Filmed: An Alpha Bad Boy Romance (City Series Book 3) (24 page)

He laughed, and then pulled himself out of me.

“Oh fuck,” I said, breathing heavy and sweating.

He moved on top of me and kissed my mouth softly. “My turn now.”

I nodded to him, mouth hanging open. He grabbed me by the hips and rolled me onto my stomach, holding me there. I felt him press against my cleft again and slip inside of me. I groaned as he began to fuck me like that, his huge cock spreading me open as I lay on my stomach. I moaned loudly into his pillow and he grabbed my hair, pulling softly.

“Slap my ass,” I moaned, and he complied. I felt the cool sting of his palm and groaned. He grunted, adjusting himself and pulling my hips up into the air. He pressed my face back down into the pillow as he began to thrust hard, groaning loudly. I worked against him, moving my hips, loving every second of it. He slapped my ass again, harder this time, and I thought I felt another orgasm beginning to build in my core.

“Oh shit, Noah,” I groaned. “I’m going to come again.”

He grunted in response, fucking me harder, and I was sure an orgasm was beginning. I worked my hips harder, bucking back up against him, as he began to groan and slap my ass, harder.

As his thrusts reached their peak, so did my orgasm. As I came, I felt his hands dig into my hips, holding me hard as he fucked deep and rough, and I knew he was coming as my orgasm rolled up my spine. I let out low, loud moans and my legs began to shake again as he stiffened, thrusting into me.

The sweat dripped off his perfect chest as he slowed down and stopped, pulling out of me. I collapsed onto my side, a sweating, panting mess, floating on a cloud of post-orgasm glow. He collapsed onto his back beside me, equally sweaty and tired.

“Fuck, Linda, that was...” he said then shook his head.

“Yeah, it was.”

I rolled toward him and pressed myself up against his side, my hand finding his. Our fingers intertwined with each other as he breathed together. I felt his heart pounding in his chest, could hear it in my skull, and wanted to stay there for another few hours at least.

Just like the last time, we lost ourselves. I slept over his place, though I don’t think we did much sleeping. It was as if a switch had been thrown, and the weeks of tension burst outward and we were smothered in each other.

“H
ow’s it going, dots?”

I looked up at Noah grinning down at me.

“That’s okay, don’t help,” I said.

He laughed and bent down to help me tie off the trashcan. We straightened up and lingered near each other.

“Slow night,” he commented, looking around.

I shrugged. It had been a slow night, though the theater didn’t often get busy except on the weekends. I looked back at Noah and ran my eyes slowly along his body, smiling softly. It was his first day back at work, and it was strange to see him in the theater’s uniform again. On the one hand, it felt like he never took it off, but there was so much history shoved into it that it would never be the same.

And that was okay.

“Pretty normal for a Monday, or did you forget?”

“Please, dots. I practically ran this place.”

“Yeah well, now you’re the new guy.”

“What, are you going to haze me?”

“Maybe.” I gave his chest a soft push and he barely budged.

“Physical violence is a pretty serious infraction, dots.”

He took a step closer and wrapped his arms around me. I laughed, struggling weakly against his strong arms, as he bent forward and began to kiss my mouth and cheeks.

“Oh get off, sexual harassment is worse,” I said, laughing.

He stopped and grinned at me, and I quit struggling. It felt good to be in his arms, standing where anyone could see us. There wasn’t anything else between us, not anymore. Although things weren’t perfect with our parents, neither of us cared. The theater was dark and smelled like old carpet and popcorn, and it felt like a second home, especially safe in Noah’s arms.

At first, Chris didn’t approve of our rekindled relationship. I didn’t blame her, not one bit, for being hesitant. Truthfully, she went back and forth all the time, which wasn’t really like her. As the weeks went by, though, she began to see what I saw in him. It was his devotion, although it was devotion in his own weird way. One day, Chris stopped making comments, and I took that as passive acceptance.

Things can fall into place when you decide what’s important and what can be left behind.

“I haven’t even gotten started with what I want to do to you,” he said softly, interrupting my thoughts.

