Page 64 of Heart to Heart
“Then I guess you’ll have to make me your present, too.”
He smirked, bringing his lips a breath away from mine. “I’ll be anything you need me to be.” I had no time to decipher what he meant by that before he captured my mouth with his again, our tongues recommencing their sultry tango together.
I’d never been kissed like this before, with so much desire and want. It was easy to get lost in the moment; the dream I wish didn’t have to end. Tristan was intoxicating, his smell, his touch, his taste. I was so completely lost in him that when the producer standing behind us coughed, it jarred me back to my senses, breaking our kiss as I looked over Tristan’s shoulder, suddenly remembering we were being filmed.
“Hey,” Tristan whispered so close to my ear his breath tickled. “Don’t look at them. Look at me.” I shifted my gaze to him. His dilated pupils had taken over, painting his irises black. “When we’re together, it’s just us. You’re all mine, Avery.”
I smiled, nodding, a part of me wondering when the hell voyeurism had become more hot than terrifying. “And you’re mine.”
CHAPTER 33
TRISTAN
I hadthe biggest shit-eating grin on my face as I sat in the back of the SUV on my way to Newport Beach, where I would later meet up with Bianca on a charter sailboat for my second date of the day.
No matter how hard I tried, my perma-grin wouldn’t go away. Because every time I forced myself to think of something—anything—else, it would eventually lead back to Avery. The way she smelled, the way she tasted, the way her breasts grazed my chest as she ground herself against my erection.
Had we just been alone…
If I started thinking about that, I’d be up shit creek. I couldn’t take a cold shower in the SUV like there had been at the spa. Despite the ice-cold water raining down on me, I’d had to take matters into my own hands. Because all I could do was imagine Avery in the shower with me, droplets of water spilling down her breasts, her nipples as hard and erect as my cock buried inside her as I took her against the shower wall, her moans echoing through the spa.
Shit. I was in trouble.
I would just have to hope these next two dates went by quickly. With the way I was right now, I wasn’t going to be able to give my undivided attention to Bianca and Tatiana. Which wasn’t fair to either of them and, despite acting on my part, would be painfully apparent on camera.
However, was I really being fair to Avery by faking our relationship? Or, should I say, leading her to believe I was faking it all. Did she even really want me? I mean, with the way she was kissing and dry-humping me in the hot tub, it sure seemed like she did. But even if she wanted me then, it doesn’t mean she wanted me for forever. Her end game was her family, not some washed-up action star who was trying to claw his way back into Hollywood. She also wasn’t the type to accept help from me financially, but maybe we could work together and then be together. A have your cake and eat it, too, scenario.
Dammit, Tristan.
We’d made an alliance. I knew her terms, and she knew my intentions. And that’s the way it would have to be, despite the internal war being fought inside my head every time I saw her.
“Someone doesn’t look too happy,” Paul, the driverHeart to Hearthad hired for me, announced as we pulled up to the harbor where the yacht Bianca and I would be chartering on our date was moored. It couldn’t be Bianca. By my watch, I still had another forty-five minutes before she was expected to arrive.
I looked out the window, groaning as my face landed on a fate much worse than I could have imagined.
Wanda.
She stood on the dock, looking at her phone through aviator glasses that were almost as big as her head. Even in stilettos, she only stood five foot three inches, yet her presence was always the largest one in the room. When she saw my SUV pull up to the dock, she looked up, hastily throwing her phone inside her purse.
“Godspeed,” Paul said, shifting into park to let me out.
“If I come up missing, you know who did it,” I muttered, opening the door as though I were preparing myself for a walk to the execution chamber. Once I stepped out of the SUV and proceeded down the dock, Wanda looked up as though just noticing my arrival. One arm was on her hip, and the other was primed and ready to grab me by the balls.
“Are you trying to undo months’ worth of work for fun, or are you just that easily distracted?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You act like I don’t have eyes and ears all over the place, Tristan. Also, it’s not like fans of the show can’t see you’d give your left testicle to Avery if she asked you for it.”
“Listen, Wanda, I?—”
“No, no, no,” she said, holding up her hand. “Let me finish. One of the things people love about this show is that they can always expect the unexpected. People make brackets like this show, March Madness. Or, at least, they used to. No one out there is betting against Avery.”
I shrugged. “Well, they’re the ones voting for her.”
“And do you know why they’re voting for her?”
I shook my head, which seemed to infuriate her even more.
