The Fiancé Agreement

by McKenna Rogue

  I got up and slid into her side of the booth. She tried to give me space, but I didn’t want it. “You’re not a near stranger. We talked for weeks before we got on a plane.” I reached for her hand. “I’m happy to be here with you. It’s been good for both of us, I think.” Pressing a kiss to her knuckles, I took a breath. “It’s never just been this big, fake thing. I like you, Helena. A lot. You’re smart, you’re kind, you’re incredibly bold and confident when you let yourself go. I admire you. My family, while they’re all pains in my ass, they’re also the most supportive and kind people. And I was lucky to be raised to follow my passions. You’ve fought for everything. You shouldn’t have to fight so much. Seeing where you came from, just makes me like you more.”

  “I like you too, Gio.” She squeezed my hand and leaned her head on my shoulder. “I just sometimes wish I could have a real fiancé, a real relationship for these sorts of things. I wish I didn’t have to barter with some guy into playing my fake date. I wish I was good enough to attract someone as wonderful as you.”

  For half a second, I’d been certain she was admitting feelings. Feelings I wanted to share too. But she clearly didn’t mean she liked me. Not in the way I liked her. She clearly wasn’t in love with her fiancé, the way I was in love with her. And it killed me that I didn’t think she’d ever see me in the same light. I wanted her in my arms, in my bed, in my heart.

  Hell, I wanted what Chuck had with Aubrey. What Matt and Jonah had found with Hayley and Liseli. I wanted a woman I could come home to. A woman who loved me, who wanted to wear my ring, not as a ploy to trick her family, but as a sign, a symbol to the whole world, that she was loved, that she was mine.

  And somehow, despite all the feelings I had and the need in my belly to keep her, it was painfully obvious that after the wedding was done, once we were back in the U.S., the woman I wanted to be my woman, would go off in search of a man of her own.

  I slipped back to my own side of the table before the waiter came.

  I needed to figure out some distance, some way to put space between Helena and myself, not just physically, but emotionally, if I wanted to have any hope of standing once it was all said and done.

  After dinner, we walked back to the hotel.

  Helena reached for my hand, and I didn’t stop her as she wove our fingers together.

  I didn’t stop her when she leaned on my arm a little.

  And I didn’t stop her when she wrapped her arm around me in the elevator.

  I couldn’t seem to stop touching Helena, or letting her touch me, no matter how much my brain kept insisting that it was a bad idea.

  Other parts of me were being far more insistent.

  When we were in the room, I made a beeline for the bathroom, mumbling, “I’m going to hop in the shower.”

  Helena’s face fell as I closed the door behind me, but I couldn’t focus on that. I couldn’t think about whether pulling away was going to make things awkward. I needed space to think. To calm down. And I was pretty sure we both needed lines drawn again.

  Under the spray of the coldest shower I could stand, I ran my fingers through my wet hair, ignoring the twinge in my gut telling me that I needed to go back out there and kiss her, touch her, fuck her, until we both passed out from exhaustion.

  Somehow, I needed to get my head on straight before I completely crumbled under the weight of a heart that was sure to be broken.

  By the time I finished in the bathroom, the lights were off, and I didn’t see Helena’s shape in the bed, or anywhere else in the room.

  Pulling up my phone, I found a text.

  Helena: Hey, I don’t know what happened today, but I needed to clear my head. I’ve got a key, so don’t wait up.

  Fuck.

  She was out there, in Rome, alone, and I was the ass who let her walk away.

  What if she got hurt? Or lost? She barely spoke two words of Italian that weren’t food related.

  I sat on the end of the bed in my towel, torn. Did I go after her, call her and demand that she tell me where she was, like a boyfriend would? Or did I let her stay out, let her wander the streets of Rome alone?

  In the end, I threw on clothes and made the call.

  “Gio?”

  “Where are you?”

