Faking It

by K. Bromberg

  My eyes flash up to hers to find them trained on me. Inviting me. Asking me. Telling me it’s my turn. And when her teeth bite into her bottom lip and her eyes close in pleasure, I’m done for. Gone.

  Within a beat, her hips are in my hands, my dick is lined up at her entrance and I’m pushing into her inch by fucking inch.

  Warm. Tight. Wet. Heaven.

  Those four words fill my mind before my thoughts turn to nothing and desire wins the war on restraint.

  I give her a second to adjust to my size, then I begin to move. Slowly at first. A withdraw and a thrust back in. A grind when we’re pelvis to pelvis. A lean over to capture her nipple between my teeth as her fingers find my hair and fist there.

  “That feels good,” she murmurs as I move in and out of her.

  We find a rhythm. I pick up the pace, taking her cues as we go. Loving how she grabs her tits and squeezes her own nipples between her fingertips. Going crazy when she slides a hand between her thighs, touches my cock as it slides in and out of her, and then adds friction to her own clit.

  Her confidence is sexy. Her eyes holding mine, erotic. Her gentle commands telling me what she likes and needs is hot as hell.

  Right there, her body tells me. Harder. Oh God, right there. Tease me with the tip.

  “Zane.”

  “Zane.”

  “Zane!”

  “I’m going to come.”

  Her pussy tightens around me like a goddamn vise squeezing every last bit of control I have left. I let her have a moment to enjoy her orgasm but the pulsing of her around me pushes me over the edge.

  My fingers tighten on her inner thighs as I spread them wider and pick up the pace. Drive after drive. Thrust after thrust. My balls ache with the best kind of pleasure as they build up and then fuck if I can stop the freight train of goddamn ecstasy that barrels through me when I come.

  My, god.

  The woman just used and abused me, and hell if I wouldn’t hop back in line for her to do it all over again.

  IT SMELLS LIKE SEX IN here.

  Mick had to know what we were doing before he climbed on board the coach at midnight to drive us to our next destination.

  I close my eyes and breathe in. It definitely smells like sex in here, and I kind of like it. The scent of Zane on my skin. The sweet sting from where his stubble scraped between my breasts as he worked me into a fever pitch. The slight soreness between my thighs from where his dick—god, that heavenly cock of his, so gloriously thick and long—worked its magic and turned me all kinds of inside out.

  The man has skills. I’ll give him that. Fingers and tongue and dick. FTD. I smile and shake my head. I know FTD is a flower delivery company but from here on out, every time I hear that acronym I’ll be thinking of Zane and just how adept he is at using them.

  The bus jostles along the road as headlights flicker through the small sliver in the blackout blinds. I can hear the deep rumble of Zane’s voice as he says something to Mick.

  Zane said he needed to get a drink.

  He said he’d be right back.

  That was twenty minutes ago.

  Does he already think this was a mistake? Is he making the separation here and now so that I know this was just what we said it was—sex only—and nothing more? Or is he simply giving me a bit of space so we can both digest what the hell just happened between us.

  Mind blowing sex, that’s what it was. Comfortable. Intimate. Fun.

  But how does one do casual sex when you’re forced to live with one another? How exactly does that work? Do you just go back to being like you were before and act like nothing happened when in fact every time they look at you all you can remember is the feel of their fingers and taste of their kiss?

  The door opens. Closes. Zane’s sigh fills the small space as the bed dips and he takes his place beside me. I hold my breath, wondering what next. Do I say goodnight? Do I pretend like I’m asleep?

  I startle when Zane’s lips press against my bare shoulder.

  “Definitely not a mistake,” he murmurs as if he was reading my mind before he slides his hand to my waist and pulls me against him, my back to his front.

  Uncertain how to react or what to say or if I should even breathe at this point, I just stay still as the same thoughts keep running through my head.

  Spooning is not casual in my world.

  But I don’t push him away.

  Once was fine . . . but we need to stop at that.

  Who am I kidding?

  With his body against mine and the heat of his breath against my shoulder, I relive every damn second of tonight. The soft, the sweet, the hard, the fast, the playful, the intense—the everything, and I can’t help but wonder how I already want him again.

  I KNOW, I KNOW, I know.

  You’re looking at me and asking yourself “What’s wrong with that girl? Why has she been avoiding him?”

  And you’re looking across the parking lot where Zane is doing push-ups and jump squats and a whole load of other things to showcase that magnificent body of his, saying “He’s hot, he fucks great, and he’s got all the right lines.”

  But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

  I’m a woman.

  Sex always comes with strings, regardless of how many times you tell yourself not to tie those strings in the first place. It means there are feelings. And those little assholes? I’ve been burned by them and men like Zane more times than I care to count.

  But damn, will you look at him?

  Maybe last night’s mistake is worth making one or two or ten more times.

  And maybe I will . . . my thighs ache just thinking about it—about him. But maybe I also want to let him know that he has to work at it with me. That my legs don’t just part when he looks at me with that sexy smile of his that says he wants to eat me alive.

  Maybe I want him to know I’m not like his other women.

  I can’t be played.

