Jesus Christ.
His tongue plunges inside me as the hand on my neck drags greedily along to my shoulder, slipping my sleeve down a fraction. I pant and heave my chest again (between the corset and his tongue in my mouth it’s not difficult), my hand clawing helplessly at his coat, and Dominic remembers himself. Remembers where they are. That he is with a younglady, even if she is betrothed to him. And pulls away, pressing his forehead to mine, and groaning as Georgiana catches her breath.
‘And cut.’ Abigail breaks the fucked-up spell we’ve cast on each other. Josh releases me and steps back, and I wish I could wipe my mouth, but my lipstick will come off on my pristine white gloves. If Josh has left any lipstick on, that is.
As the makeup artists hurry over to touch us up, I watch him. He hasn’t taken his eyes off me. He glances distractedly in Kate’s direction as she gives us a thumbs-up from off stage before his gaze slides back to me. Assessing. Concerned.
‘You okay?’ he asks, his voice low.
‘Yeah.’ I nod vigorously, unsure of what else to say.Gosh, Josh, you really know how to play the bad-boy panty-dropper to perfection.Orshame we couldn’t keep going after the camera stopped rolling; I wanted to climb you like a tree.
I didn’t really want to.
(I did.)
Truthfully, I feel the oddest mix of relieved and turned on and violated and triumphant.
‘That was great, guys.’ Abigail’s voice cuts through my internal cluster-fuck. ‘I need you to try to get Elle’s dress a little further down off her shoulder this time, okay Josh? Otherwise, you nailed it. Let’s get you some water and go again.’
We do four more takes before Abigail is happy and we move to the medium shots. Four more snogs with Josh. If I’m not mistaken, each one is more heated than the last as we hit our stride and lose our inhibitions. My sense of triumph is mounting. Not only did I survive kissing Josh, but we’re good together on screen when we can get out of our own way. I know no one else doubted it, but I did.
That washot.
Too hot.
After we get the medium shots, which focus on the compelling silhouette we make, coupling against the wall, and the desperate clawing of my fingers against his coat, we find our closure. And as Josh’s fingers close over mine in a decisive but emotionless handshake, I secretly wonder if he was right. If hugging it out would have been more apt.
CHAPTER 26
Josh
This Watford place is a total shithole. But never mind, because I needed an NA meeting after today’s shoot with Elle. I was crawling out of my fucking skin after we wrapped the kissing scene, wrung out with emotion and boiling over with desire.
This morning was all kinds of crazy. After pissing Elle off, I went on set legit on edge. But I channelled that edge into Dominic, into his emotional state at being so close to getting this woman locked down and being so impatient for stuff she had no clue about. Into the tightrope he had to walk between worshipping her, and giving into his pent-up desires, and not scaring her the hell away.
Man, I knew how he felt.
My brain got all twisted up between Dominic and Georgiana and me and Elle. The strength of my feelings for her and the heat of my desire and the years of fucking history and yearning entangled themselves with Dominic’s desperation to enter into a state he’d scoffed at right before he saw Georgiana. He did a hard one-eighty and fell, big-time.
I fell years ago, and I was still flat on my fuckingface.
Anyways, with all that shit in my head, I just went for it. Didn’t overthink it—trusted the process. All I knew was, whatever I felt for Elle would enhance my performance, not damage it. And despite what she said, whatever spark of anger I ignited before the camera rolled lit a fire under her, too.
I demanded; she resisted.
I pushed; she surrendered.
It was hot as fuck.
I wasn’t on the call sheet for the rest of the day so I took off as soon as I could and headed back to the hotel for a shower and googled up the closest NA. I’ve been to a few meetings in London, but this is my first one while on location, and I need to get involved. I thought about joining my local LA one on Zoom, but it’s better in person. Trouble is, NA meetings are a nightmare if you’re famous.
So I hit this one up in Watford. It’s in a depressing fucking building on a depressing street. The requisite plastic chairs are laid out in a circle. I’ve opted for a baseball cap and a face mask—no longer mandatory in the UK, but a handy disguise. I don’t mean to be aloof, but I’m not here to buddy up. I sit quietly and I listen.
I focus on absorbing others’ stories, their observations, their pain. These people are a world away from me in lifestyle terms, and yet we’re all here. Addiction is an awesome leveller. One guy, who seems to live with chronic pain and got addicted to pain meds (so common), fell off the wagon last night and is super cut up about it. Poor schmuck. It sucks, and it brings back my usual guilt.
Imagine trying to manage pain without the relief because you got addicted to the one thing that helps. I have no such excuse. My story is so freaking predictable. Party-boy-actor gets dependent on uppers to get him through his crazy lifestyle and downers to help him level out, and somewhere along theway, lost his ability to function without them. If I couldn’t feel good, I didn’t want to feel anything.
Except when I met Elle Hart, the biggest fucking walking dopamine hit on the planet. And I had to fuck that up, too.
