I step closer and he slips an arm around my waist. For minutes, neither of us speak. I don’t know if Canon is lost in the myriad things he must have to do before we start shooting tomorrow, but I’m not. My mind is clear of everything but him and this moment with the stars as our chaperones. When he finally speaks, his words surprise me.
“Mama loved photographing at night, too.” He stares up at the sky. “She thought the darkness, the stars, were almost as beautiful as the sunset. You know what an aspect ratio is, I assume. The ratio of an image’s width to its height. Well, she used to look up at the sky and say aspect ratio infinity: immeasurable.”
“I wish I could have met her,” I whisper, squeezing his hand.
“She would have loved you.”
And all of a sudden the question, the one I’ve promised myself I will not ask, enters my head even though I’ve banned it from my thoughts.
And could you love me?
It’s still so early, too early for me to put much stock in whatever he would say.
But if I’m honest with myself about what I feel for him . . . I can’t be. Not yet. My feelings are like a priceless carpet, unrolled little by little until it fills the room. And we are really just getting started.
I thought our walk was as aimless as our conversation, which meandered from our childhoods, to our heroes, to the scenes we’ll shoot tomorrow, but there was some direction. He was guiding and I didn’t even notice until we arrive at my cottage door.
He looks down at me under the light of the small porch.
“Come inside,” I whisper, glancing around, searching for prying eyes.
“I will, but only to kiss you because these folks don’t get that for free.”
We laugh and I fumble to get the door open. As soon as we’re inside, I’m in his arms. Our mouths fuse with immediate passion, lust that has lain low and waited to strike. Walking me back the few steps to my bedroom, he doesn’t bother turning on the light, and gives me a gentle push to the bed. He feathers kisses over my cheeks, down my neck, lingering at my breasts to pull my dress away so he can suck hard, worshiping each nipple with lips and teeth for long moments. My legs spread beneath him, and I grind up against the steel of his cock. His fingers find me, stroking along the seam of my pussy, filling the aching, empty, waiting void with three fingers and then four and it’s still not as much as he would be. I cannot get his belt off, his jeans undone fast enough.
“Neev,” he whispers into my neck. “Damn, I missed you.”
It’s only been three days. Three days multiplied by interminable.
“Fuck me, Canon,” I beg, sliding my own panties down my legs as far as I can get them, down to my knees.
“I don’t have a condom.”
“I took my insurance physical for the movie.” I blink up at him, panting and starved. “I’m clean and on the pill. I haven’t been with anyone but you since then.”
“Same.” He pulls back a little, his eyes burning and intent. “Are you saying we can—”
“Yeah.” I flip onto all fours on my bed, panties still ringing my knees, and pull up my sundress, offering him my bare ass.
“Damn,” he mutters, positioning himself behind me, the jangle of his buckle, the susurrus of the ocean the only sounds in the room. “I’ve never done this before.”
“What?” I laugh and pull one cheek, spreading myself for him. “Now I know for a fact you’ve hit it from the back.”
His answering chuckle is husky, but there’s a note of . . . something. I look over my shoulder. “What’s wrong? You don’t want to?”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever done this raw, with nothing. You’re the only one.”
It strikes me that Canon won at Sundance when he was twenty-one years old. He’s been swimming in the shark-infested waters of entertainment nearly half his life. A man like that would have had to, by necessity, approach every encounter, sexual or romantic, as a potential snare. As a possible trap, or at the very least, as an ill-motivated act. He’d have to vet a woman before even considering this kind of vulnerability. The trust this must require of him.
I sit up and face him, letting my dress fall back around my hips and legs. I cup one side of his face. “If you’re not comfortable, we can—”
He silences me with a kiss—a craving, intense thing that sends subcutaneous shivers burrowing beneath my skin to skitter over my bones. A tender thing that disarms all my anxieties, my worries. He breaks our kiss long enough to pull the dress over my head and toss it aside. We tug at his clothes until they fall in a heap by the bed, and there’s nothing between us. We’re skin to skin. Our heartbeats strain for each other through our chests. My hands travel over him in claiming sweeps. He is suede and silk and leather, smooth and hard and rough, a decadence of textures between my sheets.