A Monster and a Gentleman (3 page)

“Seling, yes, don’t stop.”

He pulled her ass off the counter, forcing one leg to wrap over his shoulder. It left her balanced on the toes of the other foot, her arms behind her head, clinging to the shelves. The position gave her a moment of fear, but his arms were there, hard and strong around her. She felt soft and vulnerable, a match to his strength.

His tongue worked her clit, keeping a steady rhythm with enough pressure to drive her on and up, towards the precipice.

Cali came, every muscle in her body tensing. When she couldn’t hold herself up anymore, Cali tumbled off the counter. Seling caught her, lowering her to the floor.
 

With her body still humming with pleasure, Seling settled over her, pushing her legs open. He tugged her bra down, exposing her breasts. He lingered there only a moment before she pulled him up, wanting to feel his lips on hers. His chest brushed her breasts and his cock rode along her thigh. She wanted him in her, and even as his mouth ravaged hers, Cali tugged on his hips.
 

She felt him smile against her. He pulled away a bit, teasing her, and Cali reached down and slapped his ass. He kissed her neck, chuckling a little.
 

“Do you want me?” His gaze locked onto hers, his lashes seeming long this close up.
 

“Yes.” Though she’d come once, she still wanted him, almost desperately.

“Then show me.”
 

Seling rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him. Cali hid her frown. She’d had a relationship where the guy just laid back and closed his eyes, demanding that she always do the work. It had turned her off being on top. But the moment passed when Seling reached up and fondled her breasts with one hand, the other curving against her mound so his thumb could rub her clit.

Reaching back, she braced her hands on his thighs and worked her hips first back and forth and then in small circles. The rhythm of his hands plucking her nipples and rubbing her clit slowed, seeming to stutter as she worked his cock inside her.
 

Smiling at the effect she had on him, Cali leaned forward, pressing his hand more firmly against her breast.
 

Their gazes met. The surroundings seemed to melt away, leaving only them, only this moment of pleasure.
 

A second orgasm grew in her belly and Cali leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest as it swept over her.

“Not yet,” Seling growled, but it was too late. Cali panted with pleasure.

Seling flipped them over, driving into her with a few hard strokes before he shuddered above her.
 

They lay on the scratchy carpet, panting. Seling picked up her hand, lacing their fingers together. Cali turned her head, watching the way they fit together. As seconds became a minute, the flash-fire of passion morphed into something more intimate.
 

She could feel Seling looking at her, but the unexpected—and unwelcome—intimacy froze her.

There were three sharp raps on the door.

“Mr. Seling? I’m here to take you home.”

Cali bolted upright. The transportation crews must be here to move the trailers, and with them Seling’s driver.

“Tell him you’ll meet him at the car,” she hissed at Seling, who was still lying calmly on his back.

“I’ll meet you at the car,” he said loudly, eyes never leaving her.

“I can’t believe it’s this late—early—you know what I mean.” Cali pulled her clothes across the floor and slipped into them as quietly as she could.
 

“I don’t need the driver,” Seling said, handing her shirt to her. “You can take me home. With you.”

“No, I can’t. I need you to look outside and see if the driver is really gone.”

That made him frown. “All right.”

When he reported back that there was no one outside, Cali patted her pockets—where she’d tucked her bra—and scooped up her headset and battery pack. She’d have to make sure it was replaced with a fresh one, since she hadn’t turned it in to grip and electric before they packed up.

Seling took her hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She pulled away, no longer comfortable with the melting feeling in her belly that accompanied his touch. “Of course, we’re shooting tomorrow.”

With that, Cali let herself out of the trailer and walked away.

Chapter Two

Oren

A monster crouched on top of warehouse. His green skin appeared black in the moonlight, while his crimson wings filtered that same light, casting blood-red shadows on the metal and glass roof he perched on. His gaze narrowed and lips pulling back to reveal teeth as long and sharp as kitchen knives.
 

The monster folded his bat-like wings over himself one at a time, then took a few steps back, hiding in shadows cast by the pitch of the roof. From the shadows, his eyes glittered like light reflected off obsidian. Those eyes were watching, tracking something on the ground below him.
 

His head tilted to the side and his wings raised off his body slightly, as if he were going to unwrap himself.

The moment passed, and with a snort the monster retreated to the shadows holding so still that everything but those glittering eyes disappeared.
 

Then his lips pulled back again, but this time it was in a sinister, horrifying smile. Still smiling, his great wings unfurled and he took to the air, rising into the night like a demon rising out of hell.

Oren tapped a few keys, eyes on the monitor on the upper level of the bi-level desk. He rolled the scene back and played it again. In post-production, when there were assistant editors and animators and all the other people who made up the editing team, they could enhance things—the whiteness of fangs in the shadows, the red-tinted light under the wings. For now, the scene was good enough for the dailies, especially since it was just him, working far more than any other editor would have agreed to.
 

He rocked back in his chair, glad to be in the production offices rather than the production trailer on set. The ergonomic office chair was better on his back than the plastic affair he had in the trailer. Getting old sucked, and at forty-two he was old enough that his back was starting to hurt, especially on the days after a long run or cycle.
 

“Do you have it?” Cali walked in and plopped down on one of the two couches up against the wall in his office. His office was really a small conference room, with his editing bay against one wall and lots of space behind him for people to sit or stand and watch the film that was shot that day—the dailies.
 

