by Ali Parker
“If you think you can handle that many women,” she teased, and I chuckled.
“Yeah, I think I can pull it off,” I shot back, and she began to tuck in and sip on her coffee. I sat there for a moment, just staring at her. She glanced back up at me.
“What is it?”
“Did you spike my coffee or something?” I asked, keeping my voice light and hoping she wouldn’t take offense. To my relief, she chuckled at my teasing.
“Yeah, I get it.” She shrugged. “But I just decided, hey, marriage is what you make it, right? Even the fake kind like this.”
“So I can expect more of this going forward?” I asked hopefully. I could still feel the spot on my cheek where she had kissed me tingling slightly, and I craved more already.
“Don’t get used to breakfast every morning,” she shot back playfully and then nodded. “But yeah, more like this at least.”
“That sounds good to me.” I grinned. She lifted her coffee cup, and I clinked mine against hers, a deal sealed.
“And I’d like to move into your room,” she remarked, punctuating it with a sip of her coffee as I snorted in surprise.
“What?”
“I mean, so when our families come to visit, they don’t get suspicious about me sleeping in another room,” she pointed out calmly. “Maybe I could move some of my stuff in there when I get home from work tonight. Or you can move it into my room.”
“I think I could live with that.” I nodded, trying to play it as cool as I could. I wanted to ask if this meant she would be sleeping there more often, too, or if this was all for appearances, but I held back.
“I guess I should think about getting ready for work.” She got to her feet, taking a last bite of her breakfast and flashing me a smile. As she brushed by me, she let her hand trail over my back, and she planted another kiss on my cheek. She smelled so sweet, so good, and I closed my eyes for a moment to savor the feeling of her close to me.
“I’ll make dinner tonight,” I called to her. She paused in the doorway of the kitchen and shot me a look over her shoulder, a slightly cheeky smile on her pretty face.
“You better,” she replied before walking down the hallway.
I wanted to watch her undress, hell, almost needed to, but I was more than happy to have her on my side again. I wasn’t sure what the hell I had done to earn this kind of reaction, but I was more than happy to revel in it for the time being. So she wanted to play at being my wife for real? Well, I was going to let her, especially if it meant walking in on her in satisfyingly few clothes, cooking me breakfast in the morning.
I got ready for work and headed out not long after her. She refused to let me take her back to her car, so she grabbed a cab, ignoring my grumbles over her choice.
I spent the whole day with a smile on my face thanks to the thought of her. Even the sub-standard coffee she’d been forced to make for us was enough to keep me going when it was matched with the rush of energy I felt from the way she’d casually planted that kiss on my cheek as though it belonged there. I couldn’t shake the memory of that image I’d had when I’d wandered out of the bedroom, her dancing, humming, the outfit, the food, and the coffee. Everything seemed to fit so perfectly together, and now our families were going to be meeting on the weekend. Hell, if you squinted at it and tilted your head sideways a little, you could nearly have mistaken this for a real marriage.
When I got home that evening, she was already in the shower. I ignored my natural urge to go in and join her and cooked us something to eat instead. It was just something simple, a stir-fry with noodles and fresh vegetables, but she emerged from the shower to find me plating it up she let out this long, satisfied sigh.
“How did you know exactly what I’d been craving all day?” she remarked as she took her seat, and I grabbed her a beer from the fridge. A part of me was waiting for the carpet to be whipped out from beneath me, like I knew in my heart this couldn’t last for long, but she seemed totally relaxed, totally at ease.
We ate together and chatted about our day, and then she helped me clean up afterward, splashing water on me playfully as I dried.
“You just don’t want to get your hands dirty,” she teased me.
“I think we both know that’s not true,” I shot back, and she bit her lip and giggled and shook her head, turning her attention back to the dishes.
When we were done, she headed through to her room to start moving some of my stuff in there so it would pass the family test when the time came, and I helped her out. I didn’t want to ask outright if this meant she wanted me in there, too, but I was bursting with curiosity.