I rolled my eyes. “Good line.”

“Not a line, dots. Just the facts.”

I softly disengaged myself from his hug, grinning ear to ear, and looked back out over the theater. Chelsea was in her usual spot, and so were the Wonder Twins. Selena was probably in the supply closet getting high, and I wasn’t sure how long she’d last since Noah had come back. Miss H was hiding away in her office.

It had begun to feel like home.

“Lots of work to do tonight,” Noah said, coming up behind me and taking my hand.

I shrugged against his shoulder. “That’s fine, we’ll get it done.”

“It’s coming together.”

I nodded. It had been a month since we had slept together for the second time in Noah’s apartment. After that, things clicked: we stopped pretending like we wanted something different, and gave up on the stupid obstacles we kept making for ourselves. I slept at his place that night, and I hadn’t really left since.

And Noah hadn’t disappeared again, either.

More than that, the film was coming together. Although we had a mountain of information to go through about Miss H, we slowly whittled away the stuff that didn’t seem essential, and came up with a skeleton sketch of her life. We had to keep it to a half hour, since the contest was for short films, but I had a knack for plotting. Scene after scene, hour after sweaty hour, we made it work.

My mom hadn’t been too thrilled when I told her about Noah. Apparently, despite everything she said, she still held a big grudge against his family. At first, she avoided talking about him entirely, but she slowly came around. My dad probably had a lot to do with it. As distant as he was, he was still a good father.

“Looks like your friend is stoned again,” Noah said, interrupting my thoughts.

Across the room, we watched Selena emerge from the supply closet, moving slowly. A small cloud of smoke and haze followed her. Noah laughed as she had trouble figuring out how to close the door behind her.

“Should we help her?” he asked.

“Nah, let her work it out on her own. I doubt Miss H is going to keep her around much longer, anyway.”

“Ouch, cold.”

I squeezed his hand. “She was a shitty replacement for you, anyway.”

“I know.” He squeezed my hand back.

The night wrapped up after that. The movies ended and the customers slowly filtered out of the theaters, and Noah and I went to work, cleaning up behind them. Unfortunately, Selena hung around the whole time, blabbering on about how movie theaters are like portals into another dimension, or something like that, which meant I couldn’t let Noah fuck me in an empty theater. Still, it felt good to be working with him again, and the conversation moved freely and easily, marking time.

The people at the theater had become more than just my coworkers. Although I hardly ever saw them outside of the theater, for some reason I thought of them as my good friends. I still spent a lot of time talking with Chuck every night, and I had begun to get pretty close with Chelsea. We were a band of misfits, each brought together because of Noah. Even Miss H was only around because of him.

And it felt good and right that he was back. Without him, the theater lacked something, a kind of magic that you couldn’t put into words, exactly. It was a presence that he brought every time he entered a room. He made my life lighter and good, despite the things that threatened to drag him down all the time. It was part of my overwhelming draw toward him. He never let his own demons overwhelm the pain of others, even when things were dark and ready to bear down on him with unbreakable force, he was still there for those he cared about. He made mistakes, he slipped up and acted like a complete fucking asshole from time to time, but when push came to shove, Noah Carterson was a good guy.

I just needed him to see it.

Theater cleaned, registers closed, and all other closing duties performed, we walked out into the night together, Noah and me hand-in-hand, the others scattered around. We parted ways outside, like usual, and Noah and I headed off toward his apartment for another marathon editing session.

“Two weeks,” he said, breaking the silence that had fallen over us.

“We’ll be done by then,” I said.

“I’m not sure I want to be done.”

I looked at him. He was gazing out across campus, his breath fogging slightly in the cool night air. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. This shit means a lot to me.”

“I feel the same way.”

He shook his head. “I mean, because of this movie, we happened.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“I just don’t want it to end. That’s all.”

“It doesn’t have to,” I said suddenly.

“We’ll run out of material on Miss H eventually. She’s not that interesting.”

“First of all, yes she is,” I said, nudging him with my shoulder. “And secondly, that’s not what I mean. What if we make another movie after this one?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” he said, looking at me.

