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  Luckily, no one here knows this property like I do, and it’s every bit of a small kingdom.

  I lead Lightning to an overgrown portion of the second garden—the garden which houses the butterfly pavilion and the bird sanctuary on which my mother insisted—because the visibility there is low. We have to circle a small lake to get there, and the brush thickens on the far shore. It’s easy to lose someone inside.

  I bring Lightning to a lope, and we enter beneath the shadowy canopy of many looming pine trees.

  “It is beautiful here,” Roxanne breathes. Her eyes pan to the clear sky overhead.

  I think about taking her to the butterfly pavilion, but I don’t want her distracted by the butterflies. I want her to be with me. That’s why I’m here.

  As Lightning slows to a mild clomp, Roxanne’s eyes settle back onto mine. Our fragile magic starts to fall apart when she remembers the outside world again. I see it in those thundercloud eyes.

  “So, you don’t care about all the contracts you signed, just to be clear,” she tells me, tone lulling as if this is so predictable of me. “You don’t care about the people who are forced to stay late so the whole crew can look for you. You don’t care about your so-called date. And you definitely don’t care about me.”

  I pull Lightning to a full stop and Roxanne slides immediately off his back, glowering at me.

  “You have fair points across the board,” I agree, “but I do care about you.”

  “You just made me break Ms. Madden’s rules right in front of her!” She digs her fingers deep into her hair and marches toward the hedge of trees, back in the direction we came. “I’m going to be fired, Blake. Absorb that while I go back and apologize for you.”

  “Oh, Ms. Madden, Ms. Madden,” I mimic her girlishly, leaping down from Lightning’s back. He meanders to a bush and grazes, satisfied. “She’s just another Hollywood harpy, Roxanne. Don’t let her overpower you. She can’t legally blame you for what I just did, what everyone just witnessed me do to you. If she does fire you for that, you can take her to court for harassment and discrimination. The only person who can be blamed for that action is me. You’ve got thirty eyewitnesses on a silver platter.”

  Roxanne scoffs but has no real comeback for that. Because I’m right. This was the only way it could happen.

  I’ve been in the public eye long enough to understand how to work it to my advantage—from back when I gave a shit.

  I know she wants to be with me, and here we are, hidden by a hedge of trees. It’s even on film that I swept her off her feet, pun notwithstanding.

  “Damn,” Roxanne finally breathes. “I do have plausible deniability, don’t I?”

  A slow smile spreads across my mouth, and I step into the space between us. “We can do anything we want,” I tell her in a heavy voice. One hand comes out and brushes upward on her arm. I see a wave of something pass through her body, see her stiffen and settle again. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she lies. Her eyelashes tilt up and down, though. She’s looking at me. Absorbing me. Her teeth go into her lower lip and her eyelashes dip, and I feel like every bit of the rugged and virile hero right now. Roxanne whispers, “You’ve got to take down that man-bun.”

  I guffaw and reach up, pulling the elastic band from my hair, shaking it loose like a dog. “That was your idea,” I remind her.

  “Maybe I’m trying to sabotage you,” she suggests, but her eyes are shining with happiness.

  “It’s working, saboteur,” I growl.

  I lean down and cup the side of her face with one palm, tilting her chin and parting her lips with mine. She’s almost certainly going to stop me and say that we’re “just friends” and something about “the rules,” but I’ll take whatever moments with her I can get, whenever I can get them.

  I know she’s gun-shy, and that’s fine. I’m trigger-happy.

  I drift back and my thumb hooks against her lower lip, dragging down across her chin and smearing her lipstick. My gaze is heavy and hot on her, and I’m surprised to peer down into eyes much like my own. She seethes with sexual energy, and we gravitate together again, my thumb still on her lips as our mouths crash open against each other. I hook one arm around her and dip her in my embrace, lowering us both onto a soft patch of clover.

  I give myself just one second to look over her. She breathes like she ran a mile and rasps, “How much time do you think we have?”

  A wolfish grin splits my lips, and I know she wants it. She wants to cum. She’s doing orgasm math.

