Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: for coffee

Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: or dinner? Just the two of us?

Book!AeneasWouldNever: I wish I could. Please, please believe that.

21

AFTER A DAY FULL OF DOCUMENTS, APRIL CAME HOME TO yet more documents.

Not lab results from soil samples this time, or reports from consultants in which they misinterpreted data or used the wrong screening levels to draw their conclusions, but television and movie scripts. Actual Hollywood scripts, each containing a role Marcus’s agent thought he might like, or a role already offered to him before he even caught his first glimpse of the story.

Some he’d have to audition for, others he wouldn’t. Some would offer a substantial paycheck, others not much above scale. Some boasted big names as costars or producers or directors, and others counted on the story itself as the main draw.

His agent, Francine, had her preferences, of course, but she mostly just wanted him to choose something and have it hit the public before his post–Gods of the Gates recognizability began to wane. Or so he’d informed April over their dinner of mustard-roasted salmon and garlicky mashed cauliflower. During the afternoon, he’d baked some sort of savory flatbread too, for her sole, enthusiastic consumption.

That salmon was fucking incredible. So was the rest of their meal.

He’d shopped for the food. Paid for the food. Washed the dishes, changed the sheets, and even run a load of her laundry. Hung some pictures where she’d indicated she wanted them.

If he never chose another role, she was planning to keep him as a househusband.

Maybe that should be a joke, but it wasn’t.

And as her mother kept hinting, maybe April should be alarmed by how quickly he’d moved into her home and become a familiar, essential presence in her daily existence. Instead, it seemed . . . natural. As if he’d been in her life for years, although she’d met him only weeks ago.

She trusted him. Somehow, even after such a short time, she trusted him.

As his scripts proved, they wouldn’t always have this sort of time together, either. Soon he’d return to LA or report to some international location for filming, and they might not see one another for weeks or months at a time.

So if he wanted to stay, she wasn’t showing him the door. This alignment of their lives, their schedules, wouldn’t last forever, and she intended to appreciate every minute of it.

“I hoped you wouldn’t mind if we talked through my choices.” Using his phone, he forwarded one of the relevant emails to her from his postdinner spot on the couch. “Normally I would have had something lined up months ago, but I couldn’t seem to decide, and I figured I could use a break once we finished filming Gates. Francine’s right, though. I need to pick a project soon. I could use a sounding board.”

“You hoped I wouldn’t mind?” She opened up her laptop on the cleared kitchen table and eyed him over the top of her glasses. “Marcus, we’ve been over this before. I’m an incurably nosy bitch. Of course I want to see your scripts.”

He snorted and kept scrolling through his messages for more scripts to send. “I tried talking to Alex about it, but he’s no help. He just keeps telling me to launch a line of hair care products and be done with it.”

To be honest, for a man whose vanity was much less all-encompassing than he pretended in public, Marcus did spend a lot of time on his hair. Even on days when he wasn’t doing anything important.

Better to withhold comment.

As her laptop booted up, she hummed happily, eager to get started, and even more eager to spend time together.

This past week, she’d devoted two evenings to writing and revising her one-shot for Aeneas’s Sad Boner Week, another to working on her Lavinia costume, and yet another to sketching possible performance outfits for the Folk Trio Formerly Known As My Chemical Folkmance. Which was now, due to Mel’s successful lobbying efforts, the Indium Girls instead—despite Pablo’s initial protest that two of the three band members were not, in fact, female.

“No worries.” Kei had waved off that concern. “The contradiction will only add to our mystique.”

“It’ll change again next month,” Heidi had whispered near the staff refrigerator later that day. “Whatever you do, Whittier, don’t design the costumes around the band name.”

The nights April told Marcus she wanted to work on her various hobbies, he didn’t quibble. Other than giving her an occasional lingering kiss and offering tentative but useful advice on her fic, he’d mostly left her to her own devices. Instead of pouting, as some of her exes would have done, he’d amused himself listening to audiobooks or simul-bingeing yet more baking shows with Alex via FaceTime.

“Claggy sponge!” Alex kept gleefully shouting, his voice loud and all too clear through the cell phone’s speaker. “Claggy goddamn sponge!”

