Ryan Jacobs wasn’t on the set when we arrived. he’d been given a reprieve to sleep off “jet lag” until the afternoon. Instead, Adrianne was shuttled to hair and makeup to prepare for the scene in which her character’s lab was destroyed in the accident that had made her a superhero in the first place.
Looking at the set, it apparently involved alotof water and rigging. “Let’s find a good seat,” Callan said. He’d enjoyed coming to set. He liked watching the inner workings of the movies. I wasn’t as big a fan because, like Ethan, I was going to punch Adrianne’s director in the nose as soon as this movie was over. He spoke to the people working around him as if they were dogs or worse, and he seemed intent on ruining Adrianne’s day.
He wasn’t outright rude anymore, but he would make her run the same scene, sometimes the same lines, dozens of times... and then turn around and say that they got it on the first go. It was like he was punishing her for standing up to him. For her part, Adrianne had taken the director’s behavior with more grace than I would have been able to.
Callan and I settled near to where the filming would take place. Lee looked at us with disdain but didn’t say anything. He’d tried, apparently, to have us barred from the set, but the studio execs wouldn’t allow it to happen... though we did have to sign a couple of dozen NDAs not to talk about anything that we saw unless it was an outright crime.
Adrianne came out of hair and wardrobe. Her hair was already slicked back, and the costume that she’d been put into was pre-soiled. “Even grimy, our girl looks hot,” Callan murmured to me.
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
Lee had the water valves opened above the set, and immediately, everything was drenched. “This is mid-scene,” he explained to her. “The explosion has already happened. The pipes have already burst, releasing the chemical. You’re trying to turn the pipes off and reacting to being hit with the chemical at the same time. We’ll do the beginning and the transformation another day since that’s different effects.”
Adrianne nodded. “Am I in agony?” she asked. “Or is it the knowledge of what could happen that is driving me?”
I was close enough to see the surprise on Lee’s face.Thatta girl, I thought. “Let’s try both,” the director said. “We’ll see what works better and adjust as we need to.”
Adrianne nodded, and then she waded into the soupy mess of the set. Lee gave her a three-count, and the water turned on again. It was a deluge, and although it had to be freezing, she didn’t flinch.
She threw herself into the scene as if the explosion had happened overhead and she saw the pipe burst. This take was the one in which she pretended to be in pain. Her screams made my stomach twist, and I had to hold onto my chair so that I didn’t barge into the scene to save her.
“Excellent, Adrianne!” Lee called when he called for a cut. It was the first time in a week of filming that he’d said anything positive about her performance. “Let’s try it as if you simply know what’s happening as the chemicals dump down on you.”
They reset, and this time, Adrianne didn’t shriek as she ran about. Instead, she dashed around the set as she tried to shut off the pipes, and she grew increasingly frantic in her attempts to get things shut down. Then, as she realized that she couldn’t shut the pipes off, her growing despair reached out into the studio. She began to wail, and Callan reached over and gripped my sleeve.
The scene came to an end, and Lee called for a cut. “Brilliant,” he murmured. “That was perfect.” He turned to the crew. “Let’s get set for this afternoon’s scenes with Adrianne and Ryan while she warms up.”
Adrianne murmured a thank you, and then her eyes landed on me. “Why don’t you stay here?” I asked Callan. “I’ll take her to the trailer.”
Cal nodded. “I’ll go get us lunch, all right? Text me what you both want.”
I muttered something in the affirmative, already pushing myself out of the chair. I met Adrianne at the door that led out to the back lot of trailers. She was shivering, and there were tears falling down her cheeks. I willed myself not to reach out and touch her. There were too many prying eyes here to behave in any kind of romantic way. “You were absolutely amazing,” I told her.
She smiled and swiped at her eyes. “Thank you.” She sniffled and wiped at her face again. It was hard to tell if her face was wet from the tears coming from her eyes or the water dripping from her hair. “Did you see him? He actually complimented me.”
“It’s about time,” I said, thinking about some of the brilliant things I’d seen her do in the last week. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes, okay? Before you catch your death.”
Adrianne snorted as we walked out into the sunshine. “That’s a myth, you know,” she said.
“Hypothermia is not,” I pointed out. We stopped at her trailer, and she stood just outside as I quickly checked things over. It was empty, thankfully, and I ushered her inside. “I’ll start a hot shower for you. You peel out of those clothes.”
I left her standing in a growing puddle in the main area of the trailer in favor of getting the shower on and heated for her. The bathroom was tiny, but the showerhead had surprisingly nice water pressure.
When I opened the door, a naked Adrianne stood in front of me. She was still shivering, but she didn’t cover herself, and I didn’t know where to look first. Her body was curvy and perfect, andwhyhad I waited so long to touch her again?
“Shower with me?” she asked.
Saints couldn’t have said no to such a request. I wrenched my shirt over my head and dropped it to the ground, enjoying the need that spread across her face.
“Come here,” I said, popping the button on my jeans and pushing them and my boxers to the ground and kicking them out of the way.
Adrianne stepped forward, and I tugged her into the bathroom and beneath the spray of the shower. We had to leave the door of the stall open so that we both fit, but I was so busy kissing her, licking into her mouth, that I didn’t think about the chill at my back. Feeling her soft curves pressed against me was sheer heaven.
Her fingers slid up the nape of my neck and into my hair, as if she was afraid I would disappear. “I don’t mind an audience,” I told her. “But for the first time? I wanted you all to myself. I didn’t want there to even be a chance that we’d be overheard.”
She shivered against me. The hard tips of her nipples brushed my chest, and my cock surged against her belly. “It was only a week,” she said, cheeks turning pink. “But I feel like I’ve been waiting for you forever.”
Fuck, how could I ever resist her?