by K. Bromberg
But what if he feels the way I do? What if he’s afraid to say anything too?
“Har?”
Love is a bullshit emotion. The phrase loops through my mind. So do the hundred other things he’s done that I could say contradict that phrase.
“It’s beautiful up here.” My voice breaks when I speak, my heart swelling with emotion. I glance at him over my shoulder from where I stand near the edge and love the way he looks at me right now—like I’m appreciated, wanted, desired. “It kind of reminds me of that first event.”
“Ahh . . . the night that started all of this.” He laughs quietly.
“Why did you invite me to the party?” I ask the question I’ve always wondered.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs, a shy smile sliding on his lips. “Maybe because once you told me about missing the job interview I felt like an ass.”
“Be careful there, Zane. You’re showing you have a heart,” I tease, and he chuckles.
“Then again, maybe it was for purely selfish reasons because I just wanted to see you again.” He scrubs a hand over his chin. “I knew you’d show.”
“Oh, please.”
“You did though and turned everything I had planned around. God, I was so pissed at you. It takes a lot to blindside me like you did, and Christ, woman, you had me sputtering for a few seconds to figure out how to respond.”
“I assumed you’d call my bluff and that would be it . . . but God, you were such a jerk with your ‘she’s a friggin nightmare’ comment that I figured you deserved it.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?”
I nod. “You sure did.”
“I’m sorry, but I’d never met a woman like you before.” He smiles and shakes his head as he thinks back. “Don’t think I ever will, Cinder.”
“You know the only reason I went that night was so I could thank you for the shoes.”
His eyes flash back up to mine. “Thank God I sent them, then.”
Thud. There goes my heart with his cryptic comment that seems to say more.
“Thank God,” I whisper and then suddenly feel so vulnerable when nothing has really changed. I turn back to the city and wonder how many other women are out there feeling like I do right now. Too scared to admit her feelings and too hopeful that he’ll admit his without prompting.
Most men would be out the door knowing the end is near and yet here I am, inside his house, in his life. What exactly does that say?
Don’t think right now, Low. Just act. Enjoy. Live in the now.
Anxious all of the sudden, I run my hand down the side of my dress, feel its expensive fabric, and realize he bought this for a fancy night out, but didn’t protest when I chose otherwise. “I’m sorry, Zane” I say, turning to face him and seeing he’s shifted so he’s perched on the edge of the chair but his eyes remain fixed on me. “I didn’t think about—it was a waste of a dress to just do this.”
“Well, that depends what your definition of a waste is.” His smile turns devilish as he rises to his feet.
“How so?”
“Maybe when I picked this out I was envisioning getting to take it off of you. If that’s the case, you saved me time—in the restaurant,”—step toward me—“the cab,”—another step—“the elevator—those are all precious seconds I wouldn’t have wanted to waste.”
“And what exactly was it that you had planned on doing to me once you removed said dress?” I ask as he comes to a stop right in front of me.
His eyes say it all but it’s the silence that settles in the cracks of the sexual tension about to explode between us.
Time is slipping away.
Each second.
Each minute.
It’s one less here I have with him.
I step forward and press my lips to his. He reacts immediately, invites me to enjoy everything about him.
The guttural groan in the back of his throat. The softness of his lips. The sparks of warmth on his tongue. The taste of everything that’s grown to be familiar and exciting to me.
I’m lost instantly.
Maybe I have been for some time but only just now realize it.
Our hands roam. Over exposed flesh. Over fabric that can’t come off fast enough. Each inch we feel only making us eager for more.
He guides me beneath the privacy trellis. Then his fingers feel the edge of my hem and then slide back up my sides to the underside of my arms, directing them to go above my head. He leans in for another kiss before pulling the dress over my head.
He steps back and stares at me as I stand there on display for him, hands over my head and wearing nothing but stockings, garters, and heels.
He emits a low whistle as his eyes darken with desire, roaming over every stitch of lace and expanse of bare skin. “Now that is definitely worth the extra time you saved me.”
“Zane—”
“Shh,” he whispers as he steps forward and then to the back of me. His breath is on my shoulder as the rattle of his belt followed by the tug of a zipper joins the sound of my ragged breath. “You’re incredibly sexy,” he whispers into my ear. “But you already know that.” He trails the tip of his finger down the line of my spine. “You turn me on in ways that continue to surprise me.” My breath hitches as his lips press to the dip right above the swell of my butt. “Like right here. It’s incredibly sexy on you.” He takes his tongue and trails a line up my back to the nape of my neck. “Or right here,”—he scrapes his teeth over my skin and chills chase each other all over my body. “With you, it’s fucking everything.” His hands slide over my skin. “I just want to touch you everywhere.”
Seduction by touch. First to my ass where he palms and then squeezes it. Then up my torso to cup my breasts as he lays a row of kisses down the line of my shoulder before ever-so-softly pinching my nipples between his thumb and forefinger. A shocked gasp falls from my lips as my body jerks in absolute awareness.
His hands then continue down the front of my abdomen straight to between my thighs. I widen my stance when his finger pulls my panties to the side and delve beneath them.
