He tossed his keys to the valet at the Culver Hotel and walked straight into the lobby.
Nicole was standing near the elevator bank.
The moment she saw him, the tension in her shoulders visibly fractured.
“You made it,” she breathed.
He didn’t slow his pace as he joined her in the lobby, his eyes briefly noting her rigid posture.
“You’ve worked in the Australian market for five years, Nicole.
You know exactly what a late-night hotel meeting with a production executive means.”
“Which is why I called you,” she shot back, stepping into the empty car beside him.
“It’s Peter Holman.
Orion Pictures.
He claimed he screened Dead Calm and had a project tailor-made for me.”
He watched the floor numbers light up.
There was no script waiting in that suite, but ignoring a call from Orion wasn’t an option.
You had to verify the room.
They walked down the hushed, heavily carpeted hallway.
When Peter Holman opened the door, the relaxed, magnanimous expression on his face curdled the second he saw the man standing next to his target.
“Good evening, Peter,” he said.
His tone was perfectly level, treating the encounter like a scheduled two o’clock in a Burbank conference room.
“Aaron Anderson, CAA.
I handle Nicole.
We appreciate you taking the time to walk us through the material.”
Holman’s jaw tightened.
He glanced at Nicole, the implication heavy.
“I was under the impression Ms.
Kidman was coming alone to discuss the role.”
“And miss a ground-floor pitch from Orion?”
He stepped forward, seamlessly crowding the doorway until Holman was forced to step back, allowing Nicole to enter the suite’s foyer.
“Let’s hear the pitch.”
He knew exactly where Holman sat on the food chain.
Orion Pictures wasn’t a scrappy outfit like Miramax; they were the mid-major kings, riding the massive capital generated by The Terminator and RoboCop.
Holman was a legitimate executive, which made his casting couch routine highly insulated.
Holman leaned against the suite’s mini-bar, projecting a strained patience.
“You can wait in the lobby, Aaron.
You aren’t required for this phase of the process.”
He turned his attention to Nicole, delivering a slow, clinical appraisal.
“You’re too tall.
It breaks the eyeline for most leading men and severely limits your utility.
But Orion has a few internal projects.
Roles where your physical profile could be an asset.”
“What’s the script?” Nicole asked.
Her voice didn’t waver.
“We can get into the specifics over a drink,” Holman said, his eyes flicking back to him.
“Just the two of us.”
He looked at Nicole and nodded toward the hallway.
“We’re done here.”
She didn’t hesitate.
She had shown up hoping for a miracle, but she wasn’t going to play a rigged game.
She turned toward the door.
“She just got off a Qantas flight, Anderson,” Holman called out, the polite veneer dropping entirely.
“She doesn’t know the protocol.
But you’re at the agency.
You know how the industry operates.
Don’t be stupid.”
He stopped in the doorway.
He looked back at Holman, his expression utterly devoid of heat.
“If you were Mike Medavoy or Arthur Krim, this routine might actually yield a result.
But since when does a mid-level acquisitions guy have unilateral greenlight power on a theatrical release?”
Holman was a middleman.
The absolute ceiling on his authority was a topless scene in a straight-to-video thriller.
“Have a good night, Peter,” he said, pulling the heavy door shut until the latch clicked.
They walked back out into the warm evening air in silence.
When they reached the valet, Nicole didn’t immediately get in the car.
She stood on the concrete, staring out at the Culver City traffic.
“Get in,” he said, unlocking the car.
The casting couch setup hadn’t surprised her in the slightest—she was too seasoned to be shocked by a fake audition.
But Holman’s calculated jab about her height had left a mark.
It was a genuine vulnerability, a limitation she couldn’t fix.
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting in a dark leather booth at a quiet bar off Santa Monica Boulevard.
Nicole took a slow sip of her vodka.
“He’s a ghost,” he said, cutting right to the math of the encounter.
“In a corporation like Orion, only the top two executives in the building actually possess the authority to cast a lead.
The rest of them wear Italian wool and use the corporate letterhead to try and get laid.”
“They don’t make the films,” he continued, setting his glass on the coaster.
“They manage the distribution slate.
The actual casting power belongs to the producer, the director, or a male lead holding a pay-or-play contract.”
Nicole stared at the ice in her glass.
“Is that what it takes, then?
Trading access for screen time?”
“In the independent sector?
Yes.
It’s an unregulated market,” he stated cleanly.
“But on a studio picture, the liability is too high.
Look at Pretty Woman.
Disney allocated a fifteen-million-dollar production budget, and they’ll match it in marketing.”
“You don’t hand a thirty-million-dollar corporate asset to an actress just because she slept with a producer.
She still has to test well and carry the commercial weight of the picture.”
He leaned back in the booth.
“Minor supporting roles get traded.
