To Love Jason Thorn

We had a quick dinner where Lucy and Olive managed to make me laugh multiple times with their stories before we headed to the bar where the cast and crew were meeting up. More than a party, it was a way to reconnect with each other and get to know the new people before filming ate up all our time. If Olive was sad that Charlotte couldn’t make it, she didn’t show it, but I could see that something about her friend’s absence in her life was troubling her. I didn’t ask questions.

While Lucy had preferred jeans and some number with a lot of cleavage, Olive was wearing a sparkly, metallic gray skirt with a casual white shirt. Her hair was still damp from the shower she had taken after the shoot and she barely had any makeup on, and she looked perfect in my eyes.

Still reeling from our photo shoot, I was having trouble looking away from her. Every little detail seemed to matter somehow. The way her cheeks were flushed from laughing so much, the way I caught her looking at me under her lashes, the way her eyes sparkled whenever I reached out to hold her hand. It was becoming impossible to not notice every little thing about her.

Impossible to not like everything I was seeing.

I had been forcing myself to sleep in my own room ever since she had cried in my arms before coming on my fingers that night, but my patience was starting to wear thin.

I was seconds away from prying her legs open and taking her for myself. Every innocent look, every innocent touch, every secret smile…everything just pushed us closer to our inevitable.

Chugging down my second beer of the night, I kept track of Olive and Lucy from the corner of my eye. I wanted to give her alone time with her friend because even I could see how much they were missing each other. They hadn’t stop talking ever since Lucy had stepped foot in the car. I hadn’t meant for my schedule to keep her away from her friends, but in my line of work, you got used to not having your freedom.

They were doing tequila shots and chasing them with beers. She didn’t look like she was drunk, and she certainly wasn’t acting like it, but I couldn’t be sure. If they had another round of shots, I was going to interfere. As much as I would have loved to deal with drunk Olive again, I wanted her to be stone cold sober when we got back home.

An hour into the party, a few of the crew members had decided to set up the karaoke machine and proceeded to sing their hearts out, becoming the night’s de facto entertainment. Every now and then, they were hopping back onto the stage to torture everyone’s ears. Other than them, no one else had picked up the mic, which was a blessing if you asked me.

I was sitting at the bar with the assistant director, Tyler Cameron, a guy I had worked with before and respected, when I first heard Olive’s voice through the speakers.

“Hello everyone, I’m Olive.” She coughed and tapped the mic with her finger.

Someone let out a loud whistle.

“I believe that’s your wife, Jason,” Tyler said, looking over his shoulder. He was the first guy at the party that I’d told that we were married. Tyler wasn’t a guy who would repeat it to anyone else, especially after I’d asked him not to.

Wife. Yes. Right. I was married.

I turned in my seat to face the stage. “That she is,” I said, my eyes taking in the curves of her body. Leaning back, I rested my elbow on the bar and took a gulp of my beer.

There was a smile in her voice when she said, “I just lost a bet to my friend Lucy there.” She pointed to a beaming Lucy and got a whistle from her. “So as the loser, I’m supposed to make your ears hurt for a little while. I hope you can bear with me. It’s a slow one, so you should be okay.”

“Is her voice any good? I don’t think I can handle any more screeching for the night,” Tyler said as he gave his full attention to Olive.

“Oh, she’s good. Don’t worry.”

“You look okay, Jason,” he said, eyeing me cautiously before Olive started her song.

I took my eyes away from Olive as she tried to get on the barstool. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I know better than to believe anything I read in the tabloids, but after all those photos and videos…well, you looked like you were a bomb ready to go off at the wrong move. I’m glad you’re back with us, and if she is the reason…well, good for you.”

Instead of answering him, I grunted and gave all my attention back to Olive.

As always, she hadn’t been able to get on the barstool, so when she started Ed Sheeran’s song “Kiss Me”, she was standing up, one hand wrapped tightly around the mic, the other resting on the barstool.

After a while, when the song pitched higher and her sweet voice charged through the space, everyone seemed to be shocked into silence. Tyler spoke up again. “She seems to be good at a lot of stuff, your wife.”

I nodded; that was all I could manage at that moment.

Somewhere in the middle of the song, after her eyes had finally found mine in the crowd, her voice turned soft and husky as she gently ordered me to kiss her. I held her eyes because I needed that connection since it felt like we were busy falling in love with each other. She was seeing me, and maybe for the first time, I was seeing her too. Her voice called to me as much as her eyes did, but then she hid those beautiful eyes from me, and I found myself crossing the room to get to her.

