Fake Wife

by Stacey Lynn

  Chapter 21

  Corbin

  She’s beautiful. My soft and gentle angel, which is how she sleeps and how she lives.

  Until I slide my dick inside her, and then she goes wild for me. Thank God for wills and addenda that declare I have to get married, because if Eleanor were alive right now, I’d throw her the largest, wildest party the crazy woman ever could have imagined.

  Because I never could have imagined this, Teagan in my bed after I completely wore her out the night before.

  We fell asleep a tangle of naked limbs entwined together after I took her like a barbarian on my floor. It’s not how I wanted our first time to go, but when she fell to her knees and took my dick in her mouth like she needed it for her survival, I lost my damn mind.

  I don’t feel bad about it, either. Making love to Teagan is better than with any woman I’ve ever been with. Rich society women who care about money and prestige are frigid and proper and too fucking uptight to let go of their control, and the schemes they try to hide in their eyes, to ever enjoy sex as much as Teagan does.

  Fucking Christ. I thought she was going to kill me when she put her mouth on me, sucking me deep and handling me with care.

  She wasn’t doing it because she thought she had to, like a blow job is a requirement from a man. I mean it’s enjoyed, fuck yeah, but enjoying it because a woman desperately wants it versus it being a duty are two very different things.

  And now, waking up with her sleeping next to me, on her side and facing me, her lips slightly parted, hair draped over her cheeks, and cute, occasional little puffs of breath, she’s no longer just my angel.

  She’s mine.

  To have and to hold. Till death.

  If I could move up our wedding any sooner, I’d marry her tomorrow.

  On Teagan’s hand beneath her cheek, Eleanor’s ring rests on her slender ring finger. I reach out and twist it slowly until it rests perfectly centered on her finger.

  I could have taken her to any jewelry store, had her pick out anything she wanted, but this is perfect for her.

  And I know it would make Eleanor happy that it’s on this woman’s hand.

  It might be fucked, but this is why I know I’m falling in love with her. Eleanor would have loved Teagan. She’d love her kindness and her laughter, the way she lives without caring what people think about her. She’d love Teagan’s loyalty, however misguided, and she’d love her dream of owning her own farm for the simple fact she wants to live her life helping people, making people feel better.

  Fuck. She and I, we’re not so different. I don’t want to heal people with my furniture and wood designs, but I do want them to walk into their homes and feel good. I want them to see the work done by my hands and smile, feel peaceful whenever they see it, in a way I always did as soon as I entered Eleanor’s mansion despite the opulence of the furniture there.

  And Teagan wants the same. She wants to wake up every morning, work hard, take care of other people and change lives.

  Somehow we click. We fit.

  And I want her more than I could ever imagine wanting anything except to make Eleanor happy.

  I close my eyes and grin. “You did this, didn’t you?” I whisper, thinking of my grandma and her wacky ways. “I bet you maneuvered all of this, down to the accident, from your grave.”

  I’m smiling, something I don’t do often when I think of Eleanor. Her death is too fresh, but somehow I know she did do this. She sent me Teagan to give me a home again, not just a house.

  Romantic thoughts like these are bullshit, or at least it’s what I always assumed. What the hell do I know about romance? My idea of making love is carpet burning the hell out of a woman’s back and marking her neck like a damn teenager with no remorse.

  I brush my thumb along the mark I left accidentally, but still liking it. I want her to have a thousand marks of me on her. Everywhere, where people can see and some for only my eyes, in places I’ve never considered marking a woman.

  And Teagan will have them. She’ll have my marks on her everywhere so no matter where she is, when she looks at her body, she’ll have the visible reminder whom she belongs to.

  But not now; now we have talking to do, decisions to make, and things to accomplish so we can get out of this mile-high cell and back to where we belong.

  “Morning, angel.” I brush my thumb along her cheek, tracing tiny little freckles and dusting a stray eyelash off her cheek. “Wake up.”

