I leaned against the doorframe, watching as Laird articulated with his hands, his accent making his voice rise and fall like rolling waves. Americans, I had come to realize, had these very flat and monotone accents, including myself. Irish people had accents that went up and down, amazingly emotional and expressive, rising intonations on the ends of sentences that caught your attention and held it. I would never grow tired of Laird’s voice.
Jack paused in whatever speech he was giving to Laird when he saw me, and a sly grin spread over his face.
“Well, I’d love to keep discussing this with you,” he said, “but I think that I should head on back and finish my work up for the day. Looks like you have another meeting anyway.”
Laird looked at Jack, confused, and then his gaze slid over to me and I saw him realize what Jack meant.
“Right,” he said, nodding at Jack, his gaze locked on me.
Jack grinned at me as he passed me, and then I fully stepped into the office, closing—and locking—the door behind me.
32
Laird
To say that I looked put-together as I stepped out of the office was… probably an overstatement. I was pretty sure that I didn’t look indecent, but anyone who paid attention to me could probably tell I’d just buggered Trudie within an inch of our lives. Not that I had any regrets about that. The office was empty at this point and we’d both been quiet.
Trudie stepped up beside me, and I offered her my arm, as I always did. As always, she looked delighted. Right, time to go find some dinner…
As we walked towards the elevator, I heard voices. Talking. What was someone still doing in the office?
I followed the sound to the break area, and found three people drinking coffee and chatting. Namely Jack, my mother, and my father.
Oh, fuck. I had forgotten that today was the day that my parents were visiting. Between Trudie and I confessing our feelings and the whole thing with Pete, I’d completely lost track of the days. Bloody hell. My parents were never going to let me live this down.
“Mum! Da!” I grinned at them, trying to look slightly less like I’d just had sex with my girlfriend, the woman to whom they thought I was married.
Fortunately, my parents looked amused rather than upset. “You forgot that you were supposed to be picking us up,” my father said in a warm but teasing voice.
“Ah… guilty as charged,” I admitted. “Good thing you knew where to go.”
“And that Jack picked up his phone,” Mum added.
“I’m really batting a thousand on being a good son today,” I mumbled.
My father laughed and pulled me into a hug. “Ach, don’t even worry about it. It’s natural when you’re still a bit of a newlywed.”
Ah. Yes. That.
I looked over at Trudie. Should we tell them right now? While it was still early? Or should we wait?
The thing was, we could’ve kept up the charade. I wanted to marry Trudie for real, so we could’ve just kept dating until I asked her to marry me, since while I was bloody well ready to do it there and then, I didn’t think that Trudie would want to rush into anything. After she had spent years with a man who had treated her like property and controlled her, why would she want to jump right into tying herself to someone else permanently, no matter how much she loved them? No, I wanted to give Trudie time to adjust to being in a proper relationship with me and be sure that this was what she wanted. I didn’t want there to be any doubts in her mind. I wanted to go at her pace.
So we could’ve kept up the charade, and then just gotten married when we were ready, quietly, without any fuss. After all, my parents were usually in Ireland. We didn’t see each other in person too much.
But my mother would kill me if I didn’t have her at my wedding. It was part of why she’d been so hurt when I’d lied about being married to Trudie. When I got married for real I wanted her to be there. And I thought… well, I hadn’t asked her, and I knew that she wouldn’t want anything too fancy, but I figured that Trudie might want a proper wedding as well.
So that only left one option: telling the truth.
“Why don’t we head out for our dinner reservations?” I suggested. “Thank you, Jack, I appreciate it. This is why you’re my best mate.”
“Yeah, you owe me one,” Jack replied, grinning and clapping me on the shoulder. “I’ll see you both later. Keep him under control, Trudie.” He winked at her and then set off.
I gestured towards the elevator. “Shall we?”
Once we got to the restaurant and my parents were asking the server about the specials, I leaned into Trudie, holding my menu up so that my mouth couldn’t be seen. “I think that we should tell them. Since we’re together properly. What do you think?”
Trudie went a bit pale, I think in fear that my parents would be angry with her. But then she nodded resolutely. That was my girl. I was sure that Trudie had no idea how brave and strong she actually was. It reminded me a bit of when I was a kid, and being a brat, as usual, and on this particular occasion, I’d been telling my mum how ridiculous Cinderella was.
“Why didn’t she just tell her stepmother off?” I’d demanded. “Cinderella’s a pushover.”
“That’s not how abuse works,” Mum had said. She’d explained it to me, as best she could, given that I was just a kid at the time. “It takes great courage to stay kind when others are cruel, and to endure horrible treatment. Cinderella waited for her chance to escape. She was brave to go through all of that for so long and to find the right moment.”
Thinking back on that, now, Trudie reminded me very much of Cinderella. Many people would’ve let the things someone like Pete put them through make them bitter or angry. And you couldn’t completely blame them. But Trudie was still one of the kindest and sweetest people I knew—even though she also didn’t take any crap and could sass when she had to. She stood up for herself. She knew her worth. And when the time had been right, she’d seized the opportunity for her freedom, after years of putting up with that fucker.
