by Lexy Timms
“Ah,” she said.
“If you don’t like the office, I could—”
“No, no, no. It’s wonderful, Colin. Really.”
She stood onto her toes and placed a chaste kiss on my cheek that left me worried rather than settled.
Was she second guessing the proposal?
“Are you hungry? I have dinner reservations for us, but—”
“I’m starving. I fell asleep on the plane ride and didn’t eat much before the flight.”
“Then let me treat you to one of the finest dinners in L.A. then,” I said.
All throughout dinner, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Abby was telling me about the plane ride and how she was impressed that nothing happened to interfere with the flight. She even made some quip about the smooth flight happening because I wasn’t on it and dubbed me her own personal ‘bad luck charm.’ She tossed me a sultry little grin across the table that sent my heart racing, and as I reached over to take her hand I could feel her trembling.
“Abby, are you all right?” I asked.
Her eyes rose to mine as she set her wine glass down. The light from her eyes faded as she drew circles on top of my skin. I braced for the worst as my brain prepared my body for the rejection it was about to face.
But instead of rejection, I got something completely different.
“Do you think people will take me seriously?” she asked.
“What?”
“This personal public relations position. It wasn’t something you originally had, right?” she asked.
“Not until Beddingfield started stirring the pot making all his crazy statements about me. Media-baiting me and stuff like that. I knew I needed to create a position then. Most prominent businessmen have a position like this one, which I’m sure you know. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
But I knew what was worrying her and I thought knew how to settle her mind.
“Abby, you are—first and foremost—completely qualified for this position. You are a brilliant P.R. representative and overqualified for any other P.R. position we have except this one. It is well-deserved given your educational background and your experience in the field.”
“Even my screw up at the magazine?” she asked.
“Especially that one. True character is realized in our moments of failure. It makes no sense to hire a P.R. representative that doesn’t have a decent character.”
I watched the hesitation slide from her face, but there was still a bit lingering behind her eyes.
“I’ve missed you,” I said.
“It’s only been a few days,” Abby said, snickering.
“It has seemed like forever, I said.”
Her eyes rose to mine and I could still see silent questions rushing behind her beautiful brown eyes.
“How about this?” I asked. “Why don’t we get our dinners packed up to go, then head back home? We can curl up next to the fire, I can open up a bottle of wine, and we can enjoy this food from the comfort of our own couch.”
“You mean your couch?” she asked.
“What?”
“You said ‘our couch.’ You mean ‘your couch,’ right?”
“Um, yeah. Yeah, my couch at my apartment,” I said.
“I think that would be nice.”
I signaled for the waitress who quickly came and boxed up our food. Relief was washing over Abby’s features, but her words were weighing heavily on my mind. Semantics. Public relation representatives dealt with semantics on a daily basis. It was the difference between a decent public image and a repulsive one. As a media representative, Abby was not only good with twisting bad truths to look like decent ventures gone wrong, but she was also good with verbiage that communicated lines that needed to be drawn in the sand.
Abby was drawing lines with me that made me very uncomfortable, and it made me wonder if she even knew she was doing it.
“Ready?” I asked, as I offered her my arm.
“Ready,” she said.
She took my arm and I escorted her out of the restaurant. I felt her clinging tightly to me as we made our way to the parking lot. The bag of food was clutched at my side as I led her to my car, but a sound in the bushes caught my ear.
A clicking sound that Abby was already trying to locate.
“Hello?” she asked, as she released my arm. “Is anyone there?”
“Abby, don’t. Just get in the car.”
“There’s someone in the bushes, Colin. I can hear—”
Just then, a man with a camera jumped out of the bushes and started taking rapid pictures. Abby jumped with a fright as I ran towards her, my arm wrapping around her waist. Her eyes were wild as I tried to shield her from the paparazzo, his camera shutter rapidly clicking as I opened up Abby’s door.
I shoved her in and gave her the food before I ran around to my side.
Opening the throttle, I quickly pulled out of the restaurant as Abby sat quietly. She was clutching the food tightly to her as her wide eyes stared out the window. I reached over and took her hand, feeling her fingers trembling against mine.
But no matter how much I urged her to, she wouldn’t turn to look at me.
Chapter 2
Abby
My mind was racing a million times a second as we pulled into Colin’s apartment complex. It really wasn’t a complex, but more like a looming tower of suites that overlooked the ocean. I hadn’t been ready to come here yet and see all my boxes strewn about, but after the paparazzi attack at the restaurant, I couldn’t wait to get inside. I hadn’t understood I was going to be Colin’s personal P.R. representative. I thought I was taking the position as the company’s representative. This meant I would be responsible for dealing with Colin’s image in the media.
Which meant interacting with them and being in front of a camera.
I was shit in front of a camera! I figured that out at the conference. Sure, it may have looked like I’d held my head high, but in reality, I was a cowering little woman with clanking metal knees and a hollow head. It took all the education and personal experience I’d garnered up until that point to simply field the media barrage in that press room in Wichita.
