicole might get to touch his body intimately, but there was one flesh-toned package she’d never get to see—lesbian or not. Unfortunately, his nudity meant that those totally sexy muscular indentations in his incredible ass might get some screen time. That would definitely cause a few million “Charles Conroy” fans to blow a gasket for sure. Even more hype for Seaside III, which wouldn’t start filming until the fall.
Ryan turned to face me with his fists on his hips, looking like a life-sized, naked Ken doll with obscured genitalia. “So, what do you think?”
He was so adorable, smirkin’ in his merkin.
“And it’s not even my birthday!” I laughed. “I’m wondering how painful it will be when you have to take that thing off.”
“Just like a Band-Aid,” Buckley mumbled. “Grit and pull.”
Ryan blew out a tense breath and slipped a gray flannel robe on, tying the belt securely like a boxer headed for a fight.
It was time for him to go pretend with another woman below him and I was going to watch.
Chapter 10
React
“Cut. Ryan, you need to drop your arm a bit. You’re casting a shadow on Nicole,” Jonathan instructed, sounding irritated. “No, that’s still not working. We need to adjust the lighting. She’s got a dark shadow running right across her face.”
I watched the gaffer make a slight adjustment to one of the towering lights near the large bed, and was thankful for the momentary reprieve.
An hour ago, that naked body was between my thighs, loving me. Now Ryan was carefully seated between Nicole’s bare legs, nothing but flesh-toned merkins keeping their bodies from actually touching.
Ryan and Nicole were holding light conversation while the lights were adjusted around them, but the sight of him lying on top of her was almost too much for me to take in. Like a sick, masochistic voyeur, I stood there, watching. Watching my fiancé slip his lips over another woman’s body every time the director called “Action!”
I knew it was fake, completely staged, but still.
Ryan pressed Nicole’s hair back from her face, gazing at her before crushing his lips down on hers. She gasped and the sheet that barely covered them rose and fell with the roll of his hips.
Slight tremors vibrated up through my shoulders. Instantly I was torn from the spot and pulled back in time, recalling every ounce of pain I felt when I walked in on my ex-fiancé, Thomas, grinding his naked ass into that emaciated slut, Cheryl Regan, with painful clarity. The overwhelming anguish blasted uncontrollably like lightning into my chest.
I had sworn to myself that day I had caught Thomas, made the most sacred of vows to the sanctity of my own soul, that I would never, ever allow myself to be hurt like that again. To step anywhere near a man who was capable of eviscerating my heart.
Loving someone should never end in all-consuming devastation.
But time and time again I set myself up to be ripped to shreds. And here I stood, torturing myself all over again watching this charade.
Certain moments were tolerable: those when filming had halted and Ryan and Nicole weren’t all over each other. But the moment the cameras were rolling, my hands tightened into fists and I wanted to puke craziness.
I knew Ryan was uncomfortable with my presence, peering at me through worried eyes every spare moment when his pretend make-out session wasn’t being carefully orchestrated. Still, it wasn’t enough to end this insanity.
I don’t care how other women would handle watching their man fake sex with another woman; I twitched when Jonathan yelled “Action!” yet again.
Ryan’s mouth on her jaw, her lips, grinding her into the bed like he was actually fucking her looked so real that the heartache seared its way up my throat.
It’s pretend. It’s fake.
The sheet covering them slipped and a good sliver of Ryan’s ass was now in full view. No matter how many times I repeated my mantra it still didn’t keep the bile from rising up.
I could see Ryan desperately trying to reach that detached mental space he needed to go to to pull this off. He needed to be “in the zone,” so to speak, where he wasn’t Ryan Christensen anymore. The place where his character persona, Chase Sheffield, took over and deviant actions became inconsequential.
God, could I do this again? Could I actually be secure enough in my heart and mind to deal with the knowledge that there would be more times like this in my future? More fake love scenes and more intimate touches shared between my lover, my husband-to-be, and random sculpted actresses? Would my eventual marriage become yet another Hollywood divorce?
It’s one thing to be married and trust that your spouse never cheats on you. It’s another when script
ed fake make-out sessions are part of his career, and you know with absolute certainty that moments like this will reoccur.
For a brief time I carried this man’s baby in my womb. If we ever have children, I’m not going to be able to stand here and supervise his pretend sex each and every time. Knowing how easily a moment like this could get way out of hand, leading to a connection with another woman.
One day I’ll be pregnant—large and round, uncomfortable. One day sex won’t be a priority; feeding and caring for an innocent infant will be. Staying home to raise a family with some sense of normalcy will be. Will Ryan be able to control himself and know in no uncertain terms where the lines of acting and cheating are firmly drawn? So many unanswered questions.
Ryan clasped hands with Nicole, raising their entwined fingers over her head—a move that I thought was reserved for our lovemaking sessions only. The sense of betrayal that came from it pierced into my heart like a hot knife and I had to consciously stop the whimper from breaking free.
Jonathan had called “Cut!” and Ryan and Nicole were listening to him intently. I couldn’t look at Ryan anymore—not in the eyes, anyway. My focus landed on everything else—the towering lights, the black cords snaking across the floor, the black screen blocking shadows from forming, the khaki cargo shorts the boom operator was wearing.
Thousands of movies, thousands of onscreen kisses. Jake Gyllenhaal’s kissed a lot of girls. I love his movies. When he filmed with Anne Hathaway—that sex looked real. They both were this naked, too. And that girl in Prince of Persia—Princess what the hell was her name? Jake kissed Heath Ledger, too. Several times. Damn, that was hot. But they were acting. Making a movie for our enjoyment just like this. I wonder if these things are why he split from Reese Witherspoon all those years ago? And after all of this time, he’s still single. Maybe he wanted to—A firm hand clasped my shoulder, startling me.
“You okay?” Mike asked quietly. His worried expression wasn’t helping.
Damn, how I wished my defiant bottom lip would keep from quivering. I gave him a noncommittal shrug.