Quirks & Kinks (12 page)

“Uh, yeah,” he confirmed matter-of-factly. Blasé. La di da. Like people had third nipples every day.

God, what did I know? Maybe they did.

Studying me more closely as I continued to fondle him, he asked, “Do you not read the script at all?”

“Huh?” I was distracted.

“The script,” he repeated, knocking my hand away, sliding the sleeves from his arms, and turning to the wall to work on untangling the fabric.

Bye, bye, you strange glimpse of heaven,
I mentally told his disfigured chest.

“It’s all about how Miranda likes to do all kinds of interesting shit to Gary’s nipple.” My eyes shot from the phantom image of his naked chest up to his eyes. He’d obviously gotten his shirt free and slid it back on while I was busy fantasizing. “His
third
nipple.”

Right.
Gary’s
third nipple. Not Anderson’s.

Fuck, I was losing my mind.

“Actually,” he amended, “It’s about people with minor physical deformities finding comfort and relief from persecution in their lovemaking with similarly unconventional people. Miranda’s passion for Gary’s third nipple is only one of the scenarios.”

I just stared. Dumbfounded. Fucking
impressed.
I certainly hadn’t gleaned that interpretation from the damn thing. Of course, as he’d pointed out, I hadn’t actually read it.

“Come on,” I reminded him. “
We’re
going to be persecuted if we don’t get our asses inside!”

Chuckling, he held open the door and gestured for me to proceed him inside. If I’d had time, I might have stopped to swoon over the existence of chivalry.

But I didn’t.

So, instead, I ran down the hall, ducked quickly into my dressing room to grab my script, and ran the rest of the way to the set to find Anderson already there like an overachiever.

I bet he already knew his lines too.

“Alright, kids,” Howie called, just as I made it to their huddle. “We’re going to start with the physical stuff today and come back to the intro. Gary and Miranda have to leave early, and I want to be able to consult with them during their scene if we need to.” Turning to Anderson, he asked, “You ready?”

When he replied with a respectful, “Yes, sir,” Howie and I both smiled.

Talk about a noticeable difference.

“What about you?” he asked me, ruining my happy bubble.

“Um—”

Anderson saw me struggling, and tried to step in.

“Sir, you see, she was outside . . . um . . . rescuing a bird?”

It was sweet.

And really fucking unbelievable.

I shook my head in shame.

“What?” Howie asked, understandably confused.

“Torturing kittens?” Anderson offered, making me laugh at one of the worst possible times.

Howie’s eyes studied me, and I broke down. “I’m not
completely
ready. But I will be.”

Amused by something I couldn’t figure out, he winked and let me off of the hook. “Good enough for me.”

“We’ll start with the lovemaking,” he offered. “All you have to do is lay there and react to him.”

I raised my brows and laughed. “I’m pretty sure he expects more effort than that.”

Anderson’s mouth turned up at the ends and the black of his eyes ate away at the green. His body promised me things—things I wasn’t ready to know; that the extra effort would be worth it.

Man, I was in trouble.

Hot, raspy breaths bathed the line of my spine all the way to the dented dimples seated just above my butt. Anderson blew soft puffs of air into the hollow between them, and then shocked my system with a touch of his lips.

I knew it was fake, and I knew all of this action was meant to culminate at my very imaginary tail. I
knew
it shouldn’t be turning me on, but sweet baby Jesus it was. It really fucking was.

I couldn’t discriminate properly between real and make believe, and my sluggish, aroused mind struggled to remember that the man behind me was no more enjoying his actions than I should be. He was acting. Doing our
job.
He was just really freaking good at it.

“Love this part of you,” he murmured into my skin, further igniting my senses and making me push my ass toward his face. If I had an elongated tailbone, and needed it serviced, Gary would be the man for the fucking job. At least, Anderson’s interpretation of him would be.

Stretching for it, yearning for it, I clenched my hands in the sheets and threw my head back in—

“Cut!”

Fuck.

Eyes shut tight, my forehead dropped to the surface of the bed below me, and if I wasn’t mistaken, Anderson’s forehead briefly did the same on my back.

“Okay. We got that, guys. Change positions so we can do the take of Miranda’s attention to Gary,” Howie instructed like my world wasn’t tilting even further on its axis. Becoming one with my character was part of the process, but my body was taking it an entire step further.

Anderson moved gently, careful to manage his weight as he picked his body up off of my legs and shifted to laying on his back next to me. Crawling into position straddling him, I avoided his eyes, afraid of seeing something I didn’t like.

The rational part of my brain claimed that signs of real arousal were what I didn’t want to see, but I knew deep inside of myself that the absence of it was what I actually feared.

“Great. Yep,” Howie interrupted my thoughts. “Positioning looks great, Easie. Just start with the kiss and work your way down slowly, okay? We’d rather have more material than less, so take your time.”

“Can I get a lighting adjustment?!” he yelled off to the side, causing a couple of guys to scurry into action from the wings and me to have to sit straddling Anderson in awkwardness.

“So . . .” I offered, finally trailing my eyes up to his. Warmth bathed my skin from the affection I found waiting there as he studied me. His eyes didn’t meet mine, but rather, moved from one of my features to the next, starting at the line of my neck, working their way up my throat, and settling at the middle of my mouth.

