My (Mostly) Fake Wedding Read online

  She hesitated. “Wait. Are you with someone?”

  “No. I’m about to be. But until tonight, I’m a free man.”

  Belle shook her head, frowning. “No, I mean you’re getting married? So you’re engaged?”

  I sighed. “No. I can’t go into all the details. But just trust me. I’m not in a relationship right now. I’m all yours. For now.”

  We both were quiet for a few moments, and my words seemed to take on more meaning than I’d intended.

  Finally, she reached behind her back and undid her bra.

  3

  Belle

  I lost my mind. I’d left it in my seat back in first class by the window. Whatever I was doing now, whoever was doing it—that wasn’t me. I wasn’t the girl who hooked up with guys I just met. I wasn’t the girl guys wanted to hook up with on sight. I especially wasn’t the girl who brushed aside a very real concern that I was helping someone cheat on their significant other. But for some reason, I believed Chris when he said it wasn’t what I thought, even if that made me a gullible idiot.

  None of the above was me. I was the one guys saw platonically. That’s why I got into the whole Lance mess in the first place. So what the hell was going on? Was there some mysterious glitch in the matrix that was making Chris Rose—Chris freaking Rose—mistakenly see me different?

  He towered over me in the small bathroom, but the way he was looking at me was doing wonders for my self-confidence. I was standing in an airplane bathroom covered in God only knew what kind of nastiness in nothing but my panties. A mega-famous NFL quarterback was a few inches from me, and now he was stripping his shirt off.

  Maybe the plane crashed on takeoff, and this was heaven.

  Yeah. I decided to go with that. It wouldn’t be very Christian of me to not enjoy myself in heaven, right?

  In the distance, I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of a higher being threatening to smite me for involving religion in my mental gymnastics.

  Chris’ body was covered in tattoos, and the combination of endless muscles, dark black ink, and the shine of the overhead lights bouncing off the ridges of his abs made me feel like I was going to pass out. If this really was heaven, why hadn’t anyone thought to lead with this part in the Bible? Sure, trumpets and singing were great, but… Okay, yeah. I was definitely going to be smote any minute now, and not just by the towering hunk of muscle undressing in front of me.

  “Why are you going to New York?” Chris asked the question almost casually while he undid his jeans and started pulling them down. Dark blue briefs and a bulge to write stories about, by the way.

  “Is that really important right now?”

  “I prefer to know someone before I put my dick in them. That’s all.”

  I opened my mouth, not sure how to respond. Chris saved me the trouble when he moved toward me, both of us still clad in our underwear. He cupped my chin like he was making sure I wasn’t about to change my mind. Then his mouth crashed against mine.

  His lips were like velvet waves I could get lost in. His tongue was the riptide, threatening to pull me out so far to sea that I’d never be able to swim back. The only thing to do was ride the wave—and potentially his cock, I was dirtily inclined to note.

  He broke from my lips and kissed my neck. Warmth exploded across my skin like a chemical reaction. Rationality and logic started to dim until only the base, instinctual thoughts were punching through the haze.

  Hot man.

  Kissing me.

  Want more.

  Rebound sex.

  That last thought was enough to temporarily zing me out of the brain fog. I was rebounding, wasn’t I? Meaningless, cheap sex to take away the sting of what happened with Lance. But was that so wrong of me?

  “You never answered my question,” Chris breathed into my neck between kisses. He was taking handfuls of my breasts now, rubbing the occasional circle around my hardening nipples with the pad of this thumb. His knee had also found its way between my legs, and I could feel my dampness soaking through to his skin.

  “You kissed me before I could.”

  “Fair.” Chris bent, sucking my nipple into my mouth and making me gasp.

  “Could you—”

  “Stop?” he asked, looking up from my breast. “No. I don’t think I could unless you commanded it.”

