by Virna DePaul
“Fuck, I can’t wait any longer,” I hear him say. He twirls me around and I have to laugh at how easily he maneuvers me. He kisses me wildly, and we taste each other. He pulls away briefly to grab a condom from the table next to the bed. Getting off the bed, he takes me by the hips and pulls me to the edge.
I’m on my knees, wet and desperate for him to fill me. Gripping the comforter, I groan as he presses his cock against my soaked opening. This position makes me feel every inch of him. For a moment I’m not even sure he’ll fit. But then I feel his pelvis pressed against my ass, and I wiggle.
He spanks me. The sound makes a loud crack that echoes in the room.
“I told you I’d fuck you like this, didn’t I?” he says, pulling out before shoving back inside me. “I told you I’d fuck you as I smacked your delicious ass, didn’t I?”
I can only moan and try not to scream in response. The sharp pain of the smacks coupled with his cock inside me sends me into another place. He thrusts in a relentless rhythm and my body tightens like I’m a spring about to release.
I lean down on the bed, my breasts pressed against the blanket. He slaps my ass again.
“Dirty, naughty girl,” he breathes. “Who knew my girl would love to get fucked like this?”
I moan. Charles never talked to me like this. But I love it. I look back over my shoulder at him, and it only fuels my own pleasure at the look on his handsome face.
I can feel his rhythm getting jerky as he starts to come. My body tightens and tightens, all the blood in my body pooling below, and I know my orgasm will be cataclysmic. Extraordinary. I push against him and he shoves one last time inside me. I burst, screaming into the bed. I’m shaking as his cock jerks inside of me. It only extends my own orgasm.
He lightly spanks my ass one last time before pulling free. I collapse onto my side, and he joins me shortly thereafter, his arms around me.
“Damn, that was great.” He breathes against my neck, and I must admit, I preen a little at his praise. I’m not so frigid anymore, am I?
“You weren’t too bad yourself.” I turn over so I’m facing him. He’s still wearing one sock, and when I look around the room, I see our various pieces of clothing tossed everywhere. “Is your tie on the lamp?” I ask.
He looks behind and then laughs. “Well, we were in a bit of a hurry. At least, I was in a bit of a hurry to get inside you.” He caresses my side; I shiver.
Simon kisses me and strokes my body and then proceeds to kiss me all over, from my toes to the top of my head. When he enters me, I’m practically writhing on the bed, desperate for him. Even though I want him to go faster, he keeps up a measured, almost painful, rhythm that only drives me crazy. But when I start arching against the bed, I can tell he’s about to falter. All of a sudden he’s driving into me and we’re both coming at the same time, yelling to the ceiling.
* * *
I wake up knowing I’d had the best sex of my life. I glance at my phone and see it’s nine o’clock in the morning. Simon’s asleep still, and I sit and watch him for a few moments. His golden hair is tousled and I can see a shadow of a beard on his face. He looks younger, asleep like this. I touch his cheek, the one with the scar, and his eyelashes flutter. When he sees me, he smiles.
“What time is it?”
I tell him, and he yawns, stretching like a sleepy lion.
“Simon, how did you get your scar?”
He stiffens and doesn’t appear like he’s going to answer.
I immediately pull away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”
He catches my wrist, pulling me back toward him, then sighs even as he leans forward and kisses me softly. “It okay. It’s just—it doesn’t have pleasant memories for me.”
“Oh. Were you—were you attacked?” The idea of someone hurting him, possibly even having the chance to kill him, makes me tremble with fear. Simon’s such a good man. I love being with him—no, that’s not exactly true. I’m in love with him. And as much as that scares me, I just can’t deny the truth of it, either.
“I wish that were the case,” he says grimly.
I blink. “What?”
He falls back and rubs his palms over his face. “I got into some trouble. Wholly my fault. I got involved with some rough kids and, well, you know yourself how cocky I can be. I picked a fight. One I lost. It was a mistake, and this scar, it’s a constant reminder of that mistake, of how I should never think too highly of myself. Because in the end, we’re all a product of our upbringing.”
