“The ice cream and conversation weren’t satisfactory?” he asks me.
“You didn’t let me finish the ice cream,” I gently remind him.
“Because we were off plan—” he stops himself and abruptly switches off the light.
I can sense his agitation as we get into bed. And as comfortable and soft as the pewter fur comforter seemed when I was looking down at it, I find it’s actually super heavy when I get underneath it.
Probably weighted, I think, remembering a few of the things I’d read about Sensory Processing Disorder before moving in with Go. I shift onto my back, deciding this will probably be the best way to sleep for now, since I’m going to have a hell of a time rolling over beneath this thing.
I lay there in the dark for a few minutes, wondering about…a lot. Go. The unexpectedly magnificent sex. The ice cream cut short. The tension still emanating off of him, making it hard for me to relax.
Then the covers move, and he grabs a hold of my hand in the dark. Interlacing our fingers and squeezing my hand tight.
“Is this okay?” I hear him ask on the other side of the bed.
“Yeah, it’s great,” I answer, voice strained, because I’m trying not to choke on what I’m feeling right now.
“Let me know if I’m hurting you. I don’t want to hurt you. I like you.”
“I know you don’t,” I answer. “And I like you, too, Go.”
We lie there quietly, the tension slowly fading from the both of us.
I’m not surprised when I wake up later in the night with Go’s hand no longer wrapped around mine. But I am surprised to find he’s no longer in bed.
He’s probably downstairs in his office, I guess, remembering all the work he’d been mumbling about missing throughout the photo shoot, and the way he’d gone straight to his laptop bike when we got home.
I’m weirdly compelled to find him and try to convince him to come back to bed. But first…I push the heavy cover off of me and head to the bathroom, the need to pee more urgent than the need to find my missing husband. Pregnancy, I’m finding, has a way of prioritizing your biological needs before all others.
The bathroom doesn’t announce me for once. I’m guessing the house is “smart” enough to turn off after a certain hour, like a smart phone in “Do Not Disturb” mode. But the Japanese toilet is still working. It beeps and sets to warming my bottom as I do my business and wipe. Then it super quietly flushes itself as soon as I stand. I watch it go about its fully automated work, wondering sleepily if I’ll ever get use to living in this house.
A groan disturbs my musings about the smart house however, and I look around, wondering where it possibly could have come from, before I remember the hidden shower.
Padding over to the mirrored door, I pull it open, only to freeze when I find…
Go, one hand braced against the stone and tile wall. His eyes squeezed closed and his teeth clenched. The sound, I realize now, is actually a series of low grunts. Staccato and desperate as one hand pulls at his length.
I should leave. This is obviously something he wanted to do in private, and when I’m not striking super weird marriage bargains with the billionaire brother of my dead ex-boyfriend, I’m actually known for being a sensitive person.
But I can’t look away. I’ve felt, but never seen, his cock in the flesh. And I can’t help but stare at it now, long and lined with rigid veins. A pearl of pre-cum has gathered at the tip, and I find myself wetting my lips with the thought of…
Then it’s too late to quietly disappear. He looks up suddenly, some sixth sense letting him know he now has an audience.
“Nyla,” he says harshly, his erotic agony fading into true distress.
“It’s okay,” I say quickly.
“No, it’s not. This wasn’t in the plan. But I couldn’t sleep with you in the bed. I should have made you put your pajamas back on…”
Okay, like I said, I’m supposed to be some kind of professional, but real talk, I’m not even listening to him.
I walk over to him, my eyes on his erection, which is still raging hard despite the interruption. “It’s alright,” I mumble, kneeling down. More to myself than him. “It’s alright.”
“No, it’s not alright—Nyla, what are you doing? What are you—?”
I take him in my mouth, scraping the ball of my tongue ring across the underside of his dick as I suck him hard.
“Nyla, not part of the plan. Nyla—”
I reach up and work his balls, not worrying about the pressure for once, just squeezing them as tight as I can.
And he once again breaks off, a stream of Spanish cuss words streaming from his mouth. Then his fingers vice into the sides of my head, keeping me there, despite his earlier protests.
“Your tongue ring feels so good on my dick,” he says on a sharp inhale.
“Not in the plan,” he manages to squeeze out one more time, but then his body begins to shudder.
I look up and smile at the raw desire I see etched across his face. He’s obviously getting close.
“No, no don’t fucking look at me like that…” he says, and the next thing I know, he’s pulling out of my mouth.
Before I can protest the withdrawal though, my back’s pushed into a wall. “Wanna feel you…wanna feel you…” Go mutters, crushing me in his hug as he thrusts into me, hard.
I totally understand. I can’t breathe. But I totally understand. And I don’t care about not being able to breathe as I wrap my legs around his lean waist. I can breathe when I’m dead, I think.
I actually think that as I hug him as tightly as he’s hugging me.
I thought I was out of control, but Go—he’s completely out of control. Thrusts wild and heavy, trapping me against the wall with desperate urgency. His beard’s in my neck, and he’s muttering a ton of Spanish I can’t translate. Something about my mouth. And my eyes. The only thing I really understand is “No me mires…” Don’t look at me, over and over again.
