Let’s Pretend

by Laurent, River

  Her jaw drops. “No way," she gasps. "You have to be shitting me, right? You didn’t...not with him?”

  "Yeah, I did," I admit. "And it was amazing, seriously. I didn’t think it would be, what with it being my first time and all, but he was...oh, Molly, he was awesome. So gentle and it was so good! He’s so sexy. We ended up having sex all weekend long. I mean, I could hardly walk straight this morning."

  "I can’t believe that I’m hearing this," she says in an awed voice while shaking her head. "I mean, I knew you thought he was hot, but..."

  "You did?”

  "Oh, come on, I’m not blind, deaf, and dumb," she teases. "It was written all over your face whenever you mentioned seeing him at parties. And when he gave you the car, you were practically giddy when you came and picked me up in it."

  "Wow, I didn’t realize I was being so transparent.”

  She laughs and reaches over to squeeze my hand. "I actually think it’s kind of cute," she replies. "You’re obviously into him, and now...well, I’m not going to go for the obvious, and quote the, ‘he got into you’ joke, but you know."

  I laugh. I’m glad I chose to come out here today. I’d planned on just staying in and doing some reading while I waited for him to get home, so we could fool around again, but it’s good I came out. I need to get out into the real world and see people.

  "He sure got into me," I say with a wide grin. It’s wild, saying it out loud to someone else. I wasn’t even sure it was real, felt more like a dream, but now since someone else knows, it’s real. I feel giddy, overexcited. Like I am on the brink of bursting.

  She takes a sip of her coffee.

  I look down at my cup. I’ve almost forgotten about mine in the thrill of confessing to her.

  Suddenly, she hits me with a hard stare.

  "What?" I ask, shifting in my seat. I know that look. It’s the look she gives me when she’s worried I am about to do something that’s counter to my best interests.

  She hesitates for a moment before she comes out with it, "It is just sex for you, right? I mean, you’re not getting attached to him, or anything like that, are you?"

  "No!” I reply at once, but then I shrug. "Well, I mean, I live in his house. And we do share the same favorite book. And I guess..."

  "Okay, I’m going to stop you right there…" She raises her palm and her expression is serious. "You need to remember that this guy isn’t actually your husband.”

  "Well, yeah, I know that," I say defensively, but the lines are becoming blurred.

  "And he’s not ever going to be," she continues quickly.

  I nod, but something inside of me feels defiant. I don’t want her to ruin it.

  "You agreed on this as part of a business deal,” she continues undisturbed by my falling face, “not as some romance of the century. Don’t go and lose it, babe. Everyone tells you there’s something special there or that there should be...but it can just be sex. Really. You just have to keep in your head that it’s just chemistry."

  I lean back in my seat and stare at her. I know that she’s right, and I also know that she’s raining on my little happiness parade.

  "I’m glad you’re no longer around your evil stepmother and she isn’t corrupting you with poison apples or something, but Zach is not your Prince Charming. You know what I’m saying?"

  I shift in my seat. I want to tell her that of course I know what she’s talking about, I’m a grown woman who knows how this stuff works, but she knows as well as I do that it would be a straight-up lie. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I guess that makes me vulnerable to misreading signals and assuming things about a relationship that aren’t true. "Yeah, I get it," I agree, but I’m already slightly regretting telling her about Zach and me. I wish I could take it back and go back to the time where I could convince myself there is something between us.

  She smiles gently at me. "I’m only telling you this because I know my girl can do a million times better than Zach Black.”

  "You better not say that to anyone at the wedding, they’re not going to be too impressed..."

  "I won’t say it to anyone, but I see much bigger and better men in your future. Trust me, I know these things."

  "Right," I agree, and I manage a smile. Then I hide behind my coffee cup, hoping that it’s enough to keep the doubt on my face concealed. Because, even though I know she is right, that getting involved with a man like Zach for anything other than the pure physical would be a bad idea...I still find my stomach all a flutter when I think of him. And for the life of me, I cannot imagine any man better than Zach. Even if I turned into a vampire and lived for a million years.

  "Anyway, what’s been going on with you?” I ask, quickly shifting the conversation back to her.

  And with that, the conversation about my sex life is dropped and we get on to hers, but her words tick away at the back of my mind for the rest of our meeting together, until I can hardly stop thinking about ways to prove her wrong.

  Which is crazy. I know that it doesn’t make any sense to prove her wrong, and yet, still, I feel the urge. As we talk, I begin to form a plan in my head. And soon enough, I have secured something that I am confident will make my point. Once and for all.

  I head back down to Zach’s office as soon as I’m done visiting with Molly. I march up to his office right away. Dahlia gets to her feet and steps out in front of me before I can go inside, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes at her.

  "He doesn’t have time to see you right now," she tells me.

  I could swear there is a slight sneer to her voice. "I don’t need him for long," I reply, and brush past her, not giving her the chance to so much as try it with me. I push open his door and step inside, and I am glad to see that he’s in there by himself.

  I close the door behind me, lock it, and he glances up at me from whatever document he’d been reading…and the rest of the world drops away.

