Dragon's Clutch (Sanmere Shifters Book 3)

played the diva a bit, she seemed to have calmed down a lot. He thought it could be an act, with her just doing what he had said in order to be seen as a real actress. But even if that was the case, her act was keeping the peace and the crew and Brianne weren’t feeling her wrath quite so much. He was even starting to think that maybe he had been wrong about her. Maybe she just genuinely believed the stereotype that you had to act like a bitch to be taken seriously in this industry and his talk had made her see that really wasn’t the case. Either way, it was going better than he had ever expected it to with Valerie involved.
The filming was pretty much on schedule and so far, there had been no major setbacks, which Callin was also happy about. The only thing he wasn’t overly happy about was Brianne. Not that her presence on the set every day didn’t make him happy. On the contrary, it did. It made him really happy. But he hadn’t gotten past the flirting stage with her yet and it was killing him not being able to hold her, to kiss her, to fuck her until she was screaming his name. His dragon was in a constant state of arousal and discontent, urging him to take things further with Brianne.
And he wanted to. God, how he wanted to. Although the air around him and Brianne was always charged with a deep-rooted chemistry that he felt in his very soul, and although they flirted whenever they got the chance to, they didn’t get the chance to often enough for his liking. Valerie was constantly finding Brianne things to do that seemed reasonable on the surface, but which Callin knew were aimed at keeping Brianne away from him. That was exactly Valerie’s style. To speak to Callin about it would mean she had to admit that she felt threatened by a mere human, so instead, she tried to make sure there was no way for Callin and Brianne to connect. And it was working.
Callin was sure that was the only reason nothing had happened between him and Brianne. If he could only have a bit of time alone with her, he knew things would start to move between them. His dragon senses told him that she felt the same attraction to him that he felt to her.
Under any normal circumstances, Callin would have asked Brianne out on a date and they could have had a normal evening away from Valerie’s watchful eye, and Callin was sure that the sparks would have continued to fly. This was no normal circumstance, though, and while Callin ached for Brianne, he was also a professional, and the movie had to come first. The truth was, with the grueling schedule of relearning lines for scenes that had been changed, and the long days of filming, there just wasn’t time to start a relationship, and the last thing he wanted was to start something with Brianne and then have his work schedule clash with their dates and make her feel like she was second best.
Even with all of that being said, the movie was scheduled to take nine months to a year to complete the filming and Callin knew he couldn’t wait that long to take things to the next level with Brianne. He had to find a way to get her alone without Valerie hovering around or finding something urgent for Brianne to do that took her away from him. He had even debated having Valerie fired, but he knew that would achieve the opposite thing to what he wanted. If Valerie wasn’t on the set, then Brianne would have no reason to be here either, and as much as Callin and Brianne joked about Valerie being the worst boss in the world, Callin sensed that there was something there. Something that kept Brianne loyal to Valerie and he didn’t think he could persuade her to work for him instead.
He sighed and tried to shake off the thoughts. They haunted him, chasing themselves around and around in his head constantly, and he was never able to come up with a workable solution. He had even considered just walking up to Brianne and kissing her, but he was afraid of what Valerie might do if she found out that her assistant had kissed him.
He turned his attention to the script in front of him, putting his problems to one side for the moment and going back into work mode. Tomorrow, Callin and Valerie would be filming a scene from before their characters got together. The scene was loaded with romantic tension and it led to them almost kissing. Callin wasn’t sure the script worked, though. He thought it might feel a little bit too stiff. He reread the lines, taking note of the moment when the two of them would be mere inches apart, staring into each other’s eyes, before the scene ended without them actually kissing.
The scene was designed to make the audience hold their breaths and feel the characters’ disappointment when they were robbed of their first kiss. It was meant to make the audience root for the couple, and Callin knew it could work—as long as everything about the scene was executed perfectly. If it felt even a little bit stiff or fake, it would instead have the audience rolling their eyes and shaking their heads.
He stood up. The only way he would know for sure whether or not this was going to work was by running the lines through with someone. Callin knew it was late; it was almost one a.m., and most of the cast and crew had gone home for the day. He figured his assistant, Shauna, might still be around somewhere, though. He had told her to go home hours ago, but she often ignored that instruction and stayed on the set until he left. And she was