He touched her lower back, just to steady her, but it felt like the one place on earth his hand was born to rest. All the edgy tension rippled right out of him, and he exhaled through the dizziness of the change. He’d been not-okay, but now he was just fine. Like magic.
He was starting to irritate himself.
“Don’t worry about me,” he murmured. “I’m sorry I’m being so…”
She arched her brows and waited, forcing him to finish the sentence.
He sighed. “Sorry I’m being so quiet. I think I ate too much.”
Her laughter was incredulous. “You could eat a truck-full of pizza, and it wouldn’t be too much.”
His lips twitched. She wasn’t wrong.
“It’s okay to be in a bad mood, you know. I don’t need you to entertain me all the time.” She gave him a considering look with those pretty doe eyes. Her hesitation tasted like icing sugar, like care. “I like being around you, Zach. Even when you’re not performing. Okay?”
Honestly? He felt like she’d just whacked him over the head with a two-by-four. This was the sweetest concussion of his life. “Okay,” he said, and meant it. His hand at the small of her back felt electric.
She smiled. Then she turned away, and her expression changed. Drooped. He followed her gaze and found the cause: at the centre of the dining hall, a group of adults cooed happily as a golden-haired toddler stumbled across the floor. Then a beaming, equally golden-haired woman came along to sweep the kid up in her arms. The toddler squealed and laughed and clapped its pudgy hands. Rae looked like she’d been teabagged by a ghost, her expression caught between shock and horror.
Zach didn’t want kids, so he’d always assumed Rae was childless for the same reason. Now he wondered if he’d been way off.
“Hey,” he said, grabbing her hand, clutching her limp fingers tight. “You good?”
She blinked a few times, like a robot rebooting. “I’m fine,” she breathed, and she did look better now. “I was just… surprised.”
He nodded dubiously. “It is pretty late for a kid to be up.”
“No,” she said. “That’s—that’s Kevin’s son.”
Now Zach probably looked like he’d been teabagged by a ghost. “What?”
“That’s Kevin’s son. It looks just like him. And the woman holding him is Billie.” She nodded again, as if talking it through had made her certain. “They must have brought him to the convention.”
“Why the fuck would they bring a toddler to a convention?”
“Maybe they couldn’t get a sitter.”
“I thought your husband was rolling in it?”
There was a flash of familiar fire in her rakish, one-sided smile. “Maybe he wanted to make this a family affair. He likes attention. Oh, God, everyone’s noticed me.” She stiffened. The fire flickered, went out.
“No, they haven’t,” Zach lied, sliding an arm over her shoulders, dragging her into his side. Despite his words, curious eyes crept toward them, two by two. The room seemed to be holding its breath, wondering how Rae would take this. He felt her crumbling against him with sheer embarrassment, and suddenly, he was desperate to fix it.
“They’re all staring at me,” she hissed.
“They’ve been staring all night. You’re beautiful.”
Laughter bubbled out of her, sharper than it should be. “I’m lurking in the shadows, spying on my ex-husband’s baby.”
“Actually,” Zach said, “we’re lurking in the shadows because you look like dessert.”
She tipped her head back to frown at him in confusion. He couldn’t help himself. He kissed her snub little nose.
She sucked in a breath, and he felt like she’d taken it directly from his lungs. That was how they worked: she acted, he reacted. Or maybe it was the other way around, a cycle that had started without him noticing. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know; he just wanted to make things better. This was exactly the kind of disaster he’d come to help with, after all.
He wrapped his arms around her and spoke into the fall of her hair. “I’m about to fake-boyfriend you.”
After a moment, she relaxed against his chest, flashing him a familiar smirk. “Is that a verb?”
“It is now.” He grazed a kiss over her cheekbone. Lips, skin, pressure. He’d done this a thousand times—not with her, but then, it shouldn’t really matter that it was with her.
And yet, it did. The way the tension slid out of her body, the way her fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt, the way she stared at his mouth when he was done… it all mattered.
