Curve Struck (A Celebrity Stepbrother Romance) (2 page)

Strong arms wrapped around her waist, Declan's hands clasping together behind her back and tugging her toward him until she and the stool were balanced again.

Her breasts and the curve of her stomach pushed against the hard planes of his chest and abdomen. Her pulse accelerated as she stared into the flinty gray eyes and wondered if it would have been less damaging to fall and bust her head open on the floor than to be pressed that tightly against a man like Declan Bain.

"I have a Dremel!" she blurted.

The dark blond brows knitted together until he realized what she was saying.

"You're not using a power tool anywhere near my neck, Mel," he responded with a tease of amusement in his voice. "You can't even stay on your feet around me -- at least not without my assistance."

Her mouth pursed into a pout. Her near fall had nothing to do with how damn attractive the arrogant ass was. It was a matter of pure physics, the extra wide butt, the narrow step, and other things like gravitational pull that she could have explained to the idiot if she hadn't been sketching in her design book during every science class she'd ever been forced to sit through.

"So you want to reschedule your flight?" she shot back. "Again?"

Whatever mirth had played around his eyes and mouth vanished. Pivoting to his right, he proceeded to her workbench and sat down. Right before he came to a stop, he flicked the backside of the war kilt out so that he sat bare bottomed.

She blinked as she saw part of his fine ass before the thin chain mail settled into place. With her blood pressure instantly spiking, she reminded herself she'd seen it all before in stills from the movie.

"Let's do this," he prompted. "Just stay away from my spine and major blood vessels."

Before she grabbed the Dremel and its rotary blade from her kit, she turned the torque so that one of its three seams was a few inches to the side of his spine. Then she grabbed some scrap leather from one of the bins, doubled it as protective padding then placed it between the piece of jewelry and his skin.

She fished out her safety glasses and put them on. With the Dremel in hand, she slowly touched the fast rotating blade against the seam she had selected. The leather padding was there more to protect Declan against any slivers of metal or the heat generated by the tool because the blade only had to go through a grooved inner rod.

After a few seconds, she stopped and checked how close she was to the center, knowing that she only needed to cut a centimeter or so beyond the mid-point to sever the inner rod holding the pieces together. That left her several centimeters as a safe zone before she would encounter the leather padding.

"You're killing me," Declan growled as she continued to inspect the cut she had already made.

Her shoulders bounced in a laugh she tried to suppress. There probably weren't many girls her size who would ever be able to claim that she had made a man as famous or as universally desired as Declan Bain sweat.

"Keep your kilt on," she growled back, a smile he couldn't see plastered across her face.

This moment, she thought, with her body leveraged against his, that growl in his voice and a matching one in hers, too little clothing on him and the scent of his body, would all be incorporated into her mental wank material for the next few months.

Two seconds later, the blade sliced through the last bit of resistance and she immediately took her finger off the button powering the tool.

"Help me make sure the other one doesn't go on as tightly," he said, standing swiftly and grabbing the gold colored version of the prop.

Melanie put the Dremel down and assisted him. It felt strange being that close to him when no one was around. Usually there were at least a couple of people loitering and more breezing by when she helped an actor or actress with their wardrobe. Scents weren't isolated during production. On a regular filming day, he could smell cologne and cosmetics, any catering set-ups nearby, cigarette smoke, production smoke and a thousand others odors.

Right then, all she could smell was Declan, the sweat of his worry mixed with the almond oil they had used for the battle dress promotional shots and a juicy citrus that was probably from whatever products he had used when he had showered that morning.

As she put the torque on Declan's neck, he reached for her phone.

"What the hell are you doing?" She snatched the phone to her chest before he could claim it.

"Checking the time."

She huffed, but was just as eager to know the answer. Pressing the power button, Melanie groaned before she responded.

"Three forty."

Declan jumped to his feet. Part of the front panel of the skirt caught, undoing half of one of the two duct tape hems she had fashioned. Cursing, he lifted part of the panel and removed the rest of that line of duct tape. Letting it fall, he looked in the mirror, shook his head and pulled off the other strip, completely undoing her efforts.

"Fuck it, he's getting fifteen minutes and then I have to go," Declan growled, stalking out of the room and down the hall on bare feet.

Melanie stood as still as a statute, her mind processing what her eyes had just taken in. Shaking her head, she released a disconcerted grunt.

What had been seen couldn't be unseen.

Not when it looked that good.

