Dylan stands and holds out his hand towards me.“Let’s do it.Thanks for the offer.”
Thanks?He’s accepting?He wants to come home with me?I stare at his palm in bewilderment.“Won’t it raise irritating speculation?”
His nod is subtle, but it’s there, and so is his palm, still waiting for me to accept it.“I suppose it might, if anyone is trailing me with a telescopic zoom lens at this time of night and you lack curtains at your place.”
I have curtains and blackout blinds.“You do understand that I wasn’t asking you back for sex?It was simply an offer of a bed for the night.”
It’s barely possible to open the door into my spare room.
Quit lying, Kira, you’ve no intention of letting him sleep in there or on your couch.
“No it wasn’t.”
He’s right.It wasn’t.I’m still aghast that he’s refuting me.Aghast, and sickeningly hopeful that this means something that it probably doesn’t.Or maybe it does.I can’t quite read his expression, but there’s a definite glimmer of mischief in his eyes.He leans in close to me, so that I catch the scent of his aftershave and the lingering trace of antiseptic.
“Take me home and screw my brains out, Ms.Carter-Wells.”
“Even if I forget to draw the curtains?”I bleat.
He laughs, and scoops an arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his body.“I don’t give a fuck about curtains.I just want to find out who Kira Carter-Wells truly is, and watch her engulf me with her quim.”
I gawp at him stupefied.“Is that anOldrichquote?”
He gives another chuckle and a wink.“Could be.”That’s when he leans in and kisses me, right there in the hotel lobby, with the night manager watching, and a maid flitting around us with a duster.Not just a kiss that could be mistaken as a friendly peck either, but a full blown, arms around me, crushingly dirty lip kiss that leaves me groaning into his open mouth and angling for more once he’s done.“When we get home,” he promises.
“And afterwards what?”
He squeezes my fingers.“Let’s just take it one step at a time, eh?Same as we would with any new relationship?”
Blow me, he’s actually choosing to give this a chance.
“This cat of yours, does it have a name?”he asks as we’re getting into the car.I’m parked on the street outside the front of the hotel this time.It’d be wrong to take him back down to that underground car bunker tonight.
“Sure does.”I bow my head, eyes narrowing with amusement, and stifling a full-blown laugh.My heart’s all light and floaty, and I think I’ve just acquired a ninety-nine per cent gay boyfriend.“He’s called Dylan.”
He tugs on my hand and pulls me to him again, so that my back is to his body.“You named your cat after me?”
“Don’t imagine that’s a compliment.It’s ’cause he’s full of shit.”I nudge him in the ribs with my elbow, and he yelps when I inadvertently hit the place he’s been glued.“God, I’m sorry.”
His hurt expression ladles guilt onto me in spades, but then all that hurt vanishes, and his eyes are full of mischief again.“I expect to be kissed better, Ms.Wells.”He rubs his injured side.
“It’s Carter-Wells,” I remind him.“And kissing you is only a fraction of what I plan to do.”
-epilogue-
-Dylan Drake-
Six days later…
Getting caught with my trousers down in this place would be a bad thing.But that’s what closed doors are for, right?It’s not like all the cameras can see through wood or the guests at the LGBT+ Awards all have X-ray specs.And maybe, just maybe, I don’t actually give a shit if they do find me in flagrante.It would only prove I’m every bit as roguishly wicked as my television counterpart, and viewing audiences do love him.That is, after all, why I’m here.
All right, sensible head on, so maybe while I’m up for LGBT+ Celebrity isn’t the best time to announce there are a couple of things about me that aren’t precisely as advertised.Like the fact I’m not entirely bent and have in fact recently discovered an obsessive taste for pussy, which also happens to be why I’m having to take five in a store room.
Kira snorts as I push her through a door into the air conditioning cupboard.I’ve trodden the boards in this place before.I learned all its secret places during a two week run ofThe Judas Kiss.Not once did I get caught in here.
The dry hum of the machinery is exactly how I remember it, as is the flattering buttery orange glow of the lighting.
“Is there some kind of danger I should be aware of?”my paid escort asks.She’s attending tonight’s awards in the guise of my bodyguard as that was a whole lot easier to arrange than her negotiating time off to attend.
