by Ali Parker
I guided her to a seat, and she reluctantly sat on the very edge of it as though she was preparing to leap into action once again and start chewing me out as soon as she got the chance.
“It’d be your fault,” she muttered, a classic grandmother guilt trip. I closed my eyes for a moment, gathering myself, and then spoke again.
“I know I messed up,” I promised her “I know I did, really. But I’m going to make things right.”
“How?” she demanded. I wracked my brains. How much did I tell her? I needed to keep this brief. Cleo had already given away more than I had ever wanted any of my family to know, and I was going to play the rest of my cards as close to my chest as I could get away with.
“You’ll have that big wedding, Nonna.” I touched her hand lightly. “We’ll get married properly in front of all of you.”
She eyed me for a long moment, and I could tell there was a part of her that wanted to launch into full flow all over again, but she thought better of it. She sniffed, leaned back in her seat, and finally let her mouth close.
“Fine.” She shrugged. “But I want to plan the whole thing.”
“Anything you want,” I promised, even though I knew there was no way in hell Amaya would let someone else plan her wedding for her when the time came. At that moment, all I needed was to get my nonna to quiet down, and for the time being, I seemed to have succeeded.
50
I lay in bed, the flat champagne in my hands, straining my ears so hard, I thought they might burst as I tried to make out the conversation happening in the courtyard below me. I knew it was useless, that I couldn’t hear a thing, but I wanted to know what his nonna was saying to him. It would have been comical that the tiny little woman was coming to tell off her fully-grown grandson if it hadn’t meant that everyone in that family would know about our fake wedding.
The thought of them knowing the truth at last made my stomach hurt. But maybe it was for the best? The truth had come out in all sorts of ways these last few days, and perhaps peeling it open like this was the only way any of us could move forward.
I placed the champagne on the bedside table and stared at the ceiling. The last thing I had expected when I came home from work was to find Kristo with flowers and champagne, suggesting we spend the evening together on the balcony. He could be romantic, sure, but he usually wasn’t romantic in this pointed a way, especially considering what we had just found out from his lawyer. What was I supposed to make of all of it? Was this his way of trying to build a marriage out of the wreckage of our old one? Or was he just trying to let me down easy? My mind ran in a hundred different directions, and I did a terrible job stopping it as I waited for him to come back upstairs and tell me what the fuck was going on.
Eventually, I heard the door to the apartment open, and he let out a long sigh as he came inside. I couldn’t hear his grandmother. He’d probably sent her home already. He made his way to the bedroom, grinning ruefully at me, and then took a seat next to me, clutching that bottle of champagne we’d opened downstairs. He took a swig and then handed it to me. I drank deeply from it, grateful for the alcohol to take my mind off whatever the fuck was happening between the two of us.
We sat there for a long time in that companionable silence, drinking from the bottle and trying to let the reality of the day slide off us. I wanted to ask what his grandmother had said, but I knew he probably didn’t even want to think about it any longer. He had gotten rid of her, and that was all that mattered. We exchanged swigs of the bottle until the expensive bubbles had me bold enough to actually say something.
“So …” I began, looking over at him as the evening light began to fade outside. “That happened.”
“Sure did.” He chuckled, and I giggled back.
“You looked so ridiculous with her coming after you like that.” I sighed and shook my head. “She’s a scary woman when she wants to be.”
“And trust me when I say she always wants to be,” he muttered, and I laughed again. I was loosening up, the champagne helping a lot. I put the bottle down next to me and sat up, and he propped himself up with a pillow and let out a long sigh, as though he was already exhausted.
“So what did she say?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand. “She knows. That’s the long and short of it. And she was mad at me for not telling her sooner.”
“What were you supposed to do?” I wondered aloud. “Walk in there with me on your arm like ‘hello, this is Amaya, my very fake wife’?”
He laughed out loud, and I liked the sound of it, the comfort of knowing we could still just talk like this when we wanted to. He glanced at me for another moment, and I could see something in his eyes, something that ran a little deeper than just the booze and the flowers.
“Yeah, I guess.” He shook his head. “And besides …”
He trailed off and stopped himself.
“Besides?” I prompted him. I could feel a prickling running along the back of my neck, as though something in my body was telling me that whatever was about to come out of his mouth next was going to be momentous.
“I was actually going to ask if you wanted to stay married to me,” he finished up. My heart felt as though it had dropped into my feet, and my mouth went dry.
“What do you mean?” I pressed. He shrugged. Playing it cool, the way he always did, but I could see the nerves in his eyes, the worry that I was going to say no or turn him down. As if I ever could have.
“Get married, I suppose.” He glanced up at me. “I was going to ask you tonight. See if you would do it, and we could actually do it properly this time around.”
“You’re serious.” I stared at him, blinking. How long had I dreamed of hearing something like this come out of his mouth? It was hard, so hard, the pain churning in my stomach. He still wanted me to go through with this charade, even though his family knew the truth. What did he get out of it? I didn’t understand.
