5
The Reel shoot was in Beverly Hills, at a historic hotel that was both a tourist attraction and an industry hot spot. Shane had eaten at the restaurant a few times, but this was his first time upstairs. They’d reserved three rooms on the top floor: an enormous luxury suite for the shoot itself, and two smaller rooms across the hall for Lilah and Shane to get ready.
Earlier in the week, Shane had gotten a call from a woman named Mercedes, who’d identified herself as the intimacy coordinator for the shoot. He’d been a little surprised; he was familiar with the concept, but he’d never worked with one before and was under the impression they were mostly for choreographing sex scenes, not still photography.
Mercedes had explained that Dario, the photographer, had recently started bringing her on any shoot that featured either nudity or intimate physical contact. She’d asked if he had any hard limits when it came to either.
“Did you talk to her already? What did she say she was uncomfortable with?” He wasn’t going to be the one who blinked first.
“You don’t need to worry about that. This is just about your own boundaries.”
“I’m fine with anything she is,” he’d replied promptly. But the reality of what was in store for him hadn’t fully set in until he’d arrived at the hotel and the stylist had shown him his three looks—a designer suit, black boxer briefs, and a beige dance belt (a cross between a jockstrap, a Speedo, and a thong). Better than a cock sock, he thought ruefully, but not by much.
Mercedes came by to visit him after he’d gotten dressed in the suit (in his own underwear, they’d specified). She looked like she was in her midfifties, with a broad, warm face, curly dark hair streaked heavily with gray, and the most calming aura Shane had ever encountered.
“Normally, I’d get you both together and do some bonding warm-ups before the shoot and go over the ground rules again, but Lilah seemed to think it wasn’t necessary since you’ve worked together for so many years. I’m okay with deferring to you two, if you agree. How do you feel about that?”
“Great,” he said, with a little too much verve.
“Perfect. Since this is a photo shoot, we don’t need to choreograph everything out beforehand. We can stop and take as many breaks as we need, figure it out as we go. Just don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything I can do to make this experience more comfortable for you.”
He resisted asking, Could you find me a different partner to do it with?
Dario stopped by to introduce himself next; he was tall and bald with a deep, rich voice and an impressive black beard. He reiterated that he wanted them to feel comfortable and relaxed and, most important, to have fun. Shane was pretty sure he’d have more fun getting his entire body waxed—which, thankfully, they hadn’t asked him to do—but he smiled and nodded and said everything he was supposed to say.
As Dario headed out the door, he turned back to Shane. “By the way—big fan of the show. Do you know yet if they’re finally going to get you two together?”
Shane smiled weakly. “That’s the whole point of today, right?”
Dario grinned. “Exactly. See you out there.”
When Shane crossed the hall to the set, Lilah was already there, getting final touch-ups on her makeup. Someone must have cranked down the thermostat in an attempt to offset the heat from the lights, because it was fucking freezing.
They’d both been styled in an ambiguously retro aesthetic: his hair slicked back, beard freshly trimmed, her with long hair extensions teased high, eyes smoky with dramatic cat-eye makeup.
She was wearing a thin silk slip dress, and as he gave her a quick once-over, he could tell she was cold, too. He refused to let his eyes linger, since she was staring directly at him; he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of catching him checking her out.
She did look good, though. Better than good. He thought about walking the few steps over to her and telling her that, trying to break the ice between them that couldn’t be blamed on the temperature, but those steps might as well have been miles. The words stuck in his throat, and he turned away as one of the makeup artists came over to give him a touch-up of his own. Someone turned on some mood music, sultry, ambient trip-hop pulsing low and steady through the room.
They started in the suite’s outer room, on a pale pink crushed-velvet couch opposite the fireplace. Lilah sat in the center of the couch, Shane standing behind it, his hands braced on the back. At Dario’s direction, she reached up and grabbed hold of his tie, pulling him closer. When he met her eyes, her expression was guarded and wary, tension vibrating through her neck and jaw.
These pictures probably weren’t very good, but it wasn’t like they’d use them, anyway. This was just about getting the two of them warmed up before they were asked to start shedding layers and crawling all over each other.
Click-click-click. “Good, good. You both look gorgeous. Try to relax a little. Take a deep breath, and exhale. I know we’re still finding our way into it. We have plenty of time.”
Next, Shane sat on the couch, in the corner, his legs spread wide and a lazy arm resting across the back. Dario lowered the camera and called out instructions, gesturing with his free hand.
