Pretend Honeymoon (Romance)

by Bella Grant

  Ava closed the door swiftly behind her, not bothering to lock it as she hurried down the street, her steps growing faster and faster until she was running down the empty sidewalks in the inky blue night, her feet refusing to stop until she reached her apartment.

  She panted hard in the humid night air as she leaned against the second-story landing of her apartment, fumbling with her keys in the dark. Her heart beat rapidly, though no more rapidly than it had when Carter had pressed his hand against her heart in the café, rolling the sensitive flesh of her nipple between his fingers. He must have felt the hummingbird flutter of her heart against his palm, known how petrified she was, but not of him. She hoped he didn’t think it was of him.

  It was life she feared, not Carter. Right now, he was the one person in the world who made her feel safe, but she wasn’t ready to take the next step. Was she? Her body still tingled from the heat of his fingers, and she felt the phantom pressure of his erection against her leg, the softness of his kiss against her lips. What the fuck is wrong with you? Ava demanded, hating that she’d run, hating that she’d been too nervous to stay and find out what a cock felt like. What are you afraid of?

  She wasn’t afraid of sex. It might hurt, she knew that, but from everything she’d heard, the pain only happened the first time, and as long as the guy knew what he was doing, the pleasure should far outweigh it. Plus, just because she had never been with a man didn’t mean she hadn’t explored herself. She’d masturbated often enough to know there would be no blood from penetration, no tearing hymen. There might not even be any pain. Although she’d never been with a man, she wasn’t totally inexperienced.

  Ava was a virgin, but she knew her body well. Once inside her apartment, she fell to her mattress, letting her legs give out and landing on her back. She slid her hands down her exposed stomach, the light sheen of sweat drying cool in the night breeze coming in from the open window. She moved her left hand to her breast, the breast Carter had held firmly in his large palm, his fingers pressing against the pink mound of her nipple.

  As her body responded to his, he had pressed harder and more firmly, rolling the pink mound between his thumb and index, squeezing until she was on the threshold of pain. He did this gradually, over the course of several minutes, and as the pressure intensified, so did her arousal.

  Ava couldn’t shake the memory from her mind. Unable to ignore the throbbing between her legs, she slid her right hand inside her panties and slipped a finger into the warmth of her center. She sucked in a deep breath, squeezing tight against her nipple the way Carter had, sliding her fingers inside her and flitting her thumb over her clit.

  It didn’t take long for Ava’s pent-up sexual energy to explode out of her. As she moved her hand fast against her clit, building towards an unstoppable orgasm, Ava pictured Carter’s face watching her. She closed her eyes and imagined leaning against the railing, touching herself, squeezing her breast until it hurt, the pain amplifying the pleasure that spread from between her legs. She imagined him with his hands in his pockets, his cock pressed hard against the seam of his pants, observing her. In her mind, her gaze was fixed on his, surrendering herself to him, exposed and vulnerable, entirely his.

  “Now come,” she imagined him say is his soft, firm voice, a velvet glove on an iron hand.

  Ava’s hips bucked up against her hand and her legs shook as she let the orgasm take her. Her body trembled beneath her fingers. She squeezed her eyes tight and held onto the picture of him watching her, commanding her to orgasm, basking in the pleasure of his power over her. The thought excited her like nothing else in life ever had.

  As her body stilled, Ava wiped her fingers on the inside hem of her dress. Her body felt weak and relaxed, but the feeling in her stomach had not abated. Ava had hoped coming would release the hold Carter had on her, but it hadn’t. If anything, it made it worse. But now, she knew she didn’t want to run. She didn’t want to flee from her life, her fears, and her anxieties. She was sure. She wanted Carter to take her. Her fear now was that she had fucked up. You ran away, she chastised herself. You had your chance and you ran away.

  Ava went to sleep that night with a new feeling pounding in her chest. Instead of the loneliness she had felt from Mateo’s absence the last few days, her body swirled with a mixture of arousal and anxiety, a heart-fluttering, stomach-turning anticipation of the coming day when she would return to the coffee shop and see him.

