Chapter 3
Chapter Three
G etting into character
“I don’t understand why you’re wasting your time on this film, Ty,” Bernie Rather said on the other end of the line. The man was one of the top agents in Hollywood, but that was only because he played by Tinsel Town rules. It was his consistency that kept him afloat, not his creativity.
Ty was amazed the man had managed to walk down the aisle four times, as marriage certainly held a level of risk he’d never seen Bernie take on a professional level. Of course—considering the fact he’d ended up in divorce court four times—perhaps it was best Bernie stuck to the tried and true on the business front.
“We’ve been through this a thousand times, Bernie. I want to do something different, something of substance. I’m getting too damn old for the action hero shit.”
“The only problem with you is pride. Break down and start using the stunt double and you could keep doing action movies until you’re eighty. Look at Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis.”
Depression overwhelmed Ty at the thought of chasing bad character actors through various cities while the special effects people blew up everything in sight. There was no way he could continue to play those roles until he retired.
“No thanks. I’m ready to try a more serious role and Evening Songs is the perfect story. Oscar material for sure.” He didn’t dare admit to Bernie that his desire to make the film was twofold. While he hoped it would break him out of his stereotypical roles, he also wanted to see the stories told and shared with a broader audience because they spoke to his heart.
“You realize it will be both of our asses if this thing flops. Your star power will only take you so far, Ty. Add in your rather volatile public persona and you’re a ticking time bomb facing complete annihilation.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. He’d heard that line a thousand times from Bernie and he knew exactly how much was riding on this project and his plans for the future and his career.
“I know that. It won’t fail.” He delivered the line with as much conviction as he could muster, praying his agent couldn’t hear the underlying anxiety in his voice.
Gwen had signed the contracts. She was now legally bound to work on the screenplay with him, but he’d failed to tell her exactly how much was riding on this movie. He needed her talent, her writing skills, far more than he’d let on. He was betting the entire future of his career on her ability to tell a great story.
“Talk to you later,” he heard Bernie say as he hung up and put the phone in his pocket.
He paced the floor, glancing out the window every few moments, waiting for Bob to return from the airport with Gwen. He’d wanted to pick her up personally, but his morning meeting had run long, lasting well into the afternoon. He’d only arrived home half an hour earlier.
He stifled a yawn and grimaced. He was exhausted from tossing and turning all night.
Hell, every night since she’d left. The past two weeks had moved in slow motion, and every time he replayed her reaction to his kisses, his touches, he felt like the memories had been burned onto his brain and soul.
She was perfect for him, and that concept obliterated all of his common sense. He’d never met a woman like her. He’d never let himself imagine a woman like her existed. It was as if he’d written his ideal character, described her, shaped and molded her and Gwen had fallen into the part—his ultimate leading lady.
He was a dominant in every aspect of his life, but in the bedroom, those tendencies seemed to be amplified to outlandish proportions.
His entire life was spent in the limelight, so he’d learned how to temper his needs, his desires. He could just imagine the field day the tabloids would have printing the news of his sexual escapades. In his world, long-term committed relationships didn’t happen, and there was no way he would open himself up for the ugly gossip that would surround him if he dared to venture into the type of sexual relationship he truly wanted.
“Fuck.” He couldn’t even think the words in his own mind.
BDSM.
He wanted a slave in the bedroom, a woman he could command and control. He wanted to place a collar around Gwen’s neck and chain her to his bed forever. He wanted to take care of her, give her anything and everything she’d ever dreamed of.
No doubt he could keep an entire army of psychiatrists busy with his psyche if he was so inclined, but he’d come to realize that his need for dominance was simply an innate part of his personality. He was who he was and since meeting Gwen, he knew the years of hiding, of restraining that need for ultimate control, were over.
Until now, preserving his career, his reputation, had always come before those desires.
One week in Gwen’s presence had changed that. Never once in all of his forty years had he met a woman he wanted to utterly possess. Whether the idea of controlling her in the bedroom was right or wrong, it continued to gnaw at his conscience while eating away at his willpower.
He knew he should resist her—for the success of the screenplay, if nothing else—but he also knew he never would, never could.
He now understood the reason he’d been drawn to her story, “The Darkest Night”. Clearly she had similar desires. Every move she had made the morning she left proved it.
She was a born submissive.
She would obey his commands.
She would place herself completely in his hands, and she would be marvelous.
