Page 12 of My Lucky Star
“It’s okay.” I placed the half empty cup on the nightstand.
Aria’s eyes flicked up and down my half-naked torso. “Do you want me to find you some clothes?”
Lounging around this godforsaken hotel in my designer suit felt a little out of place. Maybe it wasn’t the worst idea to find a casual outfit to tide me over until my bags arrived. I needed to get hold of Emir.
“Yeah, maybe.” I gestured for her to come in.
She stopped in the middle of the room and slowly rotated around to study every inch of it. “Original.” Her eyes grew wider, spellbound.
I bit back my smile. “Let me guess. You want to take more photos.”
“Yes, please!” Her eyes shone with delight as she stuck her hand into her dress pocket.
I expected her to pull out her phone but instead, she handed me a small plastic-covered card. “Here’s your SIM card.”
Internet in exchange for photos, like yesterday.
“Thank you.” I made sure our fingers brushed as I took the card from her. I wanted to make sure she was real, not a Burcu-like vision conjured up by my imagination.
She jerked almost imperceptibly, fumbled her phone out of her other pocket and crossed the floor to frame her first shot. “Can we cover that?” She asked, pointing at my bed.
“Sure.”
Before I could set down the SIM card, she’d straightened the duvet. “Is there a bedspread?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
She opened a side cupboard and unearthed a huge roll of golden velvet.
It turned out to be a bedspread, and I helped her stretch it across the bed, feeling embarrassed. I shouldn’t have let her in with my bed unmade. That was the kind of oversight my mother found horrifying. A lapse in both hospitality and cleanliness – the pillars of Turkish society.
Maybe Emir was right. I’d become a lazy, spoilt, self-centered jerk. I’d tried to buy her phone, my brain reminded, as if to offer more evidence. In my defense, that move would have been well received by a Turkish fan. I think. They were generally happy to give me anything. I didn’t even have to ask.
Still, I found Aria’s response stimulating. She presented a challenge I hadn’t experienced in a while, not outside of acting. In thedizis, women played hard to get. In real life, they were anything but. Except in New Zealand, it seemed.
No one knew me here, and this is what it felt like to be a nobody. The woman in front of me was more interested in photographing the Art Deco furniture than my face and body.
I hopped across the floor, trying to stay behind her as she moved around with great purpose. Her green dress didn’t hug her curves, but when she crouched down to get a low angle on the seashell-shaped chair, the fabric tightened around her bottom, revealing a delicious hourglass figure. It shouldn’t have affected me at all, but my mind went rogue, flashing images of Burcu, digging up memories.
The chase. I remembered the chase. The obstacle course of working through a woman’s defenses, layer by layer. The push and pull, the frustration and elation.
I adjusted the towel around my waist, trying to obscure the tent I was erecting.
I could have simply stopped staring at her ass. Instead, I circled to the other side, using my vantage point to peer into her cleavage, simultaneously enjoying the intensified throbbing in my groin and feeling like the biggest perv on the planet.
I’d had this problem on set with Burcu regularly and really appreciated the loose-fitting jeans and untucked shirts that dominated my character’s artsy-casual wardrobe.
I’d travelled back in time, back to a romantic scene with my old co-star, surrounded by the crew, yet somehow in our own little bubble nobody else could enter. I’d find an excuse to touch her, and feel that electricity course between us, keeping us locked into the magic, knowing the scene would come out perfect.
Aria stood up without warning, her gaze gracing my visibly bulging towel. Her cheeks flushed and she reversed across the carpet, almost hitting the door. “I... I could get you some clothes now.” She fumbled for the doorknob. “I told the office I’d be late this morning so I can swing by the shops...”
Great. I’d freaked her out. My only potential ally in a foreign country and I’d already introduced her to my penis. This was why Emir had shipped me away. I ran a hand across my face, wishing I could keep it there permanently and not catch the panicky flash behind those brown eyes before she neutralized her expression into something between polite and... wait... amused? Her mouth twitched unmistakably as she fought hard to not look me in the eye.
Emboldened by the giddy warmth that crinkled the corners of her eyes, I smiled back. “Apologies for the... um, distasteful display. You look a lot like someone I used to know. We were... intimate.”
Her jaw dropped. The stunned silence seemed to stretch the moment from seconds to minutes. It probably wasn’t that long, but enough time for my gaze to roam up and down her body, noticing her soft planes and hardened nipples, which only made my situation worse, but I was no longer trying to hide it, so I kept my stance. “I’m sorry. I’ll take another shower. A cold one. But please don’t leave. Please, Aria.”
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