27. Molly
27
MOLLY
N oah had said yes to the photo shoot.
He’d said no to being completely naked, though, and I hadn’t been able to talk him out of that.
“Think about it,” I said, moving through his room and cleaning it up. I was planning to blur the background and focus only on him, but you could see clutter even through a blurred shot, and I didn’t want these pictures to look sloppy. I slid the blind closed but cracked them so there would be beams of light coming through, and then started making the bed. “The labels are asking you to be more accessible to photographers, right? Be more friendly? Less brooding dark boy?”
“Brooding dark boy?” he asked, amused. “Is that what they’re calling me these days?”
I threw a pillow at him. “You know what I mean.”
“‘Noah Michael, brooding dark boy of the rock world,’” he said musingly. “I don’t know, I’ve always thought of Rivers as darker than me. Maybe it’s because he’s brunette and I’ve got blond hair. Can’t I be the golden boy instead?”
“Oh my God.” This time I picked up a shoe and threw it. “Make yourself useful and clean up your room!”
He looked deeply offended at that. “But I thought this was supposed to be a bedroom shot. This is what my bedroom looks like.”
I was going to kill him.
“Noah Allen Michael, I want it tidy in here. Now. Be a good boy and clean up and I’ll let you have whiskey and cigarettes while we’re in the shoot.”
Instead of cleaning up like I asked, he scooted toward me, already half undressed and took me in his arms. “Good boy, now?” he asked huskily. “I thought I was supposed to be playing a bad boy.”
My body erupted in chills and I looked up at him, knowing exactly what my face was doing. He wasn’t going to be naked but I’d negotiated down to him being in his boxers, and that meant there would be a lot of Noah on display. I was twitchy as hell about it. We still hadn’t talked about the fact that we’d slept together, but he’d been touching me a lot more lately. Just casual brushes of his fingertips over my hands. His arms coming around me when I wasn’t expecting it. His eyes trailing down my body like... like...
Like they were doing right now.
Fuck, I wanted him. And he was the one thing I definitely couldn’t have.
“Noah,” I said, my voice full of warning. Or pleading. I wasn’t sure.
“Yes?” he asked, dipping his head closer. “Did you want something?”
I wanted something, alright. And I couldn’t have it. So I stepped back out of his arms and turned my back on him. “Behave yourself. I’m here on official business.”
That got him chuckling, at least, and we moved quickly to tidy up in the room before getting started. I’d brought really great lighting equipment with me but once I had him stretched out on the bed in the natural light, I decided to shoot that way instead. There was enough sunshine coming through the blinds that I got all the light I needed, and the way it fell in beams over him gave the whole thing a gritty, undone sort of look.
Perfect for the shoot I wanted.
We started working, then, me calling out demands and adjusting his poses and him looking unfairly hot in the bed alone. I wasn’t surprised to find that he was a natural in front of the camera. He’d always been too good-looking by half, and he loved performing. When I told him a certain pose was good, or the lighting in that spot was best, he took full advantage of it, moving just enough to give me different shots without losing the light. He flexed and stretched and let me see every inch of him, and when I did glance down at his boxers, I saw that he was hard and ready to do a whole lot more than just pose.
I stopped the groan that tried to climb up my throat, told myself firmly that I wasn’t here to fuck him, and went back to snapping shots.
But the longer we went, the hotter his eyes got when they met mine through the view finder, until I felt like he was the one stripping me down and staring at my body. My mouth was dry and my pussy was aching for him, and he hadn’t even touched me.
This had been a very bad idea. Yes, I was probably saving my job. I was giving Janette what she wanted–almost–and doing it in a way that just might save both our jobs. If I gave her good pictures, she’d run the spread with them and he’d get all the publicity he could handle. The labels were bound to see it and fall in love with him–and the paycheck he was promising–so if the Authors didn’t have another contract yet, they would as soon as this story published.
Win/win.
Bonus: I wasn’t breaking any of Janette’s rules to do this. In fact, I was following every rule she’d given. I was following orders, not talking back, and definitely not messing with one of the stars.
Unless you called aching with how bad I wanted to jump him breaking a rule.
“Molly,” he said suddenly.
I snapped back into reality and realized that I’d dropped the camera to my side and was standing there staring at him. “What?” I asked, jerking the camera back up and going back to work.
“You okay?”
“Of course,” I said vaguely. Though I wasn’t taking any pictures of him now, either.
I was just staring at him through the viewfinder. I couldn’t seem to do anything other than that.
He moved before I was ready and had me against the wall in no time flat.
“Put down the camera,” he said quietly.
I tried to glare up at him. Really, I did. But my body was too busy reveling in the feel of him, hard and ready, against my belly. My legs were spreading for him and my hips rocking, and I couldn’t seem to stop them.
“Huh?” I asked vaguely.
