Hollywood Hearts: A Steamy Standalone Instalove Romance Read online

  Olivia seems relieved, and not just because the plane’s stopped acting like a yo-yo.

  “An extra hour or two, huh?” she asks me, unfastening her seatbelt. Expert level now.

  “No cabin crew to bother us either. What should we do to pass the time?” she asks me in a husky tone, the look in her eyes already telling me what she has in mind.

  “Here?” I ask her, looking around me, realizing it’s about as good a place as any. No one to tell us what to do and at least three thousand miles from the nearest boss or agent slash manager.

  Next to the intercom switch is a do not disturb option, which I flick casually and unbuckle myself as I move over to Olivia, doing my best to scoop her up in my arms without hitting my head.

  The cabin’s big, but not that big. I still have to watch my head.

  Feeling her hands grab at my chest as I take her to the most private section of the cabin. I ask her, “Are you sure?”

  Her head is already nodding, her wide eyes looking up at me, never more sure of anything since I’ve met her.

  “I want you, Jack. Now more than ever,” she tells me softly.

  I lean down and kiss her, keeping my head low once we enter the private suite at the rear of the jet. A space I’ve changed my clothes in a few times but never used the full sized bed or bathroom in before now.

  “You sure we’re alone?” she asks, and I nod firmly.

  “I always travel alone, making sure I’m never disturbed,” I tell her, undoing my shirt, glad that habit is paying off for us both now.

  She lays back on the bed, looking up at me as I undress, which I’m not afraid to do in front of her.

  Unlike the last time, her focus is more on me now, the light in the cabin a lot brighter than the dim lights and storm from last night in the hotel.

  I strip naked silently and quickly, noting her eyes move to my bobbing arousal as its finally freed but our eyes lock soon after that.

  Moving to the edge of the bed. I take her hands in mine and press them over my chest. Onto my heart.

  “This is here for you now, always,” I tell her, feeling her trembling fingers trace the outline of my chest before we kiss again and I clutch her firmly in my arms.

  “I thought this would be different,” I confess to her, feeling my own hands tremble a little as we both smile at each other. “More special is what I mean to say.”

  “How could this not be special?” she asks me, moving her hands off me only long enough to point out our surroundings.

  “On a private jet, thousands of miles from anyone. The mile high club?” she ventures.

  “A few miles high,” I counter, glad she feels this is special enough. “As long as I can have you, Olivia. As long as you’ll be mine,” I remind her. “That’s all that matters to me. If you’re sure.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” she chimes, cocking her brow and shivering a breath as her hands return to my chest, tracing their way down to my groin as she grips me with both hands, letting out a low sigh as she guides me over herself laying back onto the bed.

  “I’m all yours, right here,” she adds, moving my hands with hers to find her buttoned jeans and then her sweater which I lift up.

  Making us both as naked as quickly as possible.

  My skin against hers as soon as we can manage it.

  Pushing our clothes to one side with my hands, I feel her fingers gripping my back and pulling my weight onto her.

  Using both my arms I hover over her but she lets me know with a little moan how much she wants to feel all my weight on top of her.

  The same trembling fingers trace the lines of my muscles and shoulders, back over my neck, and as far down my back as she can reach.

  I shiver as my swollen organ presses against her sex once her legs wrap around my waist, completing the circuit.

  The perfect circuit of both our bodies long before I enter her.

  I want to taste her again, need to feel her in my mouth. But she has other plans as she directs me into my own claiming of her for real this time.

  “You want me? Here I am,” she whispers in my ear, her soft body melting into mine as I growl again with satisfaction.

  It’s happening, this is finally happening.

  I’m so hard I don’t need to even guide myself into her. She lifts her hips just enough and in a second I can feel my throbbing heat at her entrance.

  The slickness of her virginal altar yields to me instantly and we both gasp for a moment as I feel my thick heat moving to join with hers.

  Fuck, she’s tight.

  My first reflex is to fill her with my seed. The only urge that’s possessed me since seeing her for the first time, but now that I feel her flex and groan against me, I want to pleasure her a thousandfold.

  Want her to feel the magic I’ve been saving for her all this time.

  The magic we both feel between us finally, her legs widening for me as I move deeper inside her. A deep, throaty moan of her own desire telling me this is what she needs. Now and always.

  Forever.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Olivia

  Fake it ‘til ya make it?

  Not with Jack. There’s no faking either, but plenty of making as we finally start to mesh together.

  My first time could be awkward, filled with so many questions. But with Jack, he lets me take charge as well as guide me a little along the way too.

  It’s a completely shared experience, and I know he’s just as nervous and maybe unsure as I am about so many things until we finally reach that point of just knowing.

  This is right.

  This is our destiny.

  I’m his and he’s mine now, we belong together.

  Thousands of feet in the air or even rooms apart, god forbid. It’s clear soon enough that we’ll always be together from now on.

  I want to trace my hands all over his taut body, feel every inch of his muscular frame as it flexes over me, but there’s a greater need.