“Hmm, thank God that’s done,” she sighed, flopping onto the bed. “I’m so tired. You want to go to bed?”
She was patting the spot next to her, and I hesitated for a moment, not sure if I was going to mess things up by taking her up on it. But fuck it, she was the one asking.
“Sounds good.” I nodded. “Let me just get ready, okay?”
The two of us brushed our teeth and got changed, and I came back through to find her slipped beneath the covers. She was wearing some light, strappy top that would have been so easy to peel off her, but I kept my hands clenched tightly at my sides and ignored those urges. I had to hold myself together.
I slid in next to her, and she snuggled up to me at once, letting her head lay on my chest as though this was what she’d been imagining all week long. I slipped an arm around her and closed my eyes. I was surprised at how good this felt, even without the sex. I opened my mouth to say something but then closed it, thinking better of it. I just wanted to be here in this moment with her and not think about anything but how good this day had been and how much I hoped we could hold onto it for the rest of our time together. However long that was.
33
My eyes fluttered open, and I found myself buried in a wall of chest, pressed so close to my husband that I wasn’t sure if the two of us would ever unwind from each other.
I inhaled deeply, filling myself with his scent, and tried to remember falling asleep in the first place. I recalled slipping into bed next to him, curling up close to him, and then dozing off, his arms wrapped tight around me. I glanced at the clock. It was just before six, and I didn’t have to get up for a couple of hours yet. I had to get Jolene soon for the day ahead with his nonna, but that wasn’t for a while.
I squirmed against him, listening to the steady rise and fall of his breath, letting it calm me. I propped myself up on his chest and looked at him, eyeing him. He looked so peaceful when he was sleeping, like all the stresses that weight down on him during the day had all but slipped away. But I didn’t want him sleeping. No, I wanted something else entirely.
Maybe it was just waking up right next to him, but it was impossible to deny how much I wanted him in that moment. The tenderness he’d shown, holding me all night, had kindled that fire inside me, the one that had started yesterday when he’d emerged from the bedroom looking all rumpled and hot as hell without a shirt on. I had been playing this little game with myself, trying to figure out precisely when I was going to give in, knowing that he wasn’t going to make the move and that he wanted me to guide his hand when it came to physical intimacy.
I planted a kiss on his bare chest, and he stirred slightly but didn’t wake. I moved down, running my hands over his muscles, and let my mouth tease across his skin. I had never done anything like this before in my life, usually leaving it to the men I was with to make the move. But since he had left the choice up to me, I had to make a move. And that was sexy in its own right.
I slid over and on top of him and looked down at his face with a grin on my own as he slowly came to wakefulness. His eyes flickered open, and he looked up at me and then they widened.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he asked sleepily but didn’t ask me to stop.
“Waking you up,” I replied, and I leaned down to kiss his neck again, working my way down his body as he let out a groan and squirmed against the bed. I rea
ched down, ran my hands over his sweatpants, and found that he was already growing hard.
“I’ve never seen this side of you before,” he remarked, voice edged with sleep but rich with desire. He reached down and stroked my hair as I finally made it between his legs.
I shot him what I hoped was a seductive look as I pulled down his sweatpants and took his cock into my hand. I stroked him a couple of times. It was the first time I had really gotten a look at it in broad daylight like this, and I had to admit he had a beautiful dick, long and just big enough that I could wrap my fingers around it. I closed my eyes and flicked my tongue across the head, tasting his pre-come on the top, and he groaned and moved his hips, guiding himself past my lips and into my mouth.
It had been a long time since I had gone down on anyone, and even then, most of the time I had been doing it because I knew the guy I was with wanted me to. But with Kristo, it was different. He let me set the pace, watched me with a near-reverence, and reached down to grip the top of my arms to hold me steady as I slid my mouth up and down his erection.
