Acting Out Page 8

  “We’re good.” The brush-off seemed stilted. Inadequate. He needed to explain why he’d been such an asshole about it, so he continued. “It’s just a phone. I just… It took me by surprise. I thought I’d left it at the club.”

  “I—” Jeremy tried to run his hand through his hair, and Quinn grabbed his wrist before he could touch it. “Sorry.”

  Picking up his foam coffee cup instead, Jeremy began to tear little chunks out with his thumbnail. He furrowed his brow. Glancing sideways and back again, he began with, “I don’t blame you for being pissed off. I…I wanted to be safe. I needed a way to get in touch with Greg. Waking up with—”

  Kit flinched, waiting for the verbal blow that’d label him gay. Quinn paused, and Jeremy caught his stare.

  Clearing his throat, Jeremy dug another chunk out of the cup and continued. “Waking up with that hangover and not remembering… I assumed a lot of things I shouldn’t have. It was a shitty thing to do. I’m sorry. I wanted to lash out, and I did the first thing that came to mind to make myself safe and hurt you at the same time.”

  Relieved Jeremy hadn’t lobbed the gay grenade, Kit grabbed his soda. He took a sip, then spoke over the rim. “Yeah, sure. We’re good. It’s all good.”

  “Can we, um, start over, then?” Jeremy asked.

  Swiveling in his chair, Kit held out his palm. Strong, warm fingers curled around his own. They shook hands. Examining Jeremy’s face, he saw relief and a faint hope for something as yet undefined.

  Kit flashed on their first scene—one in which they’d mime some pretty heavy sex—and found himself looking forward to it. This time he wanted to touch and remember… A series of emotions volleyed through Kit at the thought. Shock won out, and he sat back, dropping Jeremy’s hand. Twenty-five minutes later, they each donned the fabled cock socks and some gray sweats—part of their school uniform—and walked down narrow corridors to the set in silence.

  “You okay with this?” Jeremy asked.

  Kit shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. “It’s work.”

  Lighting and camera crews bustled around the dorm-room set. The scent of sawdust lingered in the air as he and Jeremy stood shoulder to shoulder and considered the bed where they’d spend the next several hours.

  “It’s kinda small,” Jeremy said. “Do you think we’ll both fit?”

  “It’s a blowjob, not fucking,” Kit muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  “Huh.” Jeremy tilted his head to the side. “I guess.”

  The director came over to block the scene with them, showing Jeremy how to lie on the bed—feet toward the headboard, hands laced under his head for the opening shot—then described the next few beats. “Other than that, do what comes natural when you say the dialogue, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Natural?” Jeremy sat up on his elbows. “How should I know what’s natural?”

  Kit backed up a step. “Don’t look at me, dude.”

  “How exactly do you fake a blowjob?” Jeremy’s voice carried clear across the set, or so it seemed to Kit, who hooted an embarrassed laugh and pivoted away.

  “Oh for chrissakes, we’re not filming a porno.” Greg stepped onto the set. “It’s done with camera angles. Shots of the back of the actor’s head, his face in your crotch. Most of the connotations are created with the receiver’s facial expressions. Sorry to disappoint you boys, but nobody’s popping a cherry here.”

  Fits of laughter overtook the crew, lifting the mood on the set considerably. Even Greg cracked a smile. Crouching by the bed, he motioned Kit over, and the three of them huddled for his interpretation of the scene.

  “You’ve been separated. Haven’t touched for weeks.” Greg’s eyes took on a faraway gaze. “Kit, you’re being chased by a gang of students. You’re desperate with fear when you enter. Jeremy, you’ve been rewriting reality in your head. Comforting yourself with the knowledge there are places in your mind you can go where nobody can reach you. Together, Alan and Grant are each other’s lifeline.”

  They would film the initial sexual contact several times. This scene—its kisses and touches recorded from every possible angle—could take them a half day or more to capture. Even with an extensive Hollywood career, Kit’s love scenes remained limited to some passionate kisses and a couple of ass gropes. He’d never filmed nude before, and certainly not with another guy in his arms. What if he got a hard-on? Everyone would see it. He faded out on the last of Greg’s instructions and stood to wander to the edge of the set.

  “All nonessential crew clear the set.”

