My Fake Husband

by Black, Natasha L.

  “Deal.”

  Then he kissed my chin and my bottom lip and the corner of my mouth, making me gasp and respond, as if he held all my reactions in the palm of his hand. Like he only needed to choose the touch that would make me gasp or moan or say his name. He made it seem so easy, so natural. When it was anything but simple, not when any other man I’d ever been with had felt like an alien, someone that could never understand me.

  “It’s been you my whole life, Damon,” I said.

  “It’s been you too, Trix. I just need you to say yes.”

  “Yes to what?” I said with a nervous giggle. “I already married you and I’m pregnant with your baby. What other kind of validation do you want?”

  “To know that you’re here because you want to be. Not because you needed me for a loan or because I’m helping you and you feel an obligation to me. Because you want to be with me.”

  “How could you ever think I don’t? I’ve been tearing myself up because I thought I failed you, that you’d hate me.”

  Damon took my face in his hands, his aqua blue eyes intense and bright, “Never. Never think that. I would do anything to keep you. I love you. I couldn’t hate you. I will never leave you. I will always be here for you and our baby. You are everything I want, everything I will ever want.”

  He fell to kissing me, as if he could not convince me any other way. My body responded to his, as if his lips turned a switch that lit me on fire. I wanted his hands on me, wanted all of him.

  “I thought it had to be the night I was out with the girls and came home and you were in a towel. But it seems like it was—the first time we were together that I got pregnant. When you were in the fire. When you took me up against the door, and then again in your bed. That was the night we made our baby, Damon.”

  He kissed my neck, just below my ear, and slid his hands over my hips, “I should’ve known as soon as I touched you that something magical was happening. The way it felt to be inside you, how right it was. It doesn’t surprise me at all that we made a baby that night. Not when I needed you so much, when you needed me. That just means this was meant to be even more than I thought it was.”

  “Do you really think that?” I said.

  “Quit worrying. Let me make love to you, Trix. My wife. My woman. Until the day I die, I swear it.”

  The kiss he gave me then made me shudder and curled my toes. It was poignant and sharp and fiery. I was panting by the time he let me catch my breath so he could work over my nipples, making them stand sharp and taut for his lips and tongue. When he stroked my stomach, I writhed, begged for more. He was in no hurry. Damon just took his sweet time, kissing and caressing every part of me, the backs of his fingers infuriatingly gentle on the side of my breast, on my thigh. Where I wanted him to grip and grab and thrust, he stroked and teased instead. Thirsty for him, I caught his mouth with mine and sucked his tongue, getting a very satisfying moan out of him.

  I reached for his hips and ran my hands over his ass appreciatively. “I want you inside me, Damon. I’ve missed you so much,” I breathed against his lips. He kissed me again, then he cupped my sex, pierced me with a long finger, then another, groaning when he felt how slippery I was.

  “You’re ready for me,” he said, sucking my neck, hitching my thigh up and wrapping my leg over him.

  Damon rocked into me, spearing me with his cock, making me twist and writhe under him. He worked in and out, really going in deep and then inching out so slowly, lush and hot.

  “God, you feel amazing.” Then he made a strangled noise when I gripped him, clenched around him like a fist. I worked my hips down over him, pushed against him. He tunneled into me, my body stretching, rearranging to accommodate his size, his powerful thrusts. Every time he buried himself in me, he gave a little twist, a nudge against my clit that sent sparks through me, a jolt of pressure and icy bliss that scalded me. Finally he just penetrated me fully, rubbed against me, rocking, his big, heavy muscled body pressing me into the mattress as he licked my lower lip and sucked it, grunting as he rocked forward and ground against my throbbing clit. I bore down on him, screaming, my nails digging into his shoulders, the heavy slab of his back unyielding under my hands. I came with a great clench and my limbs jerked, my head thrashing on the pillow and animal noises spilling from me as he kept going and going, dragging it out of me when I didn’t think I could take anymore. When I babbled and begged him to stop, he licked my earlobe and whispered, “Take it,” and I felt my body seize up and shake with a piercing thrill that made my legs cramp up with the force of it.

