by Aubrey Irons
She takes another sip from the bottle of water. “It’s-” Natalie sighs, and her big blue eyes suddenly dart up to mine. “I’m just trying to process this whole ‘keeping you interested’ part of the job I never thought about.”
I grimace. “You talked to the other wives, huh.”
Natalie nods. “Yeah,” she says quietly.
I shake my head, scratching my chin. “Shit, sorry about that.”
“I just…” She looks down, picking at her nails. “I don’t want six months to go by where I walk away this big victim of you and your…whatevers.”
“It’s not going to happen like that.”
“Of course it will, Austin.” She shrugs in this way that stabs something through me, like she’s giving up. “You’re you, and with your reputation, it’s just-”
“Natalie-“
“Look, am I not good enough?”
I freeze, my jaw dropping a little as she looks down, wringing her hands.
“What?”
She suddenly shakes her head. “No, I’m- I’m sorry, that was stupid.”
“No, Natalie-”
“I’ve just had too much champagne. Seriously forget it, please.”
She suddenly whirls and dashes out of the room, running her fingers through her long dark hair as she disappears.
No way.
No damn way is she walking away from me and from this again.
I take one more second to think about what the fuck I’m doing before I storm after her.
I find her in her room, standing in the open double French doors that lead out to the terrace.
“You’re too good.”
She whirls, having not heard me coming up the stairs. “What?”
I step into the room.
“Austin-”
“I said you’re too good.”
Natalie blinks. “For what,” she says quietly, her fingers toying with one another, clasped in front of her.
I take another two steps towards her, watching her teeth drag over her bottom lip as she watches me.
“For me to corrupt. For me to tarnish.”
I move even closer, until I’m standing right in front of her, my eyes burning into hers.
“Sounds like an excuse,” she says, her eyes darting across my face.
“It is.”
She swallows thickly and I step right into her, reaching up as I lock eyes with her and pushing a piece of her hair away from her face.
“It is, because not a fucking second goes by with you in this damn house where I don’t want to tear your clothes off and taste every fucking inch of you.”
Natalie’s eyes go wide, and her breath catches as her cheeks flush hot.
“Not a day, huh?” She breathes.
“Not a damn day,” I growl.
She swallows again, her chest rising and falling with the tension of her breath. “So, today, for instance-”
“Today I want to tear that shirt off of you, toss you down on that bed, push your skirt up to your waist and bury my tongue in your pussy.”
She gasps, her eyes growing wider than I’ve ever seen.
I smirk. “Too much?”
Slowly, she shakes her head side-to-side, and it’s the last crack in the dam around my self-restraint before the whole thing just gives.
“Good,” I growl.
And then I kiss her.
I mash my lips against hers, hard - swallowing her moans as my hands slide down to her waist and push her back against one of the posts of her bed.
Her hands grab at my shirt, pulling me into her as her tongue slides across mine. My hand moves to her hip, tightening on her thigh and pulling her leg up to my waist. Natalie’s moaning, gasping into my mouth as I grind against her, kissing her fiercely as we grind into the bedpost behind us.
She’s pushing my t-shirt up over my chest, gasping as she pulls away from my mouth. She drops her lips to my chest, kissing, sucking, and biting at my skin as I yank the shirt from my head and toss it aside. I cup her jaw in my hands, bringing her back up to claim that mouth.
I yank that conservative fucking top out of her skirt, pulling away to tear it from her body. I drop my mouth to her neck, making damn sure I leave bruises in their wake as I nip and kiss my way down to the tops of her breasts.
I’m tearing at her bra pulling it from her arms and growling as I drop my mouth to those perfect, pert little nipples. Natalie cries out when I wrap my lips around one, darting my tongue across the bud as my hands slide down to the edge of her skirt.
I’m pushing it up her thighs to her waist, and she doesn’t stop me this time.
And I’m fucking hungry for it - going damn insane for the need to taste her.
My fingers hook into the waist of her panties. I pause, waiting for her to stop me, or say no. But she only moans even more fervently into my mouth, her nails raking through my hair and down over the stubble of my chin as her lips bruise against my own.
I yank her panties down her legs before making her yelp as I push her back across her bed. I shuck my jeans off, kicking them away as I crawl over her. My muscles bunch as I ease down to claim that mouth again, kissing her even fiercer when she moans and wraps her legs around my waist.
And then she’s pulling back, her eyes wild and her lips pink and swollen from my kisses. “I still- I mean.” Heat flushes into her cheeks, and she moans as I silence her again with a searing kiss before she pulls away again.
“No sex.”
My hands slide up her thighs, and she gasps as my fingers find her soaking wet and dripping for me.
“Define sex,” I growl into her ear.
She moans as I slide my thumb over her clit, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth as her eyes flutter shut.
“No fucking.”
I growl. “And what if I’m not going to be able to stop myself from licking every drop of honey from between your legs.”
She moans, biting her lip and whimpering for me as my thumb drags lazy circles around her clit.
“I- I think that might be a gray area.”
