Paige moaned with desire. She couldn’t help it. And the more she moaned, the slower and deeper the kiss became. He kept it up for a while—how long she couldn’t even guess. Her mind had gone to mush when his tongue had claimed hers.
Her mind dimly registered that one of Edward’s hands was squeezing her ass and that his other hand was gripping the back of her head and neck. The twin grips felt possessive and very, very sexy.
So did his hair. Felt sexy. He was growing it out for his next role, so mostly it was turning into a shaggy mess that she surprisingly found quite appealing. Made it easy to run her fingers through and rub his scalp.
Mmm. His tongue exploring every inch of her mouth with that slow rhythm that scattered her mental marbles turned Paige to jelly.
When he ended the kiss, she leaned her head back and held on to his broad shoulders for balance. The way he was looking at her took the wind left in her sails and blew it all to hell. So too did the firm grip he maintained on her neck.
With his free hand, Edward gently caressed her cheek before swiping his thumb back and forth over her bottom lip.
“You taste like wonder,” he growled.
She’d never heard that sound before. It was raw and kind of menacing.
“And garlic and tomatoes and blue cheese and red wine.”
Paige smiled. At least, she hoped it was a smile and not a grotesque facial spasm.
“Oh, and French Roast.” He was smiling into her upturned face.
Finding her sense with a good deal of effort, she bantered right back. “Too much garlic, you think? I don’t know,” she teased with a slight shake of her head. “It’s hard to tell.”
His bark of laughter sealed the deal for her. She would never know another man his equal.
“Are you crazy? There’s no such thing as too much garlic!”
And then he simply pinned her to the wall and kissed her senseless. It wasn’t until she felt his hand on a thigh left bare by her skimpy shorts that she pulled it together.
Pushing him with a gentle shove, she smacked him lightly on the chest. “Okay, okay. Enough with the Mr. Handsy thing,” she teased.
“No good?” He chuckled back.
He was still crowding her personal space, not that she minded in the least, so she surveyed the mess she’d made of his hair—reaching up to push it off his forehead.
“Well,” she shrugged, smiling with a half-grin, “coming out of left field and all, you have to give me a chance to catch up.”
She didn’t expect the rough grunt he made when he pushed off her and backed up. “No left field for me, Paige. This has been a long time coming.”
Her mouth dropped, and she was pretty sure her eyes had the deer in the headlights look to them. Finally, she frowned, her eyebrows almost meeting from the tension on her face. “Edward, what are you saying?”
He tapped her playfully on the nose. “You’re a smart girl. Can’t you figure it out?”
“Uhh …” Paige mentally rolled her eyes. Smooth. And to think, she aced a public speaking course at the university. Pfft. “Should we be doing this?” The question appeared out of nowhere, but she trusted her judgment enough to know it came from honesty. Should they be doing this?
“There is no this, babe. There’s only us. So what you’re asking is if we should be doing us.”
He sounded so serious.
“Us,” she murmured.
“Come on, Paige. You can’t be that surprised.”
Surprised? She was flabbergasted. Wanting Edward Banning was practically on her résumé but that didn’t mean she’d ever let those feelings out of the box where she kept them. Until now. And now seemed like a good time to take a big breath and a deep gulp.
Those mesmerizing blue eyes bored into hers. “Don’t you think we should talk about this?”
Hmm. Fight or flight? Talk or run? Run sounded good. For now. She needed time to think about everything. That did not mean, however, that she didn’t secretly want him to make the decision for her, just tear off their clothes, and make love to her right there in the damn hallway.
Giving him a cheeky grin, she fished her keys from the pocket of her shorts and jangled them.
“Nope.”
Ducking her head under the strap of a purse that she had placed across her body, Paige stuck her arm through a loop on the backpack she took everywhere and turned for the door.
“Wait!” He chuckled. “Are you fucking serious? Nope? That’s what you have to say? Just nope?”
Toeing her sandals with one foot, she arranged them on the floor to make them easier to slide into.
With a final smirk and a wink, she laughed in his smiling but shocked face.
“That’s right, sweetie. Nope.”
Yanking on the door, she made to leave turning one last time to wiggle some fingers at him in good-bye.
“Toodles,” she chirped then quickly bolted through the door when Edward burst out laughing and lunged for her as if he meant to unleash the tickle monster.
As she scurried along the path to the driveway, she heard him still laughing in the doorway. “Did you just use the word toodles?”
She smiled the whole way home.
Sometimes, the lag between the end of one project and the start of another was so laidback and slow that life almost felt normal. And then there were times when the transition from one movie set to another took on time warp qualities. Everything sped up, which in turn made Paige feel like she needed to be operating at Mach speed to stay on top of things. They had a long few weeks until they had to be in Montana, but her days were full and busy.
Even though just twenty-four hours had passed since the extraordinary encounter she’d experienced with Edward, it seemed like the following day had gone on for a year.
Fresh from excitement of their dangerous game of flirt, retreat, flirt, kiss, and then run like hell, she’d barely survived the sleep-deprived coma of yesterday. The detailed and highly erotic scene that had played out in her dreams after she had dragged her grinning ass home hadn't helped.
It was one thing to watch Gideon Shaw make love to a movie character and another thing altogether to experience firsthand, deliciously so, how Edward went about kissing. His movie star alter ego might be one of the sexiest men alive, but the fabricated individual was a pale shadow to the real man.
Had it been inevitable then that her dreams would be a veritable encyclopedia of carnal scenes? Probably.
Her thighs were burning from the grueling workout she’d programmed into the hi-tech treadmill on which she was currently pounding out a rhythm. Hiding out at the gym had seemed like such a great idea after the hellacious day she’d just endured. Between an excess of unfulfilled sexual desire and after a workday that had tried her patience as well as her composure, working up a serious sweat and burning off some energy had been her only choice.
Things had steadily gone from bad to shit-tacular as the day wore on, starting with a full bore argument she’d walked in on between a red-faced and furious Mickey and the director of Gideon’s just-wrapped movie.
Markus Gladford was one of a handful of in-demand directors who was enjoying his fifteen minutes of applause and industry fame. Edward had been excited to work with the intense, mercurial visual artist who’d racked up one box office hit after another.
The shoot had been uneventful until the last couple of weeks when Gladford had gone off the rails. At the time, she had figured the pressure of directing a highly anticipated adaptation of a famous book was making the man lose his shit.
But finding him at Mickey’s swank Beverly Hills office and looking like a bad kid who’d just been handed his ass by a stern parent, Paige couldn't ignore the warning bells.