Chapter 27
Mallory
“We’re planning to take our honeymoon in a few months when we have time to do it right,” Dash says to a college friend who asks.
“So much going on right now for both of us at work. We’re gonna honeymoon in a few months,” I tell my parents’ friends, a nice couple who’ve lived in Calistoga longer than I’ve been alive.
He and I have been saying versions of the same thing all night long. No one seems to think it’s strange that we’re not hopping on a plane to some tropical honeymoon destination in the morning, so we keep spouting the party line. And dancing.
So much dancing.
I had no idea how fun it would be to dance with my new husband until Dash spun me around on the dance floor and dipped me at the end of each song. I can’t get enough. Of him.
“Is it wrong to say I’m having the best time of my life at my fake wedding with my fake husband?” I ask as Dash pulls me into his arms for a slow ballad. I admit I’m fishing, wanting him to tell me that it’s not all fake, that some of what we feel for each other is real.
“It’s not wrong. This is an amazing night.”
“It is.” I want to say more. I want to tell him that I can’t imagine dancing with anyone else or loving it this much. But I can’t.
Our guests clap and give us room in the center of the dance floor, but after a few seconds, he’s all I see.
Or rather, all I can hear are Dash’s wedding vows. They play over and over again in my mind and it takes all my wherewithal not to ask him if he meant any of them. Of course he didn’t.
He may like me as a person, and our sex is off the charts, but he was very clear from the get-go about where he stands on relationships. I would be asking for a very uncomfortable thirteen months ahead if I brought up the idea of our fake relationship turning real.
So instead, I let my eyes drift shut and concentrate on Dash’s large, reassuring hand on the small of my back. And I dream about an hour from now when we can leave our fake wedding and have very real sex in the honeymoon suite.
“You have outdone yourself, husband.” I sigh in an orgasmic haze. I’m pretty sure my hair is tangled like a bird’s nest with strands plastered to my face. My cheeks feel hot, and I’m lazy and pliant.
Dash’s quiet chuckle tells me I look just like I feel. “Back atcha, wife.”
My cheek rests on Dash’s chest, and our bodies are bathed in sweat. “I sort of want to shower, but I can’t move.”
“If you can’t move, you can’t walk to the shower.” Dash’s voice sounds like maple syrup, and my ears are just as happy as the rest of my body.
“True.”
“I’d offer to carry you, but I thought you liked me sweaty.” He nudges me under the chin and shifts me so his lips can fall to mine. They’re salty and sweet at the same time, and I can’t imagine ever getting enough.
The bridal suite has treated us well. After the wedding, we came back to a champagne and fruit plate, which we devoured after our first round of sex. Or maybe it was after our third.
“I do,” I mumble against his mouth, which travels along my cheek to my temple, where he plants a soft kiss. “But I may not be quite as desirable when I’m a sweaty mess.”
He shifts again and pulls back just enough to focus on me. Our faces are a few inches apart and we lay side by side. I wrap my leg over his hip, and his hand comes to my hip. It’s like we can’t be with each other without touching each other.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” I’m still in a hazy, dreamy, post-sex fugue, so I’m really not understanding his question.
“Denigrate yourself. Suggest that you could possibly be undesirable when the very idea is an impossibility. You, my dear, are very, very desirable in so many ways.”
“You just like fucking me.” I don’t want him confused about the reason.
“You just did it again.” He looks confused and maybe even a little upset. And now I’m confused because I’m not sure what I’m doing that bothers him so much.
It seems important to keep the lines of communication clear now that we’ve included sex in our fake relationship. I want to make sure he knows that I know that he doesn’t have to pretend to catch feelings too. We can just be honest.
“What?”
“I don’t just like fucking you.”
I tilt my head because all evidence points to the contrary.
He shakes his head. “Of course I love fucking you. I really love fucking you, but that’s not what I mean. You said it like the only reason I find you desirable is because of this.” He points at the space between us, but I get his drift.
“I love doing all manner of things with you, with and without clothing, if I’m not being clear enough. And I don’t like you thinking that I’m only telling you I find you inexplicably desirable because I like fucking you. I find you incredibly desirable. Full stop.”
I feel chastened like a kid in school, but I’m not about to argue when he’s saying such nice things. So I say nothing and we lay side by side for a while longer in silence. I start to reach for his abs because they’re too beautiful not to touch, but he intercepts my hand and holds it against his chest instead.
“You don’t believe me,” he says, fixing me with those hypnotic blue eyes.
“I believe you.”
“You don’t. In your heart of hearts, you still think I’m under the spell of a good orgasm or I’m just paying lip service because I’m being nice. But you don’t truly believe that I desire the hell out of you.”
