He doesn’t realize I’m serious. “I gave you a taste, babe.”
It’s not lost on either of us that I don’t protest at the term.
“A taste of what?” I wonder if I should tell him I’ve never done anything even remotely like that before. If his fingers had gone any deeper inside me, he’d have felt the evidence of my innocence.
“A taste of us.”
I don’t know what to say. Part of me expects him to ask me to do something for him, because as inexperienced as I am, I know something of the way things work. But he doesn’t. He just holds me until the trembles subside. It’s then that the sense of shame and guilt overtakes me.
Technically, I’m still a virgin but I gave him more of me than anyone has ever had. And I still don’t know what this is or where it’s going. I know what he said, that he wants me, but…wouldn’t he have said that to the others? There have been dozens before me. Dozens of women, and they knew what to give him, how to touch him, how to please him, and they knew what to expect. Did he whisper the same words he did for me?
I know only one thing for sure: I want more. What he just did to me…I need more. I see what the big deal is now, and that was just a taste. I’ll never be able to get enough but I can’t have any more. I can’t. Because I need more from him. I know my feelings for him are going out of control. I know where they’re leading.
And I cannot afford to fall in love with him. How can I let that happen? How can I trust him? How can I give myself to him when I’ve only known him for a matter of days, and if I fall in love, what then? I move in with him? Would he marry me?
Do I want to get married? Does he? Is that where this is going?
Not for him, surely. And what about his movies? They have sex in them. Meaning he has sex, with actresses, on screen for millions of people to see. And yet he’d come home to me and I’d kiss him and touch him and have to know that another woman just did all that, even if it was for a movie and not real emotion? Even without emotion, it would be real kisses, real sex.
I’m hyperventilating as these thoughts pound through me a mile a minute.
I let him touch me. I let him give me an orgasm. His fingers were inside me. His mouth was on my ni**les. I basically had sex with him, and I barely know him. He can get me fired and make sure I never work in Hollywood again. He can do anything he wants and get away with it.
He touched me. He kissed me. He made me feel so much, so much.
Tears leak down, tears of raw confusion and desperation and fear.
He sees them. “Grey? What…what’s wrong?”
“I…I’m sorry. I don’t… I can’t…” I scramble away from him, off the bed and into the bathroom.
My stomach heaves, the welter of emotions turning to nausea, as it always does. I don’t throw up, though. I taste bile, fight it down. Dawson is on the other side of the closed door; I feel him there. I know I have to face him. I open the door and there he is, huge and gorgeous and clearly upset.
“Grey, what’s wrong? I thought we’d—”
I shake my head. “Dawson, I’m…God, I’m messed up.” I want his arms around me, because even when he’s the one who upsets me, he comforts me. I can’t let that happen because I’ll get lost in his touch all over again. “I’m so confused, and I don’t know what this is, what we are…I don’t know anything.”
“Don’t—don’t you want to be with me?”
“I don’t know! You make it so hard to think! You touch me, and I can’t make sense of anything. You could have anyone, or several people, and I can’t compete with that. And you’re a movie star. You’re going to be in Gone With the Wind, and you’ll kiss Rose. Or, knowing how Jeremy directs, you’ll have a love scene with her. And then what about us? Am I supposed to be okay with that? Where is this going? And what we just did…it was…amazing, but I couldn’t stop it. It was so much, so fast, I didn’t know it could—”
“Are you saying you felt like I was forcing you?” There’s a razor-sharp edge to his voice.
“No! I’m saying it was me…I wanted it, but I shouldn’t have…It wasn’t…” I don’t want to admit that I’m a virgin. I don’t know how he’ll react or what he’ll say or do. What it would mean for us, or whatever this is between Dawson and me. I push past him, adjusting my clothes. “Just…I need to go home. I need to think. This is all happening so fast, and I’m so mixed up—”
“You’re running away again.” He’s equal parts angry and resigned and sad.
“No!”
“Then what would you call it?” His eyes are blue-gray, and he’s pacing away from me.
“I don’t know. I’m just saying I need some time.”
“Time for what? Either you want me or you don’t.”
“It’s not that simple, Dawson—”
“Then explain it to me.” He turns back to me and stands over me and stares down into me, into my soul. “Tell me one true thing.”
“I want you so much it terrifies me.” I can’t look at him.
“Why does it scare you so much?”
“Because it’s so much, and I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know what this is between us.”
“It’s a romantic relationship, Grey. It’s not that complicated. I like you, you like me, we spend time together. We make love. We tell each other true things about ourselves.”
“Then you tell me one true thing about you.”
He rubs his hand over his face, and then through his hair. “Okay, fine. You’ve still not told me anything real, anything deep. I know you’re afraid, that’s no secret. But I’ll show you what I mean when I say ‘one true thing.’ I’m the son of Jimmy Kellor. My mother is Amy Lipmann. You’re in film, so you have to know those names.”
I knew this. Of course I did. Dawson being Jimmy’s son was public knowledge. But somehow I never thought of the effect that would have on Dawson. Jimmy Kellor was—and still is—one of the best-loved directors of all time. He was notoriously difficult to work with, demanding and exacting and quirky, but he was brilliant. He’s mostly retired now, and is famously reclusive. No one knows where he lives, but he’ll sometimes consult on a film from his home, via email and phone. Amy Lipmann was a romance actress from the seventies and eighties. She had a reputation as a wild child, and her relationship with Jimmy Kellor was a huge scandal at the time, since he was over forty and married with kids. Amy was barely twenty-one. Jimmy left his wife and kids for Amy, and the two stayed together for almost twenty tumultuous years. Tabloids recorded every accusation of cheating on Jimmy’s part and every visit Amy took to rehab. Eventually Amy overdosed on cocaine in the mid-nineties. Jimmy’s last film was the year Amy died, and he hasn’t directed since.