Feast of Saints (41 page)

Lilly beamed at both of them when Park turned his dimpled smile on her, every bit as charming as Jake. “I was forewarned that she’s impossible to say no to, which I’ve discovered is the absolute truth. So has your cameraman over there,” he said, nodding in Cully’s direction.

Jake pursed his lips at her, “Yes, I’ve discovered that as well,” he said. Lilly flushed scarlet.

“Come, let me introduce you to Maya and Monty. Are you free to have dinner with us tonight?”

“Yes, I’d like that,” said Park, surprised and pleased at the invitation.

“Lilly?” Jake asked, “Would you join us as well?”

She thought about the hours of work she had ahead of her to get ready for tomorrow’s unplanned burning Sofia. Not quite as enthusiastically, she said, “Yes, sure, I’ll be there.”

Jake steered them toward Monty and Maya. Frowning at her over Park’s shoulder, he mouthed, “Something wrong?”

She shook her head and smiled, giving him two thumbs up. Her problems were not his problems tonight.

An hour later, she was still scurrying around the Lab trying to get as much done as possible before meeting Park, Jake, Maya, Alan, Alison and Monty in the lobby to head out for dinner. When she rounded the corner and saw the well-dressed group, she stopped short. She was still wearing the casual skirt and top she’d thrown on this morning.

Addressing Alison, she said, “I’ve got bit more to do before tomorrow. You guys go on ahead and I’ll meet you there.” Her suitcase was still with the concierge. There was no way she was going to retrieve it in front of everyone and just waltz up to Jake’s suite. Besides, she didn’t want to tip off Park to the fact that she’d given up her room for him, which would make him feel awkward. So, she added, “I’ve got to run back out to the set. Please don’t wait on me to order. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She quickly turned and headed back the way she had come, not giving anyone a chance to offer to wait on her.

Back in the Lab, she fiddled with Maya’s effects for fifteen minutes before returning to the lobby. Grabbing her suitcase from the concierge, she hauled it back out to Maya’s makeup trailer, feeling like it would be too presumptuous to just move into Jake’s hotel room while he was gone. Luckily, Maya’s little trailer bathroom was well stocked with expensive, yummy smelling soaps, shampoos and cosmetics.

The only nice dress she’d brought was the Halston she wore the other night, so she slipped it back on. Grabbing up her clutch she popped in a lipstick along with Jake’s keycard. When they got back, after she finished her work, she hoped to join him if only to sleep a few winks.

Picking up her phone, she saw a text from Jake, fifteen minutes ago, checking on her. “Shall I fetch u?”

“On my way!” she typed, then hit send. The phone powered down as its last bit of battery life was used up sending the text. Lilly hadn’t charged it since before leaving from LA. She didn’t even think she remembered to pack the charger. Thank God she had packed everything else she could possibly need for tomorrow.

Lilly stepped out of the cab in front of Spago’s in Wailea, which was green and peaceful, a far cry from the preproduction party zoo at Spago’s in LA months ago. She paused in the doorway, spotting Jake’s familiar face and broad shoulders seated across the room. She admired him and the whole table from a distance. Between Jake and Maya and Alan and beautiful Park, they were easily the best looking group of people on the planet. Jake was listening intently to Park, but when he saw her standing there, he excused himself immediately.

“You look lovely,” he said, meeting her at the entrance, his blue eyes turning to midnight blue as he recognized the dress he’d stripped off of her two nights ago.

He reached for her hand. Lilly evaded his grasp, sliding her hand instead up his forearm, resting it in the crook of his elbow. It was a more acceptable, much less intimate contact that wouldn’t send the same signal as approaching the table hand-in-hand would.

“Everything okay?” he asked, covering her hand with his.

“Great. Everything is just great,” she fibbed, smiling up at him. That sorry part of her that felt overwhelmed by him and thought she didn’t belong here was threatening to make an appearance. She pushed that pitiful girl down, then stomped on her, and smiled wider at Jake.

However, she was unable to beat down the feeling that she should have stayed on the set. She had hours and hours of work ahead of her to get Maya’s effects ready for tomorrow. But she wasn’t about to admit that fact to Jake given the fight they’d had over the extra work she had taken on with the behind the scenes video.

Dinner was exhilarating and exasperating at the same time. Jake toyed with her under the table any time he thought no one was paying attention to them. Walking his fingers over the top of her thigh, he pinched the fabric of her dress, pulling it up until he could touch the bare skin above her knee. At one point, Lilly caught Maya staring at her flustered face. Maya looked from Lilly to Jake, who was studiously looking the other way, then back again at Lilly with narrowed eyes.

