Amy Valenti - Not Your Damn Submissive (Denial #1) (3 page)

“
Just as long as you know an assistant is all I am.” I folded my arms protectively across my chest. “So what assistance do you need before this scene?”

A flash of heat crossed his expression for just long enough for me to notice it, but he let it fade away even as my pulse quickened.
“Since we only have ten minutes, could you just bring me some water before shooting starts? Marcia wants to do a couple of final touch-ups to my makeup.”

“
Of course.” I strove to keep my manner professional. “Be right back.”

While Marcia fussed around Callum, I went to the
water cooler in the side room down the hall. For a second, I contemplated finding something that tasted terrible to mix into the plastic cup, but quelled the urge.
Do not engage. Keep things professional. Don’t let him provoke you and don’t give him any reason to get into an argument with you.

Mini pep talk over, I ventured back onto the set and found Callum sitting on the end of the bed, studying the lines he
’d need for his scene. He didn’t look up as I approached.

“
Mr. Connors?” I said quietly, not wanting to distract him—for selfish reasons as well as professional ones.

He looked up and seemed genuinely glad to see the water cup I was carrying.
“Thank you.”

I handed over the cup, careful not to let my skin brush his, aware that
my hands had a slight tremor. Around him, I was a bundle of nerves, and I couldn’t stand it that he probably knew it.

“
Will you need anything else?” I asked, putting boredom into my tone and expression so that he didn’t get any ideas.

There was something
intimate about standing in front of a man who was sitting on the end of a bed. With one step forward, I’d be between his knees and he’d be able to cup my ass as he drew me into his lap, or pull down my shirt to take one of my nipples between his teeth and…

Callum held my gaze as he took a sip of water. When he lowered the cup, a droplet remained on his top lip and he licked it away casually before speaking.
“That will be all for now, Kat. Stay nearby, would you? I’m not sure how many takes this scene will need.”

“
Got it.”

Glad to be dismissed, I walked off the set, my attitude as calm and dignified as I could muster. I joined a couple of waiting runners against the wall, well out of the reach of the cameras, but my pulse hadn
’t begun to slow down yet.

When
I looked back over at Callum, he was gazing at his lines again, entirely unruffled and definitely not as captivated by me as I was by him. God, how was I going to survive the next two weeks?

Chapter Two

Callum

I hadn’t had this much of a problem remembering my lines since the time I’d had to speak Latin for a minor role as a possessed priest. That had been one of my first acting jobs—I liked to think I was more professional and focused these days.

Then again, Kat handi
ng me something I’d asked her for had shaken my cool. I’d expected her to keep on the Little Miss Badass persona she’d been wearing all day, but she’d been serious, respectful and slightly nervous, the way I’d have expected a new but willing submissive to be. Granted, I would have preferred her to be kneeling rather than standing, but since this wasn’t my bedroom and we weren’t in play, I’d taken what I could get, thanking her for her service and taking a sip. What I’d really wanted to do was pull her on top of me and reward her with a screaming orgasm for following my order.

My cock stirred, an
d I slammed down on the thought before my desire could get out of control, repeating the lines on the page over and over in my mind. I didn’t dare look at Kat. If she was watching me with the same attentiveness as she had when she’d handed me the water, I was liable to scoop her up in my arms, carry her to my trailer and lock us both in there until we were both sated and exhausted.

Fuck.
I needed to get it together.

“
Okay, people, let’s do this!” Darren Birch, the director of this godawful book-to-TV-show adaptation, clapped his hands a few times to call us to attention.

With only a tenuous grasp on my lines, I hid the script pages under the bed and lay down on it, gazi
ng towards the set’s window. It showed nothing but a green screen for the moment, but a view of the neighbourhood at night would be digitally added later.

The lighting guys did their thing, and the bedroom set went from being harshly lit by the overheads t
o softly illuminated by lamps. I took a deep breath and tried not to imagine Kat spread out on the bed, naked and reaching for me.

I was gonna have a seriously difficult time focusing if I didn
’t get a hold on this. Frustrated with myself, I poured the feeling into the character I was meant to be portraying—Nathaniel Locke, adversary of the protagonist’s vampire love interest on the show, written to be a cocky bastard.

I folded my arms under my head and wait
ed for the inevitable call to come.

“
Action.”

The sound of a door opening was my cue to look from the window over at the doorway with a smug grin and small wave.
“Hey, cutie.”