I’m ready to sling back some sort of rebuttal when it occurs to me that he’s right. There’s no point in arguing because he’s one hundred percent correct.
I squeeze my eyes shut because it’s almost painful to feel this seen and at this proximity. I don’t like such close scrutiny, especially when I can’t control what he sees.
“Fine. You’re right.”
I don’t open my eyes and wait for Dash to change the subject or get up for a glass of water. Or maybe the apocalypse will happen right here and now, and I’ll be saved from having to finish this conversation.
But I don’t feel the bed move, and it seems that Dash has stayed exactly where he is.
The apocalypse is a giant disappointment as well.
“Mallory.” The use of my actual name surprises me. I open my eyes to find Dash’s peering at me with concern.
I put my hands over my eyes instead.He gently lifts them away.
“What?”
“You know what. Talk to me. Why do you think I’m just blowing smoke up your ass?”
I take in a deep lungful of air and exhale slowly.
“I guess…in my experience…people tell me what they think I want to hear, even if it’s not true.”
“I’m not like that.” The firm set of his jaw leaves no room for argument.
“Okay.” I can’t take the intensity of his eyes, so I look away.
He turns my chin to face his. “No, not okay. I need you to believe me. We’ve gotten ourselves in deep with each other with our plans to get married, get your business started, and now we’ve thrown sex into the mix.”
At my attempt to protest, he taps a finger against my lips. “And I am very, very happy about that, so don’t get any ideas about eliminating it.” He removes his finger and I stay quiet. “I’d like to get to know you better. If I say you can believe me, it means that you can. If I have to keep reminding you until it sinks in, I will.”
“Okay.” It shouldn’t be so hard for me to accept his honesty, but I guess I still carry lingering fears that people like Felix tell me. “Thank you.” He nods, and I sense that he’s waiting for me to say more. “You can trust me too. If I say something, it will be the truth.”
He gives me a side-eye as though he’s not sure. “Yeah?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Okay, good.”
Dash’s body relaxes, and he pulls me into him again. I mull what he just said and try to figure out why it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. It’s not so much the idea of being honest with each other that is a problem. It’s more the idea of acknowledging that it means he’ll know things about me, things I might tell him because I’ve just vowed to be honest with him.
I’m not sure I’m ready to do that with another person.
Maybe it won’t come up.
“I like this,” Dash says, kissing my temple, and I assume he means the way we’re lying here in a sweaty heap after an orgasm that seemed like it lasted thirty minutes. It feels good here, curled against his chest with Dash’s strong arms encircling me.
“Me too.” I nuzzle into him a little more and feel his grip tighten. I don’t dare tell him how much I like it because it scares me to think about it. When I’m in his arms, I don’t ever want him to let me go.
Our inhale and exhale synchronize, and we breathe like one connected being. It feels like we’re more than the sum of our parts.
“What were you like in high school?” Dash asks, rolling onto his back, putting his hands behind his head, and looking impossibly sexy doing so. His abs flex as he rearranges himself, shoving a pillow behind his head.
He was built to exist in this exact scene, post-coital on crisp sheets with morning sun highlighting every curve of his chest and abs. I almost can’t look at him with a straight face because he’s such a perfect physical specimen that it must be some kind of cosmic joke. But I look anyway because I can.
Maybe that’s why I don’t answer his question. I’m distracted and very content.
Then I notice his head tilt and his lips press together expectantly. I realize he actually expects an answer.
“Are you really asking me about fifteen years ago?” My gaze returns to his abs until I feel his index finger brush beneath my chin, tilting my face to look at him.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
I scrunch my face and shake my head, dismissing this ridiculousness. “I was…normal. You know. It was high school.”
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“Sorry. It was a terrible question.”
“Why?” The corner of his mouth rises in amusement.
I shrug. “No one particularly likes high school, do they?”
He rolls off the bed and strides to the bathroom to refill the water glass from my bedside table. I watch his tight, athletic ass retreat toward the open door of the bathroom, grateful that we didn’t pull the shades last night. Every detail of Dash’s back and legs glows under the warm morning light. He’s like a walking Michelangelo sculpture.
When he comes back with the water, I get an even better view. All sculpted abs, broad shoulders, and large dick.
I don’t realize I’m gawking in his direction until he looks very pointedly at me. I lower my eyes and feel the creep of heat across my face.
He drops back onto the bed next to me, and I hear his low chuckle. “You can look. God knows I can’t stop staring at you every chance I get.”
This makes me blush even more furiously, which is why I end up answering a question I didn’t plan on discussing.
