Well, I totally smashed that show!

I am hyped to the max. Everyone is hyped to the max. But there's only one face that I really want to see. Backstage is literally buzzing with relieved excitement. My adrenaline is piqued and I'm desperate to see Clara. Last night, I blew her away with my performance. Tonight, I want to arouse her with my performance. As I'm sharing time with my crew, team and dancers, I'm constantly looking out for Clara. As yet, there's still no sign of her. I've already asked Will whether he has seen her and I know that Cam isn't with her either.

Shit, maybe she's already left?

Maybe she couldn't face seeing me after the show?

Maybe that kiss was a kiss too much?

My heightened mind becomes plagued with worrying about whether or not I have scared Clara away by being too pushy. Just as I'm mentally giving myself a good kicking, I see the face that I've been longing to see. "Clara, I've been looking for you." My relief is obvious, as is my pleasure at the sweet sight of her. "Did you want to change for the party in my dressing room?" It takes all of my strength, just to refrain from sweeping her up in my elated arms.

Her eyes fall so depressingly low. "I am really tired, Rhys. I had zero sleep last night. Today and tonight has been full on. We have finished the interview, finished the photos...I'm just ready for my bed now."

"Is this because of what happened earlier?" Of course it is! You're the reason why Clara wants to leave!

"Of course not! I'm just—"

"Knackered." Comes my bitterly disappointed interjection.

"Yes, I am." She tells me with a burdened sigh and such a regretful smile.

Needing to get rid of the awkward space between us, I move nearer to her. "I really want you to come, Clara?" It's honestly and plainly said. I do want her to come. I want her at the party, because it will probably be the last time that I see her.

Hesitant, she cutely grimaces. "I'm not sure."

"Even if it's just for a little while?" I widen my hopeful eyes and smile, just wanting her to say yes. "If me and my lips promise to behave ourselves, will you come?" My eyes brighten with playfulness, aglow with angelic flirtation. At this point, I'd say just about anything to get Clara to this party. For me, promises are just like New Year resolutions—made to be broken.

Surprisingly, Clara then says with a sexy roll of her eyes. "Oh, alright then." Undoubtedly persuaded by my irrepressible Rhys Ryan charm, she finally agrees to come.

Quietly elated, I try to keep my reply real casual, but my eager and bouncy body expresses just how happy I am that she's now definitely coming to the wrap party. "Cool." I cheerily say, now looking at her clothes. "Are you wanting to take me up on that offer of changing now?"

Clara smiles, nodding hard. "That would be great."

Offering to walk her to my dressing room, I walk with a confident swagger. Now, I would get more time with my gorgeous journalist. I would thankfully get more time to discover more about the alluring Clara Thorn. With my adrenaline pumping hard around my body, I feel like I have been given a reprieve.

I'm not yet ready to return to LA, and I'm not yet ready to say goodbye to this unbelievable woman.

**

When I saw Clara again, my capacity to speak kind of got lost in the swallow that I honestly couldn't make. Changed and ready for the party, she was quite simply womanly perfection. Her brown hair was sexily swept to the side, looking gorgeously shiny against her neck as it teasingly rested on her right breast. Her eyes looked just as compelling as the ocean, now framed with glorious gold and elongated lashes that were coated in the blackest of black. And her divine lips. Oh jeez, her divine lips were deliciously stained an illegal shade of red that just made me harder than hard. I couldn't find any of the words that I had wanted to say to her. Every one of them was paralysed in my overwhelmed and over aroused throat. I think I just about managed to say that she looked amazing. And shit, she did look amazing. Clara Thorn was quickly becoming all kinds of amazing to me. "I think me and my lips might be breaking promises later." Is what I had truthfully told her, because I knew that me and my lips were totally screwed for the night.

"A promise is a promise, Rhys Ryan." Came her scolding reply. A reply that only heightened all that I felt for her. I was falling for Clara. I knew it, and we both felt it—the heat, the chemistry, the unsaid something that constantly simmered between us—it never eased up.

I told her that I knew that I had promised not to kiss her again, but I also told her that promises sometimes get broken for worthy reasons, and shit, if Clara wasn't enough of a worthy reason, then I didn't know what was anymore.

When we finally left that dressing room, we were coated in flirtation.

A flirtation that had become reckless and unavoidable.

Now at the party, I'm currently doing the whole pop star thing—rubbing shoulders with the wealthy, the famous and the wannabes—happily getting it out of the way, with one eager eye kept on Clara the whole time. From afar, I watch her. I like how beautiful and confident she looks as she politely chats with some of the other guests at the party. Everything about Clara is effortlessly so graceful.

Her demeanour is graceful.

Her smile is graceful.

Her laugh is graceful.

Even the way she listens, is graceful.

Watching her, I smile. As some newbie actor is enthusiastically telling me how great my show was, I am only smiling about Clara. I smile, because she brings rays of happiness to my life. She brings happiness to my heart. My heart has become a thing that's made up of tiny hairline fractures.

Every lie.

Every disappointment.

Every resentful feeling I have ever had for my sister, has caused me to have a beating but fragile muscle in control of my entire body. Then I meet Clara, and she somehow is repairing all of those hairline fractures.

She soothes the lies.

