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Spoiler Alert(8)
Author: Olivia Dade

He wanted to respond: She’s lovely, and I don’t want to be an asshole’s favorite actor. Stop watching Gods of the Gates and go fuck yourself.

His agent would keel over dead. The showrunners would explode. His carefully crafted persona would fracture, maybe irreparably, in a completely uncontrolled way.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, then pinched his forehead between thumb and forefinger as he thought hard.

Minutes later, he dictated his actual response. I know beauty when I see it, probably because I see it in the mirror every day. @Lavineas5Ever is gorgeous, and Lavinia couldn’t ask for a better tribute.

He tried to leave it there. He really did.

But Jesus Christ, this guy was a total dick.

Come on dude, @GodsOfMyTaints tweeted moments later. Stop the hippocritical white knight shit, like u would ever let yourself get within 15 feet of that cow.

The shitstain had left poor @Lavineas5Ever tagged in his tweet, and Marcus hoped to fuck she’d muted this particular conversation long ago. But in case she hadn’t, he couldn’t leave it there. He just . . . couldn’t.

With a click of his mouse, he followed @Lavineas5Ever. Which made her one of only 286 people he followed, all the rest of whom were connected to the movie and television industry in one way or another. A quick glance at her profile revealed she lived in California. Convenient, that.

He couldn’t DM her first, since she didn’t follow him. Which was fair, since he wouldn’t follow an account as uninteresting and useless as his, either.

Over two million people did follow him, however. He sincerely hoped any other assholes among those followers saw his next tweet.

I’m no white knight, just a man who likes a beautiful woman on his arm. When I get back to California from filming, @Lavineas5Ever, will you please have dinner with me?

Then he sat back against his headboard, arms folded across his chest, and waited for her response.

* * *

April blinked at her laptop screen.

Yup.

Marcus Caster-Rupp had definitely asked her to dinner.

Marcus. Caster. Hyphen. Rupp.

Not to repeat herself, but: Holy fuuuuuuuck.

The dude had graced countless magazine covers, biceps flexing. She saw him on her television screen every week, and had saved more than a few photos of him to her hard drive.

And he’d just . . . asked her out?

Wow. Wow.

If she were being picky about which of the Gods of the Gates actors she’d want to date, if only for a single evening, she’d definitely have chosen the guy who played Cupid, Alexander Woodroe, instead.

But Caster-Rupp was hot. No doubt about that. Not ridiculously muscular, but tall and lean and undeniably strong and fit. She’d been known to sigh over close-ups of his thick, veined forearms before, not to mention gifs of his first love scene with Dido, because damn. That ass. Round and working and . . . delicious.

He was also undeniably beautiful. That knife-edged jawline could slice heirloom tomatoes. His cheekbones were pristine, his nose just battered and forceful enough to add character to his face. All lengths of stubble suited his handsome features and emphasized his perfect lips. As did a beard. As did a clean shave. It was ludicrous and unfair, honestly.

His lush, sandy-blond hair, just starting to silver at the temples, set off his cloudy blue eyes like—

Well, like a television star’s hair should set off his eyes.

He was a damn good actor too. A couple of seasons ago, his character had followed Jupiter’s stern order to secretly gather his fleet and leave Dido—the woman he’d loved and lived with for a year—in the middle of the night, with no warning or even a final word. Caster-Rupp had conveyed Aeneas’s naked grief and shame and reluctance with such skill, April had cried.

Then Aeneas had spotted the glow of Dido’s funeral pyre in the distance, across the choppy water, and understood the implications. Because of what he’d done, she was either dying or dead, and he couldn’t do anything to stop her or help. Dropping to his knees on his ship’s deck, his face crumpled in agony, he’d clutched his hair and bowed his head, his breath rough pants as he grappled with horror and self-loathing at his beloved’s fate.

At that, April hadn’t merely cried anymore. Sobbed, more like it.

She still thought he should have won a little gold statue for that episode.

In the actor’s capable hands, no one could deny Aeneas’s intelligence, his huge, lonely, scarred heart—or his reluctant, growing respect for and attraction to Lavinia in the last three seasons of the show.

But there was a reason April didn’t follow the dude on Twitter.

She didn’t think he’d ever said an interesting word in any interview she’d seen with him. And she’d seen plenty, because the Lavineas shippers hungrily pounced on any media coverage that might discuss their favorite pairing. Unlike Summer Diaz, the woman who so ably portrayed Lavinia, though, Caster-Rupp never fed the fandom with insight or analysis or even a bare mention of the Aeneas-Lavinia relationship. Not that he mentioned the Aeneas-Dido relationship, either.

He kept things vague. Enthusiastic and one hundred percent generic.

After the first season of the show aired, most reporters simply gave up on interviews with him and just flashed a few of his biceps-flexing pics on-screen whenever they mentioned his character.

His ability to portray such intelligence on camera, such emotional depth, was a wonder. In real life, the man was all hair-flipping, cheerful vapidity, a walking, talking, gleaming, preening, Hollywood-pretty-face stereotype.

Not her kind of date, in short.

But spurning him, rejecting his kind gesture, in public would be churlish. And how could she call herself a Lavineas fan if she turned down the chance to talk with him?

Then again, maybe he was looking for a way out.

They needed to talk. Not in front of his two million followers, either.

She followed his account. Then she slid into his DMs, half expecting to find out she had been hallucinating, or Twitter’s notifications had gone bonkers somehow and told her he’d followed her account and asked her out when he definitely hadn’t.

But up the DM screen popped.

She had permission to send direct messages to Marcus Caster-Rupp. Because he’d followed her. In reality.

Weeeeeird. Exciting, but weird. Not to mention awkward. So much so that composing her initial message took several minutes.

Uh . . . hi, she eventually wrote. Nice to meet you, Mr. Caster-Rupp. First of all, and most importantly, thank you for being so kind just now. It was very sweet of you to defend me like that. That said, I want you to know: you don’t have to go through with the dinner. I mean, I’m probably willing if you are, but I don’t want you to feel obligated.

While she waited for a response, she quickly checked the Lavineas server.

With a groan, she flopped back against her headboard. Dammit, BAWN had responded to her earlier messages, and she didn’t have time to answer him right now.

But she had a responsibility to the fandom. If he knew the situation, BAWN would understand.

Still, she wrote him a quick message. Taking care of a few last-minute tasks. Then I’ll be back to chat. Sorry!

By the time she maximized her Twitter window again, Caster-Rupp had written her back.

I don’t feel obligated. You’re obviously very talented at making costumes, and as I said, you’re also quite lovely. I would be proud to take you to dinner. P.S. Please call me Marcus.

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