  Leaning down, I kiss her forehead, her eyebrows, and the tip of her nose, smiling as her eyes flutter open and widen when she sees me.

  “Hey,” she whispers, her voice groggy from sleep. I continue kissing her, brushes of my lips on her flesh while she stretches and cringes.

  “Sore?” I like the idea of it, taking her so roughly she still feels me.

  I kiss the mark I left on her throat, licking it with my tongue as if to seal it into her flesh forever. Like a tattoo.

  God, I’m turning into a nasty man.

  Or the man I’m supposed to be.

  Either way, the insane possessiveness I currently feel toward the woman beginning to writhe under me heats my blood, turns me into a fierce creature I barely recognize, but enjoy all the same.

  Damn, she just does it for me.

  Her hand slips between us, wraps around me, and I grin against her throat. “You want something, angel?”

  God, I love that she reaches for me. Unapologetic in her desire for me, and how in the hell did we last this long? This has been building, rolling between us and growing since the moment we met and she blinded me with her beauty.

  “You.” She arches her hips toward me and I still her with my hand.

  “We have things to talk about. Decisions we need to make.” But I’m kissing her collarbone, her chest, nibbling on her nipples, and feeling like my dick is about to explode from her small fingers and warm palm.

  “After.” She presses against me, her wet sex on my thigh, grinding against me like we’re teenagers on a couch with parents who don’t give a crap in the other room.

  Good lord. I’m done. Nothing is more important than finally getting a taste of Teagan.

  I roll to my back, shoving away a pillow from beneath my head, and then wrap my hands around her hips, yanking her over me, having her straddle my chest.

  “I haven’t tasted you yet,” I say. Few women can ride a man’s face with no hint of embarrassment, but Teagan grins. Her eyes sparkle and that glimmer in her eyes is a delicious little gift. It tells me everything I’ve already been thinking. She’s perfect for me. “Climb up.”

  “Only if I get to taste you, too.”

  Oh hell yeah. My balls draw tight. I’m ready to blow and I haven’t even gotten a view of her luscious ass yet, the taste of her cunt, but the promise alone is enough.

  I slap her ass playfully, and help her turn around. Her hands glide down my abs, my hips as she bends over. I can’t wait anymore.

  Her pussy is in front of me, wet and glistening, and I yank her to me at the same time she cups my balls.

  “Yes,” I grunt. Yes to all of it. To her, the sweet taste of her juices, the gentle way she handles me as if she has all day to play with me.

  I touch her everywhere I can reach, massaging her ass while she works my dick.

  Tease her asshole with my thumb, which makes her go crazy. She pulls off me, groans, hips bucking.

  I slap her ass. “Hold still.”

  “I can’t,” she pants. She turns and looks at me over her shoulder. “That feels so crazy good.”

  A girl who likes a little back-door play. A million ideas flutter into my brain and fill my balls with come.

  I’m going to need to start a list.

  I yank her back to me, working her into a frenzy and pulling back, teasing her, running my fingers through her wetness, pressing against her clit. I take her to the edge and pull back until I burn with need to release.

  “I’m coming,” I warn her, but she only takes me deepe
r.

  I shoot my load down her pretty little marked throat, and she comes, all over my face.

  Crazy, wild, real abandon, and it’s beautiful.

  —

  “What else are you planning? World takeover?”

  She startles at my voice as I walk into the kitchen. She’s sitting at the counter, papers spread all over the place, fingers tapping on her laptop while she pauses only to take a bite of oatmeal she scavenged from somewhere in my pantry.

  She has a mug of coffee next to her, and the scene is almost identical to yesterday. Before everything changed for the better, hopefully.

  I didn’t think we’d be able to tear ourselves away from each other after our morning started in bed, but Teagan left me shortly after to go shower in the bathroom attached to the bedroom she’s been sleeping in.

  While I took the time to get ready and answered a few emails, more texts from Trey giving me shit about settling down when I told him the wedding will be Labor Day weekend, a worry niggled in my mind after she left my bed this morning to put space between us again.

