Pretending to Be Us

by Taylor Holloway

  Maybe it was because I was an actor. Maybe that’s why I liked controlling sexual situations. You get ordered around on set all day and told what to do by producers and PR people and you start looking for control in other situations. Or maybe it had nothing to do with that. I had no idea. I didn’t really care. But I knew what I liked. And I liked that Lucy was offering it to me.

  “Well,” I told her, “you can start by taking off all your clothes and getting down on your knees.” I went to sit on the bed and watch her. “Right now,” I added, in case she had any confusion about that part. This ought to be interesting. Usually people establish some boundaries well in advance, but if she was down for this, I was too. If she trusted me to do this, I trusted her to communicate her needs back to me. She’d never had any trouble telling me what was on her mind before. I doubted she’d start now.

  Her eyes flashed up to mine as she dropped my jacket and made quick work of her button-down blouse. She peeled it off and it joined the jacket on the ground. The bra was next. I watched, transfixed.

  She thought I was made in a focus group? She was man’s fantasy brought to life. Long limbs, narrow waist, high, round tits... all delivered up with a shy smile and eager, innocent blue eyes. And, on top of all of that, she shared my kink? I unbuckled my belt.

  “I should make it super clear so there’s no confusion later," she said, dropping her skirt down as well and getting down on her knees. “I’m a virgin.”

  “What?!” I sputtered.

  Shit!

  She swallowed and blushed. “Is that bad?” Vulnerability was everywhere on her face. Her eyes were suddenly shining and wet.

  I was up and across the room in an instant. I pulled her off the floor, folded her into my arms, and sat us both down on the bed. She chirped in surprise and then settled into my chest, seemingly comforted but obviously also confused.

  That made two of us.

  I rocked her back and forth, utterly ashamed of myself. “I’m an idiot.” I said, more to myself than her. She was silent. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I didn’t know. I...” I ran my hands down her back, trying to impart some comfort since I couldn’t find the words. She probably thought I was some kind of creep now. I had not handled the last couple of minutes well at all.

  Of course, she was a virgin. That made way more sense than her asking me for something kinky out of the blue like that. She was what? Twenty? Christ, I was a moron.

  “You don’t want me now, do you?” She said after a few moments of silence. She seemed weirdly ashamed. Like she’d been the one to act stupidly. I felt a little bit ill.

  “It’s more like I don’t deserve you now,” I said.

  “Should I go?” her voice was muffled, since her face was buried in my chest.

  “Do you want to?” I asked. “It’s okay if you do.” It wouldn’t surprise me if she never wanted to see me again. Who orders the sweet, virginal princess to strip and get down on her knees? This idiot, that’s who. I swallowed. She was almost naked in my arms and in about two seconds she was about to leave. Again.

  Way to blow it, Peter.

  Then she went and surprised me again. “I don’t want to.”

  21

  Lucy

  Peter looked down at me in shock. I took the opportunity to kiss him. He tasted like tequila, and although he was gentler and much more careful than he’d been the other day, he didn’t pull away. When I eventually came up for air, he paused and looked at me seriously.

  “Lucy, I thought you were asking for something very specific from me,” he said. His green eyes were full of dark things I didn’t know how to name. “I swear I thought we were on the same page. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I wouldn’t just spring something like that on somebody. Especially not a virgin...”

  I cocked my head to the side. A hysterical giggle rose in my throat and I squashed it. “I’m a virgin, not a nun. I’ve seen Fifty Shades of Grey. I even read the book.”

  He winced and confirmed my suspicions. “That’s actually not a great introduction to--”

  I shook my head and cut off what was probably a well-articulated, intelligent explanation of something I didn’t want to hear at the moment. “I’m sure it’s not. But I’m game.” I shrugged. “I’m a big girl. I just want this. I want you. Right now.”

  His lips parted. I saw him make up his mind. His black pupils dilated in his famously vivid green eyes. When he spoke, his voice was a half-octave lower and much more gravelly. “Maybe next time.”

  Then he was kissing me again and I forgot I was awkward. I forgot I didn’t know what I was doing. I forgot all the lies I was trying to maintain. All I thought about was him and how badly I wanted him.

  Somehow, using his far superior sexual skill and strength, I was under him a moment later. He could toss me around like a rag doll, and for whatever reason, I loved it. It was obvious that he did too. I felt his weight on me and I sank into the oblivion of the mattress knowing that I’d leave this room just a little bit different than I went in. And then he was tugging off his shirt and I was too transfixed by him to even think at all.

  Jesus Christ.

  In that moment I had what millions of women around the world wanted, Peter Prince naked on top of me. Taut, hard muscles covered by soft, silky smooth skin and a smile that captivated the whole world. He stared down at me, brushing my hair back from my neck before kissing me there, and lower. He worked on my chest eagerly, kissing and sucking and using his hands where his mouth wasn’t. I arched up into it all, feeling overstimulated in the best way.

