Page 6 of Total Creative Control

Skye, wait. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I was stupid. (Beat)

Thanks for coming back for me. I didn’t think you would - I thought that was it for me.

SKYE

(His expression softens)

Me too, reporter boy. (briskly) Now get your arse moving. If we don’t get to the surface in the next ten minutes, we’re toast.

Chapter One

Aaron

Three years later

“Wait,” Aaron said, sitting forward excitedly. “Wait, I’ve got it. Skye turns to Faolán and says, ‘The difference is, if it had been you in there, I’d have ripped his bloody head off.’ And then we end on that. No need for those last two lines at all.”

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Lewis’s office, pages spread out around him, the wall behind him filled with post-it notes. An organised kind of chaos that only he and Lewis fully understood. On the far side of the room, Lewis was pacing in front of the window. Or had been. He’d stopped when Aaron started speaking and now stood stock still, a slow smile curling one corner of his mouth.

“Yes,” Lewis said, moving back to his desk and dropping into his chair, reaching for his laptop to make the change. “Yes, that’s it. Perfect. Fuck, I wish we’d thought of that an hour ago.”

Aaron glanced at the clock on the wall—it was getting on for nine—and reached for another slice of pizza. “It would have saved some time,” he agreed, taking a bite. “But we got there. We just had to work through it.”

Sitting back in his chair, Lewis folded his hands behind his head and eyed his laptop screen with satisfaction. As always, Aaron’s gaze arrowed in on the point where his shirt stretched over his broad, toned chest and the buttons pulled slightly, revealing a sliver of tanned skin beneath.

Guiltily, he looked away.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t master his adolescent obsession with his boss’s body, not even after three long years of working for him. He couldn’t even call it a crush, not really. When it came to the kind of relationship Aaron wanted, Lewis was a non-starter. Definitely not boyfriend material. No, it was lust, pure and simple. A physical response that had nothing whatsoever to do with Aaron’s heart and everything to do with his unruly dick.

And it was embarrassing as hell. Though thankfully Lewis seemed to be oblivious.

“Yup, I think we’ve got it,” Lewis announced, nodding to himself. “That’s looking good. We can leave it there for tonight.”

“Really?” Aaron looked at him in surprise; these sessions usually went on much later. In fact, he’d been kind of counting on that tonight.

“Yeah,” Lewis said, “you should head home. We can work on the final scene tomorrow.”

“I don’t mind staying.” He nudged the pizza box towards Lewis. “There’s still some left.”

But Lewis put both hands on his desk and stood up. “I appreciate the offer, but actually I have to go. I’m meeting my brother for drinks in—” He looked at his watch, grimaced. “Shit, in ten minutes.”

Ignoring the spike of disappointment, Aaron reached for his phone. “I’ll get you an Uber, then.”

“Thanks.” Lewis snapped shut his laptop and reached for his bag. “We’re meeting at the Bat and Belfry.” He hesitated, then added, “You’re welcome to join us, if you like.”

“No, I should get back,” Aaron said because that’s what he always said. Because that’s what Lewis expected him to say. Since day one, there’d been a tacit understanding between them that they didn’t socialise outside work. They’d never explicitly acknowledged it, but it was there all the same, an invisible but nonetheless clear boundary. Aaron flashed a smile he didn’t really feel. “Say hi to Owen for me.”

He liked Lewis’s brother. Owen dropped past the office occasionally. He was a less... intense version of Lewis. Lewis but with a few more social graces.

“I will.” Lewis glanced around the office at the detritus of papers and post-it notes. “Fuck, the cleaners…”

“I’ll tidy up,” Aaron said, climbing to his feet. “You get going. Your ride will be here in”—he checked his phone—“three minutes.”

“You’re a diamond,” Lewis said as he came out from behind his desk.

Aaron lifted an eyebrow as he opened the office door and said flatly, “See me sparkle.”

Amused, Lewis snorted, but he stopped on the threshold, so close that Aaron’s dick pulsed with painful awareness, a familiar, helpless reaction to Lewis’s six-foot-two of lean muscle, his thick black hair—ruffled now from running his hands through it all evening—and his intense blue eyes.