Pretend To Be Mine

by C. Morgan

  His tongue explored my mouth while he thrust deep inside me over and over. I spread my legs farther and bent my knees. Rylen put a hand on the inside of my thigh and pressed down. Somehow, he fucked me deeper.

  If I were a cartoon character, I’d have been seeing stars. His rhythm was exquisite, the curve of his cock divine, the strength of how he held me down orgasm-inducing. I whimpered as he fucked me harder until neither of us could stay in control of ourselves.

  He dropped down over me onto his elbows. A hand knotted in my hair and tightened into a fist. It burned my scalp in the best way. He held my head to the side to trail kisses down the side of my neck. All the while, his hips worked and my pussy grew sloppier.

  Rylen sealed his lips over mine. I was so close to the edge but I didn’t dare cry out. We had to stay quiet. Although the creaking and rocking of the bed frame probably wasn’t very stealthy at all.

  My body tightened. My insides gripped his cock. Rylen bowed his head and maintained the perfect rhythm as I strained against the intense pleasure closing in on its breaking point.

  “Yes,” I breathed. “Don’t stop!”

  Rylen showed no mercy. He fucked me until the bedding under my ass was soaked through and a cry I couldn’t contain finally escaped. He clamped a hand over my mouth, which only turned me on more. His cock plunged in and out of me until I burst apart one last time. Rylen broke with me and slowed the pace until we were still, after which we devoured each other with salty, breathless kisses.

  Chapter 18

  Rylen

  I woke up bathing in morning sunlight.

  It left me disoriented. My bedroom didn’t catch any daylight until the afternoon, and when I woke, especially in the winter, my room was dim and awash in dark grays. This room was bright—so bright it almost hurt to open my eyes when I finally did.

  It took several seconds to process that I was in Natalie’s room.

  Shit.

  I hadn’t meant to sleep over. Apparently, I was too exhausted last night to extract myself from her bed after we had sex. I should have been better. When I got up to wash up, I never should have climbed back into bed with her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who’d be happy to find me here the morning after. She was a professional, and based on everything she’d said about having a business to run and not being able to go to Paris, it made sense that letting me sleep over wasn’t on her to-do list either.

  I rubbed at my eyes before looking around her room. When I’d first arrived in the dead of night to pick Natalie and Muse up and go to the clinic, I hadn’t paid much attention to what the room looked like. And I certainly hadn’t paid any attention upon our return. I was too busy staring at Natalie’s breasts and her body to notice the minimalist bedroom.

  The walls were a warm shade of white. Glass shelves offered surfaces for plants with long leafy vines to bathe in the sunlight streaming through the tall windows. Blinds covered the lower half, but the top foot of the windows, which reached the ceiling, were wide open. Nobody would be able to see in, and if they did, all they’d see was white ceiling and the odd plant. I noticed several crystals dangling in front of those windows, and they cast bursts of rainbows across the walls, ceiling, floor, and the bed in which I lay.

  I’d expected her bedroom to be much like her office: dark and sultry. I expected to wake in the lair of a seductive goddess. A siren. But I found myself in an entirely different reality. This room was cheerful and full of life. It was vibrant, much like Natalie was, and there was no similarity between this place and On His Arm.

  Besides the numerous candles littered on the glass shelves, her dresser, and her nightstand.

  She had a thing for flames and inviting scents apparently.

  After getting the lay of the land, I rolled onto my back and turned my head to see if Natalie was still asleep. She was. She lay with her back to me in bed only half covered by her fluffy white duvet. Her entire back was exposed and I let my eyes follow the curve of her spine down to her waist and back up to the swell of her hip. The blankets were wrapped around her thigh. One leg was drawn up while the lower leg lay straight out. Her foot was pressed against my calf. Her hair was on my pillow.

  Slowly, I lifted my head and peered over her shoulder at the alarm clock on her nightstand.

  It was seven thirty. That gave me just enough time to get up, go home, shower, and head into the office.

