“Uh, sorry to interrupt anything. I know it’s late.” He looked both ways down the hallway. “Embarrassingly enough, I couldn’t get the phone in my room to work and I couldn’t find that directory thing they gave us so I couldn’t text you and—”
“It’s okay,” I said, taking a step toward him. There was a nervous energy about him tonight, like I could feel his body thrumming with electricity, and all I wanted to do was place a hand against his chest to remind him to breathe.
“Right. I just... you were great today.”
“Thanks.” The poorly lit hallway hid the blush gathering on my cheeks.
“I was thinking we could run lines tomorrow? Our call time is pretty late.”
“We could do that.”
“The dance studio around noon?” he asked. “I think we have to meet up there later this week to rehearse for the ball scene.”
“Oh God,” I said. “I almost forgot we had to dance.”
“Can’t be any harder than kissing,” he said softly.
“Can’t be,” I replied.
“Well, good night, Bee Hobbes,” he said.
“Good night, Nolan Shaw.”
I watched as he walked down to the very end of the hallway. The last room on the left.
And as he reached into his pocket for his key, waving at me once more before ducking inside his room, I remembered that I definitely slipped Nolan Shaw some tongue earlier that day during our kiss.
And Nolan Shaw had returned the favor. Tongue and all. I guess I wasn’t the only one who forgot to keep it PG.
He really was the bad boy of INK, wasn’t he?
I slept with the curtains wide open, because if I didn’t, I would definitely sleep through all my alarms. Sleep didn’t comeeasy. I was too frustrated and horny. Every time I closed my eyes and let my fingers trail down my breastbone, I saw Nolan wringing his beanie in his hands. Biting his lip. Standing in an elevator. Holding my gaze. Sliding a key card into the door of a hotel room with me waiting on the other side. And finally I gave in—if anything, just so I could get some sleep.
Something about masturbating to my costar felt like a slippery slope that led straight to breaking all of Teddy’s rules, but it certainly wasn’t enough to stop me and soon I was biting into my pillow, thankful that I’d remembered to pack the charger for my vibrator.
When I finally fell asleep, I couldn’t stop myself from dreaming of our kiss over and over again. I hadn’t been so turned on by a kiss since Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart kissed at the end ofTwilightwith Iron and Wine playing in the background. (Turned out I wanted to beandkiss both EdwardandBella. I still mourn the fact that the porn parody ofTwilightwas shot before my time.)
As I sat up early the next morning, still slumped against my headboard, the sound of someone jiggling my doorknob woke me up completely.Please don’t be a Christmas-themed serial killer.I tiptoed carefully to my door and peered out the peephole.
“Angel?” I asked as I unlocked my dead bolt to find a surprised, partially drunk, and partially already hungover Angel standing in the hallway, limply holding his room key in his hand.
“Oops,” he said through a hiccup. “Wrong room. I can’t find my room, so all the rooms are the wrong room.”
I snorted out a laugh and pulled him inside before closing the door behind us. “Let me get you some water. Please tellme you haven’t just been wandering the halls of this place all night.”
“No, no, no,” he said with a yawn. “We stayed at the bar until two-ish. And then Prancer gave us a ride home.” He nodded with eyes closed. “Salt of the earth. Strippers are. Salt. Of. The. Earth.”
I reached into my minifridge that didn’t actually work and handed him a room-temperature bottle of water, which he chugged in three gulps. “And then Luca and I went back to his room—”
“Oh?”
He held a finger up and shook it in my face. “And we fell asleep watching an old Celine Dion concert.”
“Oh,” I said, somehow both unsurprised and disappointed. “That actually sounds really romantic.”
He stumbled over to my minifridge, taking my second and last complimentary bottle of water. “Do not. Do not even go there. My brain hurts too much to even consider what it might mean that I was perfectly content to fall asleep to an old Celine Dion concert and innocent cuddles, because that could only mean two things. Either I’m old or I’m in love, and I am neither of those things.”
“Or you’re both,” I offered.
