“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, unable to hold back any longer from the singular power of the experience and his own demanding nature.

He tightened his hold on the back of her head, stabilizing her, and began to thrust between her lips, his ass flexing tight. It was like plunging straight into the essence of pleasure. It surged through him in bursts, spiking through his flesh.

Ah, Jesus. This is what he’d stooped to—face-fucking Snow White while only a few feet and very thin walls separated him from dozens of coworkers.

His face collapsed in regret when he sensed her recoil slightly at his demanding possession, but then she was back—fiercer than before, sucking him until his eyes crossed.

He felt his balls pinch in delicious pain when the muscles of her throat closed around the tip of his cock. If he hadn’t been holding it in, his shout of pleasure would have made him hoarse. As it was, it scalded his throat as he strangled it.

Pleasure ripped through him. He held her head steady as he erupted, not because of his dominant nature, but because his body had been paralyzed in a rictus of s

ensation. As the second wave rocked him, he recognized the discomfort he caused her. He released her with a slight jerk, rocking them both. She made a sound in her throat—God, he hoped it wasn’t of dismay—but then his body tightened again in release. He came on her tongue, and his worries were buried by flooding pleasure.

He groaned gutturally, feeling like he was being emptied and filled all at once.

* * *

The need for a long, full breath overcame her at last. She slid his softening—but still formidable—penis out of her mouth. The slick, fleshy cockhead pressed against her cheek as she gasped for air, filling her lungs. His hold on her gentled. He stroked her hair as she desperately tried to catch her breath.

It was as if she’d just been caught up in the furious twist of a cyclone, only to be suddenly tossed out again into a motionless, hard world. Her mind struggled to make sense of what had just occurred. Fragments of vision and sensation bombarded her awareness.

“Are you okay?”

She froze on an inhale at the sound of his voice.

She felt a slight pressure from his hand, as if he were willing her to look at him.

Her cheeks burned. Dear God, what had she just done?

“Joy?” he prompted when she didn’t move.

Keeping her head lowered, she leaned back, separating herself from him. She carefully raised his boxer-briefs and covered him, keeping her gaze averted from his glistening cock.

He was just as beautiful to her satiated as he had been rigid with need . . . so naked, so vulnerable. She began to anxiously search for damage to his makeup.

“What the—”

His bewildered-sounding voice stopped abruptly when someone shouted in the distance.

“Seth!”

“What?” Seth Hightower barked impatiently, his voice sounding as if it came from twenty or thirty feet away.

“I need you to take a look at this.”

Joy stood so abruptly, the chair she’d been sitting in rolled backward several feet. She met the man’s startled gaze.

She didn’t even know his name.

“He’ll be here any second,” she said. She immediately picked up her paints as the first wave of panic started to flow through her. He caught her wrist.

“Hold on. It’s going to be okay, Joy.”

She was mortified to realize tears had sprung to her eyes.

“No. No, it’s not.” Not for me, it’s not. He looked taken aback.

For a second or two, the silence swelled.

“Of course it is,” he said, smiling even though puzzlement shadowed what she could see of his features.

She swallowed and looked away from his smile. “I need to touch you up,” she said, realizing for the first time that her voice was hoarse from taking his cock so deep. Another wave of heat flooded her cheeks. She tried to move to gather her paints—to gather herself—but he continued to hold her wrist.

“Joy.”

She glanced up at him doubtfully, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

“Meet me later. After the shoot. Please?” he added when she just continued to stare in the vicinity of his collarbone.

“I . . . I don’t know what . . . why . . .”

“I understand,” he said quietly. He released her wrist and touched her cheek until she looked at him. “I’m not sure I know, either. But I want to figure it out. Meet me at the statue? The studio statue? After this craziness is done? Just give me enough time to get out of this getup and shower, and I’ll be there. I just want to talk to you. Please, Joy.”

Something squeezed at her heart a little when he entreated her. In the distance, she heard her uncle’s voice as he approached.

“I haven’t got time right now. You’ll have to handle it,” Seth called out, as if he was walking away from whomever had interrupted him.

“Joy?” the stranger said sharply.

She looked into his clear aquamarine eyes and nodded once.

“Say it. Say you’ll be there.”

“I’ll be there,” she whispered.

* * *

Six hours later, she checked her watch yet again.

He wasn’t coming.

She should have known better than to come herself.

The photo shoot had been completed now for almost three hours. She’d kept herself busy in Seth’s studio during the shoot itself. Seth had returned after a while in order to oversee prosthetic removal. Joy had helped him, but she hadn’t caught sight of the man she’d promised to meet.

She’d been waiting by the United Studios’ statue of the seven muses for long enough. There was no way the man was still occupied. Not when almost everyone else on the set had long since showered and left. He’d stood her up, plain and simple.

She stood from one of the benches that lined the little park at the north studio entrance. One of the bronze muses caught her eye.

Joy lowered her head and walked toward the gate. She didn’t need the muse’s somber stare to know it was time for her to leave the whimsy of fantasyland and deal with the reality of a harsh world.

Two

FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER

Joy leaned back in a booth at Harry’s Brew and Bake and let the air-conditioning do its thing. Being a native Southern Californian, she’d had no idea that Chicago summers sweltered. Wasn’t this supposed to be the land of frigid lake winds and blizzards that brought the city of broad shoulders to a halt? The mixture of heat and humidity in the air this afternoon had her wilting by the time she hit the second step outside her front door.

