Heartthrob (31 page)

Jed laughed. “I thought it was pretty funny, until the producer paid nearly eighty thousand dollars to keep the article and pictures from being run. The producer was afraid if the story was printed, no one would come to see his movie. And he told me that although coming out was very PC, if I let slip my ugly little ‘secret,’ my career would be over.

“I told him again that he was wrong, that I adored women, that I was about as heterosexual as I could possibly be—in fact, it frequently got me into trouble, but he didn’t believe me. He told me to stay away from my ‘little friends’ in San Francisco or I could kiss my career good-bye.

“And when I told my agent about it—and Ron knew I wasn’t gay—he told me that even a rumor about being gay could seriously damage my image as an action/adventure star.

“And I believed them both.” Jed turned to look at her again, and his eyes were bleak. “I let myself be bullied into worrying what people would think. I stopped returning my brother’s phone calls, and I wasn’t there for him when he died. How’s
that
for something to be ashamed of?”

Kate couldn’t speak. What an awful burden to carry around.

“So, see—I’m not much of a friend,” he told her. “I don’t stick around when the going gets tough.”

Kate wanted to cry. She wanted to tell him, on the contrary, that he was a very good friend, indeed. Because she knew what he had done.

He’d taken out this still-raw, emotionally charged piece of his soul and put it on display for her to see, in a gallant, selfless attempt to even things up. He’d orchestrated a hostage exchange of sorts. She’d told him her darkest most shameful secret last night, so he’d now told her his.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He knew exactly what she was talking about. “I wanted you to know.”

She had to laugh. “Like hell you did.”

He turned on his side, head propped on one arm. “No,” he said. “I honestly did. I think I’m probably looking for some kind of forgiveness, or absolution.” He smiled crookedly. “And despite what you think, you
are
a nice girl. In fact, you’re probably the closest I’ll ever get to an angel.”

Kate laughed, a burst of disbelieving air. “That’s a
terrible
line.”

“It’s not a line,” he told her. “It’s the way I … feel. When you smile at me, I’m … I’m okay.”

Those were words from her script. “Laramie says that to Jane.”

Jed nodded. “I know. It’s such a good line—and it really seemed to fit.”

He was silent then, just gazing at her.

“I’m naked,” Kate said suddenly, fighting a fresh flood of tears to her eyes. “And I’m in your bed. Can’t we do something with our mouths besides talk?”

Something flickered in his eyes. Uncertainty. It made him look desperately sweet and impossibly young. She could actually see him deciding just how to answer her. He chose humor. “You mean, like make farting noises?”

She laughed. “I’m inviting you to kiss me,” she said. “You now have two choices here. You could either continue to be an idiot, or you could accept my invitation.”

“I’m sorry. It’s been a long night, and it’s been filled with many really long hours that—individually—would have been enough to override the three miracles needed for my sainthood application.”

“You’re still not kissing me.”

Jed leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers.

Her mouth was as soft as he remembered, but salty from both her tears and the night’s heat.

He lifted his head to look into her eyes. “This is not why I did it,” he said. “Last night … It wasn’t just because I wanted this.”

“I know,” she whispered, touching his face, his hair.

He caught her hand and kissed her fingertips, trying to identify this odd sensation in his chest and behind his eyes. It was the strangest thing. He knew that before the morning was through, he was going to make love to Kate again. He was already almost entirely aroused—he’d spent the entire night in that state—so maybe that was why other parts of him were starting to swell.

Of course, a far more likely explanation was that he was going to cry.

It was absurd, but he felt so completely, impossibly, goddamn amazingly happy. He felt a barrage of emotions, each one more complex and gut-wrenching than the last. Elation. Relief. Hope. Inspiration. Triumph.

He had to stop and analyze. He had to rein in everything he was feeling, to catalog and file it for further use.

Because God help him if he just let loose. He’d scare Kate to death, maybe even scare her off. And he’d scare himself as well. He didn’t want to feel this way, so raw and open and exposed. Emotional highs were usually followed by emotional lows—he’d experienced that just last week—and he needed to maintain a more middle ground.

Always.

