The Hollywood Project: Shuttergirl Part 20

"I do," he whispered, "I have you."

He slipped his hand past my waistband and into my panties, going right to my soaked seam. His fingertip brushed my c.l.i.t, and I combusted, arching my back to get closer as my head shouted.

You love it you love it you love it like a good wh.o.r.e.

"G.o.d, Michael. I can't, I'm... I'm distracted. I-"

"You're so wet. Please. I want to see you come," he said. "My pants are staying on."

"I-"

I can't.

Don't.

But the words didn't come out, because Michael was on top of me, face an inch from mine, and he wasn't going to hit me and call me names while he f.u.c.ked me so hard I cried. It wasn't in him. He just drew lazy circles with his fingertip, sending shockwaves up my back and gathering a lightstorm in the pitch dark.

I put my hands on his face, brushing the little hairless spot in his chin as if it were a talisman. The voice that called me a s.l.u.t quieted, and the hands that stung my cheeks fell away. Michael was back for me. I was accepted again. Even past the swelling around his eyes, in the depth of the jade, I saw myself in him.

My p.u.s.s.y went white hot under his fingers. I tried to say something, some warning, but I could only open my mouth before my back arched against him. I tried to keep my eyes open, but they shut with the burst of pleasure. My hands squeezed his face as he put it against mine, and my body went rigid, then slack, then rigid, then slack.

"My G.o.d, Laine, you're beautiful."

"Did I hurt your face?"

"No." He took his hand out of my pants.

"Thank you." I brushed my thumbs along his jaw.

"I loved it."

"I can take care of you."

"No, I think my head is going to explode."

"You're fully erect. I can feel it. I have to finish it for you."

"I'm a grown man. I've had erections before. It's not a big deal." He slid down and put his head on my shoulder.

I stroked his hair, waist deep in peace, all worry gone for the moment, and floating in no more than an ocean of grat.i.tude. I must have been more vulnerable than I realized, or he'd reopened some wound with his kindness, because though my sweet reverie stayed, as the minutes pa.s.sed, a layer of need fitted itself on top of it.

I needed to tell him, if not the details, the outlines of who I was.

"I want you to know," I whispered, starting somewhere small, then everything I didn't want to say spilled out. "I have stuff. I've never been to jail, but you know, it's stuff, and it's ugly, and it scares me. Because, I mean, you're so perfect, and I'm... I'm just a mess. I'm not whole. I'm a bunch of pieces of a person I cobbled together." My eyes got wet when I thought of the comparisons between us and that picture in my silverware drawer. "So if you have to move on when you realize that, I'll understand. You have an image, and if anyone understands protecting a career, it's me. I mean, I'll be mad, don't get that wrong, but also." I swallowed and blinked, shifting my head so he wouldn't feel the tear on his forehead. "I won't blame you."

I waited for an answer. Anything. A change in position or a word on any subject. The weather. Sports. Something. But all he did was breathe.

I smiled so wide, tears fell into my mouth. He was sleeping. How hard had Foo hit him? Hard enough for a concussion? G.o.d, that a.s.shole. I was going to give him a piece of my mind. He'd always called me stupid, and maybe that had been some little sheet-curling game he played, but it didn't turn me on. Being called a dumb wh.o.r.e because some big biker thought it was funny? Well, no. It wasn't funny, and it wasn't true, and when I was face to face with that moron, I would punch his face right back.

Michael's phone rang. I stretched to see it, but I couldn't move without disturbing him. I reached but couldn't get to it. He didn't move, just a breathing weight on one side. I could have slipped out from under him, even if I didn't want to get the phone. I could have gotten up and walked around, made coffee, done stuff until he woke. But I didn't want to get up. He'd fallen asleep with me, and I didn't want to insult the intimacy or the trust he'd put in me. I'd wanted to have s.e.x with plenty of men, but Michael's breath on my neck, his foot tucked between the cushions of my couch, his arm draped over my stomach were more intimate than any s.e.xual act. He'd laid himself bare before me, trusting me in the vulnerability of sleep.

I might have drifted off as the sun touched the horizon, or time might have gone faster than it should have, but when his phone rang again, he took a long, deep gasp and woke.

"I couldn't reach it," I said, my voice sharp and unwelcome, like a shrieking alarm ending an hour of sweet soft breaths.

"It's all right." He reached over me and looked at the phone. "G.o.dd.a.m.nit."

I scooted up to a sitting position when he stood. He swayed, squeezed his eyes shut, and put the phone away, still ringing.

"I'm sorry. I was supposed to do a thing, and I almost slept through it." He jammed his feet in his shoes.

I got his jacket and helped him into it. "You look like you're still half asleep."

"I think I am." He kissed me once on each cheek then on the lips.

He tried to pull back, but I yanked him onto me. I might never see him again. He could easily walk out and decide I was too much trouble. He'd be crazy not to think that.

"I need you to wait here for an hour," he said into my cheek. "It won't take me longer than that to get you a bodyguard."

"Fine. One hour."

He put his hand on my cheek and slid it to the back of my neck, drawing me close. "Thank you."

"Your pleasure."

"Go out with me. Have a date. Tuesday night."

A date. So simple. Exactly what people did when they liked each other.

"Dinner?" I said. "In public? With a guy who's going to have at least one black eye?"

"A movie. Let me show you a little of my world."

"No."

He kissed me, and I fell into his urgency and his warmth, smelling dried blood. I didn't want to believe he could ever care about me. He was a dead end at full speed with broken brakes. He was a labyrinth with no exit, only starvation and the hope that there was a center.

But he was also sweet as spring, an explosion of poppies in Death Valley after a winter of rain. He was lightning before a rainstorm, drowning a dark road in white light for a split second before night soaked the way.