But Colin expected me to do that full time!?
We pulled into the parking garage underneath the complex and he parked right next to my SUV. The car stopped and we sat for a moment, giving me a few seconds to breathe. I knew Colin was trying to give me the best he could and I really was appreciative, but it was just all so much so fast.
“You ready to go upstairs?”
I turned my head towards Colin and found those bright blue eyes staring back at me. Instantly, I felt my nerves calming and the voices in my head receding. That was the thing about him. The thing I just couldn’t nail down. There was something in his eyes—in that look he gave me whenever he saw only me—that settled my mind and tempered my racing heart.
“I love you,” I said breathlessly.
The smile that crossed his cheeks was one of stunned relief. He leaned forward and captured my lips and I felt a quick heat growing in my core. I reached over and cupped his cheek before my fingers made their way to his hair, pulling him closer to me as our tongues danced like wildfire.
“Let’s get you inside,” Colin said with a whisper.
I grabbed our food and he dragged me to the elevator. The moment the doors closed his lips were all over me. His hands raced underneath my red coat and pulled my body towards him. I could feel his thickness growing against my skin. His lips raced down my neck as his hand took the bag of food, then he pulled me close to him as my hands fisted his coat.
“The things I’m going to do to you,” he said.
Our lips peppered each other in kisses until the elevator brought us all the way to the top. The elevator lights blinked, signaling the need for Colin’s key. He reluctantly pulled away and fiddled with his keys, trying to find the one he needed to open the elevator door into his home.
I reached ar
ound and palmed his bulge as a groan slipped from his lips.
The elevator doors finally opened and we poured into his home. Our hands made quick work of each other’s clothes, leaving them in piles on the floor. We knocked up against the walls with our bare backs, our bodies heating for each other as our lips began to swell. I could feel my arousal pooling between my thighs as he picked me up and carried me across the threshold into his bedroom.
He laid me on the bed before his hungry lips raced down my body. He was needy. Primal. Resisting urges I knew he had in favor of what he wanted the most. His tongue parted my folds as my juices coated his tongue, and I could feel his growl rumble my ribcage as I moaned for more of him.
His hands wrapped around my thighs and pulled me closer to his lips. The way he sucked and flicked my swollen nub had me breathless from the start. The satin sheets underneath my body caressed my skin as my heels dug into his back. His hands pressed deep into my thighs, threatening to leave bruises behind as I undulated into his face. I could feel him lapping deep, drinking me down as my body poured out more for him to eat.
It wasn’t long before my back was arching off the pillow and his name was filling the corners of his room.
Kissing up my shaking body, his eyes met mine. They were blown wide with lust as he settled between my legs, his dripping girth teasing my entrance. He slowly slid in, his eyes never leaving mine as my jaw unhinged in pleasure. The way he stretched me and filled me always robbed me of my voice. Like the first time I ever had sex, only without the pain.
Our bodies moved together as he sank his lips onto mine. I could taste myself on him, the sweet intoxication swirling around my head. I ran my hands down his back and gripped onto his muscles. My legs wrapped around his waist just so I could feel him deeper inside my body. All the doubts I had running around in my mind washed away the moment our bodies intertwined.
It was during these moments with him that I knew he was the one for me, whether my brain was willing to accept it yet or not.
I could feel his curls raking against my clit, teasing shivers from my body as his lips slid to my neck. He grazed along my pulse point before moving to my shoulders where his teeth sought their fill. I could feel him pulsing against my walls, his thickness growing within me, like a plant searching for the sun to let it bloom. I moaned as he nibbled at my shoulder and gasped when he sank his teeth into my skin.
Then I rolled him over and decided to take what was rightfully mine.
Slamming my hands down onto his chest, I bounced in his lap. I could feel my arousal coating his skin as I swirled my hips. His hands grabbed onto my ass, kneading my skin as he guided my movements. I had missed him. Oh, how I had missed this. It had only been three or four days since I’d seen him last, but to my body it felt like an aching eternity. To my body, it felt like decades had gone by. Like long lost lovers were finally rediscovering bodies they craved in their youth.
I dropped to Colin’s body and opened my eyes, only to find him smiling at me.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, just before he kissed me. “You’re so radiant when you’re sweating for me.”
I watched as a bead of sweat dripped from my brow and onto his cheek.
Slowing my movements, I dipped my body down to his. I felt his hands move up my back, his fingertips massaging my muscles as I rolled deeply into him. I sank my lips to his neck and kissed his skin, feeling the electricity building in my toes. I loved the scruff on his face. It was something I hadn’t experienced yet with him, and it sent shivers down my spine.
It also raised to the surface a silent but painful truth that hung between us.
My body jolted with my impending climax as my breathing became unsteady. I rose up from his body and picked up my pace, feeling the heady passion of my orgasm coiling in my stomach. I was so close I could taste it. I could feel my body locking up as my fingertips curled into his chest.
