Who Better To Love: Chapter 10

Roman Holiday


Disclaimer: I own nothing but myself and my own ideas.

Rating: NC-17

Please see links to the first nine chapters "under the cut"

Thanks (sort of) to Jess, for her TOUGH LOVE :P




For those of you who haven't read the previous chapters, please do!

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 8


Who Better To Love Ch 10: Roman Holiday


Nikki awoke with the sun shining through the open window, casting rays of warm yellow light across her body. She stretched and yawned and pushed aside the soft blanket that had been placed over her, at some point, before she rose. She pushed her hair off her face and looked around the suite for Zac. All she found in the bathroom were a few wet towels on the floor, a raised toilet seat, and about a dozen different bottles of lotions, colognes, and hair products. She laughed in spite of herself. He wasn’t in the bedroom, as she found a perfectly-made bed covered in half-packed suitcases. Returning to the living room, she startled as the door opened. She heard his humming before she saw his face, and exhaled with relief.

“Morning, sunshine,” he called to her.

“Hah! I probably look more like death warmed over.”

“Not a chance!” They met in the middle of the living room and he threw an arm over her shoulder, pulling her into a sort of half-hug, then handed her one of the cups of green tea he carried in the other.

“I woke up and you weren’t here. I was wondering… I was wondering how you slept last night,” she changed the direction of her comment, not wanting to sound worried, or desperate.

“I slept great! Man, I don’t think I’ve slept that well in months!” As he turned away from her to toss his key card on the coffee table, he realized that he may have said too much. “I mean, I think I was really tired, and just slept like a rock, you know?”

“Mhm, I know what you mean.” And she did. She felt the same way.

“Oh, your mom was here, by the way.”

“What! Why? What happened? Oh my god, my mom! I totally forgot!”

“Don’t worry, Nik. She came by about half an hour ago to see if I knew where you were. She woke up and went into your bedroom and saw that you hadn’t slept there. Actually, I think she kind of wondered about us, but I let her in and she saw you sleeping on the sofa, fully dressed,” he laughed, “and she said she’d just let you sleep. I’d already gotten up and showered and everything before she came by.”

“Did she ask why I was here? I never even told her I was coming by last night. She was already in bed.”

“Yeah, of course, but I said that I called you to come and hang out, and then you got a headache and lied down, and I just let you sleep there. No worries.”

Nikki was incredibly relieved that it worked out like that, not prepared to have to be honest with her mother about everything that had happened between her and Zac over the last year.

*~*~*~*~*

“Oh my god, what a beautiful city!” Nikki exclaimed, as they rode into Madrid on their way to the hotel. “We’re so lucky, aren’t we, Zac!”

“Yeah, I really am…” he looked at her, “…we are!” Zac’s expression and words didn’t escape Karen’s now careful attention.

“I’ll see you soon?” he asked, as he hugged her in the elevator. They were in the back, behind several members of the Hairspray team.

“Yep, just let me put my stuff away and make a phone call, and I’ll come down to your room,” she whispered back.

“Nikki, what’s going on, honey?” Karen asked, when Nikki hung up the phone from Bryan.

“What do you mean, Mom? With Bryan? He’s working on scripting a short film for his Production class. He’s really excited about the theme he came up with, something about nuclear war and clowns,” she laughed. “I don’t really get it, but he’s excited! And he got that job at the studio on Fridays. And-“

“Nik, that’s not what I mean. What’s going on with you… and Zac.”

She had to ask. She had asked before, months ago, when they first got home to Great Neck. Nikki gave her the just friends line, and she bought it. She and Carl could tell that Nikki liked Zac, and suspected the feelings were mutual, but they never imagined their baby girl had gotten wrapped up in a relationship so devoid of certainty, so full of secrecy, and kept it from them for a year. Karen, who had been around her and Zac more often in Toronto, suspected that they may have gotten a little closer than they let on, but decided long ago to give her daughter some privacy. But, seeing them together again, in the midst of Vanessa’s scandal, seeing the tenderness between them, the way they looked at each other when they thought no one noticed, it was apparent that there was something more there. Either something had happened between them, or it was about to.

“Me and Zac? Nothing! Mom, you know that. We’re just friends!”

“Nik, I’m not blind! Or stupid.”