  Chapter 18

  Scarlett

  "What’s wrong Scarlett?” he asks with a frown. Then he sees the look in my eyes and I guess it clicks into place for him, because he gets to his feet and makes his way around the desk towards me.

  I feel a little breathless. Am I really going to do this? Molly’s words rotate around my head: It can just be sex. Well, if that’s all it is, then I want to enjoy every inch of it that I can, while I still can. While he still belongs to me.

  I bite my lip, as he gets closer; I swear, just the look in his eyes sometimes is enough to make my body ache for him. When he meets my gaze and I can tell that he wants me too, I feel like someone has set me on fire, burning up from the inside out. He must know what he is capable of doing to me.

  I wonder, for a second, how many other women he has made feel this way, then push that painful thought away quickly. That’s not important. What is important is the fact that he wants me now. Me. So what if it might not last forever.

  He plants his hands on the door, either side of me, pinning me to the spot, and his gaze trails down to my lips, slowly. He moves in and kisses me, taking his time, parting my lips with his tongue and moving it against mine, testing me, teasing me. When his tongue slips into my mouth I start to suck it, and feel whatever resolve I’d been hanging on to turn to jelly inside me. It’s impossible to have any doubts when he just makes it so damn easy to believe that this is… that this has to be something more.

  He pushes his hand under my skirt, rolling it up and over my hips, grasping at the flesh beneath. I groan, not caring if anyone outside the door ‒ basically, the witch Dahlia ‒ hears me. In fact, maybe there is just some small part of me that hopes she does. I want the world to know I am his and he is mine. To know that nobody else is allowed near him.

  Not fucking Dahlia….not anyone!

  "Go bend over my desk," he breathes in my ear, and he swings me around.

  I walk with unsteady steps to the desk. I am facing a giant window that looks out over the whole city below. An entire world, moving on as normal, and here we
are about to have sex in the middle of the day, like animals who cannot get enough of one another.

  He rolls up my skirt quickly, and I moan as he pulls my panties down. It’s crazy. It’s wanton. It’s shameless. It’s lustful, but I don’t care. I want him. I need him. If I don’t feel him inside me in the next two seconds, I feel as if I might explode.

  He is quick to oblige. I hear the tear of a condom, and briefly wonder if he just keeps them around for moments like this one. Before the thought becomes ugly, I feel him pressing against my slit and my minds blanks out as I release a groan of pleasure.

  He plants a hand on the small of my back to keep me steady as he pushes inside of me. I gasp and clutch a hold of the desk for support as he enters me. I’d been told, way back when, that when a man has a very big cock the most painful position is from the back, but I haven’t found that with him, not once. No, if anything, the pleasure is always so intense I feel as if I am going to pass out.

  "Fuck, how is it that you’re still so tight?" he growls, as he pushes all the way inside me.

  This new angle takes me by surprise; it feels so good, my pussy clamps tight around his cock, and I can see from his reflection in the window beyond me that it feels just the same way for him, too. I know he’s savoring the feeling of me around him.

  He begins to move inside of me, going in long, slow strokes at first, and I get lost to the way it feels. He knows just what he is doing, just how to touch me, just how to make me his. Ever since we first had sex, I’ve been a little mad at myself that I waited as long as I did to give myself this intense pleasure, but then, I remind myself also that not every guy is going to be as good as he is. I got lucky with my first time and now, I want to make it a tenth time, twentieth, hundredth.

  He slides his hand between my legs and begins to play with my clit as he moves inside me. The sensations spread out all across my body, as I tip my head back and moan. I feel his hand working into my hair, tugging my head back just slightly.

  "Look at me," he orders, his voice low, leaving no room for argument.

  I open my eyes and catch his gaze. It is so laden with want for me that I almost come right then and there. "Oh..." I groan, and I begin to move back against him, pushing my hips into his groin so that he can fill me balls deep. Every time he is inside me, all I want to do is submit to him completely. His fingers are soft on my clit where his dick is hard inside of me, and the contrast has me building quickly. I know that I can’t hold off much longer. I press my lips together to keep any sound from escaping my mouth...and then I remember Dahlia outside and I don’t want to keep it in. I don’t care who hears me. I want the whole office to know that this man is mine.

  All mine.

  "Ah!” I cry out, as the feeling washes through me. My legs shudder and I grasp the desk for dear life. I can barely manage to keep upright. He moves inside me once, twice, three times more, and then I feel him find his own release, too. He lets out a deep, throaty growl that seems to rise from somewhere primal inside of him, and I am proud that I am the one who drew it out of him. His cock twitches and jerks as he finishes inside me.

  My legs are trembling and my breath is coming quickly. I can still feel the shockwaves of pleasure pulsing through my body from what he has just done to me.

  "You okay?" he asks.

  Everything is still so new, my body still so sensitive to every single touch. I hope it stays that way forever. I hope I never get tired of this, not with him. This is too sweet, too powerful, too much to ever want to give up...

  With a frown, I push those thoughts to the back of my mind. This isn’t what this is about. I came here to prove that I could have sex with him and have it mean nothing at all but pleasure. Letting myself go down that rabbit hole is not going to make my point. "I’m fine," I assure him.