  I closed my eyes, looking up to the ceiling. “I’m going to New York for a meeting, if you’re so—ahh,” I had to stop to bite my lip when he slid his hand in the front of my panties. He took a greedy, exploratory path that led his middle finger down past my clit where it hooked into my entrance. I was wet enough that he glided in effortlessly. He somehow found the magical place to apply pressure against my walls, shocking a surprised breath out of me and making me clench all over—including down there, which only intensified the feeling.

  Chris grinned up at me, then took my earlobe between his lips and kissed softly. “You’re tight around my finger. Not sure my dick is going to fit.”

  I decided to take his excuse for a distraction and run with it. I focused on the question he’d asked instead of the blitzkrieg attack on my senses.

  Letting myself stay focused on what his mouth and hands were doing felt like the path to oblivion—mutually assured destruction. I’d decided to swear off relationships after Lance because I knew how easily I drifted into that dangerous state of existence. This needed to be meaningless. Casual.

  So I kept talking, even though every nerve in my body was practically singing with ecstasy and he’d only just started.

  “I had business in Texas, but it went south. There was an offer from New York.” I paused again, squeezing my eyes when he added a second finger to the mix between my legs. His thumb was extended, applying friction to my clit with every luxurious plunge of his fingers inside me. “I wasn’t sure about the deal,” I said tightly. “But after Texas, I knew I’d be crazy to pass on it. So that’s where I’m going.”

  “Business,” Chris mused, as if he wasn’t knuckle deep inside me and currently sending me at warp speed toward the most explosive orgasm of my life. “So you’re a career woman. I like that.”

  “I’m glad you approve,” I said with a touch of sarcasm.

  “What kind of business?”

  I might’ve normally snapped. I could’ve told him it was ridiculous to try to have a conversation while he fucked me with his fingers. But it really did feel like I was clinging to the distraction to avoid something. I couldn’t say what it was exactly, but there was a very real, very hard to pinpoint sensation that I was balancing on the edge of a cliff.

  “Your turn,” I said. I had to pause, burying my face in his chest to stifle a moan. I gathered myself, with difficulty, and began questioning him. “Why are you going to New York?”

  “It’s where I play football, for starters.”

  “And where this mysterious indoctrination to the church is happening tonight, right?”

  Chris’ fingers paused their relentless attack on my pussy, if only for a moment. He grinned slightly, then resumed. “That’s enough talking. And if you thought I was going to let you off that easily…” he straightened, pulling his fingers from me and then lifting them to my mouth. “Taste yourself,” he commanded.

  One of my eyebrows flicked up. Kinky bastard. Hot, but kinky. I obediently opened my mouth, because when the sex god pulls his fingers from your pussy and tells you to lick them clean, what else are you supposed to do, exactly?

  I tasted myself on his fingers, but all I could think about was the intensity in his eyes as he stared down at me.

  Chris produced a condom, pulled down his briefs, and slid it on.

  Before I knew what was happening, he had freed his length, which I was flattered to see was standing at attention for me. I tried not to stare, even though I wasn’t sure why I thought he’d be embarrassed about the work of art between his legs.

  He took a fistful from the front of my panties, squeezing until I felt them grip me tight. I expected him to
yank them down, but he pulled them back toward himself so quickly that the thin elastic band over my hip snapped away. He dropped them to the floor with a grin.

  Wonderful, I thought, even as a little dirty thrill ran through me. It seemed like I was going to finish this flight commando, thanks to Chris Rose.

  Chris gripped my shoulder, then spun me so my forehead was pressed to the wall and my ass was against his hard cock. Everything he did was so purposeful and confident that I couldn’t help but fall into the rhythm with him—to let him guide me and take control. It felt good.

  With one hand on my waist and one still tight on my shoulder, he slid himself between my legs, making me feel like I was about to collapse. He teased me with himself, spreading my arousal and gliding across my entrance and clit for several agonizing seconds before he bent his knees and smoothly pressed himself into me.

  I gasped. He took me slowly, which was a relief because I could feel myself stretching to fit him. My walls gripped him as he rocked against me, taking a little more of me with each thrust.

