The Princess and the Porn Star Read online

  The elevator reached the penthouse, and before the doors had even fully opened, Darryl squeezed through and hurried out into the hall.

  “Was it something I said?” Quinn asked, batting his eyes.

  I smothered a laugh and shook my head.

  He offered me his elbow, and I slipped my hand into it.

  “You know,” he said, eyeing my hand on his arm, “someone might get the wrong idea about us one of these days.”

  “If they do, I’m sure you’ll set them straight.”

  “Damn right I will.” He stuck up his nose. “I might be flawless arm candy, but I only bat for one team.”

  I just laughed. I’d never admit it to him—his head would swell ten times its size—but I liked having him as my plus one. It was nice going out for an evening with someone who had my back and didn’t expect to get into my pants. All the fun of taking an actual date to a party without any of the bullshit.

  Quinn and I walked into the room. We weren’t two steps through the door when he gasped.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Look at the bar,” he said, making a point of looking a different direction.

  I rolled my eyes, then looked toward the bar. Didn’t take long to figure out what had caught his eye: that buzz cut in a bowtie with a martini shaker in his hands was so, so Quinn’s type. And I knew Quinn. The sleek mahogany bar and colorful rows of top shelf wouldn’t get him all flustered the way six feet of sex on wheels did every time.

  “He’s cute,” I said.

  “Cute?” Quinn gave me one of his what-the-fuck looks. “That man is beyond cute.”

  I grinned. “Aww, how cute. Thirty seconds into the party, and the dog’s already picked out a bone.”

  “You’re damn right I have.” He straightened his jacket. “Mark my words, darling. Before this night is over, I will have that man.”

  “Care to place a wager?” I asked.

  He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll wager a full weekend off against twenty hours of voluntary overtime.”

  “Is the overtime with or without complaint?”

  Quinn clicked his tongue. “Do we really need to negotiate details of something that’s never going to come to fruition?”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You want that full weekend off if you win?”

  “Fine.” He huffed sharply. “Twenty hours of overtime, with no complaints.”

  I held out my hand. “You’re on.”

  We shook on it, and then he tugged at his cuffs as he threw the bartender a predatory narrow-eyed glance.

  “All right. Time to score some time off.”

  I laughed. “Go get him.”

  He strutted toward the bar, and I just shook my head. Why I even bothered making these bets, I didn’t know. Quinn was good. He knew he was good. And he always won.

  Then the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

  He’s here.

  I turned my head. I found him. I almost dropped to my knees and melted.

  The man I wanted, needed, had to have again looked right back at me, pale green eyes meeting mine over the top of a martini glass, and the son of a bitch—like every man in the room—was wearing a tux.

  I needed a drink. Not an alcoholic one, just a cold one that might take care of my suddenly dry mouth and skyrocketing body temperature.

  The bar was only halfway across the room, but it may as well have been miles away for as easy as it was to reach. A record exec stopped to congratulate me. Rich introduced me to the head of marketing. A couple of reviewers told me with thin-lipped, fake-as-fuck smiles that they were excited to see my new video and hear the album. I didn’t even have time to be skeptical or wonder just what nastiness they’d have to say about the music or the video. I just needed something cold and wet in my mouth. Something to calm me down as much as I could possibly calm down with that undeniable presence prickling my skin and screwing with my pulse.

  Finally, after politely bowing out of half a dozen conversations, I made it to the bar. Quinn glared at me as I distracted his prey for a moment, but then he just grinned into his martini glass—top shelf and free, no doubt—and craned his neck as the bartender bent over to pull a bottle of water from the minifridge. To Quinn, I mouthed, You’re welcome.

  He just winked.

  “Rachel?”

  I turned around, and suddenly I was alone with Lee. Buzzing voices and clinking glasses faded into the background.

  “Lee,” I finally managed to choke out. “Hi.”

  He smiled. “Long time, no see.”

  “Yeah.” I gulped. “Too long.”

  “You look incredible,” he said.

  “So do you.” I couldn’t help doing another quick down-up, and when our eyes met again, his narrowed as the corner of his mouth pulled up.

  “So, um…” He cleared his throat. “How have you been?”

  “Good. Good.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been traveling a lot lately,” he said. “With all the…appearances. And stuff.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. They’re running me into the ground.”

  I wish you’d run me into the ground.

  That thought ignited intense heat in my cheeks, and I quickly went for the bottle of not-nearly-cold-enough water in my hand.

  Stilted small talk was like a foreign language when it came to talking to Lee. It was even more awkward than when we’d first met on the video set and had no idea how to interact at all.

  But there was something hanging over us this time. Something that needed to be said but couldn’t be, not with press and Risen Star executives lurking around us.

  I had no idea what to say, mostly because I was afraid anything I tried to say would come out as “last time wasn’t enough” and “I want you every way I can have you.” I’d never had this much difficulty being articulate with a man. Even at my highest, I’d been able to form coherent sentences most of the time, at least enough to avoid saying something completely inappropriate. Or maybe I was just so high I didn’t care. But right now, sober and lucid, I couldn’t say what I wanted to say because there were too many people around, and I couldn’t say anything else because I was afraid I’d just say what I wanted to.

