Chapter 18
Autumn
In my soft bed, I startled awake, heart racing and fingers lying heavy on my pussy. It had been days since our time together in the desert, but the dreams of Dante and the hot springs were still so fresh and vivid in my mind. I exhaled and bit my lip. It was just dark enough in my room to fight against waking up.
In that purgatory between awake and asleep I got flashes of our intertwined bodies soaked, steaming in the moonlight and his thick cock throbbing against my inner thigh daring me to succumb to my wildest fantasies.
And that kiss—our first kiss!
I drifted in and out of sleep, wanting nothing more than to fully be absorbed in the dream. It was all so vibrant. In the fantasy Dante took me over and over in the middle of the desert, but—like every morning lately—it all vanished far too soon.
“Fuck.”
The next best thing then.
I closed my eyes and rubbed tight, little circles into my eager clit, remembering how the ride back to the house that night was torture. I clung so tightly to him, and the vibrations of the horse, and the hard leather of the saddle pushed against my pussy… His scent, the heat and pressure of his touch were all still so fresh in my mind. They carried me to climax with a violent shudder.
Breathing heavily, I clasped a hand over my face. I had to get this fantasy of him under control. The last thing either of us needed was unnecessary complications. It was a harmless crush, that’s all. I’d had tons of them over the year.
What was one more?
Sliding my hand out of my underwear, I read the ungodly time on the alarm clock. Five-thirty in the morning. I’d been getting up earlier since our day off together last week. It recharged me more than I thought it would’ve, and although nothing happened between us that night in the hot springs, training with him had changed considerably.
We stopped jumping around so much and spent large blocks of time on specific skills. He took the time to make me understand the how and why of what I was learning. It felt more like exercising with a friend than being trained by a drill sergeant.
The distant sounds of chopping on a cutting board and oil sizzling drifted through my bedroom door when I opened it. I smiled when I passed the small vase in the hallway. It now held two Desert Five-spot flowers.
I sighed. The longer I lingered in the world of actors and stuntmen the more conflicted I was finding myself. Everything was rapidly becoming more complicated. I didn't know how comfortable I was with that. It made me long for my old, simple, little life. When it was just me and a webcam I didn't even need to wear pants!
Things had gotten so much better professionally between Dante and me, but in a way that made everything worse. I was having a harder and harder time convincing myself that I wasn’t falling for Dante. I tried to let that go and focus on what I had to do to get the full advance for Mom, but I died a little every time he looked at me.
That night in the desert when he could’ve taken me he didn’t. He made his choice, why couldn’t I accept that and do the same?
What I saw when I crept into the kitchen stopped me in my tracks and had me drooling for something other than just food.
Dante stood over the oven, stripped to the waist, wearing only a pair of black mesh shorts and sneakers. Early-morning light filtered in through the window and bathed his broad, muscular shoulders. His skin glistened with a light sheen from a recent work out's sweat; it was enough to send tingles surging through me.
I was genuinely surprised at how easily Dante moved in the kitchen. Fire licked up the sides of three separate pans that he expertly seasoned, stirred and flipped brightly colored meat and vegetables in.
Look at him. With a lean, sculpted body like his I guessed it was no surprise that he moved with a chef’s perfect practiced precision. He must’ve had to cook all his own meals to get into that ridiculously good shape.
It struck me that he was the one who’d been cooking my breakfasts! He didn’t have to do that. I knew that other people prepared the rest of my meals. Why couldn’t they do this one as well? Unless… Did he insist on doing this one himself?
Was there anything he couldn’t do?
I bit the corner of my lip as I leaned quietly against the wall. There was something so incredibly sexy about a man who could cook. Maybe it was the cool kitchen light, but I’d never fully seen how many scars he had.
My God, they were everywhere!
They gave his tattoos a patchy, almost digital quality in certain spots where the ink was removed or healed-over scar tissue. Most of them were cuts and scratches, and one even looked like an animal bite, but the whitish discoloration of the burns were the hardest to look at; probably because I was there for those. Looking at the aftermath of that day he saved me written so plainly across Dante's back made my skin itch with empathy pangs.
Sometimes I could still taste the sulfur from the explosions and the copper of his blood in the air.
“You’re up early,” he said, without turning. “Don’t be nervous. You can come in.”
“What? No. I’m not…” I started, but was stopped by his abrupt glance over at me. The creeping California sunrise may have lightened the dark shade of brown in his eyes, but not their sharp intensity. When his gaze shifted over to my ear I realized that my thumb and forefinger were rubbing my rubbing my stud. I immediately lowered my hand.