I pushed him away. "The clock's ticking, Greydon."

"I'll pick you up Tuesday."

"I said no."

He backed up toward the door. "Don't go anywhere. I'm sending a guy named Carlos. He runs fast, so give it your best shot."

"Get out. You bother me."

I closed the door behind him then ran to the window. I could see the exit of the Whole Foods parking lot in the stripe between two buildings. When I saw his little green Aston Martin drive away, I swallowed the worry I was holding in the back of my throat.

I paced the hard floor twice, roiled to the core by his absence, his presence, his possibilities, and his ability to hurt me. I snapped up the blue camera bag and dumped the contents onto the coffee table. I could get the thing set up in minutes. I called Tom while I unwrapped the boxes. There was no way I was waiting an hour for some guy named Carlos to show up.

Chapter 24.

Michael "Oh my G.o.d," Harvey said as I sat in the makeup chair. "What happened to your face?"

"Ran into a fist. You like it?"

"Oh, honey, you're falling apart like my nephew's Legos. First, you're late, and now? What am I supposed to do with this?"

"You got eleven minutes to figure it out."

He leaned back on the counter and put his fingers to his chin, stroking his goatee. He looked at me as if I were a crossword puzzle he couldn't solve. I worked with him whenever I was in Los Angeles, and today, for the Jack Rambling show, my face should have been a piece of cake.

"Don't hide it," I said. "Let's have some fun."

I winked at him with my good eye, and he winked back.

Mentally, I was working on a joke that started with "You should see the other guy," but Ken called as Harvey was working around the bruise. I rejected the call. I'd already gotten an earful from Gene for being late. He'd done everything he could to put something on my schedule during the weeks we weren't shooting, and his ladles of guilt over my lateness and lack of emotional investment were beginning to wear on me.

Once Ken found out about Mister Foo KILL RIDE, he'd probably call me an unmanageable risk and drop me. My face throbbed. My brain hurt. I remembered the shocking blow to my face and the lightning bolts creeping in on my vision as if it were happening over and over.

Yet all I could think about was how much I wanted to take Laine to bed. Feel her twisted under me, hear her cry out for me. I wanted to share sweat and skin, to blend a scent of our own making. And the big guy with the tattooed knuckles? He'd been with her at some point. I could tell from the way she reacted that it hadn't been love or anything like that, but it had been physical, and she was scared. Much had become clear, and for whatever it was worth, I wanted to kill him.

Focus, Mike.

Harvey stepped back to check his work. The phone vibrated. I wanted to throw it out the window, because ten things were happening at once.

A kid came in with a clipboard and walkie-talkie. "Mister Greydon! You're on in-" He stopped dead when he saw my face.

I smiled. "You should see the other guy."

Chapter 25.

Laine I had a rock in my shoe.

It had lodged between the soft flesh of the outside of my right foot and the leather of my brown stiletto as I ran down Wilshire Boulevard.

Still, I ran like a purse s.n.a.t.c.her. Like the old days, when I didn't really know what was at the end of the run, when tips weren't guarantees and the phone never rang.

My bag cut across my right breast and banged against my lower back. I held a spanking-new four-pound camera aloft in my right hand, and my hair clips were doing nothing to hold my hair anymore but were bouncing against my scalp, hanging on for dear life.

I cut a corner into an alley. Voices around some corner, indistinguishable over the sound of my panting. Flashing lights that could have been my body giving out or cameras. A few days off, and I was lazy and out of shape.

The back of Kate Martello's was around the next corner. There wasn't a movie star on the planet who used the front entrance of anything and not a paparazzo worth his salt who couldn't find a back door. I slid on a pile of scree to get around the next corner, avoiding a twisted ankle by some miracle of grace and luck, and slammed full body into a shouting dog pack of photographers.

Wall-to-wall sweat, canvas jackets, lumpy bags, unshaven faces, car breath, and testosterone. My feet were on fire, and that rock in my shoe was getting shoved up someone's a.s.s if I didn't get a shot I could sell. I squirmed to the front, giving as many elbows as I got. I knew those guys, and they'd step on me if I didn't step on them first.

The situation behind Kate Martello's was particularly bad. It was in the old part of Beverly Hills. The alley was narrow, and the only s.p.a.ce in the front of the ropes for the paparazzi was a wedge between two black SUVs. It was a tight fit, but I was skinny. I elbowed my way forward.

"Is that the lens you're using?" Tom asked, not even looking at me as I crouched and stepped in front of him. He was taller and had no problem putting his camera above me.

"It's the one I got."

The lens that Michael had replaced was long, and I'd been in such a hurry to get out of that apartment I hadn't doubled down with something wider. I'd just grabbed a flash to fight the night and run.

"f.u.c.k," I grumbled. "I need a wide angle." I twisted my body and reached into Tom's bag.

"Yeah, you do," he said, his eyes on the restaurant. He shifted so I could rummage around his bag. Flash. Battery pack. Long lens. Pepper spray.

"Don't you have an eight?" I asked.

"It's on my camera. My five six is in the car." He glanced at me. "Sorry."

"Who's in there?" I rooted around his bag. He wouldn't lie to me, but he could be mistaken, or maybe a jury-rig would come to me if I touched enough equipment.

"Brad. Jayce. Some girl. How the h.e.l.l have you been?"

How was I supposed to answer that? How had I been?

Happy. That was how I'd been, but I'd die before saying that out loud.

"Fine," I said. "What about you?"

"Great. I want to show you the stuff I've been getting."

I let the flap of his bag drop. "Sure, I'd love to see it."

He beamed then snapped back to business. I guessed that was what he thought I wanted. "Can you see inside with that thing?"

Two paps whose names I knew I knew but couldn't recall pushed into me. Life sucked in the dog pack, but d.a.m.n, it was never boring.