  Like running from me in my workshop.

  Her blinding smile evaporates the worry in an instant and her cheeks turn pink. “No.”

  “What is it?”

  I need coffee, but her blushing draws me to her. After everything we did last night and this morning, this is what she becomes embarrassed about? Women are strange.

  I turn the laptop so I can see the screen. OREGON WEST COLLEGE flashes on the screen in navy and gold. Below it are the words Applying for Financial Aid. I scroll down the page, scanning the applications for scholarships and a link to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid website. The hell?

  She doesn’t need any aid or help.

  She’s chewing on her thumbnail, looking more uncertain than she did the day I whisked her into the French restaurant.

  “You’re going back to school?”

  We’ve talked about it. The first weekend we spent together I mentioned she can take the time to do whatever she wants to do, find a job, go to school…but she hasn’t talked about her plans since. She’s never once mentioned doing anything with her time, and I don’t mind taking care of her.

  I want to take care of her, contract or not.

  Oh. That’s her problem.

  “You want to finish school, Teagan?” I ask.

  “Well, yeah, I was going to.” She nibbles on her nail again and moves to slide from her stool.

  I step in front of her before she can. “You can still do it. Nothing in that has to change.”

  “I don’t want to be kept. It feels wrong.”

  God. Crazy women. “I know.” I cup her neck with my hand, brushing her jaw with my thumb. “That’s why I want to keep everything the same.”

  A little line appears between furrowed brows and she cocks her head, tilts it up to me. “I don’t understand.”

  I laugh softly and kiss the top of her head. “I want to take care of you, and I promised you I would. Nothing has to change. I like that you want to do this on your own. I really like that you don’t give a shit about my money, and if there were questions about it before, which I didn’t have, by the way,” I add before she can scrunch up her nose, “they’d be gone now. I want to help. I want to help you reach your dreams. Let me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She turns from me and I let her go, giving her another brief kiss at her temple before I get my coffee.

  “I was thinking about taking night classes,” she says. “I can go to school at night, get a job at one of the horseback riding ranches nearby.”

  I smile down at the counter. All the places she’s looking at are out in Cannon Bluffs. My little angel doesn’t want to be in Portland any more than I do.

  I add a spoonful of sugar to my coffee and stir, waiting to see if she’ll say anything else, but she doesn’t. There’s quiet clicks of fingers on her keyboard but nothing else until I turn around and rest my ass against the counter.

  “Take the day classes. Get it done as soon as possible. Work on days you don’t have school, study at night. You do too much you won’t have time to study.”

  “It seems like so much to ask of you.”

  I want to strangle her. And I wish she’d be as certain of us as I am, and even if she’s not, we have two years to become certain.

  What difference does it make whether I pay for it now when we’re fucking or later because we signed our names to a contract that can’t hold up in court anyway?

  It’s all coming from the same pocket.

  “I have to get to the office for a few meetings today. I’m thinking since you have to go dress shopping with my mom on Friday, we can stay here this week and then move out to Cannon Bluffs. That okay with you?”

  “Move?”

  She questions me like this wasn’t the plan. I’d give anything to know what’s going on beneath her golden halo of hair, but I’m also not lying. I’ve got a meeting with the board and my father and I’ve taken long enough getting ready.

  Not that it wasn’t worth it.

  “Yeah. It’ll take the week to get this place packed up and on the market. After your meeting with Mom, we can move out there.”

  Her eyes flare wide open and I laugh softly, walking to her. “I’d give anything to know why this surprises you, Teagan, but we’ll talk tonight when I get back.”

  “Okay,” she whispers.

  She looks stunned and beautiful with wide, confused brown eyes and her hair hanging down her shoulders. She’s in a simple sweatshirt, pocket in front of her like a hoodie but no hood. Pale pink yoga pants and bare feet, painted red toes poking out on the barstool.

