by Artemis Hunt
THE PRETEND BOYFRIEND
By Artemis Hunt
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright 2012 by Artemis Hunt
Cover art by Artemis Hunt
THE PRETEND BOYFRIEND
1
Samantha Fox takes two steps at a time up the stairs of the nineteenth century Gothic building that hosts Dan’s Café. She is late. She doesn’t being late because she equates lateness with rudeness. My time is precious, and so is yours.
She flies into the seating area with its cozy tables and chairs, her shoes clacking noisily upon the black-and-white checkered linoleum. Spotting Cassie, her best friend sitting alone at a table, she almost trips over a pair of shopping bags by a chair at another table. She manages to rescue herself by grabbing onto the back of the chair.
“Hey, watch it, will you?” says the woman with the pixie hairdo seated there, clearly annoyed.
“Sorry, so sorry.” Sam picks herself up and half-clambers, half-limps to the amused Cassie. “Oh,” she groans, “I’m such a klutz.”
“You always were a klutz. It’s part of your charm.” Cassie pulls her coffee mug away discretely from Sam as the latter sits, juddering the table and sploshing coffee over the rim.
“Yeah, it’s charming when I was fourteen. And even then, not really.” Sam shudders. “Remember how we were when we were in middle grade? I wore braces and I kept getting my lunch stuck in my buck teeth.”
“I remember that awful Brian Morton. He was such a bully. Remember how he used to draw funny caricatures of you with your braces all over the lockers? He called you ‘Jaws’.”
“I’m going to expunge that dirty memory forever from my temporal lobes.” Sam runs a careless hand through her mess of hair. “I’m sorry I’m late anyway. My boss wanted me to go over the Killeney account for the seventeenth time. She’s such an anal retentive like you wouldn’t believe.”
“All work and no play makes Sammy a tight ass like she never wants to be. You’re on track for it, you know.” Cassie signals a passing waiter. “Can we have the menu, please, like yesterday?”
“I have to. I’ve got no one else but me. If I want to live the American dream and get that America dream apartment over at Soho, I’m going to have to put my nose on the grindstone for it.”
“Or you could marry someone rich and get the American dream handed to you on a china plate, that is probably made in Taiwan.” Cassie arches her eyebrows meaningfully.
“I’m never getting married.”
“You know it’s not true.”
“It’s true. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve been in three failed relationships. I’ve got majorly dumped three times, and the third is by a man who decided he was gay after dating me for two months. That’s got to be a record. Anyway, it isn’t PC to want a man to get those things for you. The only person you can rely upon – ”
“ – is you,” they chorus together.
“Hey, you’re finishing my sentences,” Sam complains.
“Only because you’ve said it like a gazillion times.”
“I have not.”
“You have too.”
“I’m not a nag.” At that moment, the strains of Usher stream from Sam’s monogrammed Coach purse. She groans. “If it’s the office, I’m going to scream.”
“Then don’t get it.”
But Sam has already dived into her purse to fish out her Samsung Galaxy Ace. She holds the cellphone up and makes a face at the display.
“It’s Lori, would you believe? She never ever calls me unless she wants money or to crow over me for not having a guy.”
“Lori, your slutty gangbang fest of a sister?”
“Ssssssh. She does not too have gangbangs.”
Sam picks up the phone and says into it, “Don’t tell me . . . Mom’s got a new boyfriend.”
Cassie crosses her eyes. Sam shoots her an evil look.
“Uh huh. Uh huh. What? Oh? Shit, no fucking way! You mean you are really going to get married? But you’re only twenty-two!”
Cassie mouths incredulously: For real? Slut Lori is gonna get married?
“Twenty-two is not over the hill. How can you even think that? You’re barely out of college. Uh huh. Well, look at me. I’ve twenty-seven and I’m not married.” Pause. “Twenty-seven is not geriatric and prostate problems are only for men, for crying out loud.”
Cassie stifles a giggle.
Sam mouths back: If you’re gonna make fun of me, I’ll kill you.
“The engagement party is this weekend? Thanks for telling me three days in advance.” Pause. “Well, I’m your sister, I think I deserve to know a little earlier, if that’s OK with you.” Pause. “Uh huh. Don’t you think you’re rushing things a bit? You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Cassie makes a blowing sound.
Sam mouths: Shut up.
“No, for the last time, I’m not going through menopause, Lori. Why do you always have to exaggerate everything to put me down? Well, yeah, Mom always did love you best but that doesn’t give you a right . . . no, no, don’t even go there. I do too have boyfriends!”
Cassie bares her teeth.
“Well, I do have a boyfriend. We are practically getting married. Oh yes.” Sam nods to convince herself. “Bring him to your engagement party this weekend? Well, no, he can’t. He’s going to Tokyo. He’s a high-powered executive and he jet-sets to places like Tokyo every other week.”
Cassie mock-palms her own face.
“What do you mean I’m lying? I do so not lie. I don’t have to prove anything to you. So what if I come to your party alone? It doesn’t mean I’m a frigid old maid. Puh-leez. OK, OK, OK, I’m coming this weekend. Yes, alone because my rich boyfriend is in Tokyo. Yeah, text me the details and spare me the snark. Goodbye.”