  “Enough,” I promise, floating down her body, almost but not quite brushing her skin. She writhes in anticipation, and I get so hot knowing how bad she wants it, how hard she’s been playing Hide and Seek with me.

  I lower my head and grind my mouth against her pussy through the denim crotch of her shorts.

  “I want to feel your mouth on me,” she whimpers, and I peer up at her from between her legs, still biting on her shorts. I settle back and half-smile.

  She’s gaining some confidence with me…

  I unbutton and unzip her shorts for her, tugging the snug waistband down. Her ass flows over the shorts because I only pull them down enough to expose her pussy and let me get my head in there. I don’t need anything else. My tongue divides her shimmering pussy lips like we’re French kissing, and I twist against her clit, suck against it.

  Roxanne clutches two fistfuls of my hair and straight up stops breathing. If her grip on my head wasn’t so damn forceful, I might be worried she had a heart attack.

  The French do call orgasms the little death.

  Frustrated with the denim shorts binding her thighs together—even if it does showcase the thickest part of her ass, and I do hesitate and sink my teeth into that bubbled derrière—I wrench the shorts down to her ankles and shove her knees apart, exposing her honeyed gash in the afternoon sun.

  Jesus Christ, I want to paint her.

  My lips go to her clitoris in a feverish hunt, my tongue pumping the underside of her button. I grasp her ass with my hands and press her as hard against me as space will allow, then slide my hands over the insides of her thighs and open her further. I can’t decide. I want it all. My cock strangles to death against the confines of these tight riding pants, and I fumble to unzip and release him.

  Roxanne’s hands leave my hair and swing to embed in the dirt on either side of us. She uses the resistance of the earth itself to grate herself against me and pants and my fist goes to my cock. I squeeze it and groan against her sweet, throbbing pussy.

  The murmurs of people in the far distance intrude into our world.

  My eyes pin to the only thing that matters: this goddess splayed out against my mouth, spread eagle. She doesn’t hear the approaching crew. She’s too busy trembling on the brink of orgasm.

  Let me take her there, and then we can hobble out of these woods.

  I drag the hardest ridge of my tongue mercilessly up and down her nub, pumping myself with one free hand while the other hand spreads and exposes her clitoris completely. Now I can flick my tongue over parts of her that may have never even been touched before…

  Roxanne groans and whimpers, and her sternum rises off the ground by itself like she’s possessed. Her hips twist, and her heels drag across the forest floor, and her dirty fingers go back into my hair and pull. God, I want her. I want her cum streaming down my chin. I want to sink my staff into her right now, because I feel like I’m on fire and she alone is water.

  My fist strokes up and down on my member, and I tongue her into oblivion, relishing everything: her taste, her texture, her breath, her little grinds and groans. I’m going to come so soon, but I can hear the voices more clearly now. Candace’s voice breaks out of the pack. I know they’re close.

  We’re running out of goddamn time.

  “Fuuuck, Blake,” Roxanne moans, and it makes me so hot just to hear her say my name like that, to hear her voice grate over every syllable, call me like an animal, not like I�
�m a goddamn knight. Like I’m her beast. Her slave. I belong to her and I know it. I want it. I’m hers.

  I drive against her pussy with renewed vigor, and she whinnies, then melts into a deep, trembling moan. Her thighs quiver and enwrap me, and she gyrates as she comes. I ride her like she’s my little bucking bronco.

  I’m still lapping at her juicy slit when she shoves me away, giddy and boneless, pushing herself up onto her elbows. “It tickles!” she wails and wiggles.

  I grin and settle back victoriously. My dick is outlined in detail against my pants, and her gaze softens with sympathy as it touches on my pounding erection.

  “Do you have a condom?” she breathes, and I feel my heart in my throat. She wants me inside her. Right here. Right now.

  I don’t have a fucking condom. I try to imagine the position of the general My Billionaire Bachelor crew, forever trudging closer to our fucking private moment. I came through a hidden path, but if you follow the trail, you walk around the pavilion first. I can’t hear them anymore and think that they probably decided to look inside and check for us there.

  Still, it’s a butterfly pavilion. We’ll be visible in a matter of minutes. Ten, tops. More likely, five.

