by Aubrey Irons
Dad whirls back from where I’ve shoved him, his face red and furious looking.
Except I’m not a little kid anymore.
“You watch yourself, boy.”
“Keep your fucking hands to yourself,” I growl through gritted teeth, keeping myself between him and Natalie.
Goddamnit, how the fuck did this happen.
I turn and shake my head at Mom, already half the size of the woman who met us at the front door, or who went to the kitchen to get Natalie another piece of cornbread, because that’s what he does to her.
“Why is he here, Mom?”
“Honey,” she says quietly, still looking at the floor and playing with the cross on her neck. “He’s your father, Austin.”
“No, he’s not,” I spit out, turning back to glare at him. “You give that up when you leave.”
He glares right back at me. “I’m still your daddy, boy.”
“No,” I say evenly. I shake my head. “No, you’re, not. And I’m not boy anymore, old man.”
He snorts, pulling a flask out of his jacket pocket and fiddling with the cap as he nods a chin at Natalie. “Shit, don’t know what a hot little thing like that sees in a fuck-up like you anyways.”
My mouth goes tight as I take a deep breath of air through my nose.
Fuck this.
“Mama, thank you for dinner.”
She does look up then, wringing her hands and looking at Nat and I pleadingly. “You- I mean-” She looks down again. “You don’t want to stay for dessert? I made key lime.”
“Not while he’s here,” I say softly but evenly.
Mom nods.
“Bernadette,” Natalie puts her hand on my mom’s arm. “Would you like to come with us and have that pie?”
Mom smiles a small little smile as she looks up and meets her eye. “Thank you, sweetheart,” she says quietly. “But no. Not tonight.”
“We’re leaving,” I say gruffly, giving my mom a quick kiss on the forehead. “Night Mama.”
“It was lovely to meet you, Bernadette,” Natalie says, giving her a hug.
“Take care of my boy now, ya hear?”
Natalie smiles. “Of course.”
I don’t even give my dad another look, as I take Nat’s hand and lead her out of the house.
20
Natalie
We’re halfway home before Austin says anything in the looming, neon-lit quiet of the car.
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” I say with a casual shrug that I hope comes off more reassuring than it does cavalier.
“No, it’s not,” he says with a voice edged in steel.
“Austin, I’m a big girl, I can handle a drunk guy being inappropriate.”
I know his silence and the brooding look on his face has a lot more to do than just his father being weird with me. But I know that’s a part of it. I know it from the way he lunged out of his chair back there at the house to protect me.
Hell, I’ve never had man lunge to my defense like that.
I can remember any number of a dozen times over the last two years when one of Vince’s awful, pretend-gangster friends would hit on me; aggressively. I remember how Vince would just laugh and then accuse me of flirting with his friends.
A real winner, there.
But Austin jumped in like a damn superhero at the first sign of someone coming near me.
It’s not altogether not sexy, I’ll say that.
I turn and look out the side window of the Aston Martin, hiding the blush and and the tingly feeling writ large across my face in the darkness of the car.
Austin pulls into the driveway, the car going silent as he pulls the key out.
“Thanks for coming tonight.” I turn to see him looking at me in the darkness, that steely look still on his face, but with the slightest hint of a smile hidden there in the corners of his lips.
“Your mom is pretty great you know.”
He grins, turning to look out the front windshield. “My mom is a saint, when she’s not acting like a fucking idiot.” He shakes his head, his thumbs drumming on the steering wheel.
“People do dumb things when they think they’re in love. Or are.” I reach up to play with the ends of my hair, curling them around a finger in a way I can distinctly remember my mother shaking her head at when I was younger.
I turn to look at him. “My father cheated on a lot more than mutual funds and declaring income tax, you know. My mother took him back every time, and I used to hate her for that. Now?” I shrug. “Now I just feel sorry for her.”
Austin smiles in the darkness. “Sounds like our moms might-”
“Nope, no,” I shake my head, laughing. “She’s the exception to the ‘dumb things in love’ rule. She’s married two more men since Dad, and she’s still a fucking lunatic.”
Austin laughs, shaking his head as he turns and grins at me. “And what about Vince.”
I arch a brow at him. “What about Vince?”
Austin shrugs. “That fall into the ‘dumb things in love’ rule?”
“I’ve never been in love.”
It just tumbles out, but I know it’s true the second I say it in the ticking darkness of that car in the Hollywood Hills. And for a moment, it feels like a knife to the heart, until I realize it doesn’t actually hurt to say out loud.
In fact, it’s freeing.
Austin whistles. “Well, damn.” He leans back against his door, nodding at me and looking me over in an appraising way. “I sort of had you pegged for the fairytale-princess ‘true love’ type shit.”
“Nope.” I flash a half-smile at him in the dark, brushing hair away from my face and tucking it behind my ear. “I’m not really sure I believe in it, to be honest.”
“That why you marry a guy like me for five hundred large?”
I grin. “Oh, totally. I just married you for your body.”
I’d meant it lightly, as a joke. But the whole car goes quiet as the weight of the sudden sexual tension shrouds the darkness. A full second ticks by, with me cringing at my Freudian slip of an awful joke before I suddenly shake my head and reach for the door.