“I know, but, we are just friends.” Nikki turned and walked away from her mom, knowing that she had just told the truth. Not the whole truth, not the truth of the past, but for the time being, she and Zac were just friends.

*~*~*~*~*

“That premiere was amazing! It was hilarious to hear Spanish coming out of my mouth!” she laughed, curling up close to him as she linked her arm with his.

“I know! And of course your singing was perfect!” She smacked him lightly on the chest. “What? It was! It always is. I don’t know how you do it, going up there and just singing for all these people, and dancing.”

“You do it, too. In Vegas, and on Oprah, you were great!”

“Yeah, with everyone else, not by myself.” He never failed to marvel at her courage.

They walked arm in arm down the rustic stone sidewalk of old Madrid.

“It was kind of harder, tonight. It was hard not to think of things back home, and just focus on making it fun for everyone.” Zac gently pulled his arm from hers and wrapped it around her shoulders, holding her close to him. Her arm slipped around his waist, her hand resting comfortably on his hip. He knew that, as a New Yorker, who had lost family friends, this horrific anniversary was especially hard on her. “I can’t believe it’s been six years.”

“Me neither.” They held each other, as they walked down the narrow street, two friends who understood each other, loved each other, and needed each other, in every way.

*~*~*~*~*

“Oh, Zac,” Nikki breathed into his mouth hot on hers. “Zac, we can’t,” as she slid her hand up under his shirt, running her fingers over his muscular back.

“I know we can’t,” he groaned, as his hands slid down to her ass and lifted her up closer to him.

“We really can’t,” she repeated, as she broke from the kiss and lowered her mouth to his neck.

“Why can’t we, again?” he asked, as one hand ran up her side from her ass to the side of her breast.

“Because… because… I forget why, right now,” she stammered, between kisses she placed across his chest, several buttons now opened on his shirt. “But, we can’t.”

“I think we can.”

He pulled her tighter to him and kissed her hard, his hand now holding her head to his, his fingers tangled in the ringlets of her hair. She kicked off her shoes and pulled him down to the floor. Kneeling together, their pulses quickening, they tried to remember why they couldn’t. She lifted her arms as he pulled the blue cashmere sweater over her head. It was so soft in his hands, soft like her skin as he ran his hands over the small of her back.

“But….” She couldn’t think of any words to finish that sentence, her mind was so clouded with sensations and memories.

“No butts… except this one,” he smirked between kisses, as he squeezed her ass.

“Dork,” she teased, as she fidgeted with the last closed button on his shirt.

They knelt together, on the floor of his hotel room, their shirts tossed aside. Their hands were all over each other, their tongues moving in rhythmic unison.

“Now tell me why we can’t,” he asked again, his breath heavy and his mouth full of the taste of her as he swept his tongue across her lip. As he pressed his thumb against the hard nipple beneath her black, lacy bra.

His phone rang. Everyday blasted through the room, and she answered him, as she reached for her sweater, “That’s why.”

As she rode the elevator up to her floor, and pulled her wallet out of her bag, she looked at the picture of her and Bryan, his arms around her as they shared a swing in her backyard, and she repeated, with a sigh, “That’s why.”

*~*~*~*~*

It was the morning after. Well, not really the morning after. It just looked that way to any keen observer that saw them during the Hairspray photocall. Nikki had gone to bed with his scent all over her, his taste in her mouth, and the long list of reasons why nothing could happen between them at the front of her mind. But, during the course of her restless sleep, the memories wafted over her, the words he had said to her and the touch of his body connected with hers. And she began to think, tentatively, irrationally, recklessly, why not?

Standing beside him in front of a sea of photographers, she had thoughts of him in mind. Each smile she gave, each time she raised her eyebrow in the way that drove him crazy, she was thinking of him.

With his arm around her, the scent of her perfume and the softness of her hair as it grazed his cheek, he thought of her. When he looked down and saw the black lace of her bra showing through the white of her shirt, he felt the blood begin to drain from his brain to his groin.

”Did she wear that bra again for me?” he thought. “What is she thinking? What does this mean? And, I didn’t even get a chance to tell her yet.