  I nervously swept the tip of my tongue across my lips, and right then, caught Lee’s eye. His gaze darted toward my mouth. Then my eyes again. We both quickly looked away, but not for long.

  Eye contact. Clearing throats. Not speaking. How the hell did we stop being awkward with all these people around?

  Lee glanced around the room. Then, “Do you have your phone with you?”

  I nodded.

  He made a subtle beckoning gesture.

  I pulled my phone out of my clutch and set it on the bar.

  Lee picked it up. He held it under the edge of the bar, and his eyebrows pulled together as he thumbed something into the phone.

  Then he set it back on the bar and surreptitiously slid it back toward me. I figured he’d entered his own contact info into the phone, but when the screen came to life, it was on the notepad app, where Lee had written: Rm 3279. Come by after the party?

  I met his eyes, and the lift of his eyebrows echoed the question mark on his note. I pulled in a breath to tell him I would definitely—

  “And there’s the stars!” Jim came out of nowhere, and his hand materialized on my shoulder. “How about a picture?”

  “A—” I suddenly found myself looking down the barrel of a massive camera lens, and instinctively leaned in and smiled.

  The blinding flash left me seeing spots, and as I tried to blink my vision back into focus, Jim said, “We’re going to screen the video in just a moment.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “But first, I have someone I want you both to meet.” He herded us toward a couple of comb-overs in tuxes. “This is Jack Rowan, president of Risen Star Records.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “A pleasure,” Lee said.

  We each shook hands with Jack, and the
n he said, “You know, I wasn’t so sure about Jim’s idea. I mean, a porn star in a music video?” He laughed and narrowly avoided dumping his martini down the front of my dress. “But between Jim and you two, it worked. It really worked. People are going to love it!”

  I responded with a watery smile. So did Lee. Hadn’t we both heard this same backhanded compliment a hundred times?

  A fork clinked sharply against a glass like the prelude to a wedding toast.

  Every conversation died down, and everyone turned toward the front of the room, where another exec now stood with a martini glass in his hand. “I want to welcome everyone to the launch of Battle Cry, the newest album by Risen Star recording artist Olivia Taylor.”

  Polite applause tightened the knot in my stomach. Being in the same room as Lee was maddening enough. The message on my phone didn’t help. Seeing us together in the video?

  Oh God. I’m going go to burst into flames before I ever make it to Room 3279.

  But I didn’t have a choice. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and my heart pounded as the exec spoke again:

  “If you’ll direct your attention to the screen”—he gestured toward the massive flatscreen mounted on the wall—“I’d like to present, for the first time ever, the ‘You Ain’t Even Kissed Me Yet’ music video.”

  The room dimmed, and the screen lit up.

  The video’s intro was fairly slow, and I was alone on the screen for that part. The clips filmed prior to Lee’s arrival, just me in front of what had been a green screen and now showed a dark, starry background. I was dressed all in white leather with not a lot of skin showing, with the camera focused on my face. Then came the backup dancers—all female and dancing alone—who moved slowly, smoothly, gradually picking up speed as the song gained momentum.

  I held my breath. Forty seconds into the song, a long note. An increasing tempo. A dramatic crescendo.

  And then, an explosion of light in perfect time with the entrance of the drums. The tempo shifted to a rapid techno beat.

  All the female dancers were paired now, and so was I.

  With Lee.

  On the stage.

  In leather.

  Oh my God.

  The song’s rapid tempo couldn’t keep up with the beat of my heart, and I couldn’t look away from the screen. I could feel the leather against my skin and Lee’s body against mine. His hands roaming my body. His hard-on against my ass. He was a few feet away now, but my nerve endings replayed every onscreen touch just like it was happening in real time.

  While Lee and I had been dressed in contrasting leather—one of us in black, the other in white—the backup dancers were matched up with their partners, and they danced even closer than we did. Cameras zoomed in on bare hands sliding across black leather. Leather sliding across leather. It created the illusion that the dancers shared one body, one liquid, undulating form, exactly the way I’d felt when dancing with Lee.

  Then the video cut to the two of us facing each other on the platform. The platform had spun one way and the camera had circled us in the opposite direction, creating the illusion we’d been moving even faster than we were. I shivered at the memory of that centrifugal force that had drawn us together, pulled us toward a central point until we had no choice but to touch. Until we’d melted together as one form like the uniformly dressed backup dancers. Until we came together in a kiss that was unscripted, unexpected and totally unavoidable. The kiss Jim had used in the video after all. The kiss that made the hotel room spin like the platform I’d been standing on, and I didn’t have Lee to hold on to this time.

  Not yet, I thought, gripping my clutch a little tighter until I found the edge of my phone. I don’t have him to hold on to yet.

  I ran my thumb along the edge, as if the coarse texture of my clutch had suddenly become a Braille version of Lee’s message. I couldn’t look at him. If I did, my dress would melt off right here in the middle of this room, or I’d grab his jacket and drag him away in a manner that would scream to everyone else that the kiss they’d witnessed was completely real. And that it was only the beginning. The first spark of a fire that would raze everything in its path if someone didn’t do something about it quickly.

