Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (26 page)

No! God, don’t open your lips!

Too late. He felt my acceptance, my welcoming invitation, and his tongue slipped into my mouth. Our heads were turning and twisting and I was lost in a sweet pleasure, as if he was kissing my whole body simultaneously. His tongue was searching and questing and then mine was joining it, and any plan I’d had to blame it on him, afterward, evaporated because I was kissing him back.

His hands came up and cupped my cheeks and they felt so big, so warm that I felt my whole body weaken and slump forward against him, my breasts squashing against his chest. One hand slid down my side and around my back and held me to him, and a crazy thought flashed through my head:
I’m home, now. This is where I was always supposed to be.

He was rubbing my back softly, crumpling the fabric of my top against my skin, and suddenly I was very aware of things like
flesh
and
skin
and the fact that I could just be naked against him, if it wasn’t for all these stupid clothes. I could feel the way his muscled chest pressed into my breasts, my nipples aching from the contact. I could feel him step forward, crushing me against the wall from ankle to shoulder, and then—yes—the hard throb of his cock through his pants, the head of it against my thigh.

God. My
thigh.
Quite a way down my thigh. I mean, he was big all over but I hadn’t assumed—I could feel myself going mushy inside.

The kiss was changing. Both of us were letting our mouths open, lips meeting hungrily and then breaking for an instant, our breath panting out of us, eyes closed as we searched for each other. My hands were tracing down over the hard contours of his back, delighting at the sheer size of him—

Wait, when did I even put my arms around him? I hadn’t meant to do that!

My fingers had a life of their own, skimming around his trim waist, feeling the hard leather of his belt against my pinky fingers, ready to slide down and grab his ass.

He was leaning into me and a low growl came from his throat, vibrating through me. His hands slid from my back and he pressed me even harder against the wall. His palms landed on my waist.

Slid around to my stomach.

Rose up to cup my—

Breaking the kiss wasn’t enough. I had to rip my whole body away from his and go stumbling across the floor away from him. I needed distance—if I’d stayed between him and the wall, I knew I would have taken one look into his eyes and been lost again.

I panted for a second, my head turned away from him. I could still feel him. My lips throbbed. My mouth felt empty and cold from the loss. A hot wash of pleasure was still on the surface of my skin, the whole front of my body burning for him, desperate to know where the contact had gone.
Bring him back! Now!

“That was good,” I said in a voice that wasn’t even halfway mine.

“Good?” Ryan’s voice had a thick, heavy growl to it that I hadn’t heard before. But instantly, it was all I wanted to hear.

“Maybe a bit much,” I said, turning back to face him. I wondered how red my face was. The whole apartment felt like it was in the high nineties. I wanted to strip off all my clothes and run at him, not even waiting for the bedroom. Failing that, an icy shower. But no. Instead, I had to stand there, fully clothed, and act like everything was normal. “I mean, it’s only their first time. A first time kiss wouldn’t be like that.”

He rubbed his jaw. He had just a little stubble there—he looked a lot less clean-cut, compared to that first time in the alley, and it looked good on him. “It wouldn’t?”

I could feel myself flushing even more. “No. When did you ever kiss someone for the first time, for real, and it was like that?”

And then we locked eyes and I saw it. There was something in his stare that hadn’t been there before and it terrified me. It terrified me because I wanted it so much.

He didn’t believe me. I’d gone too far and blown the whole thing.

“Why are you lying to me?” he said, taking a step toward me.

I went on the defensive. “
Lying
to you? I’m not lying to you!”

“It wasn’t acting at the screen test. Was it?”

“I thought we were
both
acting.”
God, Ryan, stop this, please!

He just stared at me for a moment. “Go out with me,” he said at last.

And there it was.

“What?!”
I screeched, trying to sound horrified. I
was
horrified—horrified at what I’d done. “I can’t—”

“I like you,” he said. “Really like you. I’ve fallen for you. Go out with me.”

“I—” My eyes were searching around, looking for a way out, an excuse, something that would sound remotely convincing after that kiss.
Do Jasmine!
But whenever I reached for her, she kept slipping through my fingers. “Ryan, I’m sorry. I don’t feel that way about you. I thought you understood. It was just acting.”

“Was it?”

He took another step toward me, close enough that he could kiss me again, if he wanted to. And part of me wanted him to just scoop me up in his arms and kiss the hell out of me because the whole thing was ruined anyway. Why not just give in and have a few hours of pleasure before he asked the wrong question and my past came out and we were both destroyed?

But I couldn’t do it. Learning the truth about me and what I’d done—and
failed
to do—would make him hate me. I couldn’t bear that, not now I knew how he felt about me.

“
Yes,”
I said, leaning into him. I put everything I had into it, every last ounce of acting ability I’d got. And even as I begged it to work, there was a part of me that wanted it to fail.

He stared at me for a long moment...and then dropped his eyes. “Shit,” he said, the pain like broken glass in his voice. “Shit, Jasmine, I’m sorry. I thought—” He sighed and put his hands to his head. “I’m not good at this stuff. I really thought—”

I was breaking up inside, my heart fracturing into heavy, tender pieces. “You’re not the first,” I said gently. “We all get confused, sometimes.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Look, I get it, now. I won’t let it happen again.” He paused. “Do you think we can still do the show?”

Relief was flooding into me, but it was carried on a wave of freezing, drowning guilt. I’d hurt him—badly—all because I was selfish enough to want just one kiss, one tiny moment of feeling like I had a connection with someone, after all the years alone. “Of course we can still do the show. In fact, its better that this happened. It’s cleared the air, you know? Now we can go forward as friends.”

