I felt his thumb press down on my clit and I blew apart, my cry of release triggering North’s. He threw his head back, his eyes on me, his muscles strained as he gritted his teeth to muffle the sound of his climax, and my inner muscles clenched around him as he throbbed with release.
North fell against me, his lips on my shoulder, his chest against mine, my arms still locked around him. He turned his head and kissed my neck.
“Ye werenae jokin’。” His accent thickened with lust as it sometimes did. “Ye were soaked, princess.”
His hot mouth hit my throat and he groaned. I shivered at the feel of his tongue as he scattered wet kisses upward toward my ear. Then North whispered, voice hoarse, desperate almost, “I love ye so fucking much.”
Joy, fear, adoration, longing, relief, anxiety. I felt it all as I tightened my arms around him and kissed the top of his head. I tried to open my mouth. To say the words back … but they wouldn’t come.
It made little sense because the one emotion I felt more than all the others was love.
I loved North.
Why couldn’t I say it?
Tears pricked my eyes. Especially when he lifted his head to look into them. I sensed and saw his disappointment. But he didn’t condemn me for my weakness. Instead, he kissed me with such tenderness, it only made me feel worse.
Was I broken?
The thought terrified me.
Because if I couldn’t say it to North … there was no hope of me ever saying it ever again.
Thirty-Three
NORTH
Walker proposed to Sloane at her bakery opening. She said yes!
The text from Aria made me smile as I chugged a bottle of water. Blake was filming a scene between my costars for the rest of the day, and I was enjoying downtime overlooking the gorgeous Lake Como.
Hot sun beat down on my back as I replied.
Happy for them. I’ll need to text Walk.
It didn’t surprise me Walker had proposed to Sloane at the grand opening of her bakery. Aria told me last weekend she thought his proposal was brewing.
Monroe is holding an impromptu engagement dinner for them tonight. I might miss our call.
My gut twisted. Not because she’d miss our nightly call, but because I wished I were going with her. A friend’s engagement dinner sounded like something you were supposed to do as a couple. These things never bothered me before. I’d missed girlfriends’ birthdays, for goodness’ sake, because of filming schedules.
The difference was that Aria was my home, and I felt like together we were making a place for ourselves in Ardnoch, even if I couldn’t be there all the time. I didn’t want to quit—I loved acting too much. But it would take me a while to get used to being so aware of missing out on life events with Aria.
Maybe if she’d tell me she loved me, it wouldn’t bother me so much.
I was trying to be patient, but fuck, it stung every time I said it and she didn’t say it back.
Sighing, my fingers flew over my phone screen.
No probs. Enjoy yourself. We’ll talk later.
Tomorrow we flew to Japan for the last of our location shoots. It was too far for Aria to come visit, so I wouldn’t see her in person for a month. I didn’t know how I’d handle all that time apart, especially with things feeling not quite settled between us.
Aria sent me a blowing-kiss emoji. In return, I snapped a selfie with my back to the lake and a view toward Tremezzo and sent it to her.
Barely a few seconds later, she replied,
Well, now I’m turned on and you’re not here to do anything about it. Thanks. Asshole.
I barked a laugh and typed back,
You’re welcome, gorgeous.
Still smiling, I turned to lean on the wall, staring out at the sun glistening like diamonds across the water. Fuck, I missed her. I stood there for a wee while, enjoying the epic beauty of my location for a bit. They didn’t need me for the rest of today, which meant I wasn’t on camera again until Tokyo, so when my belly grumbled, I decided to take myself off.
I walked up the quaint narrow paths that wound through the mountains between red-tiled-roofed buildings of terra-cottas, pinks, and yellows. Flowers and lush green vegetation bloomed on wrought iron decorative balconies with old-fashioned lamps hanging off shopfront doors. No one even looked at me, even though the residents knew we were filming, and there were plenty of tourists around. It was great. I felt almost normal for once.
Among the stores were a few trattorias to choose from, and I stepped into the cool shade of the nearest one to order a zucchini pasta dish.
Eating it in peace, enjoying the normalcy, the solitude, I would have been annoyed by the buzz of my phone in my pocket if I hadn’t thought it was Aria.
It wasn’t.
The text was from my publicist.
These photos went online an hour ago and are already all over the internet. My advice is to ignore and not make any statements on your socials. I’d advise Aria to do the same.
What now? I tapped on the link and let out a stream of muttered expletives. Heart pounding, I scrolled through the images and the article on a gossip-rag site. The headline read LOVE RAT? IS KING’S VALLEY ACTOR CHEATING WITH COSTAR?
Fuck.
Someone had taken photos of me and Eden at the restaurant here in Como last night. We’d dined with three of our costars, Blake, and the producer Garry. But at one point, I’d left our table to answer a call from Aria, and Eden had approached once I got off the phone. After I’d told her to back the fuck off, Eden had been easygoing about it. Now that she wasn’t flirting with me every chance she got, she was funny and good company. She’d made me laugh about something, and I hadn’t even noticed she’d touched my arm as she smiled up at me. In another photo, I was leaning in to hear what she was saying over the loudness of the music at the restaurant, and it looked like she was whispering intimately in my ear. I hadn’t touched her, but from the angle the camera took the shot, it looked like my hand might be on her hip.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Any fool could see this was no evidence of my cheating, but the insinuation was enough for panic to take hold. Even though this was bullshit, it was still intended to humiliate us. To humiliate Aria.
Hands shaking, I called Aria to give her a heads-up. To talk it through.
It went straight to her voicemail.
Could she have seen the article already?
Frantic at the thought of her seeing those pictures—and her experiences with her exes coming back to bite us in the arse—I hurried to set.
Pulling Blake aside, I told him I had an emergency at home and that I’d meet them in Tokyo.
Blake cursed. “For fuck’s sake, another emergency?”
I stared stonily at him, not in the mood to expand on the situation, even though he was my boss. “I will make it to Tokyo in time,” I vowed.
“Fine.” He waved me away. “I’m holding you to that.”
I left without another word.
First, I had to endure the helter-skelter drive from Lake Como to the airport. I’d told my driver I needed to get there as soon as possible, and he took me very seriously. It was like being in a real-life Mario Kart game. To put it into perspective, the drive to Malpensa Airport is typically an hour and forty minutes from Bellagio, and he got us there in an hour.
I tipped him big for his haste and the thrill. The fear of dying certainly kept me distracted from my fear of losing Aria over stupid, misleading photographs and false rumors.