“So… tell me about the high school version of you. What was she like?”
“You knew me then. I’m sure you remember.”
“I remember you as a hot senior that every sad little freshman like me looked at like the goddess you were. I didn’t know you. I wouldn’t have had the gall to say I knew you.”
I roll my eyes but feel my face blaze, no doubt turning the shade of a roasted beet. “I was just a regular senior.”
“But you were friends with my sister, right? Did you hang out at our house?”
“I didn’t have a lot of female friends,” I admit, telling myself it’s safe to admit this without worrying he’ll judge me for being antisocial. He had sisters. I’m sure he remembers girl drama.
“Not even Beatrix? Seems like she was friends with everyone.”
“Not me.” I press my lips together as though the truth is in danger of slipping out if I don’t hold it back physically. I shrug. “Like I said, I wasn’t friends with a lot of girls.”
He turns to face me while still holding me in his arms. Moonlight streams in through the open window so I can see his features clearly. The aquiline nose, the soft eyes with sinfully long lashes, the strong cut of his jaw. A few days’ worth of stubble rakes his chin, but it can’t stop his dimple from popping when he smiles.
“Talk to me, Mallory. I want to know you better.”
My heart twists in my chest because I want him to know me, and that’s new territory after spending most of my life trying to keep people away. And it still shocks me that he’s the one who’s bringing these feelings out, tempting me to share more details about my life. He’s making me feel like it feeds my soul to get closer to a person rather than protecting myself by pushing away.
The guy who doesn’t commit is making me want to commit. To him.
It’s a frightening thought, but like all other thoughts regarding Dash, I decide to let it ride. No point in analyzing it to death when my feelings are lust-fueled. That’s all this is. I’m lying in a gorgeous man’s arms, basking in the afterglow of incredible sex. Who wouldn’t feel an overwhelming sense of contentment? Who wouldn’t feel like everything’s right with the world?
Who is too much of a chickenshit to be honest with herself?
A problem for another day.
“What do you want to know? I was just a normal high schooler. You had two sisters and plenty of girls in your own grade. I was like them. I just didn’t happen to be friends with them.”
“Why not?”
I feel like it should be obvious to anyone who remembered me back then, especially since he described me exactly the way most guys viewed me. Dash looks at me and waits patiently, his steady eyes threatening to bore into my soul.
Might as well lay it out for him. He wants to know me better? Fine. It’ll explain a few things about my life now as well.
“Guys paid attention to me because I hit puberty early, had the big boobs and long legs when half the other girls were running around in braces and awkward bodies. I got a reputation for being fast even though I didn’t hook up with anyone until I started dating my boyfriend junior year. Girls in my grade believed the rumors, didn’t trust me, thought I was trying to steal their boyfriends.”
It all comes out in one long breath like I’m eager to get rid of the words.
Dash listens without his expression changing, except at the end. He winces when I describe how other girls saw me.
“I bet Beatrix didn’t think that.” He shrugs. “But what do I know about girls? Maybe she was worse than any of them.”
“It didn’t matter. Even if there was a chance of us becoming closer friends, I wasn’t interested. I didn’t trust any of the girls in my class after enough of them said things behind my back that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
It’s kind, but I don’t want him to feel sorry for me.
“I played my part in it. Especially after high school. I just let people think what they wanted to and eventually figured out how to make it work to my advantage.”
His brows quirk upward, and his eyes take on a new level of sparkle. “What do you mean.”
I bite my lip, unsure whether I want to let him in on what I’ve started to think of as my superpower.
Turning to assess what Dash seems to think of me after what I’ve confessed, I see only sympathy in his eyes. And curiosity. Not judgment.
“Sometimes…it’s useful to flirt and let men think that if they discuss business with me or let me ask some questions, they’ll get something out of it—sexually.”
“And you give them nothing.”
Again, no judgment.
I shake my head.
Dash nods. “Fucking brilliant. I wish I could flirt my way to business success.”
I want to tell him that he damn near has. That I wouldn’t be here right now posing as his fake wife if he wasn’t so good at what he does. Only in his case, he’s not a tease. He’s just a really good-looking guy who happens to be offering something I need.
“So there you have it. High school was pretty forgettable, if you can imagine. But I guess it got me where I am today, so I can’t really complain.”
I feel finished with the conversation, but I can see the wheels turning in Dash’s head. He has more questions I don’t feel like answering, not after I just feel like I exposed my poker hand and don’t have another ace in the hole.
So I turn the tables. “How about you? Tell me about high school Dash.”
His eyes float upward as though he can see a video playback on the ceiling. I’m tempted to look there as well, but it’s too much fun to look at his face instead. He nods and smiles.