They didn’t have a moment alone all day. Everywhere they went, they were accompanied by publicists and assistants and people fussing with their hair and trying to apply more make-up to their faces. Photographers and interviewers at every turn. They made it through the crazy puppet show of an interview, but the tension between them continued to grow. Zac would listen to Nikki answer a question, his mind wandering to the feel of her body, to the things he wanted to do with her. His eyes would fall to her chest without him even realizing it. He found himself standing in the middle of interviews to adjust his pants. Nikki wasn’t doing much better. Her eyes traced the angular contours of his body as he sat beside her. She licked her lips at the memory of kissing him the night before, at the memories of kissing him everywhere. Zac tried so hard not to blurt out something about Nikki, that he completely omitted listing any of her songs amongst his favourite numbers from the movie as he rambled on, and had some explaining to do later than night.

Finally, the day was over and they were left alone. No cameras, no questions. No one telling them what to do or where to go or how to sit or what to say.

“Nik, when Vanessa called last night… I never got a chance to tell you… I’ve been trying all day, but I never had a chance.”

“What, Zac?” she asked lazily, her eyes absorbing every line of architecture and every light they could of Madrid. She leaned her elbows on the railing of his balcony, taking an ivy leaf between her fingers.

“She wanted to know what I meant.”

“What you meant? When?” she asked, as she turned towards him.

“I didn’t tell you, because, well, I didn’t know how, I guess. I didn’t want to presume anything. But, after last night….” She looked at him, her brows furrowed in confusion. “The morning that she left Melbourne, we talked. I told her that I would stand by her, like I promised I would, but that I didn’t know what was going to happen when I got home. She was running around getting her stuff together and I didn’t even know if she heard me.”

Vanessa had heard him. She heard him say that he didn’t know if he could be there when he got home, the way she wanted him to be. That he didn’t know what he wanted anymore. His words burned in her mind. They pressed down on her chest and twisted her stomach and made her shake when she left his room. When she left his room and saw her in the hall. And then the real fear began.

“Well, last night, I told her again that I didn’t know how it was going to be when I got home. I didn’t know what I could promise her. She asked so many questions, but I told that we had to talk when I got home.”

“Did she ask… did she ask about me?” Nikki recalled the look that Vanessa had given her as they said good-bye.

“Yeah, she did. But I told her that we were friends. Because we were, we are. I couldn’t tell her anything else, not over the phone. We talked for hours, I hardly slept at all. But, I think she knows.”

“I told my mom,” Nikki blurted out.

“What! When?”

“Just now. Sort of.” She turned back to the view and breathed in the warm air of late-summer Spain, recalling her conversation with Karen.

”What are you doing, Nikki? Are you crazy?”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“With Zac. I’ve been watching you two kids, and there’s something going on. You can tell me, honey. Don’t you trust me?” She took Nikki’s hand, the strain showing on her face.

“Of course I do, Mom! But, there’s nothing to tell.” Nikki looked away.

“Don’t lie to me, Nik! Don’t give me that face you would make when you were little and you ate the cookies and tried to tell me that you hadn’t. I know you.”

“Mom, please! Don’t!”

“What about Bryan? He’s a good boy, Nikki, and he cares about you.”

“So does Zac,” she muttered.

“He has a girlfriend, Nikki! You think he’s going to give her up?”

“No. I don’t. But, I don’t know if it matters…. It didn’t used to matter….”

“What? Nikki, baby, don’t do this. Don’t lie to me like this. What would Daddy say?” Karen asked, desperately, tears in her eyes.

“I don’t know, Mom. Please don’t tell him, please!”

“But Nikki, tell him what?” Karen squeezed Nikki’s hand tightly.

“That… that Zac and I… last year… until… but not for awhile… but… maybe now….” She couldn’t face her mother anymore.

“Oh Nikki! Oh God, no!”

“I’m so sorry, Mommy,” and she pulled her hand away from Karen’s, then grabbed her bag and ran out the door.

“Oh shit, Nik!” Zac said, and pulled her towards him. He held her for a moment then asked, “What about Bryan?”

“I don’t know, Zac. I liked him, I do like him, but, I don’t know. I called him yesterday, but there just wanted anything there. Not what I wanted to feel, you know?” He nodded. “I decided yesterday that I was going to talk to him when I got home….”

“I think there’ll be a lot of that happening,” and he bit his lip.

Nikki sighed and closed her eyes. “I just wish everything could stay like this forever.”

“What, living out of hotel rooms with twenty people telling us what to do, being yelled at in Spanish by crazy puppets?”

“No!” she laughed.

“I know what you mean.”

