He chugged the second bottle and crushed the plastic before tossing it into the small recycling bin. “Unspeak your curse, witch.”
After a moment, he stretched with his whole body and opened his eyes widely. “Okay. Okay. Okay. I’m awake. I’m sober. And dear God, I need a shower.”
“Oh, oh, oh wait!” I jumped up from where I was perched on the edge of my whirlpool tub. “Before you go, could you do me a favor? I forgot my tripod, and I really need a shot for my ClosedDoors page.”
He held his hand out for my phone.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I squealed. “Give me just, like, ten minutes. I need to get ready. I’m going for that oh-I-had-so-much-sex-all-night-I-can-barely-open-my-eyes-but-here’s-my-cute-little-tush-ready-and-waiting look.” Surely there’s some sort of compromise to be found in keeping my supporters happy and not pissing off Teddy. And I was reasonably certain a few more paywalled posts on an already porny ClosedDoors account wasn’t going to fundamentally change the risk calculus with my Hope Channel morality clause.
“So, natural?” Angel asked.
“Exactly,” I said as I dug through my suitcase for the perfect pair of barely there panties.
Chapter Seven
Nolan
Don’t look at her ClosedDoors account. Don’t look at her ClosedDoors account.
I sat on the edge of my bed, freshly showered and with my phone in my hand. I’d just gotten the notification that she had a new post, and I wasn’t going to look, I absolutely was not going to look. Because if I looked, I was going to break, and I didn’t want to break, not on the very first morning implementing my new and improved Bee Strategy.
The new strategy went like this:no orgasms in Christmas Notch. Like at all. My junk was now verboten to me.
As yesterday’s shower session had shown me, I was incapable of keeping my mind off Bee when I jerked off, and after the kiss yesterday...
I groaned remembering it. The silky whisper of her tongue against mine. The wicked coax of her lips. It had been a kiss that saidI’d like to sit on your face, please, and there was simply no way in heaven, hell, or Vermont that I’d be able to stroke myself without thinking of it. Or without thinking of the two kisses that had come after—each as filthy as the first, and yet hauntingly innocent too, because whenever we’d break off the kiss, I’d pull back to see her looking up at me with wide, pretty eyes, and her expression showing nothing but total commitment to Felicity. It was like she had no idea stage kisses were a thing. And she definitely had no idea what they did to me. Even though they were the most carnal kisses I’d ever felt in my life, she clearly wasn’t trying to be carnal at all, which made me a total perv for kissing her back.
Sure, sure, I could always say that I hadn’t wanted to ruin the take, but the truth was cutting through my conscience like scissors through wrapping paper: I had wanted to kiss her back. I had wanted to feel her tongue on mine. Professionalism be damned, Steph’s warnings be damned, I’dwantedit.
But for reasons both moral and practical (but okay, more practical than moral, let’s be honest), I now had to stifle all Bee-related thoughts. We had only one other kiss scene to shoot, and if I wasn’t going to end up panting after her like a dog, I needed to cut all my fantasies off at the source.
Which was why it was a terrible idea to look at her ClosedDoors post. Terrible idea. Simply terrible.
But maybe just a quick peek...
My thumb moved on its own, muscle memory taking over as I woke up my screen and tapped the app notification to take meto her latest post. Andfuck, it was a good post. I bit my knuckle as I looked at it, a low groan working its way out of my chest.
Bianca von Honey in lacy little panties, hair tousled, bottom up in the air as she stared into the camera with hooded, come-hither eyes.
Unf.
God, to be in the same room as her, to be walking toward that bed knowing that curvaceous ass was mine to smack. To bewithher, near her, able to kiss her for real with no one watching...
My cock filled and lengthened, pushing against the towel I had wrapped around my waist, and you know what, screw the strategy, screw the plan, I would need superhuman strength to resist a picture like this, and maybe it was smarter to stop when the gingerbread lotion was all gone anyway, like how smokers quit when they’re done with a pack—
Before I could get off the bed to find the bottle, something in the picture caught my eye.
Something that looked an awful lot like a reflection of someone in the window behind Bee.
It was blurry and half-obscured by the candy-cane-print curtains, but after I zoomed in, there was no doubt it was someone holding up a phone, like they were taking the picture for her.
And then I remembered last night when I’d knocked on her door, having spent a full thirty minutes psyching myself up to ask her to read lines, and she’d answered wearing a bathrobe and an expression that made it seem like I’d pulled her awayfrom something. And the way she’d stepped out into the hall instead of staying in her doorway, like she hadn’t wanted me to see inside...
It hit me like a baton to the knee. She hadn’t been alone last night.
She’d been with someone else.
It was a mistake suggesting the dance studio for reading lines. I should have suggested Frosty’s Diner (now serving Blitzen blini!) or maybe the lobby of our kitschy inn. Or better yet, the town square, where there’d be no chance of me thinking non-Benedictine nun thoughts because I’d be freezing my beanie off.