I frown, confused about his statement he shouldn’t think too highly of himself and uncertain what he means by being a product of his upbringing. He hasn’t shared anything about his childhood or his family with me. All I know is his sister Dana is a waitress at my family’s country club. I look around at his meager apartment and wonder if maybe his family had fallen upon hard times or something. If that’s the case, I wouldn’t care if they’d lost everything.
“We all make mistakes,” I say. “Regardless of our upbringing.”
When I don’t go on, he pushes himself up on one elbow. “You’ve mentioned past mistakes before. Past mistakes your mum won’t let you forget.”
I nod. Hesitate. Then decide that since he’d shared something personal, I could be brave enough and do the same thing. “I was a wild teenager. Reckless. I partied. I slept around. Not very well, I know, considering I’d never had an orgasm or given a blow job before you, but I definitely wasn’t the good girl you know me to be,” I add, trying to make things less serious.
He doesn’t smile or laugh, but he does reach out and caress my cheek, making me tremble.
“What happened, Marissa?” he asks.
I look down, and trail my finger over the pattern in the sheet. “I was with this boy—Brian Hall—and he was a typical bad boy. Wore a leather jacket and smoked cigarettes even. But the thing was, I thought he loved me. One night, we left a party and we’d been drinking, and I asked him not to drive. I asked him to call a taxi, but what kind of bad boy would he have been if he’d done that?” I smile sadly.
“Marissa,” he whispers.
I shake my head. “We got into a car accident. I was hurt, but not bad. I don’t even have any scars.”
“And Brian?”
“He ran off. Left me there. Because he didn’t want to be found by the police. Of course they found him anyway but—”
“The bastard left you there? Hurt?” Simon snaps, disbelief and rage written all over his expression.
“He did. And of course I was left to face my family alone. My mom and dad were horrified. They were already on the brink of divorce, but after what I did…”
“They divorced?”
“Yes. Got back together. Divorced again. And are now back together. Obviously.”
“The divorce wasn’t your fault, Marissa. And what you did—getting into a car with someone who had been drinking—was a mistake, but it’s not something you should pay for for the rest of your life. It’s not right for your mum to keep bringing it up. It’s not right for her to use guilt to keep you in line.”
“She just wants what’s best for me. And it’s better that I learned my lesson before something even more terrible happened. I was out of control. I’m not meant to be wild and reckless and passionate, Simon. I like being a good girl, for the most part. Hell, pretending to be your girlfriend is the most reckless thing I’ve done in ages.”
He’s quiet for several moments before he says, “Do you regret it? Especially after what happened tonight?”
“Not at all,” I say, meaning every word. “I will never regret the time I’ve spent with you, Simon.”
He blinks. Tenderness and desire flare in his eyes, and hope swells inside me.
Will he reciprocate what I’d just said? Will he tell me he wants more time with me? That he doesn’t want thing to end. Will he—
He leans forward, kisses me on the temple, then says, “Are you hungry?”
Now it’s me who blinks.
/> Am I hungry?
Right.
He doesn’t want to go there. He doesn’t want intimacy and feelings and sharing with me. He doesn’t want a real relationship.
Now that the ball is over, we’re supposed to go our separate ways.
I swallow hard and force myself to smile. “Are you cooking?”
“You don’t want to eat my cooking, darling.”
“Then you know what we should do?”
He raises an expectant eyebrow.
“Order delivery like civilized people.”
He snorts. “What restaurant would deliver to this neighborhood?”
I force a smile. “I know a guy who knows a guy…”
* * *
When the food arrives, it’s heavenly. Eggs, bacon, fluffy pancakes, muffins, flaky croissants, even fresh jam and whipped butter are spread out on his bed, like we’re on a breakfast picnic. He was also smart enough to order coffee enough for an elephant, and we almost drink all of it.
