: Chapter 25

It’s almost nine thirty before Hayes gets home, and I’m about to crawl out of my skin by the time he walks in the door.

I leap off the stairs, where I’m waiting, the minute the door opens, but he hustles in with his head down, phone against his ear. “No, Dexter, if you want approval, you’ll need to send it through the proper channels. I’m not interested in acting as your shortcut. No. No. No. Do I need to say no once more? Call my office and make an appointment if you want to discuss this further. We’re done for now. Good night.”

He hangs up, drops the phone into a potted plant, and loosens his tie, and all of my own frustrations and worries fade away as concern for him takes hold.

I want to be mad. I want to remind myself that I deserve better than this, but I can’t.

For one, this is all pretend.

For two, his profile is etched with weariness, his shoulders are drooping, and the sigh that leaks out of him is like an overstretched balloon finally giving up the last that it has to give.

When he turns his head and spots me, guilt flashes across his features. “Begonia. Apologies. This afternoon turned into one crisis after another, and I lost track of time.”

It’s so damn familiar.

I’m working late, Begonia. Eat without me.

Sorry I forgot to call. I was tied up.

The boss needed me. You know how it goes.

I know better.

I do.

I know better than to pretend everything’s fine and I can roll with this and I wasn’t worried he’d died in a helicopter accident, but my indignation is warring with knowing that Hayes Rutherford is a million times the man Chad was, and I’m not talking about his bank account.

Chad wouldn’t have walked across the foyer to wrap me in a hug and hold me tight as if he were holding on for dear life the way Hayes is right now, like he truly didn’t want to be in the office and is glad to be home.

He wouldn’t have bought me so much as an at-home clay-painting kit, never mind a pottery wheel and clay.

And Chad and I could’ve afforded a used pottery wheel and clay.

I’d sometimes stalk them on eBay when I was feeling unsettled.

And I’m not letting Hayes off the hook because he bought me a pottery kit to use at his house, kiln and all, and had his staff set it up for me in a room with a window overlooking his solarium with all of the pretty plants and hot tub and indoor waterfall.

I’m letting him off the hook because he has zero obligation to apologize to me, to acknowledge that he made me worry, that he should’ve called, that he broke our date, because this is all fake, but he’s doing all the things someone he’s in a relationship with deserves anyway.

“You must be famished,” he says into my shoulder.

“I had some duck with your family. And it was only mildly awkward when Uncle Antonio started talking about a few women he knows that he could invite out here, and then when your mother asked if he was ready to date again to try to cover for him, and then when Keisha pretended she was whispering to me that they’re all a-holes, when she wasn’t actually whispering at all and everyone heard her. What about you? Have you eaten?”

“We stock Razzle Dazzle treats in all the offices.”

“Hayes.”

I can feel his smile as he shifts his head on my shoulder. “I’m shocked, bluebell. You seem the type to embrace snacks for dinner.”

“On vacation. Not when you’re working fourteen-hour days.”

He kisses my neck, sending delightful shivers dancing across my skin. “Apologies for your awful dinner.”

“That was actually just the soup course. Dinner itself wasn’t all bad. Françoise and I made friends today, so she snuck a live cricket onto your mom’s plate, and then Marshmallow tried to save her from the scary cricket and ended up running across the table and almost catching his fur and another tablecloth on fire. I think you should have a no-candles rule as long as Marshmallow and I are in residence.”

Hayes’s whole body is shaking.

“Are you laughing or having serious regrets about bringing me here?”

Marshmallow stalks into the room with an umbrella clenched in his jaw, and he growls low like he’s threatening Hayes to not answer that question wrong.

“I’m laughing.”

He is. I can hear it, and it makes my stupid back-stabbing heart freaking sing. “At me, or with me?”

“Out of sheer regret that I missed the show. Is my mother packing her bags yet?”

“She says she has to be in Los Angeles for a dinner for some foundation tomorrow.”

