Command Performance Read online

  David pulled a face. “God, hope I didn’t just put my foot in my mouth. Or your mouth. Didn’t see her back there.”

  “Excuse me,” Mason replied in a carefully modulated voice. He turned from Ferris, now gleefully, falsely apologetic, and scanned the room, ignoring the assessing glances. Which way had she gone? Jeremy caught his eye and nodded in the direction of the bar. Mason strolled that way, unhurried and serene. Acting. Unpleasantness followed David Ferris like a stench, but this unpleasantness affected Mason directly. And it affected poor Miri in a very big, public way.

  The bar area was crawling with people. Whether by savvy or pure instinct, she’d done the right thing and not hidden. She was seated halfway down the leather-trimmed bar, looking small atop an oversize wooden stool. She was having an animated conversation with the bartender. The man turned away. As Mason approached, he saw him pour three generous shots of raspberry vodka into what was otherwise a perfectly disguised Shirley Temple.

  Mason took the stool to the right of Miri as the bartender delivered the brightly colored drink. Mason waited for her to speak, bracing for wrath, reproach. He deserved whatever she dished out to him.

  She took a small sip of the concoction. “Keeping up appearances for your ‘campaign,’” she said. “I asked if he could make a Shirley Temple that would get me drunk.”

  Mason blinked, took out his wallet, and slid the bartender a hundred dollar tip. He ordered vodka straight up for himself. “I’m sorry, Miri.” Mason wanted to hold her, wanted to soothe her. His hands made helpless fists in his lap. “I’m so sorry.”

  She looked at him sideways. “It’s true?”

  Somehow, those words pained him more than anything else she could have said. She had doubted. Wonderfully, she had assumed David Ferris was full of shit, but Mason couldn’t backtrack now. He decided on pure honesty, because she deserved no less.

  “At first, dating you was a PR maneuver. Yes. I didn’t tell you because... I don’t know. It seemed so calculated.”

  She choked a little on her drink. “That’s because it was calculated.”

  He leaned closer, wary of eavesdroppers. “But I’ve enjoyed our time together. That’s not a lie, it’s the truth. I started dating you as a PR stunt but I’ve enjoyed every moment I spent with you. I’ve been missing something genuine, something pure in my life. I didn’t realize that until I met you.” He looked over at her. She was tonguing the cherry from her drink with a complete disregard for what it might do to any man watching. He did a quick scan of the room. Yes, several men leering.

  “Can I have your cherry?” he blurted out, literally wanting to make the damn cherry go away, but then the other meaning hit him and he felt a rush of heat to his groin.

  Miri, unsurprisingly, didn’t catch the subtext. “If you want a cherry, I’ll get you one.” She waved over the bartender, her new best friend. Was she already buzzed? “Can we have some more cherries?”

  With a nod and a priceless look of irony, the young man deposited a heaping bowl of red, shiny fruit in front of Mason.

  “Enough?” the bartender asked. “Let me know if you need more.”

  Mason scowled at him. Fucking upstart. He was torn between giving the young man his business card and punching him in the face. He looked down at the bright red bowl of cherries in front of him. He hated maraschino cherries. Miri was still tonguing hers in between delicate sips of vodka and sweetness. She twirled the cherry on its stem, dipping it in and out of her cocktail.

  “Money can buy anything, huh?” Miri asked, gazing over at him.

  “No money ever changed hands. I swear. It wasn’t like that—” He stopped at the expression on her face. “You meant the cherries.”

  “I meant the cherries. Yes.”

  Mason took a deep swig of vodka, feeling it burn down his throat and into his lungs. “Miri, I know I’ve given you no reason to trust me, or believe anything I say, but I’ve enjoyed our time together, I swear. If we weren’t so mismatched... Well.” His courage petered out. “I don’t know.”

  “Are we mismatched?”

  “I’m way too old for you,” he said gently. “I’m jaded and cynical”—he lowered his voice—“and sexually deviant. I’ve been married twice, divorced twice. I’m dishonest.” He forced his gaze to hers. “Worst of all, I use people without thought to how they might feel.”