“We should go inside.”
I all but run to the front door of the house, and I almost make it too, before I suddenly feel his hand on my arm.
“Hang on.”
I freeze, closing my eyes and raking my teeth across my bottom lip; not trusting myself to turn.
“Natalie.” That deep, honeysuckle voice sends a shiver down my spine as he says my name.
“Look at me.”
I want to shake my head. I want to say no, and push kick my way through the front door so I can run off and escape into my room.
But I don’t, and instead, I slowly turn to face him.
His look is lingering - hungry, and it’s the same hunger that I feel inside, as much as I’m trying to shove it aside or pretend it isn’t there.
Because I shouldn’t have thoughts like that for a man like this.
But the way he looked when he jumped up at the dinner table, and the ferocity of his defense of my honor, and the damn way he’s looking at me now has my heart skipping a beat and my blood stuttering in my veins as I meet his eyes.
I swallow thickly, feeling my pulse quicken.
He moves closer and I step back until my back is against the front door to his house. But he moves closer still, until his palm is flat against the door to my side, his body right in front of me.
God I want to kiss him.
The thought comes surging into my thoughts almost as powerfully and as primal as the hunger for him I felt before. And I know it’s silly, and I know that’s not what this is - paper-napkin contract or letter from the State of Nevada aside.
But those damn lips of his so close to mine are like this dare needling at me. And what’s worse is that I know what they feel like on mine. I know what his tongue tastes like as it slides against mine.
I know how his kiss makes my whole body sizzle and
ache.
He leans in closer still, until those damn lips are almost brushing across mine.
“You know,” he growls, the sound of his southern-dipped voice making my knees weak as he breaths the words across my lips.
“Uh-huh?”
His tongue darts out, sliding quickly across his bottom lip as his eyes light a fire into mine.
“It’s getting harder and harder to come up with excuses not to kiss you, and damn if you’re not makin’ it even harder.”
The words I never meant to say come tumbling out anyway.
“Well then maybe you should stop making excuse-”
I don’t even finish before his lips sear fiercely against my own. I moan as he kisses me hard enough to bruise, growling into my mouth as he presses me up against the door behind me and smothers me with his hard body.
I’m melting into him, my hands instantly clutching at him and yanking him into me. His hand slides to my waist, pulling me against him as his other hand slides up to tangle in my hair.
I’m throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him back before I can even second-guess any of this. I’m moaning into his mouth as he pulls me into him, cupping my jaw with one hand as the other slides down my back to palm my ass and grind me against him.
His kisses are hungry and demanding - insistent and needing.
Needing me, and I know right then that whatever the hell this is, I need him back.
I kiss him hungrily, my hands sliding up and into his hair as our tongues swirl.
He’s growling into my mouth as he fumbles behind us. The door suddenly swings open behind us and we go tumbling inside, hardly breaking the kiss as we crash to the floor of his entryway. I gasp as his mouth pulls from my lips to trail down to the tender skin of my neck, his hands sliding over me as our bodies undulate together.
I’m gasping, swirling, falling, and I feel like I might explode.
But I’m alive. More alive than I’ve felt in a very, very long time.
I pull him back to my mouth, whimpering as I kiss him fiercely, like he’s my lifeline back to feeling this - to feeling in control and feeling alive. I’m moaning into him, and knowing this is wrong, but it can’t be helped.
There’s no saying no to this, and there’s certainly no putting this genie back in the bottle. Not with those hands, and these lips.
His hand slides to the hem of my top, pulling it out from the waist of my skirt and pushing it up to expose my skin. I slip it over my head, already feeling his fingers at my back slipping the clasp of my bra.
That goes too, followed quickly by my hands on his shirt, pulling it up over the coiled muscles of his torso and watching with a hungry look of my own as he kneels to pull it from his body and throw it across the room.
His powerful arms snatch me, pulling me up into his lap as my legs go around his waist. I gasp as he stands, lifting me like I’m weightless before striding across the room and sinking us both into the couch.
And then we’re moaning into each other’s mouths, skin-to-skin. I feel his chest against mine, my nipples sending shivers of electric tingles through my body as they drag across his warm chest. His mouth moves to my neck again, his hands sliding down to pull at the hem of my new skirt. I’m soaking wet, wanting him so badly, and feeling my pulse roar inside as his hands slide between my legs to trail over the seam of my panties.
“Wait.”
The word comes tearing out of me, fueled by the last shreds of my self-control.
Austin pauses, his mouth moving away from my neck as his eyes dart across mine questioningly.
“I-” I shake my head. “Look, just no…” I roll my eyes at myself, feeling my cheeks blush red. “No sex, okay?”
His brow cocks and a grin teases the corners of his lips as he looks at me questioningly.
“Just, no sex.”
He frowns. “No sex like…”
“Like I’m not fucking you.” I frown and quickly shake my head, realizing how crass it sounds. “I mean not-”
Not while you’re paying me money because it makes me feel like a hooker, or like Vince’s secretary?