  I gave myself up to it. The feeling of pressure between my legs was growing, but Peter wasn’t in a hurry to fix that. He lavished attention on me with his mouth, and soon I was panting, staring up at the ceiling and wondering if those noises I heard, the ones that sounded high, breathy and ridiculous, were coming from me. I rocked my hips back and forth restlessly, needing more. He pulled and rubbed my nipples, one and then the other, until they were taut, oversensitive points.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Peter said finally, crawling down lower on my body. I stared down at him, panting as he started exploring between my legs with long, practiced, careful fingers. I pushed back against the friction, needing more, more, more....

  I was desperate for whatever was about to happen to finally happen. I’d been waiting for the right man to come along for what felt like forever. And now this fucking foreplay was teasing me out of my mind. “Just do it,” I heard myself whimpering. “I can’t wait any more.”

  He smirked. “No way. You’ll wait until I think you’re ready,” he told me, proving to me what I suspected. He clearly had a thing for being in control in bed. For some reason, it comforted me to know he was in charge. If he was in charge, I didn’t have to be. I could just feel.

  So that’s what I did. He kissed between my legs for what felt like ages. What first felt foreign quickly shifted to pleasurable. I squirmed beneath him, wanting friction and finding only softness and warmth. He knew exactly what to do to keep me on the edge.

  “If I hurt you,” Peter panted in my ear when he finally crawled back up me, “I’m sorry.”

  “Will you please stop talking about hurting me?” I panted back. “I’ll tell you to stop if I need to.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he replied. His voice was a raspy, husky whisper. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”

  I stared up at him. The woman he was turning me into didn’t care about a little pain. Who’d have thought a wimp like me would want that? “That’s fine too,” I breathed. “Just, please, no more talking.”

  He smirked at me and his lips were still wet from me. “So bossy. We’re going to have to work on that.” I whimpered again, desperately, and his smile widened. “Okay, fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  He did warn me, but it didn’t hurt. Everybody tells you that the first time will be painful, but apparently, everybody has it wrong. Because when he finally pushed inside m
e, I felt heat and pressure, and god, relief. No pain. I was so wound up from the plane, and the production, and my family, and everything else in the world that seemed to be conspiring to tie me up in sailor knots, but this was simple. This was right.

  When Peter started to move, gently but with a purposeful, determined edge to him, I was right there with him. I was totally and completely in the moment, and it made me feel free. He stared down at me, lips parted and hair mussed, and I felt my body tell my brain to shut the hell up.

  I’d been waiting for what felt like forever to lose my virginity. I hadn’t wanted to stay a virgin until twenty-two. But now I was glad I waited. Because if this is what sex could be like with the right partner, I never wanted the wrong one. Or even the average one.

  We moved together, building up in intensity, tempo, and forcefulness. My hands grasped at his shoulders and noises came out of my mouth that I didn’t know I knew how to make. I sounded desperate and wanton. I sounded like a woman who knew what it was like to be taken, really taken and claimed, by a man. When my orgasm finally tore through my body like a tidal wave, Peter was only moments behind me, gasping against my neck and then pulling out to curl around me protectively. In the quiet moments that followed, I could hear his heartbeat thrumming powerfully against my back as the rain lashed down on the tin roof and washed all my worries away.

  22

  Peter

  “Tell me a secret,” Lucy said. We were lying in bed. It was still raining outside, and it felt like there was no reason to ever get up from our rented bed.

  “You first.”

  She flashed her pretty white smile and then licked her finger. She drew it down her left forearm and wiped away the makeup that had been concealing something blue and bright orange.

  I sat up.

  “You have a tattoo?”

  She nodded, allowing me to wipe the rest of the makeup away. It was a butterfly. Wait. No. It wasn’t. It was...

  “It’s the deaths head moth,” she explained. “You know, from ‘Silence of the Lambs’?”

  I remembered now. From the movie poster. It was a perfect tattoo for a film nerd. “You always cover it up?”

  She shook her head. “Not always. Just lately.” She looked at me. “Your turn.”

  I frowned. “I’m extremely afraid of clowns.”

  She giggled. “That totally doesn’t count. Everybody in their right minds are afraid of clowns.”

  I smirked. “I don’t enjoy Chinese movies about ferns.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll pry one out of you. So, about your whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing,” Lucy asked. “What’s up with that?”

  I groaned. My whole ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ thing? Kill me now. She had to bring that up, didn’t she? I flung an arm over my eyes and wished to God I had been blessed with more IQ points.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” I told her. I sounded sheepish even in my own ears.

  She turned over on her side and stared at me. “How do you know what I’m thinking, huh?”

  In her defense, she didn’t look judgmental, just curious. Still, I wasn’t sure I was up to this conversation. I looked away first.

  “You have sex one time and now you’re just shameless, is that it?”

  “Should I be ashamed for having sex?” She asked me. She crossed her arms over her naked chest and stared down her nose at me.

  I shook my head. She was always tricking me into sounding like an asshole. “No, of course not. That’s not what I meant to say.”

  Her look of smug superiority was well deserved. “Hmm,” she said after a moment. “Because it seems like the one ashamed of his preferences is you.”

  I blinked and felt my jaw go slack. “Fair point.” I laughed a strangled little laugh. “I guess I am a little bit embarrassed by it. A lot embarrassed by it.”

  Her curiosity was back. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t really know. I just really like being in control in bed.”