  None of the anger he wanted from her was evident. She reached out instead, with wide, sympathetic eyes, and stroked his cheek. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t beat yourself up over this. I was using you too.”

  Those words, coming from her, were like a roundhouse kick to the neck. Mason pounded the rest of his drink and signaled for another. Miri stared at the section of the bar between them. “I hope you’re not mad. But, see, I have PR problems of my own.”

  He shook his head, confused. “PR problems? Everyone remembers you as sweet little Hannah on Two Wonderful. They watched you grow up. They love you.”

  “They love who I was. That cute kid. That child. But I’m not going to get anywhere without changing that image of me.” Her eyes flew to his, intense with emotion. Yeah, she was drunk now, but it was good. This was uncensored Miri. But God, she was tonguing the damn cherry again. “See...” she said, “I need to shrug off this cute, innocent thing and be a little wilder. I need a more mature image.”

  He sidled closer, giving the room his back. “Let me get this straight. I dated you to sanitize my image, and you dated me to do the opposite?”

  “Don’t tell my father.”

  Mason plucked the cherry from her fingers and gnashed the offending morsel between his teeth. “How old are you? I think I was twelve the last time I cared what my father thought.”

  She gave him a reproachful look as he batted her hand away from the bowl of cherries. “You don’t understand. He started my whole career. I owe my father a lot.”

  “He owes you a lot. The opportunity to live as an adult, for one thing, not some 5-year-old character in your past.”

  “I do live as an adult.”

  “Adults don’t say things like ‘Don’t tell my father.’”

  Miri took another sip of her drink. “It’s complicated. My sister— He worries—”

  “You shouldn’t have to pay for your sister’s mistakes.”

  “It’s not just that. Child stars...” She paused a moment, stirring her drink. “Child stars end up trapped in this kind of limbo. We’re forever young. People want us to stay young and sweet like we were. It’s hard to grow up, move on to real life. I think that’s why my sister rebelled like she did, and why I’ve been standing so still.” She gazed over at him, gesticulating, drunk, lovely. “But now things are changing. When I’m with you, it feels like I’m moving again. Like good things are happening.”

  That deserved a cherry, but instead his hand curled around her arm and his lips sought hers. He kissed her with all the frustrated longing in his black heart, and she kissed him back in that clumsy, avid way that drove him mad. Desire bypassed his heart and brain and settled right in his cock. She was destroying him one cherry at a time. “Here,” he gasped, breaking away. “Have some more, goddamn you.” He threw a few into her drink.

  “I have an idea,” she said, ignoring the cherries. “If you want. If you’ll go along with it.”

  Mason drained the rest of his second drink. “Okay, I’m afraid to hear this, but what’s your idea?”

  She leaned close, right into his personal space, her breath warm and fruity, her lips as red as the cherries in her glass. “I’ll keep playing your sweet, innocent girlfriend to fix your reputation.”

  He nodded. “And?”

  “You catch me up on all the things I’ve missed.”

  Mason blinked and bit his lip. “Catch you up? On what exactly?”

  “You know. All those things you’re supposedly very good at. Those bad things you do, that have your reputation in tatters. That kinky stuff... Man, I sure am curious what that’s all about.”

>   Mason would have killed in that moment for privacy. Not just because of what they were discussing, but because of his body’s reaction to her words.

  “Miri.” It sounded like a groan. “You’re drunk.”

  “No! Well, yes. But not too drunk to know what I’m saying. I want you to teach me to be sexy, like you are. I have to be sexy to be a film star, don’t I?” She leaned in again, practically in his lap. “I need help, Mason. I’m a virgin.” He hoped her stage whisper hadn’t sounded as loud in the bar as it sounded in his ear. He glanced around the room.

  “This isn’t a discussion to have here.” He eyed the bowl of cherries as he eased her back onto her own bar stool. “Should we have those wrapped up to go?”

  “I don’t want the cherries. I want you to de-virginize me.”

