Breaking Autumn: A Bad Boy Stuntman Romance Read online

  The harsh, too-confident way he spoke made me exhale all my expectations and sent lightening cracking through my veins. I bit hard into his muscle-packed shoulder to keep my smile from cutting my face in half.

  I felt his moan through my teeth. I should’ve guessed he’d like the sting of pain. Dante was a man whose profession was to take the hits that no one else could. How could he not like a little pain?

  I almost took a piece of him with me when he pushed me back into the shelving unit. Metal clattered and rattled, threatening to jump off the wall. Dante locked my gaze as he released my pussy. Towering over me, he stuffed two of his fingers into my mouth. I could taste myself on him.

  The thought of that curled my toes. It was crazy how wet he’d made me. I’d soaked through everything.

  “I’m going to ruin you.” There wasn’t a ghost of levity in his voice. It sent my already racing pulse into a full gallop.

  Dante was equal parts sexy and terrifying.

  All the veins in his beefy arm came to rigid attention as he cleared all the heavy-looking electrical equipment and tools off the work bench like they were children’s toys. Thousands of dollars of navigational tools and devices smashed against the floor. Glass shattered and springs flew free. The loud crash made my ribcage jump.

  Someone definitely would’ve heard that!

  Fear of getting caught twisted in my belly. How could he be so cavalier about this? Wasn’t he worried? Was Dante afraid of anything?

  Dante saw the apprehension in my eyes and smirked. He didn’t try to ease my fears; instead he seemed to drink them in. He sat me onto the now empty bench and offered only, “But you’re going to love every second of it.”

  Give in. The dark pools in his eyes demanded.

  “Are you going to talk or are you going to fuck me?” The words rushed out with such boldness that even I wasn’t sure who said them. He might’ve generally been unconcerned about the consequences, but my defiance was born of desperation. Who knew how long we’d have before we were discovered.

  Impressed, Dante raised his wounded eyebrow, then smiled as he raised my dress and pulled my panties completely off. The abrupt violence of the motion made me gasp. A sucking of air licked at my wet, newly uncovered flesh, making me shiver.

  Wearing my dress as a bulky belt, all my modesty drained away as I lunged forward, unfastening his belt and pants. My whole body needed to feel him. A rush of heat rolled up my hand when I unzipped him. I bit my lip and forced my fingers into his boxers and down his massive stem.

  I couldn’t wait any longer.

  Veins pulsed down his hardened cock like a living roadmap. Dante slipped a condom out of his pocket, then thumbed his pants down. I dropped my clutch when he slid me further onto the bench and leaned me against the back wall.

  “I see you came prepared.” I tried covering my mounting nervousness at seeing just how big he was, but knew the surprise and excitement was written all over my neck, chest and face with flushness.

  I was an introvert, granted one that made goofy internet videos, who preferred to stay home. It’d been longer than I cared to remember since I had sex with anything that wasn’t battery operated. I hoped Dante wouldn’t hurt me too much.

  “Always,” he said. He dragged a thumb across my clit and watched my whole body subtly spasm just for him. Fisting his cock, he pushed the engorged head against my slit, working it back and forth and turning me into a puddle like he promised.

  He was toying with me! I gritted my teeth and let out a hungry moan of my own.

  My eyes flashed as his member began splitting me apart. I whispered, “Slow. Please.”

  He didn’t voice it, but there was a look of acknowledgment in his eyes as he eased into me. His cock was so wide and long that I had to shift several times to take all of him in. All the while he read my face, watching to see if the pleasure shifted to the wrong kind of pain.

  Was that empathy in eyes? I didn’t think a man as arrogant as him was even capable of that. I of course assumed he’d be selfish in sex too.

  You are full of surprises, Dante Marks.

  He lifted my legs, hanging them over his shoulders, nearly folding me in half against the metal, windowed wall as he started slowly pumping into me. Slow eventually disappeared and his rhythmic movements became harder and faster.

  Fuck…the fullness he gave me turned my muscles into mashed potatoes.

