Neevah
A storm in repose.
Genius at rest.
Canon asleep in my bed.
I should wake him because I know he has things to do before tomorrow’s first day on location, but he’s exhausted. And as much as I’d like to think it’s the potency of this pussy that put him out . . . it’s more than that. The man’s been working sixteen- to eighteen-hour days for months. I don’t want to touch him in case he wakes, but with my gaze I trace the powerful lines of his shoulders and the defined muscles of his torso and abs. He’s dark and rich in my sheets, like chocolate left on my pillow. I could eat him up.
I did.
Canon’s pleasure fed mine. The taste of him, the blissful agony on his face when his control broke, the rough tug of his fingers in my hair.
I’m lucky he didn’t pull out a chunk of it. This is no time for jokes, but it’s better than fear and uncertainty while I wait for my test results. And if bad jokes don’t distract me, these lines I need to nail down will. I grab the script from my nightstand and try to absorb the words swimming before my tired eyes.
A yawn from Canon’s side of the bed tears my attention from the page.
He props his head in one hand. “I wouldn’t get too attached to that.”
Now that he’s awake, I can touch him, so I run one finger over his high cheekbone and brush across his incongruously long lashes. “Don’t get attached to what?”
“That version of the script.” He kisses my finger and drags himself to sit up against my headboard, swallowing all the space with the breadth of his shoulders. “Verity is doing rewrites.”
“No. I just learned these lines.” I slap the script against my forehead and let it fall to the bed. “Are you kidding me?”
“It won’t be that significant. It needed more emotional pull. The stakes didn’t feel high enough the way it was written originally.”
“And by originally you mean the way I just learned it?”
“Sorry. Them’s the breaks. The script sometimes evolves once we get into it.” He must see the dismay on my face. “We know you’ll be getting new lines. We’ll be patient.”
I look at him disbelievingly. Patient?
“Okay. I’ll try.” He laughs, linking our fingers on the sheets. “But we do slow things down a lot when we shoot on film instead of digital. There will be more rehearsals. More time to nail it because it’s so much more expensive. We can’t afford a lot of throwaway takes.”
I know he meant that to reassure me, but a screw turns in my chest tighter at the thought of less room for error.
“How long did you let me sleep?” Canon reaches for his phone, which goes off just as he grabs it. “You set my alarm?”
“You said you still have things to do, but I also thought it wouldn’t hurt to nap for ten minutes.”
“You wore me out.” He pulls me from my side of the bed to his lap, and I’m completely unresistant, looping my arms around his neck. He palms my hip through the sheet.
“You complaining?” I nip his earlobe with my teeth.
“What do you think?” He tilts his head to capture my lips, deepening the kiss, drawing my tongue into his mouth. The script forgotten, I turn until my legs are spread over him and I’m pressing him into the headboard. The sheet wrapped around my breasts falls away, revealing that they are naked and tight and ready for his attention again.
He kisses down my throat and takes the tip of one breast into his mouth. A jolt of pleasure steals my breath, and my knees tighten at his hips. I slide my fingers into his hair. He groans at my shoulder, traces my spine and kisses my collarbone before pulling back.
“I need to go,” he says, gently setting me off his lap and swinging his long legs over the side of the bed.
I stare at the broad expanse of his back, tapering down to the narrow waist and tight ass. I wish I was a painter and could skillfully commit him to canvas. Or a sculptor like Linh’s father, molding his muscles into clay or chiseled stone. Or even a musician like Monk and could set this feeling to music.
Stay.
It whispers through my head, and I’m so close to asking him, but I don’t want to be the clingy girlfriend who distracts him from work.
Girlfriend.