Trashed (3 page)

Mmm, those lips. Plump and red and begging to be kissed.
 

Even her ears are beautiful. She’s got detached earlobes, a single small diamond stud in the lobe, with three hoops climbing up the shell on both ears.
 

And her hair….my god. So thick, so black, so long. My hands twitch, itching to bury my fingers in those ebony locks, feel them slip like silk between my fingers and pull her against my chest and kiss the ever-loving shit out of her.

“Take a picture, dude. It’ll last longer.” She’s got a wry smile on her lips, somewhere between amused, baffled, and flattered.

I hold up my phone and swipe up on the lock screen, opening the camera app, and snap a picture of her. She’s got one hand tucked into the back pocket of her jeans, the other hanging casually at her side. Her hair is loose, a mass of black framing her face, a few strands fluttering in a breeze. She’s got that wry smile, and a sharp, piercing gaze.

As soon as I snap the photo she lunges for me, grabbing at my phone. “I didn’t mean
actually
take a picture, you dumbass! I wasn’t ready!”
 

She reaches for my phone, which I hold out of reach. Most girls, if I hold something above my head, it may as well be on Mars. This girl, this nameless beauty, she’s so tall that she’s able to hop and get my hand in both of hers, and holy shit is she strong. She’s pried my phone out of my hands before I know what’s going on.

“Hey!” I snatch it back before she can delete the picture. “It was a good photo, no reason to freak. You wanna see it?” She lunges for me again, and I dart out of reach, laughing as I bring up the picture and hold the phone so she can see it. “Look.”

She frowns. “It’s
horrible
! The angle is all wrong. You can’t take a picture of a girl with the camera pointing up like that. Don’t you know anything?”

“So quit trying to steal my phone and I’ll retake it,” I say.

Surprisingly, she complies. She puts her weight on one leg, the other knee bent, her torso twisted and her hands buried in her hair, her head tilted back slightly. It’s the perfect pose for her, accentuating her hair and her height. I snap several, put a filter on it, and then show it to her.

“Is that better?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Sure. It’s okay.”

“
Okay?
” I shake my head. “You’re nuts. It’s an awesome picture. You’re insanely photogenic. I know some photographers who would love to get you in front of their cameras.”

She tosses her hair and rolls her eyes. “Yeah…okay, sure,” she says, sarcasm thick in her tone. “Tell me another one.”

I shove my phone in my pocket and move so I’m in front of her and walking backward, then stop so she bumps into me. “You really don’t know how gorgeous you are, do you?”

She shoves me away hard enough that I trip and have to catch my footing. “I’ve already agreed to have dinner with you, so you can lay off the flattery, all right?”

I don’t think she realizes who she’s pushing around. I move fast, darting toward her and putting my shoulder in her stomach, lifting her off the ground and running three long steps, and then I set her down and press her back to the wall of a building. She doesn’t even have time to protest or wiggle, and I have her up against the wall. I grab her hands, both of them, and press her knuckles to the siding, my fingers tangling with hers. I pin her hips in place with mine, and I’m drowning in the clean scent of her skin and hair, in the crush of her tits against my chest, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps of surprise.
 

“It’s not nice to push,” I murmur, my face inches from hers. Her eyes are wide and I can feel her trembling. “Listen to me. You think I’m going to waste my time on flattery? I don’t fucking think so.”

“I just—”

I don’t let her finish whatever bullshit she was going to say. “Now. Before either of us takes another step, I need one thing from you.”

She’s shaking all over, her eyes wide as saucers, brown and deep and dark and rife with thoughts and emotions I can’t decipher. “What’s that?” she asks, her voice shaky and small.
 

“Your name.”

“Des.” Her voice is a whisper. “My name is Des.”
 

“Des what?”

“Ross. Des Ross.”

“Des.” I draw the syllable out, accentuating the ‘z’ sound at the end, tasting her name, rolling it on my tongue. “Is that short for something.”

“Just Des.”
 