  There’s time for all that, I tell myself.

  What this girl needs right now is to feel her hero inside her.

  Having the legendary Jack Mercury claim me as his own.

  What an idea. What a concept.

  And oh, the feeling when he finally slides inside, giving me all of himself in just a few moments.

  My whole body tenses and then shivers once he enters me and he lets out a low groan of satisfaction.

  My own deep moans join his and I feel my hands finally grip all of him that I can from behind as I squeeze his tight buns, feeling him flex without effort as he starts to thrush in and out of me.

  Pulsing inside me as well as outside.

  “You feel so good,” he murmurs, his hands finding parts of me I never knew could feel so good as well as his whole weight on top of me.

  His skin taut against mine, it feels like each cell of his body is communing with mine, my soft against all his hardness.

  “You don’t...feel too bad yourself,” I manage to tell him before our mouths lock in a kiss that echoes the passion and movements of our bodies.

  That same tongue working its magic inside my mouth as his hands and everything else light me up to eleven on the scale of arousal.

  I never imagined being so close to someone else could feel so good. Could take me so far out of who I thought I was while still honoring who I really am physically as a person.

  “This is really happening,” I hear myself saying. My hips thrusting up to meet every movement of his, our eyes locked when our mouths aren’t, and our hands finding each other’s when they aren’t exploring.

  “It is happening,” he grunts louder, picking up the pace as I feel him swell inside me, noticing how close I am to meet his own climax.

  I don’t want this to end, but Jack echoes what I already know.

  “We’ve got forever if you want it, not just a few hours,” he tells me, burying his face in my chest and working his way up to my neck.

  I shiver under his touch, then tense ag
ain suddenly, feeling like I can’t hold back the tidal wave of emotion I feel for him.

  I can’t hold back against him giving me the same.

  It’s our first climax together and it isn’t our last either.

  He says my name, and I hear his own called from my lips as I shudder, helpless against the waves of ecstasy enveloping us both.

  Feeling him stiffen to a new level, there’s a new place in me that feels him. Somewhere I never knew existed until we both feel it.

  “Ah, Jesus!” he gasps, swearing again under his breath as I swoon, gripping me by the hips with his strong hands and thrusting, again and again, to hold the sensation between us.

  Letting me feel how he wants every day from now on to end, and it’s the one thing I’ll always crave myself.

  The only thing I’ll ever want from him, feeling him inside me like this.

  Knowing I’m his and he’s mine.

  No more doubts.

  No more questions.

  It’s a space my brain will have to get used to, but Jack’s wide eyes meeting mine as we slump exhausted together tell me he feels the same.

  Once he recovers his breath, he gasps how much he loves me.

  Tells me so with a dozen kisses, a kiss for each word, each promise.

  Promising me he’s my first and last. That I’m his only.

  “When we land, I’ll get you ten dozen roses,” he sighs. “A gallon of French perfume.”

  “We’ll go shopping and you can have anything you want, whenever you want, wherever you want,” he laughs to himself.

  I feel flattered, and I like the idea but I’m also wondering what just happened to us.

  What happened to that feeling we just shared, and I tell him so.

  “I thought we had something a bit more than just stuff going on?” I remind him, pulling him close for another kiss, sharply drawing a breath as I feel him tense inside me all over again.

  “I only want Jack the man, and I only want him to want me,” I remind him gently.

  “Too much?” he asks me, almost bashfully, wincing.

  “I just want you to know-” he starts to remind me. “I just wanna show you-”

  “You already have,” I whisper to him, holding him tight as we both feel the jet pitch to the left for a bit, and Jack uses gravity to turn me on my side. Filling me with himself until we share another powerful climax a few hundred or maybe it’s a few thousand miles in the sky, I can’t tell.

  Losing track of time as we lay in each other’s arms I could float with Jack forever, but we both eventually sense the little plane starting to tilt and gradually descend.

  “Time to go home,” Jack muses to himself, turning to glance at me and smiling.

  There’s no rush or any real urgency about getting out of bed, getting dressed, or anything else.

  Everything with Jack feels like it’s running on his schedule.

  And in his own words, now that it includes me, forever and always. Not bound up with hours and minutes.

  I try telling myself it’s that simple, but the gnawing anxiety of my daily life feels like it’s rushing up towards me quicker than any jet coming in for a soft landing.

  “What’s the matter?” Jack asks, full of concern once he senses my shift in mood.

  I take a breath in, hugging his arm and stretching a little under the covers, not wanting any of this to end.

  I open my mouth to tell him I’m fine, but he knows me well enough by now.

  He knows me better than anyone already.

  “You don’t have to rush back into anything, Olivia. You can stay here with me, like this if you want. All day, every day,” he tells me sincerely.

  Something about the look in his eyes tells me he doesn’t just mean every word, but that he’s half expecting me to agree with him. To beg him to keep me like this, in bed, intertwined with him in the sheets forever.

  Nothing and nobody else.

  For someone who was determined to remind me I didn’t need to rush into anything with him, Jack’s doing a pretty good job at convincing me to stay there.