I must admit, normally I’m rather shy to eat around men. Charles was always making some snide comment about my weight. It got to the point that I tried not to eat around him at all. It was easier to poke at a salad when we went to dinner and then make something for myself when I got home.
With Simon, I only take some eggs and a muffin, which barely takes up one side of a plate. I take tiny bites, trying to restrain myself from inhaling the food, I’m so hungry.
He seems to sense I need encouragement, because he places multiple slices of bacon on my plate and then slathers my muffin in butter. “Eat up. You’ll need your strength,” he says by way of explanation. “As much as I love you wearing my T-shirt, I can’t wait to get you out of it.”
I’m a little surprised by his words. Since the ball is over, and after what happened earlier, I’d assumed we’d be saying our goodbyes after we ate. As pathetic as it makes me, I’m happy to know Simon won’t be kicking me out of his life quite so abruptly.
I start eating like a normal person, even licking my fingers by the end. Simon is looking at me like he’d like to eat me now.
A little embarrassed by how much I ate, I clean up our breakfast without saying a word to him. I’m putting dishes in the dishwasher when I feel arms around my waist. Turning in his arms, I smile.
“I know exactly what I’d like to do this morning.” He growls wolfishly, kissing my neck and making me squirm. “But what would you like to do?”
It suddenly dawns on me—I wasn’t supposed to be taking today off. I groan. “I have a project for work I need to get done.”
He stares at me. “On a Sunday? Bloody hell. Why do you even work that job, love? You obviously hate it.”
“I do. I think about quitting every day. But I didn’t have much of a choice in what I did with my life. My mother—”
“Your mother is the same person who thinks you belong with Charles. She isn’t the best person to dictate your life, I’d wager,” he says.
He’s right, of course. The idea was to work and quit when I married Charles. Sometimes I’d fantasized about continuing to work even after I was married—maybe as a freelancer, as my own boss, as much as that decision would probably give my mother a heart attack. Even to me the idea of just quitting my job, of letting go of the familiar, feels terrifying.
“You know,” he says, “I was thinking that I don’t want to let you go. I’d like to keep seeing you. How do you feel about that?”
My brain stops. He doesn’t want to let me go. My heart starts to flutter in my chest again. So I’d been wrong in assuming he didn’t want to continue seeing me? Oh God, I’d been wrong!
“I’d like that very much,” I manage to say.
He steps away, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Good, because it’s obvious from The Prat’s appearance last night that he hasn’t quite left the picture. And I’m thinking we’ll need to show Spires and Noble that we’re legit at least one more time, if not twice more, until the press conference. Since Janelle showed up at the ball last night, I have a feeling they’re on the fence still. I tried smoothing things over, but you know them.”
That fluttery heart feeling? It’s replaced with a clenching heart feeling. Again.
He only wants to continue this for the act.
Did you really think he was going to tell you he loved you? my mind screams at me.
God, I feel stupid. Here I am, expecting him to proclaim that he wants to make this real, when in reality, he’s just using it to his advantage like he told me he would from the beginning.
At my silence, he says, “Marissa? Are you okay with keeping this going?”
I want to burst into tears. I bite my cheek so hard I taste blood to keep those tears from showing.
“Sure, yes. We might as well give it our best shot, right?”
He smiles. “Splendid. I knew you would be a good sport about this.” His phone rings and he gives me a quick kiss before going into the other room to answer. I sit there for a while longer, staring off into the distance. Finally, I get up and wander into the living room. Simon smiles at me from his small balcony and I take in his meager belongings. His apartment seems more like a hotel room, keenly impersonal, as opposed to a home he put together himself. Maybe he doesn’t know how to get personal.
But I shake off those thoughts, because it’s none of my business. He isn’t my boyfriend. He never will be, and I need to get that through my thick skull. I return to the kitchen and find detergent under the sink. I start a load and lean against the counter since Simon is still on the phone.
