Stripped (10 page)

Declan had no interest in silence, however. “Why don’t you wear outfits like last night’s more often?” She could feel his eyes on her, stroking over the curves hidden beneath the oversized men’s shirt she’d blindly yanked from her closet this morning. “That skirt was…pretty.”

It was more than pretty, as they both knew. “What I wear to work is my business.” She peeled off the transfer’s plastic top sheet, refusing to reward him with her glare.

“O’ course it is,” he responded smoothly, his accented voice as decadent to her senses as the caramel in her coffee. “You already know you’re lovely in any clothes you put on.”

Oh, please. “Is this another attempt at charm?”

“Yes. How’m I doin’?”

She stepped between his thighs, ignoring the sense of
rightness
—so similar to what she’d experienced last night, when he’d caged her against that brick wall and aligned the length of his hard body with hers—and smacked the silicone transfer down across his forehead, none too gently. “I don’t know, Mr. Murphy. Have my pants magically disappeared?”
 

He tried to move his head, to peer at her lower body, but her hand on his forehead kept him in place. “No?” he guessed.

“No,” she confirmed, unable to keep her lips from twitching with suppressed humor. “So tell me, how do you
think
you’re doing?” She dampened the back of the transfer with the moistener she grabbed from the counter behind her, far more careful with the application now that the fake scar started to adhere to his skin.
 

“But what if I’m not tryin’ to get in your pants?”
 

He was looking directly at her breasts. Hell, she could
feel
that stare, those deep brown irises caressing her until her nipples hardened against the satin cups of her bra. Thank God the blue cotton shirt bagged away from her body, hiding the arousing effect his close attention had on her.
 

When she didn’t bother to answer him—because, though she might be going stupid over him, she was far from oblivious—he huffed out a self-deprecating sigh. A furtive glance down showed his hands bunching into tight fists on the arms of the chair.
 

Good. He should be struggling to keep his hands to himself. The possession in his touch… First on the dance floor while the salsa band blasted pulse-pumping rhythm in their ears, then in the sudden quiet of the alleyway when they’d escaped the cantina—every brush of Declan’s fingertips along her waist, her hip, her thigh had stamped her with a claim she couldn’t shake even now, with all her barriers in place.
 

“Fiona.”
 

She didn’t trust the coaxing note she heard in her name, and held her tongue as she slowly lifted the transfer backing away from his fair skin. The scar stayed cleanly in place.
 

“What if I’m not
just
tryin’ to get into your pants?” He paused. “Which, by the way, is what we call underwear on my side of the Atlantic.”

Leaning away, she locked eyes with him, wishing she could mimic that superior, arched brow she’d seen him whip out time and again since filming started. “Then I think ‘pants’ is an even more appropriate word choice.” She stepped back, out of the warm bracket of his thighs, and turned to collect new tools to blend the prosthetic’s edges into his skin.
 

“Yeah, but how would I know if those disappeared? Your pants, I mean. Because you’re wearing those…those….”

“Jeggings.”

In the mirror, she watched his head rear back in confusion. “Whatever it is you said just now, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t English.”

“Jeans plus leggings equals jeggings.” She wanted to laugh—he almost always made her want to laugh, and damn, she hadn’t realized how little laughter there was in her life until him. Smothering her smirk, she turned, using the tip of a sponge doused in alcohol to blend the edges of the scar. The powder was next, followed by the sealer spray, during which she shielded his eyes with one hand. “And you wouldn’t.”

His eyelashes fluttered against her palm, teasing her with feather-light kisses of lashes that had no right belonging to a man so ambivalent about his looks. “I wouldn’t what?”

“Know if my pants disappeared.”

“You’re makin’ my point for me, Fi.”

The devil on her shoulder goaded her to torture him as his existence tortured her. It was the only explanation for why she waited a beat before murmuring, “In fact, you wouldn’t know if I were even wearing
pants
in the first place.” Her hips swished of their own accord as she returned to her counter, an echo of the strut she’d employed to walk offstage, once upon a time.
 