Damn, he was right. That was such an obvious tell. I had to work on that.
“Just in time for breakfast,” he said, plating a heaping portion of food and walking it over to the informal dining room just outside the open kitchen. “Coffee’s in the pot and tea and hot water are on the counter. Help yourself.”
“Thanks. Are you going to eat with me?” I took my first few steps into the kitchen. We’d never eaten together on a training day before. He’d always be gone by the time I came downstairs and my food would be waiting for me on the counter.
“I’ve already eaten.” Dante thought it over. “But I’ll have some coffee with you.”
“That’d be nice.” I brushed the hair out of my face, tying it up into a ponytail. I grabbed a coffee and wandered over to the heaping mound of food he’d made me. Taking a sip, I watched Dante’s bulging arms heft the cast iron pans off the now calm burners and clean them. The flexed striations in his shoulders and chest quickened my pulse more than all the caffeine in the world. I felt like I was living in some fantasy.
Isn’t this what men dreamed of; a super hot, almost naked cook to make their meals?
His shoulder was still raw from the horse kick, but was healing nicely. The stitches weren’t ready to come out just yet, but I doubted he’d keep them in much longer. Dante was the toughest person I’d ever met. Not much seemed to slow him down.
We talked while I shoveled forkfuls into my mouth. The sautéed veggies were crisp and exploded with flavor, and the eggs were a perfect combination of fluffy and creamy. I loved my mom’s Sunday frittatas, but this blew them out of the kitchen.
“Oh,” I said finishing it all. It was a testament to his work that I’d eaten more in my life these past few weeks but never been in better shape. “Oh, man. This is really good!”
“I know.” He spared a glance back at me before continuing to oil and wipe down the clean cast iron skillet. “Most of it came from my garden.”
A cook and a gardener too?
“Which trees do these grow on?” I held up my last strip of crunchy bacon. It was cooked so perfectly that it crumbled under its own weight. I had to unceremoniously smash it in my mouth to keep bits of it from falling onto the counter. Dante walked over and sat down next to me. Sipping from his porcelain Ninja Turtles mug did little to hide his amused smirk as he watched me finish up eating.
We talked over coffee for nearly an hour before he decided we needed to get to work. Neither of us wanted to go, but despite the great conversation we really didn’t have a choice. As I put my mug away and cleaned up I realized just how nice a small slice of normalcy was. Him and I; it felt natural now, comfortable even.
I closed the patio door behind me and followed him down to the gym. I wish this didn’t have to end.
“It’s time,” Dante said, opening the glass gym doors. We walked over to a covered, dining room-length, wooden table that was set up in the weight lifting area. “Today you’re going to become a killer.”
I looked on with anxious excitement as he grabbing the edge of the black cloth that covered table and pulled it back, revealing what we were doing today. The trapped scents of oil, metal and gunpowder were stronger than I was prepared for. Guns and ammunition of every kind covered the table.
“Wow.” My throat went dry immediately as I took in the varied arsenal. On that table was every kind of pistol, assault rifle and shotgun imaginable, some were naked while others had all sorts of attachments like flashlights, scopes and additional ammo slots. Everything was in the open, unloaded position, but that didn’t make it any less intimidating. There were even a few bolt-action hunting riffles and a— “Holy crap. Is that a bazooka?”
“Not exactly.” Dante said, obviously appreciating his vast collection of death. He rubbed a hand down the wooden and metal sections of the long, tube-like weapon. “It’s an RPG-seven. An Anti-tank shoulder launched—you know what? That doesn’t matter.” Noticing the technical details were going way over my head he hefted the massive weapon over one shoulder and explained it a different way. “If you’ve ever seen an action movie in the past thirty years this is what they used.”
“Is that even legal?” I took a step back in case it exploded or went off.
“Don’t worry. This is a fully-fabricated fake. It fires a pyrotechnic special effect round.” Dante put the bazooka back on the table, then winked at me, the smooth smile of his threatening to cut me to pieces. “All bark and no bite.”
“Oh.” I exhaled in relief, a huge worry lifted. “So the rest of these—”
Dante’s lips drew into a hard line as he picked up one of the pistols, his light expression turned darkly serious. His thumb flicked across something on the side which released the gun’s slide. It snapped shut with a frighteningly sharp click. “No. These are real.”
I knew this day was coming eventually and I wasn’t at all looking forward to it. I was terrified of guns. I’d never even seen a gun in person before, let alone held or used one. I figured we’d be using fakes while filming, but Dante was quick to correct me. We’d be using blanks and fake rounds, but the guns themselves would be real.