“Now, Lilah, can you scoot closer—yeah, under his arm, head on his chest, you got it. Stagger your knees a little, point that bottom foot—perfect. Shane, now bring your arm down and look at her.”
She was lying almost completely on her side, nestled flush against him, her legs stretched toward the other end of the couch. She placed one of her hands on his chest, and, against his will, he felt his heart rate speed up. Fuck. If she was already getting to him while they were still fully clothed, this was going to be a long goddamn day.
He stared down at the top of her head, keeping his breathing slow and controlled, trying to narrow his focus to the patterns of the individual strands of hair on her scalp. Nothing sexy about that. But even so, his mouth went dry as he caught a familiar whiff of her lavender shampoo.
“Shane, you’re holding a lot of tension in your face. The bad kind. Try to unlock your jaw a bit.”
Dario had them change positions again. Lilah settled onto her back, against the side of the couch, one arm slung over her head. Her legs were parted, her skirt drifting up her thighs, and he placed one knee between them—not touching her, but still, she shifted uncomfortably, putting even more space there.
With Mercedes checking in every step of the way, Shane loomed over her, his other leg planted on the ground, her free hand clutching his lapel. When he moved his hand to cover her other wrist, the one draped across the arm of the couch, he saw her eyes widen briefly, almost imperceptibly, as his fingers closed around it.
“Lilah, is it okay if he puts his other hand on your thigh?” Mercedes asked.
Her eyelids fluttered slightly, but she nodded. Shane hesitated for a moment before splaying his fingers across the cool, tender skin of her inner thigh, his fingertips brushing the hem of her dress. He looked back up at her face and saw color rising to her cheekbones, and just like that, he was half-hard. Goddammit. Why did she always have to be so fucking responsive?
When he met her eyes, whatever she saw there had her immediately looking away again, her blush deepening.
Dario snapped a few more pictures then glanced over at the display. “You okay, Lilah? You look like he’s about to murder you.”
She laughed, but it came out as more of a choked gasp. “All good over here.”
“Just checking. I think it might be the hand on the jacket. Why don’t you put it on his face instead?”
Lilah released his lapel and brought her hand to the curve of his jaw. Even though he was expecting it, the contact almost made him jump out of his skin—and not just because her hand was freezing. He was so fucking on edge, it was embarrassing.
The only consolation was that he could tell Lilah wasn’t nailing it, either. Her gaze tracked her own hand as she moved her thumb lightly against the grain of his beard, her brow furrowed, like she was trying to solve a complicated equation in her head.
Dario moved around them, making minor adjustments to their poses as he photographed them from various angles, before leaning over to confer with his assistant. The two of them spoke for what seemed like an eternity, leaving Lilah and Shane frozen awkwardly on the couch, avoiding each other’s eyes.
“Let’s set up in the bathroom while you get into your second looks,” he said finally. Shane jumped off Lilah as if he were spring-loaded, his cheek burning where she’d touched him.
He retreated to his dressing room, stripping out of his jacket as soon as he walked in. To his relief, the stylist handed him both the briefs and the dance belt. When he put them on, it seemed like the belt’s padding and compression would do a decent job of keeping his dick as unobtrusive as possible, even if he did end up getting hard again. He clung to that “if” like it wasn’t just a “when” in denial.
As Shane pulled on his robe, there was a knock at the door. Dario entered, followed by Mercedes. They both smiled warmly at him.
“How are you feeling so far?” Dario asked, perching on the arm of the easy chair in the corner.
“Fine. Good. Is everything okay?”
“Actually, we were coming here to ask you the same thing,” Mercedes said. “Is there something going on between you and Lilah?”
“What do you mean?” Shane asked, in his best attempt at nonchalance.
“You haven’t said a word to each other all day.”
Not just today, he wanted to reply. “Oh. We, um. We just like to stay focused when we’re working. Not get distracted with chitchat.”
Mercedes and Dario exchanged looks.
“Right,” Dario said. “The thing is…we’re not feeling the chemistry. We know you two have it, obviously. But that connection is missing right now. That’s what this whole shoot is about. Without that, it’s just vulgar.”
Shane scrubbed his hand over his face. “Shit. Sorry.” He gestured to his robed body. “I guess I’m a little nervous.”
Dario’s expression cleared. “Of course. Totally understandable. We’ll be closing the set for the rest of the day, if that makes a difference.” He stood back up. “Also…no pressure at all, and I’m not suggesting you get wasted or anything, but if you want, there’s always the option of having a shot of something to help you loosen up a little.”