  “I wish I could say yes,” I tell her, truly heartbroken. Dickbroken, actually. “But we have run out of time.”

  “There’s time,” she insists, breathless.

  I smile. She really wants me inside her. She’s lost all situational awareness. That’s…sweet.

  “Candace and her cronies are right on the other side of that building,” I tell her, gesturing to the butterfly pavilion, which is small.

  Roxanne’s eyes bulge, and she squirms back into her tight denim shorts, buttoning and zipping them. She never took off her black combat boots. Roxanne struggles out of the dirt and dusts herself off.

  Her eyes are wide and her energy crazy as I call Lightning over, swing a leg, and hoist myself back onto his saddle. “Don’t worry,” I say, reaching down with one corded arm. “It’s just another Berringer stunt for the books.” Roxanne grips my hand in two of hers and pulls herself up, arms slithering around my midsection, thighs hugging mine.

  I tug the reins and guide Lightning out of the glade just as Candace and her film crew emerge from the butterfly pavilion, looking like the angriest people to ever emerge from a butterfly pavilion in the history of butterflies.

  “What the hell was the point of wasting three hours today, adding all those goddamn clauses just so you could go ahead and breach them?” Candace shrills at me, marching forward. She slows as awareness of my erection reaches her eyes. It is impossible to miss, especially with the dampness from a patch of pre-cum at the tip. The harsh lines on Candace’s bitter face melt into an expression of absolute shock. It makes her look surprisingly young again. “And speaking of what the hell.”

  She stalks closer, eyes darting down to my massive hard-on every few seconds. She’s right to stare. He’s a monster.

  “I can’t control him,” I explain.

  Her eyes flick to Roxanne up on Lightning’s back. “You wouldn’t,” she says softly, like it must be true. “He would, but not you.”

  “Nothing happened, Candace,” I assure her firmly, placing an open palm between her and Roxanne. I don’t think that Candace will attack her, by any means, and yet a protective instinct does come bubbling up. “She made sure that nothing happened.”

  “Didn’t I say to get the hell out of here for today?” Candace bellows over her shoulder, at the crew of roughly thirty that she certainly commanded to stay and aid the manhunt. “Roxy, go return Lightning to the trainer, and don’t come back.”

  “Uh,” Roxanne breathes. “Are you firing me?”

  Candace glares up at her and purses her lips, shaking her head. “Why would I fire you, Roxy?” she asks. Her voice is crisp and direct, like a knife. “I have no proof that you did anything wrong. Prince Charming made sure of that.”

  “Again,” I interject smilingly, “just because I’m rich and British—”

  “Get the hell out of here, Roxanne,” Candace growls, never looking away from me. “EVERYONE, OUT! WE’RE DONE!”

  As the crew trudges back toward the butterfly pavilion and lake area, Candace’s eyes never leave mine. I wonder if this was how my great-great-great-etc. grandfather felt, peering into the ruthless gaze of Bloody Mary.

  The last staffer disappears around the butterfly pavilion, and it’s quiet again, just her and I in the glade.

  “I know what you’re doing,” she sneers. “You think that you’re going to outsmart me based on technicalities, boy?”

  “Boy? Candace. There are six years between us.”

  “Irrelevant,” she snaps. “I’m not blind. The little looks. The flirting. That is a member of the crew, Blake. My crew.”

  I huff out an offended laugh, unable to hold it in. “So what?” I demand. “So what if they’re your employees? What do you think is going to happen if I fuck her, Candace? Will the show just implode?”

  “Stay away from her,” Candace commands, pointing a finger at me like I’m a dog. But her finger shakes a little. “Roxy is mine. I found her. I rescued her. I made her. Stay away.”

  “Roxanne is a complicated woman, Candace,” I reply with warmth and certainty. She doesn’t shake me. Are you kidding? “Whether you think she’s yours or not, it will be impossible for either one of us to control her.”

  “I’m not controlling her. I’m protecting her.” Her eyes flick over me like I’m trash. “She likes your type. Spoiled and violent.”

  I simmer and take a deep breath. It’s infuriating to break once and suddenly have a reputation based on that single moment.

