Page 65 of Role Play
“Ash?” Lucy blinked up at me, confused. Her lips were wet and swollen from my brutal kisses. I pushed off of her, swiping a hand across my unshaven jaw, and reached out a hand to help herup.
“We’re going to be late,” I said. I didn’t mean it to come out as gruff as itdid.
“We have an hour,” she answered, looking at theclock.
I did my best to smile, but it was forced at best. She could see right through me, I was certain of it. “Well, we need to get breakfast first. And… I assume you don’t want us arriving at the same time. That whole ‘not wanting to look like you’re sleeping with the director’ thing,right?”
“Right.” She nodded, looking around the room as though it held the answer to why I was such an asshole. Hell, itdidhold the answers, but nothing she was going tofind.
“Okay, then,” I said. “I know a pretty great diner along the way we can hit. Follow me in your tincan.”
* * *
Jude gapedat me in the hallway, a bowl of some sort of quinoa bullshit salad in one hand, and a forkful paused halfway to his openmouth.
It was already lunchtime; the morning had flown by in a series of shots that kept both Lucy and I so busy, I hadn’t even seen her since we arrived at the studio. Breakfast had been nice… not too tense considering I had freaked out at the prospect of fucking her in my bed this morning.No, not my bed. Brie’sbed.
“You took her back to your house?” Jude repeated, whispering in the hallway despite the fact we were the only twothere.
“Yeah,” Igrunted.
“You were intimate with her in your and Brie’shouse?”
I swallowed, heat climbing from my gut. An encompassing guilt threatened to engulf me. And hell, I would have let it. “I’m adick.”
“No,” Jude said, dropping his fork into the bowl, untouched. “Ash, it’s been five years. Brie was my friend too, and you can’t stand there and tell me she wouldn’t be happy to hear you’re movingon.”
My throat burned. “I’mnotmovingon.”
“Okay…” Jude said cautiously. “Brie would be happy to know you’re exploring more lastingrelationships.”
I snorted. “Not in her fucking bedthough.”
Jude smiled. A goddamn humoring smile that—even though he was my best friend—I wanted to punch off of his perfect fucking face. “Buddy…mostpeople have sex inbeds.”
“Not me,” I grumbled. “I fuck. I fuck hard. I fuck long.” I didn’t even mention that we never got to the part of fucking in the bed because I lost my shit like I had swallowed batteryacid.
Jude shrugged. “Well, maybe it was time for that tochange.”
Was it time? Five years was a long time to go… but not when you expected a lifetime of lonely misery. Not when youdeserveda lifetime of lonely misery. “I don’t know how to describe it. Sex has just always been a way of stress release for me. Almost like a habit. It’s never different. It’s usually good. Sometimes just okay. But alwaysreliable.”
“And this…wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Because it was phenomenal.“Because… I care about Lucy. I connected withher.”
Jude lifted a brow. “You don’t care about your othersubs?”
“Yeah, of course. Sort of. Like… I would care if something happened to them. I care that their needs are met and that they get pleasure out of our scenes together. But I don’t want to sit and have dinner with them. I don’t want to debate what films are the best with them.” A smile touched my lips.I don’t want to argue over Liza or Judy withthem.
“But you want to withher?”
Yes. “I don’tknow.”
Jude’s eyes flicked down the hall to where Richard’s corner office door sat slightly ajar, taunting me. “You better go talk to Richard. Especially if you’re planning on taking this girl to dinner. Chances are she’s not going to want to be your dirty littlesecret.”
