My Fake Husband

by Black, Natasha L.

  Two fingers breached my channel, sliding in all the way to the last knuckle, curling, stroking me inside, hitting places that made me clench my inner muscles and say yes about six hundred times. I spread my legs wider, restless and wanting. He rewarded me by pressing his thumb right over my clit, not rubbing but applying subtle, increasing pressure until I felt like he was pushing an insanity button on my body. My legs were kicking out while he pumped long fingers inside of me, twisting them and pressing and then releasing my clit in a slow rhythm that built up in speed and pressure until I screamed, coming so hard that my contracting inner muscles pushed his fingers out, and I was crying his name. He looked at me, grinning. I pressed my fingertips to his lips and he sucked my fingers, his velvet tongue caressing them until I felt a flutter of pleasure in the aftermath of my orgasm. The guy was good. So fucking good.

  I sprawled out on the bed, undone, my limbs loose and relaxed. He smiled a little smugly.

  Then he scooted up behind me and pulled me back against his chest, cuddling me close. I felt him wrapped around me, so warm and safe, that I let my eyes drift shut. If it hadn’t been for the long, hard cock prodding against my butt I would have drifted off to sleep. Instead I laughed.

  “I wore you out too much,” he said ruefully.

  “Not that much,” I said slyly.

  I rolled over to face him. He reached out and looped my leg over his hip. He pulled me flush against him, my oversensitive nipples brushing his hard, muscled chest. I tipped my face up and he kissed me deeply, giving me slow open-mouthed kisses until I felt molten and undone. I unzipped his jeans, felt his cock, big and hot in my hand. One hand in the small of my back, he tilted me closer, so our bodies aligned. I could feel the head of his cock hot and slick against my sex. I worked back and forth over his length. Rubbing my slippery folds over his hard rod, teasing him and myself equally. It wasn’t easy for him to let me take the lead, but his eyes said he was hypnotized by the rock of my hips, the wetness that awaited him. I wrapped a hand around his cock, shocked by how thick he was. I shoved his jeans down and let him kick them away. His skin was hot and velvety smooth, so soft, and I wanted all of it for myself.

  Damon dragged me against him, his rigid length sliding against my folds as he aligned my body with his. He held me hard, pressing me down onto his pelvic bone and rocking. My eyes flew open wide and my mouth gaped. That pressure, relentless and tucked close, inescapably against my clit, was the sharpest, truest pleasure I had ever felt. I met his eyes, and he leaned his forehead to mine, “Trust me,” he said, and gripped my hips, rocking me up and down, keeping my throbbing clit in constant contact with the ridge that made jolts of icy champagne bubbles explode in my chest and shook me with a devastating orgasm, so fast, so fierce. I squealed with bright ecstasy, sounding like I was excited to find exactly what I wanted under the Christmas tree. He laughed.

  “God, you’re beautiful when you come.”

  He lowered us gently on to the soft mattress and covered me with his big, hard body. The big shaft between my thighs was twitching and jerking with anticipation. He took one of my legs and hooked it around him. In one slow glide, he impaled me with his cock, stretching me and going in so deep it seemed I could feel him in my throat as I bucked, spreading my legs to make room for him, taking all of him in that heavy, relentless slide punctuated with a thrust as he drove home, and I took him all the way to the hilt.

  “All. Mine,” he said, his teeth gritted. He drew out and thrust back in, pumping and with every pounding thrust into my body he ground out the words, “All. Mine.”

  His length was so hard and unforgiving, the girth almost more than I could stand. I arched and trembled, gripped his biceps and tipped my chin up. He dipped his head, sucked my neck as he thrust into my body that was so stretched, so tight. The lewd, wet sound of him pumping into me made me moan with pleasure. I was thrashing and saying his name, my nipples rubbing his chest as he moved rhythmically inside me. With one hand he reached down and scissored my clit between his fingers. “Yes, oh, Damon! Damon!” I cried as I tightened and pulsed around him wildly.

