88

8
ADRIANNE
The sunshine filtering through the curtains woke me before the alarm, and a smile curled my lips before I even opened my eyes. I was tucked against a mountain of warm muscle. I cracked an eyelid and looked at the sleeping man in my bed.
Ethan looked younger in his sleep. I reached out and ran a finger down the bridge of his nose. There was the slightest scar there. I’d found it a few days ago, and I’d been obsessed ever since.
“Woman, I swear to God.” He opened his eyes and tried to glare at me, but the smirk killed it.
“You’ll do what?” I asked. In the last week, I’d learned quite a lot about my men. Ethan was the one in charge. He gave orders, not voice requests. Challenging him, I found out, was the quickest way to end up pinned against the nearest flat surface. Not that I minded.
Ethan rolled me onto my back and slid into the cradle of my thighs. His cock already felt like a steel bar against my hip.
“You want me to show you?” he asked, pressing kisses down my throat and collarbone. He reached between my thighs. His fingers slid through my folds, and we both groaned. “So fucking wet and soft.” His fingers disappeared, and he laughed when I pouted. “You want it?” he asked again.
I whined. “Yes.”
He grinned down at me. “Ask for it.”
While Callan was a true dirty talker-he had made it his personal mission to get me to orgasm from just the things he said in bed-Ethan liked to make me talk in bed. “Ethan.” I wriggled against him, hoping to entice him, but he inched away from me.
“Ask for it, Princess,” he coaxed. Both he and Foster had taken to Callan’s nickname for me, and as much as it made me flush, I loved being their princess. They were my knights, and as much as I still balked at the idea of needing anyone, it was a heady thing to have them protect me. “You know I’ll give you whatever you want.”
I closed my eyes, unable to look into the intense, stormy blue of his eyes. “Fuck me?” I breathed out.
Ethan waited until I opened my eyes again before he reached down, angled himself, and with a push of his hips, seated himself inside me as deeply as he could go. I whined and widened my legs. Ethan was a huge guy everywhere, and I hoped to never get used to that initial stretch.
After that initial slow push, his thrusts were fast and demanding, and all I could do was take the pleasure that sang through my veins. I clung to his broad shoulders. “Ethan!”
“That’s it, baby,” he panted out, pistoning in and out. Everything grew tight and tighter in my lower abdomen, and I wrapped my legs around him. Ethan was snapping his hips now, losing his rhythm, but that tightness in my belly finally snapped, and I came with a cry.
“Fuck, Adrianne.” Ethan followed me a heartbeat later.
We paused, just taking each other in, for a moment. I smiled and reached out to brush that scar on the bridge of his nose again. “Good morning.”
Ethan grew soft, and he slid out of me. I mourned the loss of his fullness. It won’t be long until I feel him again, I reminded myself. He grinned and kissed me.
“Mornin’, beautiful,” he said. “Breakfast?”
Ethan was an excellent cook, and he’d taken on most of the food preparation chores in the last week. “I’ll help you.”
He shrugged and pressed another kiss to my shoulder. “You make the coffee,” he said. “I’ve got the eggs.”
I chuckled. “You’re just afraid of my coffee maker,” I teased.
He nipped at my skin with his teeth, and I yelped at the sudden sting that he soothed with his tongue and lips. “That thing isn’t a coffee maker. You have to be a damn Starbucks barista just to turn the damn thing on.”
“You want a latte, right?”
He looked at me and sighed. “Yes, please.”
I patted his shoulder. “Your wish is my command, Mr. Mercado.”
Ethan scoffed. “Now you’re stealing my lines?” He rolled off me. “Let’s go, Ms. Montoya,” he said, “before I have to take you again.”
“Oh, the horror,” I deadpanned, but we both got out of bed. I grabbed my robe and wrapped it around my shoulders and secured the belt around my waist. Ethan yanked on a pair of basketball shorts. The domesticity of it made my heart swell.
In the kitchen, I pressed the literal three buttons it took to make coffee and then sat to watch Ethan crack eggs into a skillet while it brewed. Watching him move around my kitchen like he owned it made my stomach flutter wildly.
Callan shuffled into the kitchen a moment later and made a beeline for the coffee. He grabbed four mugs out of the cabinet. “Merc, you want a latte, right?” At Ethan’s answering grunt, he turned to me. “Can you steam the milk?”
I smiled and nodded. Ethan wasn’t the only one who was scared of a clearly superior coffeemaker. “Do you want me to show you again?” I asked him.
He nodded, but his sleepy smile curled upward at the corner and became more of a smirk. “Please, show me how you handle it.”
It was a lame come-on, and they both knew it. That was Callan, though. Sweet and affectionate and flirty . . . and in the bedroom, he spoke absolute filth.