“Is this what fake-boyfriending is?” she whispered.
“It’s a process,” he told her solemnly, and kissed her forehead. He could hear his own pulse and it was frantic.
She smiled a little. “This isn’t bad.”
“Glad to hear it. Tell me when to stop.”
“You don’t need to stop.”
The TV screen of his mind glitched, flashing a fantasy he wasn’t prepared for: Rae, under him, begging him not to stop. Then the glitch vanished, and it was back to his regular programming.
He swallowed, then kissed her jaw. She gave a soft, helpless moan that was doomed to live inside him forever. He’d never forget it. He’d be at the supermarket in fifteen years’ time trying to choose a flavour of ice cream, and out of nowhere he’d remember Rae moaning because he’d kissed her fucking jaw.
“Oh my God,” she muttered, stiffening in his arms, her gaze skittering away. She was embarrassed. “I’m so sor—”
“Don’t.” He nudged her chin until she looked him in the eyes. And then, finally, he kissed her on the mouth.
He hadn’t exactly planned to. They hadn’t even discussed this. He’d been waiting for her to bring up Physical Fake Boyfriend Boundaries, but she never had, and now… here they were. He started carefully, his lips gliding over hers, testing, asking—but soon enough, a seething, potent something spilled out of him, turning the slight touch intense. He felt as if he’d shoved her against the nearest wall and hiked up her skirt. Kissing her like this, barely breathing her in, was making him shake. He just hoped to God she wouldn’t notice, because he didn’t know how to explain it.
The way she kissed him back was dizzying. She was careful, too, her lips slow and curious, like a question. Is this what we’re doing?
He increased the pressure, his hands tightening around her hips. Yes. This is what we’re doing.
Her tongue barely touched his, sweet and slick and sexy as fuck. Okay. I like it.
That’s when things spiralled out of control.
She was hot, liquid, molten. She pressed herself against him, and he shocked himself by feeling the opposite of nothing. He felt everything, all at once, without an ounce of bloody warning, and wondered how he hadn’t seen the signs. He raised a hand to cradle the back of her neck and grew rapidly addicted to the feel of holding her in secret, private places. Places no-one else could touch. He wanted to run his unworthy palms up her thighs, to trace a finger down the column of her spine, to sweep his thumb over the dip of her navel. He settled for pushing his tongue deeper into her mouth. She tasted of wine in a silver cup, of cool, clever steel. She kissed like she was starving, and it made his chest cave in. He’d feed her. Of course he would. Whatever she wanted. As long as what she wanted was him.
He didn’t realise he was hard until delicious pain shot through his body. His jeans were throttling his cock. Devouring his fake girlfriend with an audience of Way Too Many hadn’t made him hesitate, but a public erection felt a little too far and a lot too teenage. He meant to break the kiss gently, but in the end, they came up for air as if they’d been drowning. They stared at each other with matching wide eyes, and he wondered if they had matching thoughts. Maybe. Because she looked shocked, and he sure as shit felt shocked.
He was into Rae. Who knew?
And what should he do about it?
The most obvious answer was nothing. Reasons piled high. They were friends; he was he
re to support her; she’d specifically invited him because he wouldn’t make it weird or try to get in her pants. And anyway, she’d already offered, and he’d said no, which meant he’d fucked his chances, and—
And earlier, in the elevator, when he’d touched her without an audience, she’d turned away.
The memory was a timely reminder that their mind-blowing, world-altering kiss had been nothing but performance—to her, anyway. Everything between them was fake, except for their friendship, which was a different kind of everything. So Zach dragged himself from dizzy, oh-fuck heaven back down to depressing earth, where Rae was breathing heavy in his arms.
He frowned, studying her face. “Is your heart okay?”
"That’s not how it works,” she told him, then hesitated. “Actually, I’m not sure how it works. I never finished the NHS pamphlet.”
Helpfully, worry ruined his hard-on. “Rae.”
“What? I get along just fine.”
“Rae.”
