Chapter 5
His mouth meets mine, and if I had time to think, maybe I’d expect roughness from someone so often described as savage.
What registers is softness.
And that it’s over too soon, which means this contact in a dark alley could be accidental. Except there’s nothing accidental about his mouth finding mine again, no way to describe this second kiss as anything but surprising.
He cups my jaw once it’s over, his voice hoarse. “Did that feel fake?”
Non.
Nope.
No, it didn’t.
Who knows what my face shows him. Presumably enough to know that I’m on board with him pressing Rewind and Replay if he wants to. Calum must see that as clearly even in these shadows. “What about this?”
He leans in again.
This time, I go up on tiptoes to meet him halfway.
Calum kisses me for a third time, and I thank everything holy that my camera is clipped to the breast pocket of the suit I borrowed. That leaves both of my hands free to clasp a pair of shoulders that don’t even give a fraction under my gripping fingers.
He’s so broad and solid.
So easy to wrap my arms around and cling to, our mouths still connected.
You better believe it’s nothing like that one time his older brother hauled me from salty water and held me this close.
Reece never slid great big hands down to my arse, and I wouldn’t have wanted him to pull me as hard against him as Calum does now.
I guess it’s lucky timing that there isn’t an egg between us.
It would shatter, and I’m not sure I’d even notice when he gathers me closer than could ever be strictly heterosexual.
His lips parting confirms it. Our tongues touch, slick and sliding, his hands hefting me upward.
Calum holds me where he wants me, and that really gets my motor running.
So does being pressed against an alley wall with no way out, which I wouldn’t have guessed would do it for me.
I’m hemmed in by his bulk. Caged by strength.
If this is a hate-sex precursor, it’s wild how close it feels to freedom.
Calum’s thumbs brush my cheekbones in soft contradiction to his reputation.
His tongue in my mouth is another. I suck on it, and it’s beyond hot that he can’t keep in a hungry sound.
That suggests there’s nothing fake about what is happening in this alley.
His dick pressing hard against me is more proof.
Angels sing. Or a singer’s voice does, at least. It swoops and soars somewhere close by, and so do I at the fact that at least one part of him likes me. That nearby music soars even louder only to cut off abruptly.
A door closes followed by footsteps approaching in a hurry, and I don’t need to be able to see past Calum to know who says, “Ugh.” I do wriggle out of his hold when a different voice speaks up.
“Let me through, Seb.” Once upon a time, I made a fool out of the man who now hovers at the mouth of this alley. Tonight, Jack asks, “Did Valentin agree to help you solve your problem, Cal?”
Calum backs up a step, his voice rough and raspy, while the light on my camera blinks in time with his staccato confession. “Still working on it.”
Jack nods, but the narrowed-eyed elf beside him is still dubious about me. “Working on it? How? By shoving your tongue down the throat of one of the worst people on the planet?” He huffs. “Just wait until I tell Lynne that you’re still a Ho at Christmas.”
Jack laughs.
Calum doesn’t.
He’s back in my space, predator-fast all over again. This time, he doesn’t kiss me. He asks a question splashed with Cornish softness. “Will you help me?” His voice lowers to a whisper, and he’s never sounded more like his older brother. “Even if faking a queer sex tape isn’t an option?”
I don’t see why he’s ruling that out or describing what just felt all too real as inauthentic. Before I can ask or answer, a woman calls out.
She’s despairing.
“Was the pasta really so bad that you all had to run away while I wasn’t looking?”
“No, Penny.” Jack does something my subscribers would get a kick out of—he crosses himself, and his eyes too, before apparently outright lying. “There’s nothing wrong with the pasta. Seb and I were just looking out for Calum, and we found him.”
“Then come back inside. Eat, before Patrick finishes all your dinners.”
“Please, God,” Jack whispers, but he follows her instruction, heading back to the restaurant. “Come on, Seb.”
Calum is the only one who turns back.
“Eat with us. I’ll explain why a great big gay reveal can’t be an option, because trust me, it wouldn’t be.”
