Pretend I’m Yours (A Cheeky Novelette #7)

Chapter 1

Corinne

Lounging on the couch in my cropped, loose white camisole and silky red pajama shorts, I smile and lift the remote to pause my movie when the key turns in the front door’s lock.

“How’d it go?” I ask Uncle Declan of his third date with a woman he’s been talking to for the past few weeks.

The frown tugging at the corner of his mouth when he enters the three-bedroom rancher passed down from my grandparents to my dad, then to me when Dad passed last year, isn’t a good sign.

“I’m done with this,” Uncle Declan says when he makes his way past the formal dining room, tossing his cowboy hat on the table my grandfather had made from a felled tree that must have grown on this property for over a hundred years.

“Done with what?” I roll onto my side to see him better, keeping my eyes trained on his handsome face so I don’t accidentally give his body a slow up and down, heated gaze.

Though he’s only my uncle in spirit and not by blood, having been best friends with my dad since they were born, we’re as close as any of my friends are with their families.

Closer, probably. My parents split a few years after I was born, and Mom and I moved to Oklahoma, though my summers were always spent with my dad.

When I decided to apply to a Texas university, I moved in with Dad full-time, even though the hour-long commute to school sucks. Where my dad went, so did Uncle Declan.

I actually cried when I found out we weren’t related. Real, body-aching tears, inconsolable for weeks. Now, with my thoughts all twisted up about him, I’m all too glad of it.

“With dating,” he says. “I keep telling you, I’m too old for this.”

Though I’m secretly pleased by his stance on dating, I say with a laugh at his self-deprecation, “Oh, yeah, because forty-three is soooo old.”

“Says the twenty-one-year-old college kid.” He huffs, easing his tall frame onto the sturdy wooden coffee table.

Since I’m only working part-time at a thrift store while I finish school, having majored in Business Administration, I can’t pay the exorbitant property taxes and insurance on the house and the five acres it sits on without burning through the tuition money Dad left for me.

And since Uncle Declan was tired of moving from apartment to apartment, it only made sense that he moved in with me, splitting the bills—while making sure I stay out of trouble, of course, as a good uncle does.

“So, what happened?” I ask. “I thought you really liked Katy.”

He musses up his golden-brown hat hair before he begins working his boots off. “I said she was ok. That’s it.” