Pump Fake

by Lila Price

  “Oh, do not pull that shit with me, Eli. My father would never chip away at me until there’s nothing left, and you know it. Your dad digs out another piece of your soul every time you see him.”

  God, how I want to help Eli realize that he needs to dump his father’s advice and be his own man—to grow up. But he only glares at me over his shoulder in utter denial.

  I don’t dare say more. Anything else would be overkill, because I’ve gotten the point across.

  As Eli turns to fully face me, adrenaline runs hot-and-cold through my bloodstream, filling me with more anger as well as anticipation. And there’s something else—lust. He’s got that look in his eyes that I recognize so well, that I long for with every beat of my wild heart. I throb for him, need him more than I should.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” he says again, as flat as a slick of ice. “You don’t know anything about me and my life.”

  I hold his glare. Then something snaps in his gaze. It might be a realization that makes him even angrier, because he raises a finger to warn me off. But I don’t go anywhere.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” he growls, “I’d say that you’re starting to act like you’re actually my real fiancée. Just a reminder, Jenna—you’re not. Everything is just a show, remember? So where do you get off telling me how to handle my father, much less how to play football?”

  Every word is another deep knife penetrating my soft flesh, tearing me up. The fears I had about Eli are coming true—that he never felt anything for me, that I’m only a prop—and pain wracks me straight to my chest.

  How could I have been so blind? So stupid?

  He takes a step down toward me, this time making me retreat slightly.

  “In case you haven’t realized anything about the dynamics on my team,” he says, “no fucking-body is going to listen to what I have to say. No one is going to follow my lead if I try to exert any influence over them. All my life, I’ve just been a shadow, an extension of my dad, and deep down, everyone knows it. I’ve tried to pull away from the bastard in so many ways, but I’m as good as glued to him. Once everyone finally realizes that it’s my dad who developed my talent and got me where I am, they’ll see that I’m not worth their confidence. Understand that?”

  “You didn’t feel that way before you made the decision to get engaged to me. You had all the confidence in the world at that point. What did Bo tell you? That you made a bad choice without him? That he should’ve been there to approve of me because I ended up being a curse?”

  Eli fumes at me.

  I shake my head. “It’s not your dad who made you what you are. And as for the people who want so badly to respect you for more than just your talent? You act like you don’t give a shit about them. You rebel against them and try to tear away from them when the only person you should be trying to detach yourself from is your father.”

  He stares at me, so cold, so still. “Damn. Maybe you need to get a degree in armchair therapy.” But from the bruised shadows in his eyes, I see I’ve made a cut in him, deep inside where no one else will ever see it.

  As if he wants to make me forget that we ever ventured into this forbidden personal territory, he grins bitterly. “I’ve got to give it to you—for a hired gun, you went the extra mile with this charade. You really got into my head in an attempt to understand me.”

  “Stop trying to redirect this conversation.”

  As he approaches, I stand my ground. That familiar fire is in his eyes, and my pulse is tapping in a confused rhythm.

  “Actually,” he says, “I don’t just mean that you’ve figured me out. You’re in my head in other ways.” His gaze gets even colder. “You’ve fucked up my mind: you’re a distraction on the field. Off the field. Whenever you’re around I can’t think straight. You’re in my head.”

  The discussion has gotten out of control. My mind races just as fast as the blood in my veins. He’s so close now that my clit pulses, my belly tightens.

  He says I’m in his head, and even though a part of me likes the fact that I’ve affected him so strongly, I’m not sure if what he’s saying is a good thing. I think he’s reiterating that I really am his jinx. Or maybe this is his way of letting me know that I drive him just as insane as he does me…

  Something snaps in his gaze again, and I gasp as he surges toward me, closing the space between us, reaching down to grip me around the waist and pull me to him. He crushes his lips to mine, his kiss angry and ravenous. There’s a rumble inside his chest that sounds pleased and pained at the same time, and I press my hands against him, feeling the vibration of that sound, the sawing cadence of his heart.

  He bites at my bottom lip, as if to punish me. Shocked, I break away and smack him. When I realize what I’ve done, I hold my breath, hearing my heartbeat in my ears, feeling it kick at me throughout my body.

  His gaze is even more enflamed. “From day one, you’ve been a feisty little bitch.”

  “You never complained.”

  His gaze tells me I’m fucking right about that.

  Then he leans closer to me and asks in a cracked whisper, “How am I going to make you get out of my head?”

  You can’t, I think. My heart leaps, because I’m obviously in his blood, too. He’s all but admitted it…

  As I cling to him, he eases us down to the stairs, positioning me so that I’m a step above him. I fight my tight breathing while he pulls me to him, his mouth seeking my breast. With a mix of gentleness and hunger, he gnaws at me through my blouse and bra, tonguing me until the cotton is wet, my nipple hard and sensitized. He comes up for air, and I hazily watch him drag his fingers down my stomach. I can see how turned on I am, my nipple peaking through the material of my bra and blouse.

  I shift beneath him as he runs his hand lower, palming me between my legs, pushing me up until I rock off the stairs, then lowering his mouth to the center of me. He chews at me through my thin pants, and the erotic pressure has me moving my hips, asking for more.

  Asking for more time with him. Asking for more than sex, the only thing that’s ever connected us.

  I don’t wait for him to tell me what to do—I unbutton my blouse until it gapes open. Lately I’ve gone back to wearing my own bras, not the ones he gave me, and the modest cotton is thin. I raise one hand over my head and use the other to stroke my breast.

  Eli stops eating me, but he keeps his chin against my pussy as he watches what I’m doing.

  Show me, he always tells me. Yes, I’ll show him whatever he wants, whenever, because he’s admitted that I’ve gotten to him, that he can’t let go of me just as much as I can’t let go of him.

  And it’s more than only sex. I know it is…

  I keep arousing my nipple while I slip my other hand down my belly, then undo the fly of my pants. Eli pulls them and my panties down until I’m bare for him. Before he can come back to me, I slide my fingers between my swollen folds.

  He rests his fingers over mine, helping me work my clit, then leans in to lick my lips. He laves at me again and again, and the slickness of my pussy along with the rhythm of his tongue makes wet, sensual sounds. I close my eyes, wallowing in the expanding pressure of my coming orgasm.

  Pounding, throbbing—there’s a whirlpool of rising chaos inside of me as I hear Eli’s mouth loving me. I’m pressing my clit now, my pulse thrusting and thrusting, pushing and pushing until I have to bite back a cry. But as fists pound inside of me, making me shake and tremble, I can’t hold back anymore, and my moan busts out of me, fully released.

  In the aftermath, I feel Eli picking me up, but we only make it to the stairs landing before he’s stripping down to his beautiful skin, that sword-blades tattoo over his chest and arm making him look like a conquering god above me. He gets to his knees, and as he takes his semi-hard cock in hand, I touch myself again. I’m so creamy as I rub my pussy, watching as he cups his shaft and strokes his length.

  “Finger yourself,” he tells me, his eyes bright with fever. And it’s a fe
ver for me.

  “I want you inside me.”

  “I’ll have my cock inside you real soon.”

  He’s gotten hard, his dick pulsing, engorged. At the sight of his arousal, I slide my fingers up and into myself, swirling around all the wetness, feeling my pussy expanding and retracting every time I pump in and out. Eli can’t take his gaze off of me. I’m feeding him, just as he’s feeding me, our excitement climbing together.

  The beat of another approaching, demanding climax takes me over as he reaches for me, turning me around and pulling me back over him as he sits on the ground. He urges my legs back until my shins touch the carpet and I’m leaning forward, my hands on his shins. He palms my breasts then pulls me to him, impaling me with his cock.

  I whimper at the sensation of being filled so completely, and after an endless, throbbing, sopping pause, he guides me back again, ramming into me. I wiggle onto him, taking him deeper, finding my rhythm, easing my hips forward, then driving back against him, making desperate sounds that come from low within my core every time we move. When the tip of him hits my g-spot, a zing shoots through me, then again with every increasingly quick thrust.

