With one hand still on my lower back, he kept me close while he slipped his other hand down the front of my bikini bottoms. He moved his fingers down slowly, in no rush, even though I was dying to have him touch me.
We kept kissing, and finally he nudged his hand down and slipped a finger into my flesh.
He held me close and breathed against my ear. I groaned in lust, already trembling from the swirling of his fingertips.
“What’s your motivation right now?” he whispered.
I moaned in response.
He asked me again, “What’s your motivation?”
Finally, I opened my eyes and said, “What on earth are you talking about?”
He slipped a finger inside me and stroked. It felt good, but not as good as it had been before all this conversation nonsense.
“Motivation,” he said. “As an actor, I was always trying to figure out my motivation in a scene, but I think it’s all junk. In real life, people don’t think about their motivation. Only their intent, which is different.”
His talking took me out of the moment, and his fingers seemed equally distracted, moving without rhythm.
I reached down and withdrew his hand from the bottom of my swimsuit. He seemed to not notice.
“So, from now on, I’m going to focus mainly on intention,” he said. “I think that’s what actors mean when they talk about motivation, anyway.” He was looking in my direction, but over my shoulder, at the lights of L.A. “I started thinking about this on the plane, and it makes sense, don’t you think?”
I used my arms to help propel myself over to the edge of the pool, where I refilled my plastic champagne glass.
“Peaches? Is something wrong?”
“No, not at all,” I said, which was only a bit of a lie. “You’ve got your work tomorrow morning, so I can understand that’s on your mind.”
“I know playing Drake Cheshire isn’t exactly Hamlet, but I still want to do a good job.”
“You’re amazing as Drake. I can’t see how you could be better, but you should definitely try.”
“Thanks.” He kept looking off into the distance. He wasn’t due on set until the next morning, but it seemed like he was already there.
I tipped my glass over my cle**age and made a small pool of bubbly. “Dalton, if you want to talk about acting, we can talk about acting… any time you want.” I glanced down, trying to drop the hint that maybe we could talk about work stuff after we’d made love for the first time in our shared house.
He didn’t take the hint, though, and the champagne all trickled away.
Finally, I said, “I can’t wait to see you in action. I’m really excited.”
“The episode we’re shooting tomorrow won’t air for a few months yet.”
“I mean about seeing you tomorrow. On the set.”
“Oh.” He cast his gaze down, and I got a bad feeling he was going to say something I didn’t want to hear. “You don’t want to visit the set tomorrow. It’s always so boring at the best of times, but ballroom scenes are the worst, because of the scale. There’s nothing to do but sit around and wait.”
I shrugged. “All the more reason for me to come. I’ll hang out and keep you company.”
He still wasn’t looking me in the eyes. “Let’s talk about this next week.”
I put my hands on my h*ps so fast, I sent up two splashes of water. “Are you kidding me? I’m your wife, but I’m not good enough to come visit you on the set? What do you want from me, besides sex? Why did you even marry me?” I looked up at the night sky, where I could see the moon, but no stars. “Oh, that’s right. You married me for good publicity.”
“And also because I love you.”
My jaw dropped open. Also? What the Fudgeeo cookies?!
He quickly said, “I mean, only because I love you. Not also. That came out wrong. I told you before, I’m no good with words, unless someone writes them for me in a script.”
“You’re plenty good with words when you’re trying to get something, Dalton Deangelo.”
I turned away and started walking through the water to the stairs. He splashed and caught up with me, grabbing me in his strong arms. He held on. I could struggle all I wanted, but he wasn’t going to let me go unless I hurt him.
Oh, but I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to elbow him in the stomach, or hit him in the nose with the back of my head, but I resisted the urge and went limp in his arms.
His voice deep and thick, he growled, “You’re my wife now.”
I sniffed. “I know. That’s why it hurts so bad.”
“I’ll be thinking about you tomorrow. Go shopping with Vern.”
“Sure,” I said coolly.
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not,” I lied.
He kept hugging me from behind, and nodded his head forward to kiss my shoulder.
His grip loosened, so I slipped free of him and swam quickly to the stairs. I stepped up, out of the pool, and wrapped myself in the robe.
“I know you’re stressed about moving,” he said. “Even good changes are still difficult. Trust me, everything’s going to settle down soon.”
I grabbed a handful of my wet hair and wrung out the water. Dalton stood in the shimmering blue pool, bare chested and gorgeous, looking like a page from a magazine.
Part of me wanted to forget all about him teasing me on the plane and now this. I could let it all go and join him in the pool, on this beautiful summer night.
But another part of me still wanted to run. Now I had an enormous diamond weighing down my ring finger, but I was still the same girl who left Dalton in a hotel room and ran home in the dark.
“Trust me,” Dalton said again. “Everything will look better in the morning.”
“Is it okay if I sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight? I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since before the wedding.”
Disappointment flickered across his face. “Of course it’s okay,” he said. “This is a big house, with plenty of space.”
I turned around and looked up at the glass wall. It certainly was a big house, all right. Between the house and the huge city of L.A., I felt very small.
I went inside, gathered my laptop and a few things from the master bedroom, and got myself set up in a spare room at the opposite end of the house.
After about an hour, Dalton came by to say goodnight. We talked about schedules and wake-up times, but we didn’t talk about what had been said in the pool.