“Goofball,” I muttered. “Come here.”
I walked him through the steaming process, and he successfully frothed the milk on the fourth try. Together, we fixed two cups of regular coffee and two lattes while Ethan dished scrambled eggs and bacon onto plates.
The last up was Foster. To say that he wasn’t a morning person was an understatement. Usually, he was so groomed and precise, but I’d found that he didn’t get that way until after a cup of coffee or two.
He shuffled into the kitchen, blond hair still stuck up in every direction. Adorable, I thought. Without a word, I handed him a cup of black coffee. He would switch to something lighter and sweeter in a bit, but the first cup, according to Foster, had to be black so that the caffeine could actually hit his system and wake him up.
“Thank you,” he mumbled and sipped at the mug. I kissed his cheek. “Anytime, handsome.”
Of all of my men, Foster was an enigma. We had kissed, and he had been in control of some very hot moments in the car on the drive to and from the studio, directing either Ethan or Callan in different ways to make me come, but he hadn’t shared my bed yet. Every touch between us was affectionate, but chaste. It was driving me crazy.
We gathered around my breakfast table, and for the first few minutes, the only sound was the clink of plates and silverware. I kept sneaking glances at the men around me, trying to bite back the smile that kept trying to spread across my face.
“What’s on the agenda for today?” Ethan asked.
I thought about the day ahead. “I’m meeting my co-star today,” I said. “Ryan Jacobs. He’s finally through shooting that thriller in Vancouver.”
“Is he the love interest?” Callan looked to Ethan. “What’s his name?
The bird doctor guy?”
Ethan knew way more about the Falconi comics than any of us . . . which was sad, considering that I was playing one of the leads. “Dr. Harris Rutledge,” Ethan said. “He’s a love interest who becomes a bad guy, and it’s their love that heals him.”
Callan wrinkled his nose. “That seems like poor writing.” “Hush,” I said.
“Shut up, Cal,” Ethan said at the same time. “Their love story is what pushes her to become a hero,” he explained. “Without Rutledge, she wouldn’t have pursued trying to actually use her powers. Her need to rescue him formed the rest of her character arc.”
I was smiling before he even stopped talking. “You are a gigantic comic book nerd,” I told him. I reached over and put my hand on his. “But you are an excellent resource for an actress who has very little interest in actually reading the comics for myself.”
He snorted. “That’s absolutely blasphemous.”
I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, I’ve never met Ryan before, but Lee wants our first scene that we shoot to be the big love scene so we can ‘get it out of the way’.”
Foster frowned. “You’re supposed to go from meeting him to being in love with him in a matter of hours?” They were his first words of the day.
I shrugged as an answer. I wasn’t unfamiliar with love scenes, but it was a little weird for me to not have any rapport with my co-star beforehand.
But I’d never worked with Lee Wynne before, either, and he was a very particular man. “Lee is bringing in an intimacy coordinator to help us lay out the scene more ‘realistically’.” Both Ethan and Callan laughed, and it was an entirely male sound, like they both were absolutely sure of something. “What? What’s so funny?”
Ethan shook his head. “Sorry, Princess,” he said and didn’t sound sorry in the least. “Just the idea that you need help laying out a believable sex scene is kind of laughable.”
“It’s a sex scene?” Foster asked. “Your big love scene?”
I looked at him. “Yeah, it happens right before I have the ‘big transformation’ into the superhero for the first time. It’s supposed to juxtapose that event.” Foster’s nose wrinkled. What’s he so upset for? Callan and Ethan certainly don’t mind. “It’s a PG-13 movie. I’m not getting naked on the screen or anything.” Not that it should matter, I thought. I’m entitled to show my body however I want to.
He seemed to sense where my head was at . . . it was a super power of his. “I’m not concerned about your being naked, not in a movie,” he said. “But you haven’t even met this Jacobs guy yet. How do we clear him if you’re going to be rolling around with him on day one?”
“Clear him?” I asked. Foster glanced at Ethan, who seemed determined not to look at me. “What does that mean?”
“We’re supposed to make sure that you’re safe at work,” Foster said. “Okay?”
Callan stepped in. He did that a lot when it came to softening what Foster or Ethan was trying to say. “We’ve looked into the people you’re working with,” he said. “Not to a creepy extent or anything, but enough to know that you’re safe with those people.”
I let his words settle and tried to decide whether I was angry about it. A part of me felt like it was a violation . . . but I hired them for the express purpose of protecting me. I knew that the studio had turned over the names of everyone on the project to them after they’d spoken to the execs about my stalker. It would be dumb to think that they were doing that just because I was sleeping with them.
