by Rush, Olivia
“You’re like nothing else, Chelsea,” he said, his mouth inches from my ear, his breath hot on my skin, his voice low and charged with sensuality. “I’ve never met a woman like you.”
The pleasure was so much that I could hardly process his words, let alone form my own. So I decided to let my body do the talking.
My hands clamped down onto his perfect, round ass, his muscles tensing and flexing underneath them. I lifted my legs enough to wrap around him, locking his body against mine.
Bryce got the message loud and clear and thrust into me at a steady, smooth pace that put me into a surreal trance of pleasure. Gradually, the pace picked up, and it wasn’t long before he was driving into me with wild intensity, my breasts shaking out of my dress from the impact of his hips into mine.
When the orgasm hit, it was the sweetest rush I could imagine. The pleasure that took hold of me made the orgasm he’d brought me to with his mouth seem like nothing more than a tease. I thrashed, moaned, and writhed underneath him, my hips bucking wildly.
Bryce came soon after, announcing his orgasm with a hard grunt. He reached down and slipped his cock out of me, his end already shooting out thick ropes of pearl-white cum. The bulk of his load sprayed onto my thigh and cunt, and I watched eagerly as his prick pulsed it all out.
When he was done, Bryce collapsed at my side, and it wasn’t long before the two of us were cuddling on the limo seat.
“OK,” I said after a time, determination in my voice. “I think I can do this.”
Bryce flashed me a curious expression. “You can…what?”
“The job. I can do it.”
He smiled a bit. “That’s what’s on your mind right now?” he asked. “I mean, happy to hear it, but I’m not exactly thinking about work at the moment.”
“I am,” I said. “I think what we just did cleared my head, you know? Worked all the tension out of me.”
He placed his hand on my belly, his eyes watching my chest rise and fall.
“Good to hear,” he said. “I know you’re going to do great.”
A hush of silence passed, but then my curiosity got the better of me.
“What were you thinking about?” I asked.
“Hmm?” he asked, turning that beautiful gaze of his up to me.
“You said you weren’t thinking about work,” I said. “Which suggests that you were thinking about something.”
He pursed his lips for a brief moment, as if trying to figure out exactly how to say what was on his mind.
“It’s… I don’t know. I have a thought. But I don’t want to freak you out.”
“I want to hear it,” I said, running my hand through his hair. “And I’ll try not to freak out. But all bets are off if you’re about to tell me about some pudding fetish or something you have.”
“Pudding fetish?” he asked.
“I read this article about weird fetishes, and one of them was this guy whose ultimate sexual fantasy was to have sex in a bathtub full of tapioca pudding. Something about the little bubbles, he said.”
Bryce gave me an amused and curious look, and I realized that I was rambling out of nervousness.
“It’s not about pudding,” he said. “Sexual or for eating.” He chuckled. “You’re cute, you know that?”
“Cute or weird?” I said.
“You can be both.”
I leaned in and kissed him softly.
“Anyway,” he said, “when I pitched this whole thing to you, this fake marriage, I was serious as hell about keeping it all professional—as professional as something like this could be, anyway. I was ready to write off the first couple of flings we had as just us being into one another on a physical level. But…”
“But?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Chelsea. And I know you feel the same way.”
He was right. My thoughts since we’d started this thing had been nothing but work and Bryce—mostly Bryce.
“Maybe I do,” I said, my heart beating faster.
“So,” he said, “what do you think about making this weird arrangement of ours a little more real?”
“Real?” I asked. “What, like actually get married?”
“No,” he said. “More like stop pretending we’re not interested in each other. Be a couple. See where this goes. Because I’m being realistic enough to know that I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off you.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“We’d be a couple who’s fake-engaged but real-dating,” I said. “It’s totally absurd, but I kind of dig it.”
“Then that’s a yes?” he asked.
“It’s a yes,” I said. “Let’s see where this all goes.”
Bryce’s mouth curved into a warm smile. He slipped his arm around my body and pulled me close, bringing me in for a deep kiss. And when we were done we held each other, our bodies silver under the ghostly haze of the moonlight.
Chapter 29
Chelsea
Four weeks later
It was a gorgeous, cloudless afternoon, the temperature a perfect seventy-two—one of those days that made the hassles of living in California worth it. Standing on the opposite corner of the Bayview block where the construction was set to begin, I took in the sight of the run-down apartment building I’d finally gotten approval to tear down.
“You did it, lady,” said Bess as she stepped to my side.
“Not quite,” I said.
“OK,” said Bess. “You’ve done the first step in a very long process. Not everyone can navigate the red tape necessary to get approval on a project this size, but you did it.”
She was right. The last month had been a baffling journey through San Francisco city bureaucracy. It’d had dozens of phone calls, sent hundreds of emails, and made more than a few trips across the city to various offices where I had to fill out all sorts of forms and meet with so many pencil-pushers that I felt on the brink of insanity at times.
