Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Could Draven hear her erratic heartbeats? His face practically laid against the pulse in her neck as he hid his gaze from the TV. She should not have found his adorable fear sexy, but she did.
His body heat radiated into her from where he cuddled up against her. His mouth kept grazing her throat. The proximity of his lips caused a tantalizing warmth to swirl in her lower torso, her abdomen tightening under the blanket.
His breath blew out just below her ear. Each puff of warm air turned her on even more.
She showed him her note to try to break through the sexual tension. “ If you get scared, feel free to climb into my lap ,” she teased.
He pursed his lips and wrote, “ Don’t think I won’t .”
She gestured to her open lap and taunted him with a pesky smile.
So, he pulled the blanket from both of them and claimed her lap. But instead of sitting on it, he stretched out on the couch and rested his face on it.
Snuggling into her, he wrapped his right arm between her back and the couch, securing it around her waist. He lowered his head to balance on the top of her thighs. As he faced the screen, his cheek rubbed the skirt of her dress, bunching up the fabric until the hem sat mid-thigh.
His left hand settled onto her bare knee, ready to hide his face if another scary moment occurred in the film.
He must have made some type of humming noise because his cheek vibrated against Thea’s thigh. Those vibrations traveled up, up, under her dress, reverberating between her legs.
She blew out a slow breath as a fantasy slammed through her mind. One where Draven dug his face into her skirt, bunching it up further and further until his lips were mere centimeters from her quivering sex.
“ I’m hungry for more than popcorn tonight, Thea ,” he would tell her. “ Let me between those silky thighs .”
“ D-Draven —”
Fantasy Draven stared up at her with an intense yearning that shook her to her core. “ You’d deny a starving man ?”
Meanwhile, Real-life Draven laid his head peacefully over her lap. His hand curved around the top of one of her thighs. His fingers stretched out over her flesh, his thumb stroking back and forth like he used her skin as a fidget spinner to calm his nerves.
Back and forth, his thumb dragged across her sensitive thigh. Back and forth. He used such a precise rhythm, she couldn’t help imagining that same consistent, swiping touch between her legs. Right over her throbbing clit. Back and forth.
Something happened on the screen again, and Draven hid his face in her lap. The bridge of his nose fit perfectly between her legs. He shook his face; the motion caused her thighs to separate by an inch or two.
All the while, his thumb continued those persistent strokes on her tender thigh, the skin there tingling.
She fanned her face when he was not looking.
With her free hand, she kept her fingers in his hair, suppressing the instinct to tangle them in his wavy locks and pull his face firmly against the junction of her thighs.
He probably doesn’t even realize how he is touching you , she told herself. The possessive arm around the back of her waist. The sensual strokes on her thighs.
The skirt of her dress bunched up higher, revealing more of her skin.
Thea swallowed her lust and refocused on the movie.
But Draven’s hand crept up her leg. His thumb slid up her inner thigh as he shifted on her lap.
Her breath hitched—surely, he heard it because he paused and turned his head to look up at her.
* * *
Draven was so hot for her. Boiling. His heart pounded harder than any drum. His hard cock throbbed with each beat. The back of his head now nestled perfectly into her lap as he stared up at her.
Stunning woman . Her dark chestnut hair hung down from a messy bun, her brown eyes wide and pupils dilated.
“ You’re that scared? ” She wrote to him, showing him the notepad with shaky hands.
Draven was more than scared. He was terrified—of Thea. Of how much he wanted her. Of how much he wanted her to want him. Was it the curse of forbidden fruit? Knowing Wren said she was off-limits? Was it her prim and proper exterior yet goofy and feisty personality?
What if she goes back to her ex after this? Women “escaped” with Draven, then they left him and returned to their real lives.
Reverting back to his flirty defense mechanism, Draven wrote, “ Maybe we should sleep in the same bed again tonight. In case I have nightmares .”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. Somehow, that reaction sparked unadulterated glee in his chest. When I amuse her, it feels better than thousands of fans screaming my name in a concert hall.
Working on nothing but dangerous instinct, he reached up and touched a piece of her hair, sifting it through his fingers. Soft. Silky. Pretty. Why did she have to be so freaking pretty?
Her lips parted on a sudden exhale. Her eyelids dropped to half-mast at his touch.
“I am scared, Thea,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t understand him.
She inquisitively tilted her head and stared at his mouth—because she was trying to read his lips, not because she wanted to kiss him. Of course.
Draven sighed.
After a minute of peering down at him, she wrote something else.
“ I’ll protect you .”
A promise no one had ever made to Draven.
Not when he was a little kid, taking care of his siblings. Not when fans grabbed at his clothing and body parts as he was ushered to the car from venues.
She promised to protect him.
And it happened again. Draven’s heart shot right out of his chest and into Thea’s hands.
He liked her.
He really did.
Shit .
* * *
“ Next, use the blue eyeshadow …” Thea read the subtitle on the makeup tutorial. Each day, she attempted to master a new type of movie makeup.
For today’s lesson, she set out to conquer the down-on-his-luck action star —meaning bruises, a split lip, and a bloody gash coming from somewhere on the face. Forehead or cheek, she had not yet decided.
She dabbed more blue and purple around her eye.
“ The trick is to make the black eye look like you’ve tried to cover it up with normal makeup. ”
She nodded at the tutorial. So far, she had mastered the “glam” and the natural “woke up like this” makeup—because Hollywood did not go for a natural look without some hacks.
She had also attempted a “skeleton” skull makeup of grays and whites to make her face look made up of shadow and bone. She washed it away before Draven saw her and had a heart attack. Poor guy is a scared-y cat . She smirked.
As she finished with the split lip and black eye, she took a few photos and sent them off to her friends with the context of: “ No Thea was harmed in the making of these photos. Look at how good at this I’m getting! ”
A sense of giddy pride overrode her system—personal finance had never made her feel like this. Like she created art.