  I craned my head back and sucked in as much air as I could. I nestled my fingers into their familiar position over my pussy and began rubbing my clit.

  “Oh no you don’t.” Without breaking stride, Dante slapped my hand away. “Your pussy is mine. All mine.”

  “I can’t get off with just—” a hard cock. Fuck, his balls slapped against my ass and I was still too embarrassed to say some things out loud? But it was true! No guy alone could ever get me off. I always had to help. “I need to touch myself.”

  Dante flashed a devilish smirk and dragged his hand up my body. His fingertips were little flaming coals, searing their way across my stomach and firmed nipples, all the way up to my throat.

  He leaned in, which bent me even more and whispered in my ear, “I’ll be the one who touches you. You’re going to need both hands just to hold on.” His hot breath and the kiss of his teeth against my earrings made the low rumble in his voice cut through me like a scalpel.

  I was a mess.

  “Oh God…” I breathed loudly. The coarseness of his thumb pushed into my clit and began to rub with devastating precision.

  “Pray to me,” His words rumbled in my ear. With his strength, tattoos, scars and hard, merciless eyes, Dante was white-hot sex and fire wrapped in every fantasy I’d ever had. The authority in his tone crushed me, sending me spiraling over the edge.

  I bit my scream off into my lip so hard I thought it was going to come away bloody. My hands slid along the work bench uselessly, desperately trying to grasp on to something as cannon-fire blasted behind my eyes.

  The orgasm rocked me to my core; I couldn’t contain my scream any longer.

  I was going to get us caught if I kept screaming like that! An annoying chirp of worry resurfaced, it cracked my lusty haze. Fortunately it was fleeting. If I could still feel the vibration of music two floors below us, then there was a good chance that no one could hear us now.

  Either way, with him all around me I physically couldn’t care about anything else. My thoughts had dissolved into cascading colors and sounds. The only clear thing that rattled through me was Dante’s thrusting force, over and over. My pussy was vibrating with spasms. The next climax took me by surprise.

  How was he doing this?

  “Dante…” I whispered, coming hard again. It was all I could say before every fiber in my body became tightened steel—all the way down to my inner walls. I crushed his cock. My nails found the back of his broad, defined shoulders and anchored for dear life. I was breathing and sweating harder than any jog n’ bitch session.

  “Fucking hell. You feel amazing.” He grunted through tense, flexed exertion. The sweat that didn’t drip off his chin rolled down between his perfect pecs and rocky abs. The muscles in his huge arms fired sporadically as he pushed hard into the workbench.

  I knew he was close by the way he buried himself far enough into me for sunbursts to appear behind my closed eyelids. I propped myself up on wobbly elbows when—much to my horror—the door swung open.

  “Hooollly Hell—” shouted an unfamiliar voice. I snapped my eyes open in horror. A young wide-eyed uniformed sailor had burst in, clipboard in hand. He was probably there to grab a piece of equipment. “What in the shit is this?”

  It was my worst fear come to slap me in the face!

  I knew this would happen! I was so fucking stupid! My back flopped down on the work bench with a sweaty thump as I whipped my arms out to cover my chest. My body temperature shot up to the point of scalding.

  “The fuck does it look like?” Dante turned his head just enough to give the man
a look that was bloodied barbwire. “Kindly fuck off.”

  The edge in Dante’s voice tensed the rest of him including his cock, which was still buried deep inside me. His subconscious flexing pushed my walls open a little wider sending a surge of ecstasy racing through me. I’d probably have moaned aloud if it wasn’t for the extreme amount of embarrassment I was feeling.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t be in here. You have to leave.” The sailor was clearly nervous at Dante’s size and irritated demeanor.

  Dante sighed heavily lowering his head when he realized the sailor wasn’t just going to leave. The sucking sound his cock made when he carefully slid out of me was fucking mortifying. I scrambled to unbunch my dress enough cover myself up.

  I wanted to die.

