“She’s a monster,” I said. “She’s terrible. To me. To my brother.”
"Terrible, how?"
I closed my hands around her ass and pulled her against me, my erection awakening despite the chill. I could talk for an hour about everything my mother was, but I didn’t want her right here, right now. I wanted to kiss Emma. I wanted her hands rough in my hair and her gasp against my lips. “Kiss me.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Talk to me about your mom.”
“Is that what it takes to get a kiss?” I scowled. “You kissed Layton without an inquisition.”
She tried to pull away. “Yeah, for episode five. What’s your point?”
"And what is this? Episode 6? Emma seduces Cash on the beach?" I let go of her, and she pushed away, her face almost lost in the darkness.
“Don’t be a jerk.”
“Don’t be a tease,” I shot back. “What are you even doing out here with me?”
“I’m trying to get to know you,” she spat out across the water. “You say stuff, and when you get called on it, you deflect. Stop saying you're normal. You're not normal. You don't get to lump yourself in with everyone else. You are on a tv show. You have eighty million followers. You have Jockey as a sponsor, and it isn't because of your sparkling personality, Cash. It's because of your last name, your zip code, and the press that has been following you around since before you could talk."
It was all true. I swam closer to her and lowered my voice, hoping it wouldn't carry. "That press protected me. That's what you don't understand. You think I ran out to the paparazzi when I was five because I wanted my picture taken?" I could see her now, the damp cling of her hair, the droplets of water against her lips. "I ran to them because I saw them as protection. Around them, my mom was all smiles and laughter.” I swallowed. “In front of them, she hugged me instead of hurting me.”
She looked at me warily, and I swore to God, if she called me a liar, I’d swim for shore and leave her out here to catch pneumonia and die.
“And what about your brother?”
That wasn't the reaction or the question I had expected. I glanced toward the shore, then back to her. "What about him?"
“Was she bad with him?”
There was a reason that Wesley was at the Ranch instead of in that mansion. There was a reason that I dove into this business before I was out of high school. And both of those reasons pointed to my mom.
“No,” I said carefully. “She wasn’t bad.” The one time my mother laid a hand on Wes, I threw her across the room, and she broke her arm. We suffered for three months on solitary confinement in a house of horrors while we hid her cast from the press. “She is…” I tried to find the right words to describe the unemotional robot my mother turned into when she interacted with Wes. “She avoids him. Is ashamed of him. He craves attention and affection, and she refuses to give him that. Almost enjoys punishing him by withholding it.”
“I’m sorry I said those things, on our date, about him.” Her leg bumped against mine, and I was torn between giving her space and having her back in my arms.
I stayed in place, still able to touch, my height giving me a stability advantage over her. “You said what everyone thinks. It’s why it pissed me off.”
“Have you thought about him living with you?”
I didn't want to talk about Wesley. I knew all about Wesley. I wanted to talk about her. I didn't know anything about her or why she was doing this show, why she was even in this life.
“I mean, I’m sure he likes the Ranch, I just figured he’d be happiest with you.”
“My life is too chaotic. My friends are mostly assholes. And he hates the flash of cameras. It triggers him.”
“If they’re assholes, why are you friends with them?”
Great question. Emma was the first to ever ask me it. I didn’t have a logical answer. I was friends with them because they were all I knew. Everyone was screwed up in Hollywood, so you picked the best of the worst and stuck with them.
She shivered and I was willing to risk another swollen jaw to put my arms around her. Warm her up. Hold her. Kiss her. And I could do it out here, away from the cameras, without the scripts.
“Come here.” I pulled on her arm, bringing her closer.
She laughed. “What? Why?”
“I want to kiss you.”
She let me bring her forward, then sank a little in the water as she tried to find footing and failed. I lifted her.
“Put your legs back around me.”
She did, but there was a hesitation, a wariness that seeped through her beautiful features. I studied her face and tried to understand where it was coming from. "What? You don’t want to kiss me?”
“It was complete bullshit. We couldn’t hear or see from the beach, and I was cursing my decision to shoot at the beach. The cameras couldn't go into the ocean, and the assistants were acting as if they were too good to wade in up to their chins and hold up a mic. We wasted ten minutes, sitting there like useless idiots, while someone fetched a dingy. We didn’t know what was going on out there in the water. They coulda come back pregnant or chewed apart by sharks.”
Dana Diench, Producer, House of Fame
63
#shutupandkissme
EMMA
Did I want to kiss him? Of course, I did. My head pounded with the need. Every fantasy I’d had for the last five years involved kissing me. And now, here, he wanted to kiss me.
I needed it, but my heart was still stuttering over what he had just said about his mom. I couldn’t understand how anyone could avoid Wesley—or punish him by withholding affection. What had it been like for Cash, growing up with a mother like that? The knowledge redefined every assumption I’d ever had about his life and upbringing. It made me respect him, and I felt a sudden and fierce gratefulness for everything he must have done to protect and care for Wesley.
I tightened my legs around him and let them hold me up, freeing my hands to explore his face. I ran a tentative hand through his hair and watched as his eyes closed, then reopened. He gripped my butt, one cheek in each hand, and thank God I’d wore sexy underwear. I traced my fingers over his forehead, his cheeks, his jaw. Those lips. He watched me, those dark blue eyes almost glowing. I avoided meeting them, putting my focus on the small scar on his nose, the light shadow of facial hair along his jaw, the strong cleft of his cheekbones. He was heartbreakingly perfect. Masculine—yet, in those eyes, a hint of vulnerability.
It should have made me bolder, but it only caused my panic to rise. "I—"
I was going to say that I didn't know what to do with him, but then he leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine. Softly, like he was creaking open a door, unsure if anyone was home. My lips parted, and I inhaled, then pressed back, a sweet and salty connection that deepened as his tongue met mine. One of his hands tightened on my ass as the other journeyed up my back, crushing me to him as our kiss grew more frantic and needy. I lost my hesitation and scraped my hands through his hair, fisting the short strands as our mouths battled against each other. Soft then hard. Deep then shallow. He cupped my face and kissed the side of my mouth, my jaw, my neck. He bruised my skin with his tongue as I clawed at his back. His hand found my breast, and I gasped as his touch turned gentle, his mouth softening, finding mine again as he caressed me.