Lilly met her suspicious gaze with wide-eyed innocence. But when Maya continued to stare, Lilly shot her own pointed stare at Alan, who was trying hard to get Maya to throw him a bone, then back at Maya with a “look who’s talking” toss of her head.

Between Jake’s teasing and Maya’s prying eyes, Lilly was a ball of nerves by the time dinner ended. She needed to get back to the Fairmont desperately. But what she wanted to do once she was there, and what she had to do, were worlds apart.

At ten o’clock, when the party showed no sign of slowing down, Lilly thought she might start hyperventilating. Alan announced that they all needed to head over to the Monkeypod, a bar which was touted as having thirty-seven beers on tap. Jake was laughing at his ability to sniff out yet another pub, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Lilly was feeling desperate. It was becoming imperative that she get back to the Lab.

It was Park who saved her. Declining politely, he said, “Between the trip from Amsterdam to Seoul, Seoul to LA, then LA to here, I feel as if I’ve traveled around the world in three days. If we’re going to get started in the morning, I’m going to have to get some sleep.”

Lilly piped up, “I’ll ride back with you.” Not wanting to waste a moment and risk being persuaded to make the next stop, she hopped out of her chair and smiled roundly at the table, not looking at anyone in particular, and made to head out of the restaurant.

Park bowed graciously to his hosts. To Jake, he said, “I’ll meet you in the lobby at four.”

Over dinner, they’d worked out a schedule for the next day’s BTSV shoot. They could get a lot done since Monty would be directing Maya’s burning Sofia on the beach, giving Jake an unexpected day off of filming. That is, if she could be ready. She had her work more than cut out for her.

Chapter 25

At three forty-five a.m., Lilly started awake, disoriented. She’d brought over Maya’s completed burning skin appliances and stocked her makeup tray to be ready for this morning’s makeup call. When she finished, she had only sat down for a moment it seemed, to think through her plan for the day. She had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch in Maya’s makeup trailer.

Lilly splashed water on her face in the trailer’s bathroom and grabbed fresh clothes out of her suitcase, a bright yellow scoop neck tee and billowy white linen pants tied at the waist. She just had time to check in with Park and Jake before they started. She would need to be back down here at four-thirty for Maya.

She found Cully and Park in the lobby surrounded by a mound of camera and lighting equipment, waiting on Jake to come get them and escort them back up to his suite. They were starting with an interview in the penthouse over breakfast, then they were headed out to the ocean-side path Lilly had scouted to film Jake’s morning run. Jake would be filmed running at sunrise to take advantage of the gorgeous setting, although on an actual film day he would have been done by then and already out of the makeup chair.

“It’s not like him to be late,” Cully was saying. “Maybe he got the time wrong.”

“We talked about it more than once last night,” said Park, looking at his watch. “He even showed up at my room after midnight. He woke me up to ask the time again.”

Lilly grimaced. She hadn’t told Jake that she had given Park her room. She had thought about texting him when she was stocking Maya’s trailer, figuring they’d be back from the bar by then, but her phone was dead. He must have come to find her and was probably terribly embarrassed by waking Park.

“You guys wait here, I’ll just run up and check on him.” she skittered off, hoping they wouldn’t realize that she had to have a special keycard, and why, to access the penthouse floor.

When the elevator doors opened on his floor, Jake was standing in the hallway in his running clothes with his back to the doors, one hand on his hip, the other in his hair. He made no move to turn around and get on the elevator.

He didn’t even know she was there until she startled him by touching his arm. He whirled violently away from her touch and turned to face her, scowling.

“I thought I’d come check on you,” she said softly, apologetically. “They’re waiting on you in the lobby.”

“Right,” he said in a clipped, chilly tone, before stepping onto the still open elevator, not bothering to hold the doors open for her. She hopped back on as the doors tried to close and punched the button for the ground floor lobby. Standing side-by-side facing the closed doors, Lilly slipped her hand inside Jake’s and gave it a squeeze.

“Sorry, I forgot to tell you about Park being in my room. There was a problem finding him a room of his own.”

Jake looked down at her hand in his, then at her face, “So you invited Park Kim to sleep in your room because the hotel was full?”

“Yes, I hope you weren’t too embarrassed. I meant to tell you but…” she faltered as Jake pulled his hand out of her grasp, “…I fell asleep.”

Jake crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her, his eyebrows nearly to his hairline, as if she had just said something wildly inexcusable. The doors dinged to signal that they’d reached the ground floor. Only then did it dawn on her that Jake thought she had slept with Park in the same room.

Lilly quickly stepped in front of Jake before the doors fully opened, nearly tripping him. She jabbed her finger at the close-door button and swiped the penthouse keycard to ride back up to the sixteenth floor. As the elevator started back up, she turned to face Jake. She mirrored his body language, crossing her arms, and faced off with him.

