Heartthrob (32 page)

And then, minutes or hours later—he couldn’t say which—his control was completely gone. And as he felt the first powerful surge of his release, he could do little more than breathe her name.

She still held his gaze, and she smiled. He exploded in slow motion, rockets of unbelievable sensation ripping through him, destroying him completely, reducing him to little more than a disconnected collection of tingling atoms and particles.

But with the particles that used to be his ears, he heard her cry out with her own sweet pleasure. And with the atoms that used to be his arms, he felt her shake with her own incredible release.

And as she, too, fell apart, Jed lost himself inside of her. There were no boundaries, no separations. They were truly one.

And the rush of pleasure that brought was so intense, it
roared around him, blasting open the pleasure-proof lock he kept on his box of emotions, bringing a surge of unstoppable tears to his eyes.

Somehow Jed found one of his arms, and he held Kate tightly, pressing her head against his shoulder. And somehow, he got his other hand reconnected to his other arm, and he reached up and wiped his face before she could see him cry.

Sweet God, he needed a drink.

J
amaal sat in the slave quarters, watching Victor frown as he watched the video playback monitor.

The scene wasn’t working.

He didn’t know
why
it wasn’t. They’d been filming a sequence of scenes here at Brandall Hall for the past four days now, and up to this point, he and Susie had been hitting the ball clear out of the park on almost the first pitch.

They’d been working in chronological order, starting with the scene where Jane tended to Moses’ injuries after Reginald Brooks kicked the shit out of him. As Moses hovered near death, Susie—no, he mentally shook his head. He meant
Jane
—risked her own life and reputation by sneaking out of her house at night to nurse him.

There hadn’t been a lot of dialogue up to today’s scene—just good, solid acting.

But today, Moses had regained consciousness. And Jane had a thing or two to say to him.

Susie, wearing Jane’s long skirts, sat next to him, and he self-consciously rearranged the scraps of rags he thought of as his diaper. It was slightly better than a loincloth, but only slightly.

“What are we doing wrong?” she asked him quietly.

Jamaal looked at her. “You don’t know, either, huh? I was kind of hoping you had some answers.”

She shook her head, chewing worriedly on her thumbnail.

Her father wasn’t here watching today, thank God. If he were, Susie’s tension level would be through the roof.

Jamaal felt his own frustrations rise. He’d followed his mother’s advice, and had been careful not to push Susie into talking about her father. He’d backed way off, hoping that she’d tell him on her own terms.

So far, nothing.

It was driving him freakin’ out of his mind.

Across the room, Victor and Kate were listening intently to Jericho. The man wasn’t in costume, and he looked wildly out of place in those safari-style cargo shorts he liked to wear, a Stomp T-shirt, and sandals on his feet. He wore his hair down, too, kind of like a beardless Jesus. Or maybe it was the “found heaven” expression he wore on his face these past few days that made him look like the big J.

Jericho and Kate were getting it on. Rocking the old trailer every chance they could get. They were trying their best to be discreet, but the few times they actually
had
shown up in the Grill for dinner over the past few days, they’d only stayed about twenty minutes before one of ’em made some excuse and they both disappeared.

Didn’t take much of a genius to figure out what was up with
that.

Kate was trying her best to look as if she were in control and cool, but more often than not these days, she looked a little shell-shocked.

Jamaal had heard through the ’vine that some disgruntled former employee—now bundled safely away to jail—had spiked Kate’s drink with LSD several days
back. He couldn’t imagine Kate just sitting and chilling and going for the ride. That
had
to have been rough.

But then again, getting together with Jericho had to be an equally unsettling ride for her.

As Jamaal watched, Jericho shifted his weight so that his arm brushed against Kate’s. Even just standing there, deep in some technical discussion, Jericho couldn’t stand not to be touching the woman.

“They’re talking about us,” Susie whispered. “Oh, shoot, I wish someone would just tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

“We,” Jamaal corrected her absently. “It’s we, baby. Or maybe it’s just me.”

Victor was nodding, nodding, nodding, and then all three of them looked directly up at Jamaal and Susie.

“Susie, can I talk to you for a sec?” Victor called.

Flashing Jamaal a worried look, Susie stood up. Jamaal reached for her, catching her hand, breaking his no touching rule for the first time since that night they’d gone up to the pond and skipped stones. “Hey, don’t worry. We’ll definitely figure out how to make this click.” Shit, when he said it like that, he almost believed himself.

But she wasn’t buying. She gave him one of her fake-o smiles as she tugged her hand free.

Jamaal kept a close eye on her as Victor began to talk, ready to go over and smack the man—director or not—if it seemed as if he were doing anything to undermine her already shaky self-confidence.

“Mind if I help you try to figure out this scene?”

Jamaal looked up to see Jericho standing next to him.

“I have an idea,” Jericho said, sitting down. “If you’re interested in trying something …”

“Yes. Please. Tell me what we’re doing wrong.” Jamaal glanced at Jericho but then went back to watching Susie. So far whatever Victor was saying seemed to be okay. She was nodding, Victor was smiling.

“It’s not that you’re doing something wrong,” Jericho explained. “It’s more that you’re not doing it
right
enough.”

“Well, no shit, Sherlock. That sure was helpful.”

“On the surface it’s all there. The dialogue, the action—the main message of the scene. Jane’s worried that Brooks is going to come check on Moses—to see if he’s well enough to work in the field, right? She’s afraid Moses isn’t going to bow his head and say, ‘Yes, master,’ and that Brooks is going to beat Moses again, because of that. She believes that another severe beating will kill him. But Moses won’t bow his head, and he tells her she can’t understand what it’s like to want something more than life itself—and to know that she’ll never have it, never. And you know what he’s talking about here, right? In addition to his freedom?”

