He grimaced. “I’d rather not say.”
“Why?”
“Because compared to your worst day, I’d sound like a spoiled, shallow jerk.”
“Don’t say that, Everett,” she said, caressing his shoulders. She had to move. She must. She lifted herself a few inches off his cock and settled again. They both gave restrained groans.
“One person’s suffering doesn’t compare to another’s,” she said once she’d caught her breath. “We’re not in a contest. It’s a completely private, personal experience. What you would say is your worst day is about you, no one else.”
He hesitated, his gaze lowering to her breasts. She held her breath when he ran the tip of his forefinger along the sensitive skin on the lower swell of flesh.
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. It might have been when I took my parents to the director’s screening for Stardust. Maybe you saw it—it was my first major motion picture and a colossal flop. When I looked at the expression on my father’s face when he saw me on that screen wearing tight silver pants and spouting the most moronic lines ever spoken by a human being, including during the Neolithic era, I thought I’d die of humiliation. I knew the screenplay was bad, and had a pretty good idea it was going to tank, but until I saw myself up there through my parents’ eyes, I didn’t get just how horrible it was. I was too young to tell my agent to go screw herself when she insisted the project was revolutionary and cutting-edge. I was too stupid to understand that the magic fairy dust of filmmaking is completely ineffective on a crap screenplay.” Her heart squeezed in compassion when she saw the vivid discomfort on his face. It still bothered him, even now. “After that experience, I didn’t act for nine months. I was twenty-three years old and totally pissed at myself for agreeing to be a part of such a shit project. I was convinced I was a total sellout.”
“I never saw Stardust.”
His eyes sprung wide. “Will you marry me?”
She suppressed a smile at his earnestness. “It changed your life, that day. After that, you always were extremely careful of the parts you chose. You only wanted the best, and that often wasn’t roles in the highest-budget films. You challenged yourself on independent films and foreign projects. You became the opposite of a Hollywood sellout.”
“Only because I’d prostituted myself to begin with,” he mumbled. He put his hands on her hips and flexed his arms, lifting her up on his cock. His facial muscles convulsed as he lowered her again and she sunk onto his erection. “God that feels good.”
“I think your worst day became your best. That says a lot about you.”
His eyes turned lambent as he stared at her. Sweat glazed both of their faces now. A slight sheen of it gleamed on his chiseled torso. “Thanks. That was a nice way of reframing it. I’m not so sure I deserve it, but it sure sounds better that way.”
She smiled. “You deserve it.” She circled her hips, watching his reaction. His head banged against the headboard.
“Have we talked enough?” he asked in a choked voice.
“I don’t think so.”
His hands shifted to the tops of her thighs. His long thumbs inched toward her outer sex.
“Can I make you come, then?”
“No, Everett,” she said shakily. Her body would like nothing better, but her brain wanted to stretch this moment with him . . . make it last.
He frowned. “Then tell me something really sexy. Something you’ve never told anyone before.”
She licked her upper lip nervously and tasted salt. “After you left my apartment on that day of the rainstorm,” she began quietly, “I . . . I masturbated while thinking about you fucking me.”
He stilled. A sharp glint entered his eyes, reminding Joy of a predator sighting prey. “How did you think about me fucking you?”
“Hard,” she said on a puff of exhaled air. His cock lurched inside her. She stared at his parted lips, entranced. Her clit burned. She stroked him with her pussy—quick and firm, landing back in his lap with a sharp smacking sound. “Like you were making me take it,” she grated out, “all of your cock . . . all of you.”
“Joy,” he rasped, firming his hold on her hips.
“No, Everett. No. Don’t make it end yet,” she pleaded.
He stared at her, panting. He was like a coiled spring beneath her, a receptacle of incipient energy, a keg of dynamite about to explode at the smallest provocation.
“What’s a moment you’ll remember for the rest of your life?” she asked in a rush.
“This one.”
She clamped her eyelids shut and ground down in his lap.
“Another one,” she whispered. Was his cock growing larger inside of her? It seemed to be stroking her inner walls, firing her nerves, but he wasn’t moving.