  Mason raised a brow at her uncharacteristic brazenness and helped her down, then steered her toward the coatroom. They collected their things. She was blushing now, and pouting. He draped her wrap around her shoulders as she stared at the floor.

  “Are you okay? Do you feel sick?”

  “I feel fine,” she snapped. “I had one drink.”

  “Yes,” he said, leading her outside. “And judging from the things you said, it was a potent one.”

  “I won’t get sick in your precious car, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  It was fascinating to see her like this, petulant and aggressive rather than sweet. She thought she wouldn’t get her way. That he would refuse her offer to “teach her to be sexy.”

  The driver pulled up and Mason helped her into the back of the sedan. “It’s not my car, first of all, it’s a studio car. And I have issues with women who don’t normally drink, getting drunk so suddenly and spectacularly.”

  “I’m not spectalee— spectree— I’m not that drunk. You made me feel bad.”

  “How did I make you feel bad?”

  Miri slid across the seat, putting as much distance between them as possible. “How do you think it feels, being rejected like this?”

  “I haven’t rejected you,” he ground out. “You’re just too drunk now for me to take you seriously.” Damn it, if she wasn’t drunk... If she wasn’t drunk, he’d already be taking off her clothes.

  “Are you mad because it turned out I was using you too?” she asked. “Because it was more than that. I mean, you’re so sexy. The sexiest man I’ve ever known.”

  He glared over at her, willing her to stop talking. His cock was pounding, aching, and so was his head. He put his fingers over his lips, praying for control.

  “Just because I’m innocent doesn’t mean I don’t have the same desires you do,” she said, her pink-painted nails stroking the leather-upholstered seat next to her leg. “I want sex that’s crazy, that’s nasty and hot and out of control.”

  “Miri, baby. I need you to just be quiet now.”

  She ignored him, caught up in her surprisingly intense fantasies. “I want sex that takes my breath away. Kinda rough, like when we did that scene together, only not real rape. If I was going to picture in my head exactly what kind of man I would want to introduce me to dirty, nasty sex, it would be you.”

  He lunged across the length of the seat and grabbed her. He possibly growled. How much of this temptation was he supposed to endure? Mason would show her dirty, nasty if that’s what she wanted. Making out with a horny drunk girl was perfectly okay in his moral code.

  He grasped her face between his palms and gave her the kind of kiss he’d wanted to lay on her since the start. He breathed in her breath, battered her tongue into submission, bit at her lips. He wrapped his arms around her, shoving her beneath him. She didn’t resist. If she had, he liked to think he would have pulled away and released her, but she didn’t, so he kissed her even harder and slid a hand between them, under the bodice of her flimsy gown, over her breast. She filled his palm perfectly. His cock throbbed as he felt her nipple draw tight. He pinched the taut peak forcefully, just to see her reaction. She moaned into his mouth, her hips rising against his pelvis.

  It was like some trigger, some flipped switch. He lost it. His tongue warred with hers as he ground his aching cock against the juncture at the top of her legs. He reached down, pulling up her hem. Damn long dresses. He started to rip it in his need to get at her thighs, to get at that hot, tight place between her legs so he could thrust in and take away that innocence she was so eager to be rid of—

  “Don’t.” She pulled away, her hand around his wrist. “Don’t rip the dress. It’s not mine.”

  He gazed down at her, his pulse thundering, his senses reeling, his fingers still poised to rend the fabric. Her lips parted, pearly and pink. They looked well-kissed, even in the darkness. He put his hand over his eyes because he couldn’t look at her and remain sane.

  “I’ll take it off if you like,” she whispered. “If you help me with the zipper.”

  “No.” His voice sounded furious, hoarse. He could feel her shrink under him. It made his brain click back to reality. He took a deep breath and pressed his cheek against hers. “Please, just give me one minute. Just lie there a minute and don’t move and don’t say anything. Please.”

  It would have helped if she’d pushed him off her, but she did just as he asked, lying still and quiet beneath him. After thirty seconds or so, he managed to shift away, to sit back and up on the leather seat. He eyed her rumpled gown, the luscious breast he’d groped. The sound of her moan...oh God.

