Chapter 8

Angelina

“Sorry I look a little like a homeless person.” I giggled as I sat down at the dinner table with Dean. “I didn’t have time to change, and I didn’t want to be late.”

In my past day to day life, I would have never gone to a restaurant without spending several hours on my hair and makeup. Even if it was just my sister and me; we spent serious time getting ready before we would go out. That was the joy of the media; you could dress up, or you could be in rags. Either way, they were going to publish it.

As more and more paparazzi started to follow us, my sister and I had to actually spend our time getting ready before we went out. We couldn’t just sit around looking horrible if there were cameras and video tape of what was going on. So the transition from frumpy teenager to glamor reality star began to take place. People started to replay the scenes from my reality show where I was doing my makeup, and then they watched YouTube video tutorials that showed them how to do their makeup just like me.

So it felt really weird and unusual for me to have comfortable clothes on and all my makeup removed as I sat with Dean. I couldn’t imagine I would ever feel comfortable enough with a guy to go makeup free; yet I was doing it with Dean, and I barely knew him.

“You can wear anything you want dear,” his husky voice said as he pushed my chair in.

Damn, I could listen to him talk all day long. He could probably read the dictionary, and it would sound sexy. His strong hands brushed against my back and I felt the power they had. Dean’s eyes burned with desire as he looked into mine. The chiseled curve of his jaw line begging me to pay attention to him. I was really happy I had made it out of filming by 9:30 p.m., and I hadn’t been too late to our dinner. My heart fluttered at having him so near.

Thoughts of Dean had filled my head all day long; I couldn’t wait to see him. As I sat next to him and he talked to the waiter, a feeling of calm glided through me. I felt comfortable with this guy, truly comfortable with him. There wasn’t a need to pretend to be someone else; I didn’t feel like I had to talk shop or fill the quiet space between us. There was comfort between us, and that was truly something I had not experienced with anyone outside of my close group of friends.

“How was your day?” I asked.

“Rather uneventful, actually. Monday’s are my day off, so I got an ear full from my agent, got laundry sent to the hotel and did the obligatory cleanup of my messy hotel room.”

“You’ve been in New York for a while; why are you still in a hotel?”

“It’s not really a hotel, I guess. More like a long-term apartment slash hotel. I don’t know; people come and clean and take care of me like a hotel,” he said with a laugh.

“So why were you cleaning up?”

“I couldn’t let the maid see how messy I am.”

“Seems reasonable. You don’t want the woman who is supposed to clean your room to actually have to clean it.” I laughed.

His rough hand reached for mine and held onto it as the waiter poured us some wine. My fingers intertwined with his and squeezed. We were like old souls who had known each other for years. I wanted to know everything about him yet didn’t want to seem like an eager fan. I needed to do things right with this guy; it felt important to me.

The electricity between us was palpable as our hands touched. The warmth from his hand shot directly through my body, and I felt every inch getting warmer and warmer. Just being near Dean made me feel like I was hot.

“When I go back to my house, sometimes I wake up and wish there were hotel staff to bring me breakfast.” I giggled.

“I know; I get so used to not having to cook. I’m not sure I’d even be able to make something if my life depended on it.”

“I’ll cook for you sometime; I love to cook.”

“You do?”

“Don’t look so shocked, Dean; I’m not totally useless,” I said as I nudged him. “My mother insisted on teaching me and my sister everything about how to keep a happy household. I think she hoped someday I’d want a big family and dozens of grandkids for her.”

“My mom just didn’t want me to burn the house down,” he joked.

We sat in silence as we sipped our wine and looked at each other. My eyes drew a line from his eyes to his lips and then down to his fingertips as they played with mine. I couldn’t stop thinking about what his hands would feel like on my body. It was a growing urge that made it harder and harder to focus on anything else. My pulse grew louder in my own head as I watched his lips wrap around the edge of his glass and the red wine slid gently into his mouth.