Sam clicks off.
“Oooh, can you believe that witch? She’s been such a putz to me since the day she was born and dropped her dirty diaper on my head. Now all I have to do is find some hunky guy photos to put on my cellphone display by this weekend, and that’ll fend her off for another week. Or two.”
“Sam, you told Lori the guy is your fucking boyfriend. That’s huge.”
“So what if I told her that? We’ll be breaking up by next Monday. That’ll be an angle in line with my life story, seeing the way I seem to be fucking up all my relationships. Hey, where’s my coffee?”
“You didn’t order it.”
“Damn, I knew something was missing in my life.”
Cassie smiles and grasps one of Sam’s hands. “Hey, kiddo. You don’t need a man to complete your life. That’s what you’ve been saying all this time to me, remember?”
“Yeah, I know.” Sam signals the waiter. “One black Americano, please. No sugar.” She turns back to Cassie. “But now and then . . . it’s kinda nice to have a pretend boyfriend. You know, the kind you can borrow for a weekend party or some office function or some high school reunion. And return him on Monday to wherever he came from.”
Cassie laughs. “Hell, you’d probably have to pay for that. He’s called an escort. A discreet term for gigolo.”
“Well, sure, and he doesn’t even have to bang me.”
“Girl, sex has gotta be the best part about a hiring a gigolo.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Then what is? The scintillating conversation? The recount of experiences past shared?”
The waiter comes back with the coffee. He’s has a brown mop for hair and dimples. He says, flashing her a grin, “One black Americano, no sugar. Would that be all, Miss?”
Cassie says, “You’re kinda cute. You don’t happen to have anything on this weekend, do you?”
“Excuse me?” The waiter raises a quizzical brow.
“Um, she was just kidding.” Sam shoots her best friend a glare. As the waiter knowingly walks away, she hisses, “Don’t embarrass me.”
“Honey, you’re gonna be plenty embarrassed this weekend when your sister discovers you don’t really have a boyfriend, hot photos downloaded from Fotolia notwithstanding.”
Sam sighs and she grips her coffee mug. “I know.”
2
“Take it,” Brian Morton says to his best friend, Caleb.
“I can’t take your money.”
Brian rolls his eyes. “There’s plenty of it where it came from.”
“Brian, I know your family owns Morton Enterprise Ltd., but this is my Mom we’re talking about. I can’t take your money to pay off her mortgage.”
“If you don’t, the bank is going to foreclose and she’d be out in the streets. You’ll be forced to take her into your apartment and she’s gonna seriously cramp your sex life.”
“Or the lack of it.” Caleb bends over mutinously with his cue to aim a ball into the right hand corner pocket of the pool table. He misses. “Damn.”
Brian looks up to see a redhead at the bar eyeing him. Her eyes roam appreciatively up and down his leather jacket clad body. So what’s new? He gets looks like that from women and quite a few men all the time. With his striking features and six foot two frame, he cuts quite a figure in the smoky barfly crowd.
He blows the top of his cue and strides to the other side of the table.
“Think of it as a loan,” he says. “You can pay me back . . . with interest.”
The white ball strikes a green ball and the latter rolls into the middle pocket.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Cut it out, Brian. I’m not taking your money and that’s final. I don’t need you to bail me out every time I’ve got a problem.”
Brian shoots a yellow ball into a pocket. “I didn’t hear you complaining when I bailed you out from jail when you were caught with that underage hooker.”
“I thought she was nineteen! And I paid you back so that doesn’t count.”
The redhead at the bar is tweezing her hair. She licks her sultry lower lip. Brian grins as he bends over to sink yet another ball. At the doorway is another woman who is clearly making her intentions known to him. She’s a ballsy blonde type who looks like she can give amazing head.
Brian flashes her a predatory smile. Later, babe.
Caleb is too drowned in his own money woes to notice. “I could work overtime. I could get a new job.”
“You could also get a personal bank loan, but why get it when your best friend is willing to lend it to you for a marginal interest rate?”
“I said no.”
Brian sighs. “Stubborn as an ass, as always.”
“That’s why you love me.”
“Speaking about new jobs, why don’t you just come and work for me in Vanguard? I need a helluva a good accounts manager.”
“Brian, I already told you I don’t take favors from friends. We have to separate business from personal life, remember? And I’m not taking that ridiculous salary from you.”
“What? Too low?”
“Are you kidding me? You’re paying me double the market rate for that sort of job!” Caleb spots the blonde. And the redhead. And a couple of brunettes on the other side of the bar. “Oh God, not again.”
“It’ll only take a while.”
“That’s what you said the last time. I had to wait for two hours outside while you finished your blowjob. I was freezing my toes off.”
“That’s because she brought her twin sisters for the ride. And her stepmom was in the car.”
“You never say no. That’s your problem.”
“I say no plenty of times.”
“Yeah, only because there’re only twenty-four hours in a day. If it were up to you, you’d be fucking for as your penis can hold up.”