“Excellent. Did you make lovely art today?”

“Shh. No more talking until you eat something good for you.”

He kisses my neck again, and this time, I can’t ignore the way his touch electrifies my skin and makes my nipples pebble and sends my vagina into a tailspin of can we try last night again without the fire and literal sprinklers to put us out, please?

“F-food,” I try to order.

“I believe I’d prefer sleep.”

“You need both. And I mean sleep in the real sense of the word sleep.”

“Is the bedroom fixed?”

I sigh. “No. Your housekeeper and Keisha had an argument over whether the table that was under the flaming tablecloth could be saved, and the chairs still smell like smoke and stale water, and apparently having a clay art room assembled in an hour is as far as your money went today.”

“Hm.” He pulls away from where his breath is tickling my neck, grabs my hand, and drags me deeper into the house, past the formal sitting room in front, the dining room across from it, then the doorway to the east wing, and around the corner and through the arched stone entryway to the massive kitchen.

I smile. “A-ha! You are hungry.”

He hands me a massive picnic basket topped with a blue checkered picnic blanket that’s sitting on the island. “Can you hold this?”

“It’s a little heavy, but yes, I think I can—erp!”

In one swift motion, he hefts me into his arms and heads for the back door, me clutching the picnic basket in my lap, him holding onto me.

“Hayes.”

“Robert, close the door behind us, and don’t let anyone else leave this house if they want to live,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Yes, sir,” Robert answers behind us.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t hurt yourself, sir.”

Hayes smiles.

He smiles.

“Don’t do that,” I warn him.

The man isn’t sweating or huffing as he carries me out to the courtyard, Marshmallow trotting beside us, which is more than Chad could’ve done too. “Do what, love?”

“Smile. Do not smile.”

“I had the most fascinating text messages all day long today.” He keeps marching past the edge of the courtyard, me clinging to him like my life depends on it while still wanting to be ready if he drops me and also trying not to drop the picnic basket nestled into my lap.

And he’s not struggling at all.

Does he work out?

When?

“I wouldn’t call our text messages fascinating.”

“Jonas is enjoying his honeymoon,” he muses, as if he doesn’t have a frazzled me clinging to his neck and an eager dog leaping around his legs while he strides across the moonlit lawn. “My mother also has opinions about an interior designer for renovating my bedroom suite. Uncle Antonio is sorry he thought Liliane would be a welcome guest. He tells me he helped set up your pottery wheel himself. And Keisha tells me she told you all of my deepest, darkest secrets.”

“She only did it because she cares,” I say quickly.

“Yes, clearly breaking trust is a sign of caring.”

“Would you have told me about Brock Sturgis?”

His shoulders bunch. “She truly did tell you everything, didn’t she?”

“She didn’t go into detail.”

“Hm.”

“I won’t repeat a thing. But I think I understand better why your mom hovers. Everyone worries about you.”

“I am not a frail flower, Begonia.”

“That’s really funny, because technically, a begonia is kind of a frail flower, so it’s like you’re pointing out that I am when you’re not.”

“You are not a frail flower either. God help the person who mistakes you for one.”

“I know I’m not, and I know you’re not. You’re just…”

“I’m just…?”

“Stuck in a world where you can either let it suck away your soul or be alone. And that’s not fair. Or easy, I’d guess. How does everyone else in your family do it?”

“They don’t feel it as personally, I suppose. Didn’t have the magnitude of betrayal. Or they don’t mind. Or they appreciate the luxuries enough that the trade-off is worth it. My father married well. And not in a money sense, but in a trust and true love sense. My parents were high school sweethearts, in fact, from a time before my mother understood what would be expected of her. He’s never worried about her stabbing him in the back, nor has he had to. Uncle Antonio didn’t fare as well, but he’s my mother’s brother, so he’s shielded from the expectations of being a Rutherford.”

“And he’s a man,” I point out.

Hayes snorts. “That does present another level of protection in the eyes of the world, doesn’t it?”

