moment I made a move. Then suddenly I was either a sleaze or a piece of meat. Someone who just wanted her for her body, or someone who was worth no more than what his body could do.
And I didn’t want to make Rachel think I was cheapening either of us or the evening we’d enjoyed together.
Still, if I wasn’t mistaken, her shoulders had dropped a little after I backed off. Disappointment? Relief? Fuck if I knew.
I sighed and rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. When the hell had a simple cup of coffee become so complicated?
Probably around the same time I’d wound up having a cup of coffee with the woman I’d had a crush on for a few years. But then, this wasn’t the starstruck crush I’d had on Olivia Taylor all these years. It was Rachel who had me tripping over my own feet.
God, I wanted her so bad I could taste her. I was aroused to the point of restlessness. Tempting as it was, jerking off to her seemed…wrong. I’d jerked off to Olivia Taylor—what red-blooded straight male hadn’t?—but not Rachel. I just couldn’t. Which made me feel guilty about all the times I had .
But if I didn’t, then where would I be tomorrow? A frustrated, turned on wreck trying to dance in tight leather with a leather-clad Rachel in front of cameras and crewmen. I could do all manner of things on a set, but keeping some semblance of dignity while bumping and grinding with a woman who had this effect on me? Not bloody likely.
Exhausted, more than a little wound up, and with no idea how tomorrow would play out after this evening together, I went to bed. Before long at all, in spite of my wound-up brain, I drifted off to sleep with “You Ain’t Even Kissed Me Yet” still thrumming in the back of my mind.
As predicted, five thirty came early.
Five forty-five wasn’t much better.
Six o’clock, I dragged my ass out of bed.
There wasn’t enough caffeine in the world. Fuck. But that contract I’d signed didn’t include a “postpone shooting until I find enough goddamned Red Bull” clause, so I didn’t have much choice.
Fortunately, once I’d made it to the set and gotten into costume, the makeup artists were standing by to camouflage any evidence of my lack of sleep. When the artist had finished working her magic, I pushed myself up out of the makeup chair and shivered as the creak of leather sent me right back to the set yesterday.
They had to go with skintight leather, didn’t they? Hot. Tight. Maybe just a little bit uncomfortable when faced with any kind of…swelling. Not to mention obvious as all fuck. I was damned good at making myself get hard and stay hard under the most unarousing of circumstances but didn’t have a lot of practice with trying not to get hard.
Now would be a good time to master that skill.
I took as deep a breath as the tight leather would allow and then headed toward the set. On my way down the hall, as I passed by the row of doors designated as dressing rooms, Rachel’s assistant brushed past me with an iPad under his arm and two cups of coffee in a carrier. He pushed open Rachel’s dressing room door, and just before he closed it behind him, I caught just enough of her voice to make me shiver.
I tugged at the tight leather collar. Funny, I didn’t recall having this much trouble breathing yesterday.
Breathing as best I could, I continued on my way to the soundstage. I hadn’t been in the room thirty seconds when Jim came out of nowhere and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Buck,” he said. “Fantastic work with Olivia yesterday. Fantastic.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I’d like to see you two turn up the heat a bit today, though.”
“Turn up—” I gulped. “I beg your pardon?”
“You know, keep it clean,” he said. “Well, clean-ish. No Janet Jackson action here, but don’t keep your hands in the same place. Move them up and down.” He did an incredibly disturbing pantomime, running his hands up and down an imaginary Rachel’s waist
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