The man was definitely a "shower." From some of the more salacious tabloids, he reportedly was a grower as well. She couldn't begin to imagine how big it got when he was hard if that was true.

"Snap out of it, Melanie," she admonished and reached for her phone.

Swiping through to her contacts, she pressed her roommate's number. When the call didn't connect, she checked her signal bars and sent up her own string of swear words.

Perfect! Now she had to find a spot where her crappy service would let her make a call out then get back to the changing area, finish up with Declan and put away what she had taken out and probably recite
Hail Mary
a dozen times if she wanted any chance of making her flight.

If she missed boarding the plane, she would have to cancel the trip because her ticket was non-refundable and she didn't have enough money in her bank account for at least another week to purchase a replacement.

Stepping outside, one foot keeping the auto-lock door from closing, Melanie tried calling her roommate again. She heard the first ring, then the second. By the fourth ring, frustrated tears built along the rims of her eyes.

She had to make the flight and needed Cammie's help.

Five...six...fuck, fuck, fuck!

"Hey, roomie, I can't come to the phone right now--" Cammie started before she busted up laughing. "Tell me I had you going there for a second."

"Totally," Melanie lied, her need for a favor overriding her general policy of being honest. "Can you do me a major solid?"

"I don't have to take my top off, do I?"

Melanie laughed. Cammie took her top off for a living. She also never had to empty out her change jar to make rent or walk to work the day after, unlike Melanie. So having to take her top off was never an impediment to getting things done.

"Depends on how late I am getting to the TSA checkpoint," Melanie quipped. "I'm still on set, I didn't pack and I desperately need a ride to the airport."

"How many days?" Cammie asked, her voice turning businesslike. "And casual, formal, mix?"

"Just tomorrow and Sunday," Melanie answered. "Totally casual, but a warm hoodie and some real shoes. It's just me and my mom."

"Oh! So
Mz. Winslow
is back from England?"

Melanie laughed. After three years of being Melanie's roommate, Cammie still hadn't come to terms with Melanie's otherwise old school mom keeping her maiden name when she married. For an exotic dancer, Cammie could be remarkably old fashioned sometimes.

Of course, exotic dancing was a very old profession -- one of the oldest, no doubt.

"Yes," Melanie said. "And she's insisting I come for a visit. I would have put it off, but she sounded so freaking happy I need to make sure something weird hasn't happened."

Sighing, her foot still preventing the door from shutting, Melanie leaned her head against the exterior wall and closed her eyes. She felt like a shit for thinking something had to be wrong with her mom if the woman sounded so happy, but becoming a widow a little more than four years before had made Melanie's bookish, introverted mother even more withdrawn.

Now Nancy Winslow sounded like distilled sunshine -- and she'd added two weeks to what was supposed to be a month's stay in England, the dream trip she and Melanie's dad were scheduled to take before he fell suddenly ill.

"Okay, so totes casual," Cammie confirmed. "Basic hygiene and essential makeup only. Tablet, laptop or both?"

"Tablet and make sure my art stylus is in there."

"The little white pencil looking thingie, check. More importantly, tampons or pads?"

"Oh, gawd," Melanie snorted. "You're incorrigible. Neither -- but don't forget to toss my birth control pills in there, which I would have forgotten."

Internally acknowledging that it had been far too long since she'd needed to worry about contraception, her mind flashed an image of Declan at her. The image was followed by another and another until she was sweating despite all the cool air being sucked past her from the open studio door.

"I'll have to meet you across the street from the studio," Melanie added, dragging herself back to solving her current dilemma. "I can't get you access on such short notice."

"I'll park at Taco Smell and have a crunch wrap and lemonade waiting for you."

"You're the best," Melanie chirped before her lips smacked together in a kiss and she ended the call.

Rushing to the wardrobe room, Melanie found the gold mail and torque tossed on top of the silver version. She hadn't been gone the fifteen minutes Declan had said he'd give the photographer, so either the photographer had changed his mind or he'd managed to royally piss off the movie's star.

Either way, she needed to get everything put up and hustle her over-cushioned bottom off the lot. The first three outfits were already folded and waiting atop their bins. She put them inside then gathered up the suede boots and leather pants to fold and store. Turning to the chain mail, she swore as she lifted the golden war skirt. Some of the links had locked against one another.

Chewing at her lip, she tried to tease the links into separating. After five minutes, sweat starting to form on her forehead and her fingers cramping, she remembered the torque she had drilled in half. That damage, no matter how necessary, was enough to have Suzanne go into full bitch mode.

