Looking at Bee now, all silk and corset and big green eyes,I didn’t think want was going to be a problem. Rather the opposite in fact.
“So let’s walk through it here before we start,” Gretchen went on. “We have the first two lines, and then I think that if you reached for each other’s hands...”
I knew we’d have to touch eventually; of course we would. It was our job to be Felicity and the duke and they were in love and so of course they would touch in the safe, Hope Channel way that Hope Channel characters touched. But as Bee looked up at me and held out her hands, I felt a nervousness I hadn’t experienced since ninth grade when Jake Casebolt asked if I wanted to hang out with him under the bleachers after dark. Like there was nothing I wanted more in the entire world, and also I was scared to death of getting it at the same time.
I bit the inside of my lower lip to keep my face from doing any stupid face things and extended my hands too. At Gretchen’s nod, I wrapped my fingers around Bee’s, and so for the first time since we’d met, we touched.
Over the course of my life, I’d touched probably thousands of people—and I’d had sex with a not-insignificant percentage of that number—and yet nothing could have prepared me for what it felt like to hold Bee’s hands.Bianca von Honey’s hands. Because for the last six years, I’d fantasized nonstop about the very fingers I was clutching right now. I’d watched her use them on herself, on costars, on friends; I’d watched these fingers tease and stroke and rub. I’d worked myself raw thinking of them in my mouth, and around my cock, of them twisting in my hair as I sank deep inside her, and now they were wrapped firmly in my grasp, and—
“Okay, and then Felicity says her line,” Gretchen said, breaking me out of my hand-induced trance.
I looked over at our director to see her squinting at us, like we were a pile of IKEA pieces waiting to be assembled.
“Hmm,” she said, lifting her hand, and then tilting her head. “What if you tried touching her waist, Nolan? Are we comfortable with that?”
A small smile curled Bee’s mouth. “It’s fine by me,” she said, and I had to wonder what it was like for her to work through intimacy on this scale when normally she was negotiating things like whether or not there would be a condom covering the Hitachi Magic Wand.
I nearly smiled too—moving from porn to the Hope Channel had to be pretty fucking hilarious—but at the last minute, I remembered that she didn’t know thatIknew that she was Bianca von Honey. And I didn’t think Gretchen knew either.
So instead of smiling, I chewed on my lip. And then at Gretchen’s murmur, I took Bee’s waist with my hand.
Bee sucked in a breath as I touched her, and I couldn’t tell if it was a pleased breath or an impatient one, but for my own part, I was struggling to breathe at all. Just feeling the corset move with her inhales and exhales... feeling the boned stays under the silk...
Imagining the lacework on the back and the way her breasts would need lots of petting and kissing after being cooped up in the corset all day...
I had to tighten all the muscles in my arm so that she wouldn’t feel my hand trembling against her. And my dickwasnotcooperating with me right now, but who could blame it? Becausecorset.
CORSET.
“And then it’s the line about Felicity staying in your time,” Gretchen said, flipping a script page. “Then it’s the kiss—maybe if she touched you first before you lean in to kiss her? That’ll warm it up a little.”
“I could touch his jaw?” Bee volunteered. “Press my hand against his face and then look into his eyes?”
“That sounds good,” I heard myself saying. Gruffly. I cleared my throat. “I mean, to warm up the kiss and all.”
And then without any other warning, Bee did it. She pressed her palm against my jaw and peered up at me. Like I was the only person in the entire world. Her fingertips ever so gently stroked my cheek, rasping over the stubble and curling into where my hair waved over my ear.
I couldn’t help but close my eyes.
“Nolan, that’sperfect,” Gretchen said, sounding happy. “I love that with you closing your eyes. Okay and then you’ll lean in—count one, two, three, and Nolan says his line—and then kiss! Shit, okay, the light is already changing,” she said before we could actually get to the kiss. “Do we want to do another quick run-through? Do we have anything we want to change to make it feel better? Or do you feel good?”
Bee shook her head, dropping her hand from my face so fast you’d think my jaw was made of exploding phone batteries.
“No,” she said. “I’m ready.”
I nodded in agreement. Even though I definitely wasn’tready to have Bee’s corseted waist under my palm again, and I definitelydefinitelywasn’t ready to feel her lips on mine.
I could barely handle rehearsing the prekiss blocking. What the hell was I going to do when we actually kissed? Even a stage kiss would have her mouth under mine, her breath mingling with my own, her scent and her warmth all around me.
Pure as the driven snow, Nolan.
Pure as the driven snow.
I couldn’t fuck this up.
As Bee was looked over one final time by the hair and makeup artists—and Pearl reemerged from a centering meditation somewhere—I popped a breath mint and tried to imagine I was the duke. A Hope Channel duke who’d never had sex and who never thought about sex and who’d never even seen two horses doing it in a field or whatever.
The duke of no boners. The softest duke who’d ever softed. That was me.