“Like what? Morphine?”
Dario chuckled. “I was thinking tequila, but I can check the first aid kit for something stronger.”
Mercedes cleared her throat. “We could also get you two together and take a few minutes to do those bonding exercises I was talking—”
“I’ll take the tequila,” Shane interrupted.
The shot warmed him from the inside out, the tension in his body instantly dissipating. Not all of it, obviously. That would’ve taken the entire bottle. He tossed another one back for good measure.
He strode back onto the set, a little more swagger in his step. Lilah showed up a few minutes later, looking slightly more relaxed, too. They were herded into the bathroom, which was almost as big as the bedroom, with an ostentatious chandelier dangling over a detached claw-foot tub in the center. True to his word, Dario had closed the set, clearing the room of everyone except the three of them and Mercedes.
At least it was warm in there.
“Whenever you’re ready, you can take off your robes,” Mercedes instructed. Shane turned away from Lilah to take his off, not that it mattered.
To start, Dario shot Lilah in the mirror as she pretended to do her makeup, the reflection catching Shane sprawled in the (empty) bathtub, watching her.
The vintage theme of the shoot extended to her lingerie, which she definitely hadn’t been wearing under her dress earlier—a strappy bra that stretched down her ribs, high-waisted briefs, thigh-high stockings, garter belt, and heels, all black. Shane had never really understood the appeal of fancy lingerie—it always seemed like more of an obstacle than anything—but she was making a hell of a case for it.
Even though the bra gave her an almost cartoonish level of cleavage, his eyes kept drifting down to the sliver of midriff between her waistband and the bottom of her bra, the stretch of exposed thigh revealed by the tops of her stockings. It was less skin than she’d show in a bathing suit, but something about the negative space of it all made it feel obscene.
All he could do was stare as she arched her back and leaned over the counter, reapplying her lipstick. His brain was immediately hijacked by fantasies of smeared lipstick, fingers digging into those taunting flashes of skin, her serene expression in the mirror turned glazed and undone.
His first instinct was to suppress them. But there was no point in trying to hide it, trying to hold back. As disturbing as it was that she could still get under his skin like this, this was, ultimately, what they wanted from him. To see how much he wanted her. Fuck it. He could give that to them, no acting required.
“Amazing, Shane. Keep looking at her just like that. Lilah, toss your hair over your shoulder and look back at him.”
She did, and when her eyes locked on his, a jolt went through him. He knew that look. She wasn’t nervous anymore, either.
“Stunning. You two are killing me. Lilah, go over and sit on the edge of the tub. Take your time, though.”
She capped the lipstick and turned around, pausing for a beat to lean against the countertop. Dario circled them as she sauntered over to Shane, her heels clacking out a leisurely rhythm against the tile. He let himself drink her in, bringing his thumb to his mouth and lightly brushing it across his lower lip as he watched her. Her gaze tracked it, her breasts rising and falling with a heavy exhale.
Under Mercedes’s instruction, she perched on the side of the bathtub, ankles crossed demurely, like her ass wasn’t inches from his shoulder. She placed her hand on the nape of his neck, pleasurable goosebumps rippling across his skin as she slowly spread her fingers across his scalp. Once she had a solid grip on his hair, she used it to guide his head back as she looked down at him hungrily.
He’d thought he was hard before, but it was nothing compared to now, his cock throbbing and heavy underneath the layers of restraints. He felt his back muscles bunch and tighten against the tub as he stopped himself from reaching for her, from sinking his teeth into the flesh of her hip where the hard edge of the bathtub pressed it out toward him.
“Perfect. That’s perfect.” Dario beamed, lowering his camera. “I think we’re ready to move into the bedroom, don’t you?”
Lilah released his hair so suddenly that he had to catch himself before he smacked his head on the ceramic. She had her robe on before he had even gotten out of the tub.
Shane knew what that meant: the final stage of their wardrobe. They took another break for the crew to break down the lights and set them back up again in the bedroom. Once the hair and makeup people left his room, he considered going into the bathroom and jerking off to relieve his misery somewhat, but that felt like admitting defeat. Admitting that she still had that kind of hold on him. He couldn’t exactly ignore the evidence, though.
Mercedes stopped by to visit him again.
“Just want to confirm one more time, before we get back out there. Is there anywhere you don’t want Lilah to touch you?”
