“How is your hair so soft?” Ayden asks, running his fingers through it, semi-stroking my back because of its length. It’s lulling me to sleep, and I’ve decided that I’m never going to move ever again. I live here now.
“Excellent products. You’re exceptionally comfortable, by the way. You shouldn’t let me stay on you too long, I’d get too comfortable and then you’d have to stay here forever and ever.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” I can hear his snicker. Ayden puts his hand to the back of my neck underneath my hair, warm and comforting.
“Nah, you’ve got to work, I’ve got to work, if only to keep us in food and good books.”
“I thought you liked your job?” Ayden asks, shifting underneath me so he can get more comfortable. His free arm comes to circle around my waist, holding me tight to him.
I melt into him, a complete spineless noodle, and I swear, I could stay here forever.
I shrug. “It’s a job. Pays the bills. I don’t love it. I don’t enjoy waking up super early every morning and doing the long-ass commute with the bus and subway, just to rinse and repeat from Monday to Friday.” I sigh, tapping my fingers along his chest, marveling all over again that I’m able to touch him like this. “That makes me sound ungrateful, doesn’t it? I’m not, but I just don’t see myself doing my job forever. But just thinking about starting over makes me break out in a cold sweat. I’m not like you.”
“What do you mean?”
I rub my cheek against his T-shirt, almost purring like a contented kitten that curled up in the perfect spot to sleep. “You’re so passionate about what you do.” I keep staring at my blank TV screen, trying to word this right. “Remember when you let me on set the other day, and you were going over the script for the latest episode and sort of spacing out?”
“I was mapping out how Chris was going to act out the dialogue. I wasn’t spacing out.”
“Yeah, you were. Mouth open, eyes far away, looking off into the distance. I called your name once or twice, and then I figured you were busy doing something in your brain, so I let it go.” I nod against his chest, still not looking at him. “I was watching you, obviously, and you sort of got this dreamy smile on your face, like you remembered something good that happened to you when you were a kid or something. It was adorable. And it made me jealous. You get to be a different person when you’re at work, and I think that’s so awesome.”
“Most people would make the conclusion that I don’t like myself.”
I shrug again but think about it a little more. “I mean, everyone has flaws, has weaknesses that they wish they could change or fears they could overcome. What if we could all just reprogram ourselves, make a better version of ourselves and start again? It’s kinda what you’re doing, I think.”
“Except I’ve never been in outer space, and I’m not the son of an elitist asshole who classes everyone by their use to him, even his own son.”
I plant my chin over his heart, staring up at him, into his eyes. Is there no angle where Ayden looks no? I don’t think it exists, not that I’m complaining. “No, you haven’t, but your mind can go there, you know? Can make the situation become real to you. You can imagine it all. I think that’s your superpower.”
Ayden has a smile small tugging at the corners of his lips, and my stomach squirms at the sight of it. All because of me, his mouth is splitting into a smile and the world seems brighter for it. “I love the way you talk, the way you think things through.”
“I have a lot of thoughts. Too many. Not a lot of them good for conversation.”
Ayden smirks, resuming the whole petting of my hair thing. I almost feel my eyes roll back into my head but let out a long sigh instead. “You make me want to kiss you when you’re being adorable.”
“You make me want to kiss you when you say I’m adorable.”
We sort of slide towards each other, crane our necks, and give each other a peck on the lips, laughing afterward.
Ayden frowns and manages to sit up in a way that I’m arranged to be sort of half-sitting in his lap. His hand goes to my chin, tipping my face upwards. “That wasn’t good enough. Let’s try again.” And he kisses me soundly this time, a kiss that makes liquid heat pool in my veins and an ache bloom between my legs. My skin feels like it’s on fire, my body thrumming with an invisible electricity that’s nowhere close to being grounded. God, I want Ayden, I want him so bad.
But there’s the whole situation with my bedroom.
Ayden pulls back, his lips red from me, his breath coming in pants, eyes dark and hungry. His hands move to grip my hips, his grip tightening and loosening like a pulsing star. I might explode from that look alone. “What’s wrong? Am I hurting you? Should I leave?”
I chew on my lip, pulling back to put some space between us, too aware of Ayden’s fingers on my hips, his touch, his smell, everything. “I don’t want you to go into my bedroom,” I mumble.
“Excuse me? I didn’t quite catch that.”
Sweet Leviathan, I’m going to die of embarrassment. It’s totally going to happen. I’m going to be struck down by embarrassment from all the blood that’s pooling in my face, and there’s just not enough that’s going to my heart. I take a deep breath and try again, make eye contact, be direct. “I don’t want you to go into my bedroom.”
Ayden’s eyebrows furrow. “I’m perfectly happy right here, darling. We don’t need to go there.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, clenching his shirt in my fists, wanting him closer, wanting more of this, of him, but knowing once he sees my room, all hope’s going to be lost. He’ll truly know the depths of my fangirl obsession, and that’s it. This dream within a dream will burst like a soap bubble and cease to be. Maybe I can live off the memory, but knowing that I was so close, only to fail now, is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. And that’s not something I want to live with.
“I have…things in my room that I don’t want you to see. And I want the lights on so I can see, but then you would see everything, and I don’t want you to run away screaming.”
Ayden’s eyebrows launch themselves to the top of his forehead. “Do you have a collection of knives or torture devices I should be made aware of?”
“Not exactly.” I can’t look at him and keep staring at my fists, currently tightening their grip on his shirt.
He thinks on this for a good five seconds. “I wouldn’t like you to use them on me, if that helps.” One hand comes up to stroke the skin of my cheek until his palm is cupping half my face. He can disarm me so easily, and that might be his superpower. Maybe kissing me is. I don’t remember ever losing my train of thought like this with past ex-boyfriends.