  There’s a tapping, trickling sensation that feels like burning fingers walking up and through me, ready to tear me apart with just a few more thrusts.

  “Do it,” I murmur.

  He raises the stakes, hammering into me harder. He slips his fingers to my ass, opening it, rimming the sensitive spot there that he found that night in the restaurant. With a sucking implosion, I come for him, releasing a throttled scream that has me collapsing on his legs, panting, clinging to him. I feel him climax into me, his cum bathing me.

  His breathing is harsh behind me as I feel him smoothing his fingers up my spine, then down my back. It’s a loving gesture, but then he stops for some reason.

  My breathing stops, too.

  Something has already changed. It’s in the charged air, almost as if everything around us is a wire that’s just been cut. It’s bleeding sparks as I move off of Eli, my chest clenched.

  I want to ask him what just happened. Wasn’t there something different about this time together?

  Afraid of the answer, I stay silent. Without looking back at him, I get up, then go down the stairs to get my panties, using them to dab his cum off. I put my pants back on without my underwear. After I’m dressed, I see that Eli hasn’t moved except to lean back against a wall, one knee up, his arm resting on it as if he’s never been more casual. But there’s no denying the tenseness that still holds the air together. The same tightness seems to be stringing him together.

  “Like I said,” he finally murmurs, “you’re in my head, Jenna. I can’t even fuck you out of it.”

  My throat burns. I want to tell him that there was something this time that we both had to feel, a revelation that opened itself wide up, but one glance at his impassive face shows that I must have only dreamed it.

  The wall between us is up again, and it’s not going to come down. I’ve been fooling myself into thinking that it ever would.

  I swallow back my disappointment. “It’s too bad I can’t help you to fuck everything out of your head, Eli. Because that’s what you’ve been trying to do this entire time with me, isn’t it? Too bad it hasn’t worked.”

  “No, it hasn’t.” His voice is as flat as any wall. “Maybe everyone’s right, and I’ve been going about things all wrong. Maybe you really are the reason I’m playing so badly.”

  The air whooshes out of me. He actually said it.

  My God.

  I’m coming apart inside. It’s as if a cutting wind has whipped through me and snapped every hope I had, once and for all. He doesn’t care about me. He thinks I jinxed his career and nothing between us was ever real…

  “Jenna,” he says, so quietly that I’m not even sure he said it.

  I look at him, and for a wounded second, I do see something…

  But then his defenses go up again, and he coolly watches me as he shuts back down.

  The rest of me shatters, as if I was only a piece of prettied-up, painted-up glass to him all along, and now I’m useless. Broken.

  With all the dignity I have left—and there isn’t much—I walk down the stairs. I refuse to look back at him, but the urge to do so gets so strong that I run the rest of the way to the door, bursting into the night, fleeing to my car.

  As I drive away back to my real home, I look only once in the rearview mirror to find that Eli didn’t even come out of the house.

  It’s like none of this ever happened as everything disappears behind me.

  Chapter 22

  I’m back home, cooking Mom one of her favorite dishes—simple spaghetti and meatballs. In the kitchen, I boil the water, then drag myself over to the counter where I’m robotically chopping vegetables for the sauce, one after the other.

  “You should take a break,” Mom says from her spot at the counter. “You’ve been working like a dervish ever since…”

  As her voice trails off, I smile at her, even though I can barely manage it. “Ever since the breakup. Right.”

  No big deal, Mom. So I left behind a failed relationship a couple weeks ago. I’m back now.

  My thoughts might ring false, but they’re all I have. I pump up the smile. “You know me. I always like to stay busy. It’s the story of my life.”

  “Honey, there’s such a thing as too busy.”

  I send her a loving, appreciative glance. Thanks to her meds, she’s no longer just sitting in front of the TV, in her own world. There’s color to her cheeks, but I don’t have the heart or energy to tell her that I don’t know how long we can get the meds because I broke my contract with Eli Brennan just short of its completion.