I’ve never wanted more to say yes.
“I can’t.”
That’s gutting to admit while my lips still tingle and my dick is at a hopeful half-mast. “Gotta get back before Dad realises I’m not giving his VIP test drives.” I have to clamp down on a cackle, tickled by hysteria at the thought of Dad discovering who is doing my work for me. “Go eat.”
“I wish you’d say yes.” He lifts a hand to his lips like he feels the same tingling. “To helping me.”
I make a Christmas wish of my own. “Then try harder to convince me.”
Yes, I want him to agree to buy a boat by midnight, but curiosity means I can’t help adding, “Because you’re leaving something out. Something big.”
I can feel it.
He must be.
Who walks away from a contract that comes with fame, fortune, and a deluxe lifestyle?
“You don’t have to like me for what I did to Jack, or believe that it wasn’t what I ever intended, but you do need to be honest.” I back off. “If you’re ever ready to do that, come find me. I’ll listen.”
I leave him and Kensington behind to slice my way back along the Thames, then I dock a boat that I once watched Dad hand paint with lettering that tonight’s moon turns from gold to silver.
Trust Juno to Speed to the Rescue.
I can’t help thinking that I’ve done the opposite by walking away from Calum Trelawney.
He’s sinking for some reason. He must be.
For now, I focus on getting back to switch clothes with my stand-in just in time for the final hours of this gala. I’m also back just in time to say non merci again to Lito Dixon.
“Still not taking no for an answer, Lito? How shocking.” I say that over my shoulder once my last test drive is over. “Why not have a go at breaking that cycle?”
“There’s no cycle to break.” Lito isn’t done wheedling.
“Listen, gorgeous. The gala fireworks show is starting.” A bright flare in the sky confirms it.
“Let me shoot you underneath them with Tower Bridge in the background. I’ll make you look extra pretty.
” He follows me around the marina to its darkest corner, so persistent that I need to shout, “I said, no,” before he’ll give up.
I board la Sylvie all alone, thank fuck.
“Say yes to me.”
That isn’t Lito speaking.
Another firework fills the night sky with glitter. And with Calum.
He jumps aboard, and more than my old boat lurches—he’s so completely my type. Him prowling towards me is scary, but apparently my penis likes that. It also likes Calum’s low-pitched rumble.
“You said I should try harder to convince you.” Another firework splinters his face into handsome angles. “Did you mean about how badly I want out of my contract?”
I shake my head. I already believe he wants an escape route. I know so because I see the same wish in my own mirror every morning. He doesn’t want an out. He needs one like I do.
Calum’s why is less transparent.
Believe me, I double-checked his reason for crossing the Atlantic mid-season on my phone between each of tonight’s final test drives.
The press release put out by his club now seems bogus.
Any injury bad enough to keep him off the ice until the new year shouldn’t let him jump aboard like he just did.
Or to stride through Kensington as fast as we did this evening.
I blink, and he confirms that suspicion by moving way too fast for someone with anything like a groin strain, an injury that the part of me with a death wish wants to offer to kiss all better for him. He’s suddenly close enough that his growl is a warm gust across my ear.
“Or did you want me to convince you that I wasn’t faking what we did right before Seb and Jack interrupted?”
When we kissed.
I swallow dryly. “Yeah, that. Because it was totally unconvincing.” An internal siren screams that I’m in danger all over again.
Of course, I hurtle straight towards it.
“Call yourself a pro? You definitely aren’t at kissing people you shouldn’t.
Little bit amateur to be honest.” I hold up invisible scorecards and grade his effort in French.
He knows enough to translate those numbers into English. “Three out of ten? Fuck you, Juno.”
Yes, please.
I sniff. “I’m just saying that you’d need to put in a whole lot more practice to be persuasive. Especially with me.”
“Because?”
I raise my chin. “Because you didn’t exactly kiss me like you hate me.” Another firework explodes overhead. So does something deep in my chest when its glitter lights up his grin. “Try again to convince me.”