“I’m not going back to my room tonight, Zaccy.” She had begun to call him that after Rove. She told him that if she was Nik, he should be Zaccy. And he never minded, as long as she didn’t do it in front of anyone else.

Nikki ran the back of her fingers along his cheek, then stood up on her tip toes to kiss him. She took his hand and led him back inside his room. Picking up her purse, she shot a sly smile at him before pulling out a small package. “This is the brand you like, if I remember correctly?”

“Nik?” he asked her. “But-”

“I’ve had these with me in every city we’ve been to, since the last time, in LA.” He remembered, against his Alero, by the ballpark, how they cried when they came. “I guess I always knew somewhere in the back of my mind that the time would come when I needed you, when I felt it was okay to need you again.”

“I thought you said that us being together was living in a dreamworld?”

“I did… but, sometimes, I think that living in a dreamworld is better than not living at all.”

Zac’s eyes closed, slowly, for several seconds, and he inhaled deeply. He wrapped his arms around his waist and twirled her in a circle, her feet lifting off the floor. She laughed with him, as he took her by the hand and led her to his bedroom.

Karen wasn’t happy about it, but she saw the joy on her daughter’s face the next day and knew that she would rather see that than the dullness in her eyes that she saw back home in Great Neck.

*~*~*~*~*

“We’re in Rome!” Nikki shouted, as she used both hands to push Zac in the chest. “We’re in fucking Rome!”

“I hope we’re soon fucking in Rome!” he laughed.

“Oh, we will be! God, the air just feels different here! I love it!”

Zac pulled her back from the open window, where a slight breeze was rustling the red drapes, and said, “I think there are way too many layers between us. Let’s get rid of some.”

Nikki laughed as he pulled her denim jacket over her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. “Oh, now that’s no fun. You have to put a little more into it, Mr. Efron. Like this.” She turned him around, so he faced away from her, and pulled his black leather jacket down his arms. She spun it a few times in the air and tossed it about ten feet away.

“Ohh I like that, Ms. Blonsky. Let me try!” He pulled her black hoodie up over her arms and head, and spun it over his head before tossing it across the room. “Like that?”

“Mhm, exactly like that!” she giggled. “My turn!” They took turns removing each other’s shirts, shoes, and pants, and tossing them around his hotel suite. The living room, bathroom, and bedroom were strewn with their clothing. Nikki’s white tank top fell into the bathtub, and her black satin panties landed in a plant on an end-table. They didn’t know where half their clothing was, but they thought they’d have fun in the morning trying to find it all.

Other than her black satin bra, they were both naked. Laughing, spinning, hands and mouths everywhere. He took her hands and bent her back against a love seat in the middle of the living room. He slid his hands down her ribs, her abdomen, her thighs, and spread her legs as he knelt before her. She inhaled sharply as his tongue parted her. One hand held her back against the love seat as the other held her open to his mouth. He licked and flicked and sucked her clit, his fingers stroking inside of her. She came with his name on her lips.

Before she had a chance to collect her thoughts and re-orient herself, he pulled her from the love seat and pushed her up against a hard and angular piece of furniture across the room.

“Oh no, you’re not.”

“What?”

“You are not going to fuck me up against a minibar.”

He laughed, “That’d make a good song lyric, you should write that for your album. We’ve done the bed, the tub, the floor.”

“Yeah, I think it would make a great music video. Or maybe I’ll send it in to Saturday Night Live.”

“Or Adam Sandler, he loved you! Maybe Leno, or Jimmy Kimmel? Send it in anonymously,” he laughed.

“You’re killing the mood here, Efron.”

“Sorry,” he laughed, as he unhooked her bra and tossed it across the room.

“Bed?” she asked.

“Mmm, bed.”

“Oh, I brought something I wanted to put on,” she said as she looked back to the living room.

“Leave it. I only know one thing being put on, and it won’t be on you,” he growled, falling down to the messy bed with her.

*~*~*~*~*

Nikki was laying on her side, her left arm resting across her stomach, her right arm bent beneath her pillow. She felt a gentle touch on her fingers and opened her eyes to see Zac smiling beside her. His eyes were closed still, but he had her hand, and was playing with her fingers. She intertwined her fingers with his, and joined him in this sensual connection of their fingertips grazing over each other’s hands, under and over and between their fingers.

