Over the past few weeks, he’d made sure to take the scene apart and look at it from every angle. He’d created a shot list that was by far the most technical of any so far. He knew exactly how the scene would play out, that the core deep sensual connection wasn’t only coming to its ultimate conclusion between Jo and Graham, but was in fact a new beginning for both of the characters as they realized just how much they needed each other to fully come back to life.
And yet, the truth was that he hadn’t been turning the scene into a technical exercise just for Tatiana’s benefit.
He’d done it for himself, too.
Sex scenes had never been an issue for him before. Until now...when he’d finally learned the true power of lovemaking in real life.
Because when he touched Valentina, when he kissed the bare skin at the curve of her shoulder, when he slid into her and felt her gasp of pleasure all the way down deep in his soul, sex became something so much bigger, so much more important than just pleasure and orgasms.
He looked up from the notes he’d made in the margins of his script just as Tatiana walked onto the set, with Valentina flanking her from behind. It was difficult to keep his focus on his co-star when his every sense came alive around the woman who had started to mean so much to him, but if there was ever a time he needed to stay completely in tune with the younger Landon sister, it was now.
“Ready for our game of Twister?”
He was glad when she grinned at him. “You bet. Let’s do this thing.”
When Tatiana went to take her place on set, Smith felt Valentina touch his arm.
“I know you can’t go easy on her today,” she said, “and that you need to film the scene exactly as you wrote it, but—”
“I’m going to make this as painless as possible,” he vowed in a soft voice. “For all of us.”
But Valentina wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was staring at her sister’s back with such a bleak look in her eyes that he wanted desperately to reach for her, to pull her into his arms and swear to her that nothing that was going to happen on set today had a damn thing to do with what the two of them were building together.
Smith was a heartbeat from doing it, her protests and rules about keeping their affair secret be damned, when her eyes finally met his.
“I trust you with her.” She nodded as if trying to convince herself that what she was saying was true. “I really do.”
Considering her sister meant everything to her, her trust that he wouldn’t hurt Tatiana today meant a great deal to him.
But not nearly as much as it would have meant to know for sure that Valentina trusted him not to hurt her.
* * *
Valentina’s hands were clenched so tightly that the skin on her palms was shredded by her nails within minutes of Smith and Tatiana taking their places on the set. But she didn’t feel the physical pain, not when she could barely breathe past the tightness in her chest.
Smith said something that had her sister laughing and then, the next thing she knew, the cameras were running and Tatiana was in his arms, his mouth coming down over hers. In that moment that their mouths touched in passion for the first time, bile rose up so high and fast in Valentina’s throat that she had to cover her mouth with both hands and swallow hard to keep from actually being sick in front of everyone.
Again and again, the kiss was captured from different angles, but it never got easier for her to watch, never hurt any less to see her sister act like she was melting into Valentina’s real-life lover’s arms. It didn’t matter how many times Valentina reminded herself that it wasn’t real, that they were just acting, that their paychecks necessitated the kiss that never seemed to end.
But that endless kiss was better, so much better, than when the scene moved forward...and clothes started coming off as Smith and Tatiana moved together toward the bed in character.
Were it not for the promise she’d made her sister not to move an inch, Valentina would have run as far and as fast as she could. But she couldn’t. She had to stay right where she was, with a front-row seat to