Summary: After celebrating the successful release of The Last Duchess, MC (Colbie) finally takes her chance.
Note: I had zero intention of romancing Thomas Hunt in this book, but then my dear friend L sent me screengrabs and now I’m committed to making a new MC for him. Oops. 😀
After the party dies down and nearly everyone has left, Colbie stays. It’s not entirely planned. She keeps getting caught up in conversations and time slips away from her. Then, when she realizes how late it is and goes to tell Thomas good night, something about the way he glances at her makes her stop. It’s brief, his usual composed expression returning almost immediately, but she catches it.
He’s far from an open book most of the time, but she’s started to learn to read those quick changes in his expression. She hadn’t really wanted to leave anyway. Not yet. So she waits.
Finally, it’s just the two of them. The first thing he does is glance at his watch and offer to drive her home since it’s so late. Colbie raises her eyebrows. She refuses to believe that look on his face had only been some desire to drive her home.
No… she’s willing to bet he’d wanted her to stay.
“I can call a car,” she offers casually, hoping he’ll refuse.
Sure enough, the next words out of his mouth are, “It’s nearly midnight, Colbie. Surely you’ve been in this city long enough to know that’s not always the best time to go anywhere with a random stranger.”
“I met you late at night. Under a very creepy bridge, no less,” she points out.
A hint of a smile ghosts over his lips. “Fair enough. Although I’ll point out I asked you to meet me and we’d met before, so I was neither random nor a stranger.”
For a moment, neither of them says anything. Thomas clears his throat.
“If you don’t have any…commitments in the morning,” he finally says, “I was going to open a celebratory scotch I’ve been saving for tonight.”
He doesn’t say anything else, just keeps looking at her with those dark eyes.
Ah ha, she thinks. So you do want me to stay.
Of course, he can’t just come out and say that. It’s maddening and charming all at the same time, the way he seems to want her to take the lead on…whatever this is. She understands it and appreciates it, especially with everything that had happened. Still, she can’t resist teasing him. Just a little. Just enough to see him get briefly flustered and the faintest blush tinge his skin.
“Is that an invitation to stay?” she asks with a playful smirk.
“For a drink, yes,” he retorts, another hint of a smile on his face.
She follows him through his dining room and into the kitchen, accepting the glass of amber colored liquid he hands her. Their fingers touch and a little jolt goes through her. It’s happened before; the innocent touches and little moments that make her want him more and more. They stick in her mind, long after she’s gone home.
When he finally pulls his hand back and tears his gaze away, she nearly sighs out loud. He’s such a model of restraint and control. It drives her crazy, in the best way possible. It also makes her curious to see what he’s like when he finally lets go and gives in.
His neighborhood is quiet this late at night, the only noise on his deck the occasional quiet gust from a warm breeze. Colbie leans against the railing and marvels at the sprawling lights of LA below them. She sips her drink, savoring the rich, smoky flavor on her tongue. It tastes expensive. Knowing him, it probably is.
When she tries to picture Thomas Hunt drinking cheap alcohol, the very idea makes her giggle. Thomas glances at her.
“I’m trying to imagine you drinking anything but top shelf liquor,” she explains.
She sits on one of the chairs next to him. He takes a sip of his drink, his fingers wrapped around the glass. Her knee bumps against his. The way he swallows and the lights on the deck dancing over his face distract her so much that she nearly misses him smilingly admitting he’d been a broke college student once too, and he’d had to make do with cheap, terrible alcohol.
“I see your tastes are much more refined now,” she grins.
Thomas shrugs. “Why settle for something subpar?”
Colbie taps her glass lightly against his. “Well, thank you. I don’t even want to know what it cost, but it’s incredible.”
“You’re welcome.”
They lapse into another silence. It’s not awkward, exactly. She searches for the word. It’s…a little tense. Not in a bad way, she decides. Not at all.
She’d found him attractive even before she met him. Getting to know him made her even more attracted to him. Between that and all the little almost moments they’ve had and the way she sometimes sees him look at her, it makes sense that there’s tension.
Sexual tension, her sister would say. Then she’d probably throw in a quip about how, according to all the gossip magazines, Thomas Hunt had been single for a long time and was a complete workaholic, so of course he was tense.
Colbie almost giggles again at the thought, but hides it by taking another drink.
“So, are you going to tell me why you asked me to stay?” she asks.
He opens his mouth, and she quickly adds, “And don’t feed me a line about how it was just for a drink.”
Thomas smiles ruefully, then shakes his head. “You’re very…outspoken, Colbie. You know, that’s one of the reasons I really wanted you in The Last Duchess.”
“I thought it was my Audrey-worthy natural talent and undeniable charm,” she replies, batting her eyelashes at him.