But it was done. I’d finally gotten the approval to tear down the apartments and start the project.
I glanced over at Bess, who was looking around the neighborhood. It wasn’t the nicest part of the city—more abandoned buildings than just the one in front of us lined the streets—but it had potential. Someone just needed to get the ball rolling, and that someone was me.
“You’d think they’d be begging you to take down one of these ugly buildings,” said Bess. “Instead it’s like they want to leave these things here.”
I’d enlisted Bess as my personal assistant in the new social enterprise division Bryce had put me in charge of, and she’d been worth her weight in gold.
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “I knew that the city had strict building codes and all that, but I never would’ve thought it’d be such a process just to knock down some buildings.”
Bess wrapped her arm around me and gave me a quick squeeze.
“But that means the hard part’s over, right?” she asked.
“A hard part is over,” I said. “Not the hard part. Now we have to actually knock the buildings down, clear the lot, and get construction underway for the development. And then after that we have to get the places furnished and the tenants moved in, and hire crew to look after the property, and—”
I was getting overwhelmed just thinking about it.
“Calm down,” said Bess. “We’ve got a ton to do, but we’ll take care of it a piece at a time, just like we did with this first step. And then once this building’s done, we move onto the next one and the next one and the next one until they rename this neighborhood Chelseaburg.”
“Good to see we’ve got all points of this process covered,” I said with a smile.
“But right now,” said Bess, “I think we’ve got a very important task to attend to.”
“Oh?” I asked. “And what’s that?”
“Drinking some damn wine to celebrate.”
I laughed.
“Sounds good to me.”
Thirty minutes later,
Bess and I were back in the city center and seated at a window table at one of the trendy wine bars where she and I liked to go to have our little “meetings.” It didn’t take long before we had a bottle of white wine in front of us, along with a delicious meat and cheese plate.
“So,” said Bess, “how are you feeling about all of this?”
She gestured to the window, as though she were talking about the entire city.
“You’re going to have to narrow it down,” I said. “There’s a lot of ‘this’ going on right now.”
“I mean you being in charge of your own division,” she said. “You’ve become one of the biggest names at Carver right now. That’s the ‘this‘ I’m thinking about.”
“Every day is a new kind of overwhelming,” I said. “But Bryce sold this to me as being able to be in charge of my own company-within-a-company, and that’s what it’s been. It’s kind of amazing.”
“That man sees something in you,” said Bess. “And I can tell by the way he looks at you that he’s totally crazy about you, fake marriage or no fake marriage.”
My eyes went wide.
“Hey, hey,” I said. “Ex-nay on the fake-marriage-aye,” I said, speaking in the worst Pig Latin I’d ever attempted.
“Sorry,” she said, her hand shooting to her mouth. “Forget that this is top-secret information sometimes.”
“It’s double-ultra classified,” I said. “And you’re the only one aside from me and him who knows.”
“I know, sorry,” she said. “But at least you guys are for-real dating—that makes it all a little less crazy. How’s that all going, by the way?”
“Really, really well,” I said. “I knew that he and I would make a good couple, but I wasn’t ready for how good.”
“Perfect,” she said. “If anyone deserves a good guy, it’s you.”
Bess poured glasses of wine for both of us and raised hers into the air.
“Cheers to getting shit done,” she said.
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, lifting my own glass.
I brought the drink to my lips, but right before I took my sip, a strange feeling came over me. It was a wave of total disgust, as if my body was telling me that wine was the last thing I should be putting inside me.
I set the wine down and looked at it quizzically.
“What’s wrong?” asked Bess, noticing what was happening.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Wine just doesn’t sound good to me.”
“Are you feeling sick?”
“I’m feeling something,” I said.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s not affecting your appetite.”
“Huh?” I asked.
Bess gestured down at the plate of food between us. A quick look down revealed that nearly all the food was gone, save for a few slices of cheese and a piece of bread or two.
“Damn, we really killed that,” I said.
“Correction,” said Bess. “You killed that. I barely had anything.”
I was stunned. I barely remembered eating anything.
“Are you telling me that I ate nearly entire meat and cheese plate without even thinking about it?”
“That looks to be the story, lady,” she said.
“This is so weird,” I said. “And I’m still hungry. But my stomach hurts.”
“Well. Either you ate too much or you’re starving. Only one way to find out. Get another,” she said. “We are at a restaurant, after all.”
I pushed the glass of wine toward Bess.
“You can have this,” I said. “It just sounds like the worst thing in the world to me.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Bess, taking my glass and dumping it into hers, the wine nearly overflowing the rim.
I flagged down the waiter and ordered some more food. Meat and cheese didn’t cut it—I was craving something heavy and rich.
“Can I do the rib-eye sandwich?“ I asked. “And a side of the raspberry crêpes, too.”
The waiter nodded and headed off.
“How are Becca and Walsh?” I asked, wanting to take my mind off how strange my body was feeling.
