Part-Time Lover

by Lauren Blakely

  “Mum, you’re incorrigible,” Christian chides.

  “And where do you think you learned to be incorrigible from? The master.” She smiles at me, a hint of wicked delight in her eyes. “Just teasing about the baby,” she says playfully, then drops her voice to a whisper. “But not really. If he puts a baby in you, I’m not going to sit out the birth. I’ll follow you around till you pop.”

  I laugh because there’s nothing to say to that. There will be no baby, no popping, and no true mommy/daughter-in-law bonding. Even so, I think I love her already, and since she’s been so blunt, I decide to assuage my own curiosity. “I have a question for you. Why did you say finally about meeting? Has Christian been telling you about me?”

  “A year ago, he mentioned he’d met a woman on the boat tour and was very much looking forward to seeing her. And when he ran into you again at the garden bar, he called me and said, ‘You’re never going to believe it, Mum, but the little mermaid popped back into my life.’”

  I rein in a grin as I make a check mark in a mental column of pros and cons about this man—told his mother about me the night we met again. Definite pro.

  Christian slaps a hand on the table. “This conversation really ought to stop right now. The two of you are thoroughly embarrassing me.”

  I smile and laugh, meeting her gaze with the sort of look that says embarrassing him is what a mother and a daughter-in-law should do, and in this moment, we are indeed bonding. As I drink my champagne, I’m happier than I should be that he’s introduced me to his mother.

  I’m even happier that she’s known about me from the start.

  * * *

  On the spectrum of things I’ve never expected, stepping into a marriage of convenience would be at the top of the list. Spending my wedding night at an amusement park would be a close second.

  The spinner ride whips precariously high and my stomach rises in tandem, lodging in my esophagus. The giant gold eagle we ride in flips over, leaving us hanging upside down, high in the sky. I scream, a blood-curdling noise. The sound turns into a screech as the eagle rights us again, then sends us downward in a fast, wicked whoosh. One exhilarating, heart-pounding minute later, the ride slows, and soon, it crawls to a stop. The world is still wobbly, but the bar rattles loose and lifts up.

  Christian sets his hand on my arm, steadying me as I stand, emerging from Aquila, the golden eagle ride at Tivoli Gardens. I grab my purse from the locker and slide on my glasses.

  He rubs his ear. “You are loud, woman.”

  “So are you,” I say, as the attendant opens the exit gate, and we pour out along with a few dozen other sky warriors who braved the thrill ride.

  Christian, still wearing his suit but with his tie gone and stuffed into his pocket, shakes his head. “No, I wasn’t. I was stoic and tough.”

  I laugh as we walk the pathway that weaves through this festive park in the heart of the city. “You practically squealed like a little girl the first time the eagle soared upside down.”

  He stares at me, his brow knitted. “Little girl? I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”

  I pat his very firm bicep on his very strong arm and go along with him. “Yes, you’re right, dear husband. It must have been someone less manly and less tough.”

  He smiles at me, mischief tap-dancing across his blue eyes. “Exactly.” He bumps his shoulder against mine and whispers, “Hey.”

  That one syllable comes out sweetly, affectionately, and I add another pro in his column. That chart is weighted so heavily to one side, it’s toppling over. I should find a con. It’ll make the next three months easier. Not that I need to worry about that too much. It doesn’t matter how many pros I find, this has an expiration date.

  I am resolved.

  “Hey to you,” I say softly, then want to kick myself because that tone of voice won’t help me find a negative in him either.

  He raises a hand, adjusts an errant strand of my hair that was stuck in the arm of my glasses, and slides the offending lock over my ear. “Are you doing okay?”

  “Are you going to keep asking me that for the next three months?”

  “I might.”

  I stop, rise on my tiptoes, and kiss the corner of his lips. Oops. No luck finding a con there either.

  “What’s that for?” he asks.

  “Just marking you.”

  “You want to pee on me next?”