  Eli. I can’t think of his name without a spiral of hurt sinking through me. The pain is as fresh as it was the night I came back home, holding back my tears until I got to my room where my family couldn’t see me sobbing.

  I never did tell them that our entire relationship was fake, but in my heart, it was so very real. I’m not putting on an act every day when I blurrily go through my regular routine, taking care of Mom in the mornings until I go out to clean houses again. At least I’m careful about the houses I go to, for fear that the places will belong to one of the rich people I met during my time as Eli’s fiancé. So far, that hasn’t happened, but it doesn’t matter so much. Every place—a random pool, the rotted-out convenience store where he waited for me in his car on the day he proposed the deal, the stadium I pass while I ride the bus—is a reminder of when I was with him.

  When life was an I-wish dream until it all came crashing down around me.

  I only have one wish now, and it’s such a simple one. I wish I could hear Eli’s voice on the phone, telling me to come back, that all of this was just a big misunderstanding and I wasn’t dreaming when I saw his face after the last time we were together.

  But we don’t talk anymore.

  I arranged with Natalie to give him back all the gifts he gave me—the car, the clothes, the jewelry. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him since it’s hard enough to hear the sports news when his name is mentioned because the Rustlers won last week’s game in such a spectacular fashion. Eli is suddenly the football hero of the town after scoring three touchdowns, and hope is once again alive for an it’s-about-time run at the postseason.

  Everyone is saying that ever since Eli and I broke up, his curse is gone. I’m nothing more than a bad memory for nearly everyone in town, it seems. Including Eli himself…

  The only exceptions to that might be Ajax Jaxman and the other offensive linemen who keep texting me to come over for barbecues once the season ends. Also Courtney Dexter and some of the other wives who check in to see how I’m doing post-breakup. Even though I find an excuse to turn down every one of their lunch invitations—to be scheduled after the season ends, of course—I sense some relief in the messages, as if everyone is talking around the fact that I was a bad piece of luck. After all
, now that I’m gone, the Rustlers have actually looked like the team they were supposed to have been all along.

  The door to the apartment opens, and Ivy and Dad come inside laughing. When they walk past the kitchen and see me at the stove, their expressions go sober. Then they get the same look Mom does when she’s with me.

  Pure sympathy.

  Their concern hurts as much as anything. I know they worry when I go to bed early, shutting the door so I can cry myself to sleep. And I hate that I miss Eli so badly: the heat of his body, the way he made me feel…

  I try to smile at them now. “Come on you two, don’t hide it from me. You were down the street watching today’s game in a bar, weren’t you?

  “Um…” Ivy says.

  I shrug. “It’s Sunday. You’re fans. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me.”

  Dad sends me an apologetic gaze. “Okay, so we were rooting the Rustlers on. And you’re only going to find out the news sooner or later, Jen, so… They won again.”

  I gulp. Okay, who cares about being a curse? Be a big girl. That’s what you were before Eli, and that’s what you are now. “And how did he do?”

  I can’t even say his name.

  Dad says, “He had 233 yards today and two touchdowns.”

  That many yards? He had to have broken some kind of record, at least for the team, but I don’t want to know.

  “Go Rustlers?” Ivy says, testing the waters.

  I try to laugh, but it only comes out as a mangled sob. I turn my back and concentrate on chopping vegetables. Everyone is deadly quiet.

  “Alrighty,” Dad finally says, going to the counter and shuffling through the mail, obviously trying to find a distraction. He holds up some envelopes. “Did you know you have some stuff here, Jen?”

  I’d forgotten about my own mail, and it’s been collecting. I couldn’t care less about the junk I get. Dad slides the envelopes over to me, so I glance at them. Yup, junk, and one of them doesn’t even have a return address.

  Ivy washes her hands at the sink then takes over the cooking from me. “Take a break, Jen, read your darn mail. I’ve got this.”