“But you didn’t escape it.”

“I did for a time, leaving the country to study abroad and ignoring the tabloids and letting my family handle any issues. Ignorance truly is bliss sometimes.”

“Would you tell me what happened?”

“You want details?”

“Yes.” I don’t want details. I don’t want to know the horrific levels of torture that a spoiled high schooler with money and connections could resort to. I see it enough in my own world.

But I want him to know I’d listen if he wants to talk.

“Begonia, this is too lovely of a night to ruin it with old memories that I refuse to let haunt me anymore.”

“So, you needed a fake girlfriend because you’re perfectly fine and well-adjusted and have no lingering trust issues after your fiancée committed the ultimate betrayal like fifteen years ago?”

“You’re so very cruel, yet so very irresistible at the same time. However do you manage?”

“I won’t hurt you, you know,” I whisper. “If you want to use me to learn to trust someone again, I’m okay with that. And I realize that saying you can trust me is basically a red flag that means you probably shouldn’t, but—”

“Begonia.”

“Yes?”

He doesn’t immediately answer, and his steps slow as we approach a line of trees near a hilltop. The lights of the house are distant enough to make this little section of the lawn feel private, and the moon is bright enough that we can see its light reflected in the river in the distance.

He sets me down, then relieves me of the picnic basket and lays out the blanket. “Sit. Have dinner with me and tell me all the good that I missed today.”

“You want to hear me talk.”

He settles onto the blanket, long legs bent, sheds his suit coat, pulls his tie the rest of the way off, then removes his shoes.

It’s the shoes that do me in.

I don’t know why.

I just know that watching him take his fancy shoes off, here on a picnic blanket under the moonlight, is some kind of catnip to my inner schoolgirl fantasies about saving Prince Charming.

It’s like he’s removing all of his armor and letting me see him.

All of him. The tender parts and the tired parts and the insecure parts. The simple parts, the basic man under all the billionaire luster who needs nothing more than to know that someone sees him for who he is and loves him for that with no ulterior motives.

Too soon, I tell myself. Too soon.

“Is this for you, or is it for me?” I ask as I settle back on my heels beside him, Marshmallow flopping to the ground on top of his shoes. I don’t need light to know that my dog is gazing at Hayes as though he invented cheese-filled hotdogs.

Hayes turns to look at me, that lock of unruly hair falling across his broad forehead, his eyes hooded and serious, lips barely parted. “For both of us, I had hoped. You seem to enjoy picnics, and I…I enjoy you.”

This man.

He makes me wish we’d met another year from now, when I’ve fully found myself again, shaken Chad all the way off, learned to stand up to my mother and taught her how to listen to me when I tell her what I want and need, even when she doesn’t understand it.

“Is someone listening?” I whisper. “Are there more camera people hiding in the woods?”

He flinches.

And I freeze. “Oh.”

“Begonia. No.” He grips my hand. “The photographers on Oysterberry Bay—I apologize. I don’t—you are correct. I don’t trust easily, and I thought it necessary. But here, we’re alone. You have my word. This is not for the world. This is for me. And, I hope, you.”

We’re alone. For me.

“I enjoy you too,” I whisper.

“You shouldn’t. I’m very disagreeable.”

I put a finger to his lips.

He captures that hand too, and he pulls it to his mouth, pressing soft kisses to my finger, turning my hand to kiss my knuckles, then turning it again to kiss my palm, my wrist, and up my forearm to the crook of my elbow, holding my gaze in the moonlight and making me feel not like the last woman in the world, but like the only woman in his world.

“Hayes,” I whisper.

“I would very much like to make love to you under the moonlight, Ms. Fairchild.”

My heart tumbles out of my chest and offers itself to him on a clay platter. It’s not fancy. Not diamond-encrusted. Not even very pretty sometimes.

But it’s what I have, and it’s his for the taking.

Even though I know better.