  “Actors, take your marks.”

  Breakfast threatening to come up, Kit took his place. Any more nervous and he’d wet his pants. Great. Just great. Almost seventeen years in this biz and he had to go incontinent now.

  Lights set—scene and take called—they were rolling. And…action.

  Looking down at Jeremy, Kit reached out a hand. Traced his face. Explored a landscape that had fascinated him from the moment he’d laid eyes on the kid in that flimsy rented audition space. Staring into brown eyes full of wary arousal and simmering hope, he trailed his fingers to a full bottom lip and said, “Suck.”

  The word, though it came from his own mouth, kicked Kit’s abdomen with a jolt of arousal so strong he didn’t need to force a gasp of pleasure when Jeremy opened and took him in with a slow, sensuous slide of his tongue. Eyes unfocused, Kit swayed as the blood rushed from his head to his cock. He bit the inside of his mouth, hard, drawing blood, and his budding erection subsided.

  “Good. Real nice.” Hissing the last word, Kit involuntarily thrust his hips forward.

  Knees shaking, he sat on the edge of the bed. Jeremy tugged him down. Tongues touching first, they eased into the kiss.

  “Cut!”

  Jeremy jerked, and Kit flew backward to put some distance between them.

  “Still rolling,” the cameraman said.

  “We need better definition of the shadows on their faces when they’re kissing,” the director said to the lighting crew. “Kit? Jeremy? You’re doing great, guys.”

  Scrubbing his hands over his face, Kit turned his back on the crew. The chances of actually getting aroused during a love scene were virtually nil with so many people watching and so many stops and starts, yet he battled a stiff one. He prayed his body became inured after the first few takes and didn’t embarrass him later when his pants came off.

  Lighting adjusted after a ten-minute argument about what moonlight coming through a window really looked like, they took their marks again.

  “You all right?” Jeremy looked up at Kit from his prone position.

  Not knowing what to say, Kit licked his lips and stared at a spot over Jeremy’s right shoulder. Then they were in it again.

  “Suck.”

  This time the pressure and heat went straight to Kit’s groin without a pit stop at his abdomen. He groaned at the feel of Jeremy’s teeth scraping against the pad of his forefinger. Sitting, he let Jeremy pull him into the kiss again. A flitting of tongues culminated in an openmouthed tongue fucking that left Kit drowning in arousal. Somehow he remembered he needed to pull away.

  “Don’t stop.” Jeremy’s line—ripped from his chest on a gasp—sounded so authentic, Kit knew acting played no part in its delivery.

  “Shh.” Moving his hand down the sloped ridge of smooth pectorals, Kit flicked a thumb over one peaked nipple, then leaned down to graze that same nipple with his teeth.

  Jeremy arched and delivered a string of curse words that weren’t in the script. No one yelled cut, so they stayed in character as Jeremy grasped Kit’s head and yanked, trying to break the contact.

  “I don’t think…” Jeremy gasped for air between the words. “I can.”

  Leaning over, Kit growled in Jeremy’s ear. “Well, you better think of somethin’, because I’m gonna love you till you can’t see straight.”

  “The line is till you can’t see right.’” Greg’s voice broke into the scene, and Kit sat
up to glare at the man. Who gave a fuck if he used the word right or straight? He needed to get through this scene.

  “From the top?” Kit asked.

  The director waved, indicating he wanted the scene picked up from the flubbed line.

  Leaning over, Kit growled in Jeremy’s ear. “Well, you better think of somethin’, because I’m gonna love you till you can’t see right.”

  Jeremy made a sound like a whimper, and Kit grabbed the towel draped over the footboard. “Bite this if you’re gonna holler.”

  “We can’t… What are you going to do?” Jeremy swallowed convulsively, and Kit didn’t need to be a mind reader to know his costar both wanted and dreaded what came next.

  Focused on the action several lines away, Kit barely registered the volley of lines that led him to the moment when his hands grasped the band of Jeremy’s sweats. Staring into dark eyes widened with a mind-blowing combination of lust and innocence, Kit yanked hard.

  “Oh holy fuck,” Kit whispered, staring at Jeremy’s cock encased in the ridiculous flesh-colored pouch that concealed nothing of his size.

  “Still rolling,” the director said, indicating they’d edit the blunder in postproduction.