Jed took a deep breath. And he grabbed hard onto his control.

He took everything he was feeling, and he squeezed it all together until it could fit neatly and safely into a mental container the size of a shoe box. And he managed to smile at her instead of pulling her into his arms and bursting into tears.

But when he leaned forward to kiss her again, as he searched her eyes and found anticipation and desire and such sweet warmth, the shoe box expanded and for a moment the lid popped off. And instead of kissing her, he pulled her close, burying his face in the softness of her neck, breathing in her sweet perfume, holding her next to his heart.

“Everything in my life has been leading up to this,” he whispered. “Everything that’s happened, everything I’ve done has been worth it because it’s brought me here.”

Sweet Christ, what was he saying? What was he
feeling
? He mentally stomped the lid back on that box, and kissed her, hard, if only to shut himself up.

But her lips were soft, her mouth welcoming and gentle. And he knew that this time, she didn’t want a frantic, near-savage joining. This time, she wanted to be loved slowly, tenderly.

He could do that. These days he was the king of self-control.

He kissed her deeply, forcing his own pulse to even out, pushing all of his ping-ponging emotions even further away.

Jed tugged at the sheet, and it fell away from her, like the unveiling of some incredible work of art. He allowed himself only the briefest surge of wonder and elation. She was his. At least for now, she belonged to him.

He touched her then, skimming his hands across the softness of her skin, leaning down to touch each tip of her perfect breasts with his tongue.

Kate shivered. “You said the next time we made love, you were going to spend thirty minutes just looking.”

Jed had to laugh at that. “I got my thirty minutes in last night,” he told her. “About twelve times over. If you don’t mind, I’d like to move on to tasting and touching.” He lowered his head, forcing himself to move one hundred times more slowly than he wanted. He oh-so-gently kissed her breast, tasting her incredible sweetness until she moaned aloud.

But then she spoke. Her voice was even more breathy than usual. “No fair. I didn’t get my thirty minutes to look at
you.”

She was serious. “But … I’m not as much fun to look at as you are.”

“Wanna bet?” She smiled. “Take off the shorts, pal. And make it good.”

Jed grinned back at her. “Good, huh? You want me to do my Full Monty imitation? It won’t be as effective without music.”

“You want music?” She started to sing.

He laughed, and another firecracker of joy escaped from his box of emotions. “I can’t strip to a Garth Brooks song.”

“Why not? I could.”

She gave him a very innocent look, and his heart nearly stopped beating as he pictured exactly what her words implied. Dear,
dear
Lord. Kate. Wearing one of her cool professional producer outfits. Doing a slow striptease for his eyes only …

Even more heart-stopping was the thought that she’d consider doing that for him—knowing her past.

“I’ll remember that.” His voice was even more hoarse. “But maybe for now, we should just go without music.”

He took a deep breath as he climbed off the bed and positioned himself in the middle of the room with his back to her. He looked at her over his shoulder. “Ready?”

She shook her head. “Jed, I was just kidding. I wouldn’t really make you do this, I mean … Unless you wanted to …”

“Oh, I want to. I like it when you look at me. But you better get it straight—I wouldn’t do this for anyone but you.”

She was kneeling on the bed, and the sight of her so beautifully naked made his heart race again. She had total bed head—her hair had been wet from the rain, and it had dried going every which way. The effect was completely charming. Even though she still looked tired, and every bit of makeup she’d had on had long since worn off, she was gorgeous. And, God, she was
his.
She smiled, her eyes alight with anticipation.

It was her eyes he truly loved to look at. As beautiful as her body was, her eyes never failed to captivate him.

“Ready,” she said.

Jed closed his eyes for a moment, centering himself. He could do this funny. He knew she would like funny. She loved to laugh—his initial impression of her being humorless was completely wrong.

But right now he didn’t want to make her laugh. He wanted to make her burn. He had to do this seriously. Well, at least, half seriously. He wanted to give her hot. But how?

He could give her Laramie. Laramie was perpetually hot, with his burning intensity. When he was Laramie, he just let himself quietly smolder. Jed knew Kate liked that. She couldn’t keep her eyes off of him then.