Problem was, she didn’t seem to realize or understand her needs.
At all.
In fact, he sensed that, like him, she’d spent a lifetime denying that part of herself. He’d spent the past two weeks considering whether or not he should explore the relationship with her, take tentative steps in the direction he believed they’d both like to go.
If only he wasn’t feeling so much damn stress about the screenplay.
What if he pushed her too far?
The ways he wanted to take her were too extreme, and he’d never forgive himself if he hurt her by pushing her into something she wasn’t ready for.
Worse yet, what if he’d read her wrong?
What if he revealed his true nature and it scared her, drove her away?
He knew she craved his rough touch, but what would she think when she realized that the charming, playboy Ty Ransome had a really dark side?
Who knew?
Perhaps she would be the one woman who could handle his needs. Perhaps she would be the one who would accept him for himself, rather than the image on the screen and—dear God, please—perhaps she would be the one to stick around for a lifetime or so.
Tires on the driveway pulled him from his thoughts, and he opened the front door as she emerged from the back of the limo and looked at him. He could see she was surprised to find him standing there.
“Hey, Hollywood,” she said as she climbed the steps.
He reached out his hand and she accepted it. He didn’t release her until he’d pulled her straight into his arms. He lowered his lips to hers before she could resist and kissed her long and hard. She struggled for only a moment before opening her mouth to his questing tongue.
When at last he allowed her to pull away, he grinned at her annoyed expression.
“Dammit,” she whispered. “I can see you haven’t repented the error of your ways.”
“Sweetheart, the only mistake I could make with you would be to walk away.”
“Ty, this isn’t how?—”
“Come inside. I’ve had the cook prepare us a nice lunch. I thought we’d eat out by the pool.”
“I really want to talk about?—”
“After lunch, I thought we could take a swim,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at his continual interruptions. He knew she would continue to resist him, but he wouldn’t allow her to run from him. She was about to find herself under a full-scale Ty attack.
He’d battened down his hatches and was ready to see her white flag waving surrender against the horizon.
Failure wasn’t an option he was ready to face.
After lunch and a pleasant conversation, Gwen leaned back in the poolside lounger feeling more relaxed than she would have expected. Ty’s welcoming kiss, the special lunch, the way he was looking at her, proved he had no intention of backing off. She would be here for two months, working with him day after day, and she realized there was no way she’d be able to fight off her attraction to him.
“That’s a serious look.” He glanced over at her from his own lounger.
“You aren’t even going to try to keep your hands off of me, are you?”
He gave her a wicked smile. “Nope.”
Just sitting anywhere near the man caused such a soul-melting heat to course through her that she felt as if she were being consumed by flames.
“Will you at least try to understand where I’m coming from about the professionalism?”
“Nope.” He grinned as he spoke, and she felt herself falling under his spell. No wonder the guy was a box-office sensation. No woman alive could resist him when he smiled like that.
Her bedroom toys had been overworked since her return to New York, but regardless of how many times she’d tried to sate her overwhelming needs, nothing had come even close to relieving her weary body as he had with just his fingers.
“I want you.” He forced her gaze to meet his. “I’m not going to lie, not going to pretend that I don’t.”
“But I don’t want you.” The prevarication hovered between them like a foul odor.
“Don’t lie to me, Gwen. Ever.”
She tried to stifle the shudder that passed through her at the tone of his voice, and she attempted to clear away the sensations swamping her until she couldn’t form a coherent thought. She wasn’t sure how he was able to affect her so strongly, but she found herself drawn to him like a bee to honey.
He was controlling their personal play, and he had been from the start. The idea of him taking control of her so thoroughly should have jarred her sense of self-preservation, had her running for the hills, but instead she relished his power.
This is wrong .
The words weaved their way back into her conscience as fear and unease swamped her, washing away all other emotions. She’d spent the past two weeks attempting to regain her wits, to remember why she had to fight against Ty’s advances.
If he knew what she truly wanted from him, he’d turn away from her with disgust. It had happened before, and she wasn’t strong enough to suffer the rejection again.
She tried to alleviate the tension with humor.
“Listen, Hollywood, you’re just gonna have to accept the fact that I’m not interested in pursuing a relationship with you. I think perhaps we should focus our energy on the screenplay. That is why I’m here. The only reason I’m here.”