  “I might. Beware,” I say in an over-the-top nefarious tone as we pass the gift shops that edge the small lake, making our way to the Ferris wheel.

  “Elise,” he says, his tone letting me know he’s serious.

  “Yes?”

  “Earlier today, during the ceremony, did you think about . . .?” His voice trails off as the unfinished question hovers like thick smoke.

  “It’s hard not to think about Eduardo. But mostly, I thought about how incredibly different this is because we’ve been so open about everything. What about you? Did you think about Emma?”

  He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he scrubs a hand over his chin as if in deep thought as we reach the steps of the Ferris wheel. “I don’t know if this makes me sound totally calloused, but I so rarely think about her.” I pump a virtual fist because surely that’s a con, that he doesn’t even think about his first love. “Sometimes it feels like what happened between us was so long ago, it’s like it was another lifetime.”

  “And you were a different person?”

  He nods as he holds open the gate at the top of the steps for me. “I think I was in some ways.”

  The ride attendant says hello and gestures to one of the Ferris wheel cars. We go inside. “What’s the biggest difference between the Christian of today and the twenty-one-year-old you? Besides nine years,” I add, since I bet he’ll go for some sort of age punchline. Could that be a con? Maybe he’s not too serious about anything. Yes, that will definitely keep the chains up high around my heart if he’s simply a shallow fellow.

  He wiggles his eyebrows and punches his stomach. “Abs are still chiseled.”

  “I knew you were going to say something like that.”

  He loops his arm over my shoulders. “But they are. Chiseled.”

  I pat his belly. “Yes, and I like them. But I’d like you if your belly was soft.”

  “You would?”

  I laugh and tap his temple. “I like the upstairs. That’s what entertains me. So entertain me. Tell me something else.”

  And yes, there it is. I’ve found it. Christian is entertainment, pure and simple. He’s fun and games. That’s a pro, but in the end, it’ll be a con when he can’t take things seriously. When he can’t take me seriously. And a good con, because it’ll protect me. It’ll keep the lemon gumdrop center of me from melting. Besides, peeling away his layers is wise. The more I know, the less likely I can be taken advantage of again. Knowledge is power.

  “Tell me something I wouldn’t recognize about you nine years ago,” I add.

  The car cranks loudly, making its first circle as he taps his chin. “I was more wound up then. Like I was turbo-charged and caffeinated.”

  I squint, trying to picture a manic Christian. “I can’t see you that way at all.” He has a relaxed ease about him. Perhaps that’s because he’s a true man of leisure. Young retirees can come and go as they please.

  “I was like a coiled spring when I was twenty-one. I worked non-stop. I wanted so much. I think the fact that I’d had so little focus in uni for a while changed me. Once I had it, I was filled with the need to do things. To make money, to buy and sell, and keep flipping investments into bigger investments,” he says, as the car whirs higher in the air then stops as more passengers get on below.

  “And all that ambition played a part in your marriage not working out?”

  He nods. “We didn’t want the same things in life. We didn’t want the same things from the marriage. I suppose that’s similar to what happened to you.”

  I scoff. “Safe to say we wanted ve
ry different things.”

  The car ascends to the top of the wheel, rising in the twilight sky above the top of the other rides. The panorama of the capital city comes into view—palaces and canals, and all the twinkling red, white, and green lights of the park below us.

  “But really, the hardest part of my marriage not working out was reconciling that I wasn’t like my father,” Christian adds, and I jerk my gaze back to him. This is the first time he’s mentioned his father.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s been married and divorced three times. I think that’s another reason my grandfather was so specific about marriage in the details of his company handover. He didn’t want us to wind up like my dad, especially since Dad hurt my mum so much.”

  The picture of him fills in, details and angles becoming crisper and clearer, and another pro reminds me of its existence—the way Christian cares for his mom. Hell, the woman herself is a pro in the list; she’s a doll, and I love her. “He was looking out for you, and for his daughter, in a way.”