“Like I said, I had a good time.”
I watch as he tries to suppress a bigger smile and roll my eyes. “Of course you did. What were you, captain of the football team, dating the head cheerleader. And all her friends? At the same time?” I watch as his guilty smile tells me I’m spot-on.
“I had a good time,” he says quietly, which makes me laugh.
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“It was high school.”
“And from what I heard, many years long after that.” I’m saying what we both know to be true. At least, I think so.
I expect him to smile and laugh along with me since we’re in agreement about his shenanigans. It’s public knowledge around this town, and we’ve both lived here since high school. No secrets anywhere.
Instead, his smile fades and his eyes lose some of their sparkle. It’s like the bright midday sun foiled by a fast-moving cloud. Maybe it will clear just as quickly as it came. I wait. The sun doesn’t return.
“Everything okay?” Sitting up now, I swivel to look at him more squarely.
He nods.
“Liar.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“Oh, now we’re really back in high school. Or more like grade school.”
I get only a shrug. It sets me back because Dash is ordinarily so light-hearted and this mood or whatever this is feels different. Like he’s just closed himself off to me.
“Dash, what’s going on? Did I say something wrong?”
He stares up at the ceiling, contemplative.
“I guess old reputations die hard.” He shakes his head. “Fuck it. Maybe there’s no point in trying to change public perception. Not like it matters what other people think.”
Dash shifts, pulling himself up into a sitting position and shoving a couple more pillows between his back and the headboard of the bed. He puts his arms behind his head again and looks at the ceiling instead of meeting my gaze like he normally does.
“It matters if you care.”
Another shrug. He’s shutting down in front of me, and I start to fear that those storm clouds may not blow away. “I care if what they think isn’t true.”
“Are you saying you haven’t dated a lot of women?”
“Can we not do this?” He turns away or tries to, but I move so I’m still in his sightline. His lips twist into a grimace, but he grudgingly meets my eyes.
“We could…not do this.” I debate letting him off the hook because this seems to pain him, but I’m curious now. And he did promise to be honest with me, so I’m going to take him up on it. “But you said you want to know me better. I’d like to know you too.”
He says nothing, and I get the feeling he’s finished talking. But because I clearly don’t know Dash Corbett yet, he does the opposite of what I expect.
“It’s true and false, the thing about my dating life.” He opens his mouth but seems to think better of what he was about to say next. “I do date a lot, but it’s because I’m a social guy. I like going out, and women seem willing. But I don’t hook up anymore, mainly because it leaves me feeling empty, and it can get complicated. So I just date a woman once or twice and move on. Cleaner. Easier. More fun. I’m not the man-slut you think I am.”
“I didn’t…” I start to protest that he’s wrong about my impression of him, but I can’t lie. I absolutely thought he was a man-slut. It’s part of why I approached him for a date in the first place. Had a feeling he wouldn’t say no. “Okay, maybe I did have that idea about you. People talk and I didn’t know any better. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Not your fault. How would you know?” He slides down lower so he’s halfway between sitting and reclining. His body looks more comfortable. Unburdened.
It takes me a minute before I realize what he’s just inadvertently told me, but when it hits me, I sit up straighter. Blinking as my brain churns through new information, I finally lock eyes with Dash.
He nods, the sparkle returning to his eyes, which mesmerize me anew with their clarity.
“But you slept with me.” I feel the need to say the words out loud even though we both know it.
“I did.”
“Just because I asked?” I say the words slowly because I need to be sure of what he’s telling me even without telling me explicitly. I need the subtitles. And the voiceover. And the footnotes. Dumb it down for me!
Finally, the icy facade cracks. “No, not just because you asked. I’m here with you because I don’t want to be anywhere else. And I’m sleeping with you because I can’t resist you. I can’t stop. Don’t want to stop.”
He lets those new words mingle with the sudden thickness of the air around us. My body buzzes with electricity I feel across every inch of my skin.
The air leaves my lungs in a whoosh.
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
I nod. Then I swivel around, throw myself on top of him, and fuse my lips to his. I don’t have the words to tell him I can’t stop either, so I show him another way.
I kiss his beautiful face and let my tongue slide down his neck while my hands take stock of every inch of his chest and abs.
And then I slide lower, where I already feel him rock hard beneath me. I’ve been wanting his cock in my mouth for weeks now, and I feel like I’ve just been given permission to take everything I want from him.
From the way he groans with pleasure, he’s onboard. “God, honey…”
I tease him a little bit, running my tongue over the length of him before taking him fully into my mouth. He’s large and thick and I love the feel and taste of him.
