Chapter 2

He didn't cooperate. He turned his cheek to her as his face neared hers. He had said she could do this, but she wanted to teach him a lesson. She couldn't do that if all she kissed was his cheek.

She had no choice though, at least not at first. Her lips pressed to his cheek. His beard was in the way, but it was soft.

"MMMMM," she buzzed loudly. At the same time her left hand went up and cupped his chin, with her fingers on his right cheek. She pressed with her fingers, and was suddenly kissing the corner of his mouth. His moustache was tickling her nose. "MMMMMM," she buzzed again. It sounded like she was trying out for a soup commercial, to her anyway. She pulled at his chin again and his lips slid onto hers.

Her eyes were open, because she wanted to see the look in his when she pushed her tongue into his mouth. Her peripheral vision told her something was moving toward her face, on both sides. His hands captured her head. Half his fingers were on the clean shaven parts of her scalp and the rest mussed her hair. They were warm, and she suddenly had the image of an NBA basketball player holding a ball that was dwarfed in his hands.

His lips moved fully onto hers, parted slightly, and they nipped at her suddenly slack ones.

"Mmmmmm," he went through his nose. He sounded like he meant it.

His tongue flicked lightly between her lips, licking her upper lip, and then moving to her lower one. It wasn't IN her mouth, exactly, but its touch was so soft and so tentative that it was somehow more intimate than if he was trying to lick her tonsils.

He pulled her face against his. She could feel the strength in his hands, and she knew instinctively that she couldn't possibly get away from him without kicking and screaming.

She didn't feel like kicking and screaming, though. This was a very nice kiss.

Her tongue flicked out all by itself and pushed lightly at his. His lips sucked at the tip of it, closing.

"Mmmmmmm," he went. He wasn't playacting. The receptors in her brain that evaluated that noise said, "He really DOES want to kiss you!"

His right wrist had pressed against her hand, where it held his chin. Her other hand came up and she held his bearded face as she started kissing him back.

"Mmmmmmmm," she moaned, as his lips opened back up and his tongue came out to play.

Then it was a hundred and twenty seconds of "Mmmmm" and "Uhhhh," said into each other's open mouths, as they had to breathe, and one kiss turned into a series of six or seven. His hands slid down to her shoulders, still heavy on her body, still warm, and still pulling her toward him.

Now she could push him away though, if she wanted to.

She didn't want to. She was dizzy with the excitement of these kisses. She couldn't remember the last time a man's lips had told her so forcefully, but so tenderly, that a kiss was precious, and something to celebrate.

He finally pulled back.

"Wow," she breathed, her breath a rush of air that emptied her lungs in that one syllable.

He looked past the left side of her head, and she turned it to find his script right there, in his hand. It must have been pressed to her head first, and then her shoulder, and she'd never felt it at all!

"Now that was a kiss," he said.

Her next line was supposed to be "Can we do that again?" but they stopped, because she was panting too hard, and was in both no shape and no mood to read from the script. Both reached up and turned their microphones off again.

"That was very good," he said. "I told him we'd take a break after that. You OK?"

"No," she sighed softly. "I was going to teach you a lesson. It didn't work out that way at all."

"Sorry," he said. "I got a little carried away." He actually blushed. "You sounded really good, though. I think it helped." The part of her brain that determined the truth or bullshit factors at play in discussions like this threw up a big white "TRUTH" flag.

"That was ... surprising," said Layla, tilting her head and looking at Bob, her right eye almost covered by her hair.

The man opened the door and walked in. His mouth was hanging open.

"I've never heard anything like that," he said. "How in the WORLD did you make that sound so real?"

Bob opened his mouth but Layla cut him off.

"We're actors!" she said.

The man brushed his hand over his forehead, almost like he was wiping away beads of sweat.

"Well if you keep acting like that, I can guarantee you work for the next three years!"

"I'll remember you said that," said Layla.

As stated before, Layla was a pragmatic girl. She was intelligent too. What she was feeling at that moment was something complicated, but simple at the same time. She had liked that kiss. She had liked it a lot. That it had been with this man who she'd only just met was one of the things that made it complicated. That she didn't know his last name registered with the part of her brain that recognized the complications inherent in what was going on. So did the fact that he was much older than she was, and that she had a little boy, and that she didn't even know if he was married or not. He'd talked about his grown up children, but had said nothing at all about a wife.

But the simple part was really quite simple.

"We're ready to go on," she said to the man.

"Right!" he said, almost scurrying back out into the mixing booth.

Layla turned to Bob.

"If there are any more kissing noises ... we kiss, OK?"