  “None of your business. If you’re too busy storming into bathrooms alone, disappearing on me, I’m allowed to go out and do what I want too.”

  “Helena Stratton, tell me right now where the fuck you are.” I didn’t care that my tone was hard, or that my voice had dropped into that dangerous, commanding zone that seemed to always make her putty in my hands.

  “I’m out walking.” She sighed, looking around. “There’s a café open on the corner.” She butchered the Italian name of both the café and the streets it sat on, but it was enough that a quick internet search gave me her location.

  “Go inside. Order a coffee or a tea, and don’t talk to anyone else.” My voice was now almost a growl.

  “Fine.” I could just picture her, her nose crinkling up slightly as she stomped over to the café.

  I practically ran the six blocks to her side.

  “What the hell, Gio?” She sat with her arms and legs crossed, and a scowl on her face. But there was a steaming cup in front of her on the table, along with a pastry.

  “You can’t just wander around a strange city alone.” I crossed my arms as well, balling my hands into fists near my armpits.

  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to punch something, or if I wanted to grab her and pull her out of that chair to kiss her until her knees went weak.

  “It’s Rome. I was on well-lit streets the entire time. It’s not like I was wandering through the jungle or something.” Her scowl deepened. “What do you care, anyway? We had a great fucking day, and then all of the sudden, you wanted nothing to do with me. Fuck you, Giovanni. I’m going to get through this damn wedding in two days, and then you can have your life back. No more pretending to care about the fat girl who was too pathetic to find a real date.”

  “Pretending to care? I’m not the one who keeps throwing around words like fake all the time. I’m not the one who keeps running so hot and cold, I can’t tell if you actually like me, or if you just like the idea of having someone in your bed this week!”

  Helena stood up and signed angrily, “Sit down and quit shouting. You demanded I stay here. I’m not letting you make a fucking scene at my expense!” Her breath punctuated with each gesture, her lips forming some of the words, her eyes burning as she yelled at me.

  I sighed and took the chair across from hers, signing back just as furiously, “You could’ve stayed in the hotel.” My hands hurt I was signing so angrily. “In bed. Where I knew you were safe.”

  Helena’s frown softened just a little as she signed, “Why does it matter, Gio?”

  “Because you fucking matter.” I dropped my head into my hands, not wanting to look at her reaction. Not wanting to know what she thought of me. Above all, not wanting her to see what an idiot I was for falling for her.

  I knew it was already way too late; I was head over heels in love with Helena Stratton, and she was only ever going to look at me like a friend or a memory of her Italian trip for her sister’s wedding.

  22

  Helena

  My stomach roiled and churned, and suddenly the idea of finishing the cappuccino or the pastry on the table in front of me just made me want to vomit.

  Why the hell couldn’t he just say what he meant? What he was really feeling? Did I matter as a friend? As a muse? Or was he as torn up inside with all the possibilities as I was?

  God, it would’ve been so much easier if I’d just come to this damn thing alone. This was messier than dealing with my family and their relentless judging.

  “Gio?” I got up and tentatively rest my hand on his shoulder.

  “What?” His voice was muffled by his hands.

  “Can you look at me, please?” I stepped back, waiting for him to look up. I didn’t want
to have this conversation with the back of his head. I needed to see those damned expressive eyes if I was going to have any hope of remembering how to breathe.

  Slowly, his head lifted, and his eyes met mine.

  “I don’t think this plan of ours is going to work out.” The bile rose in my throat as I said it, as if my stomach was certain that was a huge mistake, even if I still thought it was the right one.

  “What do you mean? Do you want me to catch a plane? Fly home alone?”

  Could his voice have more of a hurt, nervous waver to it?

  “No.” I shook my head. “God, no. You can’t leave me now.” I swallowed hard, and sat down again, trying to choke down a sip of the espresso just to push my stomach acid back in place. “I just mean… I can’t tell everyone in my family that you’re a terrible person, or that you just called everything off. No one would believe it. I think…” Oh God, was I really going to suggest this? “I think we should just be friends once all this is over. I can’t stomach the idea of not at least getting to see you, of not being your friend after this.”

