The Princess and the Porn Star (24 page)

“The sparkling cider was a nice touch, by the way,” she said.

“Didn’t have much choice, did I?” I kissed the top of her head. “You don’t drink.”

“I know, but you’d be amazed how many people assume that doesn’t apply on special occasions.”

“Obviously they don’t spend a lot of time with recovering addicts.”

She looked up at me. “Do you? I mean, besides me?”

I nodded. “My mom was a heavy drinker when I was a kid. It’s only been the last four or five years she’s been sober. I don’t think she’d touch a drink if you paid her, but the house rule is still no alcohol of any kind.”

“Good rule to have.”

“Are you ever…tempted?” I asked.

Rachel shook her head. “No. Well, I mean, if I get really depressed, I sometimes crave a drink or a few pills just because I need something that’ll let me check out for a while. That’s why I don’t keep anything around the house.”

“Good idea.”

“I really don’t want to go down that road again. It was…” She trailed off and shuddered.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” I said, “how bad was it?”

“My drug problem?”

I nodded. “The media had their opinion, but I get the feeling there was some spinning and exaggerating going on there.”

“Yes and no,” she said. “They’d play up whatever they saw. I mean, when you’re on your way out of the club and they take a hundred pictures of you, they’re bound to get at least one where you look like you’re barely conscious, even if you weren’t high.”

“Sort of like how if they get you while you’re eating, they’ll get at least one ridiculous face?”

Rachel laughed. “Exactly!” As her laughter trailed off, she looked out at the ocean. “When I was into all that, they didn’t see the worst of it, to be honest.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “I was in it pretty bad, but a lot of it was behind closed doors.” She looked down at the sand in front of us. “It was a crazy cycle. I got to the point I was using so many painkillers to relax, I needed the coke to wake myself up. Then I’d get so spun up on the coke, I was using the painkillers to bring myself back down.” Shaking her head, she shifted her gaze out to the darkening ocean. “I was a mess back then. A real mess. God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t had Quinn.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know it sounds melodramatic,” she said, “but he saved my life. He woke me up one morning and said I had to get myself together for…something. An interview, I think. But once we were in the car, he told me he was taking me to rehab, and I was staying there until I got my shit straightened out.”

“So he just left you there?”

“No,” she said. “He still came and visited me every day. Every single day. When it was over, he was the one who took me home.”

“Good man.”

“He is.” She released her breath. “Anyway, I guess it’s par for the course in LA. Everyone’s hooked on something.” She looked up at me again. “You ever get involved in any of that?”

I shrugged. “Never drank very much because I saw what it did to my mom. I did smoke some weed for a while, but I just felt so hazy and out of it, I…” I trailed off, shaking my head. “Wasn’t my thing, I guess. Even with—” I paused. “I’m sorry, this is probably depressing to talk about.”

“Not as much as you might think.”

“Really?”

Rachel stopped, and we faced each other. She put her hands on my waist and looked up at me. The light was fading, but there was still just enough for me to make out her features and her dark eyes. “I can’t usually talk about this with someone. Not without expecting them to run to the press or whatever. I… It’s not my favorite subject, but it’s nice. Being able to talk about it like I’m a normal human being.”

I touched her face and brushed a loose strand of hair away from her cheek. “You are a normal human being.”

She smiled. “I feel like one when we’re together.”

I returned the smile, but it took work.

Hers fell. “Something wrong?”

I chewed my lip. “Are you sure about this?”

“About what? Being with you?”

I nodded.

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Absolutely.”

“But what about—”

“Lee.” She ran her thumb along my lower lip. “Every time we’re together, I’m more sure about this. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.”

“Except the stalkerazzi and Risen Star.”

Rachel scowled, then shrugged. “That’s the price of my career.”

“And of dating a porn star.” I stroked her hair. “Maybe if I quit. We—”

“No.” She took my hand in both of hers and kissed my fingers. “I don’t want you to quit.” Before I could protest, she looked in my eyes. “I don’t want you giving up your career for me. If you’re ready to retire for reasons besides me, then go for it, but please don’t do it on my behalf.”

I searched her eyes for a moment. “Are you sure?”

“As far as the media’s concerned, you’ll always be a porn star, whether you’re doing it right now or you’re retired.” She held my gaze and squeezed my hand. “I don’t care what you do, Lee, and I don’t want to change a thing about you.” She moistened her lips. “I just want to be with you.”

“And I just want you to be happy.”

“I am,” she whispered. “Happier than I’ve been in a long time.”

We held each other’s gazes for a moment, until her eyes flicked toward my lips. Then she slid her hands up my chest.

My heart beat faster as I reached for and cradled her neck in both hands. I swore the ground under us was spinning just like that platform in front of the green screen. The air between us was taut and heavy, loaded with something that wanted to be said, but Rachel didn’t speak and I couldn’t find the words, so I kissed her instead.

We melted against each other, my hand sliding up into her hair as the other drifted down her back. She wrapped her arms around my neck. The kiss was somewhere between hungry and lazy, our mouths moving slowly but insistently.

When we finally separated, I could barely catch my breath. The sun had slipped into the ocean, and the light was fading fast.

“I should drive you home.” I kissed her again, softly this time. “Since Quinn took off with your car.”

She laughed. “Well, I do hope you weren’t planning on leaving me here.”

“Absolutely not.”

“So if you take me home,” she whispered, letting her lips brush mine, “any chance you’ll stay there with me?”

“Oh, I’d say there’s more than a chance.”

Chapter Fifteen

Rachel

From the moment I’d signed my record deal, my life had gone ninety miles an hour. Red-eye flights and coffee-fueled interviews. The all too frequent bus ride through the night after an exhausting concert. Camera flashes and constant noise and go, go, go. Even when I slept, there was somewhere to be as soon as I woke up. I was away more than I was home, burning the candle at both ends with a blowtorch in the middle.

