The Last Thing You See (14 page)

My fighting experience was pretty much limited to movies where people were paid to have the stuffing knocked out of them by my character, but when Nick flexed his muscles and bunched his fists, he looked ready to kick some serious butt.  He looked so dangerous, so freakin’ sexy, but I maintained a mask of indifference, because Dark Fox wouldn’t have been impressed.

I loved the Dark Fox character.  Putting on these clothes was like flicking a switch.  That part of the role was
easy
to act out because when Dark Fox’s timid alter-ego put on the costume, I felt what she was supposed to feel.

It was sexy, it was powerful, and it was absolute self-assurance.  I felt like I could do anything.

I aimed a slow roundhouse kick to the right side of Nick’s body, expecting him to block it.  Instead, he trapped my leg with his arm curling around the back of my knee and spun us both to his left, where my back hit the wall next to his bedroom door with a thud that rattled the generic art that Nick’s landlord had hung up.

There was hardly any time to let out an ‘oof’ before Nick’s whole body was pressed up against mine, pinning me against the wall.  My lips pulled back in a snarl as I ineffectually pushed against his shoulders, moving him about as much as I could move a mountain.

My left leg was still up in the air, held with my knee just above and behind his hip, and I felt Nick’s hand gently slide up my thigh until he was squeezing my ass under my skirt and he discovered the one piece of the Dark Fox costume I hadn’t put on.  The piece designed to protect my modesty when I did high kicks.

Nick let out a quiet breath through an open mouth and, if we were animals out in the wild, I would have said the look in his eyes meant he wanted to eat me all up.  I kept pushing against him in a mock effort to escape as he slowly and deliberately moved his hand inwards, never taking his eyes from mine, until his fingertips brushed against my bare sex and he found out just how turned on I was.

If the hard bulge pressing against my body was anything to go by, he was just as crazy with lust as I was.  I let out a shuddering breath as he gave me one gentle teasing stroke before letting my leg go, still keeping me pinned against the wall.

“What have you done to me, Marine?” I growled.

“You should be more worried about what I’m
going
to do,” he said in a low voice.

Nick grabbed both of my wrists, keeping just enough of his weight leaning against me to hold me where I was, and lifted my arms slowly above my head.  I struggled to stop my arms from being raised, helpless against his strength.

“It can’t
be
,” I said.

“You’re
mine
, Dark Fox,” whispered Nick into my ear when he had both of my arms pinned above my head, crossed at the wrist and held in place with just one of his big hands.

Nick reached down and caressed my leg again, sliding his fingers up my outer thigh and pushing my skirt up at the same time.  Short as it was, it fell back down when his hand reached my navel.

I could barely feel his fingertips through the material of the Dark Fox costume, but when he squeezed my breast, there was no missing it.  A shiver of anticipation broke my super-heroine defiance for a moment, but I did my best to recover.

“You’ll never get away with this, Marine,” I said.

Nick didn’t respond, he simply moved his hand up, over my chest and neck, curling his fingers around the back of my neck and pulling me into a kiss that cut off all my comic book bravado.  I couldn’t stop a satisfied sigh escaping mid-kiss and by the time our lips parted, I had to pant for air.

He let go of my wrists, and I didn’t even have the presence of mind to move them before both of his hands were on the back of my thighs and lifting me up in the air with him between my legs.  Nick pressed close and I could
feel
him against me, pushing against my most intimate place.

Moving as if I weighed nothing, Nick leaned back and pulled me away from the wall before stepping to the side and pushing through the door to his bedroom.  The sensation of him moving between my legs spoke to some primal part of my brain, making it scream out in need, and I gently rocked my hips against him as I held on to his shoulders to steady myself.

Nick glanced down at the bed and saw the last element of this little game, some fluffy pink handcuffs attached to the headboard.  He looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and I felt him pull me against his hard bulge even more intensely for a moment.

“That’s cute.  You think you can contain me here,” I said, looking back at the restraints.

We fell to the bed with Nick on top of me for a moment before he shuffled upwards to straddle my stomach.  I pushed against his abs, his chest, for a few sweet seconds before he took each of my wrists in turn again and secured them in the cuffs.

I tugged against the handcuffs, the metal rattling against the headboard despite the pink padding, and looked at Nick with confusion.

“What are these made from?” I asked.

“Antiumbravulpinium, of course,” he said.

“No…”

“I told you, you’re
mine
, Dark Fox.”

Nick slid his fingers along my cheek and buried them in the hair at the back of my head, pulling my head to the side so my neck was bared to him.  He licked and sucked my naked skin, moving towards my lips before kissing me deeply once more.

I was lost in the kiss and immediately forgot about the handcuffs, which rattled again when I tried to wrap my arms around him.  The frustration, the longing, was surprisingly intense.  I wanted to feel him,
needed
to.

“Do your worst, Marine,” I challenged.  “I’ll never talk.”

The corner of Nick’s mouth rose in a smirk.  “Oh… you’ll squeal,” he promised.

Nick crawled backwards off the bed, climbing off and standing at the foot as he pulled off his shirt to reveal that chiseled physique I couldn’t get enough of.  I wanted to run my fingers over every hard muscle, kiss all over his body, but I wasn’t going anywhere.

I tried to sit up, and the handcuffs pulled my arms back as I strained towards him.  My legs were straight, the toes of my boots reaching out to try and touch him but not quite able to when he took his pants off and stood before me in all his naked glory.  His manhood jutted out straight and hard and would have been an almost intimidating presence if I didn’t want it so bad.