I keep staring down at my hands clutching his shirt at his chest, trying to make my fingers let go while I deliberate on how best to tell him the truth. Ripping off a Band-Aid is the best way to do it, but I don’t think I can give voice to what’s hidden behind the closed door at the end of my hallway. I settle for whispering in his ear instead, delighting in the shiver that ripples through him at having me so close.
“I have life-sized cut-outs of you—uh, Chrisander—in my bedroom, and I don’t want you to think I’m weird.”
Ayden leans back, eyes wide, mouth parted. Surprise warring with something else that’s gone too fast for me to analyze and agonize over.
No, I shouldn’t have told him anything.
“How many do you have, darling?”
I slowly raise my hand and then hold up not one, not two, but three fingers. Ayden looks at my three fingers then sputters out a sound before throwing back his head and bellowing out a belly laugh that has me rocking in his lap. When he settles, he wraps his arms tight around me and holds me close, still laughing like I’ve made him the happiest person in the world.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m quite flattered.”
“I told you I would fangirl over Chrisander Gage and pretty much everything Leviathan. You’ve been forewarned.” I move to get up off his lap, totally intending to bring him to my room now that the secret’s out and stop when his hand holds onto my wrist and stops all of my forward momentum.
“There’s nothing wrong with staying out here, you know.”
I frown. “Do you not want to sleep with me?” I ask, hedging my bets.
His grip around my wrist spasms in something like surprise. “What in the hell gave you that idea? I just don’t want to pressure you into anything.”
I turn to look down at Ayden, putting my palms on his cheeks, then gently moving my hands to the dark circles under his eyes. “Oh, I can’t wait to have sex with you, Ayden Stone, but I was thinking we can get undressed to what we’re comfortable in and have a nap. Nap dates are a thing, I think. If they aren’t, they should definitely be a thing.”
“A nap? I haven’t had one of those in years, since before the show started.”
I plant a kiss on the tip of his nose. “C’mon, then.” I step back, holding his hand while he stands, towers over me, and tug him towards the hallway and open the door to my bedroom. I don’t have anything especially embarrassing in there, no random sex toys lying about or dirty laundry that needs to be burned, nope, just the cut-outs that can sometimes scare guests so that they might think an intruder is in my home.
“Christ, I hated these promo pictures.” Ayden releases my grip on his hand and moves towards the three cardboard hims and shakes his head at them. “I look like an ass. You see this one?” He points to my favourite one, where he’s scowling at someone off camera and is in the process of adjusting a cuff link. He’s so intense that this particular picture has been a feature in my spank bank since I bought it two years ago. “Someone from the crew was messing with me, eating my lunch, and they caught the look on camera and mass produced it, so I look like an asshole all the time now. I wasn’t even paying attention.”
I tilt my head at him when he looks at me. “You don’t like giving off that vibe, do you? It’s why you came up to me at that burger place, huh?”
“I don’t ever want to seem ungrateful or disrespectful. I’ve been given amazing opportunities because of the work I do, and I hope to never forget it.”
My heart accelerates, and I’m finding it hard to breathe. He might be some sort of mutant—I mean, no one can be this perfect, right?
I motion towards my bed and rummage through my dresser to get a shirt to sleep in. I put it on while turned away from him, then unhook my bra and remove it, tossing it over a chair that is mostly reserved for laundry I have to fold but is now empty. Ayden can’t know I do laundry. I turn around to find him staring at me.
“Get comfortable. I’ll set my alarm for two hours, okay?” I tell him, programming my phone and placing it on the nightstand. I whirl to pull out a fluffy blanket to put on top of the comforter and rearrange my pillows to make me feel like I’m in a cocoon once I crawl in bed. “Ayden, I’ve seen you shirtless on TV. What’s the matter?”
“They put makeup on me, adjust the lighting to make everything look just right.”
“I knew that.” I did know that. I’ve looked and saved those pictures on my laptop enough to know every little detail and to compare them to other pictures of the same nature. There is some sort of Hollywood magic that happens in an editing room. I get it, I do.
Ayden nods and fists the back of his shirt and pulls it over his head. Without looking at me, his hands go to his belt, but he stops and looks up at me, waiting for my permission. I give it to him and watch his fingers make fast work of his belt and jeans. His boxers stay on as he pulls back the comforter and slides into my bed, patting my usual side of the mattress, inviting me in.
I want to remember this moment forever, just take a snapshot of it and have it in a picture frame in my mind where time and dust can’t erode what’s there.
I move over to the light switch to turn the lights off and then climb into bed, snuggling closer to Ayden while moving my hair around so we’re both not lying down on it.
“The whole point of a nap date, Ayden, is so that you can actually nap together,” I say, a good time later. He’s wiggly.
“I can’t. It takes me a while to nap. I get too worried that I’ll oversleep.”
“That’s why I’m here. I won’t let that happen. Come on, close your eyes. Close them, please.” When he does, I move my fingers gently through his hair, feather-light touches to his scalp and to the back of his neck, hearing his breath deepen and some of the tension release from his body as I caress him as he’s flopped down on his stomach right beside me.
I can’t believe this is happening to me. I have Ayden Stone in my arms, being lulled to sleep, and I’m worried, so, so worried about what’s going to happen next.
When Ayden finally falls asleep, I know I won’t be able to do the same, not with him so close, not with my body on fire and demanding, wanting the way it does.
I just stare up at my ceiling and wonder how the hell I got here in the first place, how that random trip to San Diego changed everything for me.
How it’s going to break my heart when all this is over.
How Ayden will probably forget me within a year or two, but I’ll never forget this moment, the time we spent together, even if it only lasted a short while.
That’s the thing with dreams, isn’t it? The sun always comes up and reality always wakes you up to start the day.
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