  That I’m more than just a pretty face for him to discard when this promotion is over.

  But then again, doesn’t that contradict the whole purpose of casual sex?

  See? It’s a lot easier than it sounds. Especially when he’s right there working out like that.

  This is going to be a serious problem.

  Huge.

  Stick around—you should because he’s over there taking off his shirt—and things are just beginning to get good.

  “ARE WE IN THE NO talking phase?” Zane asks as he looks over at me where I sit in the make-up chair. I’m having my hair done in the studio dressing room of the local morning TV show in New Orleans.

  “The no talking phase?” I murmur when I know damn well what he means: the part where I make sure I’m not alone with him at all today so that we don’t have to have that awkward silence pressuring us to talk about what happened when we both don’t want to.

  “Yeah. You’re avoiding me every chance you get.” He’s buttoning up his shirt and I avert my eyes. Seeing skin is bad. Very bad. Especially when I got very little sleep thinking about that skin and how it felt sliding on top of mine.

  “I am not,” I say, very well aware that we have an audience of make-up and hair artists around us who already think we’ve been sleeping together.

  He eyes me and a ghost of a knowing smirk curls up one corner of his mouth. Why am I suddenly nervous? “Good to know,” he says. “How are you?”

  “Fine.” I keep my eyes straight ahead at the mirror in front of me and focus there.

  “Fine?”

  “Yes, fine.”

  “I love when you give me one word responses almost as much as when you use adverbs. It tells me you’re trying not to ignore me but you’re failing miserably.” He chuckles and moves behind me. His reflection in the mirror is from his shoulders down so I can’t see his eyes.

  “Are you trying to push my buttons?” I ask.

  “We both know I know how to do that successfully.”

  I ignore his innuendo. “You sure do. Too bad
pushing those buttons will have you ending up in the dog house.”

  “We all make mistakes,” he murmurs as he traces a fingertip down my bare shoulder. “It’s just that sometimes I like to make mistakes four and five times, you know, just to be sure they’re worth making.”

  How is it with a few words in that sexy voice of his that every ounce of blood feels like it’s fallen to the delta of my thighs?

  And more importantly? Is he saying what I think he’s saying? That he wants to sleep together again too?

  “Is that so?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” he murmurs. “You jumped out of bed and left. I was lonely.”

  My cheeks burn bright. “I had things to do.”

  He lifts a brow as he bends down, meeting my eyes in the mirror’s reflection, and plants the softest of kisses to the back of my neck. He leaves his lips there, the heat of his breath feathering over my skin so that every single nerve in my body feels like it’s somehow connected to that one spot. “Yeah. Me.”

  Sex. It oozes out of everything about him. The gruffness of his voice. The look in his eye as he stares at me. The run of his hand up and down my bare arm.

  And I’m not the only one who notices it. There are a few knowing glances exchanged between the hair and make-up ladies as I open my mouth to speak and then close it.

  “Ladies? Can you excuse us for a moment?” he asks.

  “Of course,” the cosmetologists say, suddenly on the move from their stations as I start to get that fluttery feeling in my throat, worried about what exactly Zane is going to do when we’re alone.

  When the door shuts, he moves before me, blocking the mirror I’m staring at, and waits until I lift my eyes to meet the amusement in his.

  “You can stop the show, now. They’re gone,” I say.

  “I wasn’t putting one on.” I hate that those five simple words have my pulse picking up its pace despite my rationale telling me he’s just a sweet talker. “Doesn’t every woman deserve to be treated like they matter after they’ve slept with someone?” he asks.

  Oh. My. Who is this guy?

  I try to wrap my head around this man and the fact that he sounded like a player when I heard him talking with his friend Jack, and yet this—that comment—is nothing like what a player would say . . . well, that is unless he’s still trying to play me.

  Is he? Am I just one more gullible female to him? Or is this the real him when no one’s around?

  Hating that I don’t know and confused over why I even care when I told him point blank last night that this was just sex, I build a wall around me just in case.

  “What’s going on, Zane?”

  “I was just wondering how we were going to do this?”

  “This?” I ask. God, the intensity in his eyes is unnerving.

  “Yes, the reality that we’re both mature adults who consented to having sex, but who are now suddenly shy and don’t know how to address the fact that we did in fact have sex—incredible sex, if I might add—and come to an understanding about what we’re going to do about it. That’s the this I’m referring to.”

  “Oh, that this,” I say softly.

  “Yes, that this.” He folds his arms over his chest. “Do you regret it?” Point blank. Matter of fact.

  “I guess not.”

  “Well, that enthusiastic response is a real boost for my ego,” he chuckles.

  “No—I don’t regret it—but it was just supposed to be sex. Now it’s obviously more than that because we have to work together and live together and—”

  Zane holds up his hand to stop me. “And you’re complicating things when they don’t need to be complicated. Do you like me, Harlow?”

  I laugh at his ridiculous question. “I hope I do. I slept with you, didn’t I?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  I roll my eyes and huff. “Yes, I like you.”

  “Do you still like me after last night?”

  “Yes.” My voice is softer this time around.

  “Then that’s all we need to know at this point.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I say when he starts to walk away.