But tonight, as Lee closed my bedroom door behind us, the world slowed down. Slowed down and nearly stopped.

For tonight, there was nowhere else I needed to be, and even if there was, it didn’t matter. Only the sand in my shoes reminded me a world even existed outside this room, and as I toed off my shoes, those tiny grains of evidence went with them.

Lee shrugged off his coat and let it drop forgotten to the floor with a quiet thud. My heels hadn’t been all that high, but without them, our height difference was even more pronounced, and as he wrapped his arms around me, I felt small. Tiny. Not at all helpless or defenseless, but somehow still protected.
Safe
.

I hooked a finger in Lee’s blue tie and slid it down until the knot slipped free. His hand drifted up my back and into my hair. I pulled in a breath through my nose as his fingers slowly closed, and my entire scalp tingled in anticipation of the sting I knew was coming. Then it came, and I moaned as he pulled my head back, and I wriggled against him as he leaned down to kiss my neck.

His other hand drifted up my back, and then a shiver followed the zipper down my spine.

I was aroused beyond words. I lost myself in his kiss, in his embrace. Even as he broke the kiss and started down my neck, I was completely lost in him.

He kissed my neck as he pushed one strap over my shoulder. Then the other. With a gentle tug, the dress fell away, like it had simply lost its form and collapsed to my feet, leaving my skin bare and cool.

His hand moved around to the small of my back again, and he pulled me against him. Warm hands ran up and down—my back, my sides, my neck—like he just wanted to touch me all over when any other man would have been groping.

The cool air against my back and shoulders emphasized the warmth of his body against my front, and I pressed into him, searching for more of that heat.

Lee lowered me onto the bed. I pulled him down with me. His shirt brushed my nipples, making me gasp and shiver beneath him. His unraveled tie hung over either side of his neck. His jacket was long gone, his shirt half-unbuttoned, and he sucked in a hiss of breath as I slid my hand over his clothed erection. Oh God, he was hard, rock hard, ready to fuck me into oblivion if he wanted to or I begged him to, but in spite of his obvious arousal and my nearly unbearable need for him, we didn’t rush.

His hand drifted downward and then gently nudged my inner thigh. My body responded to him with no thought on my part, my legs spreading for him and my hips lifting in anticipation as his hand slid upward. I gripped his arm as he gently moved my panties aside, and every muscle in my body tensed and trembled as two fingertips made the slowest, lightest circles around my clit. I lifted my hips off the bed, pressing against his fingers, and whimpered into his kiss as the earliest sparks of an orgasm came to life beneath his touch.

I shuddered and dug my nails into his arm. With a groan he bent and kissed my neck, and I almost lost it when, at the exact same time his fingers slipped inside me, he released a warm, ragged breath across my skin. The heel of his hand pressed against my clit as his fingers moved in and out. Jesus Christ, the motion of his fingers was perfect—the speed, the angle, everything. After a moment, I realized his hand wasn’t moving at all but staying perfectly still while my hips did it all, and maybe in another time and place I would’ve been embarrassed, knowing I was fucking his hand like this, but with Lee, I didn’t care. I wanted more, so I did it faster, and he growled softly as he kissed his way up the side of my throat.

“Don’t stop,” he whispered. “Not until you come.”

I moaned and shivered against him. “Oh God…”

“I want you to come.” He was breathing hard now, fast and hard and hot against my neck. “Fuck, baby, I want… I want you to come.”

I fucked his hand harder. I was on edge, the growing tension closing in, and just before I lost it, Lee bent his fingers, and with a shuddered, “Oh my God…” I surrendered to an explosion in extra-slow motion. A white-hot and ice-cold shockwave unleashed one ripple at a time. He drew it out, teasing every lightning bolt and shudder out of me until I begged him to stop.

I settled back onto the bed. Neither of us said a word. Lee leaned away and pulled open the bedside table drawer, and the hiss of foil on foil made my breath catch. Then his belt jingled, and the zipper came down, and he looked me right in the eyes as he tore the condom wrapper with his teeth.

I could barely stay still as he put the condom on. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d needed someone this bad. I even caught myself wishing we could forego that single, thin barrier, if only so we could be just a millimeter closer to each other. So he could feel me like I felt him.

But I didn’t say anything as he put it on.

He wasn’t naked yet, but he was unbelievably sexy like this. The open shirt, the unwound tie, the black trousers and boxers pushed over his hips. The clothes could come off later; I wanted him exactly as he was.

Lee moved over me and pushed my legs a little farther apart. Sitting up, he guided himself to me and pressed in slowly, making sure I felt every inch of him stretching and filling my pussy until he was buried all the way inside me.

He looked down at me, and I looked up at him, and we held each other’s gazes as our bodies moved together. He lowered himself all the way, meeting my lips in a deep kiss as his hips rocked with mine, and my arms, moving of their own volition, wrapped around him. The entire universe concentrated itself into this tiny space, into this single room where Lee and I moved, kissed, fucked.

With the world locked outside and no camera lenses in sight, it was hard to believe there was anyone who thought we shouldn’t be here like this. That there was any reason he was wrong for me, or I was wrong for him, or anything about this was wrong.

I couldn’t convince myself there was any reason why this was wrong. I also couldn’t make myself believe that what this was ended at the edge of the bedframe, that it didn’t exist outside the confines of these smooth, warm sheets.

No one else could know we were in bed together right then. Lee was deep inside me, and I was tangled up in him, and there wasn’t a soul in the universe who needed to know. How good he felt, how his cologne mingled with sweat and me, how beautiful he was; if only for tonight, that was all mine.