Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  I came, pushing against the headboard and raising my hips. “Logan! Just wait, I—”

  Though he slowed down, he kept his promise and made me come again, twisting with the unbearable, overwhelming sensation of too much pleasure, until he had to stop and I was on my stomach with him behind me.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. From behind my closed eyes, my face smushed against the mattress, I felt him take off his sweatpants. “Did I know you were the one right then?”

  “I don’t know.” He put his hands on my hips and pulled them up to get me on my hands and knees. I felt the head of his dick start at my asshole then slide down to my entrance. “You decide that part of the story.”

  He pushed inside me, three strokes deep, and stopped to wrap his arm under mine and place his hand under my jaw. Then he slammed into me, making me see stars.

  “You want it all?” he asked.

  “That’s not all of it?”

  “This is all of it.” One hard thrust and he was root-deep, leaving me shuddering against him. He put two fingers in my mouth, the middle and the ring. I closed my lips around them. “Suck while you take it.”

  I did as he commanded, and he thrust into me again and again, teasing my clit with his other hand. I dropped to my elbows. The harder he fucked me, the harder I sucked. If I wasn’t half conscious with the coming of the fourth orgasm of the night, I would have sworn I’d have taken his skin right off.

  “Come with me,” he growled at exactly the right time.

  Humming against his hand, I did as I was told, and he unloaded inside with a deep rumble in his throat. Lying on top of me, still inside, he kissed my shoulder.

  “So did you know I was the one?” he asked, rolling off me to the side of the bed he’d claimed.

  “Yeah,” I replied, getting on the other side. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  “Noted.”

  “What about you?”

  “Nope.”

  “No?” I kicked him.

  “I knew from the moment you ordered your froufrou coffee.”

  “Shut up.” I whacked him with a pillow, but the bed was so big, I only got him with a corner.

  “Are you looking to get fucked again?” He reached for me, and I skootched closer.

  “I’m too tired.” Laying my head on his shoulder, I let him put his arm around my neck.

  “Not tired enough.”

  “I’m mostly dead.” My eyelids drooped, and I yawned. “Thank you for a great first and last time in the sack.”

  “Pleasure was all mine.”

  I had a clever response, but couldn’t get the words out before I fell asleep.

  15

  LOGAN

  How tired and worn out had I been to tell her the story of finding Lyric in the pool?

  No one knew but Byron, and he hadn’t mentioned it since that day, when he told me I was stupid for lying.

  What had come over me?

  I should have been anxious as hell, pacing, trying to make myself believe things that weren’t true. That I wasn’t repeating old mistakes and I was fine, fine, fine.

  Instead, I was lying awake, naked except for a pair of silly Santa socks, wearing Ella’s head on my chest and her drying juices on my dick.

  In a few hours, we’d move her into my house. With every step, I pushed us deeper into a lie I was less and less sure I could maintain. Knowing how she fucked, how she slept, and how she took her coffee wasn’t a substitute for love. Getting our story straight wasn’t the same as living it.

  We’d made a business decision, and yet—when she’d suggested an annulment, my reaction had been visceral. I’d had to peel that back to give her a less emotional reason to stay married.

  In the dark with her, I didn’t panic. The anxiety was usually worse at night, but not that night. Somehow, it stayed locked in its cage while I put the pieces in place.

  Our families.

  Our business.

  My feelings.

  Without the voice telling me I was losing control, I could see my feelings for her clearly.

  They existed as a soreness where I was hard. Tenderness. Potential.

  If in our year together, they grew past the confines of what I could hold, they would be dangerous, and if they grew then dissolved into boredom or distaste while hers didn’t, that could be worse. I didn’t know what she was like when she was really angry, but she had little to lose making my life hell.

  I should have panicked and spent the following few hours strategizing a way out.

  Instead, I fell asleep.

  I woke with the sun peeking over the horizon and no solution for the risk she posed.

  * * *

  Like every other room in the house, the gym overlooked a pool and opened to a view that didn’t disappear until the horizon faded into haze.

  Colton was already benching. Surprising, since he was the only late sleeper among us. He saw me and dropped the weights into the rack.

  “Yo, yo,” he said, sitting up. “Good morning.”

  “Morning.” I draped my towel over the handle of the treadmill and set my run uphill.

  “You split last night.” He shook my hand, then tried to lead me into a finger hook fist bump thing I had no interest in.

  “You split with your money years ago.”

  “You mad?” He got onto the treadmill next to me.

  “Don’t care.” I started my run as if his actions didn’t concern me.

  “Cool.”

  “Mom was devastated, so fuck you.”

  “Yeah.” He ran next to me. “Fuck me. So, you got a wife, huh? I’m gonna meet her at breakfast or nah?”

  “If you show.” I kept my eyes on the expanse of Los Angeles. Colton was a pain in the ass and he was turning my sour mood bitter.

  “I’m back for good,” he said. “Gonna make it right with the ‘rents.”

  “You mean you spent all the money.”

  “Man, you haven’t changed.” The belt under his feet shifted and he ran with it. “Never cut a guy a break.”

