Page 20 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

THIRTEEN

ETHAN

For a second, she looked so gob smacked I thought maybe I’d knocked her brain offline. Then she went bright red. Like a lobster crossed with a fire engine, red, like maybe I should get her to the hospital, red. I grabbed her hand and leaned forward to look right in her eyes.

“Breathe,” I said, and she sucked in a breath.

Clearly, whatever the C&C was, it was a big deal.

“Who told you about that?”

“Your sisters.”

“No,” she shook her head. “They would never. The C&C is sacred ground. It’s our Holy Grail. A Calloway Sister Exclusive and they would never share it.”

“Well, they were pretty drunk.” I pointed out.

“Oh. That explains it.”

“Give it,” I said.

A smile twisted around her lips. “It’s stupid. I can’t even imagine how it came up in the first place.” She pulled her legs free of her sweatshirt, and I don’t know why, but I thought she was about to get off the couch, so I reached over and put my hand on her knee to stop her.

Her bare knee.

Both of us looked at my hand as if checking. Yep. That was my hand. Her knee. I rubbed my thumb against the soft skin there and both of us let out a careful breath, but she didn’t pull away.

“It’s a thing we made up. C&C stands for Catch and Curl.” she whispered. “Like a ranking system for kissing.”

“Oh,” I laughed. “This should be good.”

My hand was still on her knee. God. She was soft.

“If the kiss doesn’t make your breath catch and your toes curl, then he’s not worth it,” she said. That blush had real sustaining power. I carefully reached from her knee to her wrist, taking note of her pulse. Elevated, but not dangerous. “Why were you talking to my sisters about kissing?”

“I wasn’t,” I answered. “I was talking to them about…”

I stopped myself. I was talking to them about the closet incident in high school. Now it was all starting to make sense. I pushed closer towards her.

“I asked them if they knew why you punched me in that pantry.”

She looked right at me. The firelight reflected in her eyes made her seem powerful. Like she had secrets. Secrets I was suddenly dying to know.

“Harmony, you have to tell me,” I said, leaning forward. I was smiling, but I felt like I was dangerously close to seeing if she’d let me kiss her again. “We’re married.”

“Fake married.”

“Still.”

“Fine. I didn’t punch you in that pantry,” she said. “You kissed me.”

I blinked. Pulled my hand back from her wrist. “What?”

“Your brother got in a fight and you pulled me into the pantry and…you kissed me. Then you pulled away and I leaned in at the wrong time, and my head banged against yours.”

I could feel my eyes grow wide as the truth was finally revealed. “And that’s how I ended up with a black eye?”

“Yes. Because you kissed me,” she said.

“Why did you let me believe that you punched me?”

She shrugged. “Well, that Monday at school after the party, you just…forgot everything. Like it didn’t happen. And you were so convinced I hit you, I just let you believe it.”

I’d pulled her into a closet, kissed her, and didn’t remember it at all the next day. Yeah, I can see why she might have been hurt about that. Now it all made sense. Her animosity towards me every day after that.

“We kissed?” I asked again, and she nodded. “And I gave you this…curl and catch?”

“Catch and Curl,” she corrected me. “It’s important to get your Cs in the right order. And I didn’t say that. My sisters merely suspected.”

“Hmm,” I said, dismissing that. A girl doesn’t remove the spark plug from my car on prom night if the kiss didn’t mean something to her. “Did it happen again today when I kissed you at the courtroom?”

“Well, no, but that wasn’t a real kiss.”

I wouldn’t take that as an insult because it had felt pretty real to me. Still, the gauntlet was thrown. “Maybe I should give you a real kiss so we can test this theory?”

She was shaking her head, but she also wasn’t getting off the couch. “But that’s against the rules.”

My lips curled into a smile. “You said no kissing on the mouth, but it was okay to kiss you…other places.”

I put my hand under her knee and pulled her towards me. Her leg stretched out and slid over my lap as her body lay flat on the couch. Her sweatshirt rode up, revealing the tiny, bright pink panties she was wearing.