  His thrusts grew frantic, less controlled, fast and hard until I felt his arms tense in my grip and he seemed to rear off the bed like some great beast and charge into me with a sound like a roar. I felt the liquid rush of his pulsing climax within me. With a shudder, he collapsed, tried to roll off of me as he did, but I grabbed his back and held him fast to my chest, relishing the weight of him, the sweat filming his hot skin as he gathered me against him, breathing hard.

  “My God,” he said, rolling onto his back and taking me with him. I nestled into his chest, our legs still tangled together. He had both arms wrapped securely around me, and tucked his chin on top of my head. “That was incredible. We were incredible.”

  “Yeah,” I said breathlessly, “I didn’t even know it could be like that, with you looking in my eyes and—” I broke off, feeling that I was embarrassing myself.

  “You’re right. It’s never been like that before for me.”

  After a few moments of catching our breath, I snuggle in close. “I was really scared, Damon. You could’ve been hurt or killed in that fire.”

  “It’s the nature of the job. I knew that when I started training for it. I grew up with my dad doing this, and it’s normal for me. You tell him bye, say a prayer that he comes home safe, and let go of the anxiety. Because you can’t control it, any of it. The fact is, the risks of my job make it pretty hard to find a relationship though.”

  “I can see why. It would be horrible to live like that, in constant fear that your partner wouldn’t come home, that your boyfriend or your husband would walk out the door and that would be the last time, that he’d just die trying to put out a fire, and maybe somebody he saved is walking around living their life and it cost him his own. I can’t imagine trying to survive that, not knowing if you were coming home every time you went to work.”

  I was speaking from the heart, looking up at him, practically begging him to tell me some magic spell that would be a balm for my fear, some reassurance that he’d be fine and come home to me even though that was an impossible guarantee to make. His answer never came. He just broke eye contact and stared up at the ceiling, stroking my hair absently. Damon’s body was still there with me, but his mind was far away. I felt him slip away from me, withdrawing. There was my answer. There was no help for it. If I could even admit how I felt, that I wanted to be with him, it would be a life of uncertainty and fear.

  What I had really wanted was for him to say he’d make it okay. Our life together would be worth the risk. Because we belonged together and he’d never felt this way before, that it was unique and perfect and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to be with me. That was a fantasy. No one said things like that. Just because I’d been worried and he’d been willing didn’t mean that what we had meant anything to him. In fact, it was likely that I was a one-night stand who happened to live in his house with him. He had all that adrenaline to burn off from the near-death rescue he made, and there I was, needy and tearful and eager. I had offered him my body, and he’d been happy to take me up on it. Nevertheless, that was physical. Maybe that’s all it would ever be.

  Restless and a little ashamed, I knew I couldn’t lie there any longer. Not with him staring at the ceiling and trying to pretend I wasn’t even there. There was no afterglow, no closeness to bask in. It was time to let it go. I slipped out of his arms, extricating myself as gracefully as I could. I was freezing cold suddenly, and ready to spool up under my covers, close the door and block him out, block out the knowledge of what we’d done and what a damn mistake it had been. I had wanted to be with him like that, and that desire had consumed me. My fear after seeing him on the news had tipped me over into desperation. It was my own fault. I’d walked right into heartbreak with my eyes wide open. That didn’t make it one bit easier to take though.

  Back in my room, body still throbbing from everything we’d done, a pleasurable ache of sati
sfaction that was bittersweet, I pulled on pajamas and rolled onto my side to get some sleep. I kept thinking about how I’d felt pacing the floor, sick to my stomach and my throat closing up with sheer terror until he walked in the front door and I knew he was okay. I still trembled remembering it. There was no sleep for me, despite how exhausted I was both physically and emotionally. I didn’t know what to do with this, with the feelings I had for Damon, the fact we’d made love and I admitted I couldn’t face a future of fearing for his life every time he went to work. There was nowhere to go except down the road of regret.

