His fingers slid through her, slick and deliberate, and she felt the difference in his touch — no longer asking, just giving. Her hips rolled against his hand, chasing the pressure, and the rough wood bit harder into her thighs with each shift.
She let her head fall back against the stacked equipment, the metal edge cold against her nape. His other arm wrapped around her waist, steadying her as she bucked against him, and she felt his breath hot on her neck, uneven, waiting.
The sound she made was swallowed by the party below — a low, helpless thing that she barely recognized. Her fingers dug into his shoulder, gripping the worn leather as the tension coiled tighter, hotter, building in a way she had stopped herself from feeling last time.
He worked her through it, patient and relentless, his thumb finding the rhythm she hadn't known she needed. She felt his forehead press against her temple, his breathing ragged, and she realized he was holding himself back, letting her take what she needed.
The orgasm crested fast, a sharp, breaking wave that tore through her chest and pulled her under. She bit down on his shoulder — hard, through the leather — to keep from crying out, her body shuddering against his, her nails scraping the worn jacket as she rode it out.
He held her through every tremor, his arm tight around her waist, his fingers still inside her, gentle now, not pushing, just there. She felt his lips press against her hair, a soft kiss she almost didn't register through the ringing in her ears.
Her jaw ached where she had clamped down. She loosened her bite, her lips brushing the leather, and tasted salt and dust and him. Her forehead stayed pressed to his shoulder as she caught her breath, the world tilting slowly back into focus.
His hand eased out of her, slow and careful, and she felt the absence like a cold draft. She heard his breathing, rough and uneven, felt his chest rise and fall against hers, and she knew he was waiting for her to speak, to move, to tell him what this meant.
She didn't. She stayed pressed against him, her body still humming, her thighs trembling against the rough wood, and let the silence hold them both.
She lifted her head from his shoulder and met his eyes. The bare bulb caught the flecks of gold in his irises, and she saw something there she hadn't seen in a decade — not the guarded watchfulness of the cinematographer, but something raw, unshielded. His hand was still on her hip, palm flat, fingers splayed against the silk bunched around her waist.
Her voice came out rougher than she expected, scraped clean by the orgasm and the silence. "That was —" She stopped. Shook her head. What word could possibly hold the weight of what had just passed between them?
"Yeah." His thumb traced a slow circle on her hip, the pressure barely there. He wasn't rushing her. Wasn't filling the space with words that would cheapen it. He was just waiting, his whiskey-brown eyes tracking the micro-expressions that flitted across her face, reading her like he used to read a script.
She lifted her hand from his shoulder and touched his jaw. The stubble scraped her fingertips, rough and familiar in a way that made her chest ache. He closed his eyes at the contact, just for a second, a long blink that told her more than any confession could. He had missed this. Her touch. Her choosing to reach for him.
"I'm not going to disappear," she said, the words falling out before she could catch them. She hadn't known she needed to say that until she heard it in the air between them. "I know I did before. I know I walked away and didn't look back. But I'm not —" She bit her lip, the same habit she'd never broken, and felt the ghost of her own teeth where she'd clamped down on his shoulder.
He opened his eyes. The ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth — dry, familiar, devastatingly tender. "I know the difference." His hand slid from her hip to her thigh, a slow, grounding drag of his palm over her skin. "You dropped the script this time. You didn't close it."
The reference hit her square in the chest. Page forty-two. The coffee ring. The word always written three times in a scene she'd shot with a double because he'd been on another continent. The script she'd dropped as an invitation, and he had picked it up.
She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his. The rough wood bit into her bare thighs, the party thumped below, and the air between them smelled of damp concrete and salt and the metallic tang of the storage room. "I don't know what we're doing," she admitted, her breath brushing his lips. "I don't know what happens tomorrow, or at the premiere, or when Jade asks why I keep looking at you like I'm starving."
"Then don't look at tomorrow." His hand found hers, calloused fingers threading through hers, squeezing once. "Look at me. Right now. That's all I need."
She lifted her head and met his eyes, letting him see the answer she couldn't yet speak aloud, as the single bulb flickered once and held steady above them.