Stunt: Hollywood Bad Boy Romance Read online

  “I thought my likes would be better on the abs shot,” he's talking about himself as usual. The only topic of conversation he has.

  I try to meet Jenny's eye. Give her that 'This could be a long night' shared eye-roll. But she's adamantly resisting meeting my gaze for some reason.

  She's looking down and then I see each movie star hand is casually resting on the thigh beside him. Like he owns them. Like he has a right to lay claim to whatever the fuck he wants.

  My blood is immediately setting fire to every fucking vein, that he's put his hand on her is such a disdainful way. Not caring, not sensual, she's nothing but a flesh prop to him.

  Let him do that to girls like the other one, girls who are begging for that. The other girl is in fact giggling and writhing her hips forward so that Knox's hand slides up her thigh. Over the table edge I see his baby finger is buried in the slit between her legs and suddenly something distracts him from his favorite subject. Wet pussy.

  He gives her a filthy grin then slides his fingers inside her panties, which are not much more than a spaghetti strap of fabric. He pulls her lips apart, takes the engorged pink nub between thumb and forefinger and gives her clit a hard pinch.

  The girl stifles a squeal, writhes and fails to repress a loud moan as he pistons his marauding fingers deep inside her hole. Jenny is looking down beyond shocked, as Knox finger fucks the woman right in front of all his staff, who get busy talking among themselves and drinking furiously.

  A glass overturns as the girl bucks around, trying desperately not to lose control as Knox's fingers drill into her pussy. And Jenny is suddenly mesmerized in horror as his hand moves up her leg to double up on her. Fortunately she's wearing a tight pencil skirt that gives her that sexy secretary look and his clawing figures can't gain any connection.

  Plus she's sitting rigid, legs pressed together. The absolute opposite from the girl with bare legs and slit spread for half the table. Knox's hand gropes to the top of Jenny's thigh and I'm up off the bench. Which isn’t easy being a booth and the table bolted into the floor at the center, or else it would have overturned from the force of my rage.

  He needs to take his filthy fucking hand off her. I don't care if he sends me back to the big house. He can do whatever he wants to me but he will not lay his filthy grip on the girl or he'll live to regret it.

  But Jenny's already squirming away and edging her way out of the awkward seating. As soon as she's free she rushes to the bar and grabs at the water jug sitting on top. I have to wait for at least ten people to slide from the booth to let me out, because you know the Prince isn't going to shift his ass on that side.

  He hasn't even noticed Jenny's distressed exit, completely occupied with the slutty one now, as though there's no one else in the world. I'm certain the term 'Get a room' was invented for Knox 'Dick' Templeton.

  I stride across to the bar with a couple of shots in my hand that I grabbed from the table. It's the least Knox can do to stump up for drinks.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  She nods her head, clasped in her hands with her elbows on the bar-top holding the weight.

  “Sure? Is there anything I can do?”

  She lifts her face to me and I see a world of pain in her beautiful big hazel eyes, almost green now from the tears pooling and ready to spill hard.

  “You,” she hisses. “I don't need rescuing by you.”

  ChapterFIVE

  She looks at me in disbelief so that for a second I can only believe she thinks I'm Knox, the amount of loathing hardening up her lovely features. Before I can introduce myself she shuts me down.

  “How dare you speak to me,” she hisses. “How dare you after what you did to me.”

  I open my mouth to ask, but I don't need to. I can add two and two together as fast as any pre-schooler and it doesn’t take a genius to figure that this is the girl that Knox fooled around with in wardrobe.

  That lying dickwad said she was a bit part when he knew all along she was his assistant. A rush of opposing feelings surges through by chest, almost ripping it up. I want to walk over to Knox and piston my fist into his pretty face until it's mush, for laying his hands on this girl.

  She's too good. She's too pure and unspoiled to be subjected to his filthy touch. Or to any of the shit in this town for that matter. I also want to pull her into my arms and stroke her amber waves of hair and tell her it's going to be okay. That as long as I live I will never let any arrogant fucking asshole hurt her again.

  Before I get to tell her that this is all one fucked up mess, a bulbous tear plummets down her soft cheek to the ground.

  I take her immediately by the arm and lead her out of the VIP room. She resists briefly, trying to tear her arm away from me but I hold her firm and lead her through the crowds in the club's main room, cutting a path through the throng with the force of my bulk and the fact that people are doing a double take on me.

  “Was that?” I hear them mutter.

  When we get to the curb, I lift my arm to Darby, the chauffeur and he pulls up beside us.

  “What-” Jenny mutters, about to ask how I can steal a limousine.

  Fuck it. Whatever she wants, I'll do everything to give it to her.

  “Get your hand off me,” she snarls.

  So once I settle her comfortably in the rear, I take a seat up front with Darby where I can watch over her and make sure she gets home safely without her having to look at the face that upsets her. I give Darby the address she's managed to splutter out and it's only as we're driving out to the beach that I realize she's genuinely upset.

  Like a major disappointment has hit her. Is it possible she actually likes Knox? That she's mad at discovering what a slut he is with girls. If so, that's double hurt he's inflicted on her and for that I'm going to find a way to make him pay. I only wish there was something I could do to take away one second of the pain she's in.