  “You got enough breaks.” I could see his stats. He was lazy and careless, but he was a fit fuck and already running faster than me. I tapped my panel until my pace matched his.

  “Yeah, well, break time’s over. I’ll be hauling pig slop ten years before he flicks me another dime. That cool for you?”

  “Not my problem.”

  I had enough problems. I loved my brothers, but Colton was unmanageable, much like Ella, who I wasn’t allowed to love.

  Which I didn’t. I didn’t even want to like her.

  But the sex. The alternating tenderness and ferocity had softened me. I’d told her things I hadn’t spoken about to anyone. I’d wanted her to know me, the real me, the part that wanted to crawl under her skin when we fucked and lose my identity inside her.

  Colton and I ran in silence long enough to lull me into thinking he’d stop talking, but no.

  “So you fell in love, huh?” he asked. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “I guess I do.”

  But I couldn’t love Ella. We were on a timeline. Losing myself in her wasn’t possible, nor was it wise.

  “All the girls you brought around.” Tap-tap. His belt tilted uphill. “I was always like ‘why’s he even with her?’”

  “What’s that mean?” Instinctively, I added to the grade, because if he could run this fast uphill, I could too.

  “Dude. The doctor?”

  “June.”

  “She was totally hot. Smart as fuck. Never once in two years, neh-ver did I look at you guys and think, ‘Yeah, he loves that chick.’ And Mom didn’t—”

  “My mother doesn’t run my relationships.”

  “Not saying that. Just… you were a stone-cold motherfucker, dude.”

  “Can we just have a run? Or do you want to sit and talk about your past?”

  “Whatever.” Tap-tap. Faster, and fuck him for it.

  I added to my speed. Maybe we’d be to
o breathless to talk.

  “Good morning.” Byron’s voice came from behind us. “Colton. It’s good to see you, brother.” He slapped Colton’s back.

  “Yeah,” he replied, jogging too fast to run his mouth.

  “Olivia says she knows your new wife.” Byron got on the treadmill on the other side of mine.

  I was fucking surrounded. “Oh, yeah?”

  “She fit Olivia’s gown from last night,” Byron said, setting his run, then checking mine.

  “Great.”

  “Speaks highly.” Byron upped the grade and started. He’d scale a wall just to beat me. “Very talented. She was surprised Ella’s not running that company by now.”

  “Her stepmother got control in the will.”

  “Apparently. How’s she feel about that?”

  “Ask her.”

  “I might.” Byron’s belt picked up speed.

  I made a note to warn Ella it would come up. We had to craft a response. I didn’t want any red flags popping up before we started buying shares. Then it was going to get real adversarial, real fast.

  My body was so engaged in the run, I forgot to steel myself against the pleasure of the story of us taking back what was hers. Doing something just and right, together. The pitfalls, the wins, the eventual, indisputable victory of putting her back where she belonged.

  Ella was a fighter, and I was her champion.

  Byron cut right into the fantasy. “Did you see the new bid on the pipeline?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s interesting.”

  “Let’s not bore Colton with business.”

  “Not bored,” the brother on my other side said.

  “Good,” Byron said. “If you want to work at Crowne—”

  “What?”

  “He needs a job,” Byron said. “And you know Dad. He’ll find something for him to do.”

  I knew Dad fine, but I knew Mom better. She was the one who’d put a net under Colton. Dad would teach you to swim by throwing you off a pier and rescuing you if he thought you’d drown. Mom would jump into a kiddie pool to make sure we were all right.

  “Nah,” Colton said. “I’m cool.”

  Byron leaned over to look past me at Colton. “It’ll be good for you.”

  “Gotta find a place to crash first. Got a fat ‘no’ from Pops about staying here.”

  “He’ll bend, just give it time.” Byron wasn’t even out of breath. Meanwhile, I had a crushing weight on my chest.

  Byron pulling me down was bad enough, but now he was dragging in Colton of all people.

  Fuck this.

  I shut the machine.

  “Had enough?” Byron asked.

  “This gym’s too crowded.”

  “See you at breakfast,” Colton called back.

  * * *

  Ella had put a hoodie over her pajamas and was pacing the suite’s patio with her phone to her ear. Her hair was pulled up in a bun that sat high on her head, exposing the curve of her ears and the length of her neck.

  She waved when she saw me, pointed at the phone, and mouthed, “Bianca.”

  “You can be mad I took it but you can’t just fire me.” She listened, looking in the middle distance with the mountains behind her.

  I threw myself into a chair and turned my emotions down to a low, rolling boil.

  “I know ‘you’re happy but,’” she said, sitting across from me to rest her elbow on the table. She rubbed her temple as if her stepmother was giving her a headache.

  “Honey!” I said so Bianca could hear. “I’m home.”

  Ella smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. “I have to go,” she said. “Fine.” Pause. “Yes, I believe you.” Pause. “Okay. Bye.” She tapped off and tossed the phone on the table. “Fuck.”

  “What happened?”

  “She fired me. Fuck. I shouldn’t have taken that dress. ‘Darling,’” she said, imitating her stepmother’s affect. “‘You know I love you dearly, but even if I overlook the mistake over the Rachel tee, I simply cannot send the message that stealing one of Basile’s dresses is acceptable.’”