  14

  Damon

  One crazy night, that’s what I told myself. That’s all it was. She hadn’t been prepared for how frightened it made her when I risked my life in that fire. Emotions ran high, and I was riding the adrenaline from saving a man’s life and cheating death. Trixie ran into my arms, so relieved and happy to have me home. Nothing could have kept me from having her that night. She had come to me, tear-stained and needing comfort, saying she’d always cared for me and wanted me. I couldn’t resist her under the best of circumstances, and after escaping an inferno with my life I was not at peak willpower. I wanted to celebrate, to slake myself in her sweet body and show her how I longed for her.

  I had imagined it a hundred times or more, the way it would be when I finally held her and touched her and made her mine. The sweet vanilla scent of her hair, the taste of her that intoxicated me. Her skin was like silk but warmer, and her need had been as great as my own. It had been unforgettable. And it had left me wanting more. I wanted her in every room of the house, in every way I could think of. Instead of doing away with my distracting attraction for her, taking her to bed had made it worse. I thought about her constantly and fantasized about every possible way I could get her back in my bed. Or on the couch or bent over the kitchen table. It just kindled more hunger in me, and that was frustrating. Because there was no answering longing in her face, no unquenchable desire in her manner. She acted like I didn’t exist, or if I did exist, I was someone she treated politely, distantly as a stranger.

  The distance itself infuriated me. My hands itched to touch her, to stroke and caress. Every time I so much as passed her in the kitchen I wanted to put my tongue in her mouth, slide my hand up her shirt, initiate another cataclysmic round of bed-rattling sex. I wanted to reclaim what was mine. With my mouth and hands and cock. I hardened and throbbed for her, woke up with my hand around my dick, stroking, an agony of need and yearning for her, my own familiar fist a poor stand-in for her tight, sweet body. She said she’d dreamed about me taking her for a ride in my truck, taking her parking out by the falls. I thought about that night and day, and I felt obsessed by the idea, by the fact that I hadn’t gotten to do so many things with her yet. And she was pulling away from me, not letting me in her life, in her thoughts, in her bed.

  It was worse than if I had never had a taste of her at all. I was shaky like an addict who couldn’t get a fix. The sheer force of our attraction, the chemistry that snapped between us with the extreme pleasure that lashed through me when I came inside her sweet, hot passage was one of a kind. I needed to make her see that. But I couldn’t pressure her. It was bad enough that I’d taken advantage of her worry for me after the fire. It was worse that I wasn’t ashamed. I wanted Trixie Owens, no, Trixie Vance, back in my bed and I’d do whatever I had to. If it meant seducing her, taking her out to the Rockford Falls for a picnic like a date or making out in the back of the theater in Overton or going someplace fancy for snails and champagne, I didn’t care. My obsession with her went beyond the physical, although that need was painful. I wanted her back, on my couch, in my arms, laughing at the dinner table. All of it. If I’d lost her over going to bed together, maybe I could get her back the same way. By making her want me, without the threat of danger, just me.

  I made her French toast. I folded laundry that I usually forgot. I left a note on the mirror that I’d missed her. I texted her that she was beautiful, that I was thinking of her. Nothing worked. Nothing except my continuing inability to focus on anything other than how good we had been together.

  The way we’d come together, combustible, a force of nature. A galaxy exploding, she had said. It had felt that way, catastrophic, life-altering. Then she slipped away from me. A week went by, and I’d taken myself in hand every night alone in the shower, because my body couldn’t forget the way her touch had felt and wanted more. She was in my dreams, smiling slyly over her shoulder, just ahead of me, just out of my reach, confounding and seductive.

  In my non-dreaming life, she spent most of her time working on the shop as repairs were done and major cleanup handled. When I repeated my offer to help her put in the flooring she’d gotten at a discount, she texted back that she had it covered. I took that to mean she’d watched a YouTube video and planned to do it alone or with Nicole and Michelle. I didn’t want to think some other guy was lending her a hand. Some guy from the home supply store that offered to come in after work and help her out, maybe take her out for a drink. She’d promised me she wouldn’t date anyone, and I knew she was loyal and far from foolish enough to accept a stranger’s help like there were no strings attached. But I still worried. It ate away at me.