“Mmmm…,” he moaned softly, his eyes opening, looking across to her now. “What’s that?” he asked, his eyes having shifted down to her chest from her sleepy eyes and wild, morning-after hair. She had gotten up a few hours earlier and put on the little nightie she had brought to his room, the one he never gave her the chance to put on. Her full breasts were pouring out over the sheer black ruffle, pressed together as she lay by him on her side. “Where did that come from?”

“It just appeared. I’m magic,” she teased.

“Yes, you are,” he grinned crookedly. “Well, I like it.” Letting go of her hand, he rolled towards her, propping himself up on his left side. With his right hand, he reached over to touch her.

“Uh uh,” she wagged her finger at him, then covered her cleavage with her hand. “You have to get permission first.”

He looked up at her with wide eyes and a mouth hung open.

“You have to tell me what you like first, and maybe, just maybe then you can touch.”

The tone of her voice was driving him crazy.

“I like everything.”

“Hmm. Not good enough. You have to be more specific. I need to know,” she purred. He felt himself growing harder by the second.

She pulled her right arm out from under the pillow and crossed it over her body. “Do you like this?” she tucked her thumb beneath the thin strap of the nightie. His eyes followed her movements as she ran her thumb up along the strap to her shoulder, pulling it up slightly from her skin, then ran it down again.

“Yes.”

“Tell me why.”

He took a deep, slow breath. “Because it’s so small, that I can see your shoulder, I can see where I want to kiss you again, and-“ he moved towards her, his tongue jutting out and licking his lip.

“And this?” she interrupted him. “Do you like this?” she asked, running a fingertip along the sheer black ruffle at the deep neckline. He nodded immediately, vigorously.

“Good. I’m glad…. Tell me why you like it.”

He swallowed hard before answering, his voice cracking. “Because it’s delicate and surprising,” he struggled to form the words, “and it’s like a frame, like a picture frame around the most beautiful picture.”

She raised an eyebrow and smiled, before straightening her face again. “But, I think you like more than that, don’t you. Do you like this?” She ran her fingertips over the curve at the top of her breast. He nodded. “Tell me why. Tell me why you like it.”

“Because it’s soft and round and….” His eyes were captivated by her fingertips swirling over the top of her breast. “And… and it’s….” He was having difficulty saying anything coherent as he watched her fingers, hypnotized.

Smiling, she lowered her fingers from the top of her breast, to take the fullness in her hand. Cupping her breast through the sheer, black and white flower-patterned chiffon, she asked, “And this? I know you like this.”

“I do! God!”

“You like to hold it, and you like to squeeze it, and you like to… well, you tell me what you like about it.”

“I like how it fills my whole hand, and how smooth your skin is, and warm, and I like to kiss it, and scratch you in the morning with my cheek, before I shave.” Nikki moaned in spite of her careful restraint, as Zac licked his lower lip again.

“And you like to lick it, don’t you? Both of them.” His eyes briefly rose and made contact with hers, before returning to her chest. She was running her hand over both breasts now, squeezing them together. “You like to run your teeth over my skin, and suck until you make a mark, don’t you?” He nodded. It was the only reaction she was allowing him. He was as thrilled by her words as she was by saying them. “Right here, you like this, don’t you?” and she pointed to a lower part of her breast. He loved the trio of freckles there, still hidden beneath the fabric, always sure to give them some attention, like he had made them, like they were his mark on her.

“You like underneath, here, too.”

“I do,” he answered, watching her hand move beneath the nightie, touching her bare skin, letting her hand rest beneath her breast, pushing it up.

“Why?”

“I like how hot it is there,” he practically panted.

“And I know you like this.” Her fingers were now grazing her cleavage, skimming up between her breasts. Then down. Then up. One finger now, deep between them, squeezed together tightly as she lay on her side still. “Tell me why you like this,” she breathed, unsure how much more of this teasing she could handle herself before she let him touch her.

“I like how hot it is, and I like how it gets… kind of… sweaty,” he blushed, “when I’m inside you, when I make you cum. I like to push my face in there, and, and-“

“Tell me.”

“And I like to stick out my tongue and lick you there and taste you, and I like to feel your tits on my face, on my cheeks, and I like how you put your hands in my hair when I do that,” he finished, his breath heavy and his heart racing. The open-mouthed smile he caught on her face told him that she liked it, too.