Even though she looked beat up to a pulp in the mirror, she felt like an absolute masterpiece.
Readying to wash the makeup off, she realized she left her face towel in her bedroom. Needing to grab it, she opened the bathroom door to exit.
She walked right into Draven, who stood just outside the door. Her chest slammed into his, and his arms shot out to help her rebalance as she catapulted off the hard muscles of his abs.
Her palms slapped onto his taut pecs, seeming to super glue themselves there when her hands realized who and where they touched. We’re good right here, her palms said. No need to remove us .
She gasped at his firm hold on her hips, their fronts pressing together as he steadied her to his toned chest. There was something about being sweetly hugged by a man like Draven—aka, one with tattoos, an all-black wardrobe, and a penchant for smirking.
His fingers wrapped tightly around her like she was the edge of a cliff from which he dangled. Like she was the one thing in the world that could wipe his classic self-assured smirk off his face.
She breathed in his scent and shuddered as the sensual tingles she had grown familiar with over the last few days rose to the surface.
Then, he started shaking her.
Fiercely shaking her.
Her gaze fell to his lips, which moved at the speed of light. Honestly, a person could fly to Mars in a day with the speed at which Draven said something to her. There was no chance she could read those speedy lips.
Now, he backtracked her, walking her back into the bathroom. His height and broad shoulders melted her body into submission as it mindlessly took any and all of his direction. He steered her until both of them stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom.
He kept speaking aloud, and she frowned at his lips, having no idea what he was yelling at her.
Because he appeared to be yelling.
Face turning red, breaths shallow, Draven slapped at his chest and said something. Even though he appeared to repeat the same phrase again and again, she couldn’t decipher it.
Impatient and frustrated as hell, Draven glanced at the bathroom sink, grabbed a tube of her expensive lipstick, popped it open, and wrote on the mirror with it.
Thea’s jaw dropped.
“ WHO DID THIS TO YOU? ” he wrote in smeared red lipstick on the mirror.
Stunned, she blinked several times, absorbing what was happening. Absorbing the waste of forty-dollar everlasting plum-apple lip stain on the mirror.
So.
Draven thought the black eye and split lip were real.
Two thoughts shot through her at once:
1. Wow, she really did that good of a job on the makeup?
2. He was terrified during the horror movie last night, but now he looked ready to chop someone up with a chainsaw for her.
Playful, goofy, smirky Draven evaporated from existence as this hulking, dominating man shook with pent-up rage at the idea of someone hurting her. He trembled before her.
When she didn’t instantly respond, he underlined his message on the mirror, using her lipstick again.
She made a noise at him, reaching for her lipstick.
Avoiding her outstretched hands, he shouted the same phrase he had written on the mirror. “Who did this to you?” This time, due to the context, she understood those plush, sinful lips.
She shook her head, wondering how to explain when her brain was distracted by the hypnotic way his chest heaved up and down. The way he stared at her was like he wouldn’t just burn the world for her but would give it a good ole pummeling beforehand.
Like he would make the sky itself bleed. For her.
Her dazed reaction did not appease him because he used her lipstick on the mirror again to add two question marks after his plum-red note.
She waved her hands in the air and signed, “ Stop! Calm down .”
He rushed to write more on the mirror in her lipstick, not calming down. “ Why do you have bruises on your face? ”
She fought with him to take back her lipstick, and he eventually released it. She pressed her lips together and tried not to weep as she wrote under his note in maroon, “ Stop writing on the mirror! ”
His eyebrows went into his hairline as he shot her a look of disbelief. He then gestured to her and the new note on the mirror as if to say, “ You just did it too .”
She rolled her eyes.
He moved forward, caging her to the sink as he lifted a hand to her cheek. Just before he touched her, he paused, hovering, then ever so gently stroked a thumb down her cheek. He hissed, staring at her bruises.
She swallowed at the intensity he emitted in the small bathroom. She touched the hand he held at the side of her face and shook her head. She directed his gaze to the random eyeshadow containers and the blue and purple tinted makeup brushes.
Those dark eyebrows furrowed. Taking in a shuddering breath, Draven pointed to the makeup and then to her face.
She nodded and mimicked putting it on around her eyes.
His chest concaved. His fingers on her cheek slipped around to cup the back of her neck as he leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers. Even if she couldn’t hear his deep sigh, his relief was ear-piercing.
He stole the tube of lipstick from her grip once more and wrote, “ WHY? ” on the mirror.
She slapped at his chest and slammed a hand next to her original note of “ Stop writing on the mirror .”
She mimed needing something to write with to explain to him. He swiftly turned, grabbed her hand, and walked her to the kitchen, where he handed her the notepad and pen they kept there.
Her palm and fingers cried at the loss of his hold on her. When was the last time someone held her hand like that? I can’t remember , she thought.
A memory that would never fade from her mind was the way Draven clutched at his heart when he saw the bruises on her face. Or the way he had tenderly pressed his forehead to hers.
As she explained that she was now pursuing her dream of being a makeup artist for movie sets, Draven nodded. The tension in his shoulders slackened as he nodded along.
“ I’m practicing each day. Applying to jobs each day. I know Hollywood is all about who you know, but I think I can do it. I’ll find some internship or something …”
Thea painted her goals onto the notepad for Draven’s eyes, something that might have bored anyone else. Still, he nodded to everything she wrote, engaged and present.
When he read her, “ I think I can do it ,” Thea swore his lips moved and said, “I know you can do it,” but that could have been her imagination.
After letting her babble about her hopes and dreams, Draven wrote back something that made her heart stop and restart.
“ My band needs a makeup artist for a Halloween gig. Would you be available for hire tomorrow night ?”