Colder than Ice Read online

  “Alright?” came his muffled voice into the top of her hair.

  Sophie mm-hmmed and relaxed against Tristan’s shoulder. It was like her heart had forgotten how to work, and then started back up again, twice as fast.

  The movie’s heroine sat on a fire escape of her apartment building looking out over the city lights and sadly eating a takeout container of Chinese food alone, and in the lull, Sophie said,

  “Are you planning to visit your family while we’re there? Should I dress a certain way?” The possibility had just occurred to her, and she was eyeing her suitcase and its lack of red carpet gowns with a frown. Tristan pulled back to look at her.

  “Do you want to meet my family?”

  Sophie honestly couldn’t tell from the tone of his voice whether he thought that it was a good idea or a bad one, and the two of them gazed at each other for a moment.

  “I—” she began, but couldn’t figure out which path was one of least destruction. She didn’t want to presume that her fake boyfriend would want to go that far, but at the same time, maybe the Ecclestons would expect that sort of thing, having been in the entertainment industry for such a long time themselves.

  Tristan finally hmmed. On screen, the male protagonist was running through torrents of rain while carrying the heroine’s umbrella, trying to return it to her just minutes before his final match as a gesture of respect.

  She waited and watched him stare at the rug in front of them for a few long beats.

  “I think,” he said at last, “It’s probably best if you don’t get entangled with them.” He’d paused to come up with the most diplomatic way of telling her that, and rather than being insulted, Sophie found herself with more questions. “Gabriella was…” He looked up at the screen as the two romantic protagonists kissed, the camera spinning around them in giddy joy. “She could do no wrong.” Tristan glanced at her. “My father always seemed to prefer her over anyone else I associated with, the way she’d go after what she wanted at all costs. Awards, particular roles, sponsorship deals…”

  “She sounds ambitious.” Sophie tried to be as diplomatic as possible—this was the first time she’d ever really heard him talk about his ex. It was an eerie feeling, knowing so much about a woman she’d enjoyed watching in other movies.

  Tristan nodded in reply. She’d gathered as much from the few interactions she’d had with the woman, but Sophie didn’t want to disrupt the fragility of Tristan actually talking about his family as well. Gabriella could wait—this trip was bigger.

  And Sophie watched as Tristan seemed to deflate, the credits running over into the black screen asking them if they were still watching.

  “If I’m being perfectly honest,” he said slowly, “I’m not particularly fond of my family. I’m sure you’ve gathered as much.”

  “You don’t mention them very often,” she offered.

  “Being from an acting family with a name that dates back centuries comes with a towering sense of responsibility,” he murmured. “You’ve seen the office in my apartment—I keep everything pop culture there, nothing gets out of that room. It’s all got to be a big secret, because it’s a blight on the Eccleston name.”

  “Really,” said Sophie.

  “Yes. It’s like you said—I’m supposed to be into John Donne and Shakespeare, or be off constantly reciting Yeats. I’ve been told what a waste it is that I don’t use my voice for recording audiobooks of classical poetry.” Tristan finished, biting his lower lip with an emphasis that surprised her.

  “I guess I did assume that you’d just naturally be into that side of things—having a degree in theater, being so fully immersed in it,” she admitted.

  “I didn’t have a clue who I was until I came to the States. It never even occurred to me that I could do something other than the same old period pieces, or RSC, or whatever was going on in the West End. Of course, I still—” He stopped, and something happened in his jaw for a moment, and Tristan smiled at her. “You don’t have to worry about meeting my parents—we’ll be so busy with filming anyway,” he said, and wrapped his arm around her again.

  He still what? she thought, Still likes the big-hat-and-pond productions?

  “It’s hard to know that your parents are disappointed in you,” Sophie said into the fabric of his sweater. Tristan’s shoulder was warm and firm against her cheek, and she pressed her temple into it for a moment. “Pretty sure mine are still mad that I gave up a measly 401k to write about a woman in spandex with a cool pickaxe on a chain.”

  “But you’re so good at it.” He reached over and tucked a loose curl out of her eyes.

  “My dad wanted me to stick with the desk job until I could pay back my student loans. For all that 401k was worth—I wasn’t even making enough to really save anything into it,” Sophie said. “And just because you win an Eisner doesn’t mean that Fannie Mae doesn’t still call you once a month looking for interest payments. Or that Dad won’t quit dropping hints about how ‘maybe someday I’ll use those expensive business classes’. They were a required credit, I was an English major, jeez.” She leaned back against his chest and looked up at him, Tristan gazing at her down his perfect nose. “I guess what I mean by all that is that I can relate, a little bit.”

  “But what you’re really saying is that we don’t have to go see anybody’s parents, least of all our own.”

  “Nope,” said Sophie cheerfully, “All we really have to do is film you in a wig, and make out lots.”

  “Ah ha,” said Tristan quietly, and leaned forward to kiss her and make that happen. She chuckled through the kiss, but he deepened it, and pretty soon she’d forgotten what she was doing at all.

  It wasn’t like the other times he’d kissed her. This felt definitive, as though he had a clear sense of what he wanted, and was curious if she did, too.