“Are you wet for me, Harlow? Do I turn you on? Do you want me as badly as I want you right now?”
“What do you feel?” I murmur as his one hand parts me and with the other, his fingers slide inside to find me slick for him. The sound he emits alone when he feels me wet is enough to make me come.
He plays with me. Taunts me. Teases me. Has me squirming into his hand and begging for more but won’t give it to me.
Just little pieces at a time. An open mouth kiss just below my ear. A rub of a finger pad over my clit. A nip of teeth on my shoulder. A dip of his fingers inside of me. The scrape of his chin along my back.
“Zane,” a moaned request that has him chuckling as his fingers dive into me again. My fingernails dig into his forearm to both ask him to stop and beg him for more.
I clasp my fingers over his wrist and direct his arm up and under my arm so that I can slide his fingers into my mouth. I suck on them, turned on by the taste of myself wanting him and between his groan, “Good God, woman,” and his cock, thick and hard against my backside.
“I want you,” I say aloud, while his actions say the same.
I turn to kiss him. To tell him in the only way I know how that I’ve fallen for him. In framed faces and dancing tongues and tugs on hair and fingers closing around his cock.
“Let me,” I murmur as I push him down on the chaise lounge and climb over him. With my legs astride his, I line him up at my entrance and just before I slide over him, his hands flash out and grab my hips.
“Hey,” he says, prompting my eyes to flash up to meet his, but he doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me with an intensity that I can’t decipher but that I want to. It’s equal parts desire and lust and fear and something else I can’t put my finger on but that makes my heart suddenly beat out of my chest.
“What is it?”
A ghost of a smile plays on his lips and he subtly shakes his head
. “I just wanted to look at you like this,” he murmurs.
Emotion wars with desire in me. Wanting to know why out of all the times we’ve had sex, this is the first time he’s ever said anything that clashes with the ache burning through my entire body to have him.
Live in the now, Low.
And so with my eyes locked on his, I sink inch by gloriously torturous inch onto him. I make our bodies one until the initial pleasure of feeling each other is so strong that we both close our eyes to simply enjoy the sensation.
“Fuck that feels good,” he groans as his fingers tighten on the flesh of my hips and I begin to rock them over him. Bit by bit. Then a little faster. And then with a little more command.
A grind of my hips onto his so he bottoms out inside of me. God, yes. A rise back up so I’m just teasing his tip and hitting all the spots I need hit. That feels good. A slam back down without warning. Again. His hands palming my breasts. Faster. His lips closing over mine as I ride him. Harder.
There’s a quiet desperation between us. In our touches. In the unspoken pause when our eyes meet and he reassures me with a soft smile, in the passion of our kisses, in the plea in our voices.
I’m so busy trying to please him that I’m caught off guard when the freight train of my orgasm bears down on me. My hips jerk as my body tenses and my fingers dig into his biceps as the euphoria washes over me in wave after wave of sensation.
The damn man is a saint, trying to hold out, to keep everything as is so I can ride out my climax but I can feel the minute he loses control. His fingers tighten on my hips and he holds me still as he thrusts upwards as fast and hard as he can. Within seconds he’s groaning my name and tightening every muscle in his body as he chases his own bliss into mine.
He’s magnificent to watch—his expression, how his muscles flex, how his whole body becomes a slave to those few seconds of pleasure. To know I did that to him.
His hands pull me down so that I lay upon his chest, bodies still joined. His arms slide around me and just hold me there, skin to skin, his lips pressed to the crown of my head as our hearts and breaths decelerate.
“Can we just stay here forever?” he murmurs, the heat of his breath hitting my scalp as his thumb brushes back and forth against my back.
Comfort. Adoration. Desperation. Fear. Love.
I feel every single one of those from him, but it’s the one I want the most that I fear he’ll never voice.
THE MAKE-UP LADY POWDERS MY nose as the bright lights beat down on me. Nerves jitter through me for some reason when they shouldn’t.
Zane’s beside me.
Just like he was last night. This morning. For coffee as we sat in comfortable silence and scrolled through our social media and emails.
And now as we ready ourselves for our first of three television appearances today.
But this is the big one.
Sure I’ve modeled for Victoria’s Secret, I’ve done lingerie spreads in catalogs, I’ve walked runways, but this will be the biggest audience I will have had in one place, at one time, by far.
Zane slides his hand over to my knee and squeezes. “You’ll do fine,” he murmurs.
I slide my fingers over his hand and link mine with his as I just nod.
“And we’re going live in five. Four. Three. Two. One,” a man says across the stage.
“Good Morning USA. This is Fran Harrison and we’re about to talk to the real life couple behind the dating site that seems to be on everyone’s lips right now. We’re talking SoulM8. The newest dating site set to go live tonight at midnight and it seems to have quite a buzz about it. We’re here with the founder of the company, Zane Phillips, and the woman he met and fell in love with on his own site, Harlow Nicks—the couple that everyone is talking about. Welcome.”
“Thanks for having us,” I say with a smile.
“Good morning, Fran,” Zane says.
