Have Me

by Anne Marsh

In the pro column, Hana is sweet, lovely and obviously exactly the kind of nice person who can be invited to charity galas and cocktail hours. We’re also already married, which makes her convenient. And since she’s broke or close enough, she can use my money.

  In the con column, Hana is Jax’s sister and I’m never, ever supposed to think about her as someone I’d like to have sex with. After our wild Friday night, however, I don’t think I can go back to seeing her as almost a relative. It’s disorienting having seen her naked, compounded by the fact that we really are married. I went from being a single guy to her husband, and skipped all the dating stuff that usually fills in the middle. You’d think I could just chalk it up to drunken shenanigans, write her a check and move on with my life, but somehow I can’t.

  “Earth to Liam.” Hana leans over and pokes my stomach, aiming for my belly button. She did this for a while as a kid until I learned to watch for it and preemptively grab her hand. It feels different now. I can’t help thinking what that finger is connected to. The hand, the wrist, the arm, the deliciously curvy torso, ass and legs. I might not remember particular details, but I definitely have the big picture cemented in my head as I thread my fingers through hers.

  “We can annul on grounds of unsound mind. We were extremely intoxicated and not capable of making decisions,” I say carefully. “But I’d like to do this as quietly as possible. I’m not sure if you’re aware of my current situation, but I’m in negotiations with the board at Galaxtix. They’re concerned about how my personal life may be perceived by donors. So I’d propose that we stay married for now and then we’ll split up later when it’s convenient.”

  She drops the remnants of her taco into the bag with her free hand. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not.” This is the tricky part. “Four months would probably do it, although a year would be better.”

  For a second, I think it’s my lucky day and she’s going to agree without arguing. Her lips part and she gets this soft look on her face, but then she presses her lips together and stiffens up. It’s time to sweeten my offer.

  “I’ll compensate you, of course. Generously.” I reach into my suit jacket and pull out the post-nup my lawyer drafted. “I would need you to sign this, but it’s to protect both our interests. That way I don’t get half a bee farm when we split up, and you’re not saddled with my business.”

  Hana makes a choking sound. I shift so I can reach behind her and pat her on the back. Since she can breathe—based on the number of audible freakity-fudge-freaks I hear—she isn’t dying and doesn’t need my help. I run my fingers down the delicate knobs of her spine. She feels fragile, but we both know she’s made of steel—except when it comes to me. I’ve always been Hana’s soft spot and I’ve never been so grateful for that.

  “No.” She shakes her head, making her braids dance over her shoulders. “I don’t want your money.”

  I’ve heard her have this exact same argument with Jax on multiple occasions, but this time she’ll lose. No one is more stubborn than me when I want something.

  “Tell me what you do want then.” I flatten my palm against her back. Any lower and I’ll be cupping her butt.

  “Did you really think you could stride in here and pay me to be your wife for whatever nefarious reason you need one?”

  “Yes?”

  “No.” She shifts away from me, clearly done with lunch, with me and with this conversation. That doesn’t work for me, so I use the hand I’m holding to pull her onto my lap. Without hesitation, she wriggles around, making herself comfortable. I’m less so, but that’s only to be expected. “Do you really think you’re qualified to be someone’s husband?”

  I pretend to think about that for a second. The honest answer is no, but that’s not going to get me what—who—I want. “I’ll be an intern husband.”

  “Are you sorry that you got me into this mess?”

  I debate reminding her that the “mess” is half her responsibility, but decide against it. “No.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m also not not-sorry.” I shrug. “We got married. It isn’t the end of the world. I told you I would fix it and I will. I’m just here to lay out options for you. If you’re looking for apologies, you should have married someone else. I don’t apologize. You should know that by now.”

  She hesitates, clearly not sure what to say next. Hana is nice. In her sweet, honey-centric world, people apologize when they screw up and they probably mean it most of the time. She’s trying to understand my point of view because that’s what nice people do, and I need to close the sale. All I really want to do, though, is kiss her and possibly crush her between my body and the truck while we have sex.

  “Apologies are just words.” I might possibly press my forehead against hers because I’m a greedy, desperate bastard. “But I give awesome make-up sex and now would be a great time to tell me what color you want your Porsche to be.”

  She sighs. “You’re really unbelievable.”

  She could be referring to my offer to buy her a car or sex her up, or my refusal to apologize. The likeliest answer is a D, all of the above scenario. I drop her hand and pull out my phone, making a note in my to-do app to have a car delivered to her. It’d be funny if nothing else.

  Then I return to our negotiations. “We have three options. Option A is divorce. We’re looking at 180 days from whatever date we decide our marriage ended on. I’d suggest that’s the second day, but you can let me know if you feel differently. Option B is an annulment. We’ll need to convince a judge that one or both of us was of unsound mind that night because of intoxication, which won’t be hard to do. Option C I already mentioned. We stay married for now and then we go for Option A later.”

  “Did someone tell you to do this?” She looks around.

  “Who are you looking for?”

  “Jax. I may have to kill him.”