  And then Tristan’s tongue brushed very lightly over her bottom lip, and Sophie’s lips parted all on their own, as if her brain couldn’t quite catch up to what was happening. She pressed closer to him before she knew what she was doing, closer to that warmth and hint of cologne, replaced with the overwhelming smell of him, of the deeply unique way he smelled as a person. Not as a celebrity or a gifset or a character.

  Just Tristan. As a human being.

  It was exactly the right level of closeness to him, as though everything they’d been doing up until this point was just acting. They’d just been pretending and hoping that maybe it would resolve itself, or the filming would finally end and she could go home and look back on it like a funny story.

  Tristan moved his fingertips over Sophie’s throat, and she realized that had never been in the cards anyway.

  As he moved to run his—fantastic, she thought—open mouth over the spot he’d caressed, she leaned against his jaw and breathed, bringing it all together.

  “Do you want—”

  Which one of them had said that? Maybe she’d thought it and somehow he’d said it out loud. Or was it both of them at the same time? Sophie could feel her body keyed up, warming quickly to the way his fingers had brushed aside her hair so he could concentrate in the one spot that had made her toes curl and her breath catch.

  He pulled back, but only slightly, and Sophie could feel the tips of his long eyelashes brushing against her as gently as his hands had.

  He would be very gentle, she thought, but up for whatever she asked for.

  Sophie looked up at him, gazing down at her with the strangest look. It was a combination of saintly patience and intrigue, as though he was sizing her up without being arrogant or measuring how far he could get away with pushing her.

  But she could also see the way his pupils were dilated against the cornflower blue of his eyes. Kindness, yes, but lust too. That was evident from the way his voice had dropped at least an octave.

  “We’ve never talked about this,” she said. “We never negotiated this part of the fake relationship.”

  Tristan raised his eyebrows just a touch and said,

&n
bsp; “Are we negotiating now?”

  She began to fidget, but the position of his hips and the fact that Tristan had wound one of her curls around his finger told Sophie that this was all flirtation now.

  “Hmm,” she said with a growing smile, and tucked her hair back to pull it out of his reach. “I suppose so. How do people in Hollywood negotiate their sex lives?”

  “Usually with a couple of lawyers in the room,” he said, and then cringed. “That was a bad joke, sorry.”

  Sophie found herself chuckling anyway.

  “We could make some calls, draw up some contracts, have everyone sign in triplicate or whatever the standard procedure is, and maybe in four-to-six business weeks we could proceed with formalities.”

  “Or,” said Tristan, ambling right up to Sophie and looking down at her with an intensity that surprised her with its suddenness, “We could just throw caution to the wind.”

  Her breath caught in her chest again.

  “And skip the notarization process? Hot,” she said, just before Tristan leaned forward and kissed her, his lips burning against her like a consuming fire. Somehow in the midst of getting handsy, they wound up at the foot of her bed. Sophie hadn’t even remembered walking into the room of her own accord. Maybe he’d picked her up while wrapping her in his long lean arms.

  Sophie brushed her hand over his jaw as they sank back onto her bed. Tristan slid out of her view, leaving her staring up into the ceiling as the edge of her dress came up and that mouth, that mouth moved over the bottom edge of her navel.

  And then he was there, she was exposed and he was there, circling and Sophie felt everything build so quickly that it was more of a shock than the fact that they were doing this, he was running his flat tongue over her and then twisting her between his thumb and fingertip, bolder than she’d been expecting but not unwelcome—

  And Sophie let go until the feeling of her own blood roaring in her ears was loud enough to bring her back to him.

  She could have slowed down then, could have savored the act of pulling the green sweater over his tight and lean muscles and chest, but the only thing that stood out was suddenly the immense heat rising off of him. They both fumbled with his belt, scrambled for the button at his trousers, and he had pulled her dress across her breasts, over her head and on the floor, and had dipped his head to brush his mouth across the flesh below her collarbone when a shrill sound like an emergency alarm went off from the other room.

  Sophie froze where she was.

  Tristan’s eyes darted, but he didn’t deem it an important enough interruption, and began applying himself to gracefully working his arms into a twine at her back, undoing the clasp of her bra.

  The shrill noise went off again. And then again, right on the heels of the previous one. Sophie turned; she didn’t recognize the noise. Was it a broken fire alarm in the kitchen? God, what a time for shit like this to happen.

  Tristan pulled her back, and had wrapped his arms around her, pressing the two of them together, letting her feel the heat and physical evidence of his desire for her, when the sound went off again, this time sustained as it became a series of alarms.

  He let out a full-throated growl into her hair.

  “Is that you?”

  “It’s the publicity team. They must be finished packing my luggage and want to give me the full rundown of what’ll be expected of me and when.”

  Tristan leaned back, still with Sophie in his arms, and looked up at the ceiling as though he could plead his case with a higher authority to just make the interruptions stop.

  “I must be cruel only to be kind,” he muttered. And with an annoying ache in her belly and a feeling like she’d just had her winning lottery ticket revoked and disqualified, Sophie watched Tristan disappear into the living room, sweater in one hand.

  He had one arm in it and was looking at his phone screen when she followed.