He seemed to be watching me just as intently, and I let my mouth slide around the edge of the glass while I looked into his eyes. The wine softly slipped past my lips, and I licked them seductively while he watched me.

“You’re driving me crazy,” he said.

He took in a deep breath, and before I knew it, we were kissing. His lips pressed against mine, and I felt him exhale as if I was torturing him with desire just like he was torturing me. I was really trying to be a proper lady, but the cardinal urges that filled every thought were taking over and all I wanted to do was drag him back to my hotel room and make love all night long.

“There’s so much I want to talk to you about. I want to learn all about you,” Dean said as his lips gently touched mine and our heads stayed pressed together.

My breathing took over, and I tried to calm myself. I didn’t want to talk; I wanted his naked body on mine and to make love to him all night long. It felt like that was what he wanted too. His lips, his touch, even his own heavy breathing were telling me that he wanted me.

“Would you think I was a horrible person if I asked you to come back to my hotel with me? We could talk there if you’d like.”

“Yes, don’t ask me that because I won’t refuse you.”

“Come back to my hotel with me,” I said as I started to nibble on his neck. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

“You seem a little hungry by all that biting going on down there,” he joked. “Should we eat first and then go?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he said as he grabbed me and kissed me with more passion than I was prepared for. “Let’s eat later.”

His hands were firm on my face as we moved our mouths passionately together. The touch of his passion had my whole body electrified, and I wanted to feel his touch. I needed to be naked in front of this man and have his hands gliding all over me.

Dean threw a couple of hundred dollars on the table and grabbed my hand as we went out the front door. Before we were able to get a cab, there were about a dozen flashes that we both instantly knew were paparazzi. Dean didn’t let go of my hand; he pulled me close to him and protected me.

He held onto me tighter and pulled me next to him as the restaurant valet hailed a cab for us. The paparazzi yelled at us, but I couldn’t hear what they were asking; all I heard was Dean’s voice as he talked in my ear. “Stay with me,” he said. “I’m right here. Don’t worry about them.”

The comfort and safety I felt wrapped up in Dean’s arms were an aphrodisiac to me, and I could hardly keep my hands to myself when we got into the cab. This man was everything I had hoped for in a lover, in a man. He was strong, honest, handsome, and he protected me gallantly as we faced the paparazzi. His first instinct was to make sure I was protected, even in a situation as silly as a herd of paparazzi; that was a sign that he was a man I wanted to keep around.

“It’s probably a horrible time to talk about this,” Dean said between my kisses to him. “But should we just post something and take the wind out of their sails?”

“Um, like on social media?” I asked as I climbed into his lap and straddled him.

“I guess; I mean I don’t know. I just think we should say something since they have more pictures. It bugs me when they sell a story and spin things the way they want them. I’d rather have the story come from me. It’s just my preference, though, what do you think?”

“Where’s your phone?”

“Here,” he said as he handed it to me.

“You don’t have a password on here? Dean, oh my gosh. We need to work on your security,” I said as I pulled up his Instagram account.

I leaned close to him and kissed his cheek as I snapped a selfie of the two of us. It was a bit of a relief that he had brought up posting online, and I knew my fans were going to love him. A lot of the girls who followed me probably weren’t that aware of who Dean was, and I was excited to introduce him to them. He was an old school Hollywood hunk, and the young women who followed my social media were going to fall in love with him.

“I know; my friend Ren told me the same thing. Show me what you’re typing, so I know how this all works.”

“I’ve met the most amazing girl, Angelina Kent,” I said as I typed. “See I put this sign before my name, so the photo will post on my account too; it’s called tagging someone. That way my fans will see it too. It’s like posting once but getting twice the people to see it.”

“Okay, and do we add Instamatch? By the way, you have more than twice my fans.” Dean laughed.

“Do you want to add them? We don’t have to, but it will increase the amount they have to pay us.”

“One time. Let’s just post one time and then be done with all this. Is that okay with you?” Dean asked. “My contract says I only have to post a couple of times this month, and I actually posted a few days ago.”