  I gripped his hair in my hands and kissed him, a kiss of tongues and teeth clashing, of him lifting me with one arm into his lap and pumping me up and down on his cock, lifting me and shoving me back down his length. I jerked my hips forward, arched my back so my breasts were practically in his face. He captured a nipple and sucked it, laved it with his tongue, scraped it lightly with his teeth until I was keening, demanding that he come, that he give me every drop he had.

  “I want it, all of it, you’re mine,” I gasped, bouncing in his lap, riding him, his arms around me, dragging me up the thick erection and then thrusting it back into me. “More,” I said, “don’t hold back. Don’t stop, please.” I was half out of my mind on orgasms and all I could think was how much I wanted to feel him empty inside me, how the hot liquid gush of him inside me, coating my thighs would be the one thing to relieve all this sweaty tension between us. I felt the first heavy lashings of his climax shoot into me with a force that bowed me back. I arched, leaning back on my hands to watch where we joined.

  “Oh God, look at you, look at taking all of me in,” he groaned, and his head went back, his thrusts going wild and a spill of thick cum pouring into me. I made a carnal sound, my hand shooting out to grab his back and press him closer. I rocked against him after he was done, milking the last drops from him. He kissed my cheek.

  “All of me, always,” he said raggedly. “I want to give you everything. You’re mine.”

  “That’s primitive,” I said, trying for lightness.

  “Very. You’re my woman,” he said with a mischievous grin and pulled me down into his arms with a laugh. “I’m like a caveman now. My woman. My child. Mine.”

  His voice and face were serious, and I nestled into his broad chest, feeling completely whole and safe and loved.

  “I never imagined life could be like this. It feels too perfect,” I said. “I was lucky to have a house and my shop, bad plumbing and all. Some people don’t get even that much.”

  “I know. But now I have you. And baby makes three. Just think, in a few years, I’ll be coaching our little nugget on Little League right alongside Laura and Brody’s kid. They’ll be cousins, and they can grow up together, so close in age. That’s just another layer of how lucky we are.”

  “We really are. It’s crazy.”

  “Not crazy, Trix. It’s perfect. There’s nothing crazy about that.”

  I loved writing that check. The one that paid off my loan. I had sold my house to a couple who fell in love with it and paid way more than I would’ve asked for it. It reminded her of the house she grew up in, and it was a sentimental thing I guess. Then I sold the extra lot attached to the house separately to a guy who wanted to build a duplex there. I leased the apartment over the shop to someone who didn’t forget and leave stuff on all the time.

  I had a husband who placed a standing order for red roses every Thursday afternoon, because he said roses were for lovers. I told him that once, right before I babbled about funerals and crap because I was nervous and had a huge crush on him. Now we were looking at cribs from IKEA and turning that spare bedroom into a nursery for our baby. So far, he’d painted the walls a soft baby blue—he bought the paint the week we found out we were having a boy. I wanted to do a Mickey Mouse room, but he was pushing for a Ghostbusters theme. I think I’ll win this one.

  He came home last week with a red race car. The kind big enough for a toddler to ride in. When I ex
plained patiently that he was going to be too little for that for a long time, he just grinned.

  “It’ll be Fast and Furious time before you know it, and our kid isn’t gonna be a passenger, that’s for sure. He’ll be the kind to drive the getaway car.”

  I had smiled in spite of myself and then made him swear not to show him those movies until he was at least twelve.

  “What if he’s a fairy tale kid? Knights and dragons and castles. He’ll grow up hearing about how I loved you all my life, and how you turned out to be the prince who rescued me.”

  “Nobody rescued you, baby. You and that little boy saved me, if anybody got rescued here,” he said, his hand curving protectively over my round belly. “I would’ve been nothing but a lonely workaholic with a string of forgettable flings.”