I chuckle into her ear, curling my fingers inside of her and loving the way she rakes her nails down my biceps and moans. “That a yes, princess?”
“Please.” she gasps out.
Music to my fucking ears.
I suddenly spin us around so that I’m on my back with Natalie perched on top of me, her legs astride my hips. I slide a hand into her hair, tugging it and making her gasp as I pull her down to my lips.
“I need to fucking taste you,” I growl into her ear. My hands slide down to her ass, fingers squeezing the smooth, supple skin there as I start to pull her up my bare torso.
“Get up here and sit on my mouth.”
She blushes scarlet, her eyes going wide and hungry as she stares at me. “You’re so demanding.”
“Get,” my hands grab her ass hard, “that sweet pussy-” she moans as I pull her up my chest, “on my mouth. Now.”
Her face is red and flushed, her mouth hanging open and her hair wild, but she nods as she slowly rises up and moves her hips forward.
My hands slide up her creamy thighs, pushing her skirt up with them until it’s bunched at her waist. I growl as my eyes drink her in - bare, wet, and ready for me as I use my hands to guide her down onto my mouth.
Natalie cries out as I push my tongue deep inside. I lap at her, dragging my tongue up and down her slit and teasing her clit with the tip. I push deep, using my tongue to slowly fuck her as my hands guide her back and forth across my lips.
She’s gasping, moaning wildly as her hands grasp at my hair, holding on as I push every button she has. I swirl my tongue around her clit, teasing the hard little nub mercilessly as her body rocks and shudders above me.
She drops one of her hands back to my hip. Slowly, almost tentatively, it’s moving towards the waist of my jockey shorts. I groan as I feel her fingers follow the trail of hair down over my abs and under the waist, until they curl around my rock-hard cock.
“Yes,” she moans, her fingers slowly moving up and down, stroking me as I wrap my lips around her clit.
Suddenly, she’s pulling away from me, and I growl.
“And where do you think you’re going.”
“What’s yours is mine, right?” She tosses back with a sassy look, her hair wild as she winks at me and slings her leg back over my face.
My hands grab her ass, bringing her back to my face though she’s facing the other direction now. I groan into her wet heat as I feel her fingers push my briefs down my thighs, freeing my cock and wrapping both hands around it.
I can feel the metal of her wedding ring against my shaft, and damn if it doesn’t get me even harder.
I feel her weight shift as she leans forward, and I groan as I feel her slowly wrap those perfect, velvety lips around my head. Her tongue teases the very tip, swirling round my crown as I push my own tongue deep into her pussy. My hands grab her ass, planting her firmly on my mouth as she starts to bob up and down, sucking me as she moans.
I’m in fucking heaven.
We’re moving together, her hips bucking against my mouth and my tongue as she muffles her moans around my cock. Her hands stroke me, reaching down to cup my balls as her hot, wet mouth sends me into fucking orbit.
I slip a hand down between us, cupping a breast and letting my fingers tease her nipples. My tongue dances across her clit, swirling around and around until she finally pulls away from me and cries out.
“Oh, God…”
And I want to tell her how I want her to come for me. I want to tell her that I want her to explode on my tongue until her honey covers my chin.
Instead, I just use my tongue to shove her screaming over that edge.
Natalie cries out, stroking my cock in quick, wet strokes as she reaches back with her other hand, grabs my hair, and just fucking explodes against my mouth. She moans, her whole body shuddering as she comes - shattering, exploding, breaking for me.
She suddenly drops her mouth back down and inhales as much of my thickness as she can, and it’s the last thing I can take.
I roar out, fingers digging into her skin as I explode into her mouth. She moans, swallowing my cum as I grit my teeth and groan, her lips bobbing slowly and coaxing every drop from me.
Holy. Sweet. Hell.
Natalie moans as she rolls off of me. She turns, sliding against me, throwing one leg over mine, and letting her hand rest on my chest.
And it’s damn near perfect.
“That…” she trails off, her finger tracing lazy circles across my chest. She grins, burying her smile in my shoulder. “That was a necessity,” she finally says, blushing as she looks up into my eyes.
“I could not agree more.”
What I don’t say, because I don’t feel like pushing this or making her weird, is that the other necessity is that we do that again.
We need to do that a lot, again.
25
Natalie
I wake up sometime during the night. There’s a slight chill across my bare back from the wide open French doors, but the other side of me - the side pressed against Austin - is warm.
The side pressed against Austin.
Right…that.
I slowly bring my cheek away from his sleeping chest, rubbing my eyes with my hand as I scrunch my face up.
I’m apparently making a habit out of getting drunk and waking up naked in bed with Austin Taylor.
I shake my head, wincing at the thought.
No.
Because I know damn well what happened earlier - what I wanted to happen. And I may have been drinking, and still buzzed from the champagne from earlier, but I wasn’t drunk, that much I know.
Just drunk off the heady rush of letting myself go with the stupidly attractive scoundrel with his arm around me right now as he sleeps.
I glance down at his chiseled face, illuminated by the moonlight - his tattoos etched across his skin. His chest rises and falls with his sleeping breaths.
