Page 31 of Second Act
An arrow of arousal shot from her breast to the V of her thighs. “I can’t think when you do that,” she said with a gasp.
His smile was pure wickedness. “Then my plan worked.” He bent to suck where his finger had been playing, his hand moving down to rest on her belly.
“Hugh!” Her hips lifted without any conscious thought on her part.
“An invitation,” he purred against her breast, skimming his hand lower to curve between her legs.
“I can’t...” But her body belied the protest, her muscles loosening and opening to him.
He stroked her with a featherlight touch, dipping one finger just barely inside her when she began to pulse her hips. Then he shifted down the couch in a display of flexing muscles that made her breath catch even before he touched her clit with his tongue.
And then she lost the ability to care about anything but the feel of his mouth on her. Until she came again, crying out his name while heat and satisfaction rolled through her in waves.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were glazed with desire as he licked his lips. “Your taste hasn’t changed,” he said. “And it still goes straight to my cock.”
“Finish inside me,” she said. “I just can’t promise to help.”
He shook his head. “You’re still coming down from your orgasm. And every good actor knows that building anticipation makes the final climax all the more intense.” He moved up beside her again, wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her satiated body against his. His erection nestled between her buttocks, making her nerve endings quiver despite their overload.
He’d succeeded in scattering her worries, and she decided to leave them that way. Feeling like this was so much nicer than being virtuous. For today, she would pretend that she was having a brief, meaningless sexual fling with her ex-fiancé, not with a world-famous movie star.
It wouldn’t change anything about her life.
Hugh savored the feel of Jess’s luscious bottom cradling his half-erect cock. The fragrance of expensive cosmetics rose from her hair and skinto waft past his nostrils, but under it he could still detect the familiar, distinctive scent of Jess herself. When he’d been inside her, when he’d tasted between her legs, it had felt like a homecoming.
He hadn’t been lying when he said he hadn’t expected this, hadn’t even hoped for it, although she’d been in his thoughts whenever he wasn’t involved in shooting a scene. His dinner invitation to her had been a nostalgic whim mixed with curiosity and guilt. He wanted to know what had happened to her in the years that he’d refused to be a part of. However, seeing her curled up on the dog bed had triggered such a powerful reaction that he hadn’t cared about anything except taking her as far away from there as he could get her.
Self-reproach gnawed at him even as he tightened his embrace on her waist. Had he somehow pressured her into making love without realizing it? No, she had initiated this. Of course, that didn’t mean he had been forced to go along, but as soon as she tunneled her fingers into his hair and touched her soft lips and body to his, he had lost the ability to stop.
But he didn’t want just her body. He wanted to know everything about the past eight years, even though he had no right to pry into her life anymore. He was the one who’d let their lines of communication lapse, even knowing that as his fame increased, Jessica would feel less and less comfortable trying to get in touch. He had been damned if he was going to reach out when he had been hurt. She had given up on him, so he would show her just how far he could go without her.
Back then he had been young and blind to everything but his drive to reach the top—and so very stupid. When he’d thought he needed a sophisticated pretender on his arm on the red carpet, he had really needed Jess. She’d loved him with everything in her, no reservations. He’d loved her in return with all the intensity of someone who had never been loved fully before. Yet he’d somehow found a way to damage her feelings for him without understanding what he’d done.
Now he was consumed by the need to know why she had broken the engagement. Because Jess didn’t quit easily.
He shifted restlessly as he faced the truth. His refusal to reach out to her through the years had nothing to do with Jess or her actions and everything to do with his childhood.
He had felt abandoned...again.
Hours later, Jessica lay beside Hugh in the rumpled bed, their arms and legs intertwined, watching the lights of Manhattan blaze through the windows. The weight of reality settled on her shoulders while she admired the bird’s-eye view of her adopted city with its soaring, glass-skinned towers and gridded streets winking with red taillights. This was what New York looked like from Hugh’s perspective. She belonged down where you could see the grimy, cracked sidewalks and the weariness on people’s faces as they stomped through the gray haze of winter. He stroked her bare shoulder with his thumb, almost as though he didn’t realize he was doing it.
“I don’t think I can move,” she said.
“There’s no need to.” He hooked his knee around hers to angle her closer to him.
“Ever again.”
“You can stay in this room as long as you like.”
“What time do you have to go back to work?” She splayed her hand on his chest to feel his slow, steady heartbeat.
“I have to leave here at four in the morning.”
“Are you riding into the rising sun or something?”
“No, I have to get back to Boston.”
She levered herself up so she could see his face. “Wait, you aren’t filming in New York anymore?”