  Forcing his mind to his lines, Kit grasped Jeremy’s thighs and bent low. He breathed in warm musk and spicy soap, then exhaled his lines low and sultry. “You’re gonna come. The second I put my mouth on you, you’re gonna come.”

  “Cut!” the director called. “Let’s run through it again before we adjust for the next shot.”

  In the end, it took eight more takes before the director had what he wanted. They broke for lunch while the crew set up for the next angle on the same scene. Feeling as if he moved with a rolling wobble, Kit found his way to his trailer. Pausing in the doorway, he looked into the dim, cool confines of his home away from home and wondered if anyone would notice if he banged his assistant in here.

  Visions of Jeremy jerking off—his ample cock fisted in his strong palm—sprang into Kit’s sex-soaked brain. Clenching the door handle, he leaned his forehead against the metal jamb and decided this project’s real intent was to castrate him and his reputation. He rolled his head to the side…eyed Jeremy’s trailer across the meager strip of pavement. The word bent whispered through his brain, and he wanted to punch something. He was not gay. Just horny.

  In such an intense film, of course the part burrowed beneath his skin, tickling his psyche in ways he didn’t dare try to understand. Maybe if they just fucked for real, he’d get it out of his system? The act would cease to seem so tantalizing. So forbidden. Flinging his trailer door shut as he moved, he used momentum from his descent down the stairs to propel him twenty feet. Raising his fist to pound on Jeremy’s door, he hoped this worked. If not, he’d fire his publicist and hire one specializing in damage control.

  Chapter Nine

  The force of the knock startled Jeremy from his slack-jawed examination of the lunch spread on his…his…dining table. He started to say come in, but didn’t get further than the “Come—” before the door flung open, and Kit shot inside. Vision tunneling, Jeremy froze as Kit crashed into him, bringing him down on the industrial carpet and rolling him to his back. Staring up at Kit’s flared nostrils and the strip of pink coloring each tan cheek, Jeremy breathed in shallow pants from his nose.

  “Fix me,” Kit growled.

  “F-fix you?”

  In answer, Kit ground his erection against Jeremy’s thigh. “Fix it.”

  Years of personal physical denial came to a screeching halt as Jeremy gazed into a wide canyon. On one side, he knew who he was…and controlled it. On the other, he knew who he was and lived it. Owned it. Gathering himself in the face of raw opportunity, he leaped, grew wings, and crossed the divide.

  “You’re not broken.” Jeremy watched as Kit’s competing emotions gathered to form a storm cloud of frustrated anger at the reply.

  Grabbing either side of Jeremy’s shoulders, Kit shook him. Demanded, “Do something.”

  Seizing opportunity and control, Jeremy bucked. Used force and surprise to roll Kit to his back. He dipped low and sucked Kit’s lush bottom lip into his mouth. Savored spicy sweetness and tender flesh. In a nuzzling motion, he coaxed those lips apart. Slipped his tongue slowly inside and delved deep as he slid his thigh along the insistent ridge of Kit’s erection.

  A choked sob welled from the back of Kit’s throat. He arched his chest, exposing his neck, and Jeremy recognized the moment he gave over everything. Relishing the heady wave of power, Jeremy suckled along the column of flesh, leaving a trail of love marks along golden skin. Dipping his tongue in the hollow at the base of Kit’s throat, he moved lower to explore hard muscle and taut nipple with his tongue. Swirling around pebbled flesh, he found the nub of tissue and nipped. Kit hissed. Clenched both sides of Jeremy’s head and held him there. Registering the response, Jeremy moved to the other nipple and scraped his teeth along the root, then sucked hard.

  Kit choked and issued an incomprehensible plea that ended in the word “lower.”

  Dimly, he realized he had Kit Harris underneath him. Begging for it. The realization fueled the feeling of power low in Jeremy’s belly—built it from a snapping fire into a raging inferno—as he tugged down the band of Kit’s sweats. Slow. Deliberate. He removed the cock sock and raked the material over the weeping head of his cock. Exposing only the round ridge of sensitive flesh, he dipped low and captured the salty fluid with a flick of his tongue. There then gone, he teased Kit with the lightning-fast touch. Here was something he knew how to do better than Kit—better than almost anyone.