I can’t resist any longer. I just can’t. I release one of her hands and slide my palm past her ear, into the thick mass of black hair. It’s cool and silky and still damp. Her mouth falls open slightly, and I’m a breath away from claiming those red lips of hers, but I don’t, I save that, save the kiss. I look at her, try to read her, but she’s just breathing, her lips parted, her eyes searching mine. She’s not moving into me, not trying to take the kiss I’m holding back, but she’s also not pushing me away or trying to escape. She’s shaking though. The fingers I’ve still got twined in mine are trembling as if she’s barely holding back some powerful emotion. Is it nerves? Desire? Or fear?

The wind has picked up, blowing strong through the alley, carrying a heaviness with it. It’s not a cold wind, not this time of year, but it’s a wet one, a thick, damp wind.
 

I force myself to let her go, to back away from her, and when there’s space between our bodies, she seems to go limp, deflating, letting out a long, harsh breath. She straightens after a moment, visibly composing herself, and glances at the sky. “It’s going to rain, I think.”
 

I follow her gaze skyward, and see that low, angry gray clouds have rolled in suddenly, covering the blue sky and the sun. It’s dark now, and cooling off quickly. My skin prickles, and a deafening clap of thunder splits the air, accompanied by a blinding flash of lightning streaking across the sky, stabbing and then gone. There’s a drip, a drop, two and three and four, and then before either of us can even move, the clouds have opened up, releasing rain in torrential buckets.
 

“Holy shit!” I grab her hand and pull her into a run. “Where the hell did this come from?”

She’s running with me and laughing as the rain pounds on our heads, soaking us to the bone within seconds. I have no idea where I’m going, I’m just running, and she’s following me.

“Where are we going, Adam?”

“I don’t know!”
 

We’re at an intersection and she jerks me to the left, pulls ahead and leads down a short street that dead-ends at Main Street. She’s opening a door and leading me into an old bar, low ceilings and aged wood floors and thick beams, sports channels on TVs, a dartboard on one wall, a small bar with eight or ten stools. There are two or three rooms to the bar, several tables and booths in each, with the bar itself in the corner as the centerpiece. It’s a warm, dark, and comfortable place, the kind of bar I can imagine the handful of year-round locals drinking at when the tourists have all gone home.
 

“Jesus, that was fast,” Des says, wringing her hair out. “That came out of nowhere.”

I rub my hand over my short, spiked black hair. “No kidding. Sunny one minute, pouring down the next.”
 

How the hell can I be expected to have dinner with this girl now? She’s soaking wet, her shirt plastered to her skin, outlining the cups of her bra and the flat of her stomach and the curves of her back. I can see the erect nubs of her nipples poking through the fabric of her shirt and bra.
 

I’m wet too, though, and my shirt is a plain white undershirt. And now that it’s wet, the thin cotton is basically see-through. And yeah, being an athlete and an action-movie star, I’m expected to be in top shape, especially during filming. And I am. I spend hours at the gym every day to retain the bulky physique the producers expect for my role, which is a renegade roughneck superhero. Kind of like Wolverine meets Batman. He’s dark and brooding. He wants nothing to do with his superpowers, though, and avoids using them, until events conspire to force him into action. In the graphic novel on which the movie is based, my character is drawn to be impossibly proportioned, even more so than most superheroes, and when the film people started casting, they knew they had to find someone who was capable of achieving the level of bulk needed to fill the role. The Rock could have played it, but he’s older than they were looking for, and too well known. They wanted a relative unknown, someone who’d done enough acting to pull off the lead role, but not famous enough to be immediately recognizable on a household level.
 

That’s where I came in. Marek in
Fulcrum
was my breakout role, but I’d had supporting actor roles here and there, enough to establish my chops. And I’m naturally big enough that with the right regimen and training, I could bulk up enough to fill the massive profile the character demanded. Which meant that, at the moment, I’m bulked out to the max. Even in my one season with the San Diego Chargers I wasn’t this shredded, and with my T-shirt soaked through I might as well be shirtless.

Des is eyeing me pretty openly as she wipes the moisture from her face with a stack of bar napkins. “Good thing I just took a shower,” she says.

“Good thing for you you’re not wearing
this
shirt,” I joke, plucking at the sopping, translucent fabric.