But then he suddenly fists my hair, yanking my head up, forcing me to do the opposite of what he’s been telling me not to do all this time. “Come,” he commands, his face a harsh interplay of barely held restraint. “Come now.
The orgasm blooms through me like a mushroom cloud, setting every nerve ending I have to tingle as I come with an aching scream. He floods me soon after, completely silent now, as jets of his cum stream into me.
Even after we’re both done, we continue rocking into each other. Bodies in full agreement about wanting to continue, even if neither of us have nothing left to give.
But then the tension comes back over Go. He stops, and I feel him withdraw from me, even before he actually lets me out of his tight hold and places me back on my feet.
“Not in the plan,” he mutters.
My instinct is to say it’s alright. My body’s still thrumming from what we did, and I’m more than ok with the unexpected after-hours sex.
But I know Go isn’t. He’s looking around the bathroom at everything in it except me.
“Go,” I start.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
“Go—” I try again.
“We have to work tomorrow, Nyla,” he says. “And I require a certain amount of sleep, or I don’t function well. I’m going to take a shower, even though it’s the kind of loud I don’t like, so I can clock some extra sleep time in the morning. New plan: you sleep in the guest room.”
That freezes my empathy right on up in my chest. “You want me to sleep in the guest room,” I repeat.
“Yes,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. “You don’t seem capable of following plans and I have to work tomorrow. I require I certain amount of sleep, and—”
I leave before he can finish that thought. Before I say something I might end up regretting later.
He’s right about having to work. And work is really important to Go. Obviously. He’s pretty much told me that a thousand times already, and we’ve only been married a day.
He’s adjusting, I remind myself as I snatch my pajamas up from the bathroom floor where Go snatched them off my body earlier. We’re both adjusting. I use every empathy trick I’ve ever learned as I simply do as he asks and take myself to the guest room down the hall. But I can’t help feeling more than a little humiliated as I quickly jerk my pajamas back on and get into a new bed with a regular comforter.
And I don’t really cry—it’s just not my thing. But I can feel my leather heart rattling inside my chest as I fall asleep. Strange, I hadn’t actually expected to have sex on my wedding night. Especially not amazing, completely mind-blowing sex. Earlier it felt like an unexpected dream come true.
But now it feels like it’s only made things worse. Like our ten-year marriage is over before it’s even had a chance to begin.
10
I sleep fitfully and when some inner wake-up alarm sounds, I open my eyes to another super gray day.
Welcome to Portland, I think as I sit up and regard the Willamette River with less awe than a girl who’s suddenly found herself living in a multi-million dollar waterfront property should.
Yeah, this view would have made me a lot happier if I’d woken up beside, as opposed to down the hall from, Go, I think with a sad sigh. Not that waking up beside him could have happened anyway, I remind myself. Go told me last night he gets up at five in the morning and leaves for work by five-thirty. And now it’s…I glance at the bedside clock. A little past seven. So it’s not like he would still been here anyway.
That’s one good thing, I guess as I stand up. At least I won’t have to deal with Go this morning—
I yelp, when I find him sitting on a black leather couch in the room’s small seating area.
“Sorry,” he says, standing up. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Nyla.”
“What are you doing here?!”
He cringes, obviously not loving the loud screeching tone my voice has taken on. Then he mumbles something.
“What?” I demand, still too freaked out and shocked to temper my voice as I normally would.
He’s dressed in a new hoodie and blazer, I notice, and for some reason it only annoys me more. “Seriously, why are you in here scaring the shit out of me instead of at work?”
He mutters something else. Something that sounds an awful lot like, “I couldn’t go to work.”
And I say, “Excuse me?” really, truly thinking I must have heard him wrong.
He grunts, as if this conversation is way more laborious than whatever he was planning to do at GoBotics today. “I couldn’t go to work. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
My heart starts to beat a little slower, my annoyed confusion morphing into curiosity. “Why not?”
He looks to the side, processing my question. Then he says, “I was too afraid to go.”
Which is only more confusing. “Why were you afraid?”
“Because if I went to work, maybe I’d come home and you wouldn’t be here. I’m concerned you wouldn’t stick to the plan—especially since you haven’t read it. And a bunch of stuff you do isn’t in the plan, but you leaving me…”
The saddest look passes over his face. “That’s really not in the plan.”
I’m so confused, it actually takes me a moment of digging through all that plan language to realize he’s actually afraid I’m going to leave him. Because of what happened last night.
“Oh, Go,” I say. “I have a lot of issues. But running isn’t one of them. I’m not the kind of girl who runs. I’m more like the kind of girl who gets kicked out.”
But my words of reassurance only make him frown that much harder.
Then he shocks the shit out of me by crossing the room and pulling me into his arms, hugging me close. Just hugging me. In a way that somehow doesn’t feel sexual, even though I can feel his erection against me.
“I don’t want to kick you out,” he grumbles.
“And that’s a bad thing?” I ask, totally not understanding.
“We are now completely off plan,” he says into my shoulder. “You keep taking us off plan, Nyla. Last night in the shower, you did it on purpose… and I didn’t completely lose my shit.”