“With my eyes open,” he continues, still pressing soft kisses to the bare flesh on my arm, his eyes still holding me captive, “fully aware that I’m with you, with you fully aware that you’re with me.”

Butterflies swirl to life in my chest.

This could be a massive mistake. I know better than to get attached right now. And while my brain says this is temporary, my heart says too late.

But what’s life if not for living? “No fires tonight,” I whisper.

His eyes rake over me in the moonlight. “On the contrary, I hope to set you on fire.”

Well, then.

My panties won’t be in the way. They’ve self-ignited in a cloud of poof, floating away into the night. My breasts tingle. My vagina aches.

I want him. Naked or in a suit, though this tieless, shoeless, top two buttons of his dress shirt undone thing is exceptionally attractive.

He brushes his thumb over my jawline, shifting on the ground and making my dog grunt between us. “Move, Marshmallow.”

The poor pup grunts again.

“I’m going to do unspeakably filthy things to your mother,” Hayes informs him, his hand moving to stroke my thigh.

Marshmallow whimpers softly and slinks away, and now I’m laughing.

I’m so turned on I can’t think, and I’m laughing.

But only briefly, because the tiger formerly known as Hayes is pouncing, expertly sliding his hands under my shirt and pulling it over my head as he lowers me to the thick, plush blanket.

I part my legs, and he settles between them, the hard ridge of his erection pressing against my center through our clothes, his mouth capturing mine, his hands sliding beneath me while I blindly tackle the buttons on his dress shirt.

My bra suddenly goes loose, the cool air enveloping me a stark contrast to the heat in his gaze and his touch. He tugs one strap down my arm, his fingertips trailing over my skin and stirring my nerve endings like a sandy wind on a warm tropical morning.

I love being touched.

And kissed.

And adored.

I even love that I’m so clumsy right now that I can’t get Hayes’s shirt buttons undone.

The way he’s teasing and licking and nipping at my neck is driving me wild, and I finally give up and yank, sending his buttons flying.

He chuckles into the crook of my neck as his thick, heavy length pulses against me. “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly get any more attractive, bluebell…”

“Want me to do the same to your pants?”

“Yes.”

“Are you adding this to my bill?”

“Payable in sexual favors. Where is that sweet nipple I found yesterday? I miss it. Ah. Here it is.”

He sucks on the tip of my breast, and the world explodes in song and rainbows around me.

I’m so wet I’ve soaked through my leggings. The cotton of his undershirt brushes my bare belly, heat radiating off his long, solid body, and I surrender.

There’s no history.

No complications.

No questions.

Just us.

With him worshipping my breasts while I tug his undershirt over his head and off one arm, then take shaky, over-zealous hands to his belt buckle.

He sucks in a short breath, his belly quivering beneath the backs of my hands. “Your fingers are exquisite.”

“Your body is extis—etiquette—oh my god, I can’t talk when I’m this horny.”

He chuckles again, his mouth and chest vibrating against me while the moon smiles down on us. “More practice, Begaaaaaaaaaaah…”

I smile and stroke his hard cock again, fisting it in one hand beneath his boxers. “You were saying?”

“D-don’t ss-stop.”

He has nothing to worry about.

His cock is exquisite. Thick and long, hot and silky-smooth, with a wide, blunt tip. “I want to taste you.”

He shoves one side of my leggings down. “I want to be inside you.”

“I’ll rock-paper-scissors you for who’s in charge.”

God, he has the best laugh. It’s like the hills and the river are singing, and it’s making me even wetter.

“No negotiations, Ms. Oh, fuck yes. Begonia. Fuck. No rock p-paper—keep your hands—yes.”

He buries his head in the crook of my neck, his breath coming short and fast, hips jerking, while I tease his length with my hands, pushing his pants out of the way and cradling his testicles too.

“I love how you feel,” I whisper.

He slaps the ground blindly until his hand connects with the picnic basket, and he sends it tumbling, food and all.