  Quietly, I rolled to my side of the bed and swung my legs over. The gray laminate floors were cool under my bare feet as I padded around and collected my clothes: boxers, socks, jeans, sweater. I stepped into my boxers first, and as I pulled them up, Natalie stirred in the bed.

  I froze.

  She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms over her head. Her knuckles hit the white headboard and her breasts rose as she arched her spine. I admired the swell of her tits and the line down the middle of her ribs. I marveled at her navel and the flesh around her hips and thighs. I remembered how good it felt to hold her last night.

  Natalie’s eyes fluttered open. She gazed first at her ceiling before her green eyes flicked to me. She looked me up and down, standing at the end of her bed in nothing but my boxers, and propped herself up on her elbows. Her breasts jiggled gloriously.

  “Morning,” she chimed.

  “Morning.”

  “Were you going to run off without saying goodbye?”

  “You looked so peaceful,” I said, and I meant it. I hadn’t wanted to wake her. We’d had an exceptionally long night and I figured she could use the rest. “Stay in bed. I’m going to get ready for work and check on Muse.”

  Natalie stifled a yawn but shook her head. She swung her legs over the bed and got up, where she wiggled her toes in the fluffy white area rug on the floor and indulged in another full-body stretch that made it impossible for me to look at anything but her ass and spine. She had an incredible body. She was soft and full in all the right places.

  She padded to her bedroom door where she retrieved a long dark green robe from a hook. She shrugged it on and pulled her hair out from under it after tying the sash. “Can I interest you in coffee?” she asked.

  Coffee sounded wonderful. Even though I’d had a better night than I’d had in over two years, that didn’t mean I wasn’t still dead tired. Caffeine would help with that.

  Natalie and I made our way out to the kitchen, where we happened upon the blonde-haired, long-legged Victoria scrambling eggs in a mint-green frying pan.

  She looked up at us from beneath a mane of messy morning hair, arched an eyebrow, and smirked. “I thought I heard a ruckus last night.”

  Natalie didn’t blush as she made her way over to the coffee pot and started brewing coffee. “We tried to keep it down but Rylen’s got some good moves.”

  “So I heard,” Victoria said, shooting a smile over her shoulder at me before tossing some shredded cheese into her pan. Like Natalie, she wore a long robe, but hers was light pink.

  I sat down at their kitchen island and Natalie leaned on the other side across from me. “Sorry, Victoria and I don’t really keep anything from each other. She’ll probably ask me how good you were once you leave.”

  I chuckled. “I hope you’ll give me a good score.”

  “Nine out of ten,” Natalie said.

  “Where did I fall short?”

  Natalie winked. “I don’t like giving a hundred percent. Men’s egos can’t handle the flattery.”

  Victoria giggled and plated her eggs. She came and sat down beside me.

  I arched an eyebrow at Natalie. “So, my delicate ego aside, you would have given me a ten out of ten? In theory?”

  Natalie fetched three coffee mugs from a cupboard. “I’m standing by what I said. There’s always room for improvement.”

  “Room for improvement implies more opportunities to improve,” I said.

  Victoria pointed at me with the handle of her fork. “He’s got a point, Nat.”

  Natalie, for once, blushed. She put her back to me and b
egan pouring the mugs of coffee. Victoria nudged my elbow with her own, gave me a bro look that said “good job buddy,” and resumed her composure when Natalie set the mugs of piping-hot coffee down in front of us. She fetched milk from the fridge and sugar from the cupboard as well as some spoons before quietly going about preparing her coffee.

  I broke the silence first. “I’ve been told I take direction really well.”

  Victoria snorted into her coffee mug. Bubbles popped against the rim and she wiped her lips and nose on the sleeve of her robe.

  Meanwhile, Natalie giggled and shook her head at me. “Did I make a terrible mistake by sleeping with you?”

  “My ego says no.”

  Victoria continued to giggle.

  Natalie rolled her eyes. “If you hadn’t saved my cat’s life last night, I’d be razzing you a lot harder than this.”