  “Friends.” He stared at me, but I could practically see the gears churning in his head, as if he were trying to put the pieces together. “You want to be just friends.”

  No, I want you to put a diamond ring on my hand for real. I want you to look at me, to kiss me, to touch me, for real, as your real girlfriend. Your real fiancée. “I think it makes more sense. We tell them we decided we wanted different things, and that we’ll always be friends, that we’ll always be together, but that we didn’t think marriage would work out.” I reached over and took his hand, sorely tempted to bring it up to my lips and kiss his knuckles. “I don’t want to watch you just walk away once all this is over.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He pulled his hand away and gestured at the table. “Are you done here?”

  I nodded. I wasn’t going to be able to keep anything down right now anyway. What the fuck did I’ll think about it mean? Didn’t he want to see me again too? Or did he have enough photos, enough inspiration, to last him until his next muse came along?

  He got up and grabbed my hand. “Good. We’re going back to the hotel.”

  With the force he used to pull me to my feet and out the door, I half expected him to throw me over his shoulder and grunt like a caveman.

  Instead, he just flagged down the first taxi that went by and gave the driver our hotel name as he nudged me into the back seat.

  I was really tempted to ask him what was going on, why he was in such a hurry.

  But then his lips claimed mine, and all other thought went right out the window.

  Where had he learned to kiss like that? The man could’ve probably won some sort of prize, for how skillfully, how quickly, his lips sent jolts of need and desire straight to my core.

  The taxi ride was way too short, and when the driver stopped, Gio barely broke our kiss to pull out some cash and hand it over.

  I backed away, to the other side of the bench seat, trying to get at least a little blood back to my brain. “What the hell was that?”

  He pushed open the door and held out his hand, gesturing for me to take it.

  I let him practically drag me to the elevator, anxious for his response.

  “I just needed to kiss you again. Damn it, Helena, you scared the crap out of me, running off like that.” His hands were on either side of my hips as he kept me pinned against the back wall of the elevator, keeping me close. “I didn’t like that you were gone.”

  “I went for a walk, Gio. It’s not like I took the car and ran off to Venice or something.” My heart was in my throat, pounding hard with every floor we went up. “I didn’t like that you just disappeared either.”

  He shook his head as his hands moved to my hips and he tugged me even closer. “Do you have to be so argumentative all the time? Can’t you just acknowledge that you really wanted to kiss me too? That you still do?”

  God, did I ever. But more kissing, more of his rapidly hardening cock, and I wasn’t going to even be able to maintain a friendship when this was all over. I wasn’t going to be able to just go back to being people who talked via text once in a while.

  I wasn’t going to be happy with a text first thing in the morning, or last thing at night.

  “Were you serious about wanting to do a boudoir shoot with me?”

  Gio’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “Fuck, yes.”

  I smirked. “Then I think tomorrow morning, we should find somewhere we can buy the appropriate wardrobe.”

  I knew I was playing with fire, teasing him while I teased myself, but with the way he was looking at me, the way he made me feel every time we were in bed together, I knew the photos would be incredible. Not something I could ever share with anyone but an intimate lover, but I wanted to see myself like that. I wanted him to see me like that.

  The elevator made a ping sound, and the doors slid open.

  “This is our floor, Gio.”

  He brushed a whisper-soft kiss over my lips before he pulled away and intertwined our fingers. “I really, really want to get you naked again.”

  I was so torn, so confused by Gio and the way that he kept looking at me, the way he kept wanting me. Not a single cell in my body wanted to deny the request.

  Not when my body was screaming for the same thing.

  Gio practically dragged me down the hall, his grip on my hand so tight it was bordering on pain. When he threw the door to our room open, he pointed at the bed and growled in that deep, husky tone of his, “Naked. Now.”