“Jesus,” I breathed. “Harmony.”

I was fascinated by those panties. The way the elastic dug into the flesh at her hip. The way I could see the puffy edges of her pussy through the pink cotton. The dampness there. Was it the talk of kissing that made her wet? Was it sitting on the couch with me?

I was hard in a heartbeat, and all I wanted in the world, more than having my job back, was to brush my thumb over the damp cotton hiding her sweet spot.

She pulled down the sweatshirt, covering herself back up, but the damage was done.

The image burned into my brain. Her leg shifted on my lap, the muscle of her calf brushing over my erection.

I hissed in a breath and put my hand down on her leg, holding her against me.

My cock trapped between her leg and my body.

She gasped, and I realized what I was doing and let her go.

I turned, rising up on a knee, her legs parting so I could get between them. I put one hand on the arm of the couch over her head, bracing myself there, staring down at her face.

Everything she was thinking was right there. In her eyes. In the furrow of her brow. The way she bit that lip. Confusion, anxiousness, longing, desire.

She wanted me. She didn’t want to want me. But she wanted me.

“I gave you a shitty wedding,” I said to her. “Let me give you a good wedding night.”

“You had a shitty wedding, too,” she whispered.

“All the more reason to let me make this good for you.”

The words good for you hung in the air. She was considering it, and I wondered if any man had really made it good for her. Had made it about her.

I ran my hand from her calf, to her knee, up her thigh, pushing the hem of her sweatshirt out of my way.

Revealing those pretty pink panties and the damp spot that had only gotten bigger.

I cupped her hip, my fingers pressing into the sweet give of her ass.

My thumb hooked under the elastic over her hip bone.

I glanced down, obsessed with the image of my fingers making dents in her pale flesh.

I squeezed and she gasped, her body arching.

Yes. Yes. This. Exactly, this. It had been a ridiculously weird day and we could turn it all the way around right here. Right now.

Her knee bent and fell open, giving me space to slide up against her, between her legs. The press of my hips against her made her groan and arch again. I’d never hated jeans more than I hated the ones I was wearing. The ones that were between me and the wet heat between those sweet thighs.

I was not a man who got obsessed. I would say, truthfully, I liked sex. Who didn’t? But I viewed it as a bodily function. A stress relief. Like going for a long run.

But this moment, on this couch, with Harmony Calloway…it was changing the neural pathways in my brain.

I arched into her and she whimpered. A needy sound. A hungry sound.

Again, I pushed my hips into that place between her legs, making sure that the outline of my erection was pressed directly against her. Her hands grabbed my shoulders. Her eyes were wide.

Holy shit. We’d barely started, but she looked on the verge of coming.

I’d never dry-humped a woman to orgasm before, but I was suddenly all in. I was completely dressed, but this was still the hottest thing to happen to me. Ever.

“You like that,” I said.

It wasn’t a question, and she gasped, her mouth opening and closing. I arched into her again and her eyes rolled back in her head.

“You’re so fucking pretty like this.” I had no idea where these words were coming from. Maybe from the novel experience of having this gorgeous woman panting underneath me.

I curled my hands over the edge of the arm rest and dug my knee in, so when I rolled into her again, I hit in a higher spot. She cried out, her arms going wide, her eyes rolling back in her head again.

“You’re going to come like this, aren’t you? So fucking hot for this? So fucking ready.”

I abandoned the arm rest on the couch and shoved her sweatshirt up, revealing a tank top.

I shoved that out of the way until it was just her full, gorgeous tits, shimmying every time I pressed myself against her.

Her nipples were tight and I couldn’t stop myself, I leaned down and pulled one into my mouth.

Tongued it, sucked it. Until she clutched at my head, holding me to her, her legs clamping around my hips and I felt it… the tremors all over her body.

“Holy…fuck,” she was breathing. “Oh my God. Oh my…”

The trembling eased into random shakes.