  Chapter 8

  Carter

  After Ava bolted from the café, Carter returned to his office and sank into his chair. He smacked his hand down onto the smooth wood of the desk, and the sharp noise filled the empty room. “Fuck!” he yelled. “What the fuck are you doing, man?” He didn’t often talk to himself, but he also didn’t tend to screw up this badly. He’d made her run away. He’d pushed too hard.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath, forcing himself to calm down. He needed to get a grip. Part of him suspected this whole, stupid situation was a result of him not being able to come earlier when his poorly-timed barista had insisted on interrupting him. He was a mess, and although his arousal was scratching at his brain like an itchy, wool sweater, nothing about the situation made him feel horny. He’d scared her off, and where did that leave him now? She was skittish and he’d moved too fast. How had he miscalculated so badly?

  Carter needed to get out of his office. Although he had planned on staying to work on the quarterly projections for his meeting with the investors, there was absolutely no way his brain could handle numbers in its current state. He needed to go home. He needed fresh air and a drink on the patio. He needed to call his therapist.

  He didn’t tell anyone in his family he saw a shrink. They wouldn’t understand. They had grown up in a middle class, suburban cul-de-sac, and he couldn’t explain to his brothers why a guy who had made a fortune on a far-fetched idea would need to bitch about his life to a psychiatrist.

  He also couldn’t tell his family about his proclivities or that he was an intensely lonely person with trust issues—issues that neither he nor his therapist could quite get to the bottom of, no matter how many fifty-minute sessions they devoted to the topic.

  His therapist said it was because his last serious girlfriend—the one he’d been seeing when he’d begun hitting it big with his company—tried to sue him for damages when he broke up with her. Some kind of alimony bullshit for girlfriends who became “accustomed to a certain lifestyle.” Until the lawsuit was filed, Carter didn’t know that ex-girlfriends could sue you for alimony, or “lifestyle support,” or whatever bullshit rationale their lawyers cooked up in a dirty scheme to get someone else’s hard-earned money. That was two years ago, and until this past week and meeting Ava, Carter hadn’t felt the desire to open up to anyone.

  Of course, the moment he did, she booked it out of the café. Carter dropped his head to his hands and stared at the fine-grain wood of his desk for a moment, unblinking, wondering how badly he’d fucked up and whether Ava would come back to work.

  He picked up his phone and scrolled through his contacts. As the phone rang, Carter wondered what he’d say.

  “Hello?” his therapist answered. “Carter?”

  “Michelle, hi,” he said, suddenly feeling stupid for calling.

  “Carter, is everything okay?” Michelle asked, and he could hear the concern in her voice.

  “Yeah, fine,” he answered hastily. He was paying $260 for this conversation, so he probably shouldn’t bother lying. “No. Not really.”

  “What’s going on? Are you in danger?” his therapist asked.

  “No, of course not,” he replied.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said, her voice soothing. “You know I have to ask when I get a late-night call. What’s troubling you?”

  “I met a girl,” he said without thinking, and immediately felt like a stupid kid.

  “I see,” Michelle answered after a moment. “How do you feel?”

  “I felt good,” Carter
said half-heartedly. “I think?”

  “Are you answering a question with a question?” Michelle asked in her unhelpful therapist manner that made Carter wonder what he was paying her for every time she did it.

  “Maybe,” Carter answered. “Anyway, something happened tonight.”

  “Tell me about her,” Michelle asked, and Carter leaned back in his desk chair and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

  “She’s young.” He admitted the fact he was all too aware of. “She’s twenty. And she’s an orphan.”

  “I see,” Michelle said again after a moment. “And how did you meet?”

  “She came into the café a few days ago and didn’t know what she wanted to order, so she asked for a black coffee and I made her something else,” Carter explained. “I knew she didn’t know what she wanted, so I chose for her.”

  “Go on,” Michelle prompted without judgment. “How did she respond?”

