6. Red Lights
Selene
It’s been ten days.
Ten irritating, nerve-wracking, absolutely insufferable days spent in excruciatingly close quarters with Ron Willers.
I haven’t made a single ounce of progress on my novel. The page on my laptop is still depressingly blank. On the plus side, though, I think the physical appearance of my male lead is now very clearly defined in my head.
Ahem.
Let’s just ignore that and try not to think about it.
Yeah, right. As if it were that easy.
“Can you knock it off?” I groan, sinking deeper into the small armchair in the corner of the room.
This is definitely a scene I didn’t want to—and shouldn’t—be seeing. But one that, to my utter and pathetic disgust, I absolutely cannot look away from.
The room is bathed in thick shadows, cut through by LED lighting set to a deep, sinful red. And right in the center of this makeshift set is him.
Ron is half-sprawled on the mattress. The crimson light slides like liquid over his bare skin, caressing the brutal definition of his broad chest and sculpting every single goddamn ab into a perfect grid of shadows.
His faded jeans hang dangerously low on his hips, revealing the sharp V-line that disappears beneath the denim.
But the thing that’s completely short-circuiting my brain is that he’s wearing a mask.
One of those white rubber serial killer masks from slasher movies, its expression twisted into a ghostly scream.
His hands, thick with veins, hold the camera above him.
The contrast between the grotesque creepiness of the mask and the raw, virile sensuality of his half-naked body bathed in red light is a fucking assault on my sanity.
“Sorry…” he murmurs, his voice dark and muffled behind the plastic. “I can’t decide what character to play in our intro video.”
He pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the bed and, with one fluid motion, pulls the mask off over his head. As he does, the muscles in his back flex. His bicep flexes, pulling the skin taut in a way so obscene I physically have to gasp for air.
“But… weren’t you obsessed with the whole cowboy thing?” I ask, forcing out a normal voice that doesn’t sound like the wheeze of a woman on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Hey, I’m a real cowboy!” he protests, a lopsided grin lighting up his face.
I roll my eyes.
He sighs, turning the mask over in his hands. “Just… do you think it works?”
He tosses it onto the rumpled covers, reaches for the desk, and grabs his black Stetson, pulling it low over his brow with a deliberate, measured gesture.
God.
Cowboy hat. Bare chest. Ripped abs that look carved out of marble.
That night at the saloon, I’d felt the heat of his body and the power of his muscles, but I hadn’t really seen Ron shirtless.
But now? Now I have to physically force my jaw shut to keep from drooling on the rug.
We’re cooped up in his room at The Snowed Inn.
He had to move out of the ranch because the production crew has already swarmed the place for the reality show’s set prep, so his friends, Rae and Grant, offered him a room here at the inn.
A room that, for the moment, has also become our recording studio to shoot our couple’s intro trailer.
And… Ron Willers, bathed in this fucking red light, shirtless, staring at me from under the brim of his hat? I want to cry. I want to scream into a pillow.
Yeah… I think I’m officially, painfully sexually frustrated right now.
“And couldn’t you at least put a shirt on?” I complain, crossing my legs to scrape together some shred of composure.
Yeah, I keep complaining. Constantly. Otherwise the only logical alternative would be getting out of this chair, closing the distance between us, pushing him back onto the mattress, and running my tongue over every single pulsing vein on his body.
Ron tilts his head, and the blue of his eyes catches the red light, making him look like the devil himself. “Am I distracting you?”
God, he’s infuriating.
“You know they gave me strict instructions…” he adds, shrugging with a casualness that makes me want to strangle him. “Production wants me shirtless for the video.”
He says it like he couldn’t care less. Like he’s perfectly used to sitting half-naked in front of a woman who is losing her damn mind.
Well, maybe he doesn’t care.
But I do. Big time.
Ron
I’m trying to play it cool—I swear to God I am—but it’s really, really fucking hard.
Having Selene Dusk stuck in my room, wearing that damn little black satin slip dress? God… it’s absolute torture.