  “Yep,” he said shortly with a sigh, looking very disappointed himself. Sophie crossed her arms, unsure of what to do for a moment.

  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Tristan began.

  “You know what?” Sophie made the executive decision to just say it, to just be confident and come out with it. “We’ll have a chance to think it over on the plane ride.”

  “What d’you mean?” He’d pulled his head through the sweater and the gorgeous swimmer’s body disappeared from view.

  “If nothing else, we’ll have a chance to daydream about it the whole way over there. Who knows, maybe we’ll find a cure for jetlag.”

  Tristan bent over with laughter, all traces of his bad mood gone. He kissed her once, then again, then on the top of his head.

  “I’ll text you when I get home,” he said.

  Sophie stretched out on the bed, utterly naked, as the door shut behind him. She could call Ashley—was supposed to, in fact. It was time for their nightly chat, and she’d promised her friend that the two would talk before Sophie’s international flight.

  But she didn’t want to. She felt restless, and knew it had to do with the pressures of incomplete expectations. She could do what she usually did—browse Tumblr, reblog some fan art and set photos, then lay back and scroll through her feed of Tristan photos.

  Somehow that seemed like it would pale in comparison to the real thing that had just left her high and dry—well, not really—and anticipating the next forty-eight hours.

  No, this was a lovely discovery.

  His hands, roving over her, trustworthy and daring at the same time. The look in his eyes suggested that he wasn’t the sort of person who’d leave her unfulfilled or anything less than fully satisfied.

  She’d seen the human being at the center of him in lust and desire, now.

  And Sophie wasn’t planning on taking a step back from that.

  Chapter Eleven

  First class was always good, but this was even better.

  And somehow twice as bad.

  The gentle, almost undetectable sensation of an airplane usually put Tristan to sleep.

  But he was wide awake, thinking.

  They’d had champagne courtesy of the director, Poppy Ryan, and Tristan and Joanna had put their heads together and plotted in the way that felt like what real siblings did to make sure that everyone in coach would have some too. Dinner had been served, a nice filet mignon and a particularly creamy jacketed potato swimming in butter that he hadn’t thought twice about eating. Chocolate cake with a mirror glaze, and a little pot of bananas foster as well. For some reason he was perfectly content to leave any semblance of healthy eating behind—something about being happy, maybe even in love, that made one want to eat more, he supposed.

  That, and getting a taste of Sophie that he hadn’t been expecting.

  Tristan had started fidgeting the moment Sophie had lifted the last spoonful of Béarnaise sauce to her lips and licked it clean, taking her time. Like she was considering the possibilities of what could be done once they reached London, got into his flat, threw their suitcases into a corner, and just—

  She was fucking with him. He could feel it, no matter that she’d turned to him and blinked in surprise at the look on his face.

  And after the china had been cleared away, she’d happily fallen asleep against his shoulder, without even turning the overhead light off. He’d reached over to the panel of buttons by her side of the reclining pod and pressed it, pulled the blanket up, and waited to join her in slumber.

  Tristan had sat there, dutifully keeping his eyes closed, trying not to think of anything.

  The image of Sophie on her back, naked, legs stretched out as he pushed them back, folded them and pressed forward, his lips to hers, making her gasp in one beautiful stroke.

  Two sleeping pills, ear plugs, and a sleeping mask later, and Tristan was not any more asleep or ready to be asleep than he had been—he checked his watch—four hours ago. He was aching, mind, body and soul.

  Dear God, this was going to be a long flight—and al
l he could do was think, and be alone, which only made things… worse.

  Sophie breathed in sharply, reached up with one hand to rub her nose, and continued sleeping. Tristan froze and waited until she settled before he let his thoughts wander back. There was no way he could wake her up; it wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t just the reality that would never meet up to fantasy that didn’t even make sense to him—Sophie deserved better than some inartful fumbling around in a water closet forty thousand feet above the ocean.

  He wanted soft white feather duvets, pots of tea on a rainy and lazy Sunday morning in front of the huge windows that overlooked the street in Islington where he’d lived since graduating Oxford. Near enough to the theatrical world, but far enough away from the family estate. Croissants and the Times Book Review, crossword puzzles and the afternoon Eastender—those were the sorts of things he actually missed while in California. Proper rainy weather, the hissing honk of red city buses letting their pneumatic pistons go up and down to reach the low sidewalks.

  Certainly it wasn’t the same as having shops stay open late, or even 24 hours a day, or having clear and sunny days as far as the eye could see. But then, Los Angeles had a strange sense of false closeness that had seemed to throw loneliness into sharper relief than ever before. At least London had the decency to be foggy sometimes, so you could pretend that your ennui was just because of the weather.

  He hadn’t wanted to leave London, not really, but it had surrounded him with nothing but bad memories, and he had been more than ready for a change of any kind. Even Guernsey would’ve been preferable. As it was, Tristan had taken a detour to Bali on his way back to LA, and hadn’t been sure until recently that going to California for an extended period was a good idea.

  “Hey,” said a voice next to him suddenly, and Tristan looked up quickly to find Joanna squatting down in the aisle next to him.