“My penis can’t help having a raging libido.”
“Your penis can’t help defining the ‘P’ in promiscuity either. You’re gonna catch gonorrhea . . . or something worse.”
“I’m always careful. And you won’t dream of drinking yesterday’s coffee, would you?” Brian puts down his cue as the blonde steps up with a smile. He knows that women of all ages find him irresistible and he’s going to milk it for all it’s worth before he turns thirty. And then, there’s always Botox.
“Hey,” the blonde says.
Brian glances askew at the redhead and the brunettes, who are all glowering now.
“Hey,” he says.
Caleb groans audibly.
“Don’t mind him,” Brian says, “he has gas.”
“You wanna get out of here?” the blonde says.
Brian turns to Caleb. “I’ll only be a while,” he deadpans.
Caleb grimaces.
*
In the stockroom of the bar, piled with crates of empty beer bottles for recycling, Brian pushes the blonde onto an empty crate and lifts up her dress. She is on her belly and her breasts are spilling out of her top. She isn’t wearing any panties.
“You came prepared, huh?” Brian says, unbuckling his jeans.
“I’ve seen you around. The girls say you’re an incredible fuck.”
“Legendary.”
“Modest as well.”
He grins. “It’s a virtue drummed into me by all the people who tell me I’m an incredible fuck.”
He isn’t wearing any underwear either and his ready cock springs to attention. The stockroom is dark, and so he feels for her wet pussy with two of his fingers. She’s open and horny as hell. His black Gucci shirt is already undone. He slips out a condom from his back pocket and rips the foil with his teeth.
He positions his cock at her hungry wet hole. He always pauses for a moment before his entry. Pausing to savor yet another conquest – easy though it may be.
He rams himself into her pussy hole unapologetically.
“Arrrrh!” she shrieks.
He knows he has a large cock and his first stab is always received with cries of simultaneous pleasure and pain. As a lover, he has never been gentle. He has always claimed his sex partners with a ruthless drive to satisfy both his considerable carnal desires and theirs. His hips – slender and exuberant from many hours of gym training – possess the Olympic athlete’s ability to move extremely hard and fast. So hard that he literally pounds the blonde’s buttocks into the crate.
She groans and writhes with ecstasy. His fucking intensifies. He has plenty of energy and an ability to last for a long time, if his schedule warrants. His rhythm is all his own. Like a master violinist who knows all the strokes – when to go fast, when to go slow, which angles to hit, when to lift the woman’s buttocks higher – he instinctively maneuvers his way into each smoldering wet passage.
“Oh God,” she whimpers, “you’re so, so good.”
He’s grunting with each thrust. “I know.”
She’s too winded to laugh but she manages a chortle. “Your arrogance is astounding.”
“But everyone forgives me anyway because I’m so hot.” He grins. Caleb’s words hurl back at him: You’re the most narcissistic, arrogant best friend a man can ever have.
He seizes her breasts and rocks himself so hard against her that the crate inches forward. And forward. His fingers and thumbs scissor and tweak her nipples until she’s crying out so loud that he’s certain someone will walk into the stockroom to see what the commotion is all about.
He makes sure she comes several times before he allows his own pleasure to spill over. It’s a rule he has. Always make sure the woman is pleasured before he is. Her screams punctuate the room and the blood is roaring too furiously in his own ears for him to hear her properly.
Panting, he withdraws his cock and peels off the condom. The blonde is strewn
over the crate like a rag doll, too fatigued to pick herself up. He zips his pants and buttons up his shirt again, not saying anything.
She stirs. Her skirt is still hiked up to her waist and her bare buttocks and pussy glisten with her juices.
“I’ll give you my number,” she says. “Call me and we can do this again.”
“Thanks but no thanks. I don’t do encores.” He’s aware that he sounds awfully blunt, but in his experience, it’s kinder to let them down brutally and fast rather than prolong something he knows he’s not going to reciprocate.
She hesitates a long time as she slowly staggers to her feet to dress. “Yeah, they said that about you too, but I refused to believe it.” She does not meet his eyes.
He knows what she’s thinking. He’s not clueless. They said that about you but I refused to believe it . . . because I thought I’d be the one to change you . . . the one that you’d fuck more than once.
He finishes dressing. “I’ve gotta go.”
He turns to the door without saying goodbye. He doesn’t look back either. There’s no point when you’re never going to see them again.
*
Caleb is no longer in the pool room but the brunettes are still at the bar. The short-haired one eyes him speculatively.
“Had a good time?” Sarcasm drips off her tongue.
“Better than the one you had with your friend.” He grins.
She gets down from her barstool and saunters towards him. She fingers his shirt buttons. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Brian Morton.”
“Oh yeah? All good, I hope.” He slips into his easy smile, and he can tell that she’s bedazzled. In fact, the eyes of every woman in the room are on him.
“They say you are best lay this side of Chicago. I haven’t had the chance to experience it myself. So . . . if you have enough strength left in that body of yours, maybe you and I go back to my apartment and – ” she lets the suggestion linger.
“Maybe later. I’ve got to find my friend.”
