Pretend For Me

by Laurent, River

  I hid a yawn and smiled as Gabe approached with my drink. Taking a sip, I hoped the sugar would be enough to pep me up.

  He smiled and lightly touched my arm. "You getting tired?"

  I nodded apologetically. "Yeah, I’m really sorry," I replied, pulling a face. "It’s been a busy few weeks, after all."

  "Well, I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you.”

  I smiled. I’d become the events manager for the company around a year ago, and I had to say it was the perfect job for me – I enjoyed the organizing, the fun of putting together a party and – of course, slipping Lorraine onto the guests list. This was my favorite part, taking her to all these fancy events. I’m hoping she’ll find someone gorgeous and settle down. No luck yet, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.

  She’d always loved the apartment Gabe and I lived in so Gabe gave it to her as a birthday present and set her up with her own business. At first, she didn’t want to accept, but all I had to do was ask her if she’d do for me if she was in my shoes. Since then I have done my best to see that she moves in the right circles to get a nice guy who will not see her as a meal ticket, but will love her and take care of her the way Gabe does me.

  I looked into Gabe’s beautiful waiting eyes. "Does that mean I’m allowed to duck out early?”

  "That means that we are," he replied, and his gaze moved slowly down my outfit. "Though with you in that dress, you should be grateful I’ve even managed to last this long."

  "Come on. Let’s get out of here, before you do something you shouldn’t in front of your investors."

  Our driver took us home. Then I practically sprinted up the steps to our house and up towards Jilly’s bedroom. We had purchased this place a few months after I’d found out I was pregnant. It was more suited for a family than his impersonal apartment. I’d spent months decorating it in readiness for our baby arrival.

  As I stepped into the nursery, I felt again how perfect everything was. I could hear Gabe saying goodnight to the nanny downstairs as I walked over to the crib to give my daughter a hug. "Hey, baby," I cooed into her ear, as she snuggled sleepily against my body. She was tired, that much was obvious, but there was no way I was going to bed without seeing her. I couldn’t get to sleep unless I’d spent at least a few hours of the day with her. Even just being at the party for the evening had been enough to make me ache to hold her.

  She was the sweetest thing you ever saw, with her father’s eyes and my hair. She had grown up so much already, this tiny creature that Gabe and I had made together. Lorraine called her a little devil, but in truth, she was my angel. Even if she wasn’t going to be the only one for much longer.

  "Is she okay?" Gabe asked quietly behind me.

  I turned to smile at him. "Oh, look how the little minx comes alive when she hears her daddy’s voice.”

  Little Jilly was definitely a daddy’s girl. She reached out her hands and grabbed at the air in the direction of her father’s voice.

  I handed her over to him and she laughed happily.

  "Hey, honey," he greeted in that voice he only used with her. It was a mixture of love and tenderness.

  She let out a happy little snort.

  I watched as Gabe cradled her in his arms and smiled to myself. Now was the perfect time. We were all here, as a family, and it only seemed fair to tell the two of them that there was another member on the way. "Gabe?”

  He turned to me with that look on his face he always got when he was around her. "Yes?"

  "I’m pregnant."

  He stared at me for a second, and then slowly placed Jilly back in her crib.

  For a second, I felt sure he hadn’t heard me. He jerked his head towards the door and I followed.

  "Gabe? Did you hear what I said?” I asked, as we walked through the door.

  He turned to me in the corridor, closed the door, and scooped me up into his arms.

  I burst out laughing.

  He’d heard all right. He was just waiting until we were out of the room so he wouldn’t disturb Jilly. "I can’t believe this," he murmured against my neck as he put me back on the ground. "This is amazing. How long have you known?”

  "This morning," I replied, giggling. "I was going to call you at work, but I wanted to see your face when I told you. Then I didn’t want to tell you at the party. I decided to wait for the perfect time."

  "Baby, you know there’s no such thing as a perfect time when it comes to something like that. Next time, I want to know right after you pee on the stick. Actually, I want to be there when you pee on the stick.” He dropped to his knees in front of me and planted a kiss on my stomach, then pressed his ear to it.

  I held his head there, laughing at his goofiness. For a man so utterly in-control when it came to business, he could be so silly when it came to our children.