Our mouths meet, and this kiss is rougher.
It also lasts for longer now there’s no one around to interrupt it.
To interrupt us. We must be the only souls not staring upward at pyrotechnics.
More fireworks explode with camera-flash brightness that would show him pinning me against the cabin hatch to devour me like he’s hungry.
Like he’s starving. And like he resents a mutual attraction I’m all aboard with.
“Nope. Still unconvincing,” I pant. “Try harder.”
He does, while I give thanks that at least la Sylvie’s hatch is still good and sturdy. He hoists me up against it, and I kiss him back with both legs hooked around him. They barely hold me up after he lets me down abruptly and one quirked eyebrow asks a silent question about his performance.
I lie. “A very generous three point five. That kiss wouldn’t fool anybody watching. Maybe try hating me with fewer clothes on.” I open the hatch to head below deck, certain I’ve pushed my luck too far when he doesn’t take up my challenge.
I’m alone in a space I usually don’t want to share with anybody. Tonight, my heart sinks. Then it trips and spirals when he follows me down to where an incubator’s glow showcases a hockey player putting on his second striptease of the evening.
Calum loses his coat and yanks off his suit jacket as if he holds a personal grudge against Armani.
He unknots his tie and loops it around his fists like he’s about to strangle me with it, his gaze fixed on me the whole time as he paraphrases what Jack’s other bestie called me.
“You’re heartless. The worst person to trust with anything important.
And the very last one I’d ever choose to be with. ”
Damn.
He really does hate me.
There has to be something seriously wrong with me to keep poking. “Nope,” I tell him as he stalks towards me. “Not even close. Take another shot, rookie.”
He casts aside his tie and crowds me. His teeth graze my throat like killer whales once attempted, his growl doing something so visceral that my insides turn liquid. “How about this?” He nips my neck sharply. “You convinced about how much I hate you yet?”
I croak, “Maybe.” This is important enough that I clear my throat to speak more clearly. “But I thought you said no to a sex tape being your way out?”
He pulls back and nods. “It wouldn’t be.” Calum still gets to work unfastening his shirt buttons. “Doesn’t stop me from being an overachiever.”
He laughs then, and I join in, our playacting over.
I also get moving. My camera harness tangles as I undress, and I shrug out of it, not caring where it ends up.
I can’t care, not when Calum sits on the narrow bench that serves as my bunk, his shirt open to show chest hair glinting with the same dark gold as his beard.
He spreads thick thighs and pulls me between them. Unlike with Lito, I wouldn’t say no if he pushed my head down. Even without a dangling sprig of green leaves and white berries, Calum is a million times more appealing. And arousing.
So is him taking my hand. He doesn’t place it over the hard-on his suit trousers barely cover, nor does he demand I give his dick a kiss for Christmas. Instead, he presses my palm on the incubator. “It’s still warm.” So is his smile in contrast to all his growling.
It makes me wonder what else he’s faking, because the internet didn’t once hint at gentleness I get to see from close-up, another contradiction that activates the curiosity working for Dad has left pent-up.
Until now.
Tonight, it curls around Calum, wanting to purr until he tells me what else the rest of the world hasn’t noticed about this hockey player who leans in with a nugget of information. “Want to know what else my mum isn’t a fan of?”
“More than you being a Ho?” He nods, smiling again. This one comes with sweetness I could lick up like cream. “Tell me, Calum.”
“She isn’t a fan of hate. Says that life is way too short to hold on to that kind of feeling, and I don’t like to—”
“Disappoint her?”
He shows me more of that surprising sweetness.
“She says I couldn’t. That none of her boys ever could.
” He narrows his eyes way too late for me to keep believing he’s anything like his reputation.
“Hate is off the table,” he snarls, which is also unconvincing now he’s let me glimpse a soft and squishy centre.
“But spite isn’t. Pretty sure I can overachieve at that. ”
“At spite sex?”
I’m pretty sure that won’t be his skill set either.
That doesn’t stop me from climbing onto his lap.
“Prove it.”