  So simple and pure. Easy and complex.

  The kind of woman I never thought I’d like and now I can’t get enough of. The kind of woman I don’t want to get enough of. Ever.

  “Have a good day, angel.”

  Chapter 22

  Teagan

  William pushes from his chair behind his desk as soon as I enter his office at the library.

  “Teagan,” he says, hugging me tightly. “How are you? Mary’s been so sad you haven’t called her yet.”

  He pushes me back and I wrap my hands around his arms. The man knows how to bear hug.

  “How are you? How’s life?”

  He says it with a wink, which tells me he already knows. Of course he does. He does the grocery shopping for them, and he’s been known to throw a gossip rag or two onto the conveyor belt. He claims it’s to assuage Mary’s curiosity of what’s going on in the world, but more than once I’ve caught him flipping through the pages of those same magazines with all the intensity of a hunter in a deer blind.

  “I’m good, William. I’m sorry I haven’t called yet.” I spin the ring on my finger. It’s become a habit. The thing is beautiful and heavy and a blatant, unforgettable reminder of what my life’s becoming. “There’s been a lot going on.”

  Understatement of the year.

  William ushers me into a well-worn and cozy leather chair in a corner of his office and takes a seat in the other one. “Tell me all about it. I have to admit, I was pretty surprised to hear about you and Corbin Lane when you’ve always seemed to be in love with Drake.”

  I’d pay all the money Corbin’s supposed to give me to get out of this conversation. That is, if he’s still planning on giving me the money. The sex with him is an incredible, soul-altering experience, but it’s definitely muddled things between us and left me more confused than I’ve been yet when it comes to him.

  Which is impressive, really.

  I pick at my thumbnail and twist my ring again, then clasp my hands in my lap. Fidgeting doesn’t help anything. “After I left the library last time, I went home and caught Drake cheating on me.”

  My cheeks burn. Not from the memory, but who in their right mind wants to talk about sex with a man old enough be their father? Not me.

  “Oh.” William blusters, coughs to hide his surprise. “I’m sorry
to hear that. And I’m still so very sorry—”

  I raise my hand. “It’s fine. No apologies necessary.”

  “And Corbin? How does he fit into this?”

  You know what? Screw keeping it quiet. Trey and Caitlin know. William and Mary are the only friends I have, and I need someone to talk to.

  Blowing out a breath, I look out the window of Portland’s downtown library. A grassy park takes up a city block across the street and there’s a sprinkling of picnic blankets and strollers, women and children playing in the grass, enjoying the summer we don’t get nearly enough of.

  “It’s all an act, William.” I can’t bring myself to look at him. Shaking my head, because really, how did I agree to all of this? It sounded so simple, but now it’s all twisted and complicated. “I ran into his car, and he asked me to marry him. He has his reasons for asking, and I had mine for agreeing at the time.”

  “I see.”

  William doesn’t. He can’t. He and Mary have been married for twenty-five years and are still going strong. I blink harshly, fighting back a sudden blurriness in my vision, and heave a breath. “I rear-ended him the day I lost my job, lost my boyfriend, moved out of the apartment, William. I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

  “My house would have been an option.”

  “I know.” He’s right. I’m making excuses. I could have said no, but Corbin is hard to resist. “Anyway, I’ve agreed and we’re getting married in a few weeks. At the end of two years, we go our separate ways.”

  This is real, angel. Tell me it’s real for you. We’ll figure it out. Let me take care of you. I want to.

  Corbin’s deep voice rings in my ear. He meant every word, but what happens when he no longer does?

  Bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows arch. “Well,” William says, brushing his hands down the tops of his thighs. “Sounds like you put yourself in quite a pickle, then. But if you’re certain you need to go through with this, tell me how Mary and I can help.”

  This is why I love the man, even if he had to fire me. He’s just good.

  With tears blurring my vision, I smile. “Can you walk me down the aisle? And maybe have dinner with us this week?”