  "I think I can already hear him in there," he remarked.

  "Him?”

  "Yeah, well, I think it better be a boy, otherwise I’m going to be overrun by girls. All of whom will have me twisted around their little fingers," he teased. Then he stood up and kissed me again. This time, though, there was more urgency to the feel of his mouth against mine

  I knew he wanted more.

  He slipped his hands up and under my dress, pushing the skirt up over my hips so that I was exposed to him. Pushing his fingers over my bare thigh, he drew a groan out from between my lips.

  "Maybe we should take this to the bedroom," he suggested, lifting me off the ground and carrying me to the big room, we had made our own. He was mine and I was his. We belonged to each other, utterly and soon, we would add to our little family to prove that over again.

  Gabe laid me down on the bed and pulled my shoes off, one by one, followed by my dress. I was bare-naked underneath. I moaned softly as he lowered his mouth to my nipples, kissing and sucking softly on the exposed flesh. I slipped my hand down between his legs to touch his cock, that beautiful cock I knew would always be mine.

  He was already rock-hard. I remembered the very first time we had sex. It was so distant and obscured by the hundreds and hundreds of other times we’d done it in between, but every detail was still just as vivid. "I need you inside me," I breathed in his ear.

  He didn’t need me to tell him twice. Pulling down his pants, he fisted his cock and pressed the head against my slit. With one thrust, he was inside of me and all I could do was cry out at the sheer pleasure of feeling my man in me once again. There was nothing like it in the world. His body had been made for mine and I would never get tired of feeling our connection come together like this.

  I arched my back from the bed and pushed my hips towards his, groaning loudly when he sank his teeth into my ear like he was trying to take a bite out of me. I knew how he felt. Sometimes, I got that feeling to, an urge to consume him, to make ourselves part of one another. I adored that about him, the way he could read my mind.

  Just another reminder of how right he was for me.

  I moved my hand down between my legs and began to play with my clit, brushing my fingers softly over my engorged nub in time with his thrusts. When I came, I came hard. My upper-body lifted off the bed and I buried my face in his shoulder while tightening my grip on him.

  I never wanted to let him go.

  My pussy was still pulsating around his cock when I felt him come inside me, filling me with his warm cum. He brushed his mouth over mine one more time and slowly withdrew. Flopping back onto the bed, he turned to look at me. He was still half-dressed so I started to unbutton his shirt. He clasped my hands in his, and drew them to his lips. "You looked so beautiful tonight."

  "Must be that pregnancy glow," I joked.

  "Or maybe it’s just you," he replied as he pulled me close to him.

  I snuggled into him and closed my eyes. I always got sleepy after we made love.

  "I love you so much," Gabe whispered.

  "I love you, too."

  And with that, I closed my eyes, pressed myself against him, and started dr
eaming about what our family would be like after our new addition came along.

  The End

  Lorraine’s story is coming soon!

  But in the meantime have a peek at my coming release…

  Coming soon…

  LET’S PRETEND

  Chapter 1

  Scarlett

  “What?” I gasped in shock. “It cannot be. He would never do that. I don’t believe it. There must be some mistake.”

  Ernest, my father’s solicitor shook his head. “I’m sorry Scarlett. There is no mistake. I drew up this will, your father read, and signed it. This is what he wanted.”

  “But he wouldn’t have left Wotton Hall to,” I cried, flinging my hand in the direction where my stepmother was sitting, dressed all in black, as if she truly was mourning. “She hates it. She called it a mausoleum right to his face.”

  Ernest looked at me sadly. “I’m sorry. There is nothing I can do. He did leave the Wotton Hall, the grounds and the woods around it to your stepmother.”

  I sagged. I couldn’t understand it. He told me he would leave the house to me. He knew what it meant to me. It was my mother’s dying wish for me have the house, and he promised her. I was there when he did. With tears streaming down his face he promised her. It was simply impossible that he would leave Wotton House to my stepmother when he knew very well she detested it.”

  “You won’t be homeless,” Ernest said in a comforting tone. “Your father has made provisions for you and your sister to live in the London apartment.”

  I could feel tears clogging my throat. My father’s betrayal was impossible for me to comprehend. I was there when he drew his last breath. He held my hand and said, I love you. You are my first born and have always been my favorite. I have set it up so that you will be safe.