She soothes the disappointment.

She soothes the rooted resentment inside of me—she soothes it all.

Not wanting to be in the company that I currently am for a second longer, I politely make my excuses. "I'm really sorry, I've just seen someone that I really must speak with." It was the truth. I really did need to speak with Clara. I needed to speak with her now. Cutting my way through the thick and fettering crowd, my determined eyes hone in on my exquisite target. With each step that I make, the more impatient I become, my fingers tingling with the need to just touch her. She's talking with some overly made up blonde, but that doesn't dampen my need for my hands to warmly be placed on her arm and lower back. "Clara, can I just have a quick word?"

"Um, sure." She politely makes her excuses to the now fluttery-lashed blonde who's still in her far more beautiful eye line. "Sorry, duty calls." Then she waves her quick goodbye before following me where I'm now determinedly going.

I know exactly where I am going.

To somewhere that I'll not be disturbed.

When I reach the door that I want, I do a quick and impatient scan of the corridor either side of me, before hurrying Clara inside.

"What are we—" Clara's question gets urgently silenced by my needy, soft lips; silenced by them now being so passionately pressed against hers. I convincingly kiss her, wanting to convince her that us kissing is so justifiably right.

It's what we both want.

What our mouths and bodies both want.

Shit, it's a want like no other for me.

My hands tenderly join in with the desire that my lips still have for her. In a savouring way, the tips of my fingers feel hot and numb as they relish in how they feel when they meet her silkily soft and pale skin.

Needing to say something that absolutely needs saying, I slowly end our unforgettable kiss but keep my head affectionately against hers.

"You knew I would break my promise." My whisper is nothing but the truth. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my promise, and I believe that Clara knew it too.

"You can't keep kissing me, Rhys." What Clara is saying is totally unraveling around her. Her head is still resting against mine. Her lips are beginning to twitch with aching anticipation and her eyes are looking up at me like shiny orbs of teal hope.

With the cupid bow of my upper lip so teasingly close to hers, I smile. "I'll have a word with my mouth, if you'll have a word with yours?" Then unashamedly, I kiss her again. Daring her to push me back. Daring her to tell me that our mouths aren't right for each other. But she can't. Clara can't push me back or tell me that this isn't right, because it is right. Teasingly stopping my sumptuous assault on her lips, I slowly separate our entwined mouths. "Nope...they don't appear to be listening." Unable to suppress my self assured laugh, I bring our heads intimately close again as I inhale a breath that inflates me with a new kind of happiness.

That happiness must be infectious, because Clara is laughing now. Okay, she's also hitting my arm, but she's laughing and it's a sound that I love to hear. "Stop it!" She giggles. "This is not a good idea."

I tell her it's the best idea I've ever had about something, because it really is. With our noses affectionately moving against each other's in an almost childlike way, I hold her in my happy arms.

This is right.

This is going exactly the way I wanted it to go.

But then, with just one blink, I see the second thoughts darkening Clara's round eyes. "I mean it, Rhys. This is a really bad idea." She starts backing away; away from all of me and away from us. "I think I had better go." Now a regretful distance, she then shakily apologises. "I'm so sorry."

Clara didn't just walk away from me, she literally ran.

For just a few stunned moments, I grapple with what the hell just happened. One minute we were kissing and laughing. The next minute, Clara became afraid of all that might possibly happen between us, and ran the hell from it.

How can something that was going so right, then go so badly wrong?

Unable to let this go, I'm soon running after her.

I'm running towards all that might possibly happen between us.

But when I see Clara, when I cling onto all that we might become, she's with Cameron. With his arm curled right around her shaky shoulder, he's now comforting her. So I cut through more of the guests, wanting them both to see me. I want them both to know that I've seen them. And they do know. Cam's look in my direction is triumphantly brief, and Clara's, is just the same as the dull and regretful one that she had not long given me before.

I am beyond pissed.

I'm uncontrollably pissed.

Surrounded by so many guests, I feel so angrily alone. Watching Cameron guiding Clara towards the door and away from me, I want to run after them. I want to break Cam's arm and I want Clara to talk to me.

But I'm angry.

Burning hot angry.

Instead, I ask Slam, my now concerned bodyguard, to bring the car round. I'm done with this shitty night. I can't be bothered to mingle with anymore of my over fawning guests. This party is on me and my record company, so they can have it.

I just need to get out of here. I need to calm down before I even think about dealing with Cam and all that's going on with me and Clara.

This night might be done, but things with Clara are most definitely not done. If she thinks I'm leaving things just as they are, she's hugely mistaken.

No, I'm not letting things pan out this way.

I'm not letting Clara finish something that hasn't even started yet.

No, it's not happening.

This British beauty has sunk herself beneath my skin. All of who she intriguingly is, has got right into my bones.

I want her now, just as much as I did before.

She maybe trying to run from what we are, but I'll just have to convince her to change her direction.

And I will convince her.

Just like I'll convince Cameron.

Soon enough, when my anger has eased, they will both know how deep my intentions run.

**OOOOOOOOO, RHYS IS ALL HOT AND ANGRY 😉
KEEP THOSE GORGEOUS COMMENTS COMING, LOVELIES.... LOVE HEARING YOUR THOUGHTS**