I was so proud of her. She was possibly the bravest person I knew.
And now, even though she was faced with the possibility of two people she admired becoming furious with her (and with me), she wasn’t flinching.
“All right,” she said. “I think it’s best we be honest. I hate lying to them.”
I nodded and put my menu down to turn and face my parents. “Mum, Da, I’ve got something to talk to you about.”
“You’re pregnant!” Mum burst out, smiling at Trudie.
Trudie immediately flushed bright red and put her face in her hands. I could tell by the shaking of her shoulders that she was struggling to hold in laughter.
Well, given all the fucking like rabbits we’d been doing, it wasn’t a totally mad conclusion to jump to. But it was also completely off the mark.
“Ah, no.” I cleared my throat. “So, when you two lied to the family and said I was married, at first I was just going to show up to the wedding by myself. Explain what had happened. But I knew that nobody would believe you two had lied, and everyone would think I was lying because I didn’t want to bring my wife around, or I was divorced, or something like that.
“So I figured it was much easier just to find someone to pretend to be my wife for the week of the wedding, and then in a few months I’d announce that we had gotten a divorce. I figured that the person would be someone I liked well enough but didn’t have a load of… chemistry with. I didn’t want you all hating my wife and I knew you all knew better than to think I’d married some horrible person, so picking someone to play a harpy was out of the question.
“But then I ran into Trudie, and ended up asking her to play the part, and things… got a bit out of hand.” I took a deep breath, and grabbed Trudie’s hand, our fingers interlinking on top of the table. “I fell for her, for real.”
“You should have seen him,” Trudie blurted out. “He was taking me on tours of the city, to museums and restaurants, and just being… talking
to me all about art and everything, it was… how could you not fall in love with him?”
I could feel my chest warming as I listened to her. I knew, now, that Trudie was in love with me, that she cared about me as I cared about her—but it was wildly different to hear about it like this, to hear her talking about how she came to fall for me. I was pretty sure I was blushing like an idiot, and I couldn’t bring myself to mind.
“We only officially got together, for real, a couple of days ago,” I explained, tearing my gaze (which I was sure was adoring) away from Trudie and focusing on my parents again. “But we’ve really been acting like we’re in a relationship this entire time. Neither of us wanted to admit it, that was all.”
“It was hard,” Trudie added. “Figuring out what was real, and what was for the sake of pretending. But we figured it out.”
I squeezed Trudie’s hand, and she gave me a smile that melted my heart.
My parents were staring at us—no, gaping was more like it. I hadn’t ever seen them this shocked. It gave me a bit of a boost to see that I’d surprised them so completely that I’d left them speechless. I couldn’t recall a time that neither one of my parents could think of something to say.
“So you… tricked us,” Mum said at last. “Even more than we thought you had.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Da gave a short bark of laughter. “Well. I can’t say that we didn’t deserve it, just a bit. We basically challenged him to find a wife and put him in a tight spot, and he wiggled his way out of it! And he got a real girl to boot.”
“Trudie and I are serious about our relationship,” I promised my parents. “We might not be married like we claimed, but I love her. This isn’t casual or just a fling.”
“We can see that,” Mum said, and she seemed to be recovering from her shock a bit since she gave a small smile. “Honestly, you two were so all over each other at the wedding, of course we believed that you were married. You don’t have to say anything to convince me that you really are in love.”
“It’ll take… a bit to adjust to this,” Da admitted. “You did lie to us pretty badly. But I can understand why and I’m not mad.”
“Everything’s the same,” I told them. “Trudie’s just my girlfriend instead of my wife.”
“Of all the people in the world,” Mum said, “of course you would be the one to stumble into a relationship by having someone pretend to be your wife to fool your family. Only you would get a real relationship out of a fake one—and spend months figuring it out.”
I was definitely blushing now, and Trudie laughed. “You know, when he told me that he wasn’t good with women, I didn’t believe him. Jack told me all these stories but I still doubted them. He was always so kind and wonderful to me! But now that I’m realizing he had no idea I was head over heels for him this entire time and thought I’d actually reject him if he told me how he felt…” She shook her head. “Now, now I can definitely believe them.”
My parents both seemed highly amused by this. “Well, in that case, tell us how you two really met, and how big of an idiot did he make of himself along the way,” my father said, because he had no mercy.
The rest of the dinner passed smoothly—we all had a good time, and I felt anxiety lifting off of me, anxiety that I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying. The truth was out, and my parents genuinely loved Trudie and were happy that she and I were together for real. I couldn’t think of a better evening than that.
“I’m never going to get over that,” Trudie said as we got back to my place. My parents were staying at a hotel. “Your parents were just… standing there having coffee while we were having sex in your office!”
“Ach, don’t worry about it,” I assured her. “It was adorable how you were blushing, though.”
“As if you weren’t just as bad!”
I pulled her into me, smiling down at her and bumping her nose gently with my own. “Who cares if they knew? Who cares if anyone knows? I love you. And I’m not going to hold myself back.”
Trudie gave me a look that had me melting. “I love you too,” she said, and that was all, but that was enough.
