Adrianne wrapped her arms around my neck. She hugged me for a long while, and I melted into her embrace. “You were so brave on the plane,” she said into my neck. “I was really proud of you.”
“I shouldn’t be so afraid to begin with,” I said. “It’s silly for a grown man to bethatafraid of something that people do on a daily basis.”
Adrianne tipped her head back so that I could see her face. “I’m terrified to sleep in a room big enough for someone to easily hide in,” she said. “I’m literally a grown woman who has become so terrified of being alone that I’m not sure how to even do it anymore. Does that make me silly?”
I scoffed and brushed her hair back from her face. “Of course not,” I said. “You’re going through a traumatic experience. I would expect there to be lingering fears.”
“So why is my trauma-related fear normal, but yours is silly? Because you’re a man?”
Well, shit. “Uhm... I have no response to that.”
Adrianne buried her face against my neck again and inhaled. “Your fears aren’t silly,” she said.
I cleared my throat and tried to push down the desire to just shrug everything off and clam up. “Thank you,” I said. Her lips brushed my throat, and I shivered. “Adrianne.”
She nipped at my throat, and I cupped the back of her head. “I was thinking about giving you a reward for being so brave,” she said. “Would that be all right?”
Before I could formulate a proper answer, I felt her hands on my belt, pulling it free of the loops. When the belt went loose, she went after the button on my jeans. I tipped her chin up so that she was looking at me and put my thumb on her plush bottom lip. “Are you going to put me in your mouth, Princess?”
She nodded and then reached up to jerk her shirt over her head. She stood in front of me wearing a black lacy bra and a cheeky smirk. “That was the plan.”
Fuck, she’s perfect. I glanced around the tent and saw a chair that was pointing away from the entrance flap. “Come here,” I said to her and walked her over to it. I sat and finished opening my fly so that my cock spilled out of the front of my jeans. “Get on your knees for me?”
I saw a shiver run through her, and she lowered herself to the ground. Adrianne used her hands on my thighs to steady herself, and she leaned in and swallowed as much of my cock into her mouth as she could fit. I groaned at the warm, wet perfection that was her mouth. “You are so beautiful, “I crooned at her.
Then, I heard a sound that could turn blood into ice.Click. Click. Click. The sound of a camera going off.
We froze.
16
ADRIANNE
This could not be happening. I could feel the ground beneath my knees, Callan’s thighs beneath my hands, but this had to be a dream... or a nightmare. “Cal?”
He put a finger to his lips. “Shh.” He quickly reached down and tucked himself back into his jeans. “Sit tight, okay? I’ll sort it out.”
Callan stood, stepped around me, and headed for the seam of the tent. I slid into the chair that he vacated and hid my face in my hands.
What was I thinking?
Doing something like that in a damn tent?
It wasn’t like the trailer back in California. There wasn’t a lock, and any sounds we made would clearly be heard by anyone near enough outside. My hands trembled at the possibility. We’d gotten so used to being able to do what we wanted that I’d just... stopped being careful.
I was suddenly aware that I was shirtless. I nearly toppled off the chair picking it up and shoving it back over my head. By the time Callan came back, carrying a camera with a high-powered lens, I was dressed but still trembling. “I bought the man’s camera,” he said, holding it up. “He didn’t have any pictures of us in the files, but I may have told him that if he didn’t leave, I’d find a place to ‘lose’ him all the way out here. I’m pretty sure he left a cloud of dust behind him, he took off so fast.”
He was smiling like he expected me to find this funny, and I might have if I wasn’t so afraid. “What if hesawus?” I asked. “Even if he didn’t get a picture. It only takes one person running their mouth on social media, and then... ” I buried my face in my hands. “It’s all over.”
Callan dropped to his knees in front of me. “He wasn’t anywhere close enough to hear us,” he promised. “He was looking for you and Ryan here, to get pictures that confirmed your relationship, but he was outside the wrong tent.”
I shook my head. “I should haveneverlet the studio talk me into letting the world think that Ryan and I were together. It was stupid.”
“They didn’t give you much of a choice.”
Disgust welled up in my gut. “There’s always achoice, Cal. I just made the selfish one to protect my career.”
He reached out to touch my chin, but I moved as far as I could back in the chair, and he dropped his hand, not willing to touch me if I didn’t want him to. “Adrianne, your career is important to you. None of us would want you to give it up for us.”