I bite my lip, feeling the voice inside screaming at me to shut the hell up and let this insanely gorgeous man with his lips on my neck and his hand on my thigh making me wetter and hotter by the second do whatever he wants to me.
“I just can’t,” I say quietly.
He nods, and his fingers slowly slide up across the edge of my panties, making my eyes flutter shut as I moan quietly. “But this…”
“Fingers are okay,” I nod quickly, panting as his finger trails across the front of my panties, teasing me.
He pauses, and I open my eyes to see him grinning at me wickedly. “Oh are they?”
“Uh-huh.” I nod again, swallowing the thick lump in my throat as his eyes burn in to mine.
“I think I like this loophole,” he growls, his eyes dropping down to my breasts.
“Like this?” He pushes my wet panties to the side, his thick fingers brushing over my slit and making me whimper.
God yes.
He leans down, his lips brushing against my ear before he gently nips the lobe between his teeth, making me gasp. His fingers slip between my lips, rubbing me slowly before he slides one thick finger easily inside as I moan loudly.
“Seems fingers are very okay,” he growls into my ear as I whimper and arch my hips towards him.
His fingers curl, and he starts to stroke that magic place just inside. His lips move down to the hollow of my neck, teeth grazing the skin as his thumb begins to roll over my aching clit.
I’m moaning, clutching at rippling biceps and letting my head fall back on the couch as he slowly starts to tease me higher and higher with his fingers.
“No sex, huh?” he growls into my ear, rocking his hips against me and making me gasp as I feel the huge thickness pulsing against my thigh through his shorts and making me sorely second guess my own convictions. “Well that’s fine, princess, cause I already know I can make you come harder with these fingers than you’ve ever come in your life.”
“Big words,” I mumble out, gasping and moaning loudly as he sinks his fingers deep and curls them up.
His hand starts to move faster as he moves his mouth lower, sucking and nipping at the skin of my neck. I can feel my pulse roaring through my veins, my body starting to tense up higher and higher as his lips trail over my heaving breasts until they find the hard buds of my nipples.
I’m burning up inside, the fire only growing hotter and hotter as Austin stokes it with his fingers, and that wicked tongue teasing across my nipples. My hands slide into his hair, clutching at him as I feel the world start to spin around us. I’m gasping, feeling my body go cascading towards that sweet drop and release as his fingers work magic across my sex, his thumb rolling my clit in a steady, demanding rhythm.
“Oh, God-”
“Come for me, princess,” he growls into my ear before dragging his lips across my cheek and claiming my mouth. I moan into him as his tongue probes my lips, his fingers curling deep inside and that thumb of his sending me right to the edge.
“I want to watch your face when you come for me, Natalie,” he growls. “And I want you to come. Right. Now.”
And I shatter.
I scream into his mouth as my orgasm tears through me. My thighs clamp on his wrist, my hands clutching wildly at his shoulders, at his hair, at his face - anything to keep myself from going spinning away from him in the vortex of my release. My body goes rigid, my hips rocking off the couch into him before I suddenly collapse beneath him as if the strings holding me up were cut.
Oh, God, what did I just do?
It’s the first thought that hits me as I slowly regain use of my mind - the horrible, sinking, self-loathing realization that I’ve just left my standards and my scruples at the door and done that with a man who’s literally paying me to be his wife.
The feeling rolls through me like nausea, and I’m suddenly sitting up and feel
ing the awkward need to cover myself as I smooth my skirt down.
“Hey, hang on.”
Austin’s hand on my cheek stops my mad thoughts for a second, the warmth of his palm centering and calming me for one brief moment.
But it’s too much to hold in.
I shake my head, pulling away from his hand. “We shouldn’t have done-”
He kisses me, bringing me back to center again. “Yeah, we should have,” he murmurs into my lips.
But there it is again - that nagging, lingering thought that this is wrong. That pulling feeling on my back that I can’t ignore - all of it stemming from the fact that all of this is due to to a financial contract.
Me living here, these clothes I’m wearing, meeting his mother…
All of it, built on the premise of an exchange of money.
And I feel filthy.
I pull away. “No, Austin.” My eyes dart to his, almost losing my sudden resolve in the deepness of those hazel orbs, or in the thin lines of those dimples in his cheeks.
“You’re- you’re paying me.”
He frowns. “Nat, it’s not like that-”
“It’s exactly like that, Austin.”
I push my hair back as I stand, snatching my shirt up off the ground where it landed and hold it to my bare chest.
“That can’t happen again,” I say, quickly shaking my head.
And I don’t know who I’m trying to convince more as I whirl and run for my room.
21
Austin
Club music pounds through my head, vibrating my skull and making my damn teeth hurt it’s so loud.
I fucking hate clubs.
I’m a Texas boy. Give me some country music and a cold Lone Star and I’m a happy guy. But instead I’ve got shitty Euro-pop and some godawful designer light beer my new teammate Eli passes to me.
Welcome to LA, I guess.
“Hey, so, congratulations I guess, man,” Eli hoists his beer my way.
Daryl, another new teammate, along with Kyle who’s just along for the ride, join in, toasting my newly-spilled nuptials that’ve been splayed across the fucking internet for the last two days.
