Chapter 7
He’s hard.
I’m not sure if it’s the lines or the fact that I’ve wedged myself on top of him, so into the scene that I didn’t realize exactly how far I’d gone until I felt his erection pressing between my legs.
Okay, maybe the scene is a little spicier than I thought it would be, but it’s easier to get into with someone else there. I have a living and breathing scene partner instead of my imagination and the expectations that died with my parents.
I clear away the mental cobwebs.
I nestle closer to Marcus, and his hands fall to the tops of my thighs. His eyes meet mine, a little confused and darker than their normal color. I give him a lazy smile before starting back up with my lines.
“And I think,” I continue as Alicia, “you want to fuck me right here on this couch. You don’t actually want my help with the house. You know why I came here today, Mr. Patterson. You know what I want too.”
“This isn’t right,” he argues, his voice soft and gruff at the same time.
His haze slowly roves down to the top of my shirt and back up, as though he’s studying my curves, getting himself under control with every second lost to the perusal. And even though I’m fully dressed, the look on his face strips me down to nothing.
A slither of awareness strokes tendrils of heat along my skin, and I realize it’s too late to back down now, to pretend this is nothing but a scene—to pretend my stomach isn’t turning itself into complicated knots at the proximity.
His hands are touching me, skimming along my hips and thighs. I’ve always loved reading about it in books, but I’ve never experienced it myself in real life. I feel him between my thighs.
Marcus, hard and thick and ready. All of him.
I clear my throat, sucking in a harsh breath through my nose and holding it inside. “What’s the matter? You don’t seem the type to hold yourself back in anything you do, Mr. Patterson,” I say on a breathy moan. “I’ve seen you around the neighborhood. I’ve seen how you talk to my parents.”
I feel him between my thighs, and something inside me contracts and loosens at the same time, my core overheated, molten. I’ve never been this turned on in my life. I’ve touched myself before, got a couple of toys that River and I got at a sex shop in downtown Hollywood. She’d gotten them for use while I’d bought mine as a joke, looking at the length and the vibration and wondering how in the world it was supposed to fit inside my body.
Marcus makes my vibrators look like what they are: toys.
I’ve even had guys touch me before, a couple of them, fumbling and inept and thinking they were God’s gift. They jackhammered their fingers against me and tried to get me off. Nothing like this.
“Stop.” His warning lacks all heat.
“What makes it not right, in your opinion?” I go off script and nip at the base of his chin. “Hmm? Because from where I’m sitting, it’s nothing but right.”
“You’re practically a child, Alicia,” Marcus manages. His voice is strangled as he wets his lips.
“I’m eighteen and about to graduate from high school. I’m a legal woman in the eyes of the law. What about in your eyes?”
“In my eyes, you’re forbidden in more ways than one,” he says. “You’re asking for trouble, and once we start down this road, there is nowhere to go except the finish line. Are you willing and able to deal with the consequences?”
I let myself go, but not before noting the way Marcus’ eyes glaze over. Something hot and dangerous glitters behind them, there and gone in a second.
“So tell me to move. If you’re afraid, then tell me, and I’ll leave.” I clear my throat and focus on the script the best I can. The words blur together. It’s too real as Marcus grips me, reads through his parts.
The words aren’t important, though, not really—only the sensation. Only the way heat curls in my stomach as his fingers lay hard against my skin, biting down deep before releasing, as though he has to cycle back around to remember not to bruise me.
I want him to touch me, more than he already is, to shuck the script aside and go for it. Except this is Marcus we’re talking about. Marcus, my guardian, who has never once looked at me with desire in his eyes.
“Tell me to move,” I repeat.
His grip tightens as he slides his hands to my hips, up the side of my torso to tickle my ribs, then lower, until he drags his hand along my thigh. Back up again in a slow and idle stroke. I want to touch him too, to feel him, but I’m about to catch fire.
“You know I’m not going to do that,” he replies.
His breathing is just as uneven as mine when he tugs me closer, our bodies like two pieces of the same puzzle, his heat and scent seeping beneath my skin.
I tilt my head to the side, staring at his face.
The feral look in his eyes has me blushing.
Empire blushes, I think distantly, not Alicia.
Marcus shifts his hips to increase the pressure between us.
Fuck the script. I don’t care about the movie anymore.
Not when I’ve been numb inside, dazed and cold and lonely for so long. Every piece of me leans into the contact and cries out for it. Just to be touched. To feel some kind of joy and life.
“Then what are you going to do?” I slide my hand to his chest in case I need to physically shove myself back and stop this before it goes the way I…I want it to go. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to taste you, Mr. Patterson.”
One of his hands lifts to grab the back of my neck and keep me in place.
“Wouldn’t you like someone your own age?” he asks.
My blood starts to boil in the best possible way, and I savor the sensation where our bodies meet, every place we connect. Everything. How do I maneuver to get everything? “Do you want the truth, or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?”
He’s silent long enough to have my heart thudding in anticipation.
“Marcus?”
The sound of his name has him wincing. He pulls back a little, and I lean forward with his movement. We stare at each other, my hands shaking. His hand slides along my upper thigh, his index and middle fingers bending slightly. He’s dangerously close to my aching pussy, and I’ve got on nothing but a small thong that does nothing to conceal how wet he makes me.