The lead actress
, Jacie Smith, was a forgettable blonde, currently wearing a T-shirt and pyjama pants. We’d exchanged few words except for to do a quick, distracted rehearsal between her commitments yesterday, but she seemed to have snapped into the role of Lynette perfectly today. “Oh my God, what the hell are you doing here?”

“
Waiting for you.” I raised myself off the pillows onto my elbows, making a show of looking her up and down. “Nice jammies.”

“
Be quiet or you’ll wake the whole house!” Jacie stage-whispered, hurriedly shutting the door behind her. “And get off my damn bed!”

“
Sure you don’t want to join me, Lynette?” I reached out a hand, keeping my expression smug. If I’d really wanted her to join me, I’d have acted a whole lot differently. But this character was scripted as a dick, so a dick I’d play.

“
No! Get up right now!” Jacie tugged on my hand as if it were enough to pull me to my feet, and I played along, letting my balance waver as she dragged me off the bed and shoved me over to the window. “If Dale finds you in here he’ll kick your ass. How did you even get in?”

We ran through the rest of the scene without a hitch
—apparently my memory was better than I’d thought, and the lines sprang to mind at the appropriate times—and before I knew it, it was time for me to open the window, slip out with a dire warning about her boyfriend’s trustworthiness, and head out of shot. Jacie played out the rest of the scene alone, though I couldn’t see her actions through the thin wall of the set, and I remained hidden until Darren called, “Cut!”

I emerged from my hiding place
, and Jacie and I both looked expectantly at the director.

“
Good job, guys. That’s pretty much how it went down in the original book. But now I’m hearing you do the lines, I’m wondering if we couldn’t throw this into love triangle territory. You know, like the whole Bill-Sookie-Eric thing in
True Blood
?”

It was phrased as a suggestion, but you didn
’t turn down a director’s suggestions. Jacie and I exchanged a glance, and then simultaneously shrugged. “Sure,” she said.

T
his must be part of Darren’s ploy to hook me in as a series regular. If the show started with a few fans fixated on a relationship between my character and Jacie’s, even though the book specified otherwise, word would spread on social media and the show could become a real hit. Then again, pissing off the hardcore book fans seemed like a bad idea, since they were the main audience.

I didn
’t care either way. I just wanted to be done with this and out of here, though I’d told Darren otherwise to get myself a certain submissive assistant.

Part of me was gla
d to have an outlet for the sexual energy that had built in me since I’d first laid eyes on Kat. But I didn’t want to let any of that loose on anyone but her—or have her watch me unleash it on someone else. She wanted to think badly of me, had apparently disliked me even before I’d pulled her into this. She’d probably convince herself I was on a quest to screw any woman who moved by the time today was over.

Darren specified the changes he wanted, and I groaned inwardly. On any other day, in any other job, I
’d have had no problem playing a seductive character, but with Kat in the picture I’d gladly have taken any other role.

“
Okay, quiet on the set!”

As Jacie took up her position outside the door, I lay back down on the bed.

* * * *

Kat

Watching Callum work was amazing. Despite my misgivings about what he was
—and no, I didn’t mean a creature of the night—I really had been an admirer of his work since his early days. Although I couldn’t see the close-ups of him I would have had if I’d been watching him on TV, I was mesmerised by how effortlessly he’d dropped into the role of a cocksure vampire. A couple of times, his borderline comedic delivery of a line made me grin. He’d taken a mediocre script and made it a great scene.

But when Darren c
alled for another take, this time with sexual tension, my heart sank. I didn’t want to see how easily Callum could turn on the charm. It would only reinforce how much you could never trust an actor was showing you his true face.

For a few moments while Dar
ren was speaking, I got the feeling Callum was irritated with the way things were going. But as he lay back on the bed for a second time and undid another button on his shirt, my mind went blank of anything but pure female appreciation.

His demeanour now w
as completely different to the way it had been before. Edgy sensuality poured off him as the scene began and Jacie Smith entered the room. His smile was wolfish. “Hey, cutie.”

Jacie probably didn
’t even have to act, if she was as much a slave to his charms as I had been earlier. She kept her frantic air from the first take, but added a not-quite-subtle once-over of the gorgeous man sprawled out on the bed. “Oh my God, what the hell are you doing here?”

“
Waiting for you.” My insides melted as he checked her out, not with the cheeky objectification of earlier but with a slow, assessing gaze. How did he manage to look so hungry for her with almost no movement at all? “Nice jammies.”