“You probably wish I was, though,” Des says, and slides onto a barstool.

“Damn right I do.” I slip onto a stool beside her and try to keep my eyes north of her shoulders.

A slightly awkward silence then, as she probably wonders what I’m expecting from her, and I’m wondering what the hell it is I think I’m doing. The last thing I need right now is a distraction, or media attention. Gareth, the director, and Parker, the head executive producer, have both been adamant that everyone attached to the project keep media exposure to a minimum. We’re shooting the long-awaited and highly anticipated sequel to
Fulcrum
, which means I’m reprising my role as Marek. Everyone from the big magazines to minor blogs is speculating about who’s in the movie, where the plot is going to go, all the usual chatter. But because it’s been more than three years since the original, and since Gareth, Parker, and I were all vocal about the impossibility of a sequel, the rumor mill is running on all eight cylinders. Which means media attention of any kind has an effect on the shoot, and could lead to possible leaks.
 

And apart from the need to keep myself out of the media professionally, I’m in no position to get into anything. After what happened with Em and the shit-storm that engendered, the last thing I need is to be photographed with some other girl. Especially, both of us soaking wet, on what’s supposed to be a fundraiser weekend.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know why I jumped off that carriage, why I’m here with her, why I’m so intrigued by her, why her tough-girl persona has me twisted and heated and hungry.

I just don’t know.

And I have no idea what’s going to happen or what I expect from her.
 

“So tell me about yourself, Des,” I say, to distract myself from the internal self-questioning.

She shrugs. “I’m a college student, here for the summer on a co-op program. This is my fifth year here on the island.”

“Major?” I ask her, and then turn to the bartender, who has stopped in front of us to get our orders. “I’ll have a Sam Adams and whatever she wants.”

“Usual, Des?” the bartender asks. Des nods, and the bartender slides me my Sam Adams, and then pours a vodka tonic, setting it in front of Des.
 

“You have a usual here?” I ask.

Des nods and shrugs. “Sure. I’m here after work a lot. Probably more than I should be, but there’s not much else to do in the evening, you know?” She sips at her drink and then sets it down. “I’m majoring in social work, with a focus on foster care.”
 

“Foster care, huh?”

“Yep.” She keeps her gaze on the TV screen in the corner and sips at her drink, her posture closed and tensed. Clearly, that subject is off the table.

“So you’ve been coming here for five years?”
 

She opens a little at that. “Yeah. I came here the summer I graduated high school. I’d already been accepted to Wayne State at that point, and my counselor at the high school suggested I do the summer co-op program. She knew the program liaison at Wayne, so she got me in before I’d technically started college. Been coming back every year.”

“Just for the summer work, or what? What keeps you coming back?”

She answers right away. “I don’t know. A lot of things. It’s a good way to save up money for the school year. It’s good work experience, looks good on a résumé. It gets me away from Metro Detroit for a few months every summer. Plus, I just like it here. The horses, the atmosphere, the tourists. It’s just so fun and different. My best friend Ruth comes here with me every year, and it’s just kind of what we do.” She glances at me. “What about you? What brings you to little old Mackinac Island?”

“There’s a fundraiser dinner at the Grand Hotel tomorrow night. It’s a big deal. Couple grand per plate, silent auction, red carpet, and photographers and the works.” My head aches just talking about it.

Des must hear something in my voice. “You don’t sound all that excited.”

I shake my head. “I’m not.”

She stares at me in disbelief. “Why the hell not? That sounds like fun!”

I laugh. “You’ve clearly never been to one, then. They’re boring. Stuffy. You just sit there all dressed up and have quiet little conversations about the weather or whatever. The whole thing is just a pain in my ass. I
hate
wearing suits, for one thing. Tuxedos are the worst. I’m an actor and an athlete, not a wine-and-dine and be all haughty and hoity-toity kinda guy, you know? I like beer and football, not champagne and golf, and that’s all these sorts of events are about. Everyone is drinking expensive fucking champagne, which is gross if you ask me, and talking about golf and the latest gala in Beverly Hills, and gossiping about who cheated on whom, and who got funding for their latest script. It’s boring and stupid.”