Just... good.
I finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Kallum?” I whispered, even though we were alone with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law at the moment.
“Yeah?” His eyes were dark enough to reflect part of the movie—cottages and snow.
“What else would we do on our date?”
“Well.” His Adam’s apple moved up and then back down again. “I think I’d try to kiss you.”
Kiss.For as much as we’d done—lap dances and orgasms galore—we still hadn’t kissed. Because we both knew that kissing wouldn’t be for research. If we kissed, it would be because we wanted to kiss each other for the sheer hell of it.
If we kissed, we couldn’t keep up the pretense that what was happening between us was only about our movie.
Panic flared at the idea, at someone else being able to touch a heart that had taken so much work and anguish to claw back into my own rib cage again, but there was more than panic inside me, there was craving and lust and the chest-fluttering feeling and then I was leaning forward and our mouths brushed together.
Soft and warm.
Slow.
His beard did tickle, but in a way that made me want to rub against him like a cat, and when he parted my lips with his own, I tasted mint and ChapStick and the faintest bit of popcorn. His tongue was silky against mine, slick and skilled, and I whimpered, which earned me a rough groan. Abruptly I was hauled out of my seat and dragged onto his lap.
I parted my thighs to straddle him, and the minute my center came into contact with the hard-on trapped in his jeans, we both grunted, our mouths crashing together once again as I began grinding on him. He shoved a hand up my shirt to find a breast, which he squeezed and fondled and stroked over my bra.
This is all backward, I thought as I pulled back to stare at his half-hooded eyes and his kiss-swollen mouth. Kisses were supposed to come before lap dances. Chest flutters before orgasms. Movie dates before marriages and restaurant chains.
But I couldn’t find it in me to care. Maybe this was the wrong way around, maybe I should be embarrassed that I was thirty-two and making out in a movie theater like I was seventeen, but Kallum had that way of making anything even close to embarrassment melt away. Of making everything fun and perfect andlight.
And even though it was temporary, I couldn’t help feeling like it was a gift. A gift I’d never forget, even after we left Christmas Notch, and each other, behind.
Chapter Fourteen
Kallum
I sat in a glistening red sleigh wearing furry red pants and an unbuttoned Santa jacket, and I had my bits tucked into a flesh-colored pouch and ready for action as a snow machine whirred to life behind me. Ya know, just normal pizza mogul shit.
It’d been two days since my date with Winnie, and all I could think about was kissing her. It gave me foolish hope. We shared the kind of kisses that made me want to make playlists and overthink about birthday presents. But we only had four measly days left. And then that would be a wrap onSanta Baby. What could possibly change in four days?
Jack held a hand out for Winnie as she stepped into the sleigh. “It’s just like we rehearsed the other night,” he said. “Choreography. That’s all it is.”
Winnie nodded confidently as she straddled my thighs. The short buffalo check dress she wore was tailored so perfectly to her chest that it gave me a semi. She leaned forward and the scalloped lace of her red bra—which was part of her costume today—peeked out the edge of her bodice.
Today was the big sex scene. All the others had consisted of short and simple choreography or had been snippets for montages, but this was the first (and longest) sex scene in the whole movie. Even though Winnie was putting on her brave face, her nerves were in the details. Her trembling fingers. The way she bit the inside of her lip so she didn’t ruin her makeup.
“You good?” I asked under my breath.
She gave me a small nod as she let her inner thighs settle around my lap, but she still didn’t sit all the way down, which irritated me just a bit.
“Get comfortable, Winnie,” Jack said. “You’re not going to hurt Kallum.” He chuckled to himself. “He might actually like that.”
Winnie laughed and let herself fully settle in my lap.
I studied her expression, looking for a hint. She’d been in this exact same position just the other night in the dark movie theater. Why was this so different now?
Sure, there were the lights, camera, and crew. And this scene really was a doozy, but I still took it a little personally... and then promptly hated myself for it. This wasn’t about me. Or even us.
This was work. Winnie and I were doing our job. That was it.
“Just signal if either of you need to come up for air,” Jack told us before he rejoined the bare-bones crew waiting to get started.Miss Crumpets was in a portable playpen next to him, snuffling around for her favorite stuffed carrot.
