Agony (9 page)

I
woke up the next morning, still wrapped in Arsen’s arms. I smiled at him as he slept. I was more than a little shocked that after only a few days of knowing each other we agreed on the fact that this was something worth trying for, but to be honest, it felt
right.

I shimmied out of his arms and went to check my phone. With any luck Adesynne was awake and not freaking out.

I saw that I had five text messages waiting for me and they were all from her. Primarily she was making sure I was okay.

And still pure.

I sent her a three page text message of what happened when we got back last night and put my phone down.

I smiled when I heard Arsen yawning in the bedroom.

“Baby doll!” he called out tiredly.

“I’m in the living room,” I yelled back.

“Come here,” he said.

I got up from the couch and went back into the bedroom. He was on his back and his hair was a mess. He had one arm over his forehead and his eyes were closed.

“Get back into bed with me,” he said.

I didn’t hesitate. I walked over to my side and climbed in. Arsen immediately rolled over and wrapped his arms around me.

He cracked one eye open at me and I couldn’t help but giggle.

“How’s Addie?” he asked.

“Checking in on my virtue as always,” I replied as I nuzzled into his chest.

“Did you tell her what we did?” he asked.

“Well yeah. If I tell her the truth she won’t give me another pat down,” I replied with a giggle.

He chuckled and began to run his hand up and down my back. I closed my eyes and smiled. I loved the feeling of his hands against my bare skin.

He moved his head a little closer and brushed his lips against my neck. I instantly began to feel my body reacting to his lips. I squirmed a little as he began to gently kiss my neck.

A quiet moan escaped my lips when he slid his hand under my tank top and began to gently squeeze my breasts. He took one of my hands and guided it under the blanket, placing it on his erection.

I closed my hand around it and began to slowly move up and down, tracing the length of his hardness. I loved being able to have him so vulnerable in my hand and I think he loved it too.

Our lips met and we became tangled in a steamy, passionate kiss, as I rubbed him faster. He began to pinch my nipples; pulling on them gently. He had a hand full of my hair in his other hand and he had it balled up tightly.

I moaned into his mouth and his breathing was starting to become ragged.

A loud pounding on the door broke us apart.

“What the hell?” I asked letting go of Arsen.

“Are you kidding me?” he groaned unhappily. “I was so close.”

I threw the blankets off of us with a heavy sigh and went to the door. I peeked through the peep hole and started to laugh as I opened the door.

“You look like hell,” I remarked to Addie.

“Yeah well you weren’t the one playing drinking games,” she said reaching up to flatten her wild hair.

She stepped into my apartment and looked around. Her eyes fell on Arsen’s clothes and my dress on the living room floor and she narrowed her eyes.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything!” she shouted.

“God, Addie. Stop yelling,” I complained, covering my ears.

“Too late!” Arsen yelled back.

Adesynne gave me an odd look. She reached for me, but I stepped back and swatted her hands away.

“Back off cuz. It was just a hand job and some nipple pinching this morning. I’ve still got my virtue,” I replied.

“Well aren’t you awfully sexual all of a sudden,” she replied with a smirk.

I shrugged. The truth was that I felt incredibly comfortable around Arsen. To a certain extent anyway.

Addie looked past my shoulder and grinned. I turned around and saw Arsen leaning against the doorway in his underwear watching us curiously.

“Bad timing Adesynne. Bad timing,” he said shaking his head.

“Perfect timing if you ask me,” she replied giving him a pointed look.

He chuckled and came over to me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders.

The phone in the kitchen rang and I sighed.

“Now what,” I muttered under my breath as I pulled away from Arsen.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Dutton? This is Jareth Vance again. I really hate to be disturbing you so early in the morning, but the movie has been pushed up and we’re going to be shooting next week. I was calling to see if we could get that business lunch in today.”

“Um, sure! What time and where?” I asked, scouring the kitchen drawers for a pen and pad.

“How about noon at DiMarco’s? We can eat outside while we talk,” he suggested.

“Alright, I’ll see you then, Mr. Vance,” I replied.

“Jareth,” he said.

“Jareth,” I echoed with a smile.

