“Oh, God-”
“Come for me, princess,” he growls into my ear before dragging his lips across my cheek and claiming my mouth. I moan into him as his tongue probes my lips, his fingers curling deep inside and that thumb of his sending me right to the edge.
“I want to watch your face when you come for me, Natalie,” he growls. “And I want you to come. Right. Now.”
And I shatter.
I scream into his mouth as my orgasm tears through me. My thighs clamp on his wrist, my hands clutching wildly at his shoulders, at his hair, at his face - anything to keep myself from going spinning away from him in the vortex of my release. My body goes rigid, my hips rocking off the couch into him before I suddenly collapse beneath him as if the strings holding me up were cut.
Oh, God, what did I just do?
It’s the first thought that hits me as I slowly regain use of my mind - the horrible, sinking, self-loathing realization that I’ve just left my standards and my scruples at the door and done that with a man who’s literally paying me to be his wife.
The feeling rolls through me like nausea, and I’m suddenly sitting up and feeling the awkward need to cover myself as I smooth my skirt down.
“Hey, hang on.”
Austin’s hand on my cheek stops my mad thoughts for a second, the warmth of his palm centering and calming me for one brief moment.
But it’s too much to hold in.
I shake my head, pulling away from his hand. “We shouldn’t have done-”
He kisses me, bringing me back to center again. “Yeah, we should have,” he murmurs into my lips.
But there it is again - that nagging, lingering thought that this is wrong. That pulling feeling on my back that I can’t ignore - all of it stemming from the fact that all of this is due to to a financial contract.
Me living here, these clothes I’m wearing, meeting his mother…
All of it, built on the premise of an exchange of money.
And I feel filthy.
I pull away. “No, Austin.” My eyes dart to his, almost losing my sudden resolve in the deepness of those hazel orbs, or in the thin lines of those dimples in his cheeks.
“You’re- you’re paying me.”
He frowns. “Nat, it’s not like that-”
“It’s exactly like that, Austin.”
I push my hair back as I stand, snatching my shirt up off the ground where it landed and hold it to my bare chest.
“That can’t happen again,” I say, quickly shaking my head.
And I don’t know who I’m trying to convince more as I whirl and run for my room.
21
Austin
Club music pounds through my head, vibrating my skull and making my damn teeth hurt it’s so loud.
I fucking hate clubs.
I’m a Texas boy. Give me some country music and a cold Lone Star and I’m a happy guy. But instead I’ve got shitty Euro-pop and some godawful designer light beer my new teammate Eli passes to me.
Welcome to LA, I guess.
“Hey, so, congratulations I guess, man,” Eli hoists his beer my way.
Daryl, another new teammate, along with Kyle who’s just along for the ride, join in, toasting my newly-spilled nuptials that’ve been splayed across the fucking internet for the last two days.
Daryl chuckles and claps me on the back. “Twenty-three, a first round draft pick, a sweet new bachelor pad up in the hills, and a forty-mil contract.” He snorts. “And now is when you decided to settle down with one woman? The fuck is wrong with you, rookie?”
What’s wrong with me indeed.
It’s the question that’s been looming over my thoughts ever since Natalie locked herself away in her room after our craziness in the living room the night before. It’s the question rattling through my head ever since I almost followed her up there like some sort of pussy-whipped, well, pussy.
Fucking married life, man.
I needed to get out. And hell, I should be here, even if I hate the place. I’m a damn NFL player; it’s practically in my contract to be out at clubs acting like a rock-star.
Eli cracks up as he and Daryl clink beers over the pounding of the house music. “You’re in your prime, young buck!”
I get that the whole marriage thing has to be a secret, even to guys on the inside like Eli and Daryl who for all I know have the same sort of arrangement going on with fake media-wives of their own. Except - as Derek reiterated by way of yelling when I called him after the thirty-nine text messages, six voice mails, and an email the size of the Old Testament he’d left when my phone was off - “you just don’t talk about it.”
Apparently, these bullshit “image-wives” are commonplace, except it’s like that fight movie - “the first rule of fake wives club is, you don’t talk about fake wives club.”