“So . . .” he echoed, scrunching his nose in that adorable way before focusing his eyes on mine.

With the conversational ball back in my court, I struggled to make something witty out of the nexus of chaotic thoughts running laps around my brain. Howie and the set gods took pity on me.

“Okay, guys. We’re ready again.” After allowing a few seconds for the set to go silent—and giving me time to take a deep, cleansing breath—he gave us the green light.

“And action!”

Reaching up before I could lean forward, Anderson fingered the ends of my long, fake brown hair. I’d seen him notice the obvious change when we were outside, but we’d gotten too involved in other things to have time to mention it.

He looked at me longingly, the way Gary needed to look at Miranda and the way she would want it. But for me, it got me dangerously lost in the moment.

My eyes held his as I leaned forward, hovering just above his mouth momentarily. Something happened in those fleeting seconds, as our attention focused on one another. Electricity surged through my chest forcing a deeper, darker breath, and his free hand tightened noticeably on my waist.

Too overwhelmed by the power of the sight of him, I clenched my eyes tight and touched my mouth to his. Partially conscious of the rules of a stage kiss, I moved thoughtfully, tasting every inch of his exposed lips, but being careful not to delve inside. Until his hips shifted upward and brushed meaningfully into mine. Hard and unyielding, his arousal was unavoidable, and the surprise of it all elicited a gasp.

Suddenly his tongue touched mine, abandoning the professional boundaries and our characters in the blink of an eye.

Lost in him and the moment, my tongue danced back, twisting and caressing the inside of his mouth with the fervor of someone who feared they’d never get another chance.

His chest and the call of the script beckoned in the back of my mind, but one moment turned into two and before I knew it, we’d both lost all sense of time and spacial reasoning.

We didn’t have all the time in the world to explore, and we sure as hell weren’t alone on an island of lust. People were waiting. People were
watching.
But neither of us managed to put a stop to it before it landed us in an uncomfortable place.

“Cut!” came Howie’s loud and startling call, breaking us apart quickly and without an ending that did justice to the beginning and middle of our first kiss.

“Well, I know I said to take your time, Easie, but maybe not that much,” he teased, bringing a rare rosy blush to the center of my cheeks.

Glancing to the man between my legs, I found something completely unexpected. Because for as repentant and embarrassed as I looked and felt, Anderson
didn’t.

His eyes were hot and completely—intently—focused on me.

Luckily, Howie didn’t push it, nor did he let it linger, announcing, “Let’s go again!” before any of us had a chance to do anything else.

“And action!”

I kept my mouth closed this time, breathing shallowly through my nose as little as possible. He smelled so damn good, but each hit of his scent seemed to significantly affect my decision making skills.

Hell, it was exactly like a drug.

His throat was smooth and long, its thickness thinning a little as he stretched to give me better access. A small nip of his collarbone transitioned into an exploration of his chest, but I didn’t give myself long before zeroing in on the extra nipple.

I told myself that if I focused on the part that wasn’t
actually
attached to Anderson, I could get back into the right frame of mind. The
Miranda
frame of mind.

Purposely shutting out Anderson’s motion and response, I treated him like a mannequin, praying for a swift end to the take.

Howie, evidently with a direct line to God, chose that moment to tell us we were done.

“Cut!”

Sitting up quickly, I separated myself, compartmentalizing the lower half of my body into a box labeled “Open This Later.”

“I think we got everything we need for this. You guys go into wardrobe and get ready for the intro.”

Following Howie’s instruction immediately, I swung my leg over Anderson’s body as though dismounting a horse and scurried free until our bodies no longer touched at all.

I could feel his eyes on me, their weight dimpling the skin like a physical touch, but I studiously avoided them.

I may not have a college degree, but I’d just earned an honorary one in avoidance.

Wardrobe was waiting, and as far as I was concerned, it was screaming my name.

Trudging through a cloud of awkward fog that I’d largely created with my impression of Speedy Gonzalez, Anderson and I managed to finish shooting the intro after an agonizing twenty-four takes.

I wasn’t proud of the number, but I was content to live with it. Howie wasn’t mad, and the show got done. In the face of everything that had happened in the last couple of days, professionally, I really couldn’t ask for more.

But there
was
something that bothered me, so after getting changed back into street clothes and removing all of my TV makeup, I hiked up my panties and went in search of Anderson.

When I found him, he was gathering his stuff in his dressing room, just pulling the bottom of his t-shirt down to cover his exposed abdomen.

Focus.

Stay fucking focused.

“Hey,” I greeted softly, alerting him to my presence for the first time.

“Hey, Easie,” he murmured back, slapping his hat back on his messy-haired head and tucking his sunglasses back into the front collar of his shirt. The day had truly come full circle.

“So, um . . .” I stuttered to a start. “The second episode airs tomorrow. I know it’s not you, you know, yet. But, um. Did you . . . Do you maybe want to come over and watch it?”

“Oh,” he said, surprised, scratching at his chest with long, tan fingers. I couldn’t blame him. I’d totally blackballed him since the moment his tongue left mine. He probably wouldn’t be expecting me to invite him over.

“I can’t.”

I tried not to let my face fall too noticeably.

“I’m sorry, Easie. I wish I could.”