“Well, I definitely felt the passion that time,” she deadpanned. “But it’s coming off a little…angry. There should be some softness to balance it out. Remember, they’re madly in love. And they’ve been to hell and back, literally, to get to each other. They’ve waited nineverylong years for this moment. We should feel all that, too.”
Once again, they reset to the moment just before the kiss.
Lilah opened her mouth to say her line but made the mistake of catching Shane’s eye first. Something about the way he was looking at her wiped her brain clean of not only her lines, but the reason she was even there in the first place, her stomach turning to jelly.
Fuck him for still being able to do that.
She glanced at Fatima, stalling. “Could we take it from the top for this one?”
Fatima nodded, and Lilah returned to her original mark, taking advantage of the few extra seconds to try to get her heart rate under control. At the last moment, she stripped off her sweater and tossed it on one of the desks, the heat of it suddenly unbearable.
Running the scene felt different this time. The nervous frisson of the unknown was gone, replaced by a heavy, pulsing inevitability.
The moment before he touched her for the first time, he hesitated, his hands close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from them. When he finally wrapped his fingers around her bare shoulders, she exhaled involuntarily, eyelids drooping with sensation, the point of contact almost too intense.
Only then did she realize how long it had been since she’d let herself get this absorbed playing opposite him, tapping into that live-wire connection she’d never felt with another scenepartner in quite the same way. In the early days of the show, their onscreen chemistry had almost annoyed her, since he was so green and untrained—like he’d skipped the line and lucked his way into something most people (herself included) had to work their asses off to learn. Now, though, she had enough experience to know it couldn’t be taught.
The air thickened as they moved through all the places they’d been instructed to touch each other. Her arms. His neck. Her waist. Their foreheads. Lilah looked into his eyes, fighting to keep her breath steady.
How would Kate do it?Kate was brave. Much braver than Lilah. She’d jump in without a second thought.
This time, when Shane’s tongue brushed against her lips, she opened her mouth to him, meeting him with gentleness, not force. And, just like she’d been afraid of, she felt the telltale heat brewing in her stomach, tingles chasing down her spine.
It would be different when they shot it, she told herself, when the set would be full of people watching them, and she’d be preoccupied with the lighting and the camera angle and whether she looked weird doing it.
But she didn’t have any of that to distract her now. As the kiss deepened, she lost herself in the taste of his mouth, the hot slide of his tongue against hers unlocking something inside her, the last traces of her reservations melting away.
She slid her arm all the way around his neck, pulling him closer, and at the same time he wrapped his arms tightly around her, sealing their bodies flush against each other. He let out a sharp, needy breath and she inhaled it, nipping at his bottom lip, drawing a rumble from the back of his throat.
She was so in the zone that kissing him felt like a fucking revelation, like they were both brand new. She could never kiss him like this as herself: a kiss that was sweet with possibilities,not bitter with regret. It didn’t feel like Shane was Shane, either, which helped. He was holding her with such care and affection, like she was something precious, but it didn’t matter: she still feltlike she was a breath away from shattering.
She let herself sink into it, deeper than she thought possible, Lilah and Kate and Shane and Harrison getting all jumbled up until her whole world was narrowed to the weight of his hands on her, the pressure of his lips, his tongue, his teeth, alternatingly soft and firm and hungry and tender.Blood rushed in her ears, her pulse drumming hot and insistent between her thighs as she fought to keep up, to match him, to show him how much she loved him, how long she’d been waiting for this—
How much Kate loves Harrison.How long Kate has been waiting for this.
Finally, Shane pulled away gently and planted a soft kiss on her forehead, bringing his thumb to wipe away a tear that had collected at the corner of her eye. She closed her eyes, too flustered to look at him, her face so hot she felt like that tear would’ve sizzled into vapor if it had made it down to her cheek.
When they turned back to Fatima, her eyebrows were in her hairline, a bemused grin creeping across her face.
“Wow. Okay, then. If that looks half as good on camera, we don’t need to worry about disappointinganyone.”
21
They broke for the holidays a few weeks after they returned to Los Angeles, Shane and Dean boarding a flight back to Oklahoma City the morning before Christmas. For Shane, it couldn’t have come soon enough.
After working through it in rehearsal, shooting the kiss had been easy. The crew had burst into spontaneous applause after the first take, making Lilah blush. They’d only needed to do it a handful of times, to his relief—for coverage, rather than performance. But even though he could tell they’d delivered, nothing had matched their kiss in that conference room. The one where they’d finally gotten it right. The one he was still thinking about weeks later.
Even though he told himself the kiss was staged, the emotions behind it scripted, there was nothing fake about the feel of that bee-stung bottom lip between his teeth, the impossible softness of her skin under his hands, his body’s uncontrollable response to her. He’d already known all that, of course, but the last thing he needed right now was a refresher. Now he had to fight to drag his gaze away from her mouth every time he was around her.
He knew Lilah was correct: nothing else should happen between them while they were still working together. They couldn’t risk it. Which was why he was so relieved that he had an excuse to escape across state lines.
Their dad picked them up at the airport, driving the beat-up pickup truck he’d had since Shane was in high school. He brushed off questions about what happened to the car Shane had bought for him.
“Damn thing’s in the shop,” he grumbled. “Those computers these new cars have, they’re always malfunctioning.”
“Meanwhile this one is a sneeze away from breaking down for good,” Dean said with a laugh.
Their Christmas celebration was small this year, his sister, Cassie, coming over with her family for a late breakfast and to open presents. Shane had brought an extra suitcase of gifts, mostly for the kids. They shrieked when they ripped the wrapping off the four-person laser tag set, the three of them immediately tearing the box open and heading into the backyard to play, Dean taking the last spot. The biggest reaction, though, had come when Cassie had opened Shane’s card containing a blank check to stock all the classrooms at her underfunded middle school, his face heating in embarrassment as she burst into tears.