  “Jax has nothing to do with us. This proposal is all on me.”

  “So you’re genuinely here on your own?”

  “Yes.” She still doesn’t look as if she believes me, so I continue building my case. “Does it matter? You pretend to be my wife, I pay you. Imagine how many bee farms you could buy.”

  “I only need one.”

  This is another difference between us. If I owned a bee farm, I’d franchise it or grow it into a national conglomerate that controls the honey market.

  “Tell me why.” Her finger drills into my chest again. “Make it good.”

  “I’m getting pushback from my board about my ‘lifestyle choices.’” I make air quotes and she shakes her head. “We’re a publicly traded company and the situation with Leda doesn’t look good.”

  “They think you screwed her company over because you were mad at her.”

  Somebody’s been googling.

  “I bankrolled her company. I poured venture capital dollars into it. Anyway, it turns out that there were a few issues with the product she was developing—” like it didn’t exist “—and so I shut down the funding. I guess she took that the wrong way and she’s been accusing me of shit ever since. I look like a first-class asshole, though, and my board is pressuring me to do some damage control and shine up my image.”

  “So I’m damage control and an image buffer.”

  “It would definitely help if we looked like a normal married couple. We could live together, do couple stuff.”

  She eats another taco while she thinks my statement over. “This has to do with my being nice, doesn’t it? I’m the good cop in this scenario and you’re the bad one.”

  It does. I nod.

  “So you want my help.”

  “Yes. Fine. I do.”

  “Except you don’t want to call it help—you want to call it something else and pay me.”

  “It sounds bad when you put it that way.”

  “So how woul
d you envision this temporary marriage working? You said we’d live together? Act like a real couple?”

  I’ve given this extensive thought. While last weekend’s quickie marriage is by and large a secret, the truth will inevitably come out. There are just too many holes for me to plug. While the ringmaster signed a general NDA before I allowed him onto my property, money talks and sooner or later he’ll be tempted to share his side of our story with the press. The other guests are also a liability.

  “Yes, we’ll live together. Be seen together.” I spread my hands. “But I’m not asking you to have sex with me. If you want it to be, sex is off the table.”

  She slides me a sidelong glance, mischief dancing in her eyes. “I haven’t had sex on a table. It seems awkward and uncomfortable, but maybe you’ve had different table experiences than me.”

  “Don’t be a brat.” I recapture her hand.

  “What are you going to do? Spank me?” She blushes. It’s adorable, but it also emphasizes the differences between us and makes me want to teach her a lesson.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Her mouth falls open a little, but no words come out.

  I smile, leaning forward, my free hand stroking her thigh just high enough that we both know it’s not a friendly accident.

  “Is that what you want, to spank me?” The tip of her tongue traces her lower lip.

  Her curiosity is going to kill me.

  I shake my head. “You’re a nice girl, Hana. We both know you’re not running around the San Francisco sex clubs, asking strangers to spank you.”

  Because I’m not the nice person here, however, I raise her hand to my mouth and nip the tip of her finger. Her breath catches when my tongue swirls over the sensitive pad.

  I let go of her hand and sit back. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re safe with me, Hana. I only want to make you feel good.”

  “But not in bed.”

  “Hana—”

  “Yes, yes, I’m aware that we little sisters aren’t supposed to think about sex, let alone talk about it. I’m entirely certain that Jax would like to believe I’m planning a life of celibacy until I’m ninety. He’d volunteer me for a convent if he could, but neither of us is Catholic. I don’t want money, Liam. We’d kill each other if we lived together, for so many reasons.”

  “How many?”

  She thinks for a minute. “Three.”

  Three is manageable. “Hit me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THIS COULD NEVER WORK

  Hana

  FRIDAY NIGHT WE got married.

  By Saturday morning, I’d walked out on him after he made it offensively clear that, per his supersmart man brain, our marriage could never work as I was practically family. Oh, and that I was his own, personal hair shirt and self-flagellation tool. Tired of always coming up short, I’d left.

  In retrospect, giving Liam space was a mistake. He’s clearly used his alone time to come up with a new plan, and equally clearly, he thinks I’ll require convincing to go along with it and he’s here ready to play hardball. The delicious vegan tacos I just finished are proof of that.

  I cup his cheek with my hand. Stubble shadows his jaw, inviting me to rub my face against his until his bristles mark my skin. The sexual jolt I feel is stupid, so instead I answer his question.

  “One. You’re filthy rich and I’m not. Two. I like having sex and you’ve made it clear you’re not putting out. And three: you don’t fit into my life—it would be like adding a chef’s kitchen to a double-wide. The kitchen would be expensive and the appliances top-end, but the infrastructure work would be a bitch and no one would ever be able to figure out the resale value.”

  He gives a slow blink.

  “I’m trying to do the right thing here,” he says. And just like that Liam is back to being the suit. You know how medieval knights wore all that armor when they rode into battle and you pretty much had to pry them out of it with a can opener? Just substitute designer suits for chain mail and you have Liam. He’s happy if he gets to be the one discussing spanking and other sex acts, but he shuts down if I mention those three little letters: S, E and their best friend X.