Then I wait, wondering what the hell I’m going to do now.
Chapter Sixteen
Simon
I’m in my trailer on Monday afternoon after the final day of shooting Season Four of Alien Love, having just finished up another phone call with the producers of Perfect Union. Those men aren’t going to give me the part without having me jump through all the hoops, which I understand, but switching back and forth between my role as Borg and Simon-the-Reformed is rather exhausting. I wish they’d just put me out of my misery already.
Leaning back in my chair, I rub my temples. I wonder if there’s a fresh pot of coffee somewhere, because I’m about to nod off right here.
My phone rings, and I groan. Picking up, I say, “Simon here.”
“Simon, Declan. Noble and Spires just called me to set up a meeting for tomorrow. I have a good feeling about it.”
Seconds later, I’m disconnecting the call, my stomach clenching with nerves. The first person I want to call is Marissa, so I begin dialing her number, only to stop when someone knocks on my door and one of the interns sticks her head into the trailer.
“Mr. Dale, I have a visitor here for you. She doesn’t have an appointment, but she’s insistent on seeing you.”
Is it Marissa? It has to be Marissa. She’s never visited me on the set before, but I’m excited by the prospect. My heart pounding, I reply, “Send her back.”
I’d been readying to step into the shower and wash off this green paint. I’m pulling on my robe when the door to my trailer opens. I’m about to say Marissa’s name when I realize the woman standing in my office isn’t Marissa at all. She’s also the last person I ever thought I’d see here.
It’s Marissa’s mum, June Woodcrest.
She’s wearing an expensive, cream-colored suit, her shoes and purse a deep, blood red. Even her lipstick matches her purse. She’s staring at me like I’m some bug she never wanted to see again. I must admit, I’m so stunned by her appearance that I don’t say anything for a few moments.
“May I sit down?” she asks, eyeing me in all my green glory.
I move to the couch and clear some magazines off of it. “Yes, please.” She sits down in it, her back ramrod straight.
I go back around and sit down. When I turn back to her, she’s now looking at me like I’m a bug infested with disease. That simpering, gushy smile she had for me at the country club is long gone. My heart starts pounding all over
again and I can feel a cold sweat break out on my forehead.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Woodcrest?” I try to sound cool, collected.
She looks around my trailer and I can tell she’s judging me, in my makeup and silk robe, most of all. I shift uncomfortably in my seat. She wipes a spot from the arm of the chair she’s sitting in, sniffing a bit.
“Mr. Dale,” she finally says, “you can’t be under any misapprehension as to why I’m here.”
I blink. “I think I understand. I am sorry I lied to you about my profession. But I assure you, it’s not what you think.”
She makes a face. “It’s exactly what I think. My daughter has been acting like a different person, and I know now it’s because of your horrible influence. Before she met you, she was a sweet, dutiful girl. Now she’s been lying, defying us. She’s making a fool of herself for someone who doesn’t deserve her once again.” June takes out a handkerchief from her purse, dabbing at her eyes. I have a hard time imagining her actually crying. “What a disaster this is!”
I grit my teeth. I’m not usually easily riled, but June’s tone sets me on edge. Then again, I’ve never been much for snotty bluebloods telling me what to do.
“So you came here for…” I raise an eyebrow.
June gives me a look. “Let me say this as plainly as possible: we know of your family’s history. We know you have a mother who disappeared and a father who’s a drunkard. We know you’re nothing but a low-life from London’s East End. Because of your circumstances, we ask that you leave our daughter alone.”
A buzzing starts in my ears. Gazing at this woman, her expression one of judgment and disdain, I can barely keep myself from telling her to go to hell.
”Who told you?”
“I’m rich, Mr. Dale. I have people who can find these things out, if given the time. And after you conveniently waltzed yourself into my daughter’s life, I had you followed and investigated.”