“They’re… I don’t know how to put it. I mean, I’ve been working more with you than with them recently, so I’m going on rumors here.”
Now I was curious.
“What rumors?”
“OK, like I said—this is just what I’ve heard through hearsay. But Kendra told me that she overheard them talking about you and Bryce, that they’re convinced there’s something weird going on between you two.”
My stomach sank.
“You think that they know?” I asked.
“How could they?” asked Becca. “But they definitely think something’s up. And I’m getting the impression this is because they’re jealous at how quickly you’ve moved up in the company. Though good luck getting those two to admit it.”
The idea made me sick to my stomach. Becca and Walsh were the last people I wanted to find out about the fake engagement.
But I reminded myself that there was no way they’d be able to find out, assuming Bess had been able to keep her mouth shut about the whole thing.
“Don’t worry,” said Bess, as if reading my mind. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“I know, I know. It’s just that with everything going on I keep forgetting that there’s this whole pretend engagement to worry about. But I think I can keep everything sorted out, just as long as I don’t have to add anything else to it all.”
“Good, positive thinking,” said Bess with a smile.
I picked a little more at the meat and cheese plate as Bess happily drank her wine. Before long, the server arrived with my two meals, each of them looking totally delicious. The smell of the meat mixed with the scent of fresh crème from the crêpes, my mouth watering.
“You sure you’re going to be able to eat all that?” asked Bess.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’m so freaking hungry I can’t believe it.”
I took the top slice of bread off the rib eye sandwich with one hand and with the other took one of the fruit-and-cream-laden crêpes and unfolded it on top of the meat.
“You’re not—” said Bess.
I flashed her a look that said “oh, but I am,” before taking a big bite of the sandwich. It was a bizarre combination of flavors, but it scratched a strange itch I didn’t know I had until just now.
“OK,” said Bess. “Sweet and savory—I get it.”
I took another huge bite of the sandwich, then another, then another. I added more crêpes as I ate, and before too long, both plates were empty.
“Impressive,” said Bess. “Kind of freaky to watch, but impressive nonetheless.”
I was full and happy. But as I realized what I’d just done, the amount of food I’d eaten and the bizarre cravings that had accompanied it, I knew something was out of sorts.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Bryce, asking me to meet him back at the office.
“Duty calls,” I said. “You ready to hit it?”
As Bess drove us back to the office, I placed my hand on my stomach, which was now bulging out with food.
Dread washed over me, and I knew deep down that whatever was wrong, it wasn’t going to go away.
Chapter 30
Bryce
My eyes were fixed on the phone in my hand. On the screen was a woman posed in blue lingerie in front of a mirror, her rear facing the camera as she looked over her shoulder, a coquettish expression on her face.
This wasn’t just any girl, however—this was a picture sent to me from Felicity.
“It’s not too late,” said the text that came after the photo.
I sighed and tossed the phone onto the vast sweep of my desk. With everything going on, Felicity throwing herself at me was the last thing I wanted to worry about. Part of me wanted to tell Hunter, to show the pictures she’d been sending me and let him know what kind of woman he was involved with.
But he’d been oddly distant since
the night of the party, busy with his own work. At least, that’d been my plan. He’d shown me what he was capable of getting up to when he wasn’t sufficiently occupied, and I’d loaded him down with the sort of client-facing work he actually had a knack for, hoping it would be just the way to keep him from messing around with investors.
Or coming across other information I didn’t want him to know.
It seemed to be working out thus far. Hunter was busy and I’d been able to have my meetings with investors without him getting in the way. So far, so good.
But this nonsense with Felicity was getting out of control. I thought the matter had been taken care of back at the investor party, but then she started blowing up my phone with all sorts of scandalous pictures. I wasn’t tempted in the slightest, but it was more than a little annoying.
It was getting to the point where I was seriously considering blocking her phone number. Only the drama that would follow from such a move kept me from doing it.
I sighed and got up from my desk. It was all so frustrating—I wanted to focus on my work, not these distractions.
A knock sounded at my office door as I stood looking out over the city. It was a knock I recognized.
“Come in,” I called out.
Speaking of distractions.
Chelsea stepped into the room, that gorgeous, coy smile I loved playing on her face. She was dressed in a form-fitting pencil skirt, a white blouse that clung tightly to her breasts, and sheer black pantyhose that disappeared down into a pair of glossy black pumps.
“Goddamn,” I said, the word shooting out of my mouth as though out of my control.
She shut the door behind her and leaned back against it.
“Such a potty mouth,” she said, playfully wagging her finger.
I strode across the office and placed my hands on her hips when I arrived in front of her.
“If you don’t want me to swear when I see you, then don’t dress like that.”
I kneaded her hips through her skirt, feeling the outline of her panties through it.
“Dress like what?” she asked.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “You’re like every man’s sexy secretary fantasy come to life.”