  “I could ignore the first and third issues if we established a few ground rules like I pay my own way, but the no-sex thing is a deal breaker, so perhaps you’d care to discuss the sexual elephant in the room?”

  “Not particularly.” The growly look he aims my way might scare the pants off someone who hasn’t known him for years, but he’s said it himself. He’d never hurt me. It undermines his ability to negotiate a killer deal.

  “We did it. We had sex. Based on your reaction the other night, I either really did it for you, or you’d just come off a sexual drought. Since the Instagram posts seem to suggest you’re a man-whore and generally make yourself available to San Francisco’s population—mind you, I’m not judging—I think you just really liked getting your rocks off with me. I’m not going to force you to tell me if you’ve been entertaining secret fantasies about me for years, but I’m not averse, either.”

  The look on his face turns contemplative. “How is man-whore not judgmental?”

  “True.” I make a show of tapping my lower lip with my finger. “Okay. We’ll call you the Father Christmas of sex, passing out orgasm gifts to all the good little girls. I want a turn while you want a vestal virgin for some nefarious business purpose. It puts us at an impasse, if you see what I mean.”

  I’m hoping he won’t figure out for himself that I can’t actually stop him from keeping me on a sexless pedestal. His penis really has to cooperate with the idea, and I won’t cheat on him. He kind of already has what he wants.

  Would I have agreed if he’d asked me before the sex party? I honestly don’t know.

  I’m still holding on to his hand, so I force myself to let go. It’s harder than I expect—my fingers want to cling to his, to stroke his hand, to tickle the palm with my nails until he gives me his slow, lopsided sex-god grin. I’m not ready to let go of him yet.

  Because holy shit, the man gets hotter every time I see him, which may have something to do with the fact that I’ve seen him naked. There’s no unseeing naked Liam.

  He looks at me with his poker face. “What are you proposing?”

  Play it cool. “This would have to be a partnership, Liam. Not an employee-boss relationship.”

  Hot boss would be a super fun fantasy to role-play, but I’m not going to make it a real-life thing. Liam would run roughshod over me.

  He narrows his eyes. “Okay.”

  I grin at him. “Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ve fed him for a lifetime.”

  Does it sound like a tangent? Sure, but Liam rolls with it. “Confucius?”

  “Probably.” I wave a hand dismissively. “But getting back to the bigger picture, you have an image problem. People don’t think you’re nice. I’ll teach you how to be nice and then you won’t need me as a prop.”

  His forehead puckers in a frown, but I barrel ahead. “And in exchange, you’ll give me bad-girl lessons. Based on today’s conversation, I clearly need more practice in that department. I’d never even considered spanking, so obviously you have a ton to teach me.”

  And...

  There is one more sexual elephant we need to address.

  “Unless you’re not attracted to me,” I continue, so quietly that it takes him a moment to make out what I’ve just said. I know when he has because he tenses beneath me. “In which case, I get that certain things are off the table. I’d like to have really memorable sex with you, but only if that’s what you want, too.”

  His eyes darken, his fingers tightening on my bare shoulders. “Attraction’s never been the problem.”

  He runs a finger down my shoulder and along my side and my breath catches.

  “I w
ant you,” he says roughly. “And if dirty sex is something you’re curious about, I can help you out with that, too. But are you sure it’s what you really want?”

  “Is it a binary kind of proposition?”

  “Maybe you’d like a taste,” he said, his finger moving lower. “Before you make up your mind about us. Say yes and I’ll show you what I could give you.”

  I straighten. “We’re in public.”

  The problem is that Liam thrives on a challenge. His fingers skimming lower, his big body beneath mine, the obvious ridge of his arousal between us—these things make it clear that he’s more than willing to get busy in the back of my truck. When he touches me, when he’s close, I can’t think. All I can do is feel, and it scares me as much as it pulls me in and makes me want to hold on to him. “People will see.”

  He drops his other hand between us, shifting me until I’m straddling his outstretched legs, my knees hugging his thighs. I feel his palm slip beneath the fabric of my skirt. “Yes? Or no?”

  “I can’t think. I should say no.”

  “But you want to say yes. Think of me as the treat you’re allowing yourself. I’m going to make you feel good and then later I’m going to fuck you.” He pauses, clearly wrestling with his Boy Scout. “If that’s what you want.”

  “I can’t imagine not wanting this.”

  You.

  What happens if I always want you?

  What happens if you don’t feel these things for me?

  I lean back, trying to force my sex-focused brain to think objectively. This is what I wanted, right? This is Liam finally seeing me as a sexual partner. It’s exactly what I asked for, but it’s also a little more immediate than I’d anticipated. If pressed, I’d have said that I’d imagined a bed with luxury sheets, possibly after a nice Chianti. Better underwear and mood lighting would also have factored into my fantasy.

  He trails his fingers over the bare skin of my thigh, tracing small circles as he moves higher. “Tell me yes.”

  Liam Masterson is touching me.

  “Tell me you’re not drunk.”