His eyes widened a bit, but not for long.

"Got it," he said.

There were more. Whoever this Lubrican person was, he liked to make things build up slowly. When Megan asked if they could do that again, Mr. Wilson said he'd be happy to help her learn to enjoy kisses to their utmost.

They spent another fifteen minutes speaking lines, broken up by kisses. She loved them. It was obvious he did too. The hard part was keeping from adlibbing. Once she said "I could do this for hours," which wasn't in the script. The man didn't come yell at them, though, and they went on.

Then, suddenly, Bob said "You'd better go home, Megan. We don't want your parents to start worrying about you, and ... I feel like teaching you more than just kissing. Yes ... you'd better go now."

Layla reacted like it was real life. She didn't want to stop. She wanted the kissing part to go on for two more chapters. She really COULD kiss him for hours. His hand waving at her and pointing to the script made her jerk. Her eyes went to the lines he had spoken and she saw her next line at the very bottom of the page.

"OK," she sighed softly.

It turned out that studio time had been allocated on a per chapter basis. They had already gone over the allotted time for the two chapters they'd read through, so the man, whose name turned out to be Charles, told them they were done for the day. He also asked if they could both come back the next day.

They looked at each other. Bob nodded, and then raised his right eyebrow, an obvious "Is that OK?"

"You got a phone?" asked Layla.

"Sure," said Charles. He took them into a small office where there was a phone on the desk.

Layla picked it up and dialed.

"Julie?" she said into the phone. "Can you watch Aidan tomorrow too? It went pretty well today." She listened and then said "OK, great." She put the phone back and said, "Tomorrow is fine."

They walked out together, but it felt different somehow. All the doubts came rushing back. She didn't know him. She had spent twenty minutes making out with him ... but she didn't really know much about him. She suddenly felt awkward. What did he think? Was he thinking that she'd throw herself at him? Did he expect things to just escalate?

"I'm starved," he said. "This acting stuff is hard work."

She blinked. It sure didn't SOUND like he was hot and bothered. She couldn't help but glance down at the front of his pants. The expected lump was there, but his pants were loose, so she couldn't tell much about it. She was horrified to feel the urge to reach down and feel, to see if he was hard. Her panties were damp. There was no doubt of any kind about that. She'd been turned ON, back there in that studio.

"Could I buy you dinner?" he asked, looking straight ahead. "I feel like I should compensate you for pushing you into all that."

"You didn't push me into anything!" she said, wanting to retain as much independence as she could, under the circumstances. Those circumstances played back through her mind, though, and she felt a little ungrateful. "Well, OK, you pushed me a little bit," she said. "But it wasn't so bad."

"It wasn't anywhere close to bad," he said.

She saw the ends of his moustache rise and knew he was smiling. She'd never realized how much a beard could hide facial expressions.

"You're very naughty," she said. "You know that, don't you?"

"I know," he said. "Thanks for not getting mad at me. I really appreciate that."

"Yes, you can buy me dinner," she heard her mouth say. Her mind raced. "But you have to buy it for my little boy too. He's been at the sitter's all day and I don't want to leave him there any longer than I have to."

"I'd be delighted to meet him," said Bob.

Layla's built in lie detector waved another white flag.

"Dinner" turned out to be a trip to Chucky Cheese's, by Layla's choice. That was primarily because Aidan could play there, as well as eat. It also made it easy to talk, or to refrain from talking, if that was how things turned out. Having Aidan with her did the same thing. She could spend time taking care of him, if things got weird.

They didn't. At least not at first. Bob was friendly toward Aidan, but no more so than toward Layla, really. He was relaxed and seemed just the same as he'd been at lunch. He told a few stories and asked a few questions.

While Aidan was playing in a net full of colored balls, burrowing down under them to pop up somewhere else and yell, "Here I am!" Bob pulled out his now somewhat bedraggled script.

"Have you read ahead?" he asked.

"Not yet," she said. "Getting through today was enough for me."

"It gets ... um ... well ... there are more noises to make."

"What kind of noises?" she asked.

"Kind of ... explicit," he said, frowning.

"You mean they have sex," said Layla.

"Yeah," he sighed. "It is an adult novel, after all."

"Do you want to have sex with me, Bob?" she asked.

Now where had THAT come from?! she wondered.

"What?" He looked pale and his eyes were wide.

"I didn't mean to ask you that," she said, blushing. "I don't know why I said that."

"Oh," he said, looking less like he was about to keel over. "OK."

It hung there, though. It couldn't be taken back. She looked away, but her eyes darted back as she blushed. The startled look on his face left it as her eyes continued to flitter this way and that.