Chapter 21
Chapter 21
At thirty-four, Jaime was too old for this shit. He had a mortgage, for crying out loud—he ought to be stable and staid. He ought to spend his weekends pressure washing his deck and not breaking into a sweat when he accidentally caught Scarlett’s eye.
But no, every time he made that mistake, his cheeks flamed and his bloodstream ignited. He kept missing what people were saying to him in meetings because he was too busy reliving what had happened with Scarlett on the floor of his office.
It was mortifying. He hadn’t been this fluttery when he’d been an actual teenager. He needed to grow up, but that meant asking Scarlett what the heck their encounter had meant. Had it been an inevitable release for two people who had too much tension built up in their bodies, the sexual equivalent of shocking yourself on a door handle after rubbing your feet on the carpet? Or was it more serious than that?
It would also probably necessitate clearing the air about what had gone down on set, but Jaime wasn’t ready to do that either. Scarlett had been totally right to call him out. His job as the director was to know what he wanted and to listen—and he’d failed at both because he’d started to doubt whether he’d been right to be mad at Scarlett.
He still felt as if he were in free fall, no more confident about which way was up than he had been when he and Scarlett had ended up sweaty and panting together. He was a mess .
If the sex had been about releasing tension, it hadn’t worked. No, if anything, it felt as if they’d actually ratcheted things up. And as for it being serious ... well, Jaime knew that things with Scarlett and him couldn’t ever be anything except momentous. It was how they rolled.
In order to get through the shoot, Jaime had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and not get distracted. Except this was very distracting.
So one week after it boiled over, Jaime decided to go clear the air. He wanted to talk about it with Scarlett in person, because he wasn’t a goddamn coward, but he also would prefer it if no one else from the production saw him knock on her hotel room door.
And that was why, as he tried to slip from the stairwell onto her floor, he cursed under his breath when he saw Nate.
Nate turned toward the noise and clocked Jaime immediately. “Hey! I thought you had plans tonight.”
“I do.” He had to prove he was an adult by having a somewhat mortifying conversation with his ex. Those were plans.
“With?” Nate prompted.
Scarlett, the woman I can’t seem to get over. See, we stupidly had sex on the floor of my office last week, but I can’t manage to have a real conversation with her. The entire thing has me pacing the floor and talking to myself—and I’m starting to think I’ve cracked.
Yeah, no.
“I was going to see if Scarlett was free to talk about tomorrow’s scene, and then I was going to turn in early.”
That was perfect. He really ought to ask Scarlett about the stuff they were filming tomorrow, to consult her and involve her more because she was a valued member of the production team. He’d give up a little of the precious control she thought he was unwilling to part with as a cover for this conversation ... just as soon as they established that the sex had been a not-to-be-repeated error.
“I mean, jeez,” Nate said, in a faux whiny voice. “I know I’m not as pretty as she is, but you passed up a sure-thing dinner with me for a maybe conversation with her?”
“Them’s the breaks,” Jaime said.
“Fair enough. I think she’s in that one.” Nate indicated the door that a glance at the production binder had already confirmed to be hers.
Jaime hesitated for a minute.
This was a bad idea. It was such a bad idea.
If Jaime had been alone, this was where he would’ve realized that and run away. But Nate was standing there, looking at him. Waiting for him to rap on the door. And so Jaime was stuck.
“You gonna knock, or are you just waiting for her to intuit that you’re there?” Nate asked.
“Knock. Definitely.” Feeling as if he didn’t know how to work his body, Jaime lifted a fist and tapped on Scarlett’s door.
Maybe she would save him by being out, or in the shower, or ignoring interruptions, or—
“Who is it?” Scarlett called.
Dammit. He had the worst luck. The absolute worst luck.
“Jaime.” His voice came out high and strained. “I want to talk about filming tomorrow.” He flashed a smile at Nate, who was watching him suspiciously.
Nate had probably put together seventy-five percent of what had happened. If Jaime could redo things, he definitely would’ve picked a less perceptive collaborator.