  “I’ve had enough of this nonsense,” Victoria, my stepmother spoke up. “Has he only left the house for me? Is there no more? What about the business? What about the ancestral jewelry, the house in Paris and Bahamas?”

  Ernest cleared his throat. “I’m afraid there is nothing else for you except the house and your generous monthly allowance that will continue to be paid to you until your dying day?”

  “That’s it. You call that pittance a generous monthly allowance. The stingy, decrepit bastard. I had to suck his shriveled coc—”

  I saw red. Without even realizing it I had jumped out of chair and was streaking across the room. The sound of my hand connecting with Victoria’s cheek reverberated around our stunned figures. Victoria was holding her cheek and glaring at me with pure hatred, but she did not dare retaliate. “Get out,” I snarled. “Get out. You’re a vile, disrespectful bitch. Why he ever married you, I’ll never know.”

  She smiled suddenly. “Nobody can suck like. I’m sure I could give you a lesson or two about that. You look about as frigid as a day-old corpse.”

  “I’m going, but let me tell you the first order of business is to sell that damn place.”

  She turned on her heel and left.

  My sister, Lorelei came over to me. “Calm down, Scarlett. She’s gone now.”

  I clasped my sister’s hand then turned to Ernest, my voice shaking with emotion. “Can I instruct you to immediately buy the house from her?”

  Ernest shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m afraid you won’t be able to touch your inheritance until you are twenty-one.”

  Now I was genuinely confused. “What? Why would Dad make a stipulation like that?”

  Ernest adjusted his glasses and shrugged. “Such stipulations are usually made when the heir is very young and might make stupid decision or be cheated by the people around that person.”

  “I’m not very young. I’m nineteen. I don’t make stupid decision and I don’t hang around iffy people. My father knew that.”

  I collapsed into the chair. Was this it? I had to sit back and watch the home that has been owned by my mother’s family for six hundred years be sold to strangers. I lifted my head and looked at Ernest. “There must be another way. I can’t let Wotton Hall be sold to strangers. I promised my mother I would take care of it, that I would never let it go out of our family.”

  He looked at me from under the rims of his glasses for a moment, a strange glint in his eyes.

  “There is a way, isn’t there?” I pounced.

  Yes, there is, but you won’t like it.”

  “What is it?”

  He shifted in his chair and coughed discreetly. “Well, did you notice how you and your sister only hold forty-nine percent of the shares of your father’s company?”

  I shook my head. I had heard nothing once I knew Wotton Hall wouldn’t be inherited by either my sister or me. “No, but carry on.”

  “That is because Zachary Black owns the other fifty one percent.”

  Into the fog of my rage and despair came the image of Zachary Black, a man who I didn’t know what to make of. He looked like a male model and had a devilish twinkle in his eyes, but from what I’d heard from my father one shouldn’t be fooled by his exterior. He was a very dangerous predator in the business of asset stripping. His job was to identify businesses that appeared vulnerable and make an aggressive takeover bid on it. “Since when?” I whispered.

  “He bought the shares from your father about two years ago.”

  I shook my head to clear it. How strange? Why would my father sell the controlling interest of the company he had worked at all his to a man he considered a very dangerous predator? “Is the business in trouble?”

  “Oh no. The business is fine. It’s never been in better shape. Selling the controlling interest to Mr. Black was the best thing that you father did. The reason I mentioned him is because there is a clause in the will where if anyone jointly owns more than seventy five percent of shares they can move to stop the sale of the house, grounds and woods. Of course, you and your sister will not have enough on your own, but if you were to marry Mr. Black, you could stop the house being sold until you were old enough to buy it from your inheritance.”

  I stared at him with open-mouthed astonishment. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m afraid I am. That is the only way for you to save Wotton Hall.”

  Preorder the book here:

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  Also by River Laurent

  Cinderella.com

  Taken By The Baller

  Daddy’s Girl

  Dear Neighbor

  The CEO and I

  Kissing Booth

  The Promise

  Dare Me

  Single Dad

  Accidental Rivals

  Too Hot To Handle

  Sweet Revenge

  CherryPopper

  The Magic Cupcake

  Never Catch the Bouquet

  Come Say Hello!

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