But, hell, he didn’t need Laramie to be hot. All he had to do was think about Kate, think about the way he was going to love her—long and slow and sweet. In just a very short time, he was going to watch her eyes in the morning light as he fit his body together with hers. He was going to watch her beautiful face as he made her shatter around him, as he let himself find his own blessed release in the sweetness of her arms.

And then he was going to do it all over again tonight. And tomorrow night. And the next …

Until the shoot ended and they went their separate ways.

Bad thought. Very bad thought. He mentally shoved it far to the bottom of his emotional box and jammed the lid back on.

Think about Kate. Think about slowly sliding in and out of her sweet body.

Yeah, he could definitely do hot.

Jed hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and slowly turned to face her. He let all of his desire, all of his need simmer in his eyes as he let his gaze travel down her body.

She shivered, and it sure as hell wasn’t because she was cold.

He lifted his hands, placing them on his bare chest, above his heart, one on top of the other. And then slowly he separated them, sliding them down his stomach, to the low-slung waistband of his shorts. But he didn’t stop there. He kept going, sliding his hands lower, until he was touching himself, until he was covering the hard bulge of his erection.

He could see Kate’s chest rise and fall rapidly with each breath she took. He could hear her swallow in the stillness of the room. She watched his hands, her lips slightly parted.

He moved his hands up, then, this time flicking open the button at the waist of his shorts. He found the tiny zipper pull, but didn’t pull it down. He stepped forward, right to the edge of the bed, and with his eyes, he invited Kate to do the honors.

She reached out, about to cover his arousal with her palm, but he stopped her. He took only her forefinger and her thumb and positioned them very carefully around the tiny zipper pull, so that she wasn’t touching him at all.

Slowly, looking up into his eyes, she pulled it all the
way down. She reached for him again, but he stepped back, slightly shaking his head no. He had to grit his teeth from wanting her to touch him, but this wasn’t about him. It was about her. And he was determined to drive her insane, even if he had to go crazy himself to do it.

Still holding her gaze, he brought his hands back to his chest, putting them once again one on top of the other, above his heart. And this time, as he slowly slid his hands down past his stomach, he freed himself and pushed his shorts down his legs.

Kate gazed at him openly, unabashedly, and the heated approval in her eyes made him even hotter, even heavier.

He moved toward her then, and this time, he let her touch.

He closed his eyes as he fell back onto the bed with her, and his entire world shrank. There was only this bed, and Kate. Her hands and mouth on his body, and his hands and mouth on hers.

He inhaled her, tasted, touched, sliding his palms against the perfect smoothness of her skin as she wrapped her fingers around him, as she lowered her head and touched him with her lips, her tongue, her teeth.

The pleasure was completely mind-blowing, completely overwhelming, and he gasped, moments from losing control.

He let her push him back, let her straddle him, felt her slide against him, slick from his kisses and her own desire. The sight of her astride him was enough to make him groan aloud. She leaned forward, and he kissed her breasts hungrily, burying his face in her fullness as she slid on top of him.

“Please say you have a condom,” she whispered, kissing his eyes, his mouth, his face.

He did. In his wallet. In his shorts. “Yes.” He pointed, unable to find the words.

“I’ll get it.” She kissed him, and although her climbing off of him left him instantly bereft, he had the pleasure of
watching her walk, naked, across the room. And then back toward him.

She held out his shorts, and he fumbled for his wallet, for the condom he’d replaced just last week. He opened the wrapper, and finally, thank God, he was covered.

Jed would have pushed himself up and rolled them both over to nestle between her legs, but she stopped him. She pressed his shoulders firmly back as once again, she sat astride him. Holding his gaze, she reached down between them to touch him, and then slowly brought him deeply inside of her.

The pleasure was so sharp, so sweet, he saw flashes of color and light. And then, just as he was certain he was going to die from the sensation, she began to move. Each stroke contained more pleasure than any one man deserved for an entire lifetime. Each breath he took was a gasp of amazement, each exhale a moan of disbelief as time stretched way out, slowed down, sped up, twisted around.