Free Shooting Star (Beautiful Chaos) by Arianne Richmonde

dance with you.”
    “I am dancing with you.”
    “You’re dancing at me. I need to want to participate.”
    My back was still to him—he couldn’t see, thank God—the tears of humiliation welling in my eyes. Rejection. Being spurned. “What do you want?” I whispered.
    There was a long pause and he said, “You need to break me. Not sexually but in a deeper more metaphysical way.”
    Metaphysical? WTF? “Oh.”
    “What’s the action in this scene?”
    “To cry?” That would be easy at this point.
    “That could be the result. What’s the action ?”
    The lump in my throat hardly let me say the words, “I don’t understand you.”
    “The action that’s driving this scene? What does Skye want?”
    “She wants to get the hell out of jail!”
    “And what’s stopping her?”
    “The prison guard.” Duh ! “He’s her last hurdle. He’s the only thing stopping her freedom.” You know that, you jerk !
    “This guard is being played by a fifty-year-old. And remember this is set in 1964 and things were different then. You’ll have to think of a better way to ‘seduce’ him because if you do it like this—so blatantly—the audience will not only lose respect for Skye, they’ll be turned off.”
    Jake was turned off. He had lost respect for me. This playing-out-a-scene game before official rehearsals was bullshit and I’d had enough.
    “Let me go, you asshole!” I cried out, freeing myself from his grasp. “You’ve been screwing with my head for days. Ignoring me. Making me feel small and worthless like I’m invisible! You’re worse than my father. Using me for your own ends. Not even thinking for one moment that I’m only nineteen and just because I look like a woman on the outside and grew up before my time—” The words flew out of my mouth surprising even me—“I’m . . . I’m . . . People just want me for what I can offer them: money, a performance for their movies—it fucking sucks !”
    He spun me around so I was facing him. A glow of warmth flickered in his eyes, and his lips lifted into an almost imperceptible smirk as if he’d won a prize. But then he frowned. He looked up at me and he said, “Bring that vulnerability to this scene, Star.”
    “What? Are you serious ? I am not acting right now! This is for real, Jake. I feel used, like you just don’t give a shit about me as a person.” I struggled from his grip but he pulled me close so my crotch was practically in his face—he was still sitting. He bit his lower lip, lust oozing from his pores like rising steam. My eyes dropped down. His swim shorts were tented. He was huge. Hard as a rock. So I did affect him after all—my little dance had turned him on! But he suddenly let me go and stood up abruptly, turning his back on me.
    “Coward,” I spat out at his strong golden shoulders.
    “Fighting your demons head on is not cowardly, Star, you should know that by now.”
    I stared at the back of him, imagining myself tussling his hair, grabbing it as he pinned me on the sofa. I wanted him to kiss me, shut the words coming out of his mouth with my mouth.
    “You don’t know me, Star. Just think of me as your director, nothing more. The only thing I’m good for, as far as you’re concerned, is getting a great performance out of you. Trust me—I’m bad for you on any other level.”
    “Can’t we at least be friends?” my voice croaked.
    He jerked around and looked me hard in the eye. “Honestly? I doubt that very much.”
    His words were like daggers. “Why do you dislike me?”
    “Dislike you? Is that what you think?” He shook his head. “Come here, Star. Let’s sit down and talk, this is crazy.”
    I slumped down on to the oversized couch, sinking into its feathery comfort, watching him watch me. Boy, was he a mind fuck, or what.
    “Hang on,” he said, “I’ll get us some drinks.”
    There was a liquor cabinet hidden in a bookshelf, which I’d had no idea about. The hinges were so small when it