“Friends,” he said, the way you’d say
cancer.

“Friends,” I said with a nod.

He nodded too, accepting his fate, and then he wouldn’t look at me. He grabbed his jacket and made it all the way to the door and out into the hallway without once turning around. “I’ll see you when we start filming, okay?” he said. And then he was gone, before I could even reply.

What had I done?

Chapter 30

Jasmine

It was the first day of filming. Nearly a week had gone by without a word from Ryan, which should have made me happy. He was at a nice, safe distance. It was just what I’d wanted.

I just hadn’t meant to hurt him in the process.

We were filming in what had been an abandoned police station, now restored to life and fitted with all the lighting rigs and camera equipment the show would need. The set dressers had gone to extraordinary lengths, from the coffee stains on the desks to the fake posters and paperwork strewn around, all bearing the number of the fictional precinct the show was set in. I was already wearing my Isabel cop uniform and a make-up artist had given me an “honest, fresh-faced look” that involved far more actual product than I’d use on a night out, yet managed to look as if it wasn’t there while covering all my blemishes.

Several scenes that didn’t involve me had already been filmed, so I’d been able to see how Dixon worked. He was directing the pilot himself, which I’d guessed would be the case, but he didn’t seem too control-freaky. He knew how to talk to actors and he knew what he wanted—which isn’t always a given, with directors. I should have been focusing on my big break. I should have been excited about my first major role and working with a director and crew who were several leagues above me in terms of experience. Instead, all I could think about was Ryan.

And then suddenly, there he was, resplendent in his fake cop uniform. He looked so good in it that my fractured heart ached and stung. I wanted to run into his arms. I wanted to tell him that it had all been a mistake, that I
did
like him,
more
than like him, that I wanted us to be together—

But instead, I said, “Francesca’s doing great. Coffee’s over there if you want some.” And nodded toward the craft table.

And then I turned away and pretended to be watching Francesca do her scene. After I’d got the part of Isabel, they’d slotted her into another, equally big role: she’d be the trainee detective who would fall for the criminal she was investigating and eventually have to battle with her own heart to find out where her loyalties lay. Her current scene had her in the morgue, getting her first look at a (fake) dead body. Make-up had given her an appropriately greenish tinge. Between first day nerves and the eerily realistic corpse, I suspected she barely needed the make-up.

Behind me, I could feel Ryan move in closer. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head. I kept my gaze firmly on Francesca.

“Examine the lips,” said the actor playing her detective mentor. “I got the coroner’s report here, but I want to know what
you
see.”

Francesca sank into a crouch. They’d put her in a blouse and skirt combo that looked super-sexy on her curves. I could see her character—Yvonne—becoming a fan favorite pretty quickly.

Behind me, I heard Ryan cross his arms. He was still staring at me. I could feel it.
Ignore him. Just ignore him and—

Francesca reached out with a pen and touched the corpse’s lips and—

The corpse sat bolt upright on the table. Francesca screamed and leapt halfway across the room.

The detective mentor doubled over with laughter and slapped his knee, then high-fived the corpse. “Gotcha,” he managed between snorts.

“And CUT!!” yelled Dixon. There was a round of applause.

“W—What?!” panted Francesca, now sprawled on her ass on the floor.

Dixon ran over and helped her up. “Sorry,” he said sincerely. “We couldn’t put it in the script. I knew we’d get a better reaction if it was genuine.” He grinned. “It’s a hazing ritual. The other detectives are hazing you, so we figured we’d do it for real.”

Francesca was white-faced and still getting her breath back...but eventually she shook her head and began to laugh. The actor who’d played the corpse gave her a hug.

It was about at that moment that two things hit me. Firstly, Dixon really was a stickler for realism—Ryan and I were going to have to make our on-screen romance look really real.

Secondly, I was in Ryan’s arms.

When the corpse had sat up, I’d given a silent scream of my own. I’ve had enough years waiting in the stage wings and on the edges of a set not to make a sound. But that didn’t stop me jumping backward—straight into Ryan.

And he’d folded his arms protectively around me. You know, like any hunky, six foot five
friend.
Whose hard muscles I could feel against my back. Whose stiffening cock I could feel against my ass. I could feel the aching pull in my heart, the need to spin around and embrace him. And the feel of his body was sending waves of heat rolling down inside me to pool at my core.

I gently extricated myself. “Thank you,” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

“You’re welcome,” he said just as lightly.

How the hell am I going to make this work?!

***

It was time for our first scene. Nothing too taxing. I didn’t even speak in it—I just had to stand there and look like a nervous new officer while another cop introduced all of us newbies to Ryan. But when my name was mentioned, I was meant to turn my head and catch Ryan’s eye in a way that would clue the audience in that we were going to wind up together. A sort of innocent-but-flirty, look. A wow-you’re-hot look. The sort of look you feel guilty about when you’re caught doing it. Easy enough. I’m
good
at looks.

Except, as I turned and looked straight at him, giving the camera a little
who, me?
mixed with some full-on smolder...I couldn’t break out of it. My brain was telling me to
look away, look away,
but all I could feel was the memory of his lips on mine and those hands on my front, seconds away from scooping my breasts into his palms—

I finally dragged my eyes back to front.

“
CUT!”
yelled a delighted Dixon. “Awesome! I love the chemistry between the two of you.”