  Onscreen, as the music wound down, we pulled apart, and the camera caught that stunned, speechless instant when I’d met Lee’s eyes and my expression had all the “what just happened?” that I’d felt just then. As the platform turned, Lee’s face was just like I remembered it: eyes wide, lips apart. A furrow of did that just happen? and did you want it to happen? between his eyebrows even as he swept his tongue across his lower lip.

  Absently, I did the same, searching with the tip of my tongue for a phantom taste of that kiss. Just like they did during filming, my knees almost buckled, so I casually pressed my hip against a chair and hoped it was enough to keep me upright.

  How many people got to see their first kiss with someone on film like that? In dizzying motion, with every spark and glance leading up to it recorded for posterity, interspersed with shots of us dancing and touching on the stage to emphasize the languid crash course until that knee-buckling moment when we finally came together?

  The video faded to black, and the room was once again filled with applause.

  I was out of breath. My heart raced and my skin felt flushed like I’d just gone through all those motions instead of watching them. I was viscerally aware of Lee close by me and the message on my phone, and it was all I could do not to reach for him, but I still didn’t dare even look at him.

  Jack shouldered his way through the crowd and extended his hand. “Nicely done, Olivia. That video ought to turn some heads.”

  “We can hope,” I said, smiling in spite of my fluttering stomach.

  “And good work on your part, um, Buck.” Jack shook hands with Lee, who was suddenly way too close to me when I was in this state. “I wasn’t sure about bringing in someone from your line of work, but”—he nodded toward the dark screen—“well done.”

  “Thanks,” Lee said. “I appreciate the opportunity.”

  I’ll never know if he looked at me just then or if the tingle running down my spine was just my imagination, but somehow I stayed upright and professional.

  Then Lee pulled back his sleeve and looked at his watch. “It’s been a great party, but I think I’d better call it a night.”

  “Already?” Jack said. “It’s still early, son.” But then he paused and elbowed Lee. “Except I suppose you need your rest before work, don’t you?”

  Lee responded with a tight smile. “Yeah. Something like that.” He turned to me. “Good night, Rachel.” He held my gaze a second longer than he needed to.

  “Good night.” I smiled. His eyebrows rose, and I realized I hadn’t given him an answer earlier, so I nodded once, subtly.

  Lee grinned. Then he leaned in to plant a chaste kiss on my cheek, bowing to Hollywood elite protocol, but paused for a whispered, “See you soon.”

  I sucked in a breath.

  And then he was gone.

  And I needed to be.

  A few people stopped me to shake my hand and congratulate me on the new release. Some of them had greeted me earlier, and I was vaguely aware that their smiles were tighter and their words more clipped, like something was sour on their tongues that hadn’t been there before. But people in this town were pros at putting on smiles that were as fake as their breasts and air kisses, so the flickers of distaste were barely detectable, especially by a mind like mine that was focused on someone and somewhere else.

  It didn’t take long to find Quinn. He was at the bar, chin resting on his upturned palm as he swapped grins with the bartender.

  I sidled up next to him. “Any luck?”

  “Pfft.” A Quinn look. “You knew the minute you made that bet, you’d lose.”

  I patted his arm. “Nicely done. Let me know when you want the time off.”

  He raised his glass in a mock salute. “I so will.”

  “Figured you would.”
>
  Quinn lowered his voice. “And by the way, hon? Spectacular video. That kiss?” He fanned himself and winked.

  “Thanks, Quinn.” I leaned in a little closer. “I’m going to call it a night.”

  “Already?” He threw me a please-don’t-make-me-go-home-now look. “But I—”

  “You can stay as long as you want. I’ll get a lift home, don’t worry.” Then I winked, and Quinn smirked.

  Keeping his voice extra low, he said, “To whose home, love?”

  “None of your damned business.”

  “Not like I can’t guess.” He shrugged, then sipped his drink. “Have fun, darling.”

  I glanced at the bartender, whose back was turned. “You too, Quinn.”

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Oh, Quinn.” I grinned. “I plan on doing everything you wouldn’t do.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lee

  A light tap on the door had me off the bed and on my feet in a split second. I clicked off the movie I hadn’t actually been watching and scrambled for the door. Of course I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath and collecting myself as much as I could.

  Then I opened the door.

  Our eyes met across the threshold, and we both froze. My heart pounded.

  My God, she’s really here.

  Rachel lowered her chin as a smile spread across her lips. “This must be the right room.”

  I laughed. “Yeah. It’s the right room.” I stood aside, and she glanced up and down the hall, probably checking to make sure no one was around, before she slipped past me.

  I’d barely nudged the door shut with my foot before Rachel grabbed the front of my shirt and kissed me. Hungrily, violently, she took me right back to that quickie in my dressing room.

  I slammed her up against the wall. She hooked her leg around mine, grinding her hips against my cock, and I returned her kiss just as violently as she gave it. She was even more aggressive than I remembered, demanding access to my mouth and digging her nails into my skin, and fuck, she turned me on.

  I broke the kiss, and we both struggled to catch our breath.