“We probably can’t keep my mom’s equipment forever, but we can invest in our own gear.”

He smiled softly. “You’re serious about this?”

“Of course I’m serious!”

He suddenly stopped and faced me. I looked back at him, surprised.

“What?” I asked when I noticed the expression on his face.

He stepped closer to me, pressing his body against mine, releasing my hand and wrapping his arms around my waist. He leaned in and crushed my mouth with his as cars sped by on Broad Street. He kissed me deeply and fiercely, and I returned his kiss with that same hunger which sits in my chest every time I see him.

Finally, he broke away from me.

“What was that for?” I asked.

“I love you, you know that, right?”

I blinked at him, my whole body suddenly flooded with adrenaline. We hadn’t said that yet. We hadn’t even talked about anything too serious in terms of our relationship yet. But it was true: I knew that already, and I loved him too. He didn’t have to say it if he didn’t want to, because everything he did proved to me how he felt. He made mistakes, and he always would, but he’d never leave.

“I know that, idiot,” I said softly. “I love you, too.”

He kissed me again, this time softer and longer, and I melted into his embrace.

I didn’t know who I was going to be or where I was going to end up in the future, and there were still so many questions left unanswered. But the one thing I knew for sure was that Noah Carterson wasn’t going anywhere.

He may have been such an asshole sometimes, and loved to tease me until I couldn’t stand it anymore. He may have been short tempered and tattooed. But he was a decent person, and always would be. He made me want to be better just for being around him.

The kiss ended as he pulled away from me.

“I thought you were going to Han Solo me for a second,” he said, grinning.

“I almost did.”

He laughed and started walking, holding tight to my left hand. I matched his pace, leaning against his strong frame and holding onto his bicep with my right hand.

“What now?” he asked.

“Now we finish the movie.”

“You make it sound so simple,” he said, wistfully.

“It is simple. We’ll sit in your stupid room until it’s finished.”

“My room isn’t stupid, and you’re distracting.”

“How’s that?”

He looked at me. “You know how.”

“Keep it in your pants for once.”

He let go of my hand and grabbed my ass, hard. I let out a small squeal and hit him on the shoulder.

“No,” he said, grinning.

I rolled my eyes and couldn’t wait to get back to his place.

––––––––

I
was nervous as hell to meet Linda’s parents.

Every boyfriend probably felt awkward the first time he met the parents, but there was so much history between our two families that I think my situation was way worse than the average asshole had to deal with.

The day was a blur of setting up equipment, going to screenings, and waiting. The documentary category was showing at the end of the day on the last day of the festival, and so we had to sit through too many poorly shot and pathetically edited shorts to finally get to our crowning moment.

It was one hell of a moment. I didn’t think I had ever worked so hard on something in my entire life. I lived, breathed, and ate Miss Havisham and her story.

And Linda, of course. If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be head over heels for a girl that was a member of my father’s most hated family, well, I would have laughed and said hell yes. Because that’s hilarious and fuck my dad. But if they had said that I would also be insanely in love with her, really and truly lost for her, that I wouldn’t have believed it. But there I was, day in and day out, thinking about Linda, tasting her skin, missing her when she wasn’t around. It was pathetic and it was amazing and it was everything I had no idea that I had wanted.

So there I was sitting in a theater seat as the opening credits of a film I made with the woman I loved rolled up on screen.
The Life and Times of Miss Havisham, Actress
was the best thing I had ever made. Hell, it was the only real thing I had ever made, and I was beyond proud of it. Linda squeezed my hand, and I smiled at her. I would have rather watched her the whole time, since I had seen the movie enough already, but I figured her parents would find my staring a little unnerving.

They seemed like good people. We had met up a few hours before the show to grab a bite to eat. Her mom immediately made some awkward jokes about hating my dad, which we all knew weren’t actually jokes, but I diffused that situation by agreeing whole-heartedly that yes, my dad was a piece of shit. Linda’s father seemed a little weird and distance, but we got along when I let him talk to me about emperor penguins for twenty minutes.