  Victoria nudged me again. “Hold on to that ‘get out of jail free’ card for as long as you can.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Natalie barked at her friend.

  Victoria lifted her chin. “I like him.”

  “Whether or not you like him has nothing to do with whether or not this is ever going to happen again.”

  “Based on the sounds coming from your room last night, it absolutely should happen again,” Victoria insisted.

  “I’m putting ear plugs in your stocking,” Natalie said.

  “So you can fuck him without me hearing?” Victoria asked innocently.

  I sipped my coffee as the women talked about me like I wasn’t there.

  Natalie gave me an apologetic look. “She’s not usually this irritating, I promise. She just likes to embarrass me.”

  “Opportunities like this don’t fall into my lap all that often,” Victoria said. “I have to make the most of them when they come up. Speaking of coming up—”

  “Don’t,” Natalie warned.

  Victoria gave me a shit-eating grin. “You definitely rose to the occasion last night.”

  Chuckling in spite of myself, I polished off my coffee and slid off the stool. “As much as I have loved being the punch line of your jokes, I’d better get to work. Natalie, I’ll be in touch as soon as I get to the clinic and check on Muse.”

  Still blushing, she nodded. “Thank you. For everything.”

  Victoria pumped her eyebrows at me. “Yeah, for everything.”

  Natalie mouthed a string of curse words at her friend before walking me to the door, where she pressed a warm kiss to my cheek. “I lied. You were a ten.”

  I grinned like a fool and understood immediately why she never told guys they aced it in the bedroom. “So were you,” I said.

  Natalie laughed. “I know, baby.”

  After going home to shower, shave, get dressed, and stuff my face with some less than mediocre oatmeal, I got back in my truck and made for the clinic. When I was halfway there, my phone rang and Cora’s picture sprang to life on the touchscreen in my dashboard. On the weeks she stayed with her mother and Logan, she’d call me on Wednesdays for a midweek check-in.

  I couldn’t believe I’d almost forgotten.

  I answered the call. “Hey, sweetheart. How are you? I’ve missed you. So have Kelly and Drew. They won’t stop asking about you. It’s making me think they like you better than they like me. What’s that all about?”

  Cora’s giggles filled my cab. “You’re silly, Daddy.”

  “Where do you think you get it from?”

  Based on the background noise, it was easy to conclude that Cora was sitting at the kitchen table with her mother. I could hear Mona talking in the background and it sounded like she was on the phone with someone—a wedding vendor perhaps. Cutlery clanged against dishes and I knew they were eating breakfast together as a family.

  I swallowed the rise of anger and misery those sounds called up in me.

  “How has your week been?” I asked as I came to a red light. The music in the car next to me thumped so deeply I could feel the bass in the floorboards of my truck.

  “Good,” Cora cooed. “I’m most excited for tomorrow. Mommy is taking me shopping to find my flower-girl dress.”

  “Well, that will be a blast, I’m sure.”

  “We’re going to have lunch and get shoes, too.”

  For the rest of my drive to the office, I listened to my daughter telling me all about how excited she was about the wedding and how much she was looking forward to all the girly things she and Mona were going to do to prepare. I forced myself to be excited when in reality I was dying inside. The warm afterglow of waking up beside Natalie this morning had all but been washed away by the sounds of the happy family starting their day together on the end of the line.

  Chapter 19

  Natalie

  “Throw the guy a bone,” Victoria said as she washed her egg pan in the sink with our pink dish-scrubbing sponge. “After how well he treated you last night, you really should reconsider the whole Paris thing. Think about how much fun you’d have. And how much sex you’d have. Great sex. Ravenous, animalistic, toe-curling sex. In Paris!”

  I rolled my eyes and sipped on my second cup of coffee. It had been a long night. I was still exhausted. “I already threw him a bone last night.”

