Shards of Glass (7 page)

“By the way,” I had asked, “who’s
Rambling Rose
?”

“Laura Dern was
Rambling Rose
. Great movie,” Jake said. “She got nominated for an Oscar.”

“Why rambling?”

“She was innocently promiscuous; mistook sex for love.”

“She had rambling ways,” added Star.

“Ah,” I said.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because Sam Myers decided I was like her,” I told them.

Rambling Rose
 . . . I lay in bed thinking again about Daniel’s erection the moment I straddled him.
Surely
he felt something for me—his hard-on proved it, didn’t it? He couldn’t forever mourn his dead wife.

I wanted that role in the film after all. What had I been
thinking
to tell them no? Neither Pearl nor Samuel Myers had telephoned me back. I’d blown it. What an idiot! Lying here, I decided I would give my right arm to work with Daniel again. See his face every day on set . . . discuss my character’s motivation, listen to and follow his direction. I could feel the familiar heat between my legs. I’d pleasured myself so many times in the past I couldn’t count, fantasizing about Daniel fucking me. I hadn’t even dated other guys. Well, I’d tried, but never got past a kiss. Nobody turned me on. Everybody was anemic and insipid compared to Daniel. No, it was sad and pathetic for me to get myself off yet again tonight, always obsessing about Daniel Glass. I refused to allow myself torture my poor humiliated body anymore with someone I couldn’t have.

I got up out of bed and walked toward the big glass doors of my bedroom. There was enough moonlight to see a little without stumbling in the dark. Stars were scattered like tiny jewels in the sky, and I fancied I could make out the Big Dipper—a saucepan in the midst of the deepest blue. I picked up my iPhone and, taking it outside with me, found the astrology app that tells you what the constellations are. I lay down on the sofa and stared up at the sky in a trance.

A while later, fiddling with my phone and changing the angle, I suddenly realized there was a message. From Daniel.

Phone me. NOW.

Without pausing for breath I called, my heart racing. To my astonishment he picked up. What was he doing awake? I had his beautiful features in my mind’s eye. His intense blue eyes, his straight nose, with that very slight bump, and his full, sexy lips that I had imagined a million times licking me all over, electrifying my body into orgasmic bliss.

“Janie,” he said, in a low seductive voice.

“Daniel, I’m amazed you’re still up.”

“I can’t sleep.” He paused. There was a beat of silence and he said, “I’ve been thinking about your kiss. You got me fucking hard, you know that, don’t you? Of course you do. It was embarrassing.”

An arrow of desire shot to my core, remembering his hard-on. I had always pictured what his cock was like, but feeling it at the meeting against my legs, and seeing its solid ridge wedged against his slacks, I noticed that he was big. Very big.

“You were between a rock and a hard place,” I joked.

“Not funny, Janie. It was humiliating.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“We need to talk.”

“We could meet tomorrow. Star’s got a meeting so I’ll be alone all afternoon, you could pick—”

“Now. We need to talk now.”

“Well, I can’t sleep so . . .”
Can’t sleep because of you,
I wanted to add, but I bit my lip to stop myself.

“Stop biting your lip and twiddling your hair, it’s—”

“A bad habit,” I said, finishing off his sentence.

“I wasn’t going to say that actually.”

“How did you know I was twiddling my hair?”

“Because I know you.”

No, you don’t, you don’t know everything.
“What were you going to say then, if it wasn’t to tick me off?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. Where are you?”

“At Star Davis’s house on Pacific Coast Highway. I’m in her backyard, listening to the crashing waves, staring at the stars in the sky. The real stars, not movie stars.

“I’m on my way over.”

“What if I refuse to give you the address?” I taunted.

“I know the architect who built her house and I went to see it once, and I’m staying with friends who happen to live near you, just up the beach a ways.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Yes, it is. Very.”

I could hear measured panting. “Why are you breathing heavily? What are you doing?”

“Jogging along the beach. I’m on my way. Won’t be long.” The phone went dead.

What did he want to talk about? Never had a person instilled such fear and desire all at once in me. He would berate me, tell me that he didn’t want to work with me ever again, that what I did was cheap and tacky. God, I hated being an actor sometimes. The DNA of insecurity—part of a thankless job. Insecurity manifested itself in a myriad of ways; prickly behavior, promiscuity, bitchiness, cockiness, and often alcohol or drug abuse. I knew that Star once had a drug problem. Twice, three times actually—she kept relapsing. No actor gets off lightly, even when they’re famous.

I looked back up at the starry void and must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, Daniel was leaning down stroking my hair. I opened my eyes. I knew it was him because I could smell his familiar, masculine scent. His clean musty aroma that made me weak every time he came near me.

“So beautiful,” he whispered.

“What?” I wondered if he was referring to the starry sky but he was looking at me directly.

“You woke a sleeping bear,” he said. “You know that expression, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie? The Swedish talk about bears, not dogs. You should have let me sleep, Janie, but you woke me up.”

“When I responded to your text message?”

He chuckled. “No, when you kissed me and gave me a raging hard-on. You woke up my senses.” He took my hand and brought it to his crotch. “Feel how hard you’ve made me again.”

I breathed into his face, “Oh God!”

“I’m going to have to fuck you, because you’ve asked for it. It’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it? To get fucked by me?”

I could feel his enormous erection through his jeans. It was almost intimidating. Almost. “Yes,” I whimpered. “I’d like to deny it but that’d be a lie.”

He leaned in closer and planted a light kiss on my forehead. “Not the innocent little girl we all thought now, are we?”

“No,” I murmured.

“You’re a fiery little tiger beneath that schoolgirl body, aren’t you? I bet you’re wet just thinking about how hard I am and how much I want you. Are you wet?”