The last bastion of Dark Fox’s token resistance was dismissed when Nick climbed back on the bed and pushed his hands between my knees, parting my quivering legs and leaving me defenseless to anything at all he wanted to do.  I was his, just as he said, and I was crazy for him.

When he lowered his mouth to my sex, he made good on his promise.  It wasn’t long before I squealed, and then squealed again and moaned in blissful abandon as he took me exactly where I needed to go.

It was wonderful torture.  I wanted to run my hands through his hair, over his body, but I couldn’t.   I did everything in my power to bring us together, curling my legs, bucking my hips, pushing against the headboard.  He moved with me, keeping me on the razor edge between not-enough and too-much-to-handle, until I couldn’t take it anymore and moaned with reckless abandon as my climax hit me.

Finally, he moved between my legs and I felt him at my entrance.  No condom, nothing between him and me.  Nothing but my bad boy and his captive heroine.

His sound of satisfaction when he slid inside was a stroke to my ego, and Nick wasted no time in taking every ounce of pleasure he could from me.  His every move was as urgent as if the end of the world was coming and he wanted to feel every part of my body before it happened.

The whole bed shook with his movements.  For all I knew, the whole world might have been shaking.  Nick sat up, still moving inside me, and I felt his hand on my neck, squeezing firmly but nowhere near painfully as he controlled the pace.

I held on to his arm, held on for dear life, and came again as he hit a furious rhythm.  My toes curled in pleasure inside my boots when I felt him let go in my depths, when he took the final part of a gift I’d never even come close to giving anybody else.

I completely lost track of time as we panted and did our best to catch our breath, a sheen of sweat on both of our bodies.  Nick stayed inside me as the afterglow enveloped us and he kissed me tenderly in contrast to the wild devouring of before.

It might have been a wordless minute later, or an hour, when we were silently staring into each other’s eyes, me still hiding behind the Dark Fox mask and make-up.

“Is that all you’ve got, Marine?” I whispered, utterly spent.

“Where’s my dinner?” he asked, and we both fell to pieces laughing.

After an awkward chat the next day with my friend in Wardrobe, I found the details of a drycleaner the studio had a standing non-disclosure agreement with and took the Dark Fox costume in for an emergency service and an even more awkward chat.  I wished I could have delegated that job to somebody else but, by the next day of shooting after the weekend, it was thankfully ready to go.

My mom and brother became more distant, which put a damper on what otherwise would have been the most perfect time of my life.  Perhaps the distance was because I was so busy shooting and so there was a lot less for my mom to schedule and negotiate on my behalf than during those between-movies times, but that only drove home the notion that at some point, I’d traded a mother for a manager.

The filming was going smoothly.  I got the impression that everybody was having the same feeling I was, that we were making something that was truly great.  It was something that would be received as not just a wonderful comic-book-adaptation, but simply a wonderful movie.

Sure, there were times when I missed the good old days before I turned eighteen and they couldn’t legally expect me to work more than a certain number of hours or after a certain time at night, but it was a small sacrifice to make for that exhilarating feeling that I was pouring my soul into this larger-than-life character, creating something that people would respond to.

When the director, Jay Garnett, asked myself and several other cast members to stay late one night, I was pretty much obligated to do so, despite the fact that Nick and I had plans.  I tried to reach him on his cell phone but it kept on going to voicemail.

I had to wonder if he’d left it at home before going out somewhere else on his way to my place, where he was supposed to pick me up this evening.  He was always leaving his phone behind.  Eventually, I had to get back on set so I left a message.

“Hi, it’s me.  Don’t know if you’ll get this in time, but I’ll be running late tonight.  I have no idea
how
late.  We might have to postpone dinner.  I’ve got to go, but I’ll come back and check my phone when I can.  Love you, baby.”

I ended the call, dropped my phone, and was almost out of my trailer when I wondered what would happen if he
didn’t
get the message and turned up at my house.  My family was there and they still hadn’t found a way to accept him yet.  I bit the bullet and called my mom.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi Mom, I’m just calling because I’m going to be late getting home tonight.”

“Oh, you were coming home tonight?”

I paused, hurt at the icy tone.  “Yes, I was.  Briefly.”

“OK, was there anything else?  Need me to tell Garnett that you’re not doing Dark Fox anymore?”

“Mom, get over it.  I’m calling because I can’t get through to Nick and he might be on his way to our house to pick me up.”

“And?”

“And I need you to tell him I’m going to be late.  Let him in if he wants to wait.  Be nice either way.”

“Harper, honestly, haven’t you played with this boy’s emotions enough?”

“What are you
talking
about?” I asked.

“Orson told me all about it.”

“What does Orson know about anything?”

“He knows what you said to him,” she said.

“Which was what, exactly?”

“That you’re with Nick just to irritate me, as well as to satisfy some… some bad boy fantasy you’ve got…”

“Oh.  My.  G….”

“And, let’s face it, he’s with you for the status, so he can show off to his friends and…”

“Stop right there!” I yelled.  “You haven’t even tried to learn the first thing about Nick. 
You don’t know anything about him!
   Orson doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about…”

Somebody knocked on my trailer door and I heard the call that I was really needed back on set.  I lowered my voice.

“Mom, Nick may or may not show up.  If he does, you be
nice
.  Please, don’t put me in a position like that, don’t make me choose.”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing.  After everything I’ve…”

The knock came on my door again, and I called out that I’d be there in a second.  “I’ve got to go.  Bye.”

I dropped my phone again and left my trailer, following the guy who had come to track me down back to the set.  Everybody was waiting for me, and I did my best to apologize and get on with my job.

It wasn’t at all easy to get back into character.  My stomach was churning with a mixture of anger and fear about what my mom had said, what she might do.  I had a really bad feeling about this.