Scarlett pulled the door open. She’d ditched the fancy outfit she’d worn on set in favor of a wine-colored tank top and black leggings. She’d washed her makeup off, and her skin was endearingly bare and shiny.
Jaime swallowed. Whenever they came face to face, his insides went marshy. Maybe those green eyes of hers brought the tide in. It swept up the prickly emotions, making them bob around in the mix of things she made him feel.
“Tomorrow’s scene?” Scarlett’s eyes darted over Jaime’s shoulder toward Nate. “Is it a group convo?”
“Nope, I’m leaving.” Nate patted Jaime’s back far, far harder than he needed to. “Have a good night, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” He shouted that last bit back at them from halfway down the hall.
“What wouldn’t he do?” Scarlett asked, stepping back so Jaime could enter her room. “Because I don’t know him that well.”
“Where Kit is concerned, I don’t think there’s anything Nate wouldn’t do.”
“He ought to be careful, there. Kit leaves a trail of broken hearts wherever they—nope. Let’s not do that. We shouldn’t start matchmaking our friends.”
Because that was what a couple would do, and no one would confuse Jaime and Scarlett for a couple.
What were you, when you had an intense shared history but you had broken up twice now? What was left behind when a relationship crumbled? Who were you, even?
Jaime wished his other exes all the best. He could think about the good times and the bad times with them and feel neutral . But with Scarlett, there was never any neutrality, never any distance. Everything still hit as fresh as the day it had happened. All the lust. All the jokes. All the intensity. But also the rejection and the betrayal and the truth. His eyes snagged on her, and that encyclopedia of emotions went through him.
Standing here, a few feet from Scarlett, with amusement making her eyes sparkle, Jaime felt as if his chest had been cleaved open. She’d always put her independence first, and he’d always crave genuine emotional intimacy. They weren’t suited for each other. But he would never stop wanting her to be the one for him. Not ever.
Jaime had meant to come here and clear the air. To put a stop to things.
What an idiot he’d been.
He’d actually convinced himself that what happened in his office had been a onetime thing, that he didn’t want to repeat it, and here he was, almost panting for her again.
“I mean, Kit hates blind dates. They’re much more of a make-eyes-at-someone-across-a-crowded-room type,” Scarlett was saying. “And Nate strikes me as—”
“Stop talking.”
Then Jaime’s mouth was on Scarlett’s, and they crashed into the wall. Her hands were in his hair, and her tongue was in his mouth, and everything was perfect.
That was better. That was what he’d wanted.
When Jaime was kissing Scarlett, when he was touching her soft skin, when she was pulling his clothing off and making impatient, hungry noises, the kind that said he couldn’t get inside her fast enough, everything was perfect.
You couldn’t clear perfect from the air. You couldn’t get the taste of it off your tongue.
Why would you even want to try?
Jaime didn’t have to feel that messy stew of frustration and anger and confusion when they were wrapped up in each other like this. With her body under his hands, things between them reduced to their elemental components. Everything became a matter of taking and giving. His pleasure, her pleasure. His fingers, her sighs. His moans, her mouth.
Moral questions and ethical quandaries and the issue of their compatibility didn’t figure here. Not when they were stumbling toward her bed, shirts dropping to the floor along the way.
Scarlett pulled back from him and set her hand in the center of his chest, right over where she’d ripped his heart out. The thought set off a dull ache, which proved the thought was a lie. It only felt as if she’d taken it. Sadly, the organ was still there. Still beating. And still hurting.
With a coy smile, she shoved, and he sat on the bed with a grunt.
“Dreamed about this,” she whispered, rolling to the floor between his spread knees. With a few efficient movements, she’d freed his cock and set about doing the kinds of things with her mouth and her teeth and her tongue that made it hard to think about anything else. “If you hadn’t come to see me ...” She trailed off, but it was a sentence she didn’t need to finish.
What did it mean before, and what does it mean now? he wanted to demand. But wasn’t the way he felt when she pulled down his zipper a better answer than anything she might have said?