  All with a single look.

  Damn you, Jack Mercury. Damn you for being so freaking perfect.

  For making me fall in love with you so easily.

  Damn you in the best possible way.

  I hardly form the thought when he’s already leaning over and kissing me again like he’s already a new hemisphere in my brain.

  The Jack lobe, or the Mercury cortex.

  Whatever it is, it’s sending me floods of the best feelings I’ve ever had in my whole life.

  I already know it’s permanent too.

  I couldn’t live without it.

  Can’t live without Jack now, and I have the strong impression he feels exactly the same way about me now too.

  Weird, because I’ve spent my whole life questioning myself, hating myself even. It feels like in just a single day, someone’s come along that not only tells me I’m okay. But actually wants me more than words can say.

  “You can take the rest of today off, surely?” he asks, nuzzling my neck. My new favorite spot for him when he’s not between my legs.

  I feign a groan of protest before I hear myself making the usual excuses.

  Excuses that just don’t seem to work when tossed against Jack Mercury.

  “But it’s my job. If I don’t go… My bills. Oh my god! The rent,” I exclaim, trying to get worked up in the way I used to about everything.

  My old, pre-Jack life, which was only yesterday but already feels like someone else’s.

  Someone who doesn’t really exist anymore because they never really did in the first place.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jack

  She’s my greatest achievement. We’re our greatest achievement now.

  I could have the jet just circle for the rest of the day, landing only for fuel and then take us anywhere we wanted.

  There’d be hell to pay when the studio wanted it back, but I could deal with that.

  But I can see Olivia still wants to do things a certain way. That’s what I have trouble with right now.

  She wants to work, she has her own ethics. I’m not gonna stand in the way of that.

  Even if she wants to hang on to her own problems too. For a while.

  But what if she did things just for her for a change? It’s an idea I run past her once we land and the limo is edging closer to the city.

  She wants to get home, freshen up and change and then get back to work and I practically have to hold her hostage until she gave our driver her address.

  “Maybe you can just pick me up later for dinner?” she offers.

  But it won’t work. I won’t let it.

  I’ve had her, tasted the forbidden fruit of happiness and I won’t hand it back so easily.

  “Maybe you can let me help you upstairs once we get you home?” I counter, “I need the little boy’s room anyway,” I tell her.

  Half-truth.

  The look of panic that cements on her face before we even reach her building tells me everything I need to know.

  Everything I don’t really want to know, but I guess I have to see things as they truly are if we’re going to have a lasting chance.

  “I’m really busting,” I add, squirming in my seat and clenching my hands for effect.

  “It’s not a private jet, that’s for sure,” she cautions me loudly, still taking my arm as I pretend not to notice the dank walls outside as we pull up.

  The creepy vibe from the lobby before we take the stairs up to her apartment.

  “Elevator’s out,” she murmurs quietly, translating the faded signs that I can see for myself.

  It’s not the worst building in the world.

  Not the worst neighborhood I could have imagined. Hell, we all started somewhere and my roots weren’t exactly this nice.

  But it’s not where I want her. Not where I’d wish my queen to be, not for another minute let alone a whole other day until she convinc
es herself that her place is by my side.

  On the other side of town, in a much better house. With much finer things.

  Better surroundings.

  What she truly deserves.

  With me.

  Mine.

  I try not to let it show, but I guess I flunk as soon as she opens the door and we step inside, her offering me directions to her bathroom. Me returning her hospitality with a firm shaking of my head.

  “No,” I tell her point-blank. “Not for one more minute. I won’t. I can’t have you in this place, Olivia.”

  I don’t mean it to sound so harsh, not meaning anything against her for having her own place and doing the best she can.

  But I know she deserves so much better, and her instant tears, her own regrets that she can’t hold back a second longer all tell me that I’m right.

  We both are. She’s so much more than this place. So much better than everything she’s tried and worked so hard at so far.

  “Jack, please,” she sniffs, trying to hold herself together.

  Knowing I mean it, that she’s done here.

  With a single glance from me, she knows.

  “I love you, Olivia. I do. And if you want to work a two-bit job at a gossip column, fine. But I won’t have you here, not like this.”

  Her eyes flash with anger and hurt before narrowing, her mouth opens to tell me what she really thinks but I hold up my hand.

  “You want to be a journalist? Fine. But do it in style. Tell me what you need and we’ll make it happen. We’ll set you up with your own operation, not on your knees for someone else. Especially that Pilkington woman.”

  “That paper,” I add, hearing the venom in my own voice.

  The edge I guess I’ve been holding back for years too.

  Bearing the brunt of all their insidious gossip. Not just the paper Olivia works for, all of them. Naomi Pilkington and everyone like her, riding on the back of everyone else’s misery for the sake of a quick buck.

  I can see Olivia shrinking back a little, looking at me like I might have a screw loose, but I have a better idea.

  If she needs some time to find her way between her work and being with me forever, fine. I can easily arrange that.