  “She was happy,” Carter said. “Surprised, but happy. And I offered her a job.”

  “Why did you do that?” Michelle asked, and Carter felt irritated at having to explain.

  “Because she needed one,” he answered shortly.

  “I can help, but you have to want it,” Michelle reminded him. “You called me.”

  “I know,” Carter sighed. “I felt bad for her. She seemed so unbelievably fragile. And something else, too. It’s like she understood everything I was trying to get at with my cafés.”

  “You mean your set designing?” Michelle asked. “Creating spaces for people to live out their fantasy lives?”

  “Yes, exactly,” Carter said, his voice rising excitedly. “Hardly anyone gets it, you know? People come in and they like it, and it speaks to them, but they’re not listening and they don’t understand what’s happening or why it’s happening. They just drink their coffee and go, never fully embracing the moment. But she did. She seemed to get it.”

  “And, obviously, that made her very attractive to you,” Michelle deduced.

  “Yes. And she is a beautiful girl.”

  “I see,” Michelle said quietly. “So, what happened tonight? I assume that’s why you’re calling?”

  “I fantasized about her today,” Carter admitted. It used to embarrass him to discuss this kind of thing with his therapist, but he’d long since gotten over the awkwardness. Michelle knew him as well as anyone ever had, and he needed her insights.

  “Did that satisfy you?” Michelle asked curiously.

  “No,” Carter sighed. “I was interrupted.” He was silent for a moment, but Michelle waited for him to continue. “She came back after the café closed. She used her key to let herself in. She came up to my office and I found her on the balcony.”

  “And then what happened?” inquired Michelle.

  Carter could hear her interest growing. “I tried to dominate her,” he answered quietly. “I fucked up.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I touched her. I asked her if it was okay to touch her, and then I did. I pushed her, you know? Trying to see if she’d bend, if she’d resist or if she’d submit. And she did. I had her up against the railing, and I was barely touching her, and her body just…submitted. She leaned her head to the side and exposed her neck, and I knew she wanted it. She wanted me to take control. She didn’t want to think anymore, she just wanted me to tell her what to do.”

  “It sounds like she was actively engaged in the encounter,” Michelle asked, confused. “How did you fuck up?”

  “After she relaxed and had submitted mentally, I turned her around and began kissing her. She was into it,” Carter said, growing self-conscious at retelling his miscalculation. “But then my erection touched her leg and she freaked out, and before I could explain or calm her down, she ran down the staircase and out the door. I stood there and watched her go.”

  “What did you want to do?” Michelle asked. Her voice was emotionless and vague, and Carter knew that if he wanted clarity, he’d have to keep talking and find it for himself.

  “I wanted to stop her. I wanted to bend her over the railing and fuck her. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to save her. And all I did was freak her out. She was too brittle and I pushed too hard. Whatever was there, I broke it.”

  “Why do you think that?” asked Michelle, and Carter was surprised to hear the doubt in her voice.

  “Because she ran away,” he repeated, confused.

  “But you already knew she was a troubled girl,” Michelle concluded. “And I suspect you knew her fight-or-flight instincts would probably kick in. And it’s possible she’d never had an encounter like that with a man before.”

  “Perhaps,” Carter answered, his thoughts already shifting to Ava and the likelihood of her being a virgin. The way she had moved into his body when he pressed her up against the railing gave him no indication that she hadn’t been touched before, but the way she reacted to his erection brushing up against her was another story.

  “Carter, are you there?” Michelle asked, snapping him from his reveries.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” he said, clearing his throat.

  “I think there are some big topics we need to discuss when we meet next,” Michelle said definitively. “Your savior complex. You have a desire to save this girl, and I think we should figure out why.”

  “I already know why,” Carter said without thinking about what he was saying.

  “Oh? What reason is that?” Michelle asked, probing deeper with a rare curiosity in her voice.

  Fuck, Carter thought. He wouldn’t be able to dodge this question. “I guess she’s this missing piece in my life,” he answered at last. “And she seems malleable. I want her to be mine. And I want to be hers. I don’t want her to worry ever again.”