“Oh, look,” Sarah Weisman, a fellow teacher at the Steadman School, exclaimed, pointing out the window. Outside on North Avenue, a bus paused at a light. An advertisement for the movie Maritime looked oddly colorful and surreal on the mundane city bus, the bored profiles of passengers in the windows above the poster only adding to the impression. “I read in the Tribune this morning that the Midwest premiere of Maritime is going on in Streeterville tomorrow,” Sarah continued excitedly. “You’re going, right, Joy?”

“No.” Joy laughed. She fingered her short tresses. Her hair was growing back after her cancer treatment, and she was almost back to her usual weight. She’d been fastidious about taking care of herself—regular diet, exercise, vitamins and supplements out the wazoo. Still, she was hardly up for attending a high-profile, gilded event.

“Why not? Don’t tell me you didn’t get a ticket?” Max Weisman, Sarah’s husband, asked, his brow bunched in consternation.

“No, I could go with my uncle if I wanted,” Joy said quickly. She thought she understood Max’s confusion. Sarah and Max both taught with her at an art school for gifted high school students. The entire staff had been involved in the hiring process, so they’d all seen Joy’s résumé, including her mention of having done makeup on several high-profile movies, including Maritime. “A movie premiere isn’t really my scene, that’s all,” Joy said, taking a sip of her iced chai tea.

“You’re crazy,” Sarah said with typical bluntness. “I’d give my right butt cheek to attend that premiere.”

“I’d give my left one to make sure your buttocks stay exactly the way they are,” Max said drolly to a smirking Sarah. He leaned toward Joy, suddenly intent. “You’re not going doesn’t have anything to do with how you’re feeling, does it?”

Joy’s cheeks heated. She hated the fact—despised it, actually—that the teachers and administration at her new job knew about her cancer diagnosis. It’d been necessary to reveal the basics of that information since she’d chosen to take a half semester off from the school where she’d taught in Los Angeles while she’d undergone six cycles of chemotherapy followed by radiation. After her treatment and recovery, she’d decided to move. Start anew. People asked questions about a missing chunk of time in a résumé, though, and Joy had felt compelled to tell the truth, even if she kept her explanation to the bare minimum. It made her feel guilty, knowing that her good friends in L.A. knew less about her illness than near strangers at her present school. Not that Max and Sarah were near strangers, but still . . .

“Max, you have the finesse of a dull ax,” Sarah mumbled, obviously noticing Joy’s discomfort.

“No, it’s okay,” Joy assured. “My health is perfect, aside from the fact that I melt every time I go outside in this humidity. I can’t believe you two grew up in summer saunas like this.”

“She changes the subject to the weather,” Max said archly to Sarah, sipping his coffee.

“I am not changing the subject,” Joy said, laughing. “Look, if you like, I could ask Seth to get you two tickets. He’s staying at the Elysian Hotel over on Walton. If he has a couple tickets, you could pick them up after we finish here. I’ll call him right now,” Joy said, extricating her cell phone from her pocket.

“Hold the phone,” Sarah said in an odd, tense tone that made Joy glance up. She’d thought Sarah had been referring to the call she’d been about to make, but Sarah’s turned head told her that her friend wasn’t even aware of Joy’s actions. Instead, she stared fixedly at the entrance. Sarah jerked her hand down, slapping Joy’s thigh. She squeezed convulsively at the same time she placed her other hand over her heart. Joy glanced around her shoulder, curious as to what had transfixed a usually practical, down-to-earth woman. She saw a tall man wearing a newsboy cap and a gorgeous woman with long golden hair tumbling around her shoulders entering the coffee house.

“It’s Everett Hughes,” Sarah said in a strangled voice. “Everett Hughes just walked into Harry’s Brew and Bake.”

“You’re losing it,” Max told his wife as he scowled at the couple. “You’ve got Maritime on the brain.”

“It is Everett Hughes,” Sarah hissed at her husband as if she were a poked snake.

Joy craned to see around Sarah. The man who was the focus of Sarah’s undivided attention had a tall, lean frame and filled out his jeans in an eye-catching manner. He was nice to look at, but she suspected Max was right in thinking Sarah had Hollywood on the brain—until the man tilted his head back to study the blackboard menu. Beneath the bill of a newsboy cap that had seen better days, Joy glimpsed the profile of one of the most famous faces in the country. He sported a short, golden brown goatee. Besides the newsboy cap and well-worn jean

s, he wore what looked like a vintage bowling shirt. It was awful. The fact that the man made the shirt look like the height of careless-sexy said a lot about him.

“It is him, Max,” Joy said, sitting back in the booth and smiling. She’d grown up in the land of movie stars and was used to occasionally glimpsing a celebrity. It was strange how her heart had lurched upon seeing Hughes’s profile. Perhaps it was because he was one of the most super of the superstars she’d ever witnessed combined with the strangeness of it happening in an innocuous coffee shop in Chicago. “Er . . . Sarah, can you release the death grip on my thigh?”

“Oh sure, sorry,” Sarah said distractedly, still watching Hughes, but now straining to do so in a less obvious manner. Even though she’d consented to releasing Joy, she continued to grip her leg until Joy manually removed her hand.

“He’s here for the premiere. Is that his wife?” Max asked in a hushed tone.

“He’s not married.” Sarah scowled, her gaze still trained sideways, her entire attention seemingly focused on the single point of Hughes. “How could you not know Everett Hughes is single?”