  Unabashed by his nudity, Dante turned to face the sailor who didn’t even look old enough to drink yet. Dante raised his arms slightly, turning his palms over. He smirked at the sailor’s hesitance and asked, “You going to be the one to make me?”

  The sailor glanced behind him to see if anyone was out there to back him up. The man’s face fell when Dante took a step toward him. Everything about Dante was intimidating from his physique and posture, to his raging, veiny, erection. The sailor pressed his clipboard to his chest defensively and took two steps back. He nervously muttered to himself, “I’m just trying to do my job.”

  Dante’s eyes narrowed on the clipboard, then he ripped it out of the sailor’s hands and read it. The nervous sailor tried his best not to glance over at me or down at Dante’s cock. He failed at both more than he didn’t.

  Finally Dante grabbed a part off a shelf behind me and pressed it and the clipboard into the sailor’s chest. “We good?”

  The sailor nodded, nearly tripped over his feet as he back peddled from the small room. The door swung closed and I nearly collapsed back on the table. I could not believe that just happened.

  “Where were we?” Dante turned back to me, all the previous tension in his face at dealing with the uninvited guest had completely dissolved.

  “Are you crazy?!” I balked, scrambling to find my clothes. “That terrified kid is going to tell—I don’t know— someone! Probably several someones with guns or something.” I had no idea what was going to happen, but I had no intention of anyone else seeing me naked today.

  “This isn’t the navy.” Dante laughed. “He’ll tell his captain for sure, but no one else will bother us.” Seeing that wasn’t nearly a good enough answer Dante elaborated. “There’s a lot of film business that comes through Boston. The last thing this company wants to do is piss off their clients and get passed over for all that future money.” Dante ran his finger down my hip and along the length of my thigh. “All we’ve done is buy this room for the rest of the night with no interruptions.”

  I stood up and twisted and straightened my dress out enough to actually wear again. As attracted as I was to Dante, being discovered like that really killed the mood for me. I felt terrible giving him blue balls, but apparently, I was not as adventurous as I thought. Getting caught like that gave me serious anxiety.

  “Dante…this was great. Really, really great, but I—” I shook my head, reaching for my ear stud. I wore that apprehension on every line in my twisted up face. Worry sank hard in my belly that he was going to be upset. But what else could I do? I just couldn’t go any further. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Dante’s eyebrows pitched in a surprise and confusion. Being denied obviously wasn’t something he was accustomed to. I braced for him to a dick about the whole thing, like the entitled celebrities that occasionally make the news.

  But that horribleness never came.

  After the moment of disbelief passed, Dante exhaled into a defeated smile. He blew the rest of his air out, gave me a smile that bordered on genuine, then slightly nodded his head in understanding.

  It was a sliver, the smallest crack in his façade. Right then I realized that behind his sexy, badass veneer Dante was handsome on the inside too. There was a glimmer of tenderness buried deep down in him that I desperately wanted to see.

  But the moment for that was past too.

  “Here.” He leaned over me. I breathed him in, his warm scent thick in my nose and heart. He snatched up my clutch which had slid to the edge of the bench and handed me my cell that had nearly fallen out. “I think someone’s been blowing up your phone.”

  “What?” Shit! The vibrations I felt earlier were from my phone? I thought that was the music! I riffled through my small purse and saw that I had twenty missed calls; all from Mom.

  I sighed. She probably wanted me to get her picture with a celebrity or something.

  “I’ll—” I started to tell Dante I needed to use the phone, but he interrupted me by drawing my chin up with his finger. He leaned in and kissed me sweetly on the cheek. Dante didn’t wait for any kind of reply, before leaving. He didn’t even so much as look back over his shoulder at me. He was just gone.

  I called her back, but the voice that answered deep and very male.

  “Who is this?” I asked cautiously.

  “Hi. My name is Dennis. I’m a medic.” The man’s voice was so calm that it took the edge of my building worry. “I’m calling because you were listed in this phone as an emergency contact. We have a woman here in the bottom level of the dance hall.”