  “This is all theoretical,” I snap. “Regardless of Roxanne’s type, or how you met her, or what notions you have, I am her choice to make. Not yours.”

  Candace’s mouth curdles. “You both signed fraternization agreements,” she blurts hotly. The hag knew it was her final card to play. “The set in LA is absolutely peppered in hidden microphones, Blake. You won’t have another moment alone with her after next week. Not if you value your job.”

  I laugh in her face. “Okay,” I giggle. “Right. Sure. Value my job.”

  But she glowers back at me, like my own response was the insult she didn’t have to make. “I doubt Roxy will be so amused by the thought.”

  She has me there.

  “Lots of cameras and locked gates at the Los Angeles location, Blake,” she assures me acidly. She twists and swaggers away, leaving a final incision as she passes: “And those are keys neither of you have.”

  Chapter 6

  Roxanne

  “Blake,” I call after him, knowing he doesn’t understand, desperate to explain…

  “And then, when you’re done confirming with the security detail and the chauffeur,” Ms. Madden barks as she lurches forward at a constant pace of several feet in front of me, “I want you to head to wardrobe and make sure Annette is ready. She begged for cellulite cream, because she knows she’s going to be in her bathing suit on national television—or it might have been a pedicure, I can’t remember—and report back to me for confirmation on budget and then get her whatever she needs. Within reason, of course. Oh, speaking of that, what do you think we should get for lunch? I’m starving. Feeling seafood-y.”

  In spite of the fact that Ms. Madden probably treats me with more empathy than she treated Jenny—who might be fired?—I still kind of hate her right now. I haven’t had a private conversation with Blake in almost a week. I’ve barely had a chance to look at him.

  I’m a skilled and experienced cosmetic artist who deserves her hard-won opportunity to shine. This is my job. I’m not supposed to be running errands. I’m not supposed to be her assistant. And where the hell is Jenny? Is Jenny applying the makeup now?

  It’s an obvious, desperate ploy for control, and there’s nothing I can do about it but quit.

  So here I am, on my way to confirm with the chauffeurs.

>   I’m also starving. The sun is high and bright, and I haven’t eaten since ten of us all shared a sloppy diner breakfast this morning.

  We stand in the front of Blake’s property now. Tonight’s episode, we all travel to Greece.

  I say “we all,” but it’s not all of us. I’m not going.

  We always condense the crew when we travel from the main site of the show, and I always made the cut before.

  But not this time. I’m staying behind in the trailer. Blake is going to Greece. With Annette. The waitress from Florida.

  Not that I have anything to say about that. I’m a cosmetologist originally from Ohio. Anyway, he’s not my boyfriend.

  “Hello?” Ms. Madden glowers down at me. She’s not that much taller than me, but she holds herself like she’s a giant. “Is there some kind of problem, Roxy?”

  “Yeah,” I force myself to answer. “Yes.”

  Ms. Madden literally rolls her eyes at me and then says, “What is it?”

  “It’s—It’s not my job to be getting lunch for us. It’s not my job to babysit Annette while she gets pedicures, or to go pick up cellulite cream from the nearest spa…”

  Her gaze goes colder and steelier the longer I talk.

  “Your duties on this set are under my discretion,” she reminds me, smiling. “So, unless you’d like to exercise your option to terminate our contract, please go make confirmations with the chauffeur and head of security.” I turn and flounce toward the trailers, but she calls at my back, “And order us some seafood for lunch, will you?”

  I don’t say anything else—I just hesitate for a moment, listen to the command, and then keep walking—so she calls at my back, “Thank you, Roxy,” in a voice that reminds me of syrup.

  I hate seafood. Candace knows that. But what I want doesn’t matter. She knows that, too.

  ***

  Four hours later, after Oi! Oi! Oysters comes and drops off about ten pounds of bright pink shrimp and slimy gray squid, after I confirm all the travel plans with the jet pilots and the runway technicians and the park rangers, after getting the goddamn cellulite cream and repeatedly assuring a sobbing Annette that she does not look “like a pile of cottage cheese,” roughly half the crew descends into an abyss that I call ‘salmonella.’