I wanted her to look at me.

I wanted her to see me when I was kissing her.

And I needed her to kiss me back.

When the song ended and she opened her eyes, I was standing right in front of her. She smiled at me as if she’d known she would find me there waiting for her.

Taking another step, I closed the space between us. Prying the mic out of her hands, I laid it on the barstool. My hand curled around her neck and I asked, “Do you see me, Olive?”

The question was important to me, her answer even more so. It wouldn’t be the movie star Jason Thorn kissing her into oblivion in a few seconds. It would be me. Jason. Her friend. The man who wanted to make her his.

A shiver went through her body as she lifted a shaky hand to put on my cheek. Her voice was nothing more than a whisper when she answered me. “I’ve always seen just you, Jason.”

Then my lips were on hers, and her lips were on mine. We kissed long enough to cover years. In front of everyone, her lips became mine and I took her breath for myself, because I needed it more than she did.

I was aware of the whistles and all the applause, but I couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel anything beyond the woman in my arms. In my mind, it was just the two of us. Standing in the middle of a dark room, we were in each other’s arms, where we had locked ourselves in and tossed away the key without a second thought. She tilted her head and my tongue slid deeper into her mouth.

It wasn’t enough.

Burning with the need to consume her, I gripped her waist and leaned my body over hers, forcing her to arch her back, and kissed her more desperately.

Harder.

Deeper.

I put everything I’d started to feel for her in those past few weeks into the kiss and offered it back to her.

Our first kiss.

I wanted it to be good for her, change her world in some way. I wanted it to be her best first kiss of all the first kisses she had experienced.

It was my first time touching her heart after all; she needed to remember every second of it.

Her arms went around my neck and her fingers slid into my hair.

I groaned.

She whimpered into me, her body shaking with fine tremors.

She would remember it all.

When I wanted more from her, I slid my hand up and reached for her ponytail to pull her head back, just enough so she could catch her breath while I kissed the edges of her mouth where she hid those secret smiles, the ones she saved for when she was writing on her laptop, lost in a different world she was creating from the start, brick by brick. I wanted to own those secret smiles just as much I wanted to own her beautiful heart. I wanted to be the reason for their existence.

When she ignored everyone and captured my mouth for herself, I went willingly, giving her more of my tongue and taking just as much from her.

Then I kissed her again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

I kept one of my hands on the back of her head and let the other one slowly cup her ass so I could pull her more firmly against my rapidly lengthening and throbbing cock.

If we hadn’t been clinging to each other, the hunger I felt for her, the way my world was spinning…it would have brought me down to my knees.

My heart was ready to be hers if she wanted to take it for herself and keep it for an eternity.

I couldn’t stop.

Not when my body was aching to feel her hands on me.

Not when her mouth was giving me something I was desperate to have from her and only her, even though I hadn’t realized I needed it.

Especially not when she was clinging to me as if I was breathing life into her.

Then she was pulling away and looking at me with lust and a little bit of surprise in her eyes.

“Hello,” she whispered hoarsely. I nipped at her lips and she gave me one of her secret smiles.

My first one.

“You sure took your time,” she said, hiding her face against my neck as soon as the words left her delectable mouth. Her warm breath was whispering her longing against my skin.

Ignoring the room full of people around us, I asked, “You’ve been waiting for me to kiss you?”

She came out from hiding and looked into my eyes with the sweetest grin on her face. “Ever since I was a little girl.” Kissing me on the cheek, she added, “Thank you for making my dream come true.”

My heart ached with love for a little girl who in some ways had always belonged to me. “Was it worth the wait?” I asked, my voice gruff, my heart thundering in my chest.

She scrunched up her nose, her eyes focused on my lips. “The jury is still out. You think we can try again, maybe?”

“Guys?” Lucy whispered urgently, just below the stage.

Olive stiffened in my arms for a moment as if she’d just remembered the bar full of people we were giving a show, but I caressed her back and she melted against me. Then we both glanced at Lucy.

“I’m fucking loving what is going on here”—she motioned between Olive and me—“but people have been filming the whole thing. Since you look like you’re ready to go at each other on stage, I thought maybe you’d want to know before you start losing your clothes.”

Shit!

“We should leave,” I said to Olive and quickly got her down off the stage. No matter how quickly we left, I knew we would be the talk of the night. With the videos and the news of our marriage, maybe even more so in the coming days.