  *

  “This is it,” Darby says as he brings the double stretch to a gliding halt outside a nondescript four story walk-up from the nineteen forties.

  I'm out of the cab, opening the door to help her out. She's calmer now but still wobbly and teary. Again all I want is to haul her into my arms and wrap her up there for a thousand years. I know I could take all her pain away if only she'd let me.

  But she has no intention of hearing me out. She brushes my hand away furiously and pushes herself out of the low vehicle. She's really unsteady and when her foot hits the curb, she gets it wrong, or her legs are jello because she loses her balance and tumbles against me.

  I catch her in my grasp, feeling a searing heat as her hands flatten against my pecs to steady herself. It's all I can do not to pin her to me and make her listen to the truth. compel her to hear me out and give me a chance to start this off right.

  But now she's pushing hard to put some distance between us and I won't use force on her. I want her to see the real me, not some fucked up role Knox has created for me. And himself. She's seriously disoriented though and her ankle twists to one side as she hurls herself away from me and she almost goes down again. I catch her arm to prevent her collapsing and again she tugs herself away.

  “Let go of me,” she swipes out.

  Fuck it.

  With one easy move, I pick her up in my arms like a tiny bride and carry her up the walkway to her front door. Any nosy biddy looking through her curtain crack would have thought that we were some couple coming home at three in the morning after an elopement. Until she starts kicking her legs and sniping at me to put her down.

  “Relax, Jenny” I grit out. “I'm only here to make sure you get home safely. I'm not going to hurt you. I could never hurt you.” I feel my throat croak on the last sentence.

  What an idiot.

  I set her gently down and watch as she unlocks the door, nervously glancing back at me. Once inside, she rounds on me.

  “It's Jenna,” she snarls, before shutting the door and disappearing up the stairs.

  I try the door h
andle to make sure it's fully secure then head back to the limo.

  “Home, Sir?” Darby says with a grin. This isn’t the first time he and I have ridden out together, fixing one of Knox's screw ups.

  “You betcha,” I say.

  “Feisty one that, huh?”

  “You betcha,” I repeat and we settle into a companionable silence for the ride.

  As we drive through the silent city, it's fortunate I'm seated because otherwise I'd kick my sorry ass into next week for how I've handled this.

  Why the fuck do I continue with this screwed up charade of taking the fall for Knox, my life's mission being to cover his illegal and/or lewd activities?

  I've barely considered it before. Just went along with the game because it's always been this way. Since I was six years old and people first started commenting on how uncannily alike Henry and I looked.

  Yeah, you didn’t think Knox Templeton was actually born with that name?

  Everyone started saying we could be twins, even though we came from opposite sides of town. His parents some high level CEO and a society dame, mine, well that's another story. I guess if I want to start getting honest in my life, I have to open up to all the past and face it square on.

  My dad was a marine, he was killed overseas just before my fifth birthday. My mom tried her best, I now realize although I didn't then and just blamed her for being weak. The loss of her partner and the strain of doing it all was too much for her.

  Her depression was never diagnosed – who was there to notice it?

  I wasn't able to. I was just trying to keep it all together. I needed to appear to be a normal family to the outside world. And not let anyone find out that my mom spent her days drugged up on some cocktail mixed from the many pill bottles lined up beside the bed she rarely moved from.

  The first time I stuck up for Knox, it was probably because I was glad to have a friend. He'd initiated the brotherhood between us, letting me in on a game he had going. Even then Knox had an entourage of adoring fans. Some people just take to that role naturally I guess, they’re born for it.

  It was cool to be included with the gang at last and when Knox was called out for punching a kid who insisted Knox had cheated, I stood up for him. Somewhere along the line, that became natural to the point teachers just assumed I was the bad one.

  My mom passed away and I didn’t tell anyone for two days. I thought maybe I could keep her there with me in the house, lying in her bed while I carried on with normal life. Of course that didn’t work as soon as I realized there was no money in her purse and I had no milk for cereal.

  After the sad little funeral, I was put with a foster family. They weren’t evil like the stories you read. They weren’t amazing do-gooders either. They were just nothing.

  They did the job for the government income and turned out a human being at the end of it.

  So how did I end up a criminal?

  I headed back into Los Angeles from Oceanside where the foster family lived so as to find a job. The obvious thing would have been for me to join the Marines like my dad. The family assumed I was heading that route and I did nothing to disabuse them. I even went through the cadet core training program for two years to keep myself amused and them satisfied. Problem was I had sworn up and down, making promises to mom before she died, that I wouldn’t desert her too.

  “Promise me, my lovely boy, promise me you wont ever go away to fight. Promise.”

  I did and I intend to keep that one special request she made of me even though she's gone. I came into the city thinking that with my training I could become some celebrity bodyguard, anything to keep busy and not fall out on the wrong side.

  So you know when I saw my old pal Henry, now calling himself Knox. Given that name by an agent who said Henry wasn't a sexy name because it invoked fat old lechers that chopped off the heads of women he got tired of.

  “Sure thing, buddy, of course you're on the team,” he agreed immediately.