We hung up and I went into the bedroom. Noon was an hour away and I looked like a mess. I turned on the water and hopped right in. I washed myself especially carefully today, only because I didn’t know if I would smell like Arsen so to speak or what the hell I would smell like if I didn’t get everything twice over.

I ran back into the bedroom and threw on a pair of fitted black jeans, a loose soft pink top that came off the shoulders, and ran into the living room to find my pink flip flops.

“Where are you going?” Addie asked curiously.

“That was Jareth on the phone,” I explained getting to my knees and looking under the couch. “The movie got pushed up to next week so he wants to meet today to discuss what I’ll be doing. Ah! Got em!”

I slid my flip flops on, ran over to Arsen who was still sitting in his underwear on the couch and kissed him quickly on the lips. Then I ran over to Addie and gave her an even quicker hug. I grabbed my cell phone off of the coffee table, and my purse from its usual spot by the door, and ran out of the apartment.

DiMarco’s was a beautiful and expensive restaurant that I had never been too. I had walked past it plenty of times, envious of the people who would sit around with their glasses of wine.

It was about a ten block walk from where I lived. Normally, I would’ve taken a cab, but I didn’t walk to risk being late and it was a beautiful day out so I didn’t mind the walk.

When I rounded the corner, I saw DiMarco’s sitting in the middle of the block. I picked up speed when I checked my phone and saw that I was five minutes late.

Figures, I thought rolling my eyes.

I walked up to the host who was standing outside with his little stand. I smiled as I tried to catch my breath and looked at me with slight disapproval.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Um, I’m meeting someone here. Jareth Vance,” I replied, pushing my hair behind my ears.

He ran his finger down his list and nodded, “Follow me please.”

I walked with this snotty host through the old style, packed restaurant, through the side door and out into a bevy of round glass tables and iron wrought chairs. I didn’t know what Jareth looked like so I just followed the host until we stopped in front of an empty table and he pulled out the chair for me.

“Thanks,” I said with a smile.

He placed a menu in front of me before he walked away, “Enjoy, Miss.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. I leaned back in my chair and started to scan the menu, not knowing how I was going to be able to afford anything more than a glass of water and some breadsticks.

“Neve?”

I looked up at the sound of the deep voice and almost dropped my menu.

“Jareth?” I asked.

He smiled and held a hand out. I got to my feet and shook his hand hoping he wouldn’t notice how hard I was shaking.

Addie was right; this man was damn sexy. Almond shaped, light blue eyes, fair perfect skin covered with scruff, and black straight hair that stopped below his ears. His eyebrows were naturally arched to give him a somewhat permanently serious look, but when he smiled, I was sure the moon would fall out of the sky just so the sun could see it too.

“Please,” he said motioning toward my chair.

I sat down and continued to stare at him. How was it humanly possible to look like that? Did they grow such beautiful creatures in a laboratory somewhere and then unleash them into the world full grown?

“Thanks for meeting me on such short notice,” he said, taking the menu from the snotty host.

“Um. Yeah. Definitely,” I mumbled.

Read your menu. Just sit here and read your menu. Focus on that and maybe you won’t sound incompetent.

“I remember you saying that you had family in town so I felt bad about pulling you away from that,” he said in his smooth baritone voice.

“She’ll be okay,” I said into my menu.

“Cool,” he replied.

A young girl came over and introduced herself as Mandy and said she would be our waitress. Jareth ordered a glass of Pinot and I told her I’d be fine with water.

“Hold on,” he said telling to Mandy to come back. “I’m paying for this. Get anything you want.”

“Oh, um. Can I have a Cherry Coke then please?” I asked. She nodded making a correction on her pad and walked away.

“When I said business lunch, I thought you knew that I would be paying,” he replied with a grin.

“Well this is my first ever business lunch,” I said with a nervous giggle.

“So I’m popping your cherry then?”

“Huh?”

“Your business lunch cherry,” he said with a laugh.

Oh. Oh I thought you meant ... Focus, Neve. You’ve already got someone lined up for that job.

“Tell me what you did at Devil’s Den,” he said as Mandy placed our drinks down. He gave her a small wave and a smile to let her know we hadn’t even looked at the menus yet.