“Of course, I am,” he replied, and he took my hand. I tried to ignore the zing of energy that ran down my arm as soon as he touched me. Some part of me wanted to shake him off, to remind him I couldn’t go through with this fake marriage any longer. But I couldn’t take my eyes off his, and I needed to know why the fuck he was bothering to play this game any longer.
“But why are you doing this?” I asked nervously, not sure if I wanted to hear the answer. “You don’t believe in love, remember?”
He grinned and raised his eyebrows at me, and I chuckled when I realized how melodramatic that had sounded.
“Well, maybe things have changed a little.” He shrugged as he gazed into my eyes. “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
It felt as though he had punched the breath out of my body. There was no other way to describe the feeling as I waited for him to throw his hands in the air and announce the whole thing a joke and me a gullible idiot for falling for it. But he didn’t blink. He didn’t look away. Somehow, this was real.
“You mean it?” I asked, my voice comically tiny as I looked at him. He nodded.
“I want to marry you,” he told me bluntly, and all the feelings I had been doing my best to clamp down on these last few months came flooding up and over me in an instant. It was ridiculous, but I couldn’t keep them in any longer. Maybe it was the intensity of the last few days or maybe it was something else, but I needed to blow off some steam. And, the champagne mellowing my inhibitions, I knew exactly how to do that.
“Kiss me.” I moved into him and breathed the words into his ear, and he didn’t need telling twice. He guided me on top of him, spreading my legs as though it came easy to him, and kissed me hard, our tongues meeting at once. I tasted the expensive champagne on his lips, and the words he’d just spoken pulsed in my ears, loud and nonstop. He wanted me. To marry me. At last. Everything I’d been waiting to hear from him all this time, and all I could think to do was fuck him.
I ground against his dick, moving slowly, taking my time. The booze had sensitized every part of my
body so even the mildest touch felt incredible. He skimmed his fingers over my bare thigh, the back of my neck, my cheek, as though he was prepping me for his touch, letting me get used to the feel of him close to me again. It hadn’t been long since the last time the two of us had been together in this way, but the craving for him still ran as deeply as ever. Maybe even deeper than before, now that I’d heard those words come out of his mouth at last. Marry me, marry me, marry me. They pulsed in my brain until they felt like they were seared there.
Suddenly, he flipped me over, and he was on top of me, his hand moving up between my legs and cupping my pussy through my panties. I groaned and tipped my head back as he pressed his fingers against me through the fabric, just lightly, as he grazed his mouth against mine for the briefest moment. He grinned as I groaned and tried to kiss him deeply, and he pulled back a little further.
“I like you like this,” he remarked softly, leaning down to murmur the words into my ear and trace my skin with his breath. “Needy.”
“Mmm,” I moaned desperately, unable to articulate in any meaningful way what I wanted from him, what I needed so badly. His body felt so good on top of mine, the weight of him holding me to that bed. Instead of feeling trapped, I felt safe as though he was protecting me, holding me close and tight in his arms. I could feel his erection pressing into me, and I knew it wouldn’t be long until he would need to fuck me. Until then, he seemed keen to make me wait, to make me beg. I wriggled beneath him, arching my back so I could press my hips up against him, and he began to undo the zipper of the dress I had put on that morning. His fingers were deft and swift and controlled, but I could see the flicker behind his eyes, the one that told me he was an inch or two away from just throwing me down, ripping my panties off, and fucking me raw right here and now.
He stripped me down till I was in nothing but my panties, and then flipped me over on the bed. He was still fully dressed, and something about that smart suit next to the debauchery of what we were doing was almost too much to take. I sighed with pleasure as he traced the outline of my body with his hands, running them from my shoulders down to my ass. Then, to my surprise, he leaned down and planted a kiss on each of my cheeks down there. I wriggled.
“What are you doing?” I asked, glancing around at him. He had a deviant grin on his face, one that I recognized well, and I had a feeling the best thing I could do at that moment was shut up and let him work his magic.
“You’ll see,” he replied, and he pulled my panties over my hips and tossed them aside. He tugged me up a little so my ass was pointed toward him, and he kissed me again. I moaned, his mouth anywhere on me more than I could take. Then, to my surprise, he leaned in and brushed his tongue against my ass.
“Oh.” I wriggled on the bed once more, as his tongue began to probe me lightly back there. It felt odd for a moment, but then it mellowed into a pleasure I had never felt before in my life. He took his hand and moved it between my legs, slipping a couple of fingers inside of me, and the mixture of sensations made my toes curl.
“Good?” he asked, pulling back for a moment, and all I could do was nod helplessly.
“Good,” I confirmed, and he turned his attention back to me. Before I knew it, I was hopelessly lost to what he was doing.
I’d never had anyone do anything like this to me before. I had never wanted to. In fact, before I met Kristo, I had never really been with a man who seemed to appreciate my body the way he did. With my previous lovers, it had always felt as though they were kind of going through the motions like they knew they had to bring some pleasure to me before they fucked me but were only doing it because they knew I might think badly of them if I didn’t. But the way Kristo touched me, the way he kissed me and pleasured me and pushed me to come, I knew this wasn’t just a show for him. He groaned as he pushed his tongue deeper into me, moving in long, slow strokes that made my entire body tense up as he fucked me with his fingers.
