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It’s just a shirt, and she is just my fake girlfriend who I was ready to fake break up with a few hours ago. My fingers twitch and I go back to my book.
Ashley makes no move for the sofa bed. Against my better judgment, neither do I. After what happened in the pool, I want her close, I guess. We go to bed early and lie awake in the dark listening to each other breathe and it’s more intimate than holding her in the shower.
I stretch my hand out to hers, resting on top of the comforter between us. “Tell me something real.” Something like she did in the shower. The admission she couldn’t swim.Tell me you can be vulnerable again. Tell me whose shirt that is. Tell me why we met. Tell me who you really are.
Her hand slides away, and she turns onto her side, facing me. In the dim city light filtering through the thick curtains, her expression is wary. “Am I going back to LA alone?”
Is this over?
Fuck, I should say yes. When I ditched the scenic route earlier today, I planned to get some space. Then to put an end to this because I don’t need her complicating my life and this is getting dangerous. Not just when she’s like this either. I like the bratty bad girl far too much.
But I need this to secure my role from a fandom that dislikes me so I can reach my larger goal of bigger, better roles, awards and prestige, and a reputation worthy of the man who saved me.
The reminder feels more like an excuse than a justification now.
“If we do this, I need you to try,” I say quietly. “Being photographed with me isn’t going to be enough to make people want to work with you, and I think you know it.”
“You need to try too,” she shoots back, but with no venom this time.
She’s right. I’ve been acting like a dick in front of the cameras, and it isn’t exactly what my team had in mind.
“I’ll try,” I promise.
“Kiss me,” she says softly. “Prove you can kiss me like I’m not some slimy toad.”
I hit a patch of ice in my head, sliding, skidding, losing control.
Kiss me.
I shouldn’t.
I want it. A real kiss, not some fake angled trick for the cameras or a chaste peck. I want to taste her again, and this time do the taking.
Even though it’s a bad idea, I roll on top of her, propping myself up on one arm and wedging my thigh between her legs as I press her into the mattress. Ash’s eyes widen as I brush my knuckles along her jaw, my fingers coming to rest on her slender neck, my thumb in the notch of her collarbone. Her pulse is wild, her throat moving as she swallows. Her eyes are dark pools, staring up at me with a burning hunger that could consume me if I’m not careful.
My lips brush hers and I can practically see the sparks. Maybe the dark lets her be gentle, too, because the slide of her lips on mine is careful for once. Our lips part and inexplicably we fit with no awkwardness, no messiness. Even when she licks into my mouth and I lick into hers, the kiss merely shifts into a delicious give and take, and I have to end it because it would be too easy to let it be more. To comfort ourselves in each other. We don’t need that kind of complication.
I kiss her one last time and lift my head to study her expression. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but I think I put some color on her cheeks.
“Not bad,” she says, wetting her lips. Her breathy voice tells me it was better thannot bad.
“Look at that,” I say softly, tilting her chin one way, then the other. “Not a toad at all. Still very much a princess.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Tell me something real,” I say again, brushing a loose strand of her silky hair back. She’s opened herself tonight, and I want to see her, understand her. Know her, even. And not to help make this fake relationship work. I want this piece of her for me.
She sinks her teeth into her lower lip and I can’t look away. I want to bite that pillowy lip. I don’t want to stop at her lips either. Her breasts push against my chest with every breath she takes, and I haven’t forgotten the image of her ass in that bikini.
I snap out of it when she speaks.
“I’ve never shared a bed with someone before.”
She must see the disbelief on my face because she pushes me off her. Thank god.
I land flat on my back, exaggerating the force of her push.
“Obviously I’ve had sex,” she says dryly. “But I don’t do sleepovers. You’re my first.”
