Chapter 1: Lost in the Glare of Lights
The tour guide's voice had long since dissolved into the background hum of the building. Nancy stopped at a junction of concrete corridors, and the group was gone. No yellow lanyards, no fanny packs, no bored teenager in the studio polo shirt holding up a paddle with a cartoon sun on it.
"Hello?" Her voice bounced off the walls and came back to her sounding smaller than it left.
She checked her phone. Three bars, no signal worth using. The map on the tour brochure, folded in her purse, showed nothing useful, just a cartoon of a backlot with smiling arrows. She picked a direction and walked, her heels clicking a steady rhythm against the concrete, past closed doors with heavy latches and taped labels she didn't dare read too closely. Black cables ran along the baseboards in bundles thick as her arm.
Somewhere behind a door, machinery hummed. Somewhere ahead, a voice was already shouting.
She turned a corner and nearly walked into the light. It hit her like weather, hot and white, spilling out of an open doorway where a set stretched back into shadows. Flat paint, prop furniture, racks of clothing. And people. A dozen people, at least, moving with the urgency of people who were late for something.
"You, no, the other side, you're upstage of the key light, I need the shadow off his face, this is not amateur hour."
The voice belonged to a wiry woman in a black utility vest, glasses pushed up her nose, headset around her neck, hair pulled so tight it looked structural. She was pointing at two crewmen and not even watching them, because she had already turned and seen Nancy.
And stopped.
Nancy opened her mouth to explain. The tour, the missing group, the fact that she had wandered in here by accident and would happily leave the way she came.
The woman looked her up and down once. The navy sundress. The curves. The stunned expression on Nancy's face, which was really just the stunned expression of a woman trying to find the right words.
"That's more like it," the woman said. "Fresh. Finally someone who understands the concept of arriving on time." She snapped her fingers at a girl with a clipboard. "Wardrobe said no changes, we're going with what she's wearing, it reads great on camera. You," and now the finger was aimed at Nancy, "you're with me. We're already behind."
"I," Nancy started.
"No talking, save the voice, Ruben hates a dry read." The woman was already walking, and somehow Nancy was following, because the alternative was standing alone in a doorway while a dozen people stepped around her. "I'm Teresa Brown, I direct, I don't do introductions twice. You'll be fine. New girls always say the same thing afterward, that they wish they'd relaxed sooner."
Somewhere in the back of Nancy's mind a small, rational voice was forming the words, I think you have the wrong person. It got as far as I think before they crossed the set and the lights found her.
And there was a man by the prop bed.
He was tall, and built in a way that no amount of loose clothing could hide, even though he was trying, a white linen shirt half unbuttoned over a torso that looked carved rather than trained. Charcoal trousers sat low on his hips. Short dark hair, neat fade, a silver watch on his wrist, and dark eyes that came up and found her and stayed there, steady as a hand on a shoulder.
Nancy's mouth went dry. Her prepared sentence, tour, group, accident, sorry, evaporated like water on this hot studio floor.
"There she is." He smiled, and it was a good smile, unhurried, the smile of a man who had never once needed to rush anything. "Teresa said they were sending someone new. Ruben." He extended a hand.
She took it. His grip was warm and dry and swallowed hers entirely, and she was aware, suddenly and vividly, of the sheer scale of him. Up close he was bigger. Shoulders like furniture. The thin linen doing nothing at all.
"Nancy," she heard herself say.
"Good grip." His thumb brushed once over her knuckles, easy, practiced. "First time on a set?" yes." It was technically true. Her heart was going hard enough that she could feel it in her throat.
"You'll be fine." He said it like a fact, not a comfort. "We'll take it slow, I'll check in with you the whole way. Anything you don't want, you say the word and it's gone. Deal?"
Deal. She nodded. The rational voice in the back of her head had stopped talking altogether, and what had replaced it was a low, warm rush she hadn't felt since college, the feeling of standing on a diving board with the water waiting.
"Talent quiet on the floor," Teresa barked, walking backward toward a bank of monitors. "Ruben, you know the coverage. Nancy, honey, there's a mark on the floor by the bed, stand on it and look gorgeous until I tell you to stop."
Nancy found the tape mark. She stood on it. The lights were hot on her skin, and the crew moved around her like water around a stone, and Ruben shrugged out of his shirt a few feet away and folded it over a chair with the calm of a man folding laundry on a Sunday.
Under the shirt he was worse. Better. Worse. Defined abs, a chest she could have balanced a drink on, the faint line of hair running down beneath the waistband of those trousers, and a shape there that made her breath catch audibly, because the fabric did not lie and it did not leave much to the imagination either.
He glanced over. He'd heard it. The corner of his mouth moved.
"Take your time," he said quietly, just for her, while Teresa turned away to argue with a lighting tech. "Everybody looks the first time. It's fine."
"Nancy." Teresa's voice cracked across the set like a whip. "Positions. We're burning daylight and daylight costs four thousand an hour in this building."
Nancy's pulse was in her ears. Somewhere in her purse was a phone with no signal and somewhere in this building was a tour group, and neither of those things mattered even slightly right now, which was its own kind of revelation. She had spent ten years being on time for other people's schedules.