“So explain to everyone, if the site is launching tonight, how exactly did you meet Harlow on it?”
“We have put a significant amount of time into testing the site and fine tuning our one of a kind AI technology to create the perfect match. We have had numerous test groups try it out, myself included . . . and Harlow was in one of those beta groups.”
“I was,” I say with a smile and a nod.
“And why did you sign up? I don’t think anyone will argue when I say you are a beautiful woman who is more than capable of finding dates.”
“I’ve had my fair share, yes,” I say as my cheeks heat and the lies we’ve been telling for the past two months just roll off my tongue. “But they weren’t people looking for that deeper connection. They were men who saw the outside but weren’t interested so much in what’s on the inside. I was having a lot of first dates, a lot of men who only wanted one thing, and then I came upon an ad to be a beta for the site so I took the chance and found Zane.” I look over and smile at him, the emotion in my face completely sincere.
“And what was the first time you met like?”
“It was electric,” Zane says without missing a beat. “I knew she was fiery and passionate and not afraid to speak her mind. I loved that about her. That even though she was looking for someone, she was still herself. So many people try to be who they think the person they are talking to wants them to be . . . and with Harlow, here, she had no problem telling me I was wrong or challenging my opinion on things. It was refreshing.” Zane lifts our joined hands and kisses mine as if it’s something he does every day. “The first time we met was a comedy of errors, and the second time had a major misunderstanding, but I still wanted to see her. That’s how I knew.”
But I still wanted to see her.
“Was it love at first sight for you as well, Harlow?”
“We definitely had some things that made us question if we should go through with this, but yes, I was drawn to him in a way I hadn’t been with anyone before.”
“We’ll get a bit more of that after the commercials, but before we break, Zane, what is it about SoulM8 that makes it so much different than all of the others out there?”
“As I mentioned, we are the first site to use AI technology.”
“AI as in artificial intelligence?”
“Yes. We’ve spent a lot of time and research in how to best use AI to our subscribers’ advantage. Our initial profile set-up is a bit longer than other sites but it’s because we want to make sure we have as much information on your personality and traits and likes and dislikes as we can. We then use all of that information , combine it with the same algorithm and personality tests other matchmaking platforms use, but then SoulM8 takes it one step further. We take all of these results and allow the AI to take it from there. The program sifts through every facet and finds what we hope is the perfect match.”
“And how many matches have you had so far with your beta groups?” Fran asks.
“Statistics can always be manipulated so I’m not going to lie and say we’ve had one hundred percent success. Of course there have been people who have met up and their online persona didn’t match who they were face to face—or so the feedback has been—but at this time we’re showing the highest satisfaction rating of any of the comparable dating sites out there.”
“And you haven’t even officially launched yet! Amazing.” Fran turns to the camera. “Stick with us because after the commercial break, we’re going to get a sneak peak at these two and why everyone is buzzing about them—and we’re going to put that buzz to the test.”
The production crew tells us when we’re clear, the make-up team rushes onstage to powder our noses, and I just sit there as Zane and the host talk about some mutual acquaintance.
The world moves on while I’m sitting here replaying in my head everything that Zane just said.
“Live in five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
“We’re back here continuing our conversation with Zane Phillips and Harlow Nicks. So Harlow and Zane, you’ve been promoting the site together. Which means you’ve been
stuck together for two months on a tour bus.”
“Yes,” we say in unison.
“Let’s show the audience what that’s been like for you,” Fran says and points to the monitor where footage of Zane and I spark to life. Tiny snippets of the excursions Robert sent us on fill the screen. Us arguing on the trust course. Then high-fiving. Then kissing each other. Flinging flour at each other while baking, Zane carrying me against his side so we could finish the three legged race. The two of us laughing so hard we can’t speak. A quiet moment with my head on his shoulder, eyes closed, and him looking over at me.
“Looks like it’s been quite the adventure.”
“You can say that.” I smile.
“We’ve definitely learned a lot about each other,” Zane says, placing his hand possessively on my thigh.
“That’s good to know because we have a thing that we do here on Good Morning USA. It’s a little game we play with newlyweds”—she holds her hands out in front of her—“and before you panic and think we’re jumping the gun, we adjusted it for you. It’s all in fun.”
Both Zane and I chuckle nervously, unsure what’s going on.
“We had them fill out a questionnaire in the green room earlier this morning. It was a list of thirty questions. Typically when we do this with a couple, we end up getting some really funny results. Questions they got wrong they should know. Answers that are so off base it makes you scratch your head and wonder how they don’t know that about the other . . . but look at Zane and Harlow’s. Can we put them up on the screen?” she asks as I think of the thirty questions we answered earlier, not knowing what they were for.
The monitor across from us shows our tests side by side. Mine is on the right with my flowy cursive and Zane’s is on the left with his block style writing. The penmanship might be different, but as I scan across every question, our answers are the exact same.
On every single one of them. From how we like our coffee to who takes the longest showers to each other’s pet peeves, and on and on . . .
“I’m not sure if the audience at home can see this or not,” Fran says, “but there isn’t a single answer either one of them got wrong.”