Nikki raised her hand to her mouth. She gently bit her middle finger between her teeth at the first knuckle, before closing her lips around it, suckling lightly on it. Zac’s eyes intently followed every move she made, as she pushed her finger deeper into her mouth, twisting it around her tongue, pulling it out of her mouth then pushing it back in again. Pulling the wet finger from her mouth, she slowly, tauntingly, lowered it to her breast again. She slid her hand beneath the chiffon and swirled her wet fingertip around her nipple. “Do you like this?”

With a sharp intake of breath, he answered, “You know I do.”

“Yes, I do know you do. Tell me why.”

“I like to pinch it and press my tongue on it, and squeeze it between my lips. And I like it when it gets hard, when all I have to do is touch you, or even just stand close to you. I know it does, I know they both do. And I like to see them under your shirt, so hard, pushing through your bra, I can tell.”

“Oh fuck,” she whispered.

“Have I earned your permission yet?” He reached out to her, taking the thin black ribbon between two fingers, careful not to touch her skin, tugging on it, undoing the bow. He pulled it to his face, sweeping it along his bottom lip, then tickled her cleavage with the end of the ribbon. “Have I?” She nodded, vigorously, unconsciously imitating his own reaction to her questions.

“Finally,” she heard him say, as his face sunk between her breasts, as he rolled on top of her, his legs pushing hers apart.

His phone rang. “Dammit!”

“Leave it!”

“Fuck, it’s Gina! I can’t leave it,” he groaned. “Hello?”

“Morning. You sound cranky,” his publicist laughed. “Aren’t you up yet?”

“That’s the problem.”

“Huh?”

“Um, nothing, you woke me up, that’s all.”

“What! Didn’t you get your wake-up call?”

“No! What time is it?” he leaned on Nikki and looked over at the clock. “Fuck, it’s almost 7!”

“Well, hurry and get up, we’re on our way upstairs in a few minutes. You’ve missed your massage appointment, then. You’ll just have to pretend for the camera guy. OK see you in a bit.” Zac threw the phone down without saying good-bye.

“FUCK!” he shouted. “God fucking dammit! They’re on their way up here!” He jumped out of bed and grabbed his robe.

“Who?”

“Everyone!”

“What? Now? Why?”

“We’re doing this Day in the Life thing of me, and there’s going to be a camera on me all day, following what we do.” He was scrambling around picking up clothes, his and hers. Nikki jumped out of bed and started to pull on the garments of hers that he tossed to her, over the nightie.

“I can’t find my right shoe! Or my bra! Fuck!”

“Forget them, I’ll look later.” Nikki grabbed her bag and stuffed one red shoe and her panties into it, smoothed her hair, and opened his door. Peeking out, she saw that the hall was empty. Turning to kiss him quickly, she whispered, “Don’t shave,” before running into the hallway. She closed her own door behind her, leaning back against it, her breath heavy with nerves, less than a minute before familiar voices filled the hall.

“I miss you,” he whispered into his phone, as he reached for his toothbrush a short time later.

“Aww I miss you, too! God, you have no idea how much!”

Feeling the hardness between his legs, he answered,” Oh yes I do!”

“Is everyone there yet?”

“Yeah, they just got here. I have to make myself decent and go down to the masseuse’s studio and hang out until the camera guy can film me walking through the lobby in my robe,” he rolled his eyes.

“Really? That’s dumb!” she laughed.

“I know. Anyway, I’ll see you soon, right? Gina said you’re supposed to be coming here before we head out for the first set of interviews.”

“Yep. So, I’ll see you in like, an hour, I guess?”

“It’ll be the longest hour of my life!”

Zac opened the door of the masseuse’s room and stepped inside, locking it behind him. Looking around, he took a seat on the massage table, and thought he’d make himself comfortable for the ten minutes or so he’d have to kill before the cameraman was ready. Nothing on his mind but Nikki, and what he hadn’t been able to finish a short time earlier, he couldn’t help himself when his hand reached down to his crotch. He slid his hand inside his underwear, groaning at the sensation of his fingers as he began to stroke himself.

“I thought you’d never get here,” a voice called from across the room.

“Wha?” Zac turned his head, as he felt warm hands on his neck, down his chest, pushing the soft white robe off his shoulders. “What are you-“

“Shhh, we don’t have time to talk, Baby, we only have a few minutes,” she muttered between kisses. “I see you were starting without me,” she smirked. Nikki climbed up onto the massage table, pushing him down to lie on his back. She pulled at the knot on the belt of his robe, opening it wide to expose his body, naked save for the grey boxer-briefs he had put on when he got out of bed.