Due to their tight timetable, and the fact that everything they were doing was new, he was running the dailies twice. The first time was at the end of each day’s filming, which was usually early in the morning after a night of shooting, and then again in the office around one o’clock, when he’d string together the best takes from all cameras and angles to make a complete scene.

They discovered plenty of problems this way. Certain light settings caused the monsters’ skin to be two completely different shades in different cameras. They’d found that the canvas-like snapping of wing membrane was loud enough to throw off the sound, and finally they’d come to the realization that the monsters looked too real on film. Audiences were used to CGI or motion capture. The monsters were so real that they’d decided to add filters in post-production—which Oren was still playing with.
 

The filters would give the humans a slightly otherworldly appearance too, but audiences would automatically mentally correct for that.
 

“I’ll pull it up.” Oren worked the keys on his computer. The normal keyboard for his Mac was on the desk next to him. In its place was the specialized AVID software overlay keyboard, which made his computer look like a control panel from the original
Star Trek
. Cut together, Scene 19 showed the reunion between Padma and Ebon, Akta and Henry’s characters, with Seling’s character spying on them from the top of a warehouse.

“Are you tired?” Cali’s voice was accusing, as if the fact that he didn’t immediately give her what she wanted was a sign of weakness rather than computer processing time. Oren stifled a sigh. He forgotten how demanding a job this was and how irritating directors could be.

“Nope. I’m fine with five hours sleep.”

“Good.”

Oren stifled another sigh. Cali was one of the
most
irritating directors he’d dealt with in the past ten years. Then again, she was the first real director he’d dealt with since his meteoric rise in the industry ended with a spectacular and public fall from grace.

But she was good—brilliant, even. The best directors knew when to lead and when to stand back and let the crew flex their skills. Her brusque, almost rude, mannerisms could melt away into the sweet soft tones of a director coaxing an actor into the perfect space for the performance, and in the next instant bark out orders that got everyone moving and helped the producers keep the production on track.

“How does it look?” He could hear the faint tap of her foot on the carpet.

“You’ll see for yourself.”

“Just tell me.”

They played this game every day, and over the past month Oren had come to realize she was scared. He’d put it down to nerves, but as good scene after good scene were in the bag and she didn’t get any less nervous, he’d realized it wasn’t nerves, but fear. She was scared of failing and scared of what they were doing.

He doubted she even realized how scared she was, but it was there, in the back of her eyes and the tapping of her foot.
 

When they’d first approached him and showed him some home video of the monsters, he’d been sure he was being punked or set up in some other way. He’d been wary of the mysterious offer, more wary when his inquiries about the project to the few people in the industry who were still talking to him had yielded no information.

It wasn’t until he’d met one of the guys, watched him change from a good-looking human man to a fucking frightening monster that he’d understood. Understood not only that they were very serious when they said they were making a movie to show the world that monsters were real, but that they probably had a very short list of editors they could go to. The big names wouldn’t risk their careers being associated with the project, and the good indie people didn’t have the experience editing summer blockbusters. And there was nothing worse than an action movie that felt like a Sundance film because of the editing.

“Are the dailies in?” Jo, the production designer, bustled in.
 

“Oren’s pulling them up. How are the sets coming?”

“Good. According to Tokaki and Luke, they’re a good mix between the Clan’s caves in the Rockies, Tokaki’s place in China and stuff I made up.”

“Are they still whining about not wanting it to look too real?”

“Yes, and I see their point. If the wolf people who attacked Runako and Margo come after them again post-release, we don’t want to give them blueprints or a map to their location.”

There was a touch on his shoulder, and Oren looked up. Jo, a pretty, artsy woman with dark hair sporting one icy-blue stripe near the front, smiled at him. “I forgot to say hi. Hi, Oren.”

He chuckled. “Hello, Jo.”

“You don’t need to say hi. We see him every day.” Cali bitched from behind them.

“I’ve told you before, I’m sure they have medication for whatever’s wrong with you.” Jo returned to the couches, taking a seat next to Cali even as they continued sniping at each other.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Denial. A symptom, wouldn’t you agree, Oren?”

“Leave me out of this.”

“You’re getting bitchier as you get skinnier,” Cali told Jo.

“What can I say? Amazing sex burns calories.”

Oren had a very brief image of Jo having sex with her boyfriend—he was one of the monsters, but unlike the ones who were acting in the movie, Jo’s guy Tokaki turned into a massive white tiger almost as long as a freight car from the tip of his tail to his nose. The mental image of them having sex made hentai tentacle porn look tame.

“Jesus,” Oren murmured. He finally had the best shots cued up and in order. “Ready?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Yes—wait, there’s more people coming,” Jo said, ignoring Cali’s groan of frustration.

Though the dailies didn’t need to be seen by anyone but Cali and her assistant directors, as the production went on more department heads showed up every day. Some were just curious, he was sure, but others had realized that since the monsters wouldn’t adapt to the world they created the way animator-created computer monsters would, they had to pay more attention to what the actors looked like, how they moved and what fit their scale.

Pete Bierbaum, the special effects supervisor, was the first one in. He only recently lost his dazed look. In charge of all the real effects—things in the camera, such as blowing up cars—he’d been having a field day since he realized that if he wanted one of the actors to chuck a car across the road, he could just ask them to chuck a car across the road—no rigging, engineers or expense besides the car itself. This had more than doubled what he could do with his budget, and the man had developed a borderline obsession with having the monsters drop stuff from fifty feet up, just to watch it crash.