Jacie played it flustered, which couldn
’t have been too hard for her. I wouldn’t have been able to remember my lines. “Be quiet, or you’ll wake the whole house!” She leaned back against the door she’d just closed, staring at him as though she wanted to eat him up, yet hated the fact. I could relate. “And get off my damn bed.”

“
Sure you don’t want to join me?” Callum spoke as though he already knew the answer was yes, holding out a hand to tempt her towards him.

As I remembered my fantasy from earlier about him pulling me onto the bed with him, my cheeks grew hot
. Out of the blue, I wanted to cry. He and Jacie hadn’t had any romantic chemistry before this take, but right now Callum looked as though he wanted to do very bad things to her. If he could act this way with so little preparation time, how could I ever trust that the way he’d looked at me was genuine?

Jacie grabbed his hand and tried to pull him off the bed, but Callum only played along as far as sitting on the edge. Then he held her by the hips and stopped her from stepping away by tugging her more firmly between his legs.

Almost whispering her lines, none of her fight from the earlier take in her anymore, Jacie gazed down at him at though captivated.

As the scene went on, Callum got to his feet and gradually backed Jacie up against the wall next to the window. Then he deliv
ered his last line with his lips just an inch from hers. “Do you really think you can trust him more than you can trust me?”

Jacie caught her breath, and with another
predatory smile, Callum opened the window and vaulted over the sill, out of sight. Jacie closed the window and sat down on the end of the bed, looking a mixture of angry and smitten as the scene ended.

“
And cut.”

At Darren
’s directive, Jacie rolled her shoulders and smiled. “How’d we do?”

I waited for Callum to reappear. It took a few seconds longer
this time.
Maybe he and Jacie have such a great connection that they’ll end up going back to his trailer together. And what will you do? Stand outside and listen just in case he needs his assistant to run out for more condoms?

I swallowed
an unexpected lump in my throat. A few minutes ago I’d been praying for him to be too distracted by his script to look at me properly. Now I was jealous because he might have something with Jacie Smith. I was a mess of seesawing emotions, and it hadn’t even been one day since I’d first introduced myself to Callum yet.
Only twelve and three-quarter days to go…

* * * *

Callum

The third and fourth takes we did were only partials, adjusting some of the choreography that had made it hard to film us in our second run-through. Darren seemed ecstatic with the way things were going, and Jacie kept shooting me appreciative glances in between takes. I’d have to be blind not to notice her flirtation, but I wasn’t interested.

I
’d had to pretend she was Kat to get to the level of intensity Darren had asked for, and now that we were finished, all I wanted was to get back to her, to gauge how she’d felt watching me with Jacie.

She was nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that I
’d told her to stay nearby. My instinct as a Dom was to dream up a creative punishment for her disobedience, but I reined it in immediately. She was skittish enough, uncertain of me and of the attraction pulling her in my direction, without me punishing her before the rules had even been laid down.

No, the first spanking I gave her would be an erotic one, not a punishment. I couldn
’t wait to hear her cries of pain and pleasure as I finger-fucked her with one hand and spanked her ass with the other…

Stop.
Arousal surged through me again, and I was tired of needing to control it around all these people. It was time to break for lunch and I wanted to spend that time alone with Kat.

Jacie invited me to her trailer for lunch, her body language suggestive, but I turned her down, maybe a
bit too brusquely. She headed away from the set very quickly after that, and I resolved to try to mend bridges—although not to the point she’d like—later on.

“
Could you find Kat, my assistant, and send her to my trailer, please?” I asked one of the runners nearby. “I told her to wait here, but I can’t find her.”

The obviously over-caffeinated young woman nodded enthusiastically.
“Kat who usually does set stuff, right? She was right here for the first couple of takes, but she just took off after that. I’ll track her down.”

Hardly even sticking around long enough for me to thank her, she
set off down the hall.

Sighing, I walked the opposite way to
wards my trailer. Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to put Kat in a situation the director wouldn’t let her refuse, but if she’d gone home the way she’d planned, I’d never have seen her again. I didn’t want to admit even to myself how much that prospect had alarmed me.

I was willing to bet Little Miss Badass would be back when Kat finally showed up. That was dangerous. It made me want to treat her the way I
’d treat any wilful but willing brat who’d caught my eye on the scene—by dragging her to her knees by the hair and demanding her obedience.