It was all too easy to answer truthfully: “No.”
In the center of the bedroom was an enormous four-poster bed, covered in pristine white sheets and a billowing duvet. They stood in opposite corners of the room and dropped their robes in silence, like boxers waiting for the first-round bell to ring.
As they climbed under the covers from either side, it occurred to him that they hadn’t been naked together since they were, well, together. The last time they’d had sex, it had been rushed and ferocious, without time to remove anything more than was absolutely necessary. He had to stop his eyes from roaming, cataloging the spots where her body had changed in the subsequent years—filled out, become softer and more lush—not extreme enough that he’d noticed when she was clothed, but enough that he fisted the sheet in his hands so he wouldn’t be tempted to map the differences himself.
She wasn’t totally naked, though. She had on nipple pasties and a spandex thong that were so close to her skin tone that his dick was confused for a minute by the uncanny Barbie aesthetic of it all. Then again, with his Ken Doll groin, he supposed they were a matching set.
They started with Dario climbing to the top of a ladder parked next to the bed to shoot them from above. Shane lay sprawled on his back, Lilah on his chest, his arm curled tightly around her, pulling her flush against him. He shouldn’t have been surprised by how natural it felt. They’d found themselves in that position countless times—but not for years, and never in front of a camera.
It was kind of funny, in a ghoulish way: the two of them forced to reanimate the corpse of their former intimacy, without even the barrier of their characters to hide behind. To his body, it was like nothing had changed. But it wasn’t any deeper than muscle memory and pheromones, the sense memory triggered by the scent of her vanilla body lotion.
He rested his hand behind his head and stared down the camera, as she pressed her cheek to his chest, presumably doing the same thing.
“Lovely. Now, look at each other for me. Let’s see that connection.”
Lilah shifted herself further up his body, his arm automatically sliding down around her waist. When their eyes met, her expression was tender and unguarded. Their faces were inches from each other now, his other hand reaching over to push a lock of hair behind her ear. And that was how he knew he had truly lost his mind: with practically every inch of her body bare and pressed up against him, the thing he was aching to do the most was kiss her.
After that, things got a little hazy.
His back was up against the headboard, his legs slightly spread, Lilah sitting sideways between them, sheet clutched to her chest, both her legs draped over one of his. She leaned forward to nuzzle her face into his neck, his hand flying up to stroke her back almost of its own free will.
“Shane, is that okay with you?” he dimly heard Mercedes ask.
“Mmph,” he grunted, in a way he hoped was affirmative without making Lilah too pleased with herself. When he felt the hot drag of her tongue as she pressed an open-mouth kiss to the side of his throat, he was barely able to swallow his groan.
As soon as she did that, he realized her game: she could tell exactly how turned on he was, and she was messing with him. The annoyance that swept over him was nothing compared to the heat that had been pounding through his veins for hours, but it was enough to clear his head somewhat.
“Okay, Lilah, let’s take it down a notch,” Dario said. “I appreciate your commitment, but we don’t want to get sleazy with it.”
Lilah glanced back at him, lowering her lashes modestly. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. Glad to see you’re both feeling it. Better to go too far and pull it back than try to drag it out of you.”
Shane could think of at least one major reason it would be a bad idea for her to go too far, but he kept his mouth shut.
Finally, Dario and Mercedes rearranged them into the position he was dreading: Shane sitting upright as Lilah straddled him.
She stayed hoisted on her knees, hovering above him as Mercedes arranged the sheets. Once she was appropriately covered, he assumed she would leave a gap between them as she lowered herself down. Instead, she inched her knees forward, sinking down flush against his lap.
Shane couldn’t help but hiss like he’d been burned. She shifted and smirked, flicking her eyes down and then back again.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he murmured into her ear, low enough that Dario and Mercedes wouldn’t hear.
She draped her arms around his neck, dipping her head down until her cheek brushed his. “Don’t flatter yourself by thinking I would find it anything other than totally unprofessional.” Her voice was low and husky.
“Just keep talking. It’s going down already,” he lied through gritted teeth.
Dario guided them through a few variations: Her looking coyly back over her shoulder. Their foreheads pressed together. Dario crouching beside them, with both of their faces turned toward the camera. Every now and then, she would rock her hips slightly—not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough to make his vision go white at the edges.
“Now who’s being unprofessional?” he grumbled, tightening his grip on her hips in an attempt to hold her in place.
“Still you, it feels like.” She adjusted her thigh, dislodging the sheet, and her gloating smile disappeared.