  He stared at me as he raised one eyebrow, as if just expecting me to comply.

  My body certainly wanted me to.

  My brain, though, couldn’t quite get on board. “You can’t just demand that I take my clothes off, Gio.”

  He stalked forward, his jaw tense, until he had me pinned against the wall. His fingers encircled my wrists, guiding my arms up until he captured both hands over my head with one big palm.

  The moan as his now-free hand cupped me through my capris tore from my throat as I arched into him.

  Gio growled at me again as his fingers flicked the button loose on my pants. “Keep your hands above your head, Helena.”

  There he went again, demanding things of me.

  But if the amount of arousal in my panties was any indication, I wanted to be told what to do. To be completely at his mercy.

  “What are you going to do with me, Gio?”

  He smirked as he slipped his hand into my capris, into my panties, and dragged his long fingers through my folds. “I’m going to fuck you. Hard. I’m going to make you scream, and shake.” Pulling his hand from my panties, he grabbed the front of my t-shirt in both hands. “How attached to this shirt are you?”

  I shrugged, having a hard time focusing on anything but the intense need in his eyes.

  He must’ve taken that as not much, since he pulled firmly, ripping my tee down the front, exposing my bra, the tops of my breasts.

  Once my shirt hung open, he forcibly pushed my capris down my hips, taking the panties with them. He stepped back, licking his lips before he signed, “Stay there.”

  Nothing held me in place. I could’ve brought my arms down. I could’ve moved to the bed, or even kicked off my capris so that I would have sturdier footing. But the look in his eyes might as well have been shackles and chains, as much as I was affixed to the spot. Waiting for more commands. Waiting to see what else he would want from me, from my body.

  When he pulled a silk tie from his bag, my heartrate kicked up even faster.

  “Take off the rest of your clothes and get on the bed.” He tugged on either end of the tie, as if testing its strength. “I’m going to make sure you don’t run away again.”

  Quickly, I shrugged off the torn tee and my bra, stumbling a bit as I tried to get my sandals and my capris off. But when I almost fell, Gio was right there to catch me.

  He tied my wrists over my head, using the headboa
rd on the bed to keep me in place.

  Finally, he got undressed too.

  I watched as he stripped, the actions full of tension, angry.

  “Do you know how scared I was when you were just gone? Do you have any idea what could’ve happened?” He practically snarled it at me as he crawled onto the bed and pushed my knees wide, exposing me to him. “Anyone could’ve hurt you.”

  I knew he could see how wet I was. How fast my chest was rising and falling. “You ruined our fucking day by acting like you couldn’t wait to get away from me. How was I supposed to react? Did you want me to just sit here like a bowl of fruit, waiting for you to decide you wanted to paint me again?” I knew I was baiting him, but it wasn’t fair. He wasn’t my boyfriend; he wasn’t my fiancé. He didn’t get to decide where I would go, or with who. “And, if you hadn’t noticed, the only one who bothered me tonight was you.”

  He leaned forward, pressing his hard body into mine, as his lips crashed against my mouth, claiming me in a rough, hungry kiss that I felt all the way to my toes. That sent jolts to need straight to my pussy.

  He kept kissing me as he lined his cock up, unsheathed, completely bare, and thrust home.

  The feeling was indescribable. My mouth opened in a silent scream. The pain registered, but it was the aching pleasure that consumed me.

  There was something different about the way he pulled back and slammed into me again. Not the lack of condom, although I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about that fact. It was more possessive. More like he was branding me from the inside out with his thrusts.

  And God, did I want more.

  When he pulled out and flipped me onto my stomach, held in place by the tie around my wrists, I groaned, not from the force, or the way he manhandled my body. I groaned because I wanted more. I needed him inside me, I needed it rough, and hard, and dirty. And I needed Gio to be the one to give it to me.

  The sound of the condom wrapper being opened was almost a disappointment.