A smile, a real, genuine smile, illuminates his face. It makes her smile too.
“Those may have also had something to do with it,” Thomas agrees. “But the way you speak your mind is an admirable quality.”
He shoots her a look. “Of course, that quality can also cause complete chaos.”
Colbie shrugs. “That’s the fun part.”
He shakes his head, but she sees him fighting a smile when he swallows down the last of his scotch. His glass clinks lightly on the table when he sets it down. She follows suit, then slides her chair closer to his.
“I’m going to be outspoken again,” she says.
Thomas studies her carefully. Colbie scoots even closer, then says, “Are you going to kiss me now that we’re not technically working together anymore?”
His pupils dilate at her words. She just barely catches it in the faint glow from the glittering lights on the deck.
“I shouldn’t,” he says at last, but he doesn’t move away.
And he didn’t say no, she notes, or that he doesn’t want to.
“Why not?”
Thomas sighs. “Hollywood complicates things.”
“If you let it,” she counters, and leans in even more.
His stubble tickles her fingertips when she brings her hand up to his cheek.
“You don’t always get to control what it complicates,” he counters back.
Still, despite his words, she can see him giving in. She can almost see his stubborn resolve crumbling right in front of her. Slowly, she brushes her fingertips over his lips.
“Maybe,” she says, watching his eyes briefly flutter closed at her touch. “But you can’t control everything. Sometimes you should just let things happen. And do the things you want.”
His fingertips come to rest gently on her knee. Even through the fabric of her dress, his simple touch ignites her.
“You can’t spend your whole life being careful,” she murmurs.
Before he can protest that you can always be careful (because she’s positive that was going to be his next line), she turns and presses her lips to his. A heady feeling rushes through her as soon as she does it. She’s been wanting to kiss him, has thought about it more times than she cares to admit.
The only thing that makes finally kissing him even better is that he responds almost immediately. There’s an oh-so-brief moment of hesitation and then he’s kissing her back. One arm wraps around her waist. His other hand slips into her hair, undoing the twist she’d pulled it up into earlier.
Pleasure shoots through her at the quiet noise that escapes from the back of his throat. She kisses him harder, fingers gripping the lapels on his suit jacket. She groans when he leans back far too soon.
“I swear to god,” she mutters, “If you stop right now, or tell me we can’t…mmm…”
She trails off at the feel of his lips brushing across her jawline. They move down her neck and tease her collarbone, and she groans for an entirely different reason.
“You’re incredibly impatient,” Thomas says against her skin.
Colbie laughs a little shakily. “Yeah, well…”
His teeth graze her skin. She finds herself annoyed that his deck chairs can’t comfortably accommodate two people.
Well, she briefly considers, they maybe could.
She eyes the chair Thomas is sitting in and frowns.
No, she decides. Definitely not.
Besides, he has a much more comfortable (and much larger) couch just inside. She grins to herself at that thought, then gasps when he gently nips at the curve of her neck.
“Someone once told me to just let things happen,” Thomas quips. “Perhaps she should stop being so impatient and take her own advice.”
She bites her lip when he slowly kisses back up to her ear, hitting sensitive spots along the way. His stubble scratches pleasantly against her skin and she moans quietly. She’s rewarded by his hand tightening on her hip.
“She sounds very wise,” Colbie gets out, “But I believe she also said you should do the things you want.”
The arm rest on the chair is digging into her side. His mouth and his hands feel so good that she wants to ignore the insistent press of curved metal into her ribs, but it’s becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
“She did,” Thomas agrees, and his question of, “What things do you want to do, Colbie?” momentarily distracts her from her protesting ribs.
Almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth, he groans.
“I regret that phrasing. Don’t answer that,” Thomas says.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!” she protests through her laughter.
Shaking his head, Thomas stands and offers her his hand. He twines his fingers with hers and squeezes. The gesture is so unbelievably sweet that it makes her less than innocent thoughts halt temporarily.
“Are you certain?” he asks her.
She squeezes back and leans into him. “I am.”
He nods, though he still looks a little unsure. “I don’t want this to be me taking advantage.”
“You’re not. I promise,” Colbie says, kissing him softly.
She grins when they step back inside, fingers still laced together. “Besides, I’ve been the one flirting pretty heavily with you, remember? Like when I suggested we share a hotel room.”
“Which was entirely unprofessional,” he chides her.
“I also told Addison you were ludicrously hot,” she adds cheerfully.
Mild horror crosses his face. “You did what?”
Colbie shrugs. “It’s true.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“So you admit you’re hot?”
Thomas groans. “I’m beginning to think your outspoken side is going to cause nothing but complete chaos.”
She presses herself against him, threading her hands into his hair. His arms come around her waist automatically.
“But isn’t it fun?” she smiles.