  Christian nods as the ride circles low then rises once more. “He didn’t like the way our dad treated our mum. He wanted to see us all happily together forever like he was. I think Erik got that from him.” He hums, a sad little sound. “And look at us, all split up, just like dad. But it’s for the best, for me at least. I’m completely content with my single life.”

  There.

  That’s it.

  The big con.

  He’s married to his lifestyle, and that’s exactly what I needed to know. And what I wanted to hear, in fact. It’s better this way. Knowing he’ll never fall in love makes it easier to enjoy the pure entertainment value of Christian Ellison. Who cares if he has so many pros? They won’t ever amount to anything that can hurt me, since we’ll never truly get close enough.

  He grabs my hand. “And I’m pretty content with our arrangement so far. With one exception.”

  Oh. Perhaps there’s an even bigger con. A girl can hope. “What’s that?”

  When we reach the top once more, the ride slows as it begins letting people off below us. “It’s our wedding night and we’re not screwing right now. Instead, we’re talking about our previous marriages. That’s backward.”

  I laugh. That is indeed a drawback, but it’s easily rectified. “In our defense, screwing is an inevitability.”

  Sex with Christian sounds delicious, and a clear pro. In fact, it sounds so delicious, I’m pretty much done with the fun and games of Tivoli, especially since I know this marriage will be like this park—just fun and games, no matter how many times he’s thoughtful and asks how I am.

  As the Ferris wheel chugs down, I tug him close, and whisper, “Want to get out of here?”

  He lets out a dirty groan. “It’s all I want. To get you back to my house and show you exactly what a wedding night should be like.”

  We exit the ride and practically race past the sparkling lights in the center of the park. This might not be the field of flowers I dreamed of as a little girl, and it’s not the vineyard where my family toasted with Eduardo and his friend. Instead, I’m at an amusement park, with a husband who hardly asks anything of me, but the glittery setting is a fairy-tale land in its own strange, unexpected way.

  Do fairy-tale heroines have hot sex?

  Of course they do.

  Especially if they get married to save the hero’s brother’s company.

  A fresh urgency powers us as Christian takes my hand and guides me through the park. We have to weave through the carnival games to reach the closest exit, marching past a group of rowdy teens playing basketball.

  They’re having a blast, and I am too.

  Until someone shouts duck and a basketball slams into the back of my head, knocking me down.

  24

  Christian

  I open my palm. “Take these.”

  She pops the two Tylenol in her mouth and chases them with a glass of orange juice I give her.

  “I’m shocked.”

  “By the horrific aim of drunk teens shooting basketballs?” Wincing, she rubs the back of her head, settling farther into my couch. I brought her back to my place seconds after she crash-landed on her knees.

  “I’m shocked at you. I had you down as the worst patient ever.”

  “See? I’m full of surprises. I love being doted on. Now, please cover my scrape with a Band-Aid,” she says in a deliberately dainty tone, pointing to the tear on her knee. “Since you like being a nurse.”

  The funny thing is, I do like taking care of her. I like that I was the one to wrap an arm around her, shield her as we walked out of the park, and hail a cab faster than any man has ever hailed a cab in the history of men hailing cabs.

  I head to the bathroom, grab a bandage, and return to her, so I can press it over the scraped-up bit of skin.

  “Why did you think I’d be a terrible patient?”

  “You’re so stubborn I figured you’d be completely pig-headed about letting me take care of you.”

  “I guess you were wrong.”

  “I guess I was.”

  I smile to myself, but I don’t tell her how much I like being wrong on this count.

  When I’m done, I sit next to her. “Okay, so the head still hurts?”

  “Yes, but it’s getting better.”

  “And the knee smarts?”

  “Definitely, but I’ll live.”

  “Living is good. I recommend it. Does anything else hurt?”

  She seems to consider the question, then taps her forehead. I lean to her and press a kiss to it. “Anything else?”

  She hums as she runs her hand over her cheekbone.