I pause. “Hayes?”

“Condom. Inside you. Now.”

I can’t remember the last time I felt so wanted. So needed.

So adored for being me.

Even if it’s not real, I intend to treasure tonight for the rest of my life.

I squirm beneath him. “Let me help.”

“Got it. You. Strip. For me.”

His commanding tone sets my skin on fire and makes my vagina throb. “You like me naked.”

“I need you naked. I’ve needed you naked with me all fucking day.”

I’m wriggling out of my leggings as fast as I can while he rips open a condom, kneeling back on his heels, his eyes trained on me and my desperate yanking.

“I love when you say fuck.” I’m breathless and wheezy. Totally not sexy, but his cock is bobbing in the moonlight as he steadies it and rolls the condom down, and the sight of him makes me so wet that my thighs are slick. “It’s so improper.”

“I intend to fuck you until you can’t walk.”

“Yes.” I smell my own arousal as I finally yank my leggings off and reach for him, twisting until we’re both on our sides, facing each other on the plush blanket, his erection nudging my clit and making me moan.

Quiet, Begonia, the neighbors will hear.

No.

No.

I shove the old memories out as Hayes kisses me again, his tongue sliding into my mouth with a ragged groan from the back of his throat.

Is he this eager with everyone?

Or is it me?

Shut up, Begonia.

His fingers slip between my thighs, stroking my wet core and teasing my clit, and then I’m on my back, and that’s not his fingers anymore. “I want you now,” he says against my lips.

I tilt my hips, offering all of me to him, my hands gripping his hair. “Yes.”

“Slow next time.”

“Yes.”

He slides inside me, filling and stretching me, and we both groan-sigh together.

“Heaven,” he breathes, thrusting into me again while I arch my hips to meet him.

“More,” I whimper.

“So tight.”

“So hard.”

“So fucking good.”

He hits that magic spot inside me, and I cry out. “There, Hayes. Oh my god, there.”

“Louder, Begonia. Scream for me.”

“You… feel… so good.”

He’s a wild animal, completely unleashed, bucking his hips and slamming into me, hitting that sweet spot with every stroke, making my nerve endings tight and deliciously anxious as my release builds inside me, everything tightening and coiling inside me.

“Begonia,” Hayes gasps. “Bluebell, I’m so fucking close. Baby, I need you to come. Come all over my cock.”

And that’s all it takes.

I cry his name as my release washes over me, throbbing and pulsing and squeezing him while he stills, his neck straining, his eyes locked on mine, lips parted while he groans through his own orgasm.

“Begonia,” he pants.

I can’t speak.

I’m babbling incoherently, my words drifting away into the cool night air while I ride wave after wave of my climax.

It’s like my body has been saving up for this for years.

And it probably has.

Hayes collapses on top of me, his breath tickling my neck, before the last tremors of my orgasm have finished sending shivers through my body. I stretch my toes, let my legs fall more open, and my arms collapse to the ground too.

And then I giggle.

“Dear god, you’re going to murder me with sex, aren’t you?” Hayes murmurs.

“Can we do that again?”

“Correction: You would murder me with denying me sex. I would die of blue balls.”

I snort-laugh.

He sucks in a breath, his body going still, and I realize my vagina is squeezing his spent cock.

I love this moment.

I’m so very vulnerable. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

But also safe.

I know to the deepest parts of me that while this may only be a side benefit of our arrangement, Hayes won’t hurt me.

Not on purpose.

I trust him.

He lets me be me.

“Are you hungry?” I murmur into his hair as I find the strength to run my fingers through it once more.

He settles his head deeper onto my shoulder. “No,” he murmurs. “I’m too content to be hungry.” He kisses my collarbone. “Begonia?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you for being you.”

My eyes go hot, and I blink the sensation away as quickly as I can.

This might not be permanent, but it’s good, if only to show me what I truly want in a relationship.

To show me what relationships can be.

And I will never settle for anything less again.