“Put. Down. The. Camera.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to tear your clothes off and fuck you against this wall, and I don’t want to break it. I bought it, so I know how expensive it was.”
I put the camera down on the table next to me without asking for further clarification. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to use my voice to ask. I was struck dumb by what he’d just said.
The moment the camera was out of my hands, he did exactly what he’d promised. He fisted two hands in my shirt and jerked, tearing the buttons right off and throwing it to the ground. And he didn’t stop there. His hands went to the buttons of my shorts and worked them quickly. Once they were undone, he let the shorts slide down my legs, the material rasping against exquisitely sensitive skin. I groaned, my back arching of its own according until only my shoulder blades and ass were pressed against the wall.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was a very bad, no good idea. And I’d never wanted anything so badly in my life.
He stepped back and looked me up and down once, and then again, admiring the view of me in my bra and panties. I flushed from my toes up to my hairline as his eyes raked over me. But I didn’t try to cover up.
“God damn, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, his fingers already sliding into the waistband of his boxers. He slipped them over his hips slowly, then over his cock, and down his legs.
And now it was my turn to stare at him. I hadn’t looked closely the first night we were together. I’d already been in bed and out of my mind by the time he got undressed. But now he was standing in front of me, his cock hard and ready and his body slick with sweat. Letting me stare.
Practically daring me to look at him.
And fucking hell, if I was beautiful, he was some sort of god.
The tattoos covered his arms and chest, a mirage of color and lines, and though they could have hidden the definition of his muscles, they didn’t. Every ab was defined, his pecs perfectly muscled, his biceps and triceps so cut that I wondered how it was human. My eyes traveled up his torso and then back down, ending in the V that led to his dick.
Also beautiful, I thought vaguely. Thick and ready for me, bobbing with the same need I felt at my core.
“Are you just going to stand there staring?” I finally asked, bringing my eyes back to his. “Because I was under the impression–”
He dove on me before I could finish, ravaging my mouth with his own while his hands went under my ass and lifted me up. My back slid up the wall with the action, and I wrapped my legs around him to try to keep my balance.
“Good girl,” he muttered against my mouth. “Hold me tight, sweetheart. This is going to be a bumpy ride.”
He slammed inside me before I was ready, burying himself to the hilt, and if I could have screamed, I would have. He didn’t give me time, though. I’d barely processed the fact that he was inside me before he was lifting me up and bringing me back down, pinning me against the wall and rocking his hips so hard, so fast, that he I didn’t have any space to breathe or think, beyond the instinctive realization that he was going to ride me until I came for him.
And fucking hell, was I going to come for him. He thrust into me again and again, hitting a spot that made me want to both laugh and cry at the same time, and my body responded in kind. I tilted my hips to take him even deeper, then cried out when he took it and went even farther.
God, I was going to come apart at the seams. I scratched his back, looking for purchase, and he growled in delight. That nearly did me in, but he buried his head in my neck and started talking.
“Don’t you dare come for me yet,” he grumbled. “I want us both finishing at the same time, and I’m not ready to be done with you yet.”
He didn’t realize what he was asking. My body clenched around him, on the verge of exploding, and I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself. I didn’t have any control over it, and the deeper he got, the closer I came to finished.
“I can’t...” I stuttered. “Noah, I can’t...”
“Don’t. Do. It,” he responded, punctuating each word with another thrust.
My body erupted, and I didn’t try to stop it. I started to cry out his name but he stopped me with a kiss, his tongue sweeping into my mouth and swallowing my scream as my orgasm ripped through me, sending waves of pleasure to every inch of my body. I spasmed on him again and again, pulling him ever deeper inside me, and with a surprised roar, I felt him let go of himself. He spurted up inside me, growling and thrusting, and it sent me over the edge once again. I held onto him for dear life, not sure whether I could stand it if this ever stopped.
And not sure I could stand it if it didn’t.
When the aftershocks finally stopped and I was slumped against him, trying to remember which way was up, he chuckled softly against my neck.
“You,” he said quietly, “are not at all what I thought you were?”
I leaned back so I could look at him. “What does that mean?”
He kissed me slowly, letting me savor the softness of his lips. “It means I thought you didn’t like me. And I thought you were a girl who followed all the rules.”
The rules.
Fuck.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, I supposed. I’d broken the rules and hadn’t been caught yet. With luck, I wouldn’t be caught this time.
I gave him a crooked grin. “Rules? What rules?”
He didn’t answer. He hitched me up a bit higher, then turned and walked toward the bed. “In that case, come to my bed. I’m not done with you yet, little Bug.”
I shivered in delight at the use of my nickname. And when he laid me down and began to trail his mouth over my skin, I arched my back and enjoyed every second of it. Because this didn’t feel like a one-night stand. It didn’t feel fake or short term.
It felt like the real thing.
Noah, this passion between us, and the way our bodies moved together... It felt like something big. And I was going to enjoy it as long as I could.