Dark Frame (17 page)

I squeeze my knees together to keep him from moving too much and flip my hair to the side, grinning down at him mischievously. “But you can’t be rough with me this way.”

He squirms beneath me as if to try and prove a point, but I keep my legs pinned against either side of him, trying not to melt when his hard length shifts inside of me.

“
Oh, so this is a game to you?” he asks darkly. He grips my hips again, pushing me up until he slides out and yanking me back down. I scream in pleasure. He does it again and again, and I throw my head back, the pressure at my center building.

“
I’m so close,” I breathe.

When his thumb finds my clit, I’m pushed over the edge. It takes every fiber of my being not to shriek my release. I bite down hard on my lip as my orgasm escapes me in small whimpers and gasps. He allows me to ride out the wave of intense pleasure, guiding my hips to keep me bucking on top of him. Finally, his eyes flutter shut, and he comes.

I wait until he’s done gasping for breath before I lean forward, kissing his lips gently. This was the one thing that I never got to play out in my fantasies—the aftermath. But now he’s staring at me, our sweaty bodies still joined, our breathing still ragged.

Finally, he says, “We should have done that a long time ago.”

I hum in agreement, sliding off of him and resting my head against his pillow.

“
If I knew you were getting yourself off to me, I would have snuck into your room in a heartbeat.”

“
Yeah, but the thing is, at fifteen, it was only a fantasy. If you came into my room and offered to fuck me senseless when I was fifteen, I would have probably screamed in embarrassment and terror.”

He chuckles and rolls onto his side, facing me. “Just like you did when I tried to kiss you?”

“
That’s what terribly self-conscious fifteen-year-olds-do. Plus, I can imagine you probably sucked at sex back then.”

He furrows his eyebrows like he’s insulted. “And what about now? Placing me in the midst of your vast experience—″

I elbow him.

“
How do I compare?”

I kiss him again, tugging lightly at his bottom lip with my teeth. “You make me feel… naughty.”

“
That’s it?”

“
And you keep me from worrying about my job.”

“
So essentially I’m a distraction with a penis. Is that what you’re saying?”

I stare at him in attempt to see if he’s being serious. His eyes lack the playful glint they had in them earlier.

“
It makes me wonder…” I pause, choosing my words carefully, “what it would be like to be with you.”

He cups my jaw, running his thumb along my bottom lip. “Why do you think I auditioned for your stupid magazine?”

My eyes widen with realization. I wait with my breath held for a long time, but his gaze doesn’t falter. “I thought you said it was because of your agent.”

“
Well, it was a good paying gig. That did a lot to persuade me. But it was also the fact that ever since I left for Stan State, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“
I loathed you.”

He grins. “Maybe I had a younger sister fetish. Or maybe I’ve always secretly had a crush on you.”

“
Always?”

“
Okay, since I was twelve.”

I giggle, but I’m not detracted from the real situation at hand. “Are you serious?”

He presses his forehead to mine, fingers tracing down my neck. “Is it so hard to believe that I auditioned to see who you were all grown up?”

“
Maybe,” I mutter against his mouth. “It’s a little…” I kiss him, “unbelievable. Mind-blowingly unbelievable.”

His tongue darts out and grazes my lip. “What if we tried this?”

I can’t believe he’s suggesting it. Jaime never had girlfriends, as far as I could tell. He had fuck buddies. “I thought you didn’t want my parents to find out.”

He thinks for a moment, like he’s weighing the situation. “On the one hand, yeah, dealing with your parents would probably be miserable. On the other hand, I think I could definitely get used to waking up to you in the morning.”

This is way too much to process.

And I won’t right now. I refuse to, because my mouth is consumed by his, his hand pushing its way higher and higher up the inside of my thigh.

Chapter Nine

Evan

I’m on a date with Dallas.

Not a homework date. Not some I’ll-cook-you-dinner-and-we’ll-watch-some-television-in-our-sweatpants make-out-fest.

A real date.

