He was completely silent as the elevator took us to our floor and he guided me into the hallway.
“Bee, where’s your key?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “I guess you’ll have to come and find it.” And then because I’m a good person, I decided to make his job easier, and I slipped out of my coat, letting it fall to the ground. I crossed my arms over my stomach and began to peel my sweater up and—
“Oh, no, no,” he said as he rushed toward me, his eyes dark and hooded but his hands cautious as he threw my jacket over my bare stomach. “Come on. Come with me.”
He led me down the hallway, my eyes barely open as I listened to the sound of a key entering a lock.
The door opened and I tumbled inside, kicking off my white cowboy boots and sinking immediately onto the bed as my brain tried to tell my hands to take off my bra, but all my mental wires were too crossed to get the message to my fingertips.
“Ugh. It smells so much like you in here.” It was the best and the worst. I burrowed my nose into the pillow and inhaleddeeply. “Get over here,” I demanded as he locked the dead bolt and pulled the curtains closed.
“I think it’d be best if I took the floor tonight, Bee.”
I shook my head. “No. You can’t. I never get cuddles. No one cuddles in porn. Bianca wants dirty shitandcuddles. Pleaseeeee.” My eyelids grew heavier no matter how hard I tried to resist. “Please,” I mumbled.
And then finally...finallyI felt him settle in behind me as his head bowed into the crook of my neck and he slipped an arm around my waist. My body eased under the weight of him as I let every muscle uncoil.
He pulled my hair to the side as his lips brushed the skin at the back of my neck, the heat of his breath clinging to me, as he said, “This isn’t a porn, Bee. This is real life.”
Chapter Fifteen
Nolan
Thud.
Thud.
THUD.
The porn star in my arms sat bolt upright, elbowing my face in the process.
“Ow,” I complained sleepily, shoving my wounded face into the pillow. Shit, it was bright in here. The last thing I remembered was finally finding Bee’s key and then helping her back to her room—where she immediately lured me into another snuggle trap. I’d meant to stay for only a few minutes—just until she fell asleep again—but I hadn’t set an alarm. Andnow it was so bright outside and I’d been elbowed in the head and someone was pounding on Bee’s door.
Thud.
“Bee!” I heard a man call. “Open this door right now!”
“Do you have a stalker I don’t know about?” I mumbled into the pillow. “Do you need me to valiantly subdue him?”
“Shh,” Bee hissed. “It’s Teddy.”
“Teddy? The producer?” I hadn’t officially met Teddy yet, but it was hard to imagine a good reason why a Hope Channel producer would pound on his young starlet’s hotel door first thing in the morning.
“Shh!” Bee hissed again. “Don’t let him hear you!”
I blinked against the horrible sunlight, my entire body feeling as rumpled as the duvet underneath us.
“Bee,” Teddy called through the door. “If you don’t open this door, I’m calling your moms. And then they will call you. And we both know you don’t want that.”
Next to me, Bee swore. And then she looked down at me.
“You have to hide,” she whispered in an urgent voice. “If he calls my moms, it’s all over.”
“How does he know your moms? And what’s all over?”
“Peace! Equanimity! Separation of church and state!Nolan!”