  It wasn’t entirely clear what my position was on the team other than to keep him company and be an extra at the nightly fuckfest party at his Hollywood mansion. At least I had a place to live, food and an income for being a hanger-on. Someone had to do it.

  Guys turned as green as our perfectly manicured grass when I told them how my life rolled. And the only job I could find was commission-only, no benefits, selling cellphones at RadioShack. I worked out my frustrations a ton, at the gym, in the boxing ring. And I guess my daredevil inclinations, something in the DNA my dad shared with me. So that when Knox shied away from rolling across the top of a car, I stepped up.

  “Let me do it, Bro,” I muttered in his ear. “I got this one.”

  “Truan will take this shot. I have to take a call from my agent.”

  Knox disappeared to his trailer, wussing out with a lame excuse, happy to dump the load on me. I did the take in one. Next stunt was catching to the hood of a car it while it veered down the freeway trying to throw me off. I did that in a single take as well.

  From there I got calls to do other stunt work but Knox had discovered my usefulness as his decoy. He kept me with him and I guess some forced sense of gratitude, not wanting to take the money thanks and run, kept me with him. He was sort of the only family I had in the world and I was worried some day he also wouldn't wake up from his pharmaceutical retreat from the world.

  I'm not trying to make myself some pussy victim in this. I take it full on my shoulders. Maybe the fact that everyone always said we were like twins and he's the closest thing to a brother I ever knew, it just sticks.

  Until I landed up in jail. And Knox finally came to bail me out.

  With a caveat.

  “Don't think I'm not grateful,” I told him when he explained the deal. “But I thought I was stunt man, not stand-in.”

  “I need you to cover both.”

  His last stand-in quit because Knox is an asshole and tried to make him take blame for another of little misdemeanours.

  “You’re the only man I can trust. We go back a long way.”

  The court put me under his supervision. I have to stay in this job and not fuck up or I go back.

  I may as well be branded like a slave.

  I didn’t like it but I rolled with it because I was still kind of attached to having a family of sorts and I loved the stunt work. I had finally found my niche in the world. Something I loved and was good at.

  But now there's Jenna.

  She's the kind of girl that could be special. I've never found that before. It's something you don't come upon too frequently in our sexually charged environment of fuck buddy groupies, self-obsessed stars and equally self-absorbed fans only thinking of how they too can become world famous. The celebrity drug is highly addictive once you’ve had a little taste.

  Knox always says when I ask him why he carries on with this. “Being loved by millions of people is a rush I can't give up.”

  “Wouldn’t the love of one woman, real love, give you that same high?” I ask and he looks at me like I'm sprouting a second head.

  Because in his case I'm not sure that he doesn’t just like an endless supply of willing pussy. He's too lazy to go out and find it and I think he equates that easy get-off with real love.

  I might have suffered the same fate myself except for the feeling I'm developing for Jenna. It's more than my chivalry act, I literally want her to be safe and happy.

  Unfortunately I think she's developed feelings too. Just not toward me.

  The look on her face when we were sitting on the table, the crushed hurt and disappointment let me know that she's actually stuck on Knox. She's made the huge mistake of falling for a guy that will never return her sentiment.

  But perhaps I'm wrong. Surely Knox couldn’t fail to accept the love of a beautiful angel like her. And we can all change for a woman that really loves us, I'm convinced of that, without having personal proof.

  If she wants Knox, I won't step in her path. I won't be the one to burst the bubble
by telling her what a lying user asshole he really is. But I'm staying close and keeping an eye on him.

  Because if her hurts her one more time, indebted or not, jail time or not, if I see those tears welling up in her beautiful trusting sexy eyes again, I'm going to be obliged to fuck him up.

  ChapterSIX

  Jenna

  “You came in late last night,” Penny says when she returns from her run. I'm lurching around looking for my purse to head out to work after about half an hour of sleep.

  All night I rolled from one side to the other in an agony of frustration that my mind would not shut the fuck up. I was furious at that guy, Truan, I think he said he's called. What a sick ironic joke of a name. But he's also so hot I wanted to drag my rabbit out of the nightstand. It might have relieved the tension and anger.

  I fucking hate that guy, whoever he is. But he's so gorgeous with a body built to climb all over. And he was so caring. The way he held the door open and stole a limo driver to bring me home. He didn't have to do all that.

  “Out on the town with Knox,” I mumble, not wanting to get into it.

  “It's good you're having fun at last.”

  “Yeah. Although it seems more like duty.”

  “Duty? Sign me up for riding home in a stretch limo and Knox Templeton carrying me to my door like a superhero,” Erica, my other roomie, says, emerging from her room to head to the bathroom.

  “You saw that?”

  “I might have had to get up to pee. I was waiting for you to come in and spill but I must have passed right out again.”

  “That wasn't Knox.”

  “Fibber.”

  “Honest. He's got some guy on his crew. A lookalike he uses as some kind of decoy.

  “Unreal how they look exactly alike.”

  “And I'm pretty sure it was him that did that, you know, -”

  “Finger fucked you,” Erica says bluntly.

  “Yeah that.”

  “How can you be sure if you can't tell the difference between them?