“Why couldn’t you clear Ryan before? He’s on the cast list that the studio sent to you.”
“His background checks out fine,” Ethan said, but his eyes were trained on Foster.
I could feel my eyebrows knitting together. “I don’t understand.” I looked at Foster. “What is the matter with doing a love scene today?”
Silence stretched for far too long, and I was officially frustrated . . . until realization clicked in my head. “Foster, are you jealous? Is that it?” More silence, but now the blond was turning an alarming shade of red. I scoffed. “Well, that’s ridiculous, considering you’re sharing me with two other men.” And you haven’t touched me yet, I added in my head.
He looked at me, blue eyes icy and sharp. “Ethan and Cal are different, and you know it.” That cool anger drained from his face. “I’m sorry, Adrianne. I have no excuse. It just makes me uncomfortable.”
Damn him, I thought. If he was a prick about being jealous, I knew how to react to that. I’d dealt with jealous exes in the past because of exactly the same thing. But how could I be mad at him for being uncomfortable?
“You don’t have to go to the set,” I told him. “Ethan and Callan can come with me, and you can head to the office today.”
Foster shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. “I apologize for throwing a tantrum.”
I would hardly describe the civil conversation as a tantrum, but Foster rarely spoke at all, so I suppose it would qualify for him. “It’s okay,” I said and started gathering the breakfast plates to take them to the sink. Passing the coffeemaker, I pushed the button to get Foster’s second cup brewing. it would go into a thermos for the drive to the studio. Then, he would get another at the coffee cart outside.
As I was rinsing off the plates, he came up behind me and wrapped me in his arms. “I am sorry,” he said against my neck, pressing kisses there.
I shivered and tipped my head to the side. “I said it’s okay. I wasn’t lying about that.”
He hummed against me. “I know, but still.” With one more kiss, he turned me loose, and I tried not to whimper out loud. “I need to shower.”
Callan shot up from his seat and ran for the stairs. “Not if I get there first!”
The two men went tearing through the house, and I laughed at their thumping overhead. I looked at Ethan. “You don’t think they’ll come through the ceiling, do you?”
He laughed. “It’s always a possibility, but I think Foster has good enough sense not to.”
Before I could defend Callan’s common sense, my phone rang. I snagged it from the charger. “Hello?” For a moment, there was nothing on the other end of the line except for breathing. I could tell that someone was there. They just weren’t saying anything. “Hello? I’m going to hang up.”
“Don’t,” the person-a man, by the sounds of it-commanded. “Don’t hang up, Dr. Falconi.” He moaned in my ear, and a shiver of repulsion ran down my skin. I made eye contact with Ethan, who crossed the kitchen to my side and plucked the phone from my fingers. He pushed the ‘speaker’ button, and the breathy moans poured into the sudden silence of the kitchen. “I knew they’d find just the right person to bring you to life. I can’t wait to
-”
Ethan ended the call. “Adrianne,” he said, but his voice sounded very far away. I tried to say something to him, but my throat felt like it was going to close in on itself. “Adrianne, you need to breathe.”
But I couldn’t make my lungs work. It was like that first night Callan brought me home, only worse. That creep has my number, my mind kept repeating over and over. He can get in my house, and he can reach me at any time.
Vaguely, I could hear Ethan calling for Callan, but it wasn’t until I was pulled back against a damp chest that I realized that he’d come running. “Breathe with me, Princess,” Callan said in my ear. “Come on, just like before.”
I did what I could to follow the movement of his chest, his inhales and exhales, and as soon as I could match the rhythm, my throat opened again. Callan crushed me in his arms.
“Sweet girl,” he crooned. “It’s going to be okay.”
Shame burned through me. I didn’t want to be this damaged, frightened person with them. I wanted to be strong and beautiful. I wanted to be everything that they made me feel.
“I suppose this means I need to change my number,” I panted out.
“I’ll handle that today after I speak with the police about how this person got your number to begin with,” Ethan promised. “I’ll make sure it’s unlisted. No one will be able to reach you unless you want them to.”
I nodded. “Thank you.” I leaned back against Callan and realized that he was naked. He’d literally jumped out of the shower to come to me. “Thank you, Callan.”
He kissed the crown of my head. “Anytime, Princess,” he said, and then he cleared his throat. “I should go get dressed.” I held onto his wet arms for a moment longer but then finally released him.
When Callan, Foster, and I were ready to leave for the day, Ethan pulled me into a hug before I walked out the door. “I’ll see you tonight, okay? Leave your phone here. If you need anything, Foster and Callan can take care of it.”
I nodded and tipped my head back, and he kissed me. “Tonight,” I murmured. When he let me go, I handed him my phone and slipped my arm through Foster’s. “Let’s go, boys.”