I love how he groans each time I take him a little deeper and swirl my tongue against him. I love how he runs his hands through my hair and grips it in handfuls as he gets closer. I love making him lose control as he bites out a curse and calls my name. My real name. “Fuck, Mallory. It’s so damned good.”
And I love resting my face on his chest after he kisses me beyond reason and makes me come with his long fingers and tongue.
I want to fall asleep right here with my arm over his stomach and his hands encircling me.
“I love you, Mallory.”
He says it so quietly, almost like a quiet breath of words, that I’m not sure I heard him right. He didn’t just tell me he loves me. No. If he really meant to say those words and have them mean what they mean, he’d have made a bigger deal of saying them.
He wouldn’t just…exhale them. Maybe I didn’t even hear what I think I did. Or maybe he tossed the phrase at me, offhand, like I’ve done with friends. “Love ya, babe.” Only, I don’t really have friends like that, friends who I really love.
And don’t say things like that to people unless I really love them. So far, those people only really include my parents and my dog. And it’s not the same, not the same at all.
Did he really just say he loves me?
Okay, great. Now I’m not going to sleep at all. I replay the last few seconds over in my mind and decide that either I misheard him or he said the words so casually that I shouldn’t read anything into them. If he meant to tell me he loves me—that he’s fallen in love with me—surely, he’d say it in a more direct way. He’d declare it like people do in the movies or in books.
He’d make a thing of it and I’d get weepy and tell him I love him too and he’d respond with how he’s been in love with me since he first saw me and worried I’d never feel the same way about him, so he waited. And I’d say I worried he just wanted to be my friend.
And now I’m in the middle of an unwritten Jane Austen novel of my own making and I most definitely won’t be falling asleep because I need to keep writing and see how it ends.
Next to me, Dash moves to wrap himself around me, curling me into his chest, which I can feel rising and falling against my back with each breath. In moments, my own breathing seems to synchronize with his, and now we’re like one being, lifted to life by the air in our lungs, inhaling to bring ourselves flush against each other. Exhaling to bring ourselves even closer.
I start to get restless in Dash’s arms, struggling to turn my head to see his face. I need to see his face to understand whether he meant anything by his words.
“Shh,” he breathes against my ear, pulling me closer and wrapping an arm around me. Cupping one breast possessively, he dares me to flinch. I don’t. It feels too good.
“Dash,” I whisper in one last-ditch attempt to have a conversation.
“Go to sleep.”
His voice sounds half sleepy, so I tell myself to stop thinking. That only semi-works, so I allow myself to get comfortable in Dash’s arms and lie in bed, listening to his soft snoring. Meanwhile, I let my brain wander.
The first place it goes is down Love Alley, a place I’ve been avoiding successfully since our wedding out of sheer protectiveness. I don’t want my heart to get any ideas.
And now, apparently, all protective layers have been stripped away, and my heart is beating out of my chest, chock-full of ideas. All of them revolve around how I feel about Dash, my husband, the man who seems to understand me better than anyone else I’ve ever known—I’ve been trying to resist wanting more, but my resistance is slipping.
The longer I lie here awake, the less I can deny that I am, in fact, in love with Dashiell Corbett.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, how did I allow this to happen?
And because I am writing the dialogue for both sides of my debating brain, I provide an answer. I fell in love with him because he’s everything I’d want in a real husband. And he’s kinder to me than I am to myself.
It’s then that the other side of my brain chimes in with a solution—I need to create some distance and let my feelings ratchet down. It’s the only way I’ll make it through a year of marriage without losing my damn mind or falling so hard in love that there will be no reeling myself back from the abyss.
And there is an abyss. Big and deep and a long way down to the bottom. I know because I experienced it when I told the one man I ever felt that strongly for that I loved him. As soon as I said it to Felix, he grew distant. Cold. Disinterested. The chase was over, he told me.
He still wanted to get married because he considered me some sort of prize, and I went along with it anyway because I hoped I’d be able to win him back somehow. It never happened. I never made him love me because he wasn’t capable of it.
So I stuck with him for a while because I’m not a quitter. I stayed in a loveless marriage that felt more like a business transaction than any millisecond of the deal Dash and I struck. It makes me all the more determined to keep Felix out of my life now, but it also makes me scared to death to feel what I do for Dash.
I need to talk myself out of it. I should be able to do that, no problem. Mind over matter.
Dash’s leg falls over mine and he tucks me against him a little tighter. I feel my whole body give in to the feeling of being an extension of his. Like we belong together.
It’s enough to make my muscles relax and my heart unclench. I feel myself calm and begin to drift off to sleep.
Mind over matter can happen in the morning.