April, Dani - Superstar (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (16 page)

“Something to remember me by in case we don’t get to spend too much more time together,” he told her, his voice a husky whisper from back in his throat.

She reached across the bed to him and pulled him close, planting a gentle kiss on his lips. “I could never forget you, Scott.” She calmed him with her voice.

“When we leave this cabin, our futures are going to be so very different, Chrissie.”

“But our love won’t change.”

“You never said you loved me.”

“Well, I’m saying it now.”

He laughed and cupped her face in his large hands. “Guess I wasn’t bad after all.”

“Oh my fucking God…” Chrissie didn’t know whether to slap him or kiss him. “That was awesome. I’m not even for sure what that was still. I haven’t ever felt anything like it before.”

“Good.” He seemed satisfied, as if he had accomplished what he had set out to do by coming to her room that night. “Then maybe my brothers and I can convince you to stay with us.”

“You want me to move back to your small town with you, Scott?”

“I told you I’m just a dreamer.”

“So tell me.” She smiled into his eyes as she let him enfold her body in his one more time. “Was that a dream we just had together?”

“For me, Chrissie, everything that’s happened since you got into our truck has been a dream.”

“For me, too.” They shared another kiss, this one quiet and soft in the aftermath of what had just happened.

“The only thing is”—he looked down at her naked body cradled in his arms—“you might not like our town. You have been all over the world, after all. We probably just don’t measure up to Paris, or Rome, or Tokyo.”

He had exhausted her body with his demanding sex, and now he was breaking her heart with his words. “Then how about I take you with me?” she asked him, her voice small from under his arm. “When I leave here and go back, why don’t you come with me?”

“You know I’d do anything to be with you, baby.” He stroked her shoulder. “That way lies complications, too. I guess the only thing I’ve learned as a dreamer is that someday you always wake up, whether you want to or not.”

Chrissie had to bite back the tears. Why was everything in life always so impossible?

Chapter Nine

Scott left her an hour later. She didn’t try to stop him. Somehow the close contact between them was too hard to bear, realizing as they had that this was an impossible relationship.

Chrissie put on a long undershirt. She thought it was one of Brad’s. It fell down to past her knees. Getting out of bed, she went to the large window and stared outside at the mountains. They were beautiful at night. The sky had cleared from the storm and the moon and stars had come out. It was a lonely setting, and that’s exactly how she felt. Lonely.

She opened the window so she could be closer to the beauty that was just outside. Surprisingly it didn’t feel that cold because everything was so still. Feeling claustrophobic inside the bedroom, she hiked a leg over the windowsill and sat down on top of the ledge, gazing up to the peaks that were miles in the distance.

From her position, she overlooked the big run of their property out back. Nothing moved out there. Beyond, the white glory of the mountains loomed up over the horizon and gave evidence to her suspicion that she was really living through a dream as Scott had just told her before he left.

But did she ever have to wake up from this dream?
She was a bright and talented young woman. She was also a young woman who was starting to fall painfully in love with three men. Certainly Scott had left his mark inside of her. She still felt wet and sticky between her thighs, and a warm glow radiating from her belly where he had been.

“We only have one floor,” Brad called to her from behind. “If you jump, you won’t get very far.”

She turned around and swung her bare legs, now cold from the night air, back inside the room. “Are you bad boys taking turns tonight?” she asked him in a mocking tone.

He laughed. “Something like that.”

“Your little brother just almost killed me,” she told him, lowering the window back down to the seal. “Mind if we just talk instead?”

He slung an arm over her shoulder and kissed her forehead. “That’s all I came to do, baby.”

Staying in the crook of his arm, she walked back over with him and sat down on the bed, smoothing the long undershirt demurely over her knees. Brad had his phone with him and motioned down to it.

“I’ve been doing some research on you through the net,” he told her.

“You mean you don’t already know all there is to know about me?”

“Afraid not,” he admitted. “Truthfully, Chrissie, I never watched your TV show. I’ve never seen one of your movies, and I’ve never listened to your music except when Scott’s around, and then I can’t get the damn noise stopped.”

Chrissie threw her head back and laughed, really laughed, and laughed hard. She couldn’t remember when anything had struck her as being so funny, honest, and just plain nice to hear. When she had calmed her giggling, she reached out and picked up his hand in hers.

“Thank God you’re not a fan,” she told him between gales of laughter. “Scott’s a huge fan, and one Scott in the family is about all I can take. I love him to death, but a girl does get sore…”

He laughed with her, and they fell back onto the bed, their hands still locked together.

“You were pretty ballsy today with that cop,” he told her when they had come down from the tone that had sent them into such fits a moment before.

“I was just playing your little wifey, you no-good bastard.” She turned her voice into the country bumpkin’s. “It ain’t hard being your wife after all. Anyway, I’m an actress, and that’s what we do. It don’t make no never mind whether it’s a cop we’re performing for. We just love to perform.”

