“Sounds like you just answered your own question,” she replied, keeping her voice impassive.
“Aww, don’t be like that. I thought we were cool now.” He tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but she instantly shrugged it off, still refusing to look at him.
“So, Mia, did you do all of your own stunts? That fight on top of the semi was insane.” Grey’s voice was too loud, begging Mia to rescue her.
“Yeah, actually, I—” Mia started. Callum cut in again, interrupting her. He was obviously drunk, too, his breath hot and rancid.
“You look really good tonight. Did he buy this for you?” He stretched out a finger toward her chest to brush the gaping expanse of skin exposed by her jumpsuit, as if he was trying to slip it inside her neckline. Grey jumped back like his touch had singed her. She looked past him into the crowd.
“Isn’t that Peyton? Why aren’t you over there bothering her?”
“I told her I needed a minute to catch up with some old friends.”
“Well, don’t let us keep you. Hope you find them!” Grey gave him a sickly sweet smile and tried to turn her back to him as much as possible.
Mia snorted. Callum leaned in too close, trying to speak with her out of earshot of the others. She recoiled. He twisted his face into what he probably thought looked like earnestness, but actually looked like constipation.
“Listen. Grey. I never told you…I was a fucking idiot.”
“You didn’t need to tell me, I figured that one out on my own.”
“No, I mean…I should never have treated you like that. It was a huge mistake.”
“Cool. Thanks.” Grey tried to turn away from him again, but he grabbed her arm and twisted it back. She broke his grip with force this time, anger flaring. “I swear, if you fucking touch me again, Callum—”
He held his hands up in surrender, backing away as if she had exploded. “Whoa. Calm down. I was just trying to apologize.”
“Oh, really? Because I didn’t hear ‘I’m sorry’ anywhere in there. Save it for your Notes app.”
Callum opened his mouth to respond, but words seemed to fail him, leaving him gaping at something behind her.
Grey felt Ethan before she saw him. A solid wall at her shoulder, one hand warming the silk at her hip. Before she had time to process what was happening, the fingers of his other hand were beneath her chin, tilting her face up and back to press her lips against his.
It wasn’t a passionate kiss, and from an outside perspective, probably looked downright mundane. It was the kind of kiss that suggested easy intimacy, no different from the hundred that had preceded it and the hundred that would follow. To Grey, however, it was a cosmic event, sending liquid fire rippling through her belly. She was grateful for his sturdy presence behind her as she leaned into him to stop her knees from buckling, more from surprise than from anything else. Instinctively, she reached her hand up to his face, lightly grazing his jaw with her fingertips.
It only lasted a moment: a firm brush of his soft lips. However, in the split second before he pulled away, he gently pulled her lower lip between his teeth in a small but unmistakable bite, sending another bolt of pleasure directly between her legs.
Grey looked up at him, dazed, her face hot. He pressed his forehead to hers and murmured: “Let’s get out of here.”
She couldn’t do anything but nod. He moved his hand away from her hip and she felt regret at the sudden rush of cold air that took its place. She expected him to take her hand in his, but instead he settled it at the small of her back. He started to guide her away before turning back to offer a curt “congratulations” to Mia.
As they swept out of the bar, the pressure of his hand sending tingles up her spine, a thought emerged in Grey’s mind with alarming clarity. She felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner.
He wasn’t being difficult because he disliked her.
He was being difficult because he liked her a little too much.
OVER THE NEXT MONTH, THEY settled into something resembling a routine. Once a week, they made a brief, cordial public appearance: hiking in the canyon, laughing over cold-pressed juices, browsing through the farmers market, sitting courtside at the Lakers. They showed up everywhere you’d expect the hottest Hollywood it-couple to be seen, taking pictures, signing autographs, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes.
On the other contractually obligated nights, Grey would let herself into Ethan’s house. Most of the time, he would already be shut up in his office. Sometimes she’d leave the next morning without seeing him at all. Against all odds, however, she’d started feeling more at home there. She passed the time reading, working on her screenplay, watching movies on his extremely complicated television whose operation she had almost mastered, or creating her own Chopped challenges out of the bizarre combinations of ingredients she dug out of his fridge and pantry.
They rarely spoke when not in public, their initial overtures toward friendship mutually abandoned; and when they did, it was bland small talk. They never brought up the kiss. After they’d left the premiere party and gotten back into the car, Ethan had immediately slouched against the window in the back seat, eyes closed, refusing to acknowledge her. Now, however, his evasion didn’t rankle her the way it had at the beginning. Instead, it sent a smug little thrill through her every time she heard his footsteps in the hallway, the doors to his office and his bedroom opening and shutting, like she was being haunted by the Ghost of Sexual Frustration Past.
He was avoiding her because he wanted her.
Sure, he wasn’t handling it in the most mature way, but he was a celebrity. Everyone knew celebrities’ development permanently arrested at the age they became famous. Given the degree and longevity of his fame, she was just grateful he wasn’t pulling her hair and pushing her down in the sandbox.
Actually, minus the sandbox, that didn’t sound so bad.
But what, really, was the alternative? Their arrangement would be over in a few months. The thought of this turning into a real relationship was laughable. As much as she hated to admit it to the starry-eyed thirteen-year-old who still dwelled somewhere inside her, she couldn’t ignore the mounting evidence that Ethan Atkins was a self-centered, self-loathing, emotionally stunted alcoholic. Nothing good could come of acting on their attraction. Besides, the majority of the allure was surely wrapped up in the tension, in the heated, forbidden glances, in the knowledge that nothing could—or should—ever happen between them. As long as he was steering clear of her because he was afraid of the temptation she offered, and not because he found her completely revolting, she didn’t care if he never spoke a word to her in private again. Really, she didn’t. It was easier this way.
That didn’t stop her from replaying the kiss over and over in her mind, though. It had quickly replaced her Oscar acceptance speech as her fantasy of choice as she drifted off to sleep. In her version, instead of quickly releasing her, he would pull her into his arms, deepening the kiss, fulfilling the promise of those hungry looks he gave her when he thought she wasn’t looking. He would cup her ass and lift her onto one of the tables like she weighed nothing, and she would wrap her legs around him, grinding into the hard heat of his arousal. The neckline of her jumpsuit had been cut low enough that she’d had to go braless that night. It would have been so easy for him to slip his hand inside and free her breast, dipping his mouth down to cover the nipple already hard and aching for his touch.
“We shouldn’t…everyone’s watching…” she’d gasp.
He’d bring his face back up to meet hers, grasping her jaw with both hands, plunging his bourbon-soaked tongue back into her mouth with such force that she would feel it in her toes.