Page 76 of The Unfinished Line

Her entire body slackened in unmistakable relief.

She gave me her half smile, bringing a hand to my knee. “Does that mean I’m getting out of a trip to the cinema?”

“No chance,” I said, the rebuke falling short as she slowly slid her palm toward the hem of the towel.

God, it was ridiculous, the effect she had on me. I’d never known it was possible to want someone the way I wanted her. To find myself so unraveled by a touch—a glance—a smile.

She slid her hand higher. “I don’t know. I bet I could convince you.”

I let the towel fall, moving to straddle her.

“I’m very sweaty,” she warned, even as she drew me closer, her lips traveling across my neck, her hands pressing into the small of my back. I was intoxicated by the windswept scent of her. The heat radiating from her body. The hint of mint tea on her breath.

She tried to shift, wanting to take over, but I pinned her against the back of the chair, unwilling to let her.

I’d discovered she liked to be in control. It was clearly what she was used to.

But I wasn’t one to play by all the rules. Sometimes I liked to push the envelope.

Tangling one hand into her short wave of hair, I slipped the other between us, working loose the drawstring of her running shorts. I smiled as she attempted to measure her breathing, as her body tensed beneath me.

Never taking my eyes off hers, I teased her, slowly, unyieldingly, my mouth moving to the hollow of her throat asshe strained against me. I teased her until her hands were on my hips, her nails digging into my skin. Until her breathing was ragged. Until she was forced to throw her head back, her eyes closed, the sound of her breath ceasing completely. I teased her until at last, writhing, she found my mouth with hers, her cry muted as she stilled beneath me.

“Okay, fine,” she whispered into the crook of my neck, once I could feel her heartbeat resume its even cadence. “You win. I’ll go with you to the movies.”

I laughed. “Double feature?”

“You’re pushing your luck.”

“We could sit in the back row?”

She reached up, dragging my lower lip down with her thumb. “You know how to drive a hard bargain, Kam-Kameryn.”

And so began the eleven short days we had together.

Despite my insistence at keeping to tradition, I was the one who decided we should skip the movies, and for the first three days, we didn’t leave the apartment. Eventually, however, both stir-craziness and bare cupboards drove us from our libidinous haze, and we were forced to venture into civil society.

I felt like I was entering a whole new world.

We hiked to the Hollywood sign, walking hand-in-hand along the Sky Rim trail, taking photos cheek-to-cheek on the deck of the Observatory. We bundled in jackets and beanies and I dragged Dillon on one of those stupid double-decker buses that take a tour of the stars’ homes, circling back through Rodeo Drive and past the Chinese Theatre.

The days rolled by, turning into a week that came and went too quickly. Dillon helped me run lines from my script, brought me coffee in bed, and we laughed until we choked on wasabi sitting on the checkered floor of my kitchen eating sushi.

When we went out, I felt like a truant teenager, sneaking around beneath the football bleachers.

We played footsie at dinner under the table, made out in the elevator at the Beverly Center, and had sex in my car in the AMC underground parking structure, missing all but the closing credits of the movie. “Zero-for-two in your attempts to convert me into a film buff, Kam-Kameryn,” she’d razzed as we stood in line at Pink’s Hot Dogs.

She bought a bike at a downtown cyclery and left early one morning, only to call me at noon, asking if I’d come have lunch with her in Santa Barbara. One hundred and three miles away.

I changed my phone number, got a P.O. Box to help keep my home address private, and after a frenzied emptying of every drawer in my apartment, found my passport in my freezer.

She was supposed to leave for London the Friday night before my Monday morning departure to Greenland, but Friday came and went and I begged her to stay until Sunday.

Saturday I’d been invited to a party in Malibu, but again I declined—a habit Sophie said I better learn to break. But I didn’t care. I wanted to spend every last second with Dillon. I knew the next time I returned to LA, my life would look very different. Aaron was insisting I think about a new apartment, somewhere safer, where I could maintain anonymity. Sneak peeks and teaser trailers would begin to hit the public not long after I returned from Scotland, and I knew I would never have this freedom again. Already, these last eleven days, I knew I’d just been lucky. There’d been no more knocks at my door, and my new number remained unlisted.

But it was coming, waiting to blitz down on me like Mjölnir from the sky, and once it happened, there’d be no retreating back to Asgard.

So the parties and premieres and people could wait. For now, I just wanted Dillon.

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