He took a step closer, leaning an arm up above me, capturing me against the open fridge. Cold at my back, him warm at my front. I shivered.
It was absurd, but I wanted to reach up a hand to his face. He was cold too, in spite of his hot body. I could see it there. A coldness deep inside him, shining through his icy gaze. A coldness and an emptiness that hadn’t been there earlier in the night.
I gasped, and when I did, my chest rose—including my breasts. The small movement pressed my chest into his.
But I couldn’t even care about it because what I was so shocked by what I’d just realized.
“You aren’t Janus,” I whispered. “You’re Leander.”
He looked surprised but smiled with pleasure.
“Now that, Ms. Robins, is a talent. Only our birth mother could tell us apart. Our adoptive parents were constantly getting us confused. The world too.”
I blinked, the whole evening coming into focus. I put the same question to him I had put to Milo earlier. “How often do y’all do this? Switch?”
He opened his eyes, the picture of innocence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And if you value your NDA, neither do you.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m a locked box when it comes to secrets. Not only is it part of my job but it’s just…” I shrugged. “It’s always been my way. All my friends knew I was the one to come talk to when they needed to spill and it would never get out.”
Leander arched an eyebrow, and was it just my imagination, or had he leaned in even further? My breath came shorter as he spoke. “I know nothing on your clients has ever hit the press. And we dug. But maybe they just happened to live like little angels.”
His proximity was making me giddy so my laugh might have been a little shrill. “Excellent. Then I did my job well. Because they were teenage girls who made mistakes like everyone else. They shouldn’t have been expected to be angels. That’s a bullshit standard our society holds young women to.”
His curious look returned. “But nothing ever broke about them.”
“Just because society shouldn’t be made of mobs of internet trolls doesn’t mean it isn’t. And while they were freaking children, minors who weren’t even of age. Hell yeah, I protected them using every trick I had in the book.” My words were coming out passionately by the end because this was a subject I was passionate about.
Too many in this industry were happy to use up young talent with no concern for the mental health of the kids involved. They had people trying to use them from every angle while they were a viable income source—ad agencies, TV networks, their agents, their families, everyone else in the industry who peripherally relied on them for jobs, down to the audio producers and craft services.
It was an insane amount of pressure and I was surprised more young stars didn’t flame out by their twenties considering some of the stuff I’d seen go on around my girls.
“So what you’re saying is, you can keep a secret,” he said, leaning in even further, and considering our chests were already so close—
I gasped again, but this time because I realized his face was leaning close to mine. And I—
I was so stupid I actually thought he was going to kiss me.
When he didn’t, and his head kept moving, I was mortified. Oh Jesus Christ, was he just reaching for something in the fridge, and I thought he’d been about to kiss me of all things!
But then those selfsame lips made contact—with my neck.
I shuddered at the touch.
Holy shit, his lips were soft.
“Is this okay?” he asked, the gentlest whisper in the otherwise quiet night.
’Twas the night after the movie premiere and all were asleep in the house, not a creature was stirring, except for the exceptionally hot movie star necking with the horny woman who was in way over her head.
“I— Um—”
He started to pull away and in a panic, I reached up and yanked him back towards me. I was shocked at myself for the action and let go almost as soon as I’d touched him.
But when Leander chuckled, a slow, deep laugh, it had me quivering in places I couldn’t even name. I’d never felt anything like—
I inhaled sharply, half of me wanting to flee back up the stairs and the other half wanting to grab his neck again and drag his lips back to my neck.
The sane part of my mind fought to the surface. Client. Leander was a client!
Leander was also Leander freaking Mavros.
So was I just another fangirl to him? An easy lay when he was feeling randy in the middle of the night?
I pulled away from his lips on my neck with a gasp.