She rolled her eyes, but there was something mischievous about her mouth. He had a feeling she was being difficult on purpose, as if bickering would defuse this thing between them. It did. He was grateful. They untangled themselves, and it was almost like nothing had happened. He kept hold of her hand for the benefit of the audience he’d forgotten.
The baby and Billie were nowhere to be seen. He watched Rae carefully, but she didn’t even look for them. She had faraway eyes, like she was dreaming up different worlds.
He was glad she wasn’t dwelling on the kiss. That was for the best. Because if she’d felt that lurch of attraction, too, and if she tried to touch him in private, he might ask for something she’d never offered. Something close and silent and strong, skin-to-skin in the dark, all intimate secrets and whispered confessions. And she would tell him no.
“You still want to go upstairs?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Her tongue ran over her lower lip, and his heart shivered.
He squeezed her hand. “Rae.”
“Hmm?” She blinked back to life. “Oh, sorry. What?”
“Upstairs?”
Ah,” she said. “Yes. I need to write.”
Zach nodded, tugging her toward the elevators. Her plans complemented his perfectly, because he needed to log into his demisexual forum and search for discussions tagged, Oops, I’m suddenly attracted to my friend/fake date. Please help.
Or maybe he could start his own thread with that very question?
No. No. Not yet. He had too much to think about. Such as the very painful truth currently weighing on his shoulders.
He’d just kissed this woman with everything he had, down to his fucking soul. And she would never know it had been real.
Upstairs, Rae typed her own version of lorem ipsum and tried to remain cool while Zach sat beside her, the sheets pulled up to his waist, his bare chest gilded by the sultry lamplight. After fiddling with his phone for half an hour, he’d taken out his contact lenses and put on honest-to-God horn rimmed, tortoiseshell glasses. Then he’d started reading some sci-fi novel like the sexiest nerd she’d ever seen. Even if he hadn’t ruined her with his mouth in the middle of the dining hall, the sight would have scrambled her brain.
But he had. He had ruined her, without even trying—so utterly that, an hour later, she still had to remind herself to breathe. She also reminded herself that he’d been performing. That the hard press of his erection against her belly, that jutting steel she felt the ghost of even now, was simply a physical reaction to stimulation. It didn’t mean a damned thing, because he’d made it crystal clear that he didn’t see her that way. She could never let herself forget it.
“How’s the writing going?” he asked after a while, and her cheeks heated.
“Fine,” she said tightly. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She couldn’t focus at the minute because he was suffocating her with sexiness both past and present, but the knot inside her mind had started to unravel the moment they’d arrived in Manchester. Ideas were flowing fast now, dripping steadily like blood and wine did in the venomous world of her imagination. It was as if coming here and facing her fears had already set her worries to rest. As if she were one of her own heroines, trapped in a vicious court, proving her strength to herself with every inch of control she took.
Tonight hadn’t been so bad, after all. Largely thanks to Zach.
He removed his glasses and closed the book, marking his page with a finger. “Do you want to talk through anything?”
This was a habit of theirs, one she still couldn’t believe she’d fallen into. Discussing ideas with Zach, telling him stories before they made their way onto paper, helped Rae think. And yet, every time, a warning siren sounded at the back of her mind: You can’t trust him with that.
She did her best to ignore that siren. There were all sorts of things she couldn’t trust Zach with, but her work wasn’t one of them. “Maybe tomorrow,” she murmured. “Right now, I think I’m ready for bed.”
“Me, too,” he agreed, and his smile knocked her on her arse.
They packed up and turned off the bedside lamps. The room’s gauzy curtains let in hints of city light, so she could see the outline of Zach’s body beside her. He was a forbidding, shadowed landscape, a mountain she shouldn’t want to climb. But she did want to, in more ways than one. During that kiss downstairs, the man she’d always thought of as emotionally safe had plucked at something tender and possessive in her chest. It was sickening, not to mention gravely alarming. If she’d developed feelings for the twenty-eight-year-old friend who’d firmly turned her down, she was going to be very displeased with herself.