We don’t drive anywhere. Neither of us have cars, and even if we did, driving in Boston is a bit useless. We get in a cab and Dallas tells the driver to take us to a bistro in Somerville.

The east coast is so different from California. In California, everything is much bigger. Here, the restaurant he wants to take me to is tucked around the corner and down a stairwell, at the bottom of this old, brick building. Even the door is much narrower than I’m used to.

The restaurant itself is bright and clean and very west coast—not at all what I’m expecting. The waiter takes us to our seats and hands us our menus. I look down at the entrees.

Everything’s vegan.

I glance back up at Dallas, who is busy studying the menu as though it’s a critical exam. “How long did it take you to find this place?”

“
Not long,” he says without looking up. “The internet is a marvelous place. What the fuck is a sorrel?”

I bite back my grin. “It’s a vegetable, obviously.”

“
Obviously. Everything here has to be a vegetable.” He glances at me above his menu.

“
Thank you,” I tell him.

He says nothing and returns to studying the menu items.

I want to say something to him about today’s shoot, but everything coming to my head sounds so insensitive.
So… Britain couldn’t catch half of what you were doing to me in the mud today. Are you sure you were just
working
? Or,
I’m really horny from what you started but didn’t finish earlier today… you wanna meet me in the bathroom for a quickie?

I’m actually thinking about saying the last one as a joke. I almost do, except then I realize it’s not very funny considering how true it is.

Before I can say anything, the waiter comes back. Dallas orders a stupid-expensive pinot noir. He knows it’s my favorite wine. I order the curry and he orders fettuccine, and with our menus gone, we have to stop ignoring each other. So it’s either talk about today’s shoot or talk about the fact that he wants to prove he’s still in love with me.

Since my mind can’t wrap around the latter, I say, “I thought you said you weren’t going to try and seduce me.”

He sighs and keeps his eyes trained on me. The waitress comes back with our wine and opens the bottle in front of us. She takes a while, and I’m not sure if Dallas will remember to respond when she leaves. But when she finally does, he takes a sip of wine and says, “I was trying to stay in character. And that’s good, by the way.” He gestures to his glass.

I take a drink. He’s right. Hell, it might be the best pinot noir that I’ve had. Then again, my idea of classy is going to the liquor store in my yoga pants and grabbing a dusty four dollar bottle on the bottom shelf. “You practically ate me out.”

He glances around, but it seems like none of the tables around us care that I’m talking about oral sex like it’s baseball. “You know the passion that Brit was going on about—the chemistry she was trying to get everyone to acknowledge after we were done shooting?” He leans in close and lowers his voice. “I would never, ever be able to feel that with someone else. When you respond—when you
really
respond to what I’m doing to you in a shoot—that’s what makes a picture.”

“
So that’s why you did it?” My voice is barely above a whisper. “To make a good picture?”

“
Be real, Evan.” His bright eyes are so intense that breaking away from them should be some sort of crime. “I don’t give a damn about Amora Acquisitions and whatever they’re trying to make of this magazine. And to be honest, the money is nice, but when it comes down to it, it’s worth nothing near the few seconds I get to see the look on your face that lets me know I’m making you feel something.” He relaxes and leans back. “And making Britain happy is an added bonus. I like staying on her good side.”

I down the rest of my glass with a single swallow. It’s a shame that I’m drinking an eighty dollar bottle of wine in the midst of such a stressful conversation. Dallas doesn’t ask, he just pours me another glass.

“
Then why was leaving you so easy?” I say. It’s the question that’s been on my mind for too long. If he really cared about me, then he wouldn’t have let me walk out of that airport without a fight.

“
Because I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you for months. I didn’t think there was a way to prove myself to you.”

“
Prove yourself to me?”

He nods. “I didn’t want to just plead with you to make you stay with me, especially if you were so unhappy, then have there be months of not being able to see you, and possibly not being able to call you. You’d be at Harvard wondering if it was really worth it to give me another chance and there would be no way to show you that I desperately needed one, Evan.”