  “When we tell our kids that bedtime story, leave out the flings part,” I said.

  “Fine, we’ll keep it G-rated.”

  “Is that the doorbell?”

  “Let me get it. It’s Chinese food.”

  “You got me Chinese?” I squealed.

  “The baby needs eggrolls, I’ve been told.”

  “He really does. I’ve been craving them so bad!”

  “And I got cherry popsicles. They’re in the freezer.”

  “You are the best!” I said.

  “Don’t you forget it,” he said, bringing in the bags of Chinese food and spreading a blanket on the floor. “I thought we’d have a picnic in the nursery.”

  “That’s perfect. I’ll go get—”

  “You sit down. I’ll go get everything we need.”

  He came back with two glasses of sparkling cider, “A toast to my bride,” he said. “You accepted help from me and gave me a purpose and a life and family I always dreamed of. I can never thank you enough. All I can do is love you forever.”

  He kissed me softly and clinked our glasses together. His arm slid around my shoulders and I leaned into him, just soaking in this perfect feeling of belonging and the promise of the future with him; the future I’d always wanted.

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  Sometimes things turn out even better than you could have imagined. When the plumbing busted in my shop a little over a year ago, all I hoped for was a set of pipes that didn’t leak. Now I had everything and then some. My shop was doing great, turning a tidy profit, and I had two full-time workers plus a part-timer and a delivery driver.

  I had Damon, our home and our son. They meant everything to me.

  There was a pack and play in my office so Ashton could nap when we’re not spoiling him while I’m at work. Our perfect baby boy with his daddy’s aquamarine eyes and a little fluff of downy curls coming in, with just a hint of ginger to them.

  He was the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen, all plump cheeks and dimpled hands and cute ticklish belly. He wasn’t sitting up yet, and we joked that he’d never learn to walk because we didn’t want to put him down long enough for him to learn. It’s not just me. He had Damon wrapped around his little finger. My mom came into the shop most days and played with Ashton, begging to take him to grandma’s house. But I just can’t let my baby out of my sight yet. I’d miss him too much. If I couldn’t stop and snuggle him, tickle him in the spot that makes him chuckle and be the one to feed him that baby cereal with the apples that he loves, I don’t think I’d know what to do with myself. He filled up a part of my heart I hadn’t even known was there before he was born.

  The barbecue at the Vance’s was really just an excuse to get both grandbabies together so all the grandparents could spoil and snuggle them. My mom took off with Ashton, bouncing him on her hip, to go see Brenna, Brody and Laura’s little girl. She’s a spitfire like her mother, tall and noisy already. My in-laws came out in the backyard with a big blowup ball pit for the kids to play in. Before I could protest that Ashton was too little to even sit up, my mom climbed in the ball pit and held him in her lap while he chewed on a red plastic ball and Brenna squealed at him and threw balls in the air. I laughed and turned to Damon.

  “How is any of this possible?”

  “I was in the right place at the right time that night in the bar when you were upset about the shop. I had a way to fix your problem, and a hunch that maybe you’d fix my whole life. That I could get the girl in the craziest way possible. And like most of my off-the-wall plans, it worked out.”

  “I’m glad it did,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day out, and everything is so perfect it almost hurts.”

  “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and just go check on him and watch him sleep because I can’t believe it. Or I lay there and look at you in the moonlight and think there must’ve been something good I did to earn this, and I just can’t remember what it was.”

  “Maybe when you saved my business?”

  “No, I would’ve had to save an entire village of orphans or something to get a life this good. There’s just no way to explain it. How we got this damn lucky. But I won’t take it for granted, I can tell you that. I remember coming home to an empty house and reading my library books for company. I remember looking at you on the Fourth of July and thinking that I didn’t like your boyfriend.”

  “I didn’t have one.”