The bed was right there. He was right there, waiting, patient, watching her with those steady dark eyes.
"Okay," she said, and her voice came out lower than she meant it, half a breath. "Okay."
Ruben smiled and reached out his hand.
She took it, and he drew her in, unhurried, until she was standing close enough to feel the heat coming off his bare chest.
"Bed's the mark," Teresa said, not looking up from her monitors. "Ruben, you open standing, then to the bed. Nancy, follow his lead, don't act, just react. Cameras one and three, soft move. And..." she jabbed a finger at the room in general, "this is a oner, people, so nobody sneezes."
Ruben's hand settled at the small of Nancy's back. Warm. Heavy. It made her arch without deciding to.
"Ready?" he said, quiet, just for her.
"I think so."
"Breathe. Eyes on me. Nobody else exists."
"Action," Teresa said.
The set went still and silent in a way that felt like the air pressure changing. Nancy looked up at him and Ruben looked down at her, and then his hand came up, fingers sliding into the hair at her jaw, and he kissed her.
It was not a shy kiss. His mouth opened over hers, full and slow, and she heard herself make a sound against his lips, a small helpless noise she had never made on a first kiss in her life. His tongue brushed hers and her knees actually softened, an honest-to-God wobble, and his arm caught her around the waist like he'd been waiting for it.
His hands started moving. That was the difference between this and every kiss she'd ever had, she realized dimly; his hands never stopped. One spread wide across her lower back, pulling her hips against his, and she felt him then, the thick length of him pressing through the grey trousers, hard already, insistent against her belly. The other hand traveled up her side, thumb dragging along the underside of her breast through the navy fabric, tracing the curve, learning it.
"God," she breathed into his mouth.
"Yeah," he said, and kissed the corner of her jaw, her throat, the spot below her ear. His fingers found the strap of her dress at her shoulder and drew it down, slowly, giving the camera its moment.
The strap slid off. Then the other one, his mouth working at her neck the whole time, teeth grazing, and Nancy stood there on her tape mark with her heart slamming and her nipples tightening in the hot studio air as he peeled the bodice down to her waist.
He stepped back half a step to look at her. Her dress hung off her hips, and her breasts were bare under the lights, full and heavy, and she watched his eyes darken.
"Perfect," he said, like he was grading fabric. Then he dipped his head and took her nipple into his mouth.
Nancy's head fell back. His tongue was wet and hot and circled slowly, and his free hand kneaded her other breast, rolling the nipple between finger and thumb until she was gripping his shoulder with both hands just to stay upright. He switched sides. Sucked harder. She felt it in her clit, a direct pull, and ground her hips forward against him without meaning to.
He laughed low against her skin. "There we go."
He caught the dress at her hips and pushed it down over the swell of her ass, and she kicked it away when it puddled at her ankles, suddenly desperate, past caring about cameras or coverage or the tour group she'd lost an hour ago. She stood in nothing but a scrap of navy lace and her gold necklace, and he walked her backward the two steps to the bed and sat her down on the edge of it.
"You're shaking," he said, crouching in front of her, hands sliding up her calves.
"I don't do this."
"Your body does." His thumbs hooked the lace at her hips. "Lift."
She lifted. He drew the panties down her legs slow, slow, eyes climbing her the whole way, and the cool air hit her bare pussy and she felt how wet she was, felt it in the slick ache of her thighs, and blazed with it rather than hiding.
"Lie back for me."
She lay back on the prop bed, propped on her elbows, and Ruben took her ankles and opened her legs, wide, knees bent, the lights hot on everything now, nothing hidden from the room or the cameras or him. She should have felt exposed. She felt, instead, like she'd been walking around with her clothes on backwards for ten years.
"Look at that," he murmured, and bent his head.
The first stroke of his tongue made her cry out, loud, no performance to it at all. He licked her slow from bottom to top, flat and broad, then narrowed his tongue and worked it directly on her clit, circling, and her hips jerked off the mattress.
"Fuck. Oh, fuck."
"That's it," he said against her, and did it again.
He was methodical and merciless at once. He sucked her clit into his mouth and rolled his tongue over it in steady rhythm, two fingers sliding up her slick folds and pressing into her, curling, finding a spot that made her see white at the edges. She was babbling, she realized, a stream of half-words, oh God and yes and there, don't stop, her hand fisted in the bedding, the other buried in his short dark hair, riding his face now, actually humping against his mouth while twelve professionals watched and Teresa somewhere called framing notes in a low murmur.
He added a third finger. Stretched her. Kept his mouth locked on her clit, relentless, that same rhythm, and the pressure in her belly coiled tight, tighter, past tight into something frightening.
"Ruben," she gasped. "I'm going to, I'm, oh my God."
"Give it to me," he said, lips brushing her, and sucked hard.
Nancy came apart. It tore through her, her back bowing off the bed, thighs clamping around his head, her voice breaking on a scream she didn't recognize as her own. He held her through it, fingers working her slow, mouth gentle now, coaxing every last pulse out of her until she collapsed back onto the mattress, chest heaving, sweat cooling between her breasts, utterly destroyed.