Shane followed her gaze down, but he already knew what she was looking at, peeking out from under the strap of the dance belt: the small black linework tattoo of a cartoon ghost on his hip, no bigger than a quarter, slightly blurred with age.
When she looked back up at him, her self-satisfied expression had been replaced by genuine shock.
“You never got it removed.” It was a question, but it wasn’t.
He pushed the rest of the sheet aside to see her opposite hip. She did have a tattoo there, but when he looked closer, it was a symbol he didn’t recognize.
She’d gotten hers covered.
Of course she had.
…
“This doesn’t need to be anything more than it is.”
That’s what she’d said to him the first time they’d had sex—the first time they’d done anything besides flirt and eye-fuck, really—in her hotel room after upfronts. He’d nodded in agreement, but since she’d said it straddling him while his hands diligently worked at her bra clasp, he probably would’ve agreed if she’d said “chicken salad sandwich.”
Later, once enough blood had returned to his brain to belatedly process it, he was relieved. It wasn’t that he was opposed to commitment. But he’d been living in L.A. for less than a year at that point, and his life had already been upended by unexpectedly landing on the show. Adding a new relationship on top of that would’ve been a disaster. Plus, he barely knew her, and they were co-workers, for fuck’s sake. Keeping it casual was the only option that made sense.
In retrospect, the option that would’ve actually made the most sense would have been to not sleep together in the first place, but for some reason, that hadn’t crossed his mind.
He was grateful she’d been so direct about her expectations, saving him the trouble of trying to decode what she wanted from him. True to their word, he hadn’t slept over afterward, and they didn’t talk at all between upfronts and the start of production on season one. He’d been ready to write it off as a onetime thing. But then, their first week on set, he’d gone to her trailer to run lines and ended up going down on her instead.
Their only attempt to define the relationship had been about a month after that, when they were already spending two or three nights a week together—but only after work, never weekends. He’d been drifting off to sleep, lulled by the soft drone of the TV in her darkened bedroom.
“Are you seeing anyone else right now?” she’d asked casually, her warm breath ghosting against his chest.
He wasn’t.
“Have you been tested recently?”
He had.
“Do you want to stop using condoms, then? I have an IUD. Just let me know if…if anything changes.”
It wasn’t very romantic, but then, that was their deal. And to be fair, he never took her on a real date the entire time they were together. The two of them dating in public would be a whole Thing with a whole other set of pressures, more trouble than it was worth. Their arrangement was about superficial attraction, convenience, and stress relief. Romance was never a factor.
So there was really no explanation for why, after a few more months, when he looked at her—when they sat side by side, half-asleep, in the makeup trailer; when she slipped inside herself with terrifying focus while studying her script or waiting for them to call “Action”; when she slid into bed next to him at the end of the night, draped in one of his T-shirts—his heart stuttered out a pattern that almost felt like forever.
Not every time. Not enough to do something about it. But enough to mess with his head.
To add to his confusion, his friends at the time had been pulling him in the opposite direction. Not only did they disapprove of Lilah in particular, they felt like he was wasting his time being tied down by anyone. He should be keeping his options open, taking advantage of his freshly minted status as the star of the hottest TV show in the country. With Lilah, they reasoned, he had the worst of both worlds: all the burdens of monogamy, with none of the benefits.
The tattoos had been his wake-up call. That half-suppressed forever, etched on his skin.
He had no fucking idea why he hadn’t gotten it removed, though. He’d meant to. But he had to wait six to eight weeks for it to fully heal before he could make an appointment, and after that he kept putting it off, and putting it off, until he barely even noticed it anymore. Now, though, his stomach turned at the sight of it. Even though they’d broken up, their chance at forever destroyed before they’d even made a real go of it, she was still branded on him.
Shane knotted the sheet in his fist.
“Don’t read anything into it,” he growled. He was surprised by the ferocity of his reaction, but he’d been edging all day, courtesy of one of his least favorite people on the planet, who was currently still clinging to him like a barnacle. Sweat beaded at the edges of his hairline. This might be the thing that finally broke him.
Lilah said nothing, just ran her fingers over the tattoo one more time, lashes downcast, her expression cryptic.
Suddenly, he couldn’t take another second of it. Of any of it. He stood up abruptly, tumbling Lilah off his lap and onto the bed.
“We got what we needed here, right?” he asked gruffly, pulling his robe back on and storming out of the room before anyone had a chance to respond.