Rae sighed, a self-indulgent, gusty huff that she really, really enjoyed.
Then Zach murmured, sounding much too alert, “You awake?”
Shit.
She considered lying, then remembered that lying would still reveal she was awake. Playing dead, like Duke sometimes did when it was time to visit the vet, seemed beneath her. In the end, she cleared her throat and said, “Yes.”
The sheets rustled. There were a few violent dips in the mattress, like a bedtime earthquake, and the shape of Zach in the dark transformed. He’d rolled over. Now they lay side by side, staring holes into each other, and she felt the ghost of his breath against her cheek. She could smell the mint toothpaste they shared, too. Every exhalation caused a zing up her spine and a flutter in her belly, which was rather inconvenient, all things considered.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Are you?” she shot back, like it was a trick question.
He huffed out a laugh and she imagined him shaking his head at her prickliness. “Relax, Rae.” Easy for him to say. He wasn’t coping with doomed lust 24 hours a day. “I wanted to ask you about what happened after dinner.”
The silence that followed was short but heavy. She panicked and wondered if he could secretly read minds. Maybe her thoughts were getting so out of hand that even he, after years of hiding his power for his own protection, could no longer feign ignorance. She was preparing a speech about how he could trust her not to sell his story to the papers, or report his existence to the government, when he finally spoke.
“Are kids… a difficult subject for you?” There was a wince in his voice, like he thought she might burst into tears.
Oh. No mind-reading powers, then. Thank goodness for small mercies. “No,” she said, then added, since people always wanted to know: “I don’t have any kids because I’ve never wanted them.”
“So, you’re not emotionally gutted by the sight of Kevin Junior, or anything?”
She wrinkled her nose. “You may find this hard to believe, but I am a woman who does not regret being childless.”
“I just wanted to make sure. But no, I don’t find it hard to believe.” He didn’t sound like he was lying.
Still, she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the outline of his head. “Why not? Most people do.”
“Probably because I don’t want kids either.”
“Ha,” she barked, and remembered a similar conversation in another life. Earnest eyes behind sharp spectacles and words she’d worried she might never hear. “That’s what Kevin said, and look. You’ll change your mind.” About everything. She knew that well enough.
Mildly, Zach asked, “How many people told you that you’d change your mind?”
Rae opened her mouth, then shut it. Blinked. Finally, she tutted, “Stop that.”
There was a smile in his voice. “Stop what?”
“Making sensible arguments.”
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I have so much sense.”
She laughed, but the sound was brittle because she was still on edge. She could feel him beside her, heat and weight and aching presence, and she couldn’t shake the worry that he must be able to feel her too—a mass of unrequited lust and seething need and something deeper, more vulnerable, horribly emotional. Something she couldn’t bring herself to face head-on.
Silence fell, so she closed her eyes and tried her level best to sleep. But then Zach spoke again. “Another thing. About the kiss…” He trailed off for a moment, leaving a yawning gap of possibility between them. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
Everything in her tensed. Sorry? As in, I’m sorry, but I know you’re obsessed with me? Sorry, but you’re freaking me out, and I’m leaving tomorrow before this goes further? Like helium leaking through a pinpricked balloon, she squeaked, “For what?”
“For kissing you like that. Without asking.”
The breath rushed out of her lungs. Oh. “It’s fine,” she said. “If I hadn’t wanted to, I would’ve told you.”
He shifted uncomfortably—guiltily, she realised. “Well, you couldn’t really shove me off in public without blowing our cover.”
This really must be bothering him, because he used a phrase like blowing our cover without milking every ounce of its ridiculousness.
“I didn’t need to shove you.” She reached out, meaning to pat him reassuringly, but then she remembered that he was shirtless and she was desperate for him. She lowered her hand. “If I’d pushed you even slightly, or hadn’t kissed you back, or been stiff or uncertain, you would’ve stopped. Wouldn’t you?”
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