  He grins and offers me a hand to help me up.

  "I guess I should let you get back to work," I tell him, as I rearrange my clothes and get myself back to some semblance of decency once more. I know that when I step outside, I am going to be getting the stink-eye from his secretary, but it’s hard to care when my whole body feels like a walking ball of endorphins.

  "I guess you should," he replies, but he grabs my hand, pulls me to him, and kisses me once more.

  It’s the kind of kiss that takes your breath away. The kind of kiss that could make a girl believe that there is really something here. I linger, savoring it for just a moment longer, and then I pull away. "I should—I should get going," I mumble, the heat rising through my cheeks. I need to get out of here before he has me on the desk again.

  "See you back home," he says.

  I smile at him before I head to the door. I don’t want to go, but I know I need to get out of here if I’m going to keep a hold of what remains of my sanity. I push the door open, ignore the dirty look that Dahlia is giving me on the other side, make my way out of his office and back down to my car.

  My legs are a little wobbly, but they can still carry me. Just like my brain is a little fuzzy around the edges, but I recognize that Molly is right. I need to make sure I keep things between us purely surface-level if I don’t want to get wrapped up in something from which I can’t escape.

  Chapter 19

  Zach

  "Good morning, Mr. Black!”

  "Morning, Dahlia.” I usually wouldn’t bother to look up from the papers I flick through as I drink my coffee, but something in her voice draws my attention this particular morning. My eyebrows rise up when I see the look she’s sporting.

  I don’t give much of a damn about what my staff wear to work as long as they get the job done the way they’re supposed to, but this is taking it a little too far. Dahlia is wearing a strappy top that pushes her breasts up and there is a ridiculous amount of cleavage on show, and a black skirt that is so short, it reveals the darker material of her stockings underneath. Her hair is loose around her shoulders and she is wearing bright-red lipstick. She looks as though she is ready to hit the club for a night out, not spend the day answering my emails and organizing my meetings.

  She has never dressed like this before though, and she’s been working for me for a good few years at this point. I can’t figure out why she would have bothered to put on such an outfit this far into the game. Unless...

  My mind flashes back to what happened yesterday. Scarlett had just marched in here and the two of us...well, if Dahlia was going to start getting jealous about anything, it would have been what we did in the office when I should have been working, that’s for sure. Maybe it has something to do with that.

  She notices me noticing her, and pushes her chest forward, as though she is waiting for me to offer a comment on the way she looks.

  I decide it’s safer for me not to say a thing and hope that this new style she has adopted dies out soon.

  "Can I get you anything, Mr. Black?” she asks, smiling brightly. Her lipstick is so red, I swear her teeth look whiter than usual.

  I shake my head. "Just make sure that you mail my schedule through to Brian for Wednesday, and I’ll let you know if there’s anything else I need from you.”

  She runs her hands over her hips and offers me a wide-eyed stare that I assume she believes is laced with meaning. "If there’s anything at all that I can do for you," she says huskily. "You just let me know, all right?”

  "All right," I say.

  "See you soon," she calls flirtatiously, as she pulls the door shut behind her.

  I put my coffee cup down on the table. What the hell is that about? If she does any more of this, I’m going to have to sit her down and ask her to stop this nonsense or get HR to straighten her out.

  It’s not that she’s never shown any interest in me before. I'm not blind. I can tell when she’s checking me out or when she’s hoping that I’m going to shoot a look in her direction. If that’s what she wants from me, she should never have come to work for me, because I don’t go near shit like that. Fucking where I work, is like shitting where I eat as far as I’m
concerned.

  But she’s always been subtle. At the moment, she is essentially laying herself out on a silver platter for me. She has no chance, even if I didn’t believe in mixing business with pleasure. There is only one woman on my mind, one woman who matters, and that is Scarlett.

  And this thought just hit me like a pinch to my solar plexus.

  I lean back in my chair and stare at the closed door incredulously. Goddamnit. How did that happen? I really thought I would be able to keep myself separate from any feelings, anything real. I’d been doing it for years after all.

  But I know she’s not just any woman. She’s the woman I agreed to marry. Of course, she believes the bullshit that I’m marrying her for the shares, but I can’t hide from the truth. Those shares are nothing to me. I make and lose shares like that in a day without blinking an eye. And even if I did marry her for the shares I could have played this off without her moving in with me, but I didn’t want to do that... did I? No, I wanted her near me, close to me, in my house, where I could see her all the time. I’d arranged it in such a way to make sure that she would be close to me, no matter what.

  My skin is prickling with this new realization.

  Dahlia is out there, dressed up all hot and pretty, trying to look like the most fuckable woman on the planet, and I can’t even give her a second thought. Hell, I can confidently say there isn’t another woman alive I want. Even now, coming directly from her warm body, all I can think about is how much I want to be with her again. To see her smile, to take in the look on her face when she laughs. To touch her body, push her hair back from her face and look into her eyes as I hold her.

  I remember what her father said to me, what feels like a few lifetimes ago now—that I should stay away from his daughter. I had thought then that it was because he believed I was bad news for his daughter. But maybe, just maybe—he had been able to tell she would be equally bad news for me.