A scowl crossed his face as he rose and walked to her side. She struggled to raise her gaze to his. His eyes seemed to see right through her, and she knew he’d read the fear, the lies, the confusion in her face as easily as he read his cue cards on the set.
“You’re right.”
She glanced up, shocked by his quick capitulation. “The screenplay should be our top priority, and with that thought in mind, I’ve made some arrangements for our writing.” He gestured toward the house. “Come with me.”
She followed him in silence, through the living room and up a grand staircase, her mind whirling the entire time as he led her into the largest, most ornate bedroom she’d ever seen.
“I don’t understand,” she said hoarsely, clearing her throat, hoping to dislodge the lump that had formed there.
“We’ll write in here, Gwen.” He crossed the room to a large desk. She was shocked to realize her laptop was set up on the surface. Another glance around the room confirmed that her suitcases were there as well.
“Is this a guest room?” she asked. “I thought I’d be staying in the guest house again.”
He shook his head. “This is my room. You’ll be staying here.”
“No.” She backed away a step. “I most definitely will not.”
“You said yourself that you’re here to work on the screenplay.”
“And how in the hell will me staying in your bedroom accomplish that?”
He flashed her a charming grin that she immediately distrusted. “The stories in Evening Songs revolve around four couples in their bedrooms at night. The first story is a young married couple on their honeymoon and the second deals with the couple struggling to make a baby. ‘The Darkest Night’ shows a couple who embrace BDSM, and the final story is about the last night an elderly couple spend together before the wife dies in her sleep.”
“I wrote the damn stories. I hardly need a synopsis.”
His smile never dimmed. “What better place to write the screenplay of a movie that takes place exclusively in a bedroom than in the bedroom?”
“That doesn’t explain why my luggage is here. If you want to write here, fine. I don’t have a problem with that.” Her body chastised her mind for those words. There was no way she could sit at this desk writing day after day with Ty and the world’s most inviting, king-sized, canopied bed only a few feet away. “But I hardly think I need my clothing in here.”
“I’ve cleared my schedule for a week.”
“Cleared it? I thought you were going to continue to work on your other projects while we wrote. I’ve made arrangements to be here for two months, not a week.”
He shrugged off her comment and took a step closer to her, as she struggled not to step back, not to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he unnerved her. “Oh, we won’t finish in that time. I doubt we’ll get more than the outline sketched and some research completed, but I want us to have time to put our thoughts on paper and to get a few things established between us. While we’re working on this screenplay, we’re going to write, eat and sleep in here. Let’s call it our honeymoon phase.”
“What?”
“We’re going to become your characters. Play out the parts of each couple, get inside their heads and see what makes them tick.”
“You’re crazy,” she whispered. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not? You’re a writer, Gwen. You can’t tell me you don’t do detailed characters sketches prior to writing. I’ve read your books. Your characters jump off the page as if they are living, breathing entities. I’m an actor and a director. I attempt to do the same thing every time I take on a new role. I try to become the person I’m portraying. This could be an interesting experiment. Combining your writing skills with my acting ones to create these people. Think about it.”
She was spellbound by the enthusiasm, the energy that seemed to radiate from every part of him.
When she’d written the stories in Evening Songs , she had become incredibly attached to the fictional couples. They’d begun to feel like her family, her friends, and she’d missed them dearly when the book was finished.
The idea of bringing them back to life, of stepping into their skins with Ty, was more appealing than she could have imagined. “I’m not an actress.”
“You won’t be acting. These characters are you. You created them. They live inside you.”
“The sex?—”
“They have sex. We’re going to have sex. You’re only kidding yourself if you think we aren’t going to give in to this thing between us, Gwen. I’ve felt it since the first moment I laid eyes on you and I know it’s been the same for you. We’re adults and neither of us is in a relationship. What is there to hold us back?”
She considered his words, his invitation to join him in his bed to share her characters and her body with him. She was overwhelmed by how much she wanted what he was proposing.
Surely she could do this.
It was just sex, right?
She would simply have to make sure they didn’t cross over the boundary between normal sex and?—
She sighed. She would have to guard her fantasies carefully. There was no way she could let Ty see what dark desires lived inside her.
She looked up at him and grinned at his charming smile. Damn movie star would definitely rock her world in bed, which would be a welcome change from her toys. She was sick of having sex alone.
“Well?” he asked.
“When do we start?”