  “I thought you did, and I didn’t like him,” he said, and I laughed. “Cause he wasn’t me. So I found an excuse to talk to you, to get flowers for Laura. Just to see you, get you to talk to me.”

  “I bet you were sorry. I was such a mess that day!” I laughed. “I can’t believe you didn’t just run screaming out of the shop.”

  “I’m tougher than that. Any guy who can’t take a little awkwardness doesn’t deserve a woman like you anyway. Don’t forget, it seemed like everybody in town was mad at me for acting like an ass to Brody and my sister right around that time. I was just glad anybody was talking to me,” he said.

  “I wish I’d answered your call when I was in Savannah. I wish I’d trusted you more. I’m never going to stop being sorry for that.”

  “You have to. Because you have nothing to be sorry for at all. We both made mistakes, and we managed to fix things in time. Before I lost you for good. I kept imagining that I’d have to shake hands with the guy you married, that you’d invite me to your wedding and if I didn’t go it’d be obvious I wasn’t over you so I’d have to go.”

  “Wait, was I marrying the imaginary boyfriend from Fourth of July, or somebody else?” I teased.

  “Somebody else. But I knew I’d have to act like it was fine and I was happy for you. I’d have to show up at least for the reception.”

  “Well, be glad it didn’t happen. I decided when you agreed to marry me and help me buy the building that I’d have to give you free flowers for your wedding as a thank you. I’d have to make your bride’s bouquet with my bare hands,” I said. “It was like I wanted to act like it would be a friendly gesture, but I was eating my heart out over this imagined horrible future situation.”

  “Maybe your imaginary groom and my pretend future bride ended up together.”

  “No, I hope they died in a fiery car crash. I couldn’t stand her,” I laughed.

  “Yeah, he was a preppy loser,” Damon agreed.

  I laughed and he pulled me back against him and put his arms around me. We watched Ashton and Brenna playing, my dad taking pictures every five seconds and my mom waving him away. The sun-drenched backyard, the birds in the trees, the smell of hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill where Brody stood by soberly in a Kiss the Cook apron Laura had forced him to wear—all of it was absolutely perfect. The way my husband’s arms wrapped around me from behind, the ease of the way he held me, and the excitement and comfort of that alone was a miracle. To have all of these people we loved around us, our perfect little boy, so much happiness—it was beyond anything I could have imagined when I was ankle-deep in murky water in the backroom of my flower shop last year.

  When I thought of how hopeless, how lonely I was then, it made the magic of my life now even
better. Because I’d been alone and scared and not sure how I could handle everything life threw at me. Now, with Damon by my side, I knew I was a better version of myself and that I didn’t have to be afraid. Because we had each other. It was such a beautiful life and I was thankful for it every minute of the day, every hour of the night in my husband’s arms.

  I shut my eyes and leaned back against him, listened to his breath and the breeze and birdsong, the laughter of the people we loved the most. There were moments I knew I’d never forget, and this was one of the best.

  The End

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  1

  Laura

  I tapped my phone screen and reviewed the notes again. Yeah, he was supposed to take five of these pills a day. I read the directions closely and sorted them into the big pill organizer. I didn’t even know they made forty-compartment flip-top plastic organizers for medication, but now I was getting to know one really well. Each day was labeled, and there were five little flip-top boxes for different times of day—before breakfast, one for each meal, mid-afternoon, and bedtime. I counted out the pills and loaded the week’s worth of that medication in the time slots where it belonged. Then I twisted open the next amber-colored bottle and started distributing that medication into its appropriate section.

  It was tedious, and I was impatient because I didn’t want to make a mistake, but it was taking forever. I was just doling out my dad’s meds for the week. His health had been declining for a couple of years and now he was in kidney failure. Between trips to dialysis and keeping track of his diet and medications and trying to cook and clean, my mom was at her wit’s end. My dad wouldn’t agree to have a home health aid come in to help out either.