7 so vulnerable

"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 the time right now. You'll have to handle it," Seth called out as if he was walking away from whoever 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 photoshoot 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.