She heard him swallow, before he asked, with a hint of her earlier uncertainty, “And are you? Wearing any?” His eyes on her ass were a palpable thing.

This time, she didn’t quash her grin, enjoying his flirtatious attention more than was probably wise. “Of course I am.”

“What type of—? No, no, don’t say anythin’. Just…just let me imagine what you’ve got on under those…uh….”

She rolled her eyes at him, not caring if he saw her in the mirror. “Jeggings, Mr. Murphy. They’re called jeggings.”

He made a frustrated noise and shifted in the chair. “Don’t know what lies the fashion industry’s told you,
Miss O’Brien
, but I promise you—‘jeggings’ is not a real word.” He enunciated it precisely, replete with the sort of derision only a European could produce. A European, or a man.

She laughed softly as she spun on her heel, brush and paints in hand as she smiled at him. His face broke out in an answering smile, curiosity tingeing his amusement as his gaze flicked over her face, as if memorizing her features in this moment.
 

Unnerved by his scrutiny, her smile faded. The lip of the counter bit into her butt as she tried to back away from him, from whatever it was he saw when he looked at her.
 

He leaned forward in the chair, elbows to knees, and encircled one of her wrists with strong-but-careful fingers. Heat shot through her, hesitant sparks giving way to a full-on blaze as the pad of his thumb found her pulse, just as it had when he’d handed her the coffee. “I don’t want you to call me Mr. Murphy anymore, Fi. Not now. Not after last night.”
 

Her shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t attempt to pull away. She didn’t
want
to pull away—if standing between his legs and not touching him felt this right, it was nothing compared to the perfect storm of sensation twining up her arm to wrap complicated tendrils around her heart.
 

The organ in question skipped a beat as she stared down into his knowing eyes, drinking in the beautiful crinkles at the corners and blind to the scar lacerating him from temple to cheekbone, cutting high across the bridge of his nose. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and she swayed toward him, ever so slightly.
 

Pulling her a step closer, he lifted a hand to the curve of her waist, the shirt’s extra fabric no longer concealing her shape as he held her.

She fought to douse the instinctive panic that bubbled up in her chest now as it had last night when his seeking touch had slipped beneath her gauzy camisole, so close to her scars. He maneuvered her into the space between his knees once more, the weight of his hands—one at her wrist, the other now resting on her hip—heavy with an unspoken meaning she was beginning to recognize as something more than mere desire.
 

This was about them, as individuals, coming together.
 

This was terrifying.
 

“I know you don’t like flirty men,” he said quietly. “I know you don’t like presumptuous men. But I’m hoping you like me, at least enough to call me by my name.”

“I do.” She hadn’t shoved him away yet, had she? How much more
liking
did he expect her to show, here in her place of work?

“Then say it. Say my name.”
 

She shivered. “Declan.”

His grip tightened momentarily, a quick squeeze, whether in praise or warning, she couldn’t tell. “That’s my girl,” she thought she heard him whisper as he leaned in to press a kiss to her sternum.
 

It was too much, too close. Too dangerous for this space they were in. “Are you ready to stop talking so I can do my job?” When she stepped backward, he let her go, hands falling away as he settled into the chair, and she was supremely thankful that he released her without fuss. “I need silence for the next twenty minutes.” She needed silence, or she might start shaking where she stood.
 

He reached past her to snag his neglected coffee cup for a bracing sip, a small smile flirting with lips she remembered parting hers with visceral clarity. “I can be quiet, Fi.”
 

Sighing with relief, she let her head drop. After a moment spent recovering her aplomb, she cleared her throat, dipping the brush into the paint she would use to define his fake scar tissue. “Thank you.”

Her relief was short-lived, however, as his tone turned silky, sly. “But I want you to know I plan on being loud, sometime soon. Not as loud as you’re gonna be, though.” And, flashing her a dangerous smile, he subsided into silence.
 

It was the loudest silence she’d ever endured.