“Fuck,” I groaned. It felt incredible. He was moving his other hand all over my body – my breasts, my back, tugging lightly on my hair, sinking his fingers into my thighs like he was reminding himself what I felt like. He wanted me, needed me, down to his very core, and that was the sexiest thing about him, about this. I could already feel my body beginning to give out around him, my skin prickling where he touched. He left a trail of tingles wherever he moved his hands across me like he was painting the canvas of my body with his touch.
He moved his tongue in circles around me before plunging back in, and that was all I needed to push me over the edge. I let out a cry muffled by the pillow, and before I knew it, I was clenching around his fingers, my body rocking back against him, his nails digging deep into the flesh of my lower back as he kept me steady, as though he wanted to leave marks on me, wanted to remind me of what we had done, of where he had been.
As I was racked from the pleasure of the orgasm, he pulled away from me and dug around in the bedside table to pull out a condom. I heard the zipper of his pants and the tear of the packet as he swiftly sheathed himself, and he grabbed my hips to pull me up a little. I felt his cock pressing against my still-sensitized pussy, and I pushed myself up on all fours and began to move back against him.
“Oh my god,” he breathed, running his hand along my spine as I moved back against him. I wanted to feel him inside me—no, I needed it. It ran deeper than a simple desire. I rocked my hips against him until he was all the way inside of me, buried to the hilt, and his fingers dug into my hips as he held me close and steady. We both gasped, the mutual pleasure too much to take – I loved him at this angle, loved how big he felt, loved how satisfying he was. And before I knew it, I was starting to move.
It wasn’t lovemaking, no way. This was fucking, pure and simple, the kind that came when the two people involved needed nothing but pleasure and had no way to get it except each other. I slipped my hand between my legs to match the pace of his thrusts, and with every motion, I inched closer, moving faster and harder. My brain seemed to have slipped out the back of my head, giving way to this endless, unstoppable, impossible sensation that took control of every part of me, my whole body a machine for translating this pleasure any way it could.
He moved into me hard and rough, wrapping my hair around his hand and tugging on me lightly so my head was tipped back. I could almost see him out of the corner of my eye, but I could certainly hear him, those growls of desire that seemed to swell up from somewhere deep down inside him. I loved hearing those sounds because it told me he had totally given himself over to the moment, to me, to us. I cried out, the sound cathartic, and a moment later, the wave crested and exploded, and I came.
“Fuck,” I groaned, my whole body trembling at once, and he pressed his entire body into mine and moved into me one, two, three more times. And then he found his own release, planting his mouth against my back and letting out a long, agonized sound like a dying animal. He held himself there for a long time, and I could feel his breath against my back, in and out, in and out, soothing, calming, reminding me that this man needed more than just my body.
He slowly slid out, disposed of the condom, and crashed down on the bed next to me, grinning in my direction. My legs trembled and finally gave out, and I lay down next to him. He looked into my eyes, so deeply, it was like he was cutting through layers of rock and sediment, years of crap I’d used to build up that barrier between me and the world at large. And that’s when he said it.
“I love you,” he murmured, and he brushed his fingers against my cheek. I closed my eyes, savoring the words, letting them wash over me. The only thing I’d ever wanted to hear from him.
“I love you too,” I replied, and together, we lay there in bed, the whole world changing around us, and just looked at each other.
51
I woke up on that Tuesday morning with a pounding headache and a woman in my bed. It would have been déjà vu, were it not for the fact that I could actually remember the night before and was happy to see this woman lying next to me.
I brushed my fingers over her back, grinning, remembering what we’d gotten up to the night before. She might not have been as wild as me yet, but she was sure as hell getting there. And I was more than happy to be her guide on her path to complete debauchery.
Her eyes fluttered open, and her gaze met mine. Then, she grinned and snuggled into the sheets.
“Hey,” she greeted me, and I planted a kiss on her temple.
“Hey,” I replied. She moved toward me and cuddled into my chest, holding me tight.
“It’s so nice to wake up next to you,” she confessed as though she was sharing a dirty secret, as though the two of us hadn’t swapped “I love yous” for the first time the night before.
“It really is,” I agreed. “I mean, for you. I can’t imagine how nice it is to wake up next to me every day.”
She laughed and slapped my chest playfully and then propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at me. She was smiling.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You said you loved me.” She jabbed her finger into my chest playfully. “No take backs, right?”
“None.” I held my hands up, and she laid her head back down on my chest and that champagne hangover was all but forgotten about. It was hard to be mad about anything when she was right here with me—well, apart from the fact that I had to push her off soon enough and get to work, but I could linger a little longer, right? The best part about running the company was that I got to set my own hours, and if that meant lazing around in bed with the woman of my dreams, then I was going to indulge that.
“I should probably get ready,” she groaned reluctantly.
“Sure you can’t stay a little longer?” I asked, trailing my fingers down her back, and she shook her head.
“I really have to get going.” She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “I don’t want to be late.”