  I closed my eyes and let the moment be my everything.

  He pushed deeper until his hips made a soft clapping sound against my ass.

  And I could almost forget the way they had all looked at me when Lance’s fiancée confronted me at the rehearsal dinner.

  Chris reached around me and started to rub a delicious circle around my clit while he pounded me from behind.

  And the burning shame I still felt about what happened in Texas faded, even if it was only for this moment.

  This was moving on. This was what it felt like to get over Lance. To leave him in my rearview mirror for good and stop being so pathetic.

  Chris stopped suddenly, then spun me to face him. I could see my own wetness glistening on his condom-clad length, and it was a visceral reminder of what I was doing.

  Fucking a stranger.

  Having meaningless sex on an airplane.

  Probably preparing to have the most awkward walk of shame in a few minutes because everybody was going to know exactly what we’d been doing in here.

  “I want you to look at me while I make you come,” Chris said. He stepped closer, then hooked his arms under my legs and hoisted me upwards with my back against the wall. With my legs spread, he lowered me down onto himself.

  At first, I couldn’t look into his eyes. It was too intense. Too intimate. This was supposed to be casual, and there wasn’t anything casual about the way he was looking at me—the way his eyebrows were drawn together as if he was seeing straight through me. Studying me.

  I tried to clamp my mouth shut against the moans that wanted to come, but they spilled from my lips all the same. I rolled my head to the side and closed my eyes, but Chris put a firm hand on my chin and turned my face toward his.

  “Look at me.”

  I obeyed him, and the rush of warmth from his continued thrusts seemed to double in intensity. I ran my hands down his muscular torso, relishing the soft, warm, hardness of his body. I squeezed his chest but there was almost no give to him. He was a rock with warm eyes. A rock with hands like silk. A rock that somehow was threatening to make me feel, even when I’d sworn to put that part of myself to rest.

  I felt the orgasm rush up in me, overwhelming all thought. My body convulsed until I felt vulnerable, but Chris just pinned me between his big arms and took me through it, guiding himself more slowly into me as the final aftershocks passed through me.

  I let my forehead fall against his chest, gasping for air. “Thank you,” I said.

  He pulled himself out of me, and I could see from the tip of his condom that he’d come too. I felt a momentary rush of relief, because some insecure part of me had worried that I wouldn’t be enough for someone like him.

  Chris hesitated for a moment while we both stood there—him hard and glistening, and me weak kneed and soaked.

  “What?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Thank you too.”

  We both smiled a little awkwardly, and all the explosive chemistry of a few seconds ago seemed to dissolve into the air. It was for the best, I guessed. We both had made the terms of our little hookup crystal clear. He was mysteriously off the market in a few hours, and I was vow-bound to stop handing my heart to people who only knew how to break it.

  I picked up my shredded panties and held them up for Chris to see. “You realize I don’t have a backup pair on the plane, right?”

  “My logic left the building when you started taking off your clothes.”

  I gave a small smile. I guess that was an acceptable apology.

  We both left the restroom to dozens of pairs of accusatory eyes. I knew my hair was wild, even though I’d tried to tame it in the bathroom mirror. In my defense, it had been wild when I boarded the plane, too, but I doubt anyone made that distinction. Chris had just slid his hat back on, but we were both a little sweaty. Even though nobody could possibly know I wasn’t wearing panties, I felt incredibly dirty walking by so many people when I was still practically dripping wet and throbbing from what we’d just done.

  We sat back in our seats, and Chris once again looked like he was about to say something. He faced me, then turned away again and plugged his headphones in again.

  Just like that, the Chris Rose chapter of my life closed.

  So why did I have a gut feeling that there was still more to the story?

