Page 32 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

TWENTY-TWO

HARMONY

Harmony: Ethan did a really nice thing and helped my goose Bruce with her wing.

Sunshine: Why are you telling me this? Hold on, are you falling for this guy? What did I tell you about NOT sleeping with him. Are you caving?

Harmony: I am definitely NOT caving.

Sunshine: You’re caving.

Harmony: I’m caving a little…

The animals settled easily enough.

I did not.

I sat on the edge of the bed and wondered if it was stupid to think I could contain how I felt by implementing a no kissing rule? Or a no touching rule? No sniffing rule?

But a yes fucking rule?

I made myself crazy with my own bullshit. I knew that. Except it felt dangerous to let this relationship between us grow without rules.

Because I could get so used to the way he looked at me at the meeting, that indulgent smile coupled with proud eyes. It was a vicious combination. I could get used to the way his hand felt stretched along the back of the seat in the truck, his fingers toying with my hair.

I could get used to him. To us.

I just had to remember that everything about Ethan was temporary. This marriage was like those days between Christmas and New Year’s when time meant nothing.

My sisters and I would start eating cookies for breakfast and chips for dinner.

We had Bailey’s in our coffee every morning and wine every night.

We took long naps curled up on the couch watching movies we’d missed, because we’d worked so hard all the other days of the year.

But that week was a stretch of time out of time.

Calories didn’t count. Showers were voluntary.

We did what felt good.

Then, when it was over, we got right back to our lives. Which I always started with a New Year’s Resolution list.

Which, I’m pretty sure was how I got into this dilemma in the first place.

Weirdly, it was that thing that he’d written on my resolution list – that he would be faithful no matter what - that had cinched it for me. Total fidelity from him no matter what I did.

My ex-boyfriend couldn’t give me that. It’s why he’d dumped me.

So, orgasms and temporary faithfulness?

Why not?

I walked across the dark carpet to his bedroom door.

Through the crack beneath it, I could see the flickering light of a fire and I realized it was cold in the hallway.

I was still wearing my winter coat because I’d been in a daze since the moment he’d told me I should go to his room to find out what his rules were.

Ugh. Should I go back and put it in my room? Should I take it off and hide it in the corner? Before I could make up my mind, the door opened and it was Ethan, in the blue and grey flannel shirt he’d worn tonight. His hair rumpled and standing on end. The fire burning behind him.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he murmured, all sly and knowing. I felt like I could combust right at that moment.

“No talking,” I said, and pushed him back, shutting the door behind me.

If he talked, if we talked, this would be real.

I shrugged out of my coat and it dropped, heavily, on the floor. It must have pushed a button in him, because he was on me. His hands on my face, his body against mine, pushing me into the door.

A sudden memory hit me. Us in that pantry back in high school. Him pushing me against the shelves. Feeling real desire for the first time in my life.

He lifted my face and kissed my neck. Sucking, biting kisses that were too much and somehow not enough all at the same time.

I went for the buttons on his shirt and he lifted my sweater over my head, sending my hair into static land, but it didn’t matter.

He looked at my breasts like a starving man in front of a candy machine.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, running the back of his hand over the tops of my breasts.

“No talking,” I said.

He looked up at me, his face hardened. “No talking, no kissing.”

I nodded.

“What if I tell you to get naked and get on the bed?”

My breath shuddered and it was an explosion of heat in my belly. “That’s…that’s okay.”

“Then do it,” he said. I wanted to ask if he was angry, because he seemed angry, but I’d be breaking my own rules. And maybe I liked him angry?

I toed off my shoes and undid the button and zipper on my jeans, pushing them down my legs. I stepped out of them, nearly tripping, but Ethan caught me. I smiled a little at the embarrassing comedy of it all, but he didn’t smile back.

An electric tension filled me. Something more than desire. More than I’d ever felt, so I didn’t even have a name for it. Something past want.

“Get on the bed,” he said. The beds in this house were high and it wasn’t entirely graceful lifting one cheek and then the other and trying to scootch backwards.

Was I even wearing my good underwear? I glanced down, relieved it was my navy blue lacy panties.

“Lay back,” he said.

“Take off your shirt,” I shot back.

It really wasn’t fair how Dr. 5K looked, while I was just glad I didn’t have on my granny panties.

“Lay back, Harmony,” he said, and I did what he told me, laying back against the smooth comforter on his bed.