“Well, these are a bit of a problem, aren’t they? Although apparently not for you,” she laughed. She pulled the underwear down his legs and dropped them to the floor, then climbed onto him, her thighs around his hips.

“Oh Christ, Nik, what are you doing?”

“Well, if you don’t know that by now, we have a problem, don’t we?” she teased.

Nikki had showered and dressed by the time Zac called her, but the hair and make-up people weren’t due for a short time. She told her mom that she was going down to get a magazine to read while she waited.

Zac tugged at the brown polka-dotted dress, beginning to pull it up, to take it off, but Nikki interrupted, “We don’t have time for that.” She took his hand and slipped his fingers inside her underwear, guiding him in touching her. Her teeth tore open the condom she brought with her, and she rolled it onto him. With his fingers on her, inside of her, she was quickly wet and as ready as he was, and pushed down on top of him. Nikki knew exactly what she wanted, and she knew what he wanted. His hands were on her breasts, that she had teased him with earlier that morning. He pulled her dress down to touch her, to kiss her and nibble her. It was so fast, so hard, but it was just what they wanted. The thrill of it, the possibility of getting caught as they startled at the occasional noise outside, made it all the more exciting, and they rode those feeling straight to bliss.

“I’m cumming!” Zac shouted.

“Alright, Mr. Efron. I’ll be waiting,” the cameraman said, in a strong Italian accent.

“That’s odd, I hadn’t even knocked yet,” he thought to himself, in Italian. He took a chair outside the massage room and waited, his Nickelodeon-labeled camera in hand.

Taking a moment to compose themselves, Zac held Nikki in his arms as she lay on top of him. Quickly they were on their feet, adjusting their clothes, fixing their hair. Zac pulled on his underwear and retied the belt of his robe. Nikki stood behind the door as he opened it, as he smiled and wove to the smiling Italian waiting patiently, camera rolling as it faced the open door.

“How was the massage, Mr. Efron?”

“Fantastic!” Zac answered, emphatically. “It was amazing, man! Amazing!” Nikki laughed quietly to herself, as she stood behind the door, overhearing this exchange. “I can’t wait to do it again!”

Once showered and dressed, his make-up applied and hair fussed at by a small team, Zac opened the door of his suite to the cameraman, waving him inside. He had found Nikki’s shoe behind an arm chair after Gina and the team came in, and kicked it under the chair. No sign of anything else out of place, so he thought he was safe. When Nikki came to his room, he welcomed her in with a grin and a warm hug and kiss on the cheek, as if he hadn’t seen her since the day before, as if they were two friends saying a friendly hello. But all he wanted to do was put his hands on her ass and pull her close to him and kiss her until her lips were swollen and she was dizzy and moaned his name into his mouth.

They sat on the sofa in his suite, and he leaned into her. “Tonight, you’re gonna have to ask for permission.”

She turned to him with that you want me look, and whispered back, “Make me.”

“Oh, I will, I will.”

Just then, her eye caught something across the room. A slight sheen against a more dull background, it was her bra. Her black satin bra, sitting in plain sight, against a black cushion on the small arm chair in the corner of the living space. The chair sat beside a writing table that no one was using, that no one had yet noticed. The camera turned to them just as Gina said, “Time to go, guys.” Zac and Nikki shared a knowing glance at each other, as they rose to start their day.

Later that night, Lorenzo, the cameraman, sat down at the computer with his footage. He had to pass it on to the editor the next day, but he thought he would do a little editing of his own, first. He was an observant man. But he was also a man of passion, and discretion. Lorenzo deleted the frames when Zac came out of the massage room, where the shadow of a woman stretched across the marble floor. He deleted the first moments of film when Zac’s cheeks were flushed and he appeared dazed and grinned across his whole face. He deleted the frames when a full-cupped bra was captured on an unassuming chair as the camera panned by. He deleted the frames when the toe of a red ballet flat was filmed peeking out beneath a cushy arm chair. And he deleted the frames when two lovers leaned in close and shared a secret. Two lovers, obvious to anyone with a sense of romance and lust and an appreciation for a woman as full-bodied as a rich, aged chianti.