“Sure, that’s a deal. One time and then we will be done with them. What did you post a few days ago?”

Dean looked embarrassed, but I didn’t see anything that seemed embarrassing on his Instagram page. I did see over a thousand notifications on his Twitter account, though, so I clicked on it. I stayed straddling him as I looked at his tweet and clicked through some of the responses.

“I went on this crazy date with a girl my friend had matched me up with when I first downloaded the app. It was, well …”

I stopped him from talking. I really didn’t care who he had dated before he met me. I wasn’t one of those girls who got jealous, and I certainly wasn’t going to get jealous of a woman he met before he knew me. That was just ridiculous to me.

“Okay, so here is what I typed for our photo. ‘I’ve met the most amazing girl, Angelina Kent, thanks, Instamatch!’ Wow, they are going to make a shit ton of money off of us.” I laughed as I posted the photo.

“Do you do a lot of these contracts? It’s my first one with social media.”

“How about I tell you all about it tomorrow? Because right now, I’d really like to get back to kissing you,” I teased as my lips moved toward him.

“Yes, I think that’s the smart plan here,” he said as the cab door opened and we kissed quickly before heading into my hotel.

Luckily, the paparazzi weren’t at the hotel, and we were able to get inside without a photo being taken. Not that I would have cared all that much. I really didn’t mind being seen with Dean as long as he didn’t mind being seen with me. He was a great guy, and I was more than happy to take whatever we had going on into the public. I just didn’t want to do it if Dean wasn’t ready for it.

My life in the public eye was different than what Dean could have been used to. As a reality star, my whole career hedged on the media getting the inside scoop on my life. Whereas Dean had built a career before the media had become interested in him. Even though there were stories about his personal life in the media, they didn’t know everything. I felt like for me, the media knew everything about me. I didn’t have even the slightest bit of privacy, and that was hard for people to understand.

None of that mattered at that moment, though. It was just Dean and me as I opened my hotel room door, and we slid inside. At that moment, our agents didn’t matter, our careers, the media. None of it mattered at all because there was just the two of us.

I reached for the ponytail that was holding my hair and pulled it out, so my long brown hair flowed down around my shoulders. Dean’s eyes were intently watching me. Slowly, I slipped my sweatshirt off and exposed my bare breasts to him with a shy smile.

“I was in a hurry.” I shrugged.

“You must have really wanted to get somewhere,” he said as his hands moved up my body and pulled me close to him.

“I did. I was having a date with this really amazing guy.”

“Must be a good guy if you forgot your undergarments.”

“Yeah, he seems to be.”

“You’re beautiful,” Dean whispered as his head moved toward one of my breasts and he pulled my nipple into his mouth.

I moaned out in pleasure at the touch of his wet mouth on my skin. His warm hands pressed me toward him and then grabbed my hands and thrust them up over my head. He held my hands there with one hand as his other hand pulled on my pants to slip them down to the ground. I was his, one hundred percent his. I wanted to feel every touch he had to give me. I was there to feel the pleasure he could give me and was going to give him so much pleasure he wouldn’t want to leave my room ever.

As he moved his hands to pull on my panties, I took the opportunity to rid him of his shirt. My fingers moved quickly to unbutton the soft fabric. Then I got to feel the hard muscles of his chest as my hands pressed against him. It was everything I had dreamed about. His body was perfection, and before I knew what was going on, he grabbed me and pulled me toward him in a kiss. Our bodies were wrapped together with me naked and him close to naked as we walked slowly toward my bedroom.

I desperately grabbed at the button on his pants, but I couldn’t get a good grip as we walked and kissed. Instead, he reached for his own button and pressed his pants to the ground exposing his naked body to me.

I reached for him and let his throbbing body linger between my fingertips as our lips continued to play with each other. Dean was in charge, though; everything about this man made me want to let him be in charge too.