  I know where this is going, and I like it. I brush a kiss to her cheek next. “What else?”

  She gestures to her lips and pouts. “This hurts a little.”

  “Let’s see if I can make it better.” I kiss her lips, and I’m rewarded with a soft, sweet sigh as her arms loop around me.

  When I break the kiss, I meet her eyes. “So, you’re all better?”

  She shakes her head, affecting a shy little smile. “I realized there’s one more thing that hurts.”

  “What’s that?”

  She taps the hollow of her throat and then drags her finger down to her breasts, and I groan. “Definitely, that needs a lot of TLC.”

  I dip my face to her neck, kiss her there, then travel down her chest to her cleavage. She wriggles against me and yanks me even closer. I kiss the tops of her breasts, and she gasps, arching her chest against me.

  I look up. “Does that hurt a lot?”

  “So much.” She drags her hand down her belly to right below her waist. “And there. Definitely there.”

  I grin as my hands make their way to her back, and I find the zipper on her dress. I slide it down and make quick work of the rest of her clothes, till she’s down to her white lace panties.

  “Ah, you did wear white.”

  She smiles, then her smile disappears, and a flicker of nerves seem to pass over her brown eyes. “I wore them for you. I thought you’d like them.”

  White. Wedding night. It’s almost too much to contemplate that this is where fate, or life, or circumstance has led us. That even though we agreed more than a week ago that we wanted each other’s bodies, we haven’t been able to have them till now.

  I don’t want to linger on the fact that I’m finally going to fuck her on our wedding night, but I can’t deny that this moment feels like precisely the right time. Elise doesn’t just excite me sexually. Her mind captivates me. Her quick wit, her big heart, and her blunt honesty are huge turn-ons. She’s been turning me on since the day I met her, and tonight there will be no stopping me from showing her how much.

  I wrap my fingers into the waistband of those perfect white lace panties. “I do like them,” I say, in a rasp. “I like them so much, I want them gone.”

  I drag them down her legs, then feast my eyes on the gloriousness of her naked body. Smooth, creamy skin, perk
y breasts, and a landing strip that points to where I want to be.

  “White was perfect,” I add, as I cup her between her legs, then stroke her with my fingers.

  She’s soft and slick, and so fucking ready for anything and everything. She arches into my hand and whispers, “Kiss me.”

  I oblige, gladly moving down the couch and wedging my shoulders between her beautiful thighs. A sexy, greedy sigh falls from her lips, and she’s already pushing my head to the center of her legs as she parts her thighs for me.

  God, that move, right there. Watching her open for me. Watching the look in her eyes—want and need and maybe, just maybe, a touch of something more I can’t define—sends sheer desire shooting down my spine.

  The lust in her gaze, the vulnerability in her position—it’s a gift. And it’s one I’m so fucking grateful for.

  A gentleman should always thank a lady for giving him the gift of her body. I’ll thank her by lavishing attention on her with my tongue.

  Pressing my hands to her thighs, I dust my lips against her skin, close but not quite all the way to her center. The smell of her makes me crazy; it turns me to steel. But as much as I want to devour her, I love the tease. I nip the flesh on her inner thigh, and she moans.

  I nibble my way up, as she grabs and tries to pull me to her. Smiling against her thighs, I bite again and whisper, “Soon, soon, my little mermaid.”

  “Now, now.”

  She’s a magnificent beggar.

  I switch to her other thigh, peppering more bites and nibbles along her flesh, then I rub my stubbled jaw along her center, and she arches her back and cries out, my name falling from her lips in a desperate pant.

  I’m desperate too. Desperate to taste, touch, have.

  I throw in the towel, and turn my face to her wetness, delivering a hungry kiss there.

  She moves with me, matching every lick with an arch or a bow of her back, her hands curling tighter around my head. I’m as close as I can be, and I love being surrounded by the evidence of her bliss. She murmurs and moans as my tongue flicks faster. She lets her knees fall open wider, like she wants to spread them as far as she can.