"Screw it, I'm already doomed."

She folded the silver chain mail, put it in a bin then tossed the kinked up golden mail on top of it, placed the two pieces of the broken torque plus the gold torque on top, sealed the bin and stacked them on a rolling cart.

Grabbing her gear, she put it on top of the bin, turned the lights off and hurried with the cart down the hall. Turning onto an intersecting hall, she came face to face with the photographer's assistant. Like her, he was in his mid-twenties, maybe a year older than her twenty-five. She'd seen him on the studio lot a couple of times, usually with someone else's coffee in his hands and a harried look on his face as he tried to make sure he delivered the coffee hot.

The harried look always disappeared when he saw her, his face contorting into something ugly despite his cover boy good looks.

You don't belong on a Hollywood lot -- period.

That's what the look told her.

"Move," she growled, refusing to let him make a bad day even worse.

He turned to the side, his lean body flattening against the wall. Once she was past him with her cart, he tossed a verbal grenade in her direction.

"You don't have to be a bitch about it."

Rolling her eyes, she said nothing.

Forget him, forget Declan Bain, too. Her next gig started bright and early Monday morning at a different studio, smaller than the current film's studio and she would be working for a soap opera instead of a summer blockbuster. The position was temporary, the regular wardrobe girl was out on two weeks maternity leave, but it would be a nice break to be down in the minors where the egos were a little smaller and everyone didn't look at her like she needed rushed to the hospital for an emergency fat suctioning and stomach stapling.

"Assholes," she hissed, hefting the last of the bins onto the storage shelf.

Shouldering her backpack, she rubbed roughly at her face. Internally calling her boss a bitch, yelling at people, thinking of everyone on the studio grounds as assholes wasn't her. Something was wrong -- several somethings. She was worried about her mom after Nancy's extended stay in England, the almost secret undertone to their short conversations, and the sudden summons.

But, more than that, Melanie knew she was on edge for the stupidest of reasons.

Declan Bain -- a mere man no matter how famous or good looking.

She had known working with him was going to be a problem the first time she Googled his name after starting the gig, something she'd never done with any of the other actors. She didn't care which stars had a significant other, what their childhood had been like, or if they had a dog or a cat or neither. Nothing of that sort had interested her. But, finally, after three years hopping from wardrobe job to wardrobe job, dressing some of the most famous bodies in Los Angeles, she had become star struck.

She would rather have been hit by lightning, she thought with a rough laugh as she power walked across the lot to meet Cammie.

At least then, the burns wouldn't last as long.

After running through LAX and still coming within a hair's width of missing her flight, Melanie stowed the bag Cammie had packed for her into the overhead bin, kicked and shoved her backpack under the seat in front of her, then collapsed solidly on her butt and closed her eyes.

"Really?" a feminine voice asked from nearby, the tone pure Valley Girl laced with all the entitlement of the priciest zip codes Los Angeles had to offer.

Melanie cracked one eye open to find a platinum blonde staring at her with a disapproving curl at the left corner of her lips. If forced to guess, Melanie would have put the blonde's age somewhere between fifteen and twenty. The cleavage on display showed ample -- really, really ample -- evidence of a breast enlargement, but that meant nothing. The more affluent SoCal parents didn't see anything wrong with gifting boob jobs to their daughters for their sixteenth birthday.

"Why don't they make people like you pay for two seats?" the woman-child asked.

Melanie resisted the urge to rip into the female, or point at the obvious enhancements and say it was for the same reason Little Miss Silicone didn't have to buy tickets for the twins. Instead, she just eased deeper into the seat, squirmed her ass and shoulders around to make sure her flesh was as spread out as possible and tried to think her way into falling asleep.

A massage usually helped. Not a real one, although that would have done the trick, too. But her love life being what it was (or wasn't), she satisfied herself with an imaginary one. The mental trick often worked to focus her on relaxing one muscle group at a time until she was asleep or in such a deeply meditative state she wouldn't hear the blonde complaining.

She started with the mental image of a man's hands pulling her hair back, gathering up the dark auburn locks, gently twisting them, then making a single loop so that her hair would lay neatly to the side. Next he curled his palms around her shoulders, the thumbs extended to rest lightly against the top few vertebrae of her spine.

A firm and rhythmic kneading of her flesh at that spot relaxed the muscles of her face and neck. From there, his hands spread out. His touch grew heavier and an unintended heat sparked low in her belly.