She saw something change in his eyes. It wasn’t lust. It was love, clear and simple to see. She swallowed hard and went back to herself. “Sorry that I hit you,” she told him, giving his hand a squeeze.

“I started researching you online because I wanted to get to know who you were better. But after a few pages, I gave up. They don’t know who you really are.” He looked down at their intertwined fingers resting on top of the covers. “After a while, I got a little depressed. I found myself wishing that the name Chrissie Murphy generated as many hits as the name Gena Carson.”

“Your ex?” Chrissie asked.

“Yes. Funny thing is I can’t even remember what she looked like now.”

“I know how that is. I can’t seem to remember anything about Zach Gomez either.”

“The pretty-boy singer you use to go with?”

“The pretty-boy singer I went with until about three days ago.”

“God, Chrissie,” he exclaimed breaking contact and sitting back up on the bed. “I wish you weren’t famous. I wish you didn’t have any talent and didn’t have any money.”

She didn’t sit up with him. Instead, she laid back into the covers and threw her arms over her head. “Hey!” She raised her voice. “I like being rich.”

“Did they really pay you ten million dollars for your last picture?”

“Twelve point five,” she corrected.

“Shit!” he looked down at her, something like anger, but not quite, in his stare. “Why can’t you change your name to Mary Smith or something equally boring so I can ask you to marry me?”

“Why does it make such a difference if I’m rich and famous?”

“Because if you were Mary Smith, I could sweep you off your feet. I could promise to give you the world. I could impress you with the home I’m building back in Arizona. I could tell you I’d always work hard to take care of you and give you everything you always wanted.”

“You can still say those things to me. They’re nice to hear. No one has ever talked like that to me before.” She rose up behind him on the bed and put her arms around his neck, giving him a kiss.

“It’s impossible.” He shook his head sadly. “You’ve already got the world. The home you own in California makes the one I’m building in Arizona seem like a shack. If I worked hard every day for the rest of my life, I could never make half the money you already have earned on your career. You’ve already got everything you could want. There isn’t anything left for me to give you.”

“You’re probably right about everything you just said.” Chrissie wasn’t in any mood to lie to him. “Except I don’t have everything I want. Before I met you guys, I was thinking about killing myself. You three guys have one thing that I don’t have and have never had…You have your freedom.”

He turned around to her and put his arms gently around her. “God, Chrissie, why would you even think about killing yourself?”

“I was actually thinking about it again tonight when I realized that next week at this time I’ll probably never see any of you guys again and my life will be back in the hands of other people forever.”

He held onto her tight and she returned his hug with equal fervor. “Scott loves you,” he told her.

“I know,” she said. “He told me.”

“I think I love you even more.” He held onto her with such strength she thought she would break, but she held him back with the same desperation.

“I’m happy Ethan doesn’t like me that well,” she told him. “He’s the only one who’s not going to be destroyed when this is over.”

“He doesn’t really love anyone. He just enjoys women without really caring about them.”

“Funny thing is I think I love him, too.” Tears were running down her face.

He cleared his throat. “You know, with all the money you’ve made, you could cut back on your career.” He was struggling for a solution. “If you like living in southern California, well, I could probably find work out there. Hell, I could even try and start my own company. I’m not saying it would be easy, or that it would work, but we could try.”

She patted him on the back. There was so much she wanted to tell him, but she didn’t know where to begin. “We’re happy here in this cabin because we four are away from the world…but once we go back…” Her voice choked up, and she could not allow herself to finish. She also did not have to because she realized he already knew what she wanted to say.

They got up from bed together. He gave her a last hug. “Promise me you won’t ever think about killing yourself again, okay, baby?”

“I’ll try,” she said, uncertain.

“You live your life to the fullest,” he told her with determination. “You will always be a part of me. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll still love you just as much as I do right this minute.”

“Brad…” She looked up into his eyes. “I love you, too. And if my name was Mary Smith, I would marry you in an instant.”

“Thank you, Chrissie.” He gave her a last hug and turned to leave the room.

She caught him by his shirt. He was wearing the same kind of undershirt she had on, only on him it just covered his chest and not the whole body as it did with her.

He turned back to her at the summons.

“Make love to me,” she told him.

He took her back in his arms instantly. Their lips met. Their kiss was not long, but it was sweet and salty because of the tears she had shed. She helped him to get undressed, leaving on her shirt because she had nothing on beneath.

His cock was rock hard and standing halfway up his stomach when he finally removed the last article of his clothing. She dropped to her knees in front of him and took him in her mouth, licking the underside with her tongue and tasting the preclimax liquid seeping from his tip. She cupped his balls in one hand and stroked his shaft with the other as her lips kissed the head. He groaned deep down in his chest.