I went slow, languid, letting him know I was in this for the long haul, no matter how long it took to get him there. He felt good filling my mouth like that, and shortly, I was getting seriously turned-on myself. I slipped my fingers between my legs and began to play with my clit, grinding against my hand, letting my moans tingle over his skin and guide him closer to the edge. I realized he was close to coming in my mouth.
I pulled back at the last minute, watching his brows furrow as he tried to deal with the sudden departure of my mouth from his cock. He bit his lip briefly, closed his eyes, and then grinned at me.
“Well, that’s the best way to wake up in the world,” he remarked, and he pulled me up and on to him. I could feel his dick pressing against my slick entrance, and I needed more from him.
“Condom?” I asked. He reached into the side cabinet, pulled one out, and swiftly sheathed himself.
“At your service,” he smirked, and he took hold of my hips and guided me down on top of him, his thick girth entering me inch by inch. I tipped my head back and bit my lip, letting out a long groan of pleasure. Fuck, it felt like pure luxury, giving myself over to a desire as intense as this before I’d so much as rolled out of my bed for work.
“Mmm, you feel good,” he breathed, and he pulled the shirt I’d been wearing to bed up and over my head and ran his hands over my breasts. I began to ride him, moving hard against his shaft, closing my eyes and rolling my hips this way and that on top of him.
“You look good like that,” he murmured, and he sat up so he could loop an arm around my waist and thrust up into me, his mouth on my neck. I loved when he took control, moving fast and confident, letting me know that no matter how much I thought this was my idea, he was the one in charge. I hooked my arms around his shoulders and let my nails drag over his bare back. How could one man feel so good? Every part of him seemed as though it had been built to fit alongside mine, his body sweet and sure beneath me as he moved up into me in slow, deep movements.
“You feel good like this,” I threw back, a little nervous. I had never been much one for dirty talk, but he just seemed to guide it out of me, making it come naturally. I felt him smile against my skin, his teeth baring and sending a shiver down my spine, and the pleasure that had been brewing and building inside of me took a sharp tick upward, my skin prickling from head to toe and my mouth dropping open. I could smell the sweet sharpness of that apple shampoo filling my senses, and I closed my eyes and focused in on the feeling and found myself building, cresting, growing with every single time he moved into me, each one blurring into the last until they all meshed together in this glorious, gorgeous mess of—
“Ah,” I gasped as the feeling burst and overtook me, the pleasure popping like a bubble and running all over my body, from the top of my scalp down to the very tips of my toes. I continued to move against him, losing myself to it, determined to prolong the feeling as long as was humanly possible. He was still thrusting into me, his breath catching at the back of his throat, and moments later, he came as well, his cock twitching and his body stiffening and then relaxing as he found his release buried deep inside of me.
We stayed like that for a little longer, as though both of us knew that when we disengaged, we would need to face the real world again, something neither of us was in any particular rush to do. Then, he pulled back, planted a kiss on my cheek, and lifted me off him carefully, gently placing me down next to him where I sank back into the pillows and let out a long sigh of relief.
“Okay, that was the best way to start my day.” I grinned up at him, and he lay down next to me and propped himself up.
“And it’s my turn to make breakfast, huh?” he remarked, tracing his finger over the curve of my collarbone and smiling. I nodded.
“You better hurry,” I warned him. “I’m starving.”
“And there I thought I’d filled you up for now,” he shot back, cocking an eyebrow to underline the lewdness of his joke, and I swatted his arm as he climbed out of the bed, put his sweatpants back on, and headed through to the kitchen.
“Watch it,” I shot back. “Or I might tell your grandmother about the filth you’re spouting to me.”
“Oh, please, anything but that,” he protested, and he slipped out and made us some breakfast and coffee as I lay back against the pillows and tried to keep the smile off my face. Now that I had accepted my attraction to him, accepted my feelings toward him, I had an inkling this was going to be a hell of a lot more fun. I would never in a million years have imagined I could do something as devious and sexy as waking my man up with a blowjob, but here I was, lying back in the sheets and wondering why something like this had never crossed my mind before.