The fire was taking the chill out of the room, or maybe it was the heat flaring inside me.

I wasn’t sure which. He stepped forward, parting my legs with his.

The inside of my knees felt his jeans and I swallowed, staring up at the beams in the ceiling.

His hand cupped my chin and then my throat, making me lift my head and arch my back.

He slid that hand from my neck, to my chest and then my breasts.

He slipped his finger beneath the cup of my bra, teasing my nipple.

I moaned in my throat. His hand slipped down my belly to the edge of my underwear.

And there he stopped. I held my breath, waiting for him to keep going, but he didn’t.

I lifted my head to find him staring at me. At my body. He nudged my legs out wider, and to accommodate him, I braced my heels on the bed frame and let my knees fall open.

“Yes,” he breathed. “Just like that.”

He stepped closer, and in one quick, almost shocking move, he grabbed the sides of my panties and pulled them down. I lifted my ass and straightened my legs, letting him get them off me.

He leaned forward and kissed my breasts.

Sucked my nipple through the fabric of my bra.

And then bit, just a little. Enough to send a groan out of my throat.

He kissed his way down my stomach, his hands cupping my breasts, pulling the cups down on both sides so it was like I was being offered up. It felt dirty.

In the best possible way.

All of this felt dirty. His silence. His eyes on me while mine were locked on the celling. The slide of his body between my legs as he got down on his knees beside the bed.

I bit my lip and closed my eyes.

“Look at me,” he said, his breath feathering between my legs. I was so hot and so wet, his breath felt cool. “You’ve made up all the rules so far, Harmony,” he said. His fingers pinching my nipple, his breath all over my pussy. “Give me this. Look at me.”

I lifted my head and looked down where he was crouched over my body. My knees framed his face and his eyes reflected the fire. His hands slid down my body to my knees, which he shoved wider, and I whimpered.

“I don’t even have to look, do I?” he asked, his lip lifted in a sardonic smile. “I can feel how wet you are.” He dipped his head, his tongue coming out to run along the seam of my pussy, and I groaned, my eyes shutting as I arched up against him.

“No,” he said, pulling away. “Eyes on me, Harmony.”

Oh my God.

“Eyes on me, or this ends.”

My eyes flew open. He smiled like I’d done a good job. I got another lick, deeper this time, and my legs spasmed like they might close against him, but he braced them wide with his shoulders.

“Keep,” he said. “Watching.”

More licking. Until his tongue flicked over my clit. His eyes on me were relentless, they gave me no place to hide. No way to go inside myself. He growled in his throat like I tasted so good and he spread me wider with his thumbs, glancing down before looking up at me again.

“You’re so pretty,” he said. “So pink.” Another delicate lick, a circle around my clit and then lower. He pushed that tongue inside of me, his eyes on me the whole time, and because I couldn’t close my eyes and gather myself, I did something I’d never done.

I reached down and grabbed his hair in my fist and lifted my hips to his mouth and put him where I wanted him. It was shocking. Exciting. His groan-laugh ruffled over me, and he stopped teasing. Wrapping his arms around my thighs, he yanked me closer to the edge of the bed and his mouth.

All I could do was hold on for dear life as he feasted on me. Sucked on me. He fucked me with his tongue and sucked on my clit.

“Oh my God,” was all I could say. All I could breathe. Over and over again.

The orgasm was going to happen. I didn’t have to do anything, go anywhere in my head.

I didn’t have to coax it out or be patient.

It was in me and then it was consuming me.

My legs squeezed together as I fucked up into his mouth.

Both hands in his hair, holding him against me, grinding myself against his face.

When my body was my own again, I realized what I was doing and I let go of his hair, dropped my legs from around his ears. “I’m sorry,” I breathed. “I didn’t mean-”

“Fuck that,” he said, his eyes on mine. There was no smile. Nothing teasing. He was sharp and he was cranked up high in a way no man I’d ever been with had been before. “Do it again.”

He went after me once more, licking and sucking, and I wanted to tell him there was no way…but we were in totally new territory and the second climax was a shockwave through my primed body. I couldn’t believe it.

When he got to his feet, wiping his shiny mouth with his hand, I sat up too. Behind the zipper of his jeans, his cock was so hard. I pressed my hand against it, sliding it up from the bottom of his zipper to the top.