33
Trudie
I woke up after Laird the next morning, which was unusual. I considered lying in bed and snatching a bit more sleep, but… the bed was big, cold, and empty without him. And I would have to get up soon anyway so that we could spend the day with his parents. I was so relieved and grateful that they weren’t angry with me for how everything had gone down. Maybe, in a way, what we did was wrong but at the same time I felt like Laird’s reasons were good ones and there was no lasting damage.
Besides, how else would Laird and I have gotten together? Figured that we were both such morons we had to practically trick ourselves into a relationship with one another.
I stretched out, luxuriating in the feel of the soft sheets on my body, the soft but firm mattress, and the wide space of the bed. We hadn’t straight out said we were moving in together, but Laird had moved all of my stuff in here when I was fleeing from Pete and there was no sign of him asking me to go back to the co-op or finding me a new apartment. I couldn’t even properly describe the thrill that was sent through me at the idea that I didn’t have to share a room with a dozen other people, that I got to have all this space just for me and the man that I loved. It felt like the height of luxury and freedom.
Hmmm. One thing that I could do in an apartment with the man I loved, instead of in a place where I had just a bed in a room that I shared with a dozen other people, was pad around naked.
I got up, forgoing clothing, and walked into the open plan living room and kitchen area. I wasn’t surprised to find Laird facing away from me, concentrating on the coffee maker. He was only wearing a pair of soft flannel pajama pants, but in my opinion, he was still terribly overdressed.
Laird poured out the coffee into his mug and took a sip, still mostly facing away from me. I walked right past him and stood in front of the glass window, staring out over the city. Laird lived on the top floor of the high-rise apartment complex, otherwise I never would’ve done this. I didn’t want anyone to see us having sex, thanks, as excited about our new relationship as I was.
I knew the moment that Laird saw me, because I heard his coffee mug go clattering into the sink.
Not even two seconds later he was pressed up against me from behind, and I could feel the hard length of his cock pressed against my ass through the soft fabric of his pants. “I see someone’s decided to be a little sex kitten this morning,” he purred.
“Well,” I said, keeping my tone casual as I let my head fall back against his shoulder, arching into his touch, “it is my day off.”
Laird slid his hand down my body, cupping my breast, his thumb swiping along the underside, teasing me. I whimpered, feeling myself growing wet for him. There was something so wanton about the fact that I was pressed up against the cold glass, against a window, even if nobody could see us from up here.
“Look at you…” Laird’s other hand slid farther down, between my legs, his fingers stroking leisurely along my folds, just light enough to be a tease. “Already slick and naked for me. Do you want my cock, sweetheart? You want to be a good little kitten for me today?”
“Yes,” I sighed out, leaning more heavily against him. Laird lightly pinched my nipple and slid a finger inside of me, and I moaned.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Laird’s hand left my breast and moved up to my throat, holding me in place there. I shivered with delight. I liked being a bit manhandled by Laird, because I knew I was one hundred percent safe with him. He would never hurt me. I could trust him.
Laird pulled his hand away from my aching cunt and moved it along my thighs instead, then my stomach, stroking, teasing me even more. I whined in protest and Laird just chuckled. “Something you want?”
I ground my ass back against his crotch and felt his hard cock rubbing up against it. Mmm, yes. “Pretty sure there’s something you want, too.”
>
Laird chuckled and took me by the hips, pulling me back until I was bracing my hands on the glass window and was bent over. He rubbed his hand along my ass, then smacked it lightly. I jolted, desire thrumming through me. God, I wanted him so badly. It was amazing how my body was trained now, in a way. It was like now that I was used to being intimate with him and knew that I could trust him, I got wetter that much faster, I got ready to take him inside of me with greater speed. It felt like I was going from zero to sixty in seconds.
Laird kissed along my shoulder as his fingers returned, sinking inside of me and stretching me, making sure that I was really ready. “I love that you do that,” I blurted out. “I love that you—that you make sure I’m good, that you take care of me—”
Before, I couldn’t have said that. It would’ve been too close to revealing that I was in love with him, and I’d been trying so hard to be careful about that. But now, I could say whatever I wanted, whatever I felt like. It was elating.
Laird kissed the side of my neck. “I’ll always take care of you,” he promised, and then his fingers were sliding out and his cock was sliding in and I moaned.
This angle was good, so good. I felt filled, stretched, and I braced hard against the window so that I could thrust back onto him. Laird groaned and pressed his chest against my back, his hands roaming over my body as he started to move in rhythm with me. He kept kissing me, everywhere his mouth could reach, it seemed, like he just couldn’t make himself stop. Even though I couldn’t see his face, this felt intimate. I felt held.
It didn’t take long for our movements to get frantic, though. This angle meant that Laird was hitting that perfect spot in me every time, making my body jerk and stars dance in front of my eyes, and I knew I wasn’t going to last long at all.
“Please,” I begged. I was far past any embarrassment about begging Laird. He knew that I wanted him, he knew I was desperate—and I knew that he would never use this against me. “Laird, please, I need…”
Fake Bride: A Fake Marriage Billionaire Romance (Forbidden First Times Book 2) Page 20