The look she shot him was meant to be seductive—and it was plenty successful. Scarlett could do whatever she wanted to and with Jaime. He was hers.
But her expression was a little too coy for him to fully buy that she felt in charge here. Underneath things, Jaime hoped Scarlett was every bit as uncertain as he was. She had to be every bit as swept away by their attraction as he was—and just as unable to control it.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“I want to.”
Jaime knew she did. But he also suspected it was easier to have him like this, where she was directing the action and he was at her mercy, than it would’ve been if the situation had been reversed.
Still, when she put her mouth on him, it felt as if they were both taking the easy way out. That it was easier for them both when he was begging, when he was gasping her name, when he was the one saying please.
Please please please. The words fell from his mouth like sheets of rain from a stormy sky. But Jaime knew he wasn’t only begging for Scarlett not to stop. He was asking for her to love him, to forgive him, to let him in, to make any decision with him next time—that and a hundred other things he wasn’t yet ready to voice.
Pleasure was the thing it was easiest to ask for, but it wasn’t one-tenth of what he needed from her.
Which was probably why he was soon threading his hands in her hair, pulling her up and into his lap. It wasn’t enough for him to find release; he needed to give it too.
“I need to taste you.” Then he set about stripping her and laying her out.
Scarlett, sprawled over the bed, her hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes bright with arousal—she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Baby.” He should keep the tenderness out of his voice, but he couldn’t. It had been too long. Entirely too long.
“You said you needed to taste me?”
“I do.”
He kissed her breasts, her stomach, down and down her skin until he was buried in the core of her. The dance of his tongue and her hips and his hands and her cries—goddamn. Scarlett gave herself over to pleasure so completely. She let him lead her wherever he wanted, but she was really the one leading, wasn’t she?
It was her gasps, her moans, that he was chasing. The moment when all her muscles drew tight, when she was shaking and sobbing his name, he knew this wasn’t all in his head. Knew it wasn’t one sided.
Then he was next to her on the bed, and their hands were tangling together on his cock. His own release was almost an afterthought, albeit one that had him begging, pushing against her thigh, their eyes locked, her lips flushed. Jaime clenched the fist of his free hand on the comforter so hard it was a miracle the fabric didn’t rip.
When he finally came, she made a soft noise of surprise, as if she’d wanted the moment to last forever.
He got it. If only they could stay suspended in that spiral forever, things would be ... easy.
Scarlett half sat up and tapped around on the nightstand. She came back with a tissue, and with painful gentleness, she cleaned up his stomach.
“There you go,” she whispered, and it felt like the truest thing anyone had ever said.
Jaime had come here wanting to know what was true—and he’d gotten it.
He loved her. This hadn’t been an itch to scratch or a onetime blast from the past. No, Jaime would never get enough of Scarlett, not ever, and no one else would ever be right for him.
The only outstanding questions were whether they could grow enough to be together. Could she be with someone, and could he live with her wariness?
“Did you really want to talk about the scene?”
“No.”
“So do you want to talk about this?” She gestured at their nakedness. She’d asked the question so softly she might have been talking to herself.
But just the same, he’d heard her.
Did they need to talk about it? Sure.
But did Jaime want to talk about it? Hell no.
Not until he knew how to ask for what he wanted.
“No.” Jaime got to his feet. He found his clothes, and despite the fact that his digits and limbs weren’t working yet, that so much of him only wanted to slip back into her bed and wrap himself around Scarlett’s soft body, he made himself dress.
When he was done, he set one fist on the bed and leaned over her.
Scarlett’s expression was sober. Alert. She knew exactly what he was doing and exactly why he was doing it.
He couldn’t resist her. He absolutely could not. But he wasn’t going to let himself get swept away. He couldn’t afford to. Not until she let him in.
“I don’t want to talk about anything.”
Which would’ve been more convincing if he hadn’t dropped a soft kiss on her forehead before bolting from her room.