“Um, kicking me out of your bedroom doesn’t count as losing your shit?”
“No, it really doesn’t,” he quietly informs me, rocking us back and forth a little. “A girl once moved one of my toy robots to another room without my permission. I dumped her on the spot and told her never to come back to my house. We’d been dating for several months.”
“Seriously?!”
“Yeah, dead serious,” he answers with a weary sigh. “I can be difficult, Nyla. You saw that last night. But if you moved one of my robots, even to somewhere crazy like the lounge, I wouldn’t dump you.”
That’s a nice sentiment. Sort of…I mean, I guess, but… “You kicked me out of your bedroom. That hurt my feelings,” I admit.
We’re communicating, I realize. That’s a good thing. But I kind of hate this part. The part where I have to unzip my leather heart a little in order to admit I let him actually hurt my feelings.
“I know. I get that,” he answers. “That’s why I’m here. I’m sorry for kicking you out of the room. But we were so far off plan, Nyla. And you make me so hard.” He squeezes me in even tighter then. “No woman has ever made me as hard as you do.”
He presses himself into me. “You feel that? How hard you make me?”
I nod, my breath catching and my body warming at just the thought of reaching down and taking him in my hand again. Of putting him inside me.
“I want you,” he says, as if giving voice to my thoughts. “I can’t stop myself from wanting you. This has never been a problem for me with any other girl…but you’re what the tech industry loves and hates the most.”
“A women’s shelter manager?” I ask, totally confused.
“A major disruption.” He pushes back and lets me go in order to look down at me. “Nyla, you’re majorly disrupting my life, and for the first time ever, I’m finding it hard to have a problem with that. I guess…” he shakes his head as if this were the most out-there concept he’s ever encountered. “I guess I want to live here with you. See where this goes, more than I want my robots to stay in their boxes.”
“Seriously, where are these robots you keep talking about?” I have to ask him at this point. “I need to know, so I can never even think about touching them.”
His eyes go to the side, considering my question. “You know what? Let’s not risk what we have here while it’s still in install mode.”
I chuckle. “Okay,” I agree.
He takes my face in his hands, squeezing it between his palms so carefully, it almost feels tender, even though he’s basically forcing me to look up at him. “Nyla?” he says.
And as tough as I am, I feel strangely shy as I look up and answer, “Yes?”
“I don’t want to go to work.”
“Because you’re too tired?” I ask, not knowing how this connects to our last point of conversation at all.
“No, because I want to stay here and fuck you some more,” he answers, “Priscilla asked if I wanted to go on a honeymoon with you and I said no. Now I wish I’d said yes. That makes this a 5% time, Nyla.”
“Oh no, not a 5% time!”
I pull him down for a kiss that starts out laughing, but ends up hard and biting, and he kisses me back, so hard against my stomach, I have to pull back and breathlessly ask, “What would happen if you called in sick?”
“Probably everyone in the office would drop dead of shock because I maintain a level of lifestyle precisely aimed at never getting sick. I also have an allergy pill, which I take regularly.”
“You’re such a nerd,” I say with a chuckle.
“And you’re such a tough girl,” he kisses me again, his tongue drawing hard on mine. Then he says, “You wouldn’t have dated me in high school. Chances are you wouldn’t have dated me ever if Marco hadn’t brought you to Thanksgiving dinner…”
; We kiss some more, but then he tenses again, drawing back.
“What?” I find myself asking him for the umpteenth time.
“I’m thinking,” he says.
“About what?” I ask.
“The new plan.”
“Which is…?” I ask, still really confused. But also totally intrigued.
11
A few hours later, I watch in disbelief as Go hands both his smart phone and smart watch over to Jason while a couple of meters away, a small plane waits for us with its stairs down, humming and waiting to go.
“Are you sure about this?” Jason asks Go as he pockets all the smart devices. “I had to repeat it three times to Chris before he’d believe me, and I’m pretty sure the board’s going to freak out.”
“I’ll handle any negative reaction when I return,” Go answers in his usual brusque way.
He’s all business now that he’s left the house. And if not for the small plane, waiting to whisk us away to some remote island in the South Pacific, I’d barely be able to believe we actually had that intimate conversation this morning.
“Still, I should brief you on a few things before you leave...” Jason says.
Go gives Jason a tight nod, before telling me he’ll join me on the plane in a few minutes.
But watching what looks like a very serious conversation from the plane window, I have to wonder if he won’t back out of this new plan at the last minute. Whatever Jason and he are discussing looks pretty intense. Go keeps interrupting what Jason is trying to tell him, and though I can’t quite see his profile, I can tell by the way he’s stroking his beard that he isn’t happy about what he’s hearing.
At one point, Jason even pulls Go’s phone back out of his blazer pocket. Offers it to him. But Go shakes his head. And Jason re-pockets it with a look that makes it clear to anyone watching that he truly thinks his boss has gone off the deep end.
“Is everything okay?” I ask when Go finally sits down in the wide leather seat beside me.
He regards me for a long while, then he says, “I hope not. We can only wait and see.”
His Pretend Baby Page 8