  “That’s not really that weird.” She smirked. “It’s definitely not nearly as weird as being a twenty-two-year-old virgin.”

  “Well, you’re cured now.” I said with satisfaction. I might be a depraved sadist, but at the moment I was a very satisfied, depraved sadist.

  “And you think you need to be cured?”

  “I don’t know, Dr. Freud. What do you think?”

  “I ‘zink you need to relax,” she said in a thick, convincing German accent. “I’m not judging you and you shouldn’t judge yourself so harshly. It’s normal to have preferences.”

  I brushed her hair away from her cheek and back behind her little ear. “I guess I’m just defensive about it because I don’t want to weird you out.”

  “You think I’d be weirded out just because you want to do kinky bondage stuff while we fuck?” She smirked at me. “Bring it on. I want to try everything now.”

  Good lord. The things that came out of this woman’s mouth. Whatever preconceptions I had about princesses were totally and completely shattered now. Lucy didn’t fit in any molds. She was a host unto herself.

  “I’ve created a monster.”

  “So, you don’t want to tie me up and spank me before you fuck me?”

  “Princess, you keep talking like that and that’s exactly what’s going to happen.” My stomach growled. “But first, we need some food.”

  “Why, so you’ll have plenty of energy to dominate me into sexy, sexy submission?”

  I managed to avoid laughing. She had a good attitude about it, I’d give her that. “Yes, Lucy,” I told her seriously, “that’s exactly why.”

  23

  Peter

  “Aren’t you that movie star?” the waitress asked me at dinner that night. “Peter Prince? I recognize you, but the kitchen staff say I’m crazy.”

  I smiled politely back at her. “Yes, I am.”

  The woman, a sweet grandmother of three, who I soon learned was named Marie, grinned excitedly and asked for a photo to show her friends. Lucy watched us across the table, bemused. She probably didn’t understand the details of the conversation in French, but it was fairly apparent I’d been recognized.

  Lucy was still flushed from the afternoon’s adventures and her gold hair was messy. The sex-goddess look did things for her. It definitely did things for me. We’d spent the entire day tangled up in each other under the covers. It was the best day I could remember in a long time, even if it meant our working relationship could get a lot more complicated now that we were sleeping together. I tried not to think too far ahead, but it was difficult. I could see a lot of potential futures with Lucy. Most unexpectedly, I wanted a future with her.

  I’ve never been the type to fall in love at first sight. Hollywood is very good at stamping out any idealism or romanticism, and I’d been crushed a few times before. I thought I’d learned not to get all excited about a woman. But every time Lucy looked over at me, my heart did a horrible little excited flipflop thing. I was already in deep and I hadn’t even felt myself falling. Apparently, all those weeks she spent being cold and distant had kept me from going straight over the deep end. Now that the obstacles were removed, I was drowning in her.

  “What’s it like?” Lucy asked me when Marie finally got the perfect angle on her old-lady flip phone and shuffled off to win her bet with the dishwashers.

  “What?” I questioned, momentarily transfixed by her. It was an occupational hazard.

  “Being recognized in public by strangers. Is it weird?” Lucy cocked her head to the side to look at me under her long, dark eyelashes. Her mascara was pretty smudged, but she didn’t seem to care. “Do you get annoyed?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess I’m used to it.” Then, I frowned. “It’s one thing when it’s someone that likes my work. I actually like that most of the time. Paparazzi are horrible though.”

  “I can’t imagine.” She grimaced in visible sympathy. “I like my privacy a lot.”

  “The paparazzi don’t
follow the royal family around in Sweden?” I questioned.

  Lucy looked away and then took a sip of her white wine. “I don’t live in a palace, Peter. It’s not like in England where the royals are a big deal. Nobody ever follows me around. Except Bill. And I think he’s only interested in making love to my ankles.”

  I still had a hard time believing the vest-wearing poodle had bad manners. He’d been entirely chill on the plane ride, although Lucy admitted that Daniel gave him doggy sedatives that contributed to his good mood.

  We were at another little café in the city center, only this one actually served French food. The weather had cleared up into a cool, quiet evening and our table overlooked the river. Above our heads, strings of lights crisscrossed between the roof and a huge oak tree. A quartet of musicians were playing classical guitar down the street and the sound carried well over the cobblestones. It was all very romantic.

  Lucy’s phone buzzed and she turned pale when she read her most recent text.

  “Just a moment,” she said, “I have to make a quick call.”

  Lucy dashed off a few feet away to pace on the other side of the patio. I heard her speaking in Swedish, and while I couldn’t understand a word, it was obvious that the conversation was not a happy one. Her good mood seemed to have vanished.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked when she returned.

  Lucy threw herself down into her seat. Her expression was an obvious mix of frustration and worry. Her eyes flashed to mine. Then she sighed. “I'm having some issues right now with my family,” Lucy said eventually. “There are some pretty big problems and I’m not sure how to fix them.”

  Lucy was notoriously cagey about her personal life and this was about the most forthcoming she’d been so far. “What kind of problems?” I asked, wondering if the tiny crack in her composure was real and she’d actually let me in this time.