  Victoria threw her head back and laughed as she set the now sparkling clean pan on the drying mat on our counter. She rinsed out the sink and turned to me. “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “He’s good for you. Can’t you see that? He’s warm and kind. He cares about animals. He’s funny. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s ridiculously good looking and laughs easy. And on top of all that, he knows what he’s doing in the bedroom. What more could you ask for?”

  “He’s a client.”

  “Not yet. Technically.”

  “He’s sent in his paperwork, so he’s a client,” I insisted.

  “You’re the boss!” Victoria threw her hands in the air, clearly exasperated with me. “You get to make the rules, Nat. So change them up. Live a little! Besides, if anyone needs a win this Christmas, it’s Rylen.”

  I shrugged. “I think he’s doing okay, all things considered.”

  “He’s going to his ex-wife’s winter wonderland wedding in Paris in a few weeks. If you seriously think he’s doing okay, you’re delusional. A nice guy like that isn’t going to take this wedding with a grain of salt. There’s no way it’s not getting to him.”

  I sighed. Victoria, to her credit, was raising some valid points. “I’m wondering if he’s even going to bring a date at all at this point.”

  Victoria frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s taking him ages to make a decision. Maybe that just means he isn’t cut out for the whole escort thing. As you said, he’s a good guy. He’s too good to do business with us, I’d argue.”

  “Good men do business with us all the time.”

  “I think it unsettles him,” I said.

  “I think he just knows what he wants and you won’t let him have it.”

  “Just because we want something doesn’t mean we get it,” I insisted.

  “Apparently. But the only thing standing between him and his chance at getting through this wedding without falling apart is you. He stepped up last night when you needed him. Didn’t bat an eye. He didn’t run out in the middle of the night. He treated you very well.” Victoria leaned on the counter and grabbed my hand. “Natalie, seriously, all jokes aside, I really think you should go to Paris with him. You deserve a break. You can trust him. It’s a win-win for both of you. The only thing stopping you is policy. Your own personal policy that you can make exceptions for whenever you see fit. So I say again, throw the poor bastard a bone.”

  I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Hallelujah!” Victoria threw her arms in the air like she was celebrating winning a trophy for persuasion skills. “I’m going to go get changed. Ready to head to the office in thirty?”

  I nodded.


  Victoria left me alone in the kitchen, where I considered what she’d said. Rylen didn’t deserve the shitstorm waiting for him in Paris and I was the person who could make it more bearable for him. Didn’t I owe him at least that?

  Set aside owing him anything, I thought as I got up and rinsed my coffee mug in the sink. Don’t you want to help him?

  I sighed and braced myself against the counter. I hung my head.

  It was getting harder and harder to say no to his offer.

  After opening the office for the day, Victoria and I sat down to go over the schedules for the month of December. We fired off emails to the girls and updated the shared calendar we all had access to on our phones. We had no girls coming in this morning or afternoon, so we had the office to ourselves. We blasted our music, joked around, and hounded the girls who’d been on dates the last two weeks to send me their reviews.

  After a first outing with a new client, I liked to hear from the girls how things went. Was he a gentleman? Did he follow the rules? Did he try to ask for something that wasn’t on the table? Did he make her feel safe or unsafe?

  Based on the feedback I got, I decided whether or not we would continue doing business with that particular client in the future. It was rare that I ever cut a client out because my vetting process was so meticulous, but it did happen on the odd occasion.

  While we waited for the feedback to trickle in, I opened up an internet tab and started looking at pictures of Paris. Victoria, hovering over my shoulder, pointed at pictures of the beautiful city and wondered aloud which hotel the wedding would be at.

  “No idea,” I breathed as I scrolled through dozens of stunning images. I’d always wanted to go to Paris one day. I’d seen myself traveling solo or perhaps with a girlfriend, most likely Victoria. We’d stop at cute cafes and sip wine while eating cheese and bread. We’d explore fashion boutiques and go dancing at night in our new clothes. We’d wander through chapels and across cobblestone streets until our feet were sore and we were entirely lost.