ARRANGED

by R. K. Lilley

  She was wearing gym clothes, if you could even call them clothes. A white sports bra and teeny tiny shorts. I tore my gaze determinedly away from her body.

  She opened her mouth, to turn down food, I was sure, but I stopped that in its tracks. “You’re eating. I know that you drank more than you’re accustomed to last night, and you need food. I don’t want to hear a word of protest.”

  She met my eyes squarely. “Thank you,” she said simply.

  She took the food to her large, round dining table.

  Damn, she was hard to read.

  I made two more omelets. One for Jovie and one for myself. Right before I took my plate to the table, Chester and Vincent returned to the apartment and made themselves right at home.

  I felt a tick start up in my temple as I watched Chester casually take the seat next to my wife.

  The only empty seat left next to her, as Jovie had her other side.

  The bastard had some nerve.

  He seemed to notice me for the first time. He grinned. He leaned back, kicking the chair opposite him out from underneath the table. “Here ya go, boss.”

  The tick intensified. I tried my best not to react. I calmly sat and started eating.

  “What are our plans for today, Duchess?” Chester asked my wife. He was smiling fondly at her, looking directly into her eyes.

  And her. She was smiling back at him with unabashed warmth! Vaguely I heard my fork clatter onto my plate. I glanced down. My hands were both in fists.

  I looked around the table. Chester and Vincent were looking at her with unmistakable affection.

  Like they were one big happy family.

  What the hell was happening here? These men were paid to guard and drive my money hungry wife. Yet here they were acting like she was a Disney fucking princess and they were a couple of mice about to burst into song.

  My wife was speaking, answering his question, but I couldn’t hear her over the roaring in my ears. Chester said something and she laughed. It was a real laugh, beautiful and genuine, and I hated that she was laughing like that for him.

  Eventually I got the word out that had lodged itself in my throat. It came out in a loud growl that burst through the room and interrupted the happy little fucking exchange. “Duchess?” I asked.

  Her face froze. Her smile fell. She flushed. “It’s a nickname,” she explained. “I’m not even sure how it started. Chester’s just always called me that.”

  I looked at him. He met my eyes, not backing down whatsoever. “Doesn’t it suit her?” he asked casually. Insolently. “She always struck me as a proper lady.”

  “It’s perfect,” Jovie piped in. My gaze swung to her. She was smiling with some sort of keyed up, wicked glee. “She’s a total, extra as fuck Duchess. You nailed it, Chester.”

  Abruptly I stood. “I’m late for a meeting,” I said. A cursory excuse, though it might have been true. I couldn’t remember any of my plans. It had been a strange, completely out of my control morning. I took that control back by leaving without another word.

  “Have a great day, Banks!” Jovie shouted cheerfully at my swiftly retreating back.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  NOURA

  After my husband left like my apartment had caught fire, I didn’t expect to hear from him again anytime soon.

  I tried not to think of him again that day, but when I did my lips and fingers trembled. If I didn’t turn my mind in another direction, the shaking moved to my hands, my arms, my shoulders. Usually I had enough self-control to stop it there, but in weak moments, when I let my mind stick on messy thoughts of him, it kept going, that trembling. It throbbed through me, always unpleasant at first, but if I let it keep going, let it move to my chest, the tips of my breasts, to my churning stomach, my aching loins, that’s when it became truly disturbing and not so very unpleasant at all.

  And worse, my mind kept going back to the way he’d stood up for me with Asha. Why had he done that?

  And why did it weaken me so? It didn’t change anything. One kind act didn’t change the hard facts: My husband held my whole life in his careless hands, and he did not feel one soft thing toward me.

  Luckily I had a busy day. I didn’t have two spare seconds to rub together. It helped.

  I was one of the lucky models selected for the VS fashion show. It was the runway event of the year. The most televised, viewed, obsessed over walk in the world. And, thanks to my fake marriage and newfound fame, I’d been selected to model two looks.

