Girl in Bikini #3 lays a consoling hand on his arm.
GIRL IN BIKINI #3
You tried to tell her.
Shaking his head sadly, he puts his arm around her and goes back to work.
18
IN THE END, APRIL ORDERED YET MORE TAKEOUT FOR dinner—steamed chicken and vegetables for Marcus, red curry with shrimp and rice for herself—and he accepted her invitation to stay the night. Cuddled together on the couch, they binge-watched an old season of his favorite British baking show until it was much too late, before finally stumbling back to her bedroom.
There, they rested on their sides in her bed, naked, legs entwined, face-to-face in the blackout-curtained dimness of her room, only the distant glow of a bathroom nightlight illuminating their expressions.
With one hand he held hers. With the other he played with a strand of her hair. For a first-time sleepover as a couple, the silence between them was surprisingly comfortable. Not strained, or full of unspoken tension and awkwardness.
Still, she was going to break that silence and possibly make things awkward.
The question might seem less fraught in the darkness, though. At least, she hoped so. “Marcus?”
“Yes?” He sounded remarkably awake, given his efforts that day. Against her kitchen counter, of course. In bed. Then, just an hour or so ago, with him kneeling on the floor of her living room, her legs draped over his shoulders as she reclined on the blanket-covered couch and clutched a throw pillow and moaned and came so hard against his eager, inventive mouth, she wanted to bronze his tongue. But only after she was finished with it, naturally.
“Do you ever worry . . .” she began.
She paused. Brushed an exploratory fingertip along that elegant cheekbone, down that slightly battered nose, along that famously sharp jaw.
“Do I ever worry about what?” The prompt was encouraging, rather than impatient.
The whorl of his ear was warm under her fingertip, the skin of his earlobe soft. She tried her best to memorize the feel of both, even as he turned his head to kiss her palm.
Millions of people could recognize him under the blinding lights of a red carpet. But if she touched him like this long enough, maybe she’d be able to recognize him even in the darkness, by feel alone, in a way that made him uniquely hers.
The possessiveness in that thought should alarm her. It was uncharacteristic, especially when it came to a man she’d known for only a limited time, and a man staggering under so much baggage, both openly stated and unacknowledged.
For some reason, though, it seemed as if they’d known each other for years. As if he understood her, instinctively, a feeling she found both impossible and irresistible. Their teasing back-and-forth that night had come so easily, their discussions about underproved dough and the relative harshness of the judges’ critiques as comfortable as if they were longtime friends.
Still, his work and his fame complicated his relationships in ways she’d never before had reason to consider. And now that she did have cause to think about those complications, she couldn’t dismiss them without a discussion.
She started again, this time determined to say what needed to be said. “Do you ever worry that I’m attracted to the character you play on television, or the person you pretend to be in public, rather than the real you?”
He was quiet for a minute, the crease between his brows deep despite the stroke of her fingertip over the spot.
Shifting to his back, he stared up at the ceiling instead of meeting her eyes, although his hand didn’t relinquish hers. “I, uh . . .” He let out a long breath. “I told you about how my relationships have ended in recent years.”
She squeezed his fingers in silent response.
His head turned, and he caught her eye again. “Normally I would be nervous about that happening again. But you’ve been pretty clear from the beginning that the guy I pretend to be in public doesn’t appeal to you. At all.”
Well, no. She couldn’t really argue with that.
“You don’t seem interested in surfaces, really. More what lies beneath. Maybe because of your work, or maybe that’s why you chose your profession to begin with. I don’t know.” He rubbed a thumb over her knuckles. “But it’s one of the things I like most about you.”
Stupidly, her face heated at his admission of affection, even in the darkness.
She knew why she liked digging down deep, searching for stories, searching for contamination, rather than focusing entirely on surface beauty. Discussion of her childhood could wait for another day, though, when they’d been dating longer.
She deflected with a bit of playfulness.
“You’re not wrong.” After tiptoeing her fingers up his chest, she reached up to tug a silky lock of his hair. “That said, your surface is really nice.”
His smile gleamed in the dim glow filtering in from her bathroom nightlight. “Yours is spectacular.” He turned on his side again, his knuckles trailing over the curve of her breast. “You know, maybe—”
That much temptation was difficult to resist, but she managed to gently move his hand away. “I appreciate the compliment. But you didn’t answer the rest of my question, Marcus.”
He flopped onto his back again with a sigh. “Dammit. I’m no good at words, April.”
Nope. She wasn’t accepting that as an excuse.
Instead, she merely waited and let the silence do the urging for her.
“Just . . .” His fingers tightened on hers. “Just . . . hear me out until the end, and if I say something wrong, please let me explain myself.”
Well, that seemed ominous.
“I’m not worried you’re attracted to the guy I play in public, like I said.” He shifted his weight on the bed restlessly, lips pursed as he resumed staring at the ceiling. “As to whether I’m worried you might be attracted to the character I play on Gates, rather than the real me . . .”
His chest rose and fell. Once. Twice.
“Maybe,” he finally, reluctantly said.
He’d asked her to hear him out until the end, and that didn’t seem like an end to her. So she kept waiting, even as her brain whirred with arguments and justifications and doubts. But she tried to push aside those thoughts, because formulating her response while he still spoke wouldn’t actually let her listen to him. Really, actively listen. And when a man as reticent as Marcus—the real Marcus—shared uncomfortable truths, only a fool wouldn’t give him every bit of her attention.
“You, uh, told me you write fanfic about Aeneas and Lavinia.” He licked his lips, a flash of tongue that sparked a response between her legs totally inappropriate for the moment. “I—I might have looked up some of your stories, and they’re . . .”
“Sexual,” she supplied, after he paused for a few beats.
His little nod mussed his hair against her pillow. “A few of them.”
“Most of them.” She wouldn’t lie, and she wasn’t embarrassed. Not about having written explicit content, anyway. “Or at least on-page sex occurs in most of them, even if sex isn’t the main”—she couldn’t resist—“thrust of the story. So to speak.”
He half groaned, half laughed at that. “Don’t distract me, Whittier. This conversation is hard—difficult enough as it is.”