Dante was incredibly patient with me as we went over every aspect of the weapons I’d be using on set. The first two hours was all about safety and how the guns worked. He took a common-issue police pistol and broke it down to parts, then showed me how to reassemble it.
I tore it down then put it back together and it wasn’t long before I knew the Glock twenty-two front and back. Dante guided me every step of the way, easing some of my fear of the gun just going off.
After learning how to disassemble, clean, assemble, and load the gun, Dante grabbed a backpack near the table and took me out behind the large gym to start firing the pistol. He had me take a dozen boxes of ammo out of the backpack and set them on a small table near my firing line while he attached some targets in front of a large dirt mound about fifty yards away.
Dante demonstrated the correct form on how to aim and fire, then handed me the gun. My hands were shaking like a leaf around the cold plastic and metal grip. Dante stood off to the side with his arms crossed and nodded for me to go ahead when I was ready.
When I pulled the trigger, I screamed as the gun jerked backward. I thought it was going to fly right out of my hand. The shot was so loud I easily heard it through the noise-cancelling headphones. The bullet punched into the dirt mound several feet from the target with a little puff of dust.
“Yikes... I don’t know about this.” I was breathing heavily and sweating like I’d just got off a rollercoaster for the first time. Placing the gun on the small table beside me that held the pyramid I made out of boxes of ammo, I slid my headphones off my ears and checked my stud to see if it was still there. This was much more intense than I thought.
I don’t like this. At all.
“It’s important to be respectful of the weapon.” Dante walked over and gently pulled my fingers from my ear stud. He picked the gun up and inspected the sights, making sure nothing was off, before putting it back down. “But you can’t be afraid of it. You’re an action hero; you need to start thinking of the gun as a tool in your toolbox, one of many.”
“You watch the news lately?” I nervously chuckled, trying to lighten some of the anxiety I felt. “Not a lot of hammer-based deaths recently.”
“Pick it up.” He dismissed my joke. Dante never gave me an inch when I was getting in my own way. “You are in control.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.” I swallowed, tentatively sliding the gun off the table, grasping it in both hands. A hot surge of anger washed over me that Mom worked so much after being diagnosed. Nothing about my life felt under my control anymore. Mom’s cancer turned my whole world upside down. I was second-guessing every decision I made. I was afraid of everything! And being out here very nervously holding a gun wasn’t helping.
“Do you remember what I said in the parking lot before you went into your interview? About being confident even when you’re terrified?” Dante adjusted my stance a little wider and set my shoulders back. He placed a rough, wonderful hand on my stomach. “Tighten your core; it’ll straighten out your posture.”
“Yeah. Acting is all about pretty little lies.” My mind cleared at his lingering touch. I focused on his every nudge along my body. He moved me into the perfect firing position.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Dante finally sidled up behind me and wrapped both my hands around the gun. His hands were tightly pressed over mine. Goosebumps flickered up my arms as he spoke softly into my ear. “If you pretend to be brave long enough, eventually it won’t be pretend any more. You can do this, Autumn.”
I took a long breath in and extended my arms. Dante slid my headphones back into place and for once I didn’t have the urge to reach for my lucky stud. Having someone believe in me was intoxicating. Suddenly I wasn’t as afraid or overwhelmed.
Having Dante pressed into my back and holding my arms perfectly in place calmed my nerves. I closed one eye, lined up my front and rear sights just below the target, exhaled and slowly squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot didn’t seem so loud, the recoil wasn’t nearly as fierce and I knew without a doubt that the gun wasn’t flying anywhere. The bullet came in too low, but it at least hit the paper target. Every subsequent shot crept a little closer to the bull’s-eye.
I was in control.
Dante stepped away and let me finish firing off the remaining rounds. I ejected the empty magazine and replaced it with a fresh one. Over the next few hours I fired the gun as fast as Dante could fill the magazines for me. By the time we broke for our third meal, I’d blown through the pyramid of boxes and the rest of the rounds in his backpack.
“How do you feel?” Dante asked after our meal. I appreciated that training had become more of a conversation than a just a series of orders.
“Surprisingly good!” I smiled at him, my pride swelling under a wave of accomplishment. I still had a long way to go, but it was incredible how far I’d come in such a short time. “I never ever expected to actually be comfortable holding a gun. But it’s really not that bad. What’s next?”
What if Dante was right? What if I could do this if I just pretended long enough?
“I have one more thing to show you,” he said, a knowing smirk crawling across his rough lips. “Then we’re going to put your skills to the test.”