God he’s beautiful. Everything from the messy and yet somehow perfectly messy mop of hair on his head, to his dark brows, shadowed eyes, and perfect, utterly kissable lips. The hollow of his cheeks, the strong lines of his jaw, the scruff of his five o’clock shadow.
Or his finger, or his tongue, or that perfect cock that took every single ounce of my restraint not to jump on top of.
I’ve never felt like that. I’ve never had my body played like that.
Perfect - utterly in tune.
He’s just a man when he’s asleep. There’s no reputation, no broken background, no highly-publicized track record. No arrangement, either. It’s just me, and my beautiful cowboy, in bed.
If only it was that simple.
And as much as I hate to even think it, the truth is right there, waiting to pounce on me: that shouldn’t have happened, because this isn’t real.
This might feel good right now, just him and I, and pretending the rest of it isn’t a thing. But that’s a fantasy - a fantasy more fantastical than this sham marriage.
This is for money, nothing else.
The thought instantly sends a souring feeling through my body.
God, what does that make me?
Whore, harlot, prostitute.
The words are crude and jagged, and I shake my head to clear them. They’re also overly dramatic, because I know that’s not what this was.
But they still aren’t pleasant thoughts.
Austin’s eyes slowly open.
“Hey there.”
“You should go,” I whisper.
He frowns slightly, the move casting dark shadows across his eyes and deepening those hollows in his cheeks.
“I don’t have to, you know.”
“Yeah, you do.”
The words come out harder than I meant them to, and I wrinkle my brow as he sighs, clearing the sleep from his face with his hands before pushing them through his hair.
“Right okay, are we back to that mode now then?”
“What mode?”
He gives me a wry smile. “You know what, princess? I can’t even fucking keep track of them.”
He sits up, the warmth of his body lost as he shakes his head and looks away.
“You’re one thing, then the other. You’re hot, you’re cold-”
“I’m confused, because I shouldn’t have let that-”
“Then why did you?”
His face is tight, lined in dark, moonlit room - his voice like rough leather.
“I-” I shake my head, almost embarrassed to use it as an excuse. “I was drunk.”
“Fuck off, I’ve seen you drunk.”
And he’s right. And I feel like an asshole. But it just can’t happen. This whole thing is business, that’s all - even if we keep forgetting that.
I don’t respond to him, I just pull the sheet up, holding it to my chest and looking away.
He blows air through his teeth, shaking his head. “Yeah, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”
“You don’t know what you were thinking?”
“Look, you want business? Fine.” Austin stands from the bed, his gorgeous body uncoiling from my sheets.
“You want to get your fun though too, and I think I’ve made it clear I’m good with that.” He slips his boxers back up his legs, snapping them on his waist before leaning over the bed towards me.
“But make up your fucking mind.”
He turns before I can say anything else, storming out of the room.
The last of the warmth and the last of the moment gone with him.
26
Austin
Why is it things always go from bad to worse?
I’m sitting by the pool, stewing over Natalie’s little freakout and sipping a beer. This would be the classic case of money not buying happiness, because here I am sitting by a pool outside my twenty million dollar home. I’ve got a cold beer in my hand, the southern California sun shining down, and if I turned on the television, there�
�s a very good chance that I’d be on it.
Am I happy?
Fuck no.
Goddamnit, why did I even go there with that girl? She’s clearly too uptight, too much of a stick up her ass for me to be involving myself with her.
And yet, she’s the only one I want to go there with - the only girl I want, period.
I’m one of the most wanted men in the fucking country, with my pick of damn near any girl I want. Cheerleaders, Hollywood actresses, models - you fuckin’ name it and I could probably make it happen right now.
Except I’m broken somehow, because my mind’s all twisted up with her.
Damnit.
I sip my beer and let my head drop back onto the sun chair. My eyes close, my mouth tight as I try and force my mind to clear, if even for one damn second.
“Little different from Texas, huh?”
I’m jumping out of the chair and whirling in a half second at the sound of his fucking voice, my hands clenched into fists and a snarl on my face.
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
My dad grins and I sneer at him. “Oh, right, I forget that you’ve had lots of practice breaking into places.”
He chuckles, holding his hands up palm forward. “Hey now! Easy there boy.” He winks. “Your front door was open, big-shot.”
“And the driveway gate?”
Dad’s mouth curls into a devil smile. “Well,” he shrugs. “Old habits, huh kid?”
Yeah, I know all about his “old habits.” Habits like meth, like stealing from my mom.
Like giving her black eyes, and then to me whenever I was dumb enough to try and stop him.
He plants his hands on his hips, looking around and whistling at the spacious, tree-filled backyard of my house.
“Nice place, boy. Can’t believe I’ve never seen it.”
“Shocking, isn’t it.”
He turns back to me, reaching up to scratch the back of his silvered head. “You know, you did good.”
“No thanks to you.”
He blows air loudly through his lips and reaches to his back pocket for what I swear is the same fucking flask of Rebel Yell whiskey that was there fifteen years ago.