I let go of her nipple, looking up in her fuck drunk face.

She blinked at me like she wasn’t sure what just happened.

And, fair. We’d gone from talking to dry-humping each other on the couch in literally two minutes.

My cock twitched behind my zipper and I couldn’t resist another thrust against her, not hard, I knew she had to be sensitive, and it set her off on a whole new orgasm.

“Oh my, Ethan,” she whispered. “Ethan, what…?”

I hummed in my throat, wondering if this was her first time having multiple orgasms. If I was the man lucky enough to have so many of her firsts. I had to feel it and I slid my hand between us, fingers easing down past the elastic of her underwear into the hot juicy center of her.

“Oh fuck, Harmony,” I groaned, putting my head down on her breasts for just a second. Just a moment to get myself together. “You’re so wet.”

“I don’t…” she shook her head. Her breath coming and going out of her body in hard gusts. “This doesn’t…”

“You want another one?” I whispered, stroking my fingers over her clit. She jumped, swallowed a scream in her throat.

“Please,” she gasped, pressing the thick part of her palms against her eyes. Almost like she was in agony. Almost. “Just…fuck… please.”

I couldn’t take it another second. I wished I could.

I wished I could draw out her begging for me to make her come for hours.

Maybe later. But I was raw with wanting her.

Drunk on the surprise combustion between us.

I needed to burn this off, and then we could settle into some serious shit.

I would keep her naked and coming for hours. I’d make her beg until she wept.

But now, I just needed to see her come again.

I slid two fingers deep inside of her, stroked that sweet spongy spot on the other side of her clitoris, while my thumb worked the outside.

She threw her arms over her face and I leaned down to kiss her breasts, her pink nipples. I sucked and stroked and got so fucking hard in my own jeans, it was a real possibility I was going to come in my pants, like we were in a high school closet again.

All at once, she went rigid, every muscle quivering. Her pussy squeezing down on my fingers, her hips jack-knifing in a way that I worried my wrist might snap.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, and slowly let down her hands. “I don’t… I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” I asked her, slipping my hand free. My fingers were glistening, and I lifted them to my mouth, licking off what she’d left on my skin.

“What…” she breathed, her eyes on my mouth. My fingers.

“You’re sweet,” I said, smiling at her. I leaned down and kissed her, giving her a taste. She opened her mouth, let me in, moaned in her throat.

“No!” She said, all of a sudden, pushing at my chest. “No.”

My brain was not working, so it took me a second, but by the second no, I was up and off of her, my hands at my sides. My cock hard as a rock.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

She yanked her shirt down and then her sweatshirt.

“I said no kissing.”

I looked at the couch, and back at her. “Still? After that ?”

“It’s my rule. No kissing.”

“But you can come all over my jeans?” I asked, pointing at the wet spot on the front of my pants.

“I don’t…that’s not…” she shook her head, like she was attempting to pull herself together. “We can talk about that, I guess. Later. Or not. We could forget it ever happened.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I laughed.

“Whatever.” She looked at the fire and then back at me. “We just can’t…kiss. It’s too, too intimate and we don’t want any wires to get crossed about what this is.”

“Seems like a shame,” I said. “Considering I gave you the C&C on our very first try.”

“I never should have told you what happened in that closet,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re going to be impossible.”

“Probably,” I said, but then took pity on her. “Go to bed. It’s been a long day.”

I wanted to carry her to my room. Wrap my arms around her and sleep for three days. But, she was right. It was clear to me that we obviously had explosive chemistry, but there was no room for chemistry in a fake marriage.

“Are you okay?” she asked, waving her hand vaguely in the direction of my erection. I almost laughed, but managed to keep it together.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Good night.”

She didn’t need to be asked twice. She snapped her fingers and the animals got to their feet and ran after her up the stairs.

I sat on the couch and watched the fire burn down to embers, making sure any temptation to knock on her bedroom door and finish what we started tonight was gone.

All things considered, though, as far as wedding nights went…that had been pretty fucking awesome.