He pressed his face against mine and kissed me, driving his tongue into my mouth and licking it, biting my lip softly, all the while groaning. His groans sent currents of lust through my body, hardening my nipples.

“Oh God,” ––I breathed into his lips—“Daniel.” I flung my arms around his neck.

His hand gripped my ankle and then tantalizingly traveled up my calf, igniting every cell, every nerve along my sensitive skin.

“So soft, Janie.” He let his fingers crawl higher, easing up, up, between the apex of my thighs. I opened them a touch to let his hand in. “Jesus Christ, you’re soaking, baby.” He plunged two fingers inside me and I cried out. This was the most sensual thing that had ever happened to me. I pushed my hips at him so he’d get in further. “So fucking horny for me, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

He started to finger fuck me, my juices swirling in celebration as he pumped me, his other hand rubbing my clit. I’d come any second if he carried on like this.

“I so want to fuck you, Janie. Lie on top of you and drive myself into your hot pussy. So you can feel every hard, thick, pumping inch of me. Make you scream. Make you come.”

“Oh please!” I flexed my hips up at him as I thrashed frantically against the hand that was rubbing my clit with such expertise. One, two . . . I was going to come any second . . .

“But I need to know one thing first.” His hand slowed down and so did my pulse.
NO! Not now! Keep going, please.

“What do you need to know?” I panted, “please don’t stop what you’re doing.”

“Are you in love with me?” His fingers were still inside me.

“Yes,” I groaned, aching for him to finish off what he started.

“Then I’m not going to fuck you after all.”

“What?” I screamed out, pushing my hips at him and pressing my own hands on his so he’d make me come.

“I’m in love with my late wife,” he said quietly but not taking his hand away. He was still rubbing me slowly there . . . gently. The tease was driving me crazy. “It’s not fair to you; I’d break your heart. I only fuck women I don’t care about, and I
care
for you, Janie. I can’t have sex with you, I—”

“Please,
please,
just make me come.”

“Just this once. But it’s the first and last time.” He prized my thighs apart and got down on his knees, then buried his head between my legs. He growled with animal pleasure, his sound stifled by me when I locked my thighs around his head. His tongue licked up and down my clit—“Fuck, Janie you’re so sweet,”—and deep inside my opening, giving me the biggest orgasm of my life. I could feel tears awash on my face as I cried out in ecstasy, in pain—my climax breaking me into thousands of pieces, like shards of glass.

He continued pressing his tongue inside and then licked me up and down again, flicking and lashing at my clit like a mini whip. Another wave surged through me. This was unbelievable!

“I’m coming again!” I moaned.

I opened my eyes as another orgasm pulsed through me. It was light. No stars in the sky. An orange sun was peeping above the horizon. I was lying on my back on the sofa outside, my phone had fallen on the ground. The morning dew soaked my skin and I was damp all over, not just from the dew, but also with my own sweat. My hands were pressed between my sticky legs.

Daniel was not there.

I picked up my phone, my fingers fumbling, frantic to find the “phone me now” message he’d sent. It was not there either. I got up and made my way through the garden towards the beach, my gaze manically searching the seascape and the back of the garden.

Of
course
Daniel couldn’t have just come up from the beach and found me sleeping. This belonged to movie stars; there was major security! Locked gates sectioning off the beach from Star and Jake’s backyard.
Daniel was not here last night
!

Except in my imagination.

I’d been fucking dreaming again.

6

I
NEEDED TO TAKE control of my life—control of
myself.
I’d
had
it with these obsessive dreams of Daniel. They were stopping me from living, from getting out there and dating other guys. One part of the dream I suspected to be true, which made my situation even more ridiculous; he
was
still in love with his wife. I knew it, my subconscious knew it. And I’d heard as much through the grapevine.

Star found me in the kitchen, nursing a coffee at ten a.m. I had gone back to bed and slept like a baby, and only just showered fifteen minutes ago. I remembered I needed to call my dad and little brother, touch base back home.

“Wow, you’re up late.”

“You too,” I remarked. Star was still in her bathrobe.

“Was your bed okay? The mattress not too soft, not too hard?”

“It was soooo comfortable, I want to kidnap it and take it back to New York.”

I told Star the events of last night, that I’d crashed out on the sofa in her backyard, dreaming of Daniel. I omitted the “wet” part of the dream, of course. There were limits. But I did tell her, finally, about my general Daniel obsession, which had been going on since I was twenty-one. Two years of unrequited . . .
should I call it ‘love?’

“You’ve got it bad, huh?”

“I thought I’d gotten over him. It makes me so
angry
that he has this power over me!”

“I so identify.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, Jake made me crazy at one point. All I could think about was him. Meanwhile he was fucking other women and drinking like a sailor, and showing me in every way that he was the last man on earth I should have been with. But then things turned around.”

“So what did you do while he was being a jerk?”

“Went away. Abroad, traveled round the world, incognito. Worked in an elephant sanctuary.”

“Cool. Sounds amazing. Sadly, I can’t do that right now, much as I’d love to.”

“You need to go on some dates, Janie. Daniel’s very handsome and charismatic and everything—I met him once—but there are other fish in the sea. Right now all you’d be is sloppy seconds. It’s too soon; he must still be mourning his wife.” She shook her head. “What a tragedy that was.”

Her words reminded me of the very thing I wanted to forget. The wish I’d made, willing Daniel and Natasha to split up.

“I never seem to meet anyone I find really attractive,” I lamented, “you know, someone who makes my heart race.”

“That’s because you live in New York. All the good looking guys in New York are gay. Or married.”

I laughed. Star always got straight to the point. “I know,” I groaned, “it’s true. Every time I see someone hot, the second they open their mouth, the illusion is gone.”