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We’d been practicing lines on the sofa and only looking down if we got completely stuck. Peter was serious about his off-script deadlines, Bennett had warned me, and the rehearsal really was helping me. Beyond giving me the chance to ogle Bennett in a faded pair of Levi’s and a T-shirt and barefoot.
I launched into the climactic fight scene where Corie was demanding a divorce. Immediately, Bennett’s expression shifted to his Paul Bratter face as he blazed through the drunk Paul scene.
Biting my lip to keep from laughing, I stood from the sofa, unable to sit still for the passionate scene. This was where Corie made a complete about-face from hating her husband to worrying about him. In his drunken stupor, he climbs out of their bedroom window and to the roof of their apartment to prove he’s wild and spontaneous like her.
Hale did an excellent job on the set, creating the giant window in the ceiling where Bennett would cling during the final part of the play.
Bennett stood when I did, maintaining his Paul expression, but his words softened as his fear of dying and losing his wife became clear in the delivery of his lines. I couldn’t help but step closer to Bennett, just like Corie inched closer to Paul on the rooftop, trying to save him from falling after behaving like a drunken fool.
Their vulnerability and love for each other were apparent in the lines on the page, and we were playing them to perfection. So perfect, in fact, that my throat thickened with emotion as I drew closer to him.
“Paul! Don’t fall!”
Corie’s feelings for her new husband, her beloved who had risked his life—albeit foolishly—to prove that he could be everything she needed, began to bleed into my own.
Or was it the other way around? I wondered as I stared up into Bennett’s eyes, blazing with an intensity that wasn’t Paul at all. But Bennett. The hungry, passionate man that made me shiver with anticipation.
“Oh, Paul,” I said. It was one of the final lines when she meets him on the rooftop. I remained standing there, arms at my sides, wanting to bridge the short distance between us. But also afraid of the unbearable tension stretching like a steel line that could pop and lacerate with bleeding force anything in its path.
I’d had several sexual partners over the years. But none of them—not one—had my heart hammering out a warning that sex with this man would be different. That I might be changed from the experience.
And yet, I wanted him more than my next breath. I couldn’t stop it if I tried.
We’d finished the final scene altogether but still stood there, staring, unmoving. Until he moved, tossing his script on the floor with a resounding slap against the wood.
He was mere inches from me, devouring me with his fiery gaze. He roamed my face then lower, snagging on my off-the-shoulder shirt that exposed the lacy strap of a bralette I’d worn for comfort. And to make him look at me just like this. With insatiable need.
He lifted his hands and cupped my face, fingers threading into my hair, his thumb coasting over my mouth. He brushed his thumb again across my bottom lip.
His expression was tight and savage. I’d almost think he was filled with rage if I didn’t know his moods so well now. I recognized this one right away. I’d experience the onslaught of its intensity when he was on his knees in a movie theater, thoroughly eating my pussy and making me come in the dark.
What I found so intriguing about Bennett—well, one of the reasons—was that while he seemed predictable when I first met him, I’d discovered happily that I was wrong. Dead wrong. Right now, I knew what he was thinking, the same thing that I was. Still, I was shocked to my toes when he finally opened his mouth to speak.
“I’ve wanted a lot of women,” he crooned softly, his minty breath from the gum he’d been chewing coasting over my lips.
With those words, a brutal pain crested at the center of my chest, but then he held my face harder and went on, his words a barrel-deep rumble.
“But I’ve never in my life needed a woman the way I need you.” He watched his thumb grazing my lower lip before he pressed softly. I opened at his silent command. His heated gaze remained fixed there, his chest rising and falling faster with each breath. “I feel like if I don’t have you right now, if I don’t find out what it’s like to be buried inside you, I’ll fucking go insane.”
After wrapping my hands around his thick wrists, I squeezed, drawing his attention back to my eyes.
“Then take me to your bed.”
The crushing force of his mouth on mine made me whimper in response. Just as before, his kiss was an onslaught of sensation, his tongue aggressive but in no way sloppy. Thorough. He kissed me the way he’d fuck me. I was sure of it. With sure, deep strokes, wrenching pleasure with each thrust.
Heat pooled between my legs, and I ground against him, moaning at the feel of his hard dick in his jeans.
“Fuck,” he cursed. He curled his hand into the edge of my loose-fitting shirt and the strap of my bralette and yanked them both down.
My breast popped free. He groaned as he lowered his head and sucked my nipple into his mouth.
“Ah!” I fisted one hand into his hair, the other wrapping his nape to hold him there.
My nipples were my most sensitive spot, and the way he was sucking and nibbling gently with teeth, stinging then licking to soothe the slight pain, had me grinding harder against him.
“Your bed, Bennett,” I rasped. “Yourbed.”
Growling like a rabid dog who’d been torn from his bone, he let go of my breast with a sucking pop. He was dazed for only a second as he stared at my reddened nipple against my fair skin before he grabbed my ass with both hands and hauled me up, aligning me with the big bulge in his jeans.
