It was close to an hour later, as she was rubbing moisturizing lotion into her arms, that she heard someone coming into their suite.
“Babe?”
Ah, it was Trick. “I’m in the bedroom,” she called out, putting more lotion on her hands as she sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the hem of her nightdress that hung to her ankles.
Trick appeared in the doorway. He tossed his key card to the dresser and began to take off his jacket. “What happened? You ran out of there early…”
Turning on the bed, she began to knead lotion into her calves. “Can you tell me something about men?” she asked, rubbing the lotion in to her shins and knees.
“I can try,” he said and pulled off his tee-shirt.
God, she hated it when he did that. The studio factored in gym time to his schedule and he went on his own time too, when he had it… not that he often did. The lines and angles of his torso had distracted her on their honeymoon and she’d thought their impact would lessen the longer they were together, so far, that hadn’t been her experience.
Concentrating on her lotion, Lyla picked her nightdress higher so she could squirt lotion onto her thighs. “Do they see a wedding ring as a challenge?”
“Damn! I knew that guy was sleazing on you,” he said, coming over to drop onto the bed facing her. “I was gonna come over, but Paul was buzzing around like a bad smell. I had to wait all this time to come upstairs because I wanted to be alone with you. I didn’t want them following me up. I waited until he disappeared to do interviews with the other participants before I could slip out without him knowing I was gone. And Kira—”
“She’s very beautiful,” Lyla said, smiling as she wiped the residual lotion from her hand onto his bare shoulder. As soon as her hand landed on the solid mass of his muscle, she stopped. Her mouth opened and her smile faded. Why the hell had she thought it was ok for her to touch him like this? “Sorry, I—”
“It’s ok,” he said, widening his own smile and he curled his fingers around her wrist to do the wiping for her. “I touch you every day, bout time you returned the insult.”
Typical that he should be sweet about reassuring her. “It’s not an insult when you touch me,” she said, drawing her hand away from his. Lying on the bed, she wondered what he was looking at, then remembered she hadn’t pushed her nightdress back down. “The lotion needs a minute to soak in.”
Self-conscious, she rubbed her legs together, but he rested a hand on her shin to grip her. “You’ve got gorgeous stems, Malloy,” he said, bowing to kiss her knee.
Laughing, she pushed his head up, but was surprised to see that he wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked odd. His eyes were small, precision-focused, but she couldn’t figure out what was going on in his head. So she scooted over to the other side of the bed, putting some space between them.
“Do you want the bed tonight?” she asked and carried on before he could make a joke. “The cameras aren’t here, you don’t need to proposition me.”
His next inhale was long and tired. It had been a long few days for him, so she didn’t say anything when he turned around to lie on the bed beside her. He deserved a chance to chill. A minute of silence stretched. “Kira cheated on me.”
Oh…
Sliding down the bed, she rested her head on her hand as she lay on her side next to Trick who was staring up at the ceiling. “I didn’t know that,” she said.
“Not a lot of people do,” he said, taking another breath. “I know I’m a jerk most of the time, I know I do dumb shit, and I hurt a lot of women when I was a stupid kid playing to the cameras, but… When I’m in a relationship, I’m in. I’ve always been that way. I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep. Don’t make commitments to…” He trailed off and picked up his hand to look at his wedding ring. “I guess that’s not true anymore.”
Reaching over him, Lyla pushed his hand down. “You didn’t make me any promises,” she said, laying her hand over his on his chest. “You just recited your lines at the wedding; that was it. It didn’t mean anything. It was a script.”
Looking at her, Trick was doing that peering thing that always unnerved her. “Why do you always put yourself down?” he asked. “You act like you don’t deserve respect… or love.”
“We didn’t get married for love or respect,” she said. “So it doesn’t count… And Kira cheating on you must have been devastating; it’s obvious that you cared for her.”
“Why do you think that?” he asked.
“Two reasons,” she said. “First, you kept the secret. You found out about the indiscretion and ended your relationship, but you didn’t go selling the story or slandering her, so you must have cared about her enough not to want to embarrass her or damage her career.”
“And the second reason?”
Grinning, she got a fraction nearer to whisper. “You’re a good person Nairn Strickland, and you feel things more deeply than you want the world to know. You were with her for a while and like you just said, you wouldn’t have made promises to her if you didn’t intend to keep them… It must be weird that Bunyan’s asking you to sleep with her now… Did you forgive her after the affair?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. I found out she was screwing around, she said ‘so what’ and split… I didn’t see her again… Maybe we weren’t that into each other after all.”
