“We should leave the house today.” I say this while we float naked in the swimming pool.
“Why?” Neevah asks, and with her breasts bobbing at the water’s surface, her taut stomach and bare pussy visible in the water as she stands before me, I have to ask the same question.
“It’s Santa Barbara,” I say, only half-heartedly. “One of the most beautiful cities in the country. You should see something other than this place. And it’s not LA. Less exposure, not that I have paparazzi trailing me or anything.”
She swims the few feet over, her long, naked limbs slicing through the water. When she stands in front of me, her head only reaches my chin, and she tilts up, holds my gaze.
“But there’s so much to do right here,” she teases, her eyes growing sultry. Her hand moves between us and she takes my cock, pulling slowly, firmly.
“You’re insatiable.” I lift her so she can wrap her legs around me, and even though I don’t enter, she rubs against me, the friction sweet and hot and glorious.
“You love that about me,” she whispers into a kiss, her water-slick hands gripping my shoulders. “Fuck me again, Canon.”
“We don’t have a condom.”
“Then at least make me come.” She nips at my ear, running her palm over my nipple.
I slip my hand between our bodies, inching two fingers inside her.
“Oh my God.” She rocks into the thrust of my fingers, tipping her head back until the sun glazes her face and neck, highlighting her clear skin, completely free of makeup.
I finger her and stroke her clit, suck on her nipples, until she shudders in my arms, rippling like the water around us.
Laughing at my neck, she pulls back to smile into my eyes. I return the smile and kiss her lightly on the lips. I can’t remember a time in my life where I felt like this. This happy. This satisfied. This starved. This possessive. Every emotion seems to be exaggerated with Neevah.
I’ve always been obsessive about my work, about my art. For the first time, I think I’ve found something else, someone else, to inspire that kind of intensity. She’s ruining me and I have no idea how to stop it. I’m not sure I want to.
It’s scary as hell.
Because that gives her so much power, probably power she doesn’t even realize she has. And I know she feels the same. I didn’t lie when I said I could read her easily. She doesn’t hide the emotion in her eyes when she comes. Doesn’t pretend it’s just fucking, or treat it lightly. I don’t think she knows how to do that—to hold herself back. She is as generous in bed as she is on the stage or on camera. She scatters kisses over my face while the sweetest, dirtiest things spill from her lips into my ears. At the same time there’s a fearlessness about her, the same quality that makes her think it will all work out when people discover us. I hope she’s right.
God help anyone who comes after her for wanting me—who tries to sabotage her career or dim her light. I can’t protect her from all the pitfalls of Hollywood, but I’ll shelter her from as much of the ugliness as I can.
Her eyelids are heavy in the wake of her orgasm, her body limp and boneless in my arms. I walk us out of the pool, uncaring that neither of us wears a stitch of clothing. This property is completely private and enclosed.
Instead of giving her a lounge chair of her own, I stretch out on one and lay her on top of me. She probably thinks I’m a stage-three clinger, but in a few days we’ll go back to having very little contact. I want as much as I can get while I can have it.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” I tell her. “We should go out. Santa Barbara only does fireworks for the Fourth, not New Year’s, but there will be parties on the waterfront. It’ll be fun.”
She cuddles into my side, making room for herself on the narrow lounge chair. “I don’t want to go back tomorrow. I know we have to and I know we start shooting again, but I love this with you. I don’t want to go back to not having it.”
I don’t either, but I know it will be best for my focus, her career, and our movie. I lift her chin, kiss her nose. “Only until the movie wraps.”
“It’ll fly by?”
I’m quiet because two months without this, even an hour, feels too long. I nod, laughing when she rolls her eyes at my subdued response. I slap her bare butt lightly and shift to stand.
“Get your pretty ass up.” I extend my hand to pull her to her feet. “They don’t call this the American Riviera for nothing.”
“Did you guys consider Santa Barbara for the new location? If it’s supposed to be America’s French Riviera?”
It’s such an obvious solution, I can’t believe neither Evan nor I suggested it. I must be losing brain cells every time I come.
“Good idea. I’ll mention that to Evan. Let’s get inside so we can shower and get you out for New Year’s Eve.” I take her hand, and pause, noticing a small rash on her arm. “What’s that? Sunburn or—”
“Dammit.” She touches the rash and shakes her head. “It’s that skin condition I told you about. I have to be really careful out in the sun. It wasn’t that hot or bright when we first came out and I didn’t realize how much sun I was taking in.”
“Do you need some lotion or—”
“I have something from my dermatologist.” She flashes a smile and rushes past me into the house. “I’m gonna shower and take care of this.”
She dashes up the steps, and I call after her. “Leave in an hour?”
“Yup,” she says over her shoulder, not looking back.
I’ve needed the last twenty-four hours. Not just the lovemaking, though it’s the best on record. The conversation. Dream swapping. Being a director requires you to be a pragmatist who never stops dreaming. Last night in the huge master bathtub, we soaked together until the bubbles she poured in evaporated, along with all our reservations. With her back to my front, our legs and arms entwined, she told me her ambitions and I shared the stories I still want to tell. My life is a turntable in constant motion, and I can’t remember the last time I slowed down this way. She makes me want to slow down so I don’t miss a thing.
Dessi Blue has consumed most of my waking moments for the last two years, but I’ve barely thought about the movie since we arrived. I was right to hold out as long as I did, because if I’d felt this, had this with Neevah for the last few months, I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate for shit. Not at the level I need to. Helming a film, especially one of this scope, requires an almost inhuman amount of focus, to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
We have two months of shooting left. I have to turn this off, this near-feral desire to have Neevah, to be with her, if I’m going to give the project the attention it deserves in this final stretch. After the movie wraps, we can discreetly pick up where we leave off here, and fuck anyone who has anything to say about it. There’s not an acceptable scenario where we don’t take this further—not after this time together.
I take the stairs two at a time and enter the bedroom. It’s empty, but the shower is running. I step into the bathroom, but she’s not in the shower yet. She’s at the mirror, her hair lifted as she examines a tiny spot at the base of her nape using another mirror.
“Everything okay?”
She jumps and drops the mirror. It shatters on the floor.
“Hey, easy.” I walk forward carefully, picking my way around the glass, and lift her up onto the bathroom counter. “I don’t want you to cut your feet. Stay right there.”
I walk back out to the bedroom, slip on my sneakers, and go downstairs to get a broom. I probably look ridiculous, running butt-naked wearing nothing but Jordans.
The mirror broke in big chunks, so it’s easy to clean up. I sweep the area thoroughly, but still bring Neevah’s flip-flops to her just in case. She hasn’t moved or spoken throughout the whole process, and I tweak her toe. I’ve never seen this look in her eyes before. Worry or fear. I’m not sure what it is, but even the day she was so shaken shooting that difficult scene, she didn’t look like this.
“Baby, you okay?” I reach up to touch the spot she was looking at in the mirror, but she jerks away.
“Don’t,” she says, her voice low and curt. She jumps off the counter and walks to the shower to test the water temperature with her fingertips before turning back to me.
“I’m sorry.” Her throat moves with a deep swallow. “I didn’t mean to be short. I’m frustrated with myself, not with you, because I stayed out in the sun too long and it can aggravate my skin.”
“It’s okay. God knows I’ve been abrupt a time or two.”
She gives me a wry look.
“Alright, many times I’ve been abrupt.” I laugh, but sober, struck by the concern she carefully smooths away from her expression.
She did tell me about her skin condition. I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it.
“It really is.” She brightens, but I’m not sure I buy it yet. “Let’s get dressed and bring in the New Year.”