  Kit arched, reflexively seeking more.

  Bunching material in his hands, Jeremy yanked down. His arousal slammed hard at the sight of Kit’s long, perfectly helmeted, angry-red cock. A thick blue vein twisted from the base to just under the ridge. Compelled, Jeremy breathed in the tang of Kit’s scent as he dipped to make a flat-tongued journey from base to tip along the steel ridge of satin flesh.

  “Yes.” Kit hissed the word and grasped either side of Jeremy’s head as he surged upward.

  Flattening his tongue against the crown, Jeremy closed his eyes and popped the head into his mouth in one slow sucking motion. Using suction, he pulled Kit into his mouth one swallow at a time until he bumped the back of his throat. With his fist, he grasped and pulled down in a practiced twisting motion as he bobbed low again, widened his throat, and took Kit as far back as he could.

  Kit—hands grasping harder, hips pumping in short, sharp motions—undoubtedly saw stars when Jeremy swallowed, convulsing the back of his throat repeatedly. A string of shouted curse words made Jeremy’s balls tighten as Kit jerked beneath him. Under his fingers, he felt the surge of energy as his costar came. Bursts of viscous fluid hit the back of Jeremy’s throat, and he swallowed in greedy gulps. As Kit’s shudders died, Jeremy backed off, loosened his grip, and gave one last lick to the delicate skin along the seam of Kit’s balls.

  Kit dropped his hands from Jeremy’s head to land with a soft thud at his sides. He appeared to drift on a sea of languorous bliss. Loath to disturb such peaceful repose, Jeremy stood and went into the bathroom, where he yanked off the cock sock, took a wad of tissue and a pump of hand cream, and briskly set about remedying his own situation. His cock in a state of sustained arousal, he hissed in pain at the first stroke down his shaft. Bending his legs, he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, positioning himself to make efficient work of the job.

  The lotion heated as he slid his fist over the head of his cock and squeezed on each stroke to catch the sweet spot. His stomach muscles quivered with the effort to stand and breathe as he savored the thought of Kit’s mouth on his cock. So hot. Tight. Imagination proved even more powerful than the tug of his fist as a vision of Kit swallowing him down made Jeremy slam his head backward. He stifled a cry and finished himself with leg-shaking force.

  Pulling up the sweats, he hissed in a breath as the sensitive head of his cock brus
hed against the material. The idea of putting that sock back on made him cringe, and he wondered if he had to. Who cared if a few crewmembers saw him completely naked? Intent on asking Kit what he thought, he emerged from the tiny bathroom and stopped short in the living area at the sight of the empty floor. Turning, he looked toward the bedroom. Empty.

  A void opened in the pit of his stomach, and he sat on the leather sofa to catch his bearings. He picked at the grapes in the bowl on the table next to him, popped one in his mouth, and chewed halfheartedly. What had he expected really? A loving interlude as he and Kit basked in the afterglow? Shaking his head, he stood and went to the sound stage.

  He stepped onto the bustling set and looked down at the bed. Someone had straightened the covers. Everything lay neatly in place as if this morning’s filming never happened.

  “Hey,” Kit said to the crew as he loped onto the set with easy grace and natural confidence. With an unstudied nonchalance that said he’d never had his cock in Jeremy’s mouth, Kit looked at him and asked, “How’s it goin’?”

  Barely avoiding an eye roll, Jeremy huffed out a breath. “Fine. Thanks.”

  The makeup people flitted onto the set and cornered them both for a touch-up. Jeremy saw when Kit’s artist paused and tsk-tsked at the marks on his neck. Eyes widening, Kit shot a what the fuck glance at Jeremy as he raised tentative fingers to touch his damaged skin.

  Jeremy closed his eyes and pretended not to notice. By the time he opened them again, Kit had taken his mark, and Jeremy had to skirt around him to get into position on the bed. They were doing close-ups on the back of Kit’s head and on Jeremy’s face for these takes, so the camera operator stood close.

  “The boom’s too low,” the camera guy said to the sound guy.

  With the mic over his head and the camera in his face, Jeremy wondered how in the world to shut them out enough to be able to mime the expressions he knew he had to make. The ones he’d undoubtedly just made in his trailer… Oh shit!