  “You want to dominate her,” Michelle said succinctly.

  “In so many words,” Carter answered. “I want to transform her into the woman I know she can be.”

  “Do you think this deep longing for control is a result of your reckless youth and a string of women who you can’t relate to emotionally and therefore feel out of control with?” Michelle asked suddenly.

  “Um…maybe? I don’t know, Michelle. Is that what you think?” Carter asked, rubbing his forehead between his fingers.

  “Perhaps,” Michelle answered. “I think we should save it for next time. Until then, I would advise you to be careful around this girl. I don’t know about her, but I will venture a guess you are both wildly emotional people who spend a great deal of your life living in a fantasy world of your own creation, and that makes you extremely volatile on an intimacy level. I don’t want to see you get hurt, Carter. You’ve been making great progress.”

  “I’m not hurt,” he said, and as the words left his mouth he heard the lie in them.

  “Of course,” Michelle answered, unconvinced. “When do you see her next?”

  “She’s supposed to come into work tomorrow, if she shows,” Carter replied.

  “You’re her employer,” Michelle reminded him sternly. “You need to be extremely careful of what you do and say around her. Even though I trust you’re reading her signals correctly, she may not be fully aware of the signals she’s giving, and you don’t want to end up in another lawsuit. Especially not one with merit. If you decide to take things to the next level, you’ll need her to sign a document of consent. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Carter replied.

  “Good. Until our next session, I want you to try this: don’t make any moves at all. You’ve scared her, and anything more would feel like pursuit. I can tell how important this girl is to you because you haven’t talked about any woman in the three years you’ve been seeing me. Clearly, she’s made an impact in your life. I want you to give that relationship room to develop. You feel intensely that she is the person you can fit into your stage act, and you want to dress her up and give her lines to say, and convert her into the perfect actress to transform your fantasy into reality. But life doesn’t work that way, and
although she might be a submissive, you can’t know that for sure at this point in time. Moreover, even if she is a submissive, that does not negate her autonomy. It simply means that she wishes to be autonomous within parameters that have been mutually agreed upon. So give her space. Take it easy. Don’t make another move until she explicitly asks you to or makes one herself. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Carter said, absorbing his therapist’s words.

  “Take care of yourself, Carter. Go home and get some sleep.”

  After Michelle ended the call, Carter sat motionless, staring at his phone. He understood what she had said, and he heard the logic in her words. But, unfortunately, her advice was at odds with Carter’s every instinct, which was to win Ava over, convince her she was the missing piece in his life, and that he would take care of her.

  He let out a deep sigh and pushed his chair back from his desk. Shoving the quarterly budget projections in his leather bag, Carter hit the remote and turned off the lights in his office, making his way down the metal stairway, each step heavy with exhaustion.

  The drive home was a blur, and when Carter punched in the gate code and rolled down his long, curved driveway to his sprawling ranch-style bungalow, he had never felt so thankful to be home. After parking his Mercedes in the four-car garage—as if he needed a four-car garage all for himself, another upgrade the architect had talked him into—Carter entered through the back door, turned off the alarm, and poured himself a gin on the rocks.

  The night was still hot, a thick August evening, even though it was nearly 10:00 p.m., and the sun had set two hours ago. Carter turned on some music and headed to the pool, where he kicked off his shoes and pants, and pulled his shirt over his head without bothering to unbutton it. He stood naked in the warm air, his feet warmed from the sunbaked heat of the stones, and after taking a large sip of his drink, he dove into the pool.

  As the water enveloped him, he felt his mind clear for the first time that day. He swam laps, determined to keep the pressure at bay as long as he could, his arms churning the water, his lungs gasping for air as he turned his head every few strokes, his legs pounding behind him. When he was afraid he might drown, Carter slowed, rotating on to his back. He spread his arms and floated on his back, staring at the star-specked dome of sky above him and the dark outline of palm trees illuminated by the patio lights.