Leads get vetted.”
He checked his watch.
“I was at Disney today.
The casting process for Pretty Woman is active.”
“Touchstone is issuing blind offers to established names, but the material is a massive risk to a sanitized brand.
They are all going to pass.
When the rejection stack gets high enough, the studio will be forced to pivot to unknown commodities.”
Nicole looked up, the exhaustion in her eyes replaced by a sharp, calculating focus.
“Can you get me in the room?”
“I can secure the audition,” he said.
“I initiated the retooling of the script, which buys me the political capital to get you on the schedule.
But I don’t have the bargaining power to force the casting.
And as a foreign actress, you are a massive risk to them.
They want a domestic face.”
“I know,” Nicole murmured, tracing the rim of her glass.
“The exclusivity is obvious.
It’s a closed ecosystem.”
“That’s why I’m tracking everything in development.
I read the breakdown for a Paramount package today.
Ghost.
It’s a phenomenal script.”
He went entirely still.
The mechanical rhythm of the evening fractured.
He held the option to Ghost.
It was his personal asset, quietly insulated from CAA’s senior partners.
If she was tracking that, she was pulling data far beyond the standard agency breakdowns.
“You’re reading the right material,” he said quietly, the corporate armor dropping just a fraction.
“But forget Paramount.
When the time comes, you’re not auditioning for that one.”
Aaron smiled, the hard edges of the business fading as he looked at her.
“Don’t worry about the closed doors.
You’re with me now.
When the time comes, I’ll make sure you get—”
He didn’t get to finish the sentence.
Nicole surged across the small table, cutting his words off cold.
The sudden impact knocked a rough grunt out of him, instantly swallowed by the wet, heavy friction of her mouth crushing against his.
She arched her back, her slender body stretching tight across the narrow gap, crushing the deep neckline of her top against him.
The tension between them snapped instantly, the kiss turning urgent and heavy with friction.
“Aaron,” she breathed against his mouth, her body radiating heat.
Her fingers locked into the hair at the back of his neck, pulling him in so hard there was no room left to breathe.
“I’ve been waiting for you to stop talking about business all night,” she murmured against his mouth, her hand tracing the line of his jaw before her fingers tangled in his collar, drawing him into a deeper, lingering kiss.
“Aaron, please,” Nicole breathed, her voice cracking as she pressed her hips aggressively up into the heavy weight of his hand.
Even through the thin fabric, he could feel how completely soaked she was.
Her hands were frantic under the table, fumbling blind with the heavy brass button of his jeans, dragging impatiently at the stiff denim.
The booth was entirely too small to offer real cover, but the sheer, reckless heat of the moment had completely stripped her of any caution.
Aaron shoved her skirt up, hooking her underwear and pulling the fabric aside.
“Fuck, you’re drenched,” he muttered into her mouth, his fingers immediately sliding deep into slick heat while his thumb found the exact spot she was begging for.
Nicole let out a sharp, ragged breath out of her throat.
She collapsed back against the leather seat, sudden heat of it completely overtook her.
“Yes—just like that,” she gasped, her hips rolling frantically against his hand.
The wet, heavy sound of it was deafening to them, barely masked by the throbbing bass in the background.
“Don’t stop, I’m so close.”
Aaron gave her exactly what she asked for.
He pressed deep into the soaked, gripping heat of her, his thumb pinning her down with a fast, heavy friction.
He was painfully rigid against his zipper, his jaw clenched tight as her hand blindly worked the hard ridge of his cock through his jeans, pushing them both right to the absolute edge in the middle of a crowded room.
Nicole broke almost instantly.
Her hips snapped upward, grinding recklessly against his hand as the tension inside her finally snapped.
She clamped down hard around his fingers, the slick, soaking heat of her gripping him tight.
“Aaron—fuck,” she gasped, her voice jagged.
She fought to keep quiet, her head dropping forward as her whole body shuddered uncontrollably through the heavy aftermath.
Still trembling, her fingers scraped frantically against the heavy brass of his zipper, completely consumed by the need to get him out of his jeans.
Before she could force the teeth apart, Aaron caught her wrist, pinning her hand firmly against the hard ridge of his thigh.
Aaron didn’t give her a second to recover.
He hauled her out of the booth, his arm locking hard around her waist to keep her upright as he steered her fast toward the exit.
Nicole’s knees felt completely useless, her heels scraping the floor as she struggled to match his punishing pace through the crowd.
They hit the pavement, the heavy bass of the room instantly replaced by the hum of street traffic and the harsh glare of neon.
Aaron didn’t stop moving.
He dug the heavy keys out of his pocket, wrenching the passenger door open, guiding her down into the seat with rough urgency, already moving before the hinges fully swung wide.
____________________________________________________________
Thank you so much for reading!
Peace out,
Lucent