“Where exactly do you think I slept?” she demanded.

Jake’s cold expression didn’t crack at her accusatory tone. “Not with me,” he said icily.

“And not with Park, either,” she said, exasperated. “Is that what’s going on in there?” She reached up and tapped his temple, then rested her hand against his cheek. “That’s not who I am.”

Jake turned his face away from her palm. “Isn’t it? Every time I turn around you’re bunking with some other guy.”

Lilly dropped her hand, feeling defensive and insulted. When the door opened behind her on sixteen, she stepped out.

She couldn’t face Park and Cully right away and act like nothing was amiss. “Go on down,” she said. “This conversation can wait. It took a lot of fast-talking to get Park and Cully signed on to this project. I don’t want them waiting any longer.”

When the doors would have shut, separating them, Jake slapped the safety bar and stepped out. “What am I supposed to think, Lilly? You two obviously hit it off. You were in such a damn hurry to leave with him after dinner, and then you didn’t come to my room. You didn’t answer my calls, or my text. I had no idea where you were.”

She closed her eyes to block out his irate form looming over her, threatening to overwhelm her again.
Good Lord. He’s jealous, furiously so
. Opening her eyes, she gazed up at his stormy expression. She managed to repress her pugnacious instinct to refuse to explain herself, and said, “I was in a hurry to leave because I needed to get back to start on Maya’s effects for today. I didn’t know you called because my phone’s dead. I fell asleep in Maya’s trailer. Nobody but me.”

Jake’s piercing glare slowly softened to chagrin and he breathed out and physically relaxed.

Not able to completely keep the ire out of her voice since he obviously had been thinking she jumped from man to man, she added, “And I’ve never slept with Mike or Kyle, or anyone else that you’ve ever met. You bring my grand total to two, and the other one’s ancient history and not worth talking about so don’t ask.”

Lilly wanted to say something else to reassure him, about how she felt. About how she couldn’t imagine being tempted to sleep with anyone else but Jake. Ever again, she was afraid. But jealousy was a funny thing. It didn’t mean he was serious about her. Jealous men were often unfaithful themselves. She suspected it was the fact that they cheated that made them so suspicious of their mates. She pushed the unpleasant notion away.

“We need to get going,” she said, a touch of frost in her tone.

Jake reached out and pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled into her hair. “I’ve thought for such a long time that I wasn’t what you wanted. It’s hard to shake it.”

One broad hand fanned across her lower back pulling her against him. With his other hand, he tipped her head up and kissed her face, her brow, her eyelids. Lilly felt her frostiness melting, her body bending into him.

When he reached her lips, she raised her hands to touch him, running her fingers under his shirt. The hand at her back pulled her in tighter and he deepened the kiss. Her hunger for him flared.

“Ah, Lilly,” he breathed, tearing his mouth away from hers, but keeping her pinned against him. “I can’t get enough of you. Why did you run off after dinner? Why didn’t you come to me last night?”

“I couldn’t,” she said, breathing hard herself, trying to clear her fuzzy brain. Why hadn’t she come to him?

“Monty wants Sofia to burn today. It wasn’t in the script.” She rested her forehead against his chest, breathing him in, trying to slow her thumping heart, cool her molten desire.

“I shouldn’t have gone to dinner at all. I had so much to do.” As she said the words, the pressing feeling of being out of time returned. Park and Cully were waiting on them. She needed to be on the set in less than a half hour.

“We have to get going,” she repeated, warmer, reluctantly this time, not wanting to move from his embrace.

“Lilly, please. Don’t make me wait.” His hands slid down to her bottom, pressing her against his rigid length, his erection not at all concealed by the thin running shorts.

Lilly tilted her head up to look at his face. His furious jealousy had been completely erased, replaced by need. For reasons she just didn’t understand, this big man wanted her, and he wanted her desperately right now. She felt it, too, that clench in her stomach at the thought of stepping on the elevator, moving through her day surrounded by people who were not Jake, without first satisfying her driving desire to be close to him, to release the pleasure in her body with his.

“Come,” she said, grabbing his hand and leading him down the hall to his suite, pulling him into a jog.

Sweeping her keycard over the pad at his door, she spun as she pulled him in. “You’re going to have to be quick. You can make it up to me later.”

Jake bulldozed into her, lifting her in his arms and wrapping her legs around his waist. Lilly squealed, surprised by his suddenly sweeping her off of her feet. She smacked his shoulders then caressed them, then stroked down his strong arms carrying her. Her own desire became urgent with the reality that he was going to take her like this. People were waiting on them, wondering where they were.