Jamaal nodded. “He’s talking about
Susie—Jane,”
he corrected himself quickly. “He wants Jane. He’s always wanted Jane, but he knows there’s no way in hell he can have her.”

Jericho smiled. “So show it. Underneath every line of dialogue, you’ve got to be thinking,
I want you.
Do you know what your secret desire is during this scene?”

“Secret desire?”

“Every character has an underlying goal, a desire that sometimes isn’t revealed through dialogue, that rules everything they say, every movement they make during that scene. And for this scene, Moses’ desire is so secret, he may not even be admitting it to himself. But he’s there, all alone in that cabin with Jane, and his secret desire is to kiss her. He wants—almost as much as he wants to keep breathing—to catch her mouth with his and plant one on her.”

Jamaal looked over at Susie. God, he knew what that felt like.

“Everything you do in this scene,” Jericho continued
“is ruled by your desire to kiss this girl. You have to inch closer—but make it look almost subconscious. You have to watch her mouth, watch her eyes, and then her mouth again. You have to really want her. She’s this totally, completely forbidden thing. You know that, but you want her anyway.”

Jamaal laughed, a short, almost hysterical sounding burst of air.

“Do you think you can do that?” Jericho asked.

Jamaal nodded, gazing across the room at Susie. She turned away from Victor and looked directly at him, and he felt that now-familiar punched-stomach feeling deep in his gut. “Yeah,” he said to Jericho, still holding Susie’s gaze. “I think I can probably do that.”

Jericho stood up.

“Okay,” Victor called. “Let’s try this again. Places.”

Makeup came and checked that his bandages were in place, then Jamaal lay on the straw pallet that was Moses’ sickbed. Susie knelt beside him.

“Ready?” Victor called.

Jamaal looked up at Susie. His secret desire was to kiss her. Damn, this was going to be the easiest piece of acting he’d ever had to do.

In the dim light, her eyes looked liquid blue, and as he watched she took a deep breath, finding the piece of her that was Jane. He did the same, closing his eyes and listening for a moment to the silence of the slave quarters, listening for Moses’ voice.

“Rolling.”

Jamaal opened his eyes, looking up at Susie. She was Jane, but she was Susie, too—the same way he now was both Moses and Jamaal.

“Speed.”

“Action.”

She had the first line, the first bit of action as she expertly cut away the bandage to reveal the crisscross of
wounds that laced his back, courtesy of makeup. He felt her hands touching his skin, and he looked up at her, letting himself want her.

“He’s going to be coming down here soon,” she told him in Jane’s backwoods southern accent, holding onto his uninjured shoulder as she spread salve on his back. “Brooks is.”

He winced, and she stopped for a moment, his pain echoed perfectly in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He looked up at her, at her hand on his bare shoulder, at her eyes, at her mouth, at her eyes again.
I want to kiss you.
He had to moisten his suddenly dry lips. “I’m all right.”

She pulled her gaze away from him almost jerkily, and started again with the salve. “When he comes to talk to you, address him as Master B,” she said. “Say ‘Yes, Master B,’ and ‘No, Master B.’ ”

“I can’t.”

Her eyes were fierce. “You’ve
got
to.” She finished with the salve and wiped her hands on her apron.

He sat up, turning to face her. “I
can’t.
”

She looked at him, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. “If he beats you again—and he will if you don’t do this—you might die.” One tear escaped, rolling down her cheek.

Jamaal reached to wipe it away, but stopped himself, mere inches from her face. No touching. Moses had that rule, too.

“If I bow my head and call Brooks my master,” he said quietly, “I
will
die.” Just as surely as he was dying by sitting here and not touching her, not kissing her. God, it was killing him.

She wiped her own tear away, even wiped her nose with the back of her hand—a brilliantly realistic touch. But then she reached for his hand, surprising him by taking hold of it, of actually touching him. That wasn’t in the blocking.

“Please.” She gazed up at him, searching his eyes.
“You’re not strong enough to make the trip north yet, and it’s going to be at least another two days before Laramie and I finish the hiding place. I know you don’t understand this, but it’s a miracle you’re alive at all. When Brooks beat you, he made your … your insides bleed. If he beats you again—”

“And I know
you
don’t understand
this
,” he interrupted. “You can’t understand what it’s like to want something more than life itself—and to know that you’ll never have it. Never.
Never.
” He let his desire and his need consume him, let it color his voice. “I have spent my entire life being told what to say, what to do, what to think. I’ve been surrounded by a life I can’t have, by things I can’t have.”

Like you.
She was gazing up at him, her eyes so wide, her lips slightly parted, it was driving him insane. Her lips looked so soft, so deliciously moist, he could barely remember his name, let alone his lines.

“I can’t choose the kind of work I want to do,” he continued in Moses’ thick accent. “I can’t talk when I want, or … or walk where I want to … walk.”
Or kiss your sweet lips.
Somehow she had moved. Or maybe he had, but somehow now, she was close enough to kiss, and his heart was pounding so hard, he could barely hear his own voice. “I can’t … I can’t …”

What he couldn’t do was stop himself. He leaned down that extra two or three inches, and God, he was kissing her.

She fell into his arms, kissing him back with a passion that would’ve knocked him off his feet if he’d been standing up.

His first thought was where the hell had she learned to kiss like this? His second was who the hell cared? He was kissing her—finally, finally,
finally
kissing Susie McCoy.

She tasted like root beer, sweet and sharp and perfect.

He could hear the shocked silence in the room as he pulled back. He could see it echoed in Susie’s blue eyes.
But he knew that the cameras were still rolling, and he struggled to regain his breath as he set her aside from him. His hands were shaking.