“Sometimes it’s the people we care most about that we hurt the most,” she said.
He scooped a hand up under her jaw to angle her head up so he could peer in to her again. “Who was your guy?” he asked. “You said it had been five years, you didn’t tell me anything about him.”
“Declan Gordon,” she said, and didn’t really want to look at Trick when she mentioned her ex’s name. “It’s been six years since we broke up, I don’t talk about him much.”
“Why not? Still hung up on him?”
She shook her head and let him thread their fingers together as was his habit. “Declan was the one who taught me the real value of being alone,” she said. “I’d always been a loner at school. I met Declan in college and we were really inseparable. He’d been branded the odd-one-out in high school too. We kind of bonded over our mutual oddity.”
“So, what happened?” he asked. “How come you’re not still with him?”
Dropping to her back, she folded her hands on top of each other under her breasts. “Turned out, he wasn’t who I thought he was.”
“Ah,” he said.
“He won this national competition thing for the college and got popular overnight. We hung on for a while after, but he changed… kept trying to change me too. He didn’t want me to be me anymore, he wanted me to be what he thought he deserved. And he deserved a woman who’d worship him, especially in public. Didn’t take me long to figure out I wasn’t good enough for him. He kept telling me what a disappointment I was. How I should be grateful to him because he could do so much better. Eventually… he did.”
Turning her head to watch Trick as he rolled onto his side, she didn’t like the pity in his eyes, but it was probably mutual. “Sounds like a dickwad, want me to look him up? We can pay him a visit.”
“And what? Make out on his couch?” she asked.
He grinned and bowed forward to touch his lips to her forehead. “Or we could just go at it… I’ll rough him up a bit first, hurt him for hurting my girl, then when he’s lying there bleeding, I’ll eat your pussy right there in front of him, make him watch me worship you.”
Giving him a shove, Lyla was touched that he would make the suggestion, even if it would never happen. But she put him back on his side of the bed, and then flopped to her back and gestured downward over her hips. “The only…
“Pussy?” he asked.
“Yes, that… the only one of those you should be thinking about right now is Kira’s.” It was funny, if perplexing, to see his expression turn to disgust as he rolled flat again. “Did you leave her in the bar? I know that this is difficult for you, but Bunyan seems to think it’s guaranteed to pull in the ratings. And you did agree—”
“It’s sex,” he said, “sex always sells.”
“So why are you lying here with your buddy instead of seducing a babe?”
“My buddy,” he muttered.
She’d meant it to be a joke, now she feared she’d missed the mark. Lyla wasn’t renowned for her sense of humor or delivery or reading people, especially men. “Was that presumptuous? We’re not friends, we’re—”
He laughed and turned to his side, resting his face near enough to hers that his chin prodded her shoulder when he spoke. “We’re married, Malloy, we’re more than friends… Getting close to you, spending time with you like this … it’s been the best part of this stupid show… Haven’t you had any fun? Even a smidge?”
Turning her face to his, he was too close for her to focus properly, but she smiled anyway. “Maybe a tiny smidge,” she said. “I like listening to you play your guitar on Saturday mornings.”
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice laced with comedic male pride. “I’m real good at that, huh? You like my music?”
She nodded. “Because when I hear that, wherever I am in the apartment, I know both your hands are occupied and they won’t be coming at me.”
He laughed and tilted to kiss her shoulder. In an unusual move, he left his lips there for a second, then began to graze them back and forth. “You know, Bunyan just needs me to have sex with someone,” he said and his fingertips began to gather her nightdress at her hip, pulling it high over her thigh, though they were both still flat on the bed. “He didn’t say it couldn’t be you.”
“No,” she said, slapping a hand down on top of his. “I said that… And we’re alone, what are you thinking of, bringing him out?”
As far as Lyla was concerned, the other Trick, his over the top persona, had no place when there was no one around to watch him perform.
“If he was here, he’d be on top of you already. You’d never be this relaxed with him this close to you,” he said and rose to look down at her. “Do you trust me, Malloy? At all?”
Touching his face, she felt the need to connect with the man who was going through torture of his own. It must be horrific for him to be spending time with the ex who’d broken his heart. Not only that, he had to sleep with the woman when his own feelings about her infidelity were probably still raw.
“Completely,” she said. “And I can relax around him these days, because I know you control him, and you’d never hurt me. You’re the protective big brother I never had.”
“Brother, huh,” he said and was looking at her mouth again for some odd reason. Lyla began to worry that she might have smudged toothpaste on her cheek or something. “Never thought I’d get where your Caligula guy was coming from…”
Excitement made her turn toward him. “You remembered his name!”