He returned with breakfast and coffee—just some pastries and fruit, nothing heavy—and we tucked in and talked about the days ahead of us. There was something warming and fun about just chatting with him about everything we had to do together, about what we hoped to achieve and the things we were planning.
“I feel like Indian tonight,” he remarked as he finished up his coffee. “Sound good to you? I know this great place that does takeout, or if you want, I could cook us something up.”
“Mmm, both sound good to me,” I agreed, and I reluctantly climbed out of bed to go find my clothes and start getting ready for the day. As I got dressed, I spotted him watching me in the mirror, with an expression I had never seen on his face before.
“What is it?” I asked playfully, and he shrugged and shook his head.
“Nothing,” he replied as he took a bite of one of the enormous fresh strawberries he’d brought for us to enjoy.
But I thought I knew what that look on his face was. Well, I thought I had a good guess, at least. Because I was pretty sure I’d seen it somewhere before, reflected in my own expression sometimes when I was looking at him. It was the face of someone who had feelings they couldn’t quite put into words, feelings they knew didn’t jive with the rest of the setup we had so carefully put together. That was the face of a man who, for even just a second, was in love with his wife.
I put it to the back of my mind and continued getting ready. He was probably just checking out my ass while I was still half-naked in front of him. Keeping my heart locked tight, remember? Don’t let my mind wander into the impossible or even the improbable.
“I’ll see you later.” I made my way over to him and planted a soft kiss on his cheek. He closed his eyes and ran his hand over my back, almost enough to tempt me right back into bed with him.
34
As soon as Amaya was out the door, I rolled out of bed and started taking care of everything that needed to be done for the day ahead. I had so much to get ready and what seemed like such little time to do it in. No matter how much work I put in, this place was never going to be up to standard for my nonna, and even if I scrubbed this place down on my hands and knees for the rest of the day, she would still sweep in and find something wrong with
it in the first five minutes.
That reminded me, I had to call her. I had told her that Jolene was going to be here today, but I had a feeling it might have slipped her mind, and I didn’t want her to turn up to that kind of a surprise.
“Nonna?” I greeted her as soon as she picked up the phone. At once, she started rambling away to me.
“Are you going to cancel on me?” she demanded. “I thought you would. When you told me to come to your place, I was sure you were—”
“I’m not canceling on you,” I cut her off calmly. I had somewhat expected this. She had been staying with my father after he’d returned from his honeymoon, and the two of them had a habit of rubbing each other the wrong way every chance they got, so no wonder she was already on edge.
“Then, what are you calling for?” she demanded curtly. I rolled my eyes, glad she couldn’t see my reaction on the other end of the line.
“To remind you that Amaya’s little sister is going to be joining us,” I replied calmly. “Remember? I told you a few days ago.”
“Oh, yes, I remember.” She sniffed, and I could tell she was lying but too proud to admit it.
“Good,” I replied, running my hand through my hair. “And you’re all ready for today?”
“Of course, I am,” she replied. “I don’t know why you couldn’t just come down here. My place is so much bigger, and you could—”
“Because it makes Amaya happy to have you around at our place,” I replied firmly. Nonna fell silent, probably for the first time in her life.
“Fine,” she replied with another heavy sigh. “I’ll be there in a few hours, all right?”
“All right,” I replied. “See you soon, Nonna.”
“See you, Kristo.”
And with that, she hung up the phone. I silently thanked God for Amaya, not just that she was here at all but that my family liked her enough to accommodate anything she wanted. I could have told them Amaya wanted us to have our family dinner teetering on the edge of a cliff, and I was pretty sure they would have done it. That was just the kind of person she was, instantly able to get people on her side. Or maybe I was just feeling a little more goodwill toward her given what we had gotten up to this morning. It still felt blurry and smudgy around the edges like the memory might have been a dream, but the smell of her skin was all over me, and I knew it had been real.