Jake carried her to the couch. No time to find the bedroom. With her still wrapped around him, he dropped to his knees on the couch. When he leaned over to put her down, he intentionally fell into her, kissing her mouth, his teeth clashing against hers.

She pulled up his shirt, breaking the kiss so that she could pull it over his head.

Jake reared up, raising his arms and bending his torso in a fluid gorgeous move as he pulled the shirt all the way off and tossed it away.

“I love how this feels,” she said, admiring the beauty of him, stroking his naked stomach. “I do this at home, with your plaster casts. But this is much, much better.”

“I love how you touch me. Please don’t stop,” he replied fervently, pressing her hands against him.

Jake reached for the tie at the waist of her linen slacks, undid it, and pulled them off, lifting her legs as he did and resting them against his chest and shoulders. He stroked her calves and feet, kissing the insides of her ankles. Still in his running shorts, he leaned into her, rubbing his erection against the crotch of her panties, silk sliding on silk. Lilly pulled her legs from his grasp and wrapped them back around him, writhing into him.

Jake fell over her again, thrusting against her, pushing her legs open wider. She kissed him furiously, sucking his tongue into her mouth. The up and down slide against her panties was intensely pleasurable.

Jake broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to hers, his breathing rough and hot against her mouth, his focus also on the silky slide of his cock against her.

“Arrrgh,” he growled, and pushed up, looking around.

She read his mind. Condoms, they needed condoms.

“They’re in the bathroom, on the counter,” where she’d left them the night before last.

“Hold on,” he said, starting up to go get them.

When she would have brought her thighs together, he stopped her, pushing his palms against the soft flesh, spreading her.

“Don’t move,” he warned, then bent and placed his open mouth against the crotch of her panties, licking her through the silk. Lilly involuntarily bucked her hips against his mouth.

“Hurry, Jake,” she said urgently, gripping his hair, pulling his head back.

Jake grinned at her over the length of her stomach. Pushing up her shirt he slid up her body, stopping to hover over her breasts, covered in a simple white bra. Biting one nipple through the light padding, “Don’t…,” he said, then biting the other, “move.”

Pushing off the couch, Jake was in and out of the master suite in a half second. As commanded, she waited, with her legs spread, still wearing most of her clothes.

When he was standing over her again, Jake grinned wolfishly down at her. “That’s how I like to see you, Pixie.”

He pushed down his track shorts and boxer briefs in one move, then nearly fell as they snagged on his running shoes when he tried to kick them off, causing Lilly to giggle. Jake chuckled with her, his eyes twinkling, then turned serious as he resumed his position between her legs and slid the condom over his enormous erection.

“Hmmm,” he mused, stroking her inner thighs, “what shall I do to you?”

“Jake!” she scolded, “We don’t have time for you to do too much of anything. Come here,” she ordered, opening her arms for him.

He shook his head slowly at her. His stroking hands moved to the top of her inner thighs where he slid his thumbs over the wet crotch of her panties.

Hooking an index finger under the fabric, he pulled the panties to the side, then traced the lips of her vagina with his thumb, staring at her spread labia, spellbound.

“I want in here, badly.” He pressed the pad of his thumb against her slick opening and pushed in, wetting it, then pulled his thumb out and began circling her clitoris.

“Will you come if I do?” he asked, looking up at her face. Lilly’s muscles contracted in anticipation. Jake felt it, too, and his cock jumped in response. He leaned over her, pressing harder with his circling thumb.

“Say yes,” he ordered, rubbing his nose against hers. The head of his erect penis probed her opening, just below his circling and pressing thumb.

She whimpered. If he kept doing what he was doing with his thumb she was going to come right now.

“Say yes,” Jake commanded again. He pushed his penis into her just slightly, then pulled out again. She could feel the tingling building in her legs, her back, propelling her to lift her hips invitingly.

“Say yes,” Jake demanded, pushing in again further, all the while methodically manipulating her clitoris with his thumb.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, wrapping her heels around him and urging him forward.

Jake pushed his cock all the way in, never stilling his thumb, increasing the pleasure of the sensation by arching his back and pressing the muscles of his groin against his hand at her sex, adding heat and pressure. The fullness of his penis inside of her, the feel of his lower body spreading her wider, the illicit pull of her ruined panties and the twirling of his thumb drove her to a violent orgasm.

“Yes, Lilly!” shouted Jake as her muscles spasmed around him. He kissed her open mouth, shoving his tongue inside her mouth and began thrusting his hips. Lilly felt the rise and fall of his hard buttocks against her heels, and raised her pelvis higher, tilting to allow him deeper into her.