She is the woman of my wildest dreams. I’m dead serious. For years, I’ve been following her book releases, devouring those pages dripping with darkness, control, and passion, practically drooling over the brilliant mind that wrote them.
But ever since I actually had her? Ever since I felt the heat of her skin against mine and heard my name breaking on her lips? I haven’t been able to get her out of my head for a single fucking second.
Selene huffs, stepping out from behind the camera and walking over to the bed.
“Wait, move a little more this way,” she orders.
She leans toward me, reaching over the edge of the mattress.
I keep my gaze on the wall in front of me, refusing to look at the reflection in the glass, refusing to peek at just how high that microscopic dress has ridden up her thighs.
I’m sweating. And it has nothing to do with the heating at The Snowed Inn.
She rests a hand on my forearm to guide me slightly to the right, showing me exactly where she wants me for the lighting.
Her grip is light, hesitant, but the jolt of electricity that hits me is brutal.
I’m mesmerized by her black-painted nails, her dark red lips, and that intoxicating, cool scent of orchids and thunderstorms clinging to her skin.
My heart is hammering against my ribs at three thousand beats a minute, my chest expanding with every breath.
She freezes, too. Her hand stalls on my arm, her fingers lingering against my tense muscles. I watch her swallow hard, the line of her throat bobbing. Then, her gaze slides up from my arm and locks onto my mouth.
If I kissed her right now? Knowing her, the odds of her kneeing me straight in the balls are way higher than her kissing me back. Still… I could try. Fuck, the temptation is so strong it actually hurts.
I lean in, erasing almost all the space between us, stepping right into her orbit.
“You mean… here?” I murmur.
My voice comes out low, gravelly. What I really want to ask is if she’s okay with me getting this close to her, but I manage to mask it, making it sound like I’m just asking for a fucking blocking cue for the video.
“Just… a little more this way,” she replies, her voice dropping into a husky, intense whisper that shoots straight to my groin.
Her scent saturates my lungs. For the past ten days, I’ve tried everything to chip away at her armor, to get to know her a little better. She is incredibly guarded, but I want… I want so badly for her to let me in. I want to know more about her. To really know her.
If I gave in to instinct and pressed my mouth to hers right now, I could ruin everything.
But, God… I want to. I want to so fucking bad my chest aches. My throat goes dry, and suddenly, the denim of my jeans feels like a vice.
Then, right when I’m about to cave, something snaps. It’s like a cold, impenetrable filter suddenly drops over Selene’s expression. Her eyes go wide. The hesitation vanishes, swallowed by panic.
“I—I have to go.”
She jumps back as if she had just burned herself on my skin.
“Hey, wait…” I protest, instinctively reaching a hand out to her, as reality smacks me in the face with the violence of an ice-cold shower.
“It’s getting late.”
She starts gathering her things in a frantic rush. She shoves her notebook and pens into her leather bag with jerky, neurotic movements, carefully avoiding my gaze.
I let out a heavy sigh, running a hand over my face. I don’t want to force her to stay. But I hate this damn script. I hate the way she always pulls away. Is she afraid I’m going to overwhelm her? Does she think I’d hurt her? Why does she always act like this?
And yet… dammit. I know she had a good time with me. I felt the way she shivered, I saw her unravel under my hands. I didn’t make that up.
I push off the bed, ignoring the tight, oppressive ache in my jeans, and grab a gray t-shirt off the back of the chair, pulling it over my head.
“I’ll walk you home,” I offer.
“No.”
“I’m just going to walk you,” I insist gently.
“No. I like walking by myself.”
She slides her arms into a cardigan to cover up the little slip dress, pulling it tight around her body.
“It’s late, Selene. I’ll take Ollie for a walk, use it as an excuse…”
She stops. She doesn’t turn around. “I like the dark. It clears my head.”
I give a half-smile, exasperated and completely charmed at the same time. “Okay, Queen of Darkness,” I concede. “But… I’d still like to walk you.”
Selene shoots me a withering glare.
“Stop giving me puppy dog eyes,” she says. “I’ll text you when I get home… so you don’t have to worry about the big, infamous Elm Hollow serial killer.”