  The show was coming up in mere days, and prep was well underway. The fittings lasted more than ten hours, and I was utterly exhausted by the end.

  Presumable, it may have been a shorter day if not for a drawn out argument between the VS people and mine. I heard (indirectly—through Asha, of course) that my husband (or my handlers, it was never clear which) wanted me to only model all white/cream looks that covered X amount of my skin, and they were insisting on full approval rights.

  The VS designers wanted me in one black, one white outfit, and they weren’t backing down on how much of my skin they wanted to show.

  Eventually, late into the afternoon, Asha finally took a bathroom break.

  “Just agree to what they’re saying and then put me in whatever you want,” I said quietly to Marian, the designer.

  There were three other women in the room with me—Marian, who was working furiously on modifications on her laptop, a tailor fitting giant white feathered wings to my back, and another down at my feet measuring my legs for the thirtieth time.

  They all froze.

  “You’re okay with that?” Marian asked tentatively.

  I rolled my eyes, shrugged and smiled. “My husband is being unreasonable, newlywed stuff I’m sure, but he’ll get over it, I promise. Just do what you planned, and whenever Asha makes some ridiculous request, act like you’re going along, and continue exactly as you please. It’s what I do.”

  “You’re an absolute doll,” she told me with a conspiratorial grin.

  After that, we were done within half an hour. I only wished I’d thought of it sooner.

  I got home at eight p.m. I’d skipped lunch and dinner. Being measured in your underwear for ten hours was an unbelievably effective appetite suppressant. I was starving by then, but I was planning to ignore my hunger in favor of a good night’s sleep. It was the perfect day for it. More often than not, Jovie talked me into staying up late to watch something with her, but she had a shoot across town that she’d texted me was going to run late into the night. I was planning to responsibly take advantage of her absence and make an early night of it.

  I forgot all those plans the second I walked in the door. My apartment wasn’t empty.

  My husband was back. He was standing about ten feet from the front door.

  I was wearing sweat pants, a hoodie, and a ball cap. He was wearing black jeans and a distressed charcoal gray pullover that hugged his shoulders and skimmed his collarbone. His wavy black hair was pushed carelessly back from his face. There was extra scruff on his jaw.

  He was fallen angel beautiful. I wanted to lick him, head to toe.

  His hands were in his pockets, eyes predatory. It seemed the feeling was mutual.

  “Hello, Calder,” I said. I wanted to pat myself on the back for how steady the words came out. Nothing else about me felt steady. My pulse was rioting loud enough to fill the room.

  “Call me Banks,” he corrected.

  My brows rose. I knew why he’d ordered me to call him Calder at our wedding. I even agreed with it. His friends and family called him Banks and as far as he was concerned I was neither of those things.

  What I didn’t understand was why he was changing it now. It seemed like a trap. I wasn’t falling for it.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but his eyes had moved past me. “Leave us. She won’t need you again tonight,” he said curtly.

  I didn’t need to turn to see it; I felt Chester’s reluctance as he left. Everyone else had alr
eady retired for the evening.

  We were alone.

  “Have you eaten dinner?” Calder asked me after the door shut behind me with a decisive click.

  I almost lied. I tried to, but I was too hungry and intrigued not to see where this was going. “No.”

  He smiled at me. Why was he doing that? It was only us in the room. “I brought takeout from Omar’s.”

  My stomach rumbled. “Omar’s?”

  “Have you tried it?”

  I nodded. I had. Their chicken shawarma, falafel, and hummus were to die for. I loved their food, but could rarely afford the calorie hit.

  “I got a little bit of everything. Care to join me?”

  What could I do? I agreed to share an intimate, at home dinner with my husband.

  He plated my food and served me, just as he’d done for breakfast.

  We ate together. He sat so close our knees touched throughout the meal. Every so often his hand would rest familiarly on my thigh. Every so often he fed me a bite from his own plate.

  It was delicious and dangerous.

