Reel (Hollywood Renaissance 1)

Little to none.

It’s not just the threshold of her house I’m crossing. It’s the threshold of folly.

She turns back when she realizes I’m still outside, and the sight of her does something to me that used to feel foreign, but I’ve become accustomed to the effect. She takes my breath away. Not just the way her features are arranged into prettiness, or the dick-hardening slim-thick curves. When she looks at me I feel like she sees me, and I’m not sure anyone ever really has.

Why her?

My curiosity rages as strong as my lust. This is the threshold to why—to answers. To satisfaction for the hunger the very sight of her arouses in me.

“Did you change your mind?” Disappointment sifts into her expression. “It won’t take long to heat up, and I have ice cream.”

There’s something about the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met feeling like she has to put ice cream on top to convince me that destroys the last of my resistance. It’s just cobbler, right? I have enough willpower to eat dessert and get out of here without anything happening.

Don’t I?

I’m Canon Holt, renowned for my discipline and self-control.

And yet when she bends over and slides the cobbler into the oven, I’m like a horny teenager straining for a glimpse of her ass.

She straightens and tugs at the dress hugging her body. “Mind if I change? I just want to get comfortable.”

“Sure.” I settle onto the couch and try the only thing that’s ever worked in my quest to resist Neevah. I don’t look at her at all.

“You want coffee?”

I stare at my hands linked between my knees. “Nah. I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

“K. I’ll be right back.”

She disappears down the short, arched hallway, her heels clicking on the flagstones. The Spanish-style cottage the studio is putting her up in boasts high ceilings and oversized picture windows. Even unlit, the dormant fireplace lends the room warmth and coziness. I assume both bedrooms, hers and Takira’s, are down that hall. My mind wants to wander there, to her changing clothes, baring her skin inch by satiny inch. I’ve seen her nearly naked. We filmed a sex scene between Dessi and Tilda, but it was as calculated and choreographed as one of Lucia’s dance numbers. Neevah wore a body stocking and everything was plotted, all the places she would touch and be touched mapped out and rehearsed. In front of ten people, they were repositioned several times to get the shots we wanted. There was an intimacy coach on set. It was a clinical thing.

It wouldn’t be that way with us.

We would run wild through fire. I’d be mindless, my hands everywhere and our clothes flung to far corners. I’d trap her against a wall with my body and beg her to bite me, to break the skin.

“That’s better,” Neevah says, coming back into the room wearing a T-shirt that says Ew, David and a cotton skirt. She has dancer’s legs, the muscles graceful and rippling under richly hued skin. Her feet are bare and toenails painted white.

“Schitt’s Creek?” I ask, nodding to her shirt, hoping to distract myself from all the nasty shit running rampant through my thoughts about her legs wrapped around my waist or me licking the arch of her foot.

“Yes, Takira and I binge it in my trailer between scenes.” She walks into the kitchen and opens the oven. “There’s a lot less waiting in theater than in movies.”

“Very true. How has the adjustment been?”

“You tell me,” she says with a smile over one shoulder. “You’re the director.”

Don’t remind me.

“I think you’ve done a great job.” I smirk and lean deeper into the soft cushions. “Or you would have heard about it by now.”

“Oh, I know. I was gesturing too much in the beginning and playing it too big, like I was onstage, not for a camera.”

“The first day”—I grin, baring my amusement—“you were yelling at the camera.”

She sends me a glare and walks into the living room with two bowls loaded with steaming cobbler.

“I’ll never forget Kenneth’s note.” She hands one of the bowls to me and sits down at the other end of the couch. “Canon says to tell you we’re right here.”

“That was the last time you yelled at me, though.”

“Ya think?” She scoops up some of the dessert, chasing the ice cream around the bowl with her spoon. “I hope this is half as good as my mama’s.”

The first bite nearly crosses my eyes. “This is delicious. If your mama’s is any better, I might marry her.”

“She might have you.”

I’ve heard about her sister and mother, but nothing about her father. “So is your dad still around?”

“No.” Her smile withers and she lowers her eyes to the bowl in her hands. “He died. Heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.”

She lifts and drops one shoulder, her eyes sober when they meet mine. “It actually made us closer—me, Mama and Terry. That’s why it hurt so much when Terry . . . when she did what she did.”