But before I could seek my end, Colin pushed me off him and scrambled to get behind me.
He lifted my hips into the air as I sank onto one of his fluffy pillows. He slid into my warmth effortlessly as I groaned. My legs were shaking with every stroke he took within my body, and I could feel his balls rising to smack my clit. He set a furious pace, pounding into my body as I lurched up his bed.
This was the first time I had seen his penthouse apartment in L.A., and the only parts of it I’d seen were the glimpses of his bedroom—those visible from around his shoulders.
He wrapped his hand in my hair and pulled my face off the pillow. Our moans droned out into the room and I could feel my end approaching. My gut tightened and my toes curled. The heat in my chest spread throughout my body. Colin’s hips were stuttering as his hand tightened in my hair, and as stars burst behind my eyes I heard those words drip from his lips.
“Abby. Oh, shit. You’re perfect for me. Perfect. I love you. Oh—shit—”
He spilled into me, triggering my own release. I felt my walls flutter around him, pulling him deeper and deeper into my body. He collapsed onto me, his chest heaving as we both plummeted to his mattress. I reached back to smooth my hand through his hair, and I felt his lips descend onto my skin.
He kissed me down my arm before he slid from between my legs.
Collapsing on the bed beside me, he pulled me into him. The evidence of the love we made was draining from between my legs onto a bed that was foreign to me as I breathed in the familiar scent of my fiancé. My body shook with lustful delight as I relaxed into his body, and I could feel Colin’s hands drawing faceless pictures into the skin on my back.
“I love you,” I said.
“I have a date.”
His statement caught me off guard as I threaded my leg in between his.
“What?” I asked.
“For the wedding. I have a date.”
I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath.
“When were you thinking?” I asked.
“I was thinking a fall wedding. Maybe sometime this September. When the leaves are turning but haven’t coated the ground yet.”
“Sounds beautiful,” I said.
“It’ll only be a backdrop framing the beautiful woman I’ll be marrying.”
He kissed my forehead and I tried to smile at him, but all I could conjure was a plastered grin. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him and it wasn’t that I was regretting things. It was just that everything about him was still so foreign. His schedule and the way he ran his life. His home and the place where he worked. We had taken two botched road trips together and suddenly we were getting married?
“Do you know what colors you might like for the wedding?” he asked. “My mother’s going to want to know.”
His mother.
I hadn’t even met his fucking mother.
“Um. Let me think about it,” I said.
He kissed my forehead as my eyes fluttered shut and I clung to his naked body. This was what I wanted. The strength of him against me as the tides of my life changed. I didn’t need the fancy home or the decadent dinners or a penthouse office right across the hall from his. I didn’t need a lavish wedding that took months to plan or a wedding dress that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Right now, my life was in such upheaval that I felt myself spiraling. Sailing into an endless abyss of unfamiliarity that I now needed to figure out how to navigate.
The issue? Most of that unfamiliarity centered around Colin—the man I said I would marry.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Was it?
Chapter 3
Colin
“So, I got a call this morning.”
“From who?” I asked.
“The landlord from that apartment complex I checked out a few days ago. I cleared all their hurdles, and the apartment is ready for me to move into. Isn’t that wonderful?”
I stopped brushing my teeth and glanced at Abby’s reflection in the mirror. She was standing at my double-sink as she rubbed moisturizer into her skin. She looked radiant as she talked
about her own place. But a part of me was hurt by it. A part of me was hoping that if she stayed with me and saw how convenient and nice it could be, she would elect to stay. After all, we would be married in a few months anyway. Then she’d just have to move right back in.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.
She gave me this dumbfounded look in the mirror before she grabbed for her toothbrush.
“Of course I’m sure. Look, I know you don’t understand, but I guess some of my parent’s old fashioned ways rubbed off on me. I don’t want to live with you until we’re married.”
“But we’ll be married in a few months. September, remember?”
“Did we agree on that?” she asked.
She gave me this innocent little look, but it felt like she was sidestepping.
“I thought we had, yes,” I said.
“Well, I want to make sure we take our time. You know, so we don’t rush into anything. Maybe we could make it September of next year?”
She started brushing her teeth like she hadn’t just pushed our wedding date back an entire year.
“Abby?”
“Yeah?”
“You know if you don’t want this, all you have to do is say so.”
Abby’s motions stopped as she turned her head towards me. Foaming toothpaste was dripping down her chin as her eyes slowly grew wide. She looked like a rabid dog in heat about to pounce on the first thing that pissed her off.
I’d seen many sides of Abby, but this one I had yet to witness.
“I just want to make sure we do this right. What’s wrong with that?” she asked.
Accepting her explanation for now, I tried to diffuse the exchange before she went back to cleaning herself up.
“Well, I don’t want you to take the subway or walk to work. I don’t want you getting hurt or lost until you can get your bearings,” I said.
“I have that SUV you bought me, remember? I can get around in that.”
“Just let me send a car for you for a couple of weeks. Just until you familiarize yourself with the city.”