Immediately, she willed the hands back to the top of her shoulders, her mind hitting the restart button on the images playing through her head.

The visuals were supposed to be relaxing, not arousing.

Again, her face relaxed, his hands moved out, worked her biceps and the muscles covering her shoulder blades, fingers played up and down her spine.

Weight pressed heavily against her lower back as the plane began its ascent.

Feeling the pull of gravity, she pressed her thighs together and noticed an ache beginning to draw her nipples into thick, pouting points. She tried to open her eyes and pull herself out of the massage fantasy.

She couldn't. She was worn out and plummeting so quickly towards sleep that the man's hands could have their way with her. Forcing her thoughts inward, she turned her head in search of a glimpse of more than his hands.

"Don't look," a voice whispered in her ear.

His voice.

More of his weight settled against her backside. His hands roamed her arms, alongside her waist, over her hips and the fleshy outer thighs. His breath warmed her neck, coaxing her eyes to stay shut.

Melanie struggled in her seat, tried to inject her sleeping mind with some trace of reason. She was on a plane, surrounded by other passengers. She turned her head toward the window and fought, centimeter by centimeter, to open her eyes.

The plastic shield was up, the sky outside the plane already dark. A reflection winked at her before disappearing as she fully woke up.

She only needed that flashing second to recognize the scene that had been playing through her sleeping mind. Melanie and Declan on a bed, her flat on her stomach and his body draped over hers, his shaft buried deep inside her pussy, his tight, muscular ass grinding her to dust. They both had their heads turned in the same direction, both of them looking at the mirror she imagined he must have in his bedroom.

Only this time, when she saw the appreciative, satisfied smile on his face that she had noticed so many times when she was dressing him during production, she realized he wasn't looking at his reflection.

He was looking at hers.

Melanie released a shaky breath as the seat belt light came on. The captain's voice spoke over the PA system announcing that they were beginning their descent into Denver's airport, the seemingly short dream lasting far longer than she realized.

She looked to her left to find that the blonde had managed to whine her way into a different seat several rows over. The stewardesses skimmed by with plastic trash bags half full, their gaze alert for errant trays, unfastened seat belts and any garbage.

Melanie looked out the window, forcing herself to stare past her reflection so that she could see the city lights. As much as she tried, she couldn't get the dream out of her head. Feeling a hard tug on her hair, she looked to find her fingers trapped in a thick knot, her stress making her pull at it.

Using her nails as a comb, she smoothed out the tangles she had created.

She didn't want to think what the rest of her looked like. She hadn't put on makeup after her boss's early morning call, just quickly showered while she waited for a cab because the surprise call-in meant she couldn't take the bus and Cammie had only been home from work for a few hours.

Her clothes had been almost as haphazard -- a pair of jeans, some aqua blue sandals and a breezy peasant blouse. She had intended to change before boarding the plane, but the delay at the studio meant she would have to wait until she landed before digging out the hoodie and putting on tennis shoes.

She exhaled, trying to breathe out a little of the tension that kept building inside her. It was silly, even after the dream, to worry about Declan Bain. Her real worry was her mother. The visit home, as short as it was scheduled to be, would hopefully help put those fears to rest.

Her stomach lurched as the plane neared the ground, its deceleration increasing at a faster rate. She could see the asphalt and small lights, then the faces of the ground crew.

The landing gear made contact with the runway. Melanie bounced in her seat, her hands around the buckle of her safety belt. Contrary to the captain's instructions, she and ninety percent of the other passengers released their belts and reached for the bags they had stowed under their seats. With no one beside her, she slid over to the row seat so she could stand as soon as the plane came to a halt.

Hearing the soft electronic tone that signaled they could take their belts off, she shot upward, shouldered her bag, and popped the overhead bin open. It took only a few seconds to wrestle her rolling weekend bag out. She moved backwards as she did so, extending the handle and letting it drop to the seat. With a quick flick of her wrist, she brought it into the aisle.

She started toward the exit, one hip bumping the platinum blonde back into her seat.

Oops, she thought then immediately chastised herself for the intentional act.

She wasn't about physical aggression, hadn't been raised that way. Maybe Los Angeles, particularly the film industry, was finally getting under her skin and it was time, as her mother had suggested, for her to come home, room with her mom at the house Melanie grew up in, open an Etsy shop or something for smaller costume creations and forget about the bigger dreams that had drawn her to Hollywood to begin with.

At least then she wouldn't have to deal with the oversized egos of men like Declan Bain.