  Every time he showed even an ounce of humanity, I wanted to fall onto my back and open my legs.

  And worse, I felt myself soften toward him a little.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  By the time I was done, I’d eaten too much and I was squirming in my seat. Every time his hand returned to my thigh it moved a little higher. Was he teasing me or testing me?

  I experimented by placing my own hand on his thigh.

  “Don’t touch me,” he said softly. “I can’t last a second with your hands on me.”

  I leaned toward him, tilting my face up to him.

  He stared hard at my lips, but he didn’t kiss me.

  I’d almost forgotten. He never kissed me on the lips unless we had an audience. It was always for show. In private, he pointedly avoided it.

  I was glad I’d thought of it. It made my soft heart harden a little. Enough to keep me sane. Enough to ground me back into reality.

  “So I hear the VS people were giving you a hard time about my conditions,” he stated blandly.

  So they were his conditions. “Not me,” I responded. “But they certainly got into it with Asha.”

  “I understand that they agreed to everything I requested. You’ll be adequately covered for the show?”

  I kept my expression perfectly blank. “It seems so. Asha was happy.”

  “Good,” he nodded. “Good. You show enough skin as it is. The world does not need to see you in lingerie.”

  It was literally a lingerie show. What the hell else did he think I’d be wearing? But I didn’t say any of that aloud. I wanted the job and the exposure that went with it. I’d deal with his reaction after the fact. If and when it came.

  “I was surprised to find you here,” I admitted to him. A change of subject wasn’t a bad idea at all.

  His mouth curved into something between a smile and a frown. Whatever it was, it wasn’t happy. “You make me feel deprived. Do you know that?”

  I felt a minor quake move through me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked carefully.

  He touched my trembling lips, rubbed them softly with the tips of his fingers.

  A major quake now.

  “You’re mine,” he whispered.

  A sharp liquid throb started up in my loins.

  “Legally and literally. I’m with you right now, but I feel like I’m doing without. I have you, but it feels like you’re eluding me. How do you do that?”

  Of course I didn’t answer him. I didn’t have an answer. But it was a fact that I felt it too. Exactly as he was describing it.

  He didn’t seem to need an answer. Abruptly he pushed his chair back from the table. In one impressive motion he grabbed me by the hips and perched me on the heavy table in front of him. I didn’t have to ask what he intended when he started tugging my sweat pants and panties off, slowly peeling them off my hips and inching them down my legs. They were loose and soft, so it was an easy job. When he had my bottom half bare, he pushed my legs wide apart with his hands and just stared at me for a time.

  He shoved his chair closer until he was settled comfortably between my legs. I could feel his breath against my sex as he looked up at me through his lashes. It was an intoxicating thing to behold.

  His mouth twisted up into some self-deprecating version of a smile. “I didn’t come here for dinner, Noura,” his voice rumbled deeply from his chest into my core. “I came for dessert.”

  His words barely registered as sound. But they were felt. Oh. God. Were they felt.

  “Open your shirt,” he ordered, nuzzling into me.

  With trembling hands I unzipped my hoodie. All I wore beneath it was a bra.

  “Take your breasts out,” he told me.

  I obeyed.

  “Cup them,” he rasped into my skin. “Pinch your nipples. Rub them. I want you to fondle yourself while I,” he licked, “tend to you. Got it?”

  I rubbed my aching, sensitive breasts, rolling my nipples against my palms.

  His eyes followed the movements for a long beat, two, three. He looked enraptured. It was very much mutual.

  “Good,” he murmured and started to feast.

  He ate me out like he was indeed deprived. I responded likewise.

  He got me off like it was his job instead of vice versa.

  Afterward he rose, setting me on my feet directly in front of him.

  I had to hold onto the back of his neck to keep from falling down. Or lying down.

  He tilted my face up to him with a light touch. The barely there contact somehow sent a shockwave of awareness through me. “Look at me, Noura.”

  The sound of my name on his lips made my knees try to go full liquid.