Finally, he tosses his script aside, and my pulse quickens. “Fuck this.”
“Fuck what?” I ask in a husky voice that doesn’t sound like me.
I grind against him, shifting to get his hands even further toward my center. There is only the thrill of power at his hardness and the impressive length contained inside his pants.
Marcus lets out a rough laugh. “I’d think it’s obvious.”
I’m not in full control of myself, and I care even less.
Lust rides me harder than it’s ever done before, and the heat crackling between us finally erupts when we lunge for each other at the same time. The inches between us are nothing but fuel to the fire and simmer away in an instant.
It’s a mistake.
A terrible mistake that both of us will regret once this moment passes, but it’s a problem for future me.
Current me latches her mouth to his, hot and insistent and yes. This is exactly what I want: his tongue lapping at mine and the scent of him, lemongrass, undoing every last reservation.
Marcus threads his fingers through my hair to keep me in place, changing the angle of the kiss to go deeper, and I part eagerly for him. His tongue slides between the seam of my lips and teases me with expert caresses that have me fisting his shirt to stay steady. I’m coming apart at the seams.
I’m not supposed to want Marcus, but I do.
I always have.
I just haven’t been willing to admit it to myself.
He breaks away, only to scrape his stubble along my cheek. “Empire.” My name is a moan dragged up from the depths. He drags his tongue along the side of my neck, and I arch against his hardness again.
Shit, I want him inside of me. I want him to dominate me.
My world narrows until it’s only the two of us.
I’m not willing to let this end yet. I take his face in my hands and kiss him harder, claiming him with my tongue. He’s just as greedy for this as I am, his fingers trailing over my hip up to my breast, down between us. He sucks my tongue into his mouth at the same time as he slips his hand up inside my shorts, higher and higher—
Shit. I suck in a breath, clenching him with my legs at his waist and holding on to him as his index finger slides through my wetness. His hand is inside my panties, his fingers on me, probing, flexing.
He pushes against my opening, the gesture teasing, before he pushes my folds apart.
“You are so wet for me,” he murmurs.
My face burns, but it’s not shame.
His other arm tightens around me to keep me in place when he slips the first inch of his index finger inside my pussy, and I gasp.
This is crazy, absolute madness, and I’m still not close enough to him.
I rock against him to bring him deeper inside of me, and Marcus breaks the kiss, trailing his teeth across my jaw and down my neck. He bites me in the same place he did yesterday, covering his mark with his teeth for a second time. We’re nothing but heat and tongue and touch, and I feel him everywhere. Need makes it hard to breathe.
“That’s it.” He works his finger inside of me in time with his kisses until I surrender to him, melting. “That’s a good girl.”
He presses the base of his thumb to my clit to circle it in time with the slight thrust of his fingers. Colors burst in front of my vision, and it’s a struggle to draw a full breath as energy lights my insides.
None of those other boys knew what they were doing when they touched me, but Marcus… he’s an expert with his fingers. I can only imagine what he could do with his cock if I let him.
“Do you want to come for me?” he asks.
I can only nod. He kisses me again until I’m pliant, shuddering around him. I’m close. I’m so close, if he just—
His phone rings in his pocket, the sound as sharp as a shot from a cannon, and Marcus breaks the kiss, his brows coming together in a dark V. He keeps fingering me while he fishes in his pocket for the cell and drags it out, looking at the caller before he presses the screen to answer it.
He doesn’t let me up.
“Parker, what do you want now?” His words are clipped.
“Tell me you had a chance to talk to her about the part.” I hear Parker clearly on the other line of the phone, and I open my mouth to say something, to pull away and lose the precious intrusion of Marcus’ fingers inside me, but he glares at me, purses his lips into a shushing gesture, and shakes his head lightly, a nonverbal cue for me not to make a sound.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about her contract yet, but the moment I do, you’ll be the first person I call,” Marcus responds. He keeps the pace of his fingering but increases the pressure on my clit. “I told you to give me until the end of the week.”
My thighs tremble as he drives out an incredibly rough rhythm inside me.
“I know what I said,” Parker snaps. “I’m insistent at this point. I need to finalize my budget, so I have to know today if Empire is in or out.”
In and out, his fingers stroke until pleasure rushes through me. I’m so close.
Lost in the sensation of him and the hardness of his thighs, his cock, against me.
How can he be so cavalier when he speaks to Parker when he’s driving me absolutely crazy?
“I’ve never known you to show your hand this way,” Marcus continues.
“Well, you know how it is when the big dogs pull your leash. I’ve got them breathing down my neck for a final budget for this movie, and I. Need. Her.”
I shudder against Marcus, his fingers driving me right over the edge into an orgasm until the waves of it numb my mind. My forehead drops to his shoulder as I struggle to breathe, to ride through the waves of sensation.
“She’s certainly a hot commodity,” Marcus continues. “However—” He stares into my eyes when I lift my head. “I believe she’ll do the part if we renegotiate for more money. It’s not an option at this point.”
The scene is supposed to end with Alicia pressing a chaste kiss to Mr. Patterson’s face and leaving him wanting more, her point made. Instead, it ends with me coming around Marcus’ fingers while he talks to my would-be producer, and I’m not supposed to make a sound.