I knew he was thinking of the lions too, and of those other animals who had shaken the ground with their footsteps. As the sun dropped behind the edge of the distant hills, he leaned over and kissed me.
It was not the way he had kissed me before—not quiet, not gentle, not testing. He bruised my lips and ground his body against mine, wild and primitive, forbidden. His hand unbuttoned the front placket of my shirt and slipped inside. His palm skimmed over my bra, cupping my breast. “Is it all right?” he whispered.
I had known it was coming to this; I had known from the moment he’d left me at my door at the lodge that first night. And although I didn’t have the experience I knew he would expect, or the skill and finesse of other women, I could no more stop him than reverse the flow of my own blood.
I nodded and felt him pull my shirt over my head, but his hands were always on me, running down my back and unhooking my bra and pushing my hair away from my face. He picked me up and half carried, half dragged me inside the tent on the set, laying me down on the narrow cot. Kneeling on the rough wooden floor, he pulled off my sneakers and socks, then wriggled my shorts and my underwear over my hips.
My cheeks were burning, and I reached for the blanket to cover myself, but this was only a movie set and there wasn’t any. I tried to cross my hands in front of me, but Alex wrapped them around his neck and kissed me again. “You’re beautiful,” he said. He ran his fingertips gently over my body, the way a sightless person learns another’s face, and as I opened to his touch I started to think that maybe I was as beautiful as he believed.
I didn’t know how to touch him, or what exactly to do, but Alex didn’t seem to mind. He stood up to pull off his own clothes, and I stared at the lines of his body. I realized it was like looking into the sun—you shouldn’t do it, because you’d turn your face away and be blind to everything else.
When his mouth came over my breast, I heard the sound of my own voice, or maybe the rise of the wind. Darkness slipped inside the tent with us, covering our bodies by degrees until I could just see a sliver of Alex here and there, illuminated by moonlight, and feel his skin sticking to mine. His hand moved between my legs and his words fell at my temples and I closed my eyes.
I saw the Serengeti, filled with animals as it had been ages ago. They chirruped and whistled and cried in the night; they moved in a measured parade. Overhead was a banner of stars that slipped under my skin, swelling and shining and aching for freedom that came only when Alex sank deep inside.
When I finally stopped quivering, Alex began. He called out my name, collapsing on top of me. He looked at me with the eyes of a lion.
“Is that the first time you’ve ever—you know?” he whispered.
I turned away, mortified. “You can tell?”
Alex smiled. “It’s the way you’re staring at me. Like I just finished creating the heavens and the earth.”
I tried to push him off me, to put a little space between us. Now that it was over, I wasn’t sure it ever should have happened. “I’m sorry,”
I murmured. “I don’t do this with many men.”
Alex rolled us onto our sides. “I know,” he said. I flushed again, thinking of all the women he must have slept with; of how much more they instinctively knew how to do. He caught my chin, making me look up at him. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that I like feeling you’re mine.” He kissed me softly. “So you won’t be doing this with many men, after all.”
He smiled as he said it, but he tightened his grip possessively, as if I might actually have plans of leaving. I hesitantly traced my finger around the muscles of his chest and felt him stir inside me. I pushed my hips closer to his and heard him groan. “Jesus,” he said. “What you do to me . . .”
I pretended to hold him back. “How do I know you’re not acting?”
I said.
Alex grinned. “Cassie,” he said, “when I’m acting, I’m neverthisgood.”
IF SVEN, THE STUNT MAN, HADN’T COME DOWN WITH THE FLU, ALEX and I wouldn’t have had a fight. But that Monday morning—the morning after—I arrived at the set, trying to act as casual as possible, only to find out that the scene scheduled for filming had been changed.
Instead of Sven leaping from a low cliff with the infamous black rope, Alex and Janet Eggar would be filming the one love scene in the movie.
Janet Eggar was a young actress who, Alex had said, was doing her very first GLS—Gratuitous Love Scene. Bernie had as much as told me that Janet’s role was completely insubstantial; that it had been written into the script simply because if she showed her boobs, people would pay to see the movie. I watched her move jerkily from the costume designer to the makeup crew. She stood with her back to me and opened her robe so that base could be applied to her body.
I kept trying to catch Alex’s eye. He had arrived on the set long before I had that morning to catch up with the changes in schedule, so I hadn’t had the ride over to the set to see what he made of last night.
He had driven me back to the lodge and left me at the door of my room with a sweet goodnight kiss that made my insides hum. But thinking of gossip, he’d gone off to his own room and left me to lie awake all night, naked beneath the bedroom ceiling fan, touching myself in the places he had hours before.
As the sun came up, I told myself once again that I was not going to expect anything. For all I knew, he did this with some member of the cast or crew of every movie. I could think whatever I wanted to, but I realized that any promises I made myself were destined to be broken.
Alex was wearing a pair of jeans and no shirt, and he was in a foul mood. He barked orders to the prop people; he yelled at Charlie, the gaffer, for getting in his way. When Jennifer brought him a copy of his script, apologizing for the coffee stain across one page, I thought he would take her head off.
But when he looked at Janet, white-faced and shaking in front of the camera equipment, he seemed to soften. I watched his eyes travel the length of her robe and then return to her face. He walked over to Bernie and murmured something, and the director held up his hands for quiet. “This is going to be a closed set,” he announced. “Everyone not immediately involved with the filming of this scene can go back to the lodge and meet here after lunch.”
I watched Bernie lead Janet to the tent, to the cot where Alex and I had made love the night before. He spoke to her and gestured with his hands and she nodded and asked a couple of questions. In the distance I heard the last of the jeeps driving away, and I realized only a handful of people were left.
I wasn’t in any way connected with the filming of the scene—any technical expertise I could offer wasn’t going to help someone like Janet Eggar. But I saw her reclining on the narrow cot, and then her features changed into my own, and I knew that there was no way I was going to leave.
Bernie walked over to me. “You’re still here?” he said. “You didn’t hear what I said, maybe?”