EIGHT

No one had said anything on set. No cards and no cake, and no mention of the fact that their leading man had turned another year older today.
 

Even the leading man himself had kept mum on the subject, which was why Fiona wore a frown as she unlocked the door to her apartment around nine o’clock that evening. Shifting the In-N-Out takeout bag to her other hand, the strap of her overburdened purse digging into her shoulder, she kicked the door shut behind her and flipped the dead bolt. The keys went into a bowl on the kitchen counter, the fast food next to it, purse dropping to the linoleum with a heavy thump.
 

Pulling her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, she eyed his latest texts, received within the last hour. First up:

is dinner & a movie 2 traditional 4 a 1st date?
 

Then, a minute later:
 

what can i say? i like the classics.

Followed by:

…a 1st date for us, FYI. not just any old 1st date.
 

And finally:

no, ur right. our 1st date has 2b badass. lemme think abt it more.

All without ever receiving a reply from her.
 

She shook her head as she slid the phone into her pocket again and started gathering the utensils needed for dinner. Declan Murphy was incorrigible, and Fiona was an idiot to like him for that incorrigibility.
 

He’d been texting her since that morning in the makeup trailer a week ago. The Coffee Incident, she called it. Every day since, Declan had not only brought her coffee—complete with a shot of caramel—but he had also bombarded her phone with messages.
 

Not a creepy-stalker bombardment. More like a new-boyfriend bombardment. Except that he wasn’t her boyfriend, new or otherwise, and if she kept with her current trajectory and refused to respond to all non-work-related texts, he would eventually stop with the bombarding.

She paused, hand halfway into the takeout bag. If he stopped texting, she would be…sad? Yes, sad.
 

Huh.
 

After unwrapping her burger and dumping the fries onto a plate, she snagged a Diet Coke from the fridge and wandered deeper into her small apartment, breathing in the mouthwatering scent of bad-for-you food—the sort of food she would never have indulged in back when she danced topless six nights a week in Vegas. Her life was different now, her body no longer a temple but just a body, and that body really enjoyed fast food every once in a while.
 

Fiona couldn’t keep denying herself
everything
she wanted.
 

Therefore, French fries.
 

Toeing off her sneakers, she settled into a battered-leather swivel chair and turned on the gleaming silver screen of her desktop computer that also served as a television, DVD player, and boom box—as all her at-home entertainment, really. The tension eased from her limbs as she propped her heels on the edge of the desk, wiggled her toes—this week painted neon green—and popped the top on her soda.
 

Her butt buzzed just as the first fry crunched between her teeth.

Shifting in the chair, she pulled the phone from her pocket and swiped open the screen. Another text, this one from her dad:

Dec stopped by to ask if you like go-karts and mini-golf. I told him you were more of a bungee-jumping girl.

Ha. Bungee jumping. Sure thing.
 

At least someone was enjoying Declan’s current lack of subtlety. She snapped a quick photo of herself, tongue stuck out and eyes crossed, and sent it off to her father. Sometimes a picture was worth a thousand words.
 

And yet, she couldn’t dive in to her burger, no matter how hungry she was. Before she could think better of it, she set her plate aside and dropped her feet, pulling up the computer keyboard.
 

She Googled him.
 

More accurately, she Googled his birth date. She needed to be one-hundred-percent certain when she texted him. Because she
was
going to text him.
 

Today was his birthday, after all.
 

Happy birthday, Declan!

That exclamation point was…too much. Wasn’t it?
 

Delete.

Happy birthday, Declan.

Ugh. Why was she including his name? He knew who he was. He didn’t need Fiona to remind him.

Delete, delete.

Happy birthday.

There. As minimal as possible without sacrificing good grammar.
Send
.

But even as she took her first delicious, greasy bite of burger, Google beckoned, much as it had every night since he’d fingered her to a fantastic orgasm in the alley behind the cantina. The encounter had messed with her head, left her itching to make the Internet spill his secrets. Which was why she’d known the fifth of May was his birthday, and that this was an important age milestone.