  “Miri,” he said on a sigh. “Not here, not now. Not in the back of a car with you half drunk and me—” Crazed. Dangerously horny. Out of control.

  “But...” Her voice sounded small. “Will you? Will you do it?”

  “Maybe. Probably. We’ll have to talk about it some other time when you’re sober.”

  “I feel sober now.”

  “I don’t.” His cock could bend iron, it was so rigid at the moment. “I don’t want to do anything rash. I’m not sure you fully understand what you’re asking for, what kind of stuff I’m into.”

  “I do. I’m not as innocent as you think.”

  He fixed her with a look. “You’re every bit as innocent as I think.”

  She pulled her wrap around her shoulders, staring out the window. He watched her, willing his erection to subside.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He still covered her with his coat, his fingers brushing for just a second against the softness of her cheek. He believed she was sober now. She looked like she was about to cry.

  “Don’t, Miri. Don’t fall apart. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “How can it have nothing to do with me? You were just on top of me.”

  He stared out his own window. “You make me afraid of myself. I’m not sure I can do this thing you want because I’m afraid you’ll end up getting hurt. Really hurt.”

  “Hurt how?”

  “I could hurt you a thousand ways.”

  “Don’t, then.”

  “I won’t be able to help it. You’ll get emotionally attached. You know you will, and I’m not real emotionally accessible right now. I’m really horny though. You’ll end up feeling used, even if you put this spin on it that I’m somehow helping you. That we’ve made this tit-for-tat deal.”

  She didn’t argue with any of it, only fiddled with the corner of his jacket. “Maybe I will get attached. But I promise when you have to go, I’ll let you go. I’ll give you up. I won’t guilt you.”

  “Too late. I already feel guilty.”

  “What have you done to feel guilty about?”

  “I groped your tit and ground my cock against you and almost ripped your dress off just now.”

  “But you stopped.”

  “You stopped me. Jesus, Miri, there’s a reason I need to be seen out with you. Did you read what they said in the papers? Sex freak? Pervert? Swinger? All of it is true.”

  “That just goes to show how desperate I am.”

  She had an answer for eve
rything. He started laughing, deep belly laughs despite his despair. “That just goes to show how desperate I am?” he repeated. “You little shit.” He threw his head back, shaking with laughter. She was laughing too, little hysterical giggles that set him off even worse.

  “You know what I think?” He grabbed her hand, catching his breath. “I think we deserve each other.”

  She blinked at him in the darkness. “Does that mean you’ll at least kiss me again? I love how it feels when you kiss me.”

  He slid his thumb across the back of her hand, tracing delicate bones and veins. “I’ll kiss you, yes. All night. But not the other stuff, not yet.”

  “When I’m sober?”

  “When I say.”

  Even in the darkness, he saw the childish pout, the eye roll. He felt the sudden impulse to turn her over his knee and work out his unsatisfied sexual frustrations by spanking her ass. God, he wanted to. No. Not yet anyway.

  They moved out of the city onto quieter streets. Before the driver turned toward Miri’s house, Mason knocked on the window and told him to go to his place instead. Miri didn’t object. He held her hand and she slid lower on the seat beside him, resting her cheek against his arm. He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. She opened her mouth in response and he swept his tongue across her lower lip. He savored the taste of her, sugary vodka and bravado. She pressed closer, but he stopped her when she would have crawled into his lap.

  Her eager response to him stoked desire, but protectiveness too. His original madness at her carnal invitation had passed. In its place, Mason felt anticipation and a not-unpleasant weight of responsibility. He was going to avail himself of her offered virginity, of course, but not in the backseat of a car. He was going to make plans, take his time and make it perfect for her. Monumental. Unforgettable. And then he was going to “catch her up” until she couldn’t fucking walk anymore.

  Her lips were so soft, so delicious. He’d never look at a cherry again—not for the rest of his life—without thinking of her.

  Chapter Six: Probably