  She was gone all the time, often leaving before me in the morning, getting home late, showering and going to bed. Hardly saying a word to me. She didn’t act angry. She just avoided me like I was a rabid raccoon that had infested her house and maybe she was too polite to shoot me. There was something about that silly analogy I wanted to share with her, but I was afraid she wouldn’t laugh. I was afraid we’d lost that connection, the easy rapport, the joking around.

  I had read too much into our night together probably. I had thought she might be starting to feel the same thing for me that I felt for her. I wanted to stay with her. I never wanted her to move out, just wanted her to move into my bedroom and never leave. I wanted our marriage to be real and lasting. I wanted to tell her that talking over supper together and those incredibly stupid TikToks she sent me during the day were the best parts of my life. That kissing her had felt like coming home. That I bought that ring for her because I was more serious than I had wanted to admit, even in the beginning. When I thought this was a crazy chance to take, a backward way to get the girl I had wanted for a long time.

  I was pretty miserable. Then she texted to say she couldn’t make it to dinner at my parents’ on Thursday because she needed to finish the anti-mildew primer at the shop. So I attended the dinner, made her excuses and ate a ton of my mom’s meatloaf. I tried to avoid their questions and suggestions, but they were pretty relentless.

  “Make her Mom’s sweet potato pie recipe. It’s fabulous,” Laura said.

  “You think everything tastes fabulous,” Brody teased. “This baby is like a tapeworm, makes her mama eat constantly.”

  “Do you know if it’s a girl?” I asked. “I wouldn’t mind having a cute little niece to spoil.”

  “You’ll spoil it no matter what it is, who are you kidding?” my mom said.

  “It’s way too early in the pregnancy to tell,” Laura said, “we have a gender scan in six weeks. The only way to know this soon is an amnio, and thank goodness we don’t need one of those because they usually do them if there are problems.”

  “Well, then we can wait,” I said. “What names are you thinking?”

  “I dunno—Trixie after my favorite sister-in-law?” Laura teased. “Please tell me you’re boning her by this time. It’s been weeks.”

  “Don’t say boning at the dinner table, Laura,” our mother admonished.

  “I am not boning her,” I said, my jaw set. Brody snorted.

  “I never knew you not to kiss and tell,” he said.

  “Stop it,” I warned. “Talk about your kid or being a cop or something.”

  “Get her roses. It always worked with your mother. That’s how we got Laura. I pissed your mom off good, stayed out all night with the guys, then got caught lying that I ha
d to go on call at the station, and I was there all along. She knew I was full of shit. I got her some nice wine, some flowers. One thing led to another, and the next thing you know, we have another kid,” my father said.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Laura said, rolling her eyes. “So romantic. You screwed up, bought some flowers and got Mom drunk. Beautiful conception story.”

  “What? Like you planned that one you’re carrying now?” our dad said.

  “Too soon,” Mom said, clearing her throat. “Don’t upset my pregnant daughter or I might just mix up your pills one of these days, you old fart.”

  I hooted with laughter, and Laura joined in. Brody pushed back from the table. “I am staying out of this one. Laura, are you full? Do you need a sheet cake and a gallon of ice cream to settle your stomach?”

  “Shut up, it’s your giant baby that’s hungry all the time,” she giggled.

  My lifelong best friend leaned in and kissed my little sister’s forehead. She cuddled into the circle of his arm. It had taken some getting used to, seeing them together as a couple. But it made me happier every time I saw them together now. The way he took care of her, and she leaned into him, they just seemed like the right fit. It also made me ache a little, because I was seeing them through the lens of Trixie and me, of having been on the inside of a marriage that felt right no matter how it looked to anyone else.