“I do listen when you talk, sweetheart,” he said, draping an arm over her hip as she touched her palms to his chest.
They’d never laid like this before, in bed, together, facing each other, her body almost nestled to his, just a couple of inches between their forms as her fingers spread on the warm flesh of his hard chest.
It felt peculiar to be so close to him, so close that the heat of him was permeating the thin cotton of her nightdress and warming her nude body beneath.
Maybe that was it. All she was wearing was this thin nightdress. Yes, the garment had wide straps and hung down to her ankles, though it was gathered high around her thighs now, but she’d never been so accessible to him. Even the bikini would’ve taken more effort to get off as it had knots. This nightdress would take only seconds to shed.
Why was she thinking about taking off her clothes? Lyla knew she’d never get naked with Trick. Just. Never.
“Malloy?”
The sound of his voice startled her and she tipped her head back to see him looking down at her, his arm curled beneath his head for support. “Why does your voice sound all low like that?” she asked, but her heart was doing something weird.
It could be a palpitation. Maybe it was a coronary. It wasn’t painful, but her pulse was definitely irregular. Her stomach was agitated too, like it was roiling and jumping; but it was happy, not unpleasant.
Picking up her chin in his thumb and forefinger, Trick tipped her head back farther and rubbed his thumb back and forth just a fraction. Lyla couldn’t work out why he wasn’t answering her or why he seemed to be falling asleep as his eyelids got heavy. Maybe there was a gas leak and he was feeling the same effects she was.
But before she could ask if he felt ill, sound carried from the suite. “Where are you? You bastard!” Paul shouted through the suite.
“Damn,” Trick said, flopping on to his back to rub his hands on his face.
“Wait… are you both in the bedroom? Together?” Paul called. “Where is the camera? Get over here!”
Trick unbuttoned his pants and grumbled as he tugged them down a bit. “You take the room tonight, baby,” he whispered. “Kick me out and lock the door, ok?”
“Kick you out? Why—”
Rolling over on top of her, Trick thrust an arm around her back just as the camera appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Come on, baby, just a little nookie,” he said, rubbing his face in her hair.
“Trick,” she screeched and pushed at him. “Get off me!”
“Oh, baby, you get me hard then turn it off. Don’t go cold, hot stuff. Play with me.”
He pressed a hand to her waist, not her breast or between her legs, but her waist, then he growled against her neck. “Stop it,” she said and this time when she gave him a shove, he rolled all the way off her and exhaled. “Get out of here! All of you!”
Moving off the bed, Trick muttered something to himself and then began to stomp off toward the camera, holding his jeans up with one hand as he did. When he got to the camera, he gave it a push. “If I’m not getting any, you’re not getting an eyeful, shift it.”
Climbing off the bed, Lyla rushed over to the door to close it behind all of them when they were over the threshold. Turning around, she fell against it and closed her eyes. Pressing her hand to her forehead, she felt bad for Trick, out there taking the heat from Paul who would be pissed that he’d been ditched and because Trick was not with Kira as he was supposed to be.
This felt like it was getting complicated, but she couldn’t figure out why. Nothing had changed. Had it?
Except now that she knew Kira had hurt Trick so badly, she really didn’t want him to sleep with her. Didn’t want him to lie in bed with her and open himself up to her, he could get hurt again and…
Her hand slid down to her mouth to stifle her gasp.
She was jealous!
Lyla didn’t want Trick lying in bed with Kira, sharing his secrets with his ex, not now that he did that with her, his wife. Lyla wanted to be his outlet for emotion, if he was stressed or needed to vent, she wanted to be the one he came to, just like tonight. He’d needed to tell someone about Kira, and indirectly to tell someone how difficult this was for him, and he’d chosen to tell her.
Rushing to the bed, Lyla climbed on and hid under the cover. She was his friend. That’s all it was. She wanted to be his friend, his close friend. Being allowed to see the truth of the man behind the character was a privilege and as dumb as it was, she wanted to be something special to him.
His life was filled with people, male and female, and she still didn’t know all of them, she may never know all of them. Trick had friends at every level of every definition of the word, who the hell was she to think that she might ever qualify in the upper echelons of that?
He made her laugh. Made her feel safe. Played with her. Helped her to relax, even about the sex stuff that she was clueless about. Trick just made everything easy and he didn’t judge her. Lyla had to be careful. If she started to think he was important to her and started to think that she might want to be important to him, she could lose more than her dignity. She could lose her heart.