He kissed the inside of her thigh and looked up at her, chin glossy, dark eyes steady.
"Still with me?"
She laughed, breathless, wrecked, already wanting more. "Barely."
"Good." He rose, unbuttoning his trousers, and Teresa's voice cut across the set.
"Beautiful, gorgeous, keep that energy. Ruben, stand her up, we're going to the wall next."
Nancy's pulse kicked all over again. He was already reaching for her.
He pulled her off the bed by the wrist, and Nancy went, legs still shaky, her dress a navy puddle they stepped over without either of them looking at it.
"Wall," he said, nodding at the flat painted surface beside the prop bed, and walked her to it, turned her, pressed a palm between her shoulder blades until her back met the plaster. It was cool through her sweat. His body in front of her was a furnace.
"Hands on my shoulders," he said. She did. "When I lift your leg, let me take the weight. Don't hold it yourself."
"Okay." Her voice was still somewhere down the hall from her.
He kissed her once, deep, unhurried, then stepped back and pushed his trousers down off his hips. Nancy looked. She had been trying not to stare since the doorway and now there was no reason left not to.
He was huge. Not an abstraction, not a rumor under fabric, but real and bare in front of her, thick and long and slightly intimidating, flushed dark, standing hard against his stomach. Her mouth actually watered. Ten years of sensible office decency and her first honest reaction was a hot, greedy throb low in her belly.
"Still fine?" he asked, watching her face.
"Yes." It came out embarrassingly fast. "God, yes."
He grinned, took her right leg under the knee, and lifted it high against his side. Her thigh stretched, her back flat to the wall, and she felt the head of him slide through her wet folds, blunt and hot, teasing the entrance without pushing in. Her hips rolled toward him on pure instinct.
"Breathe out," he said. "I'll go slow until you tell me not to."
He pressed in.
The stretch was enormous. Nancy's hand flew to the back of his neck and she made a sound, low and broken, as her body opened around him inch by inch, the burn and the fullness tangled together so she couldn't tell which one she wanted more. He watched her the whole way in, dark eyes steady, feeding himself into her a fraction at a time while her wetness made it slick and easy and still almost too much.
"You're so fucking thick," she gasped.
"And you're gripping me like you want to keep it." He bottomed out, his hips flush against her, and held there, buried to the root, letting her feel every last bit of it. Her inner walls clenched around him involuntarily and he groaned, a rough sound, the first crack in all that composure. "Christ. Okay."
He pulled back almost all the way and drove in again.
The wall took her weight. Her lifted leg let him hit a place inside her that no angle in her entire life had ever hit, deep and slightly upward, and her free hand scraped down his back. He set a rhythm, long and deliberate, in and out, the slap of his hips against her thigh filling the set along with her voice, which was getting louder and less dignified with every stroke.
"Harder," she heard herself say. "You can, please, harder."
"You heard her," Teresa's voice called dryly from the monitors, and somewhere a camera dollied closer.
Ruben braced his forearm on the wall beside her head and gave her what she'd asked for. The thrusts came harder now, deeper, her whole body jolting up the plaster with each one, her bare breasts dragging against his chest, the gold necklace swinging. She was so wet she could hear it, the obscene sound of him sliding through her, and it should have been mortifying and instead it made her crazier.
"Look at me," he said.
She forced her eyes open. His face was close, sweat at his temple, jaw set with the effort of control, and he held her gaze while he fucked her, every stroke landing on that swollen spot inside until her thighs were trembling against him.
"I'm already close again," she whispered. "That can't be normal."
"It is if I'm doing it right." He shifted her leg higher, opening her wider, and drove in hard. "Come on my cock, Nancy. I want to feel it."
The filth of it, that word in his calm voice, shoved her right to the edge. Her clit was crushed between them, ground on every thrust, and the pressure rebuilt in seconds, fast and brutal, nothing like the slow climb before.
"Oh God, oh God, Ruben, I'm,"
"Let go."
She did. Her orgasm crashed through her, her pussy clamping down around him in hard rhythmic pulses, her nails digging into his shoulder, her cry ricocheting off the soundstage walls. He kept thrusting through it, slower, deep and grinding, dragging it out until she was shuddering and limp against the wall, moaning with every tiny movement.
He was breathing harder now. His control had a visible edge to it, a tremor in the forearm planted by her head.
"You're going to kill me in one take," he said, half a laugh against her throat.
"Then kill me too," she panted. "Again. I want it again."
"Greedy." He kissed her, messy and open-mouthed, still buried inside her, and she felt his cock throb hard against her walls and shivered with it. "Teresa's going to have opinions about that."
"Ruben." Teresa's voice again, clipped, satisfied anyway. "Hold there, we're changing the side light. Nancy, honey, don't move, you look incredible."
Nancy stood against the wall with a stranger's cock still deep inside her and a director praising her lighting, and realized she was smiling like an idiot. Her phone was in her purse on a chair somewhere. Her tour group was probably at the gift shop by now, counting heads without her.
Ruben tipped his forehead against hers, dark eyes glinting, still hard, still not moving.
"Two more scenes after this one," he murmured. "How are you feeling about overtime?"