  I looked at him.

  “Undress and wait for me in our bed,” he ordered brusquely. “Don’t touch yourself.”

  I couldn’t even hide the shiver that visibly moved my body at those words.

  I obeyed.

  I’d forgotten I was bare from the hips down until I started to undress. I forgot everything when he put his hands on me. His mouth. Oh God, that mouth.

  I lay naked on the bed, pulling the sheet up to my chin. I was shivering, head to toe, but not from cold.

  He made me wait a solid half hour before he joined me, a bourbon in hand. He set it on the nightstand.

  He pulled the covers to my ribs, smoothing it flat along my skin.

  His eyes were dispassionate on his hands as he played with my breasts. He was arousing me like it was his weapon.

  It was like a different man had entered from the one I’d just shared dinner with. And dessert.

  Abruptly he rose, shrugging impatiently out of his pullover and the shirt underneath. He dragged his jeans and boxers briefs off like they’d personally offended him.

  He was fully aroused, his hard dick bobbing with his every move as he dragged my sheet off.

  “Get up,” he said, the words cutting out of him angrily.

  I stood.

  He sprawled out on my bed, his back propped up against the headboard. He grabbed his drink, took a long swig, and set it back down.

  He patted his lap, his eyes insolent. “Hop in the saddle, wife. Tonight’s the night you learn how to ride a cock.”

  I hesitated, both at his nasty mood shift and his order. I wasn’t sure how to go about it.

  He stroked his cock, and in spite of myself I moved closer to watch. Close enough that I was almost touching him. Watching him touch himself got to me. A hot, drenching rush of sensation clamped down on my loins. Even when he was a bastard, I wanted him.

  He lost his patience. He grabbed my hips and swung me over to straddle him.

  I arched my hips, notching his blunt, thick tip against my cleft. I rubbed on him, coating him in my arousal.

  He only watched through heavy-lidded eyes, his hands lightly gripping my hips. Resentment and detachment warred for his expression.

&n
bsp; I took him in with a long, smooth glide. Smooth but not easy. He stretched me even more in this position. I felt impaled.

  He was virtually silent. All that came out of him was a capital H, an aspiration. I rode him in a slow dance, with full, big movements, dragging him out to the tip before seating myself again. Again. Again. Again. My brain went fuzzy with the mind-bending pleasure of it.

  I wanted to go faster, needed it, but it just felt too good to tease him.

  He brought his hands to my aching breasts, palming them roughly. I gripped his wrists, fingertips rubbing against his racing pulse.

  I rocked my hips, undulating. A timeless rhythm overtook me. There was no reason I should have picked it up so quickly except that it was dance that was as natural as breathing and as old as sin.

  His fingers were on my nipples, plucking and tugging at them gently, then harder, rougher.

  My hips jerked faster, breaking the rhythm to seat myself on him harder, deeper.

  His teeth were grinding together.

  I saw how much he liked that and I paused before each lush downswing. Just to rile him.

  Finally, at last, he snapped.

  He clutched my hips above him and pumped upward into me, jacking in and out just how we both needed. I was on top, but he was setting the pace now. It. Was. Just. Right.

  I didn’t know I was going to come until I felt the first tremors of him go off inside me. Actually I wasn’t sure who started first. It was a neat trick. He blew right as my cunt started sucking at him. I couldn’t honestly say which one set the other off.

  I was just moving down, seating myself deep on him, watching his face as his body started to erupt and mine started lapping it up, that first powerful instant of climax, when his eyes snapped open and caught mine.

  His jaw clenched. His teeth gritted.

  In a flash he had me on my stomach, his chest covering my back, his weight subduing me, his twitching cock digging into the flesh of my inner thigh. He was making a hell of a mess. All for the sake of not having to look me in the eye for another unguarded moment.

  I understood, but it stung all the same.

  “Look what you’ve done to my sheets,” I remarked. It was said lightly. With breathless nonchalance. A defense mechanism.