“I pretty much got assigned directors to assist. I worked with four; Max was my favorite. He wasn’t as demanding or dickish as the other three. I guess he noticed I was a little more comfortable being around him, so he fought to keep me,” I replied sitting back in my chair.

“What do you consider ‘dickish’?” he asked, taking a sip of his wine and leaning back in his chair.

“You know what they do at Devil’s Den right?” I asked. He nodded. “Okay well, the first director I worked with, Chad? He would have me, in the middle of shoots, clean up the male actors. I mean seriously, any reason they couldn’t just grab hand towels and do it themselves? I went home and cried myself to sleep. It was embarrassing and unnecessary.”

“I can see where that would be considered dickish. So what did you do about it?” he asked.

“Nothing. It was my first job since college, so I just kept my mouth shut. The next day when I went in, the same thing happened again. I got pretty numb to it after the third day. On the fourth day, I was moved to a different director, and finally I got shifted to Max,” I answered.

“And what did he have you do?” he asked, sipping his wine.

“Worst thing I had to do was stand there while the actors and actresses did their jobs. Max never asked me to do anything gross or disgusting. Hell, there were days that he’d let me leave early because he could see how miserable I was. Anyway, the day he fired me, he told my friend Arsen that he got me a job with Golden Hills Media and here I am,” I finished with a shrug.

“Max is a good guy,” Jareth said, “I went to high school with him. We even went to the same college together. He just decided to go a different route with his degree. Not that I’m judging him; he must make good money or he wouldn’t keep doing it. I’m more personal than that so I stuck to Hollywood,” he said with a laugh.

I laughed along with him, feeling myself finally becoming comfortable.

He looked around and waved Mandy over. We ordered our food, I took the fish and chips lunch portion and he ordered a steak, medium and white garlic mashed potatoes.

I did some mental calculations. Something as simple as what we ordered put us already at around fifty dollars.

I saw him raise an eyebrow behind me suddenly looking rather curious. I turned around and shook my head. Adesynne was standing on the other side of the gate and she was waving me over. I saw Arsen sitting in his car parked right next to the gate. His eyes were locked intensely on Jareth.

“Excuse me,” I said, my face turning beet red. I walked quickly toward Addie.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed.

“I had to see him with my own eyes,” she said looking over my shoulder. “And that one wanted to see the competition. I swear we just got here though. We’re leaving too. We’re gonna go shopping so I can get some souvenirs for everyone back home. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she said with a wink.

I shook my head as she walked back to Arsen’s car and hopped in. He finally tore his gaze away from Jareth and smiled at me. I blew him a kiss and waved at them as they drove away.

As I walked back to my table with Jareth, I saw him watching the car leave.

“Sorry about that. My cousin can be a little overzealous sometimes,” I explained sitting down.

“It’s okay,” he replied with a grin.

Mandy reappeared and placed our plates in front of us. I grabbed my napkin, undid it, and placed it on my lap. I grabbed the knife and fork and cut a piece of my fish off. The fork was hovering a few inches away from my open mouth when I noticed that Jareth was still leaning back in his chair watching me with a smile.

I raised an eyebrow and put my fork down, suddenly feeling very self-conscious.

“Ever think of stepping in front of the camera? Instead of just standing behind the scenes?” he asked.

“What? No, hell no. I wasn’t going to strip down for anyone there,” I replied, my face turning red.

“I wasn’t talking about Devil’s Den,” he said laughing. “I meant for me. I’m sure I could find a part for you in this movie.”

“That’s more Addie’s speed,” I replied making a face. “I like being behind the scenes. It’s what I went to school for.”

Jareth’s smile widened and he finally leaned forward and started to eat his lunch. Between bites he told me about what I would be doing. For once I wasn’t going to be a go for; I was actually going to do something with meaning that wasn’t degrading.

Jareth said that as his assistant, I had to be sure to always be on time and if there were nights that he needed me to stay late I would have to do so. I agreed to that; I didn’t have much of a life anyway, so working fourteen hour says would make me feel like I was actually doing something. He also said I would be on call a lot too. When I asked why he said because there would be nights, he was sure, that he would stay up going over the footage from the day before and he would want an extra pair of eyes. He also said that once I got used to going over the raw footage and understood what I was to look for, he’d leave that job entirely to me.