After the evenings they’d spent apart, she’d rewarded Marcus’s patience at bedtime. He’d seemed more than satisfied with the tradeoff. So satisfied, in fact, that he insisted on returning the favor, and by the time she was satisfied, he was hard and hot and ready to climb aboard the Good Ship April for another naked, mutually enjoyable voyage.

Despite all the sex, though, she’d still felt guilty. It was past time they had an evening together, especially doing something that mattered to him.

“Okay,” Marcus said after a few more minutes. “I’ve sent you the three main contenders.”

Yes, he had. There were three new messages in her inbox, complete with attachments. But before she could open them and satisfy her curiosity, she needed to know more.

For the moment, she moved her laptop aside so it didn’t block her view of her boyfriend. “Now that Gods of the Gates is almost done, what’s your next step? Where do you want your career to go? What sorts of roles are you looking for? And why are these your three main contenders?”

For most of a decade, he’d been fitting movies and television roles in between seasons of filming Gods of the Gates, choosing his projects from the limited selection that both interested him and would work timing-wise. The absolute freedom he now had, to pick whatever role he wanted, no matter when and where filming would occur, was a recent development.

Sometimes she got the sense that all that freedom disoriented him a bit.

“I don’t think so.” He lounged back against the sofa cushions, his smile suddenly sharp-edged with challenge. “You like figuring things out, so do the work, Whittier. You tell me why these are the three roles I’m considering.”

It felt like avoidance to her, as well as a genuine dare, but he knew her all too well. She loved shit like this. A mystery. A test of her insight. An invitation to discover stories within stories. Not to mention the carnal promise contained within that lazy, inciting smile.

She raised her brows, meeting his insolence with her own. “If I get it right, what’s my reward, Caster-Hyphen-Rupp?”

At that, the tension broke, and he snickered.

Once he’d recovered himself, though, he looked her dead in the eye. Then he slowly scanned her, all the way from her haphazard ponytail to her curling toes, pausing at a few key spots in between. Her heavy, unbound breasts, nipples pebbling against thin, soft cotton. The lavish swell of her hips and belly. Her dimpled thighs, caressed by the brush of her lounge pants when she shifted under his stare. The juncture of those thighs, where he’d settled and teased and explored so many nights now.

A flush burnishing his cheekbones, he stretched magnificently on the couch.

He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly how he looked. All his training for various roles and all his acting experience had taught him body awareness the likes of which she’d never witnessed before.

As he stretched, his thin tee rode up his flat belly, his biceps straining the sleeves. He arched his spine, his head thrown back in a way she recognized from their more intimate moments.

Not that this moment lacked intimacy.

He relaxed back into the sofa with a satisfied purr. Her labored swallow caught his attention, and that knife-sharp smile returned.

“Your reward?” Now displayed full-length along the couch, he folded his hands beneath his head and blinked heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes at her. “For each role you analyze correctly, I’ll take off a piece of clothing. And if you get all three right, you can have whatever you want. Anything.”

Twirling a loose strand of hair around her finger, she eyed him consideringly. She knew for a fact he was currently wearing three—and only three—items of clothing. The perfect number for her purposes.

It would take so little effort to get him naked. Even less to ride that handsome face of his once he was hot and needy and stretched out beneath her.

“Game on,” she said.

SHE HAD TO skim, of course, and she didn’t read the scripts all the way to the end.

Later, if he wanted her to read every word, she would. For tonight, though, for this particular challenge and discussion, that kind of intense scrutiny wasn’t necessary.

He watched her as she read, his steady attention on her a caress rather than an irritant. Whenever she took a break and glanced around her screen, she met his eyes and had to fight her own flush at the heat in that stare.

She kept waiting for him to grow bored, to produce his fancy headphones and listen to his latest audiobook, but he didn’t. He just lay outstretched and waited for her judgment.

The scripts varied so widely, she didn’t think she risked confusing them. Still, she typed a few notes to remind herself of what she’d read and concluded.

By Hook/By Crook: TV series set in Victorian NYC. Dramatic mystery/suspense. Slow-burn romance.

Central characters: semireformed thief (female) and former prostitute (Marcus), who combine street smarts to find murderer targeting victims too marginalized to garner sufficient police attention. Audition required. $$–$$$.

Exes and O: Indie film. Dramedy. Ophelia (O), for REASONS, ends up living with various ex-boyfriends as roommates. Jack (Marcus), whom she left and has missed ever since, is romantic endgame. No audition required. $.