  “You have a woman?” I asked having no idea what this guy was talking about.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry I don’t know the relation, if there even is one. Your caller info came up as…Little-miss-sassy-face.”

  “You have my mom.” I sighed. Hoping she hadn’t drunkenly yelled at the director like she threatened to earlier. I wondered if these ships had brigs like in the Navy. “Her name is Paris Moore and I’m her daughter Autumn. Is everything OK?”

  “Not really,” Dennis said, with an audible groan. “Your mom… She collapsed. You’d better get over here.”

  Chapter 5

  Dante

  Film and entertainment is a two-trillion dollar industry. Those were hard numbers to wrap your mind around. To put that in perspective, if Film were a country it would be worth more than all of the Untied Kingdom combined, ranking it as seventh in the world of economic superpowers.

  And beating out Disney for market share, Lionhouse Studio was at the top of the very short list of companies that ran the entire industry. The Lionhouse CEO, chairman and senior executive vice president—three of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world—sat opposite me right now.

  These people shaped an entire generation through media.

  I never had much patience with this end of filming, and most of the time I was able to avoid it like the plague. Sometimes that wasn’t possible, like today for instance. When these three called, you answered.

  I was a stuntman through and through. It was in my blood. Give me a script and a writer’s pipedream, and I’d turn that into a reality. I trained the actors and choreographed the impossible. You want a knife fight in zero gravity? Monsters tearing through New York? Aliens? Sentient cars kicking the shit out of each other? No problem.

  I was the best there was and that’s why I was here.

  “So you see, therein lies our problem,” continued Jonathan, the youngest of the three executives and current CEO. Unlike the other two, Jonathan was in his early forties. Of the group, he did most of the talking both privately here in his office and to the general public. He planted both smooth, manicured hands on the oak desk that separated us and leaned forward, trying to strike a warmer, more human presence. Glancing back at the older man and woman that flanked him, he finished, “We need your help.”

  I leaned back into my plush chair opposite the three of them, crossing my leg. My fingers drummed absently against the fine Italian leather of the armrest as I considered exactly what they were asking of me. The time I spent in the Bahamas filming the nature documentary; Swimming with Sharks, immediately came to mind.

  The CEO’s office was extravagant in a v
intage Hollywood way, oozing gold, dark wood furnishings, inlaid glass designs, diamond-set fixtures and intricately carved marble floors and walls. It was restored from their opulent grand opening in the roaring twenties, and was the showpiece of the entire studio. I’d met them here separately on various occasions, but never all together like this.

  “No,” I said evenly.

  “Dante—” Jonathan started.

  “I told you Ashley needed more time. She was nowhere near ready when you tapped her to perform. And we all know what happened then.” What they did to that poor girl was unforgivable. I fought to keep the edge from my tone; they were still technically my employers. Even if they weren’t, they controlled such a large part of the industry that I’d have trouble finding work with the other studios if they blacklisted me.

  Typically, a stuntman worked freelance under the Screen Actor’s Guild union hopping between production companies on a job by job basis, but I had a very sensitive agreement with Lionhouse.

  One I was beginning to regret more and more with each passing day.

  “And now you want me to do the same thing with another girl who has even less training, and in about half the time?” I continued, bile rising, scorching the words that left my throat. “With all due respect, are you out of your fucking minds?”

  “What happened to Ashley was a regrettable tragedy.” Jonathan frowned, more at my interruption than the fate of his actress. Meetings like this had their own footwork. It was a type of cruel tango where both partners fought to lead.

  Skill and reputation would only take me so far with them; I’d have to watch my tone going forward. People often forget that Hollywood was built on the backs of ruthlessness, exploitation and corruption. Being on the bad side of Lionhouse Studio was a dangerous place to be.

  We filmed the documentary in a brightly colored coral reef. It was all about understanding the nature of apex predators; and to truly do that I needed to be a part of their world. That meant no cage. Nothing separated me from them. Silent killing machines lurked all around me, occasionally darting in and out of the jagged, inky black holes in the coral reef.