  “Why do you care about a job? How much do you make? I’ll—”

  “Don’t you dare,” she objected with a defensiveness to match the overt accusations in my voice. “I promised my father on his goddamned deathbed. I said I’d take responsibility for the name. That I’d stay connected to it.” She launched off her chair and crossed the distance between the table and the sliding glass doors with her arms crossed, spun, then came back. “She can’t do this. She can’t cut me off like a… like an employee.” At the edge of the table, she pointed at me as if I were Bianca, grinding every word through her teeth. “I am Basile Papillion’s only child. Do you hear me?”

  She was a warrior without weapons.

  A princess who needed a champion.

  “Hell hears you right now.”

  She threw herself into the chair and used another to mirror my reclined posture. “We’re going to rip that company from under her, I swear to God. I want her to beg me not to, then I’m doing it anyway.”

  “Vindictiveness isn’t good business.”

  “That office has been my home since I was a kid. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with myself.”

  “You could just be my wife. If you take that on full time, it’ll make us credible to my family.”

  She slid down the chair and crossed her ankles. In profile, there was something missing from her face. A lost piece from that side, specifically. I studied her as she spoke, trying to place it.

  “The nineteen-fifties called,” she said. “They want their culture back.”

  Found it. The nose ring was the missing piece. She hadn’t put it back in yet, and in casual clothes, she didn’t look right without it.

  “It’s just a job,” I said, sticking to a point that pissed her off because I was right. “You’ve still got your name, or mine if you want it.”

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  She took her feet off the chair and faced me. “When my parents got Christmas cards, some of them were addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Basile Papillion. I asked my mother if she’d changed her first name too. She said no, but some people are old-fashioned and that’s the way they did it. When my dad got remarried, you know who the cards were addressed to? Mr. and Mrs. Basile Papillion. Same. My mother was just replaced. Poof. Like she never even existed.”

  “I don’t want to erase you.”

  “You just want to prop up our story. I know. Sure.” She twirled her hand as if she was weaving my words from the air and throwing them back at me. “You’re in this world but not of it, right?”

  “I’m not—” I stopped myself.

  What was I?

  I was a man who wanted her to look the way she was supposed to.

  I got up and went to the bathroom. There were two countertops, each with their own mirror, and two sinks. My stuff was on the vanity where I’d put them the night before. Her stuff was on the other. I scanned it for little boxes, shiny things, trays with jewelry.

  “What are you doing?” she asked from the doorway, just as I saw what I was looking for in an open contact lens container.

  “Sit.” I slid the stool from under the sink and pulled the seat to its highest setting.

  She sat.

  “Look up.” I held up the nose ring. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”

  “I can put it back in,” she said, pointing her chin toward the ceiling. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “I know.” I stood over her as near as I could, between her legs. “But I want to.”

  After sliding the narrowest end through the hole in the crease of her nostril, I closed the ring and took her chin so I could look at my work. “Better. Now you look like you should.”

  “Like a jobless temp wife?”

  I leaned down to whisper. “Like my wife.”

  I felt her suck in a breath, drawing me closer as she put her hands on my neck.

>   “Thank you,” she said, even though I hadn’t done much but slip a ring into the hole in her nose.

  “I want…” I paused to give myself a moment to change my mind—as if I hadn’t already decided what I wanted from her. “I agreed to help you get what’s yours, but right now, it’s not about the contract. I want to.”

  I knelt on the tile between her legs and ran my hands up the length of her thighs, to her waistband. “We’re going to wait a few months to settle in, then we’re going to quietly start the buyout.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “As long as it does.” I tugged down her yoga pants. “Six months at the outside.”

  “What if it’s longer?” Another tug, and she lifted her bottom off the seat so I could slide the elastic over her ass.

  “Then it’s longer.”

  “You can’t renegotiate a deal between my legs.”

  I got the pants all the way off and tossed them in a corner. Her bare legs met at a seam, and when I pushed them apart, the shadow opened into slick, pink glory.

  “Logan,” she said.

  “Yes?” I spread her open until I could smell her hunger.

  “I don’t think we—”

  Her thought melted into a moan as I kissed where she was tender, licked where she was wet, and sucked where she was swollen. She clamped her legs around me, arched her back, and pushed her cunt into my mouth so I could breathe her orgasm.

  I wiped her juices off my chin.

  “You’re something, Logan Crowne,” she said, leaning against the wall, breathless. “Really something.”

  “I’ve been told that.”

  “There are things I wanted to say.” She pulled up her pants, and I stood. “Then Bianca called, but now I really think I should say them.”

  When her waistband was in place, I held out my hand to help her up. “Say them.”

  “Last night, or this morning—whatever—I started to have…” She shook her head as if rearranging her thoughts. “Feelings.”

  “We agreed not to.”

  “That’s the problem. You’re… I like you. And if we keep it up, it’s going to be really hard to do… the thing.”

  The divorce. I could see in her face that she didn’t want to say the word.

  That was a problem.