  “Isn’t it though?”

  Leave it to a man to think sex and the aftermath is easy.

  “No, but—”

  “Was it a mistake, Harlow?”

  I open my mouth to speak, my head already shaking from side to side when he reaches out and puts a finger to my lips. “Don’t answer that now. Take your time. Figure it out for yourself. We have a long few weeks ahead of us and the last thing I want to do is make it awkward for us, but at the same time . . . if it’s just sex as you say, then hell if I’m going to stop you if you want to have some more.”

  I chuckle a nervous laugh as I process what he’s saying, offering, asking . . . “Regardless of everything, we still have to keep up the pretext that—”

  “You and your pretexts.” He shakes his head. “Yes, even if you say no, I’ll still have to kiss you when we’re in public. I’ll still have to touch you. I’ll still have to do everything a loving couple does . . . the only difference is every time I do, you’ll be reminded of last night.” His smirk taunts where his words teased.

  “Same goes for you,” I reply, knowing damn well it won’t be easy.

  “I’m not easily fazed.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Not by a beautiful woman?” I ask and rise from my chair so that we’re chest to chest.

  “Dime a dozen.”

  “Not when I go like this?” I lean up on my toes and brush a kiss to his lips, my tongue licking against them.

  “Been kissed before,” he says in the same even tone, despite the sudden desire darkening his eyes.

  “Your nipples are sensitive though. What about when I go like this?” I run my hands from his shoulders to his chest, the pads of my fingertips circling over the hardened discs beneath his shirt.

  “I can manage just fine.” A lift of one eyebrow.

  The bastard. He wants to act like a hard ass, like sleeping with me again is something he’d turn down when the sudden hardening of his cock against his slacks tells me differently.

  Two can play this game.

  “And this?” I ask coyly as I scrape my fingernails down the line of his abdomen. The muscles flex beneath my touch, his only tell that he is in fact, fazed. Well, that and the head of his cock currently hardening beneath his slacks. His quick hiss of a breath when I scratch my nails over its tip.

  Before I can circle back over it, Zane’s hand flashes to grip my wrist. “Careful, Harlow.”

  Our eyes lock in challenge, laying down the gauntlet.

  “Is there a problem?” I ask sweetly. “Is it going to be hard to not be affected?”

  “Not if you give me a response to my original question,” he murmurs, voice pure sex that I feel all the way through my body.

  “And play into your hand?”

  “Well?” he says with an angle of his head and a glance down to where he currently has my wrist handcuffed, my hand against his cock.

  “You’re used to women jumping when you say yes. I don’t jump unless I want to, and—”

  “It’s not my fault women can’t resist me and yet, I can resist them.”

  God I want to wipe that smirk off his face right now.

  “Oh, I can resist you just fine.”

  “You sure about that?” He takes my hand off his cock and moves it so that it rubs against my own aching flesh. “Because . . . we could always just get this over with right now. You could tell me you want me again. I could tell you I figured that to be the case. And then we’d both know where we stand. Just face it, Harlow . . . you can’t resist me.”

  “Resist you?” I laugh. “I can barely stand you.”

  “You guys ready?” A knock on the door startles us. I jerk my hand back and he lets me but his body doesn’t move away from mine.

  “One second,” he says before stepping so close that his body b
rushes against mine and his breath heats the skin by my ear when he leans down. “Keep telling yourself that you don’t want another round in the sheets with me, but I don’t buy it. Keep trying to act like you haven’t thought about it and me all morning . . . but you’re only fooling yourself.”

  “Don’t be so sure of yourself.”

  “Oh, I’m sure all right. Right now your panties are wet thinking about how great last night was. Your pussy is aching wanting me to fill it again. You nipples are so hard they hurt knowing the pleasure I brought you. So you can pretend all you want that you don’t want me again . . . but it’s written all over your body.” His teeth nip my earlobe as I draw in a ragged breath. “You’ll say yes.”

  Arrogant son of a bitch.

  “Come in,” he says before I can even respond. His lips brush against mine as the door opens and outside noise filters in with it. “Pretexts, remember?”

  I glare at him while all my body wants to do is lean forward and take another sip of his lips. But I don’t. Instead I do the only thing I can to put him somewhat back in his place and hopefully, make him know what it is to want.

  “Who said I’m wearing any panties?” A quirk of my eyebrow. A coy smile on my lips. An aversion of my gaze as I sit back down in the chair to let the hair and make-up team work their magic on me.

  He stands there for a few seconds longer, the weight of his stare palpable.

  When he walks away without a word, I stare at myself in the mirror, and I ask myself the one question that keeps circling in my mind: What am I hesitating for?

  Good looking. Check.

  Great in bed. Check.

  Is perfectly fine with sex and only sex. Check.

  Is frustrating enough that irritation won’t allow me to develop feelings for him. Double check.

  Is it my fear that I’m playing perfectly into his hand that has me stepping back? Much like how I told him off the first time we met?

  His laughter rumbles down the hallway from wherever he is in this television studio and I just don’t know the answer.

  Every woman deserves to be treated like they matter after they’ve slept with someone.