  I slid into an Uber outside JFK airport back in New York. It was chilly, overcast, and by all accounts should’ve been a highly depressing return home. Except there was a buzzing, ill-advised hope still churning along inside me. I knew it was supposed to be meaningless, but there was no changing that I’d just had the best sex of my life in a cramped, gross airplane bathroom a mile above sea level. I’d also felt a sort of effortless connection with Chris, and that was the part I was scared of.

  It’s what I did all too well. I gave my heart to the wrong people, and I was too stubborn to take it back even when everything in the world said I should. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The first man I see after Lance is the one my brain wanted to turn into Mr. Perfect.

  My driver ended up right behind Chris’ SUV, which wasn’t doing wonders for my plan to stop thinking about him as soon as possible. We had talked on the flight back, almost as if nothing had happened. His “goodbye” had been a greedy fistful of my ass under my dress and a wink before we got off the plane. That was it.

  It should’ve been simple. We both got what we apparently needed, and our lives would go on.

  Except twenty minutes later, we were still directly behind Chris. It had the feeling of fate, even though I wasn’t a firm believer in that sort of thing. Could you really feel that kind of a connection with someone and have it just fizzle apart? Or was there some sort of universal magnetism two people could form—like an invisible rubber band that would only snap them together with more force the harder they tried to move apart?

  My worry was ratcheted up a few decibels when I got out of my Uber only to see that Chris was walking into the same building I was. I could practically hear the cosmic snap of our rubber bands colliding.

  I glanced up at Rose Athletic Representatives and felt the gears click into place for the first time. That last minute gig I’d accepted via a hasty email from my phone after the blow up in Texas? The wedding for some high-profile client I was planning to dive head-first into? The woman I’d been in contact with had been reaching out on behalf of Damon Rose. As in the brother of the guy I just had a one-time fling with on my flight. As in the guy who had mysteriously told me he was going to be off the market once he got back in New York.

  I felt like I’d just had the twist at the end of a movie laden with hints revealed, and now my backtracking mind could see all the obvious clues I’d missed.

  I followed him into the building in a daze, not quite wanting to let the full picture come together because I already instinctively knew I wasn’t going to like it.

  I passed through the elaborat
e lobby that was practically a trophy case to show off Damon Rose’s success as an athletic agent. Every extravagance that could be bought appeared to have been purchased and put on display, from glistening, polished stone floors to the stern, almost humorously huge portrait of Damon Rose himself hanging behind the front desk.

  I chose a different elevator from Chris, who hadn’t so much as glanced back my way since getting out of his car. A few people crowded in with me, all carrying something from lattes to briefcases.

  Running was an option, wasn’t it? After all, I’d run all the way from Texas to New York practically overnight. Who said I couldn’t run just one more time? Just one last indecent escape?

  But the thought tasted sour in my mouth. Yes, I was probably about to head into a face-first dose of embarrassment and awkwardness of the highest order. Wasn’t this exactly the kind of opportunity I needed, though? Wasn’t it a chance to grow a spine, walk through the door, and not give two shits about anything except getting the job done?

  Brave thoughts, Belle.

  My hands didn’t feel brave while they clenched so tight that my fingernails dug into my palms. My knees didn’t feel brave when they were threatening to turn to jelly at a moment’s notice. I guess it was like they said: bravery was only possible in the presence of fear. I wondered if the heaps of fear I felt curling my insides qualified me to be the world’s bravest woman.

  The elevator door opened to Mr. Rose’s floor, and I stepped out. Despite the overwhelming urge to step right back into that elevator and run again, I didn’t.

  I put my big girl panties on—except, thanks to Chris Rose, that was a purely figurative expression in this case—and I headed for the meeting.

  4

  Chris

  Damon sat across from me at the conference table. He was twirling a pen while he studied something on his phone with a stern expression. Stern was a good word for my brother. Grumpy was another nice fit. Even though he was only a couple years my senior, Damon had always been the serious one. He had the same messy hair as me, even if his was closer to black than my dirty blond. The difference was that he tamed his every morning, just like he made sure his wardrobe was up-to-date, pressed, and perfect.