When he pressed me toward the bed, I fell willingly to the cushioned fabric and looked up at him with desire as his eyes penetrated me. I wasn’t the wild and crazy girl I liked to pretend I was; at that moment, I was just Angelina Kent, a girl who really wanted to make love to this man.

I swallowed hard as his eyes burned down my body, past my breasts, toward my middle. He looked like he could stare at me all night long, and I would have let him if that was what he wanted. Luckily, his body didn’t want to just look; he wanted to feel me just as badly as I wanted to feel him.

I closed my eyes and took in the soft touch of his lips as they pressed against my ankle and then moved up the inner area of my thigh. He moaned sweetly with each kiss like he couldn’t get enough of me. I liked that. I liked everything about being there with Dean. He was there with me, not the reality star version of me; Dean was there with the real me, and I felt like I saw him as the real Dean.

I longed to feel his lips on my center, but he teased me and skipped right over my middle as he kissed up the rest of my body and then steadied himself over the top of me.

“Should we post a selfie now?” he teased as he raised one eyebrow.

“Definitely not. How would you even take the picture? Your hands are busy holding you up.” I laughed.

Dean quickly plopped his naked body on top of mine and proceeded to take a pretend selfie. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was ridiculous how much the public wanted to know about our personal lives, and I knew that if I posted a selfie in bed with Dean, it would be just part of the norm for my life, and that was sad.

“Maybe you should hold the camera?” he teased as he handed me the make believe camera.

I pushed him off of me and onto the bed and quickly straddled him as I held onto our pretend camera. I held my hands up to my eye and focused on Dean as he lay looking up at me. He had the biggest smile on his face.

“Mr. Morrison, can we get a photo?” I said in my best paparazzi jargon.

“Of course. I love letting complete strangers into my personal life. Would you like to film me making love to my girlfriend too?” he joked.

The only thing I heard was that he had just called me his girlfriend. It was authentic, and I could tell it came from a good place; normally, I would have freaked out at any guy saying such a thing. But in this circumstance, with this man, I just threw my pretend camera away and leaned down and kissed Dean.

The passion between us was intense, and we made love for hours and hours, finally falling asleep in each other’s arms around two in the morning. I would have loved to stay up all night long with him, but I was exhausted, and as I curled up in his arms, I slept better that night than I had in the eight months prior.

My alarm started to blare on my phone at six the next morning; luckily, I had it set on there because I had totally forgotten to set a wake-up call with the hotel. Dean didn’t stir at all as I slipped out of bed and into the shower. I was tired, yet filled with energy all at the same time.

The vibrant emotions I felt around Dean gave me something to look forward to. I couldn’t wait to get done with work for the day and sit and talk with Dean again. I wanted to know everything about him and wanted him to know about me. I wasn’t thinking about what the public wanted or how my relationship would be perceived, all I was thinking about was how Dean made me feel.

When I was around Dean, I felt like a normal person again. No longer was I this robot reality star who was always thinking about the angel that was best for my brand. I was just me around him. It was a relief and something I felt excited about exploring more and more. Plus, it was an added bonus that both Dean and I had a contract with Instamatch.

We could occasionally post something about our dates, and we would both be making money from the deal. It seemed like a win-win situation for me. I was pretty sure my agent was going to be excited about the picture Dean and I had posted the night before also. Nothing could get in our way now; we might even end up being the next big power couple.

Power couples ruled Hollywood, and I’d be more than happy to set up such an arrangement with Dean.

“I’ll call you later,” I whispered as I kissed Dean before heading out to my shoot for the day.

“I’ve got a show tonight; come to the theater when you’re done?”

“Sure,” I said as I kissed him one last time and then headed out for my day.

I was on cloud nine as I stopped at the corner coffee shop and grabbed my drink and something to eat before heading out to the shoot. But as I looked at the tabloid paper, my heart sank, and then crumbled into a million pieces.

‘Hollywood Legend Dean Morrison is Slumming with Reality Star Angelina Kent,’ the headline read.

It was just a headline; I had read hundreds of bad ones in my lifetime, but it still hurt.