Everything in his expression begs me. And I can’t tell if I want to give him another chance because he’s so goddamn gorgeous, or because I love him back.

“
Okay,” I say.

His face softens. Relief. Suddenly I wonder what it would have been like to kiss him if the kiss had been before the foreplay—if it would have been crushing or sweet. Who would have initiated it? How long would it have lasted? A part of me wants to crawl across the table right now just to feel his warm lips on mine.

When our food comes, we don’t talk much. Part of me is grateful, and the other part of me wants to ask more questions. Like what made him decide if he was going to come to Boston for me. Was it before, or after A.J. offered him all of that money?

My stomach twists into a tight knot at the mere thought of it.

“
What?”

I glance at Dallas. His eyes are narrowed.

“
I didn’t say anything.”

“
What were you thinking about?” he asks. “You looked horrified for a second.”

I scrape my food around with my fork until I realize there is no use lying to him. If this is the time to discover if we’re supposed to be together, I can’t go dancing around real problems.

“
Did you decide before or after A.J. offered you the advance that you wanted to come and prove how much you loved me?”

His eyes sparkle with something… amusement, curiosity… I can’t tell for sure. He wipes his mouth and smiles down at his plate.

“
What’s so damn funny?”

His blue eyes flicker to mine again and the breath is sucked right out of me. “You sure make it difficult to be a romantic, you know that, right?”

I cock my head, relaying my confusion.

He sighs. “I had the entire evening planned. We were going to break into the Bunker Hill Monument, and at the top I was going to tell you—while pressing you to my rock-hard body like the maiden you are—that A.J. never called me.”

I don’t know whether to giggle or gasp. So instead, I stare at him blankly. “He
what
?”

“
He never called me, Evan. He never offered me any money to come out here. In fact, I called him and begged him to pay for my plane ticket.”

I snap my mouth shut when I realize my jaw is hanging open. My heart is swelling with so much heat and joy and giddiness that it’s a battle just to keep my cool in front of him.

“
The evening is ruined,” I say flatly, taking another sip of wine.

He raises his eyebrow at my reaction, and asks slowly, “What do you propose we do?”

I swirl the rest of the wine in my glass. “Well, since I ruined your surprise.” I hold up my glass. “Why don’t we get another one of these and head back to the Manor?”

^^^^

The rain came pouring down.

Somehow we end up back in Boston because Dallas found these
amazing
cellars on his phone that are open until eleven. Drenched and shivering, we discover the cellar hosts an antipasto bar and there’s live music tonight.

So we get a little drunk. And I end up on his lap.

The music is nothing like I’m used to listening to. It’s a couple of old men playing folk, but they’re really good at it. The crowd is mostly forty-to-sixty somethings looking to have a good time. Dallas and I might even be the youngest ones here.

He holds me tightly around my waist. I crane my neck and lean in, open mouth pressing against his strong, bold jaw, and exhale. Immediately, goose bumps emerge on his neck. He groans at the warmth. Or my mouth. One or the other.

“
I think we should head back,” he says.

“
I was thinking the same thing.”

The night is freezing, the rain pummeling us, and yet we waste time searching for the train station to take us back instead of paying cab fare. When we arrive at Veda Manor, it’s just past midnight, and the foyer and dining room are empty.

We giggle and trip our way up to Dallas’s room. There’s no way I’m making my lecture tomorrow—thank God I’ve studied well ahead and already know the material.

I peel my jacket off and lay it on the back of one of the leather armchairs. “I’ll have to borrow clothes from Britain tomorrow. That’s going to be one hell of a walk of shame.”

As Dallas grins at me, water drips from the tip of his nose. “Who says that staying the night with me is shameful?”

“
I’m just saying she’s going to want dirt is all.” I shiver involuntarily.

Dallas steps toward me, reaching out and toying with the collar of my soaked shirt. Water drips across his full lips and I want nothing more than to push myself on my tiptoes and lick it off.