“We need Mackenzie in five!” someone called from the other side of the door.
I looked down at my bandaged hands. “I hope you can work a zipper on your own,” I told her, doubting the possibility as the words left my mouth.
Mackenzie looked at me with doe eyes.
“Need any help?” Angel asked as he poked his head in through the door. Today he wore a sleeveless black turtleneck with jeans, boots, and a few gold rings on his fingers. The collar of the turtleneck emphasized the long arch of his throat, and the sleeveless cut revealed the tightly toned swells of his biceps and shoulders. They were lean muscles, but so lickable I could die looking at them.
No. He’s the enemy.
No licking the enemy.
“How are you with zippers?” I asked.
Angel grinned and trotted into the room, unzipping the garment bag with Mackenzie’s white puffy-sleeved dress with large buttons marching down the middle. I hadn’t updated the look a whole lot, since it was so iconic, but I had sharpened up the tailoring to give it more structure and a slightly more contemporary vibe.
“How are your hands feeling?” Angel asked as he helped with the zip on the back of her dress.
“Traumatized. In complete agony.” Although that wasn’t entirely true. Other than not being able to jack off or make my own cup of coffee, I’d been fine. It was when the bandages were off that I could feel the sting of every little cut, as I had in the shower last night before clumsily rebandaging them myself.
He frowned as he continued to help Mackenzie, who truly did not seem to understand how clothing worked.
Just then, Blake walked in, already beginning to shed his clothing. “Is this my suit?” he asked as he unnecessarily slid his belt out of his loops. “Yo, Kenz, you look like a lady.”
She curtsied. “Thanks, Blakey.”
“Angel, hey,” Blake said, with a dimpled bro smile that almost even worked on me. Gah! Curse his symmetrical, suntanned features!
Angel gave him a friendly smile back, and I wanted to smash up the room with my gauze paws. But no. I must have composure. I was above such petty emotions as jealousy.
“If you need any help with your zippers, Angel is here to assist you,” I told him. I was very proud of how well I nailed my 1940s movie starlet tone. Aloof and biting. I didn’t even care that Angel’s ex was about to get naked and fuck in front of us all. Why would I care?
But then Angel glared at me, and I had to admit to myself that I quite enjoyed that.
Maybe I cared a little.
Blake was oblivious to the tension he’d caused by walking into the room with his horribly muscular body. “I hope these pants have more stretch than yesterday’s,” he complained. “I’m already rocking a semi.”
Mackenzie shimmied as Angel finally worked the zipper up to her neck, and she gave a little wee-sounding shriek. “Isn’t he such a professional?” she asked me, beaming at Blake. “Do you know how many hours of my life I’ve spent waiting for my costars to get hard?”
“I’m guessing more hours than you’ve spent watching Pretty Woman.”
Blake, by some strange porn magic, was already mostly in his suit and buttoning up his shirt. Mackenzie slid on her gloves as Angel placed a wide-brimmed black hat on her head. With her pearl earrings and low heels, she almost sold the look. Once the curlers came out and her low ponytail was fluffed, she’d be the perfect porn facsimile of Vivian on Rodeo Drive.
“I need help with the tie,” Blake announced. “I don’t normally wear these things. Too stuffy.”
Very believable, since I was reasonably sure Blake took his dates to baseball games, movies with explosions, or skee-ball lounges. Unfortunately, I was in no position to knot a tie with my gauze paws, and there’d be a Cheesecake Factory on the moon before Mackenzie could figure out a decent Windsor knot.
Which left Angel.
Wordlessly, Angel went to Blake and took the tie from him, looping it around his neck, and quickly adjusting the length. There wasn’t anything overtly sexual about it, not objectively, but as Angel’s deft, artist’s fingers began fixing the silk into a neat loop, tugging on it to keep it even, Blake’s eyes slid to mine. I detected a hint of a smirk on his well-moisturized lips.
Jealousy burned in my gut, and I looked away. I know I wasn’t supposed to care, but why did Angel’s ex have to be here? And why did he have to be in Paris with Angel last January? If I didn’t have any fuckable himbos following me around, then it wasn’t fair that Angel did either!
Finally, Blake’s tie was knotted, and Angel stepped back, giving it an appraising eye. “Looks good,” he said. “My mom would be glad to know that dragging me to all of her boring TV network parties ended up being good for something.”
Blake gave Angel’s arm a familiar squeeze, and then he turned to his costar. He held an arm out for her. “Ready to bone?” he asked gallantly.
“Even more ready than I was last night,” she said with a big grin. She linked her arm through his and they were on their way.
“Are those two fucking?” I asked as soon as the door shut. “Like off camera?”
Angel sat down beside me. “Probably. Blake isn’t a complicated man. He likes sex and he likes it with as little inconvenience as possible.” Angel said it without bitterness, just like a statement of fact. Like it was something he’d long accepted.
“So does that mean that you two aren’t . . .”
“We are not.”
“You certainly looked like you were with him in Paris.”
Angel cut me a look that said don’t start. “Let me see your hands,” he said instead. “Show me where it hurts.”
Maybe I should just rip my chest open then, I nearly said.
But instead I let him unravel my bandages in the quiet of this little break room.
“Sunny says you really saved the day out there. We only have this location for two days, so she would have been hosed without you.”
“Well, I’m glad to know my vintage designer collection is good for something.”
With both my hands finally free, he held them each up and began to examine them carefully.
He blew on one particularly gnarly cut on the heel of my hand, giving me instant relief from the slight sting of having the many wounds exposed.
“Death by a million paper cuts,” I said. “That’s what it feels like.”
He blew on my other palm, his eyes locked with mine.
Without looking away or even a second of hesitation, he pressed his lips to my hand as though he could kiss away the pain.
I gasped softly, but loud enough for him to hear.
His mouth trailed down to my wrist, and oh, I liked that. I liked that far too much.
And judging by the way his long lashes fluttered and his breath hitched as he kissed along the line of my pulse, so did Angel.
Chapter Five
Angel stood, pulling me with him.
I knew losing him a second time would hurt twice as much, but with his lips tracing up my arm and then to my neck, my brain shorted out every time I attempted to consider Future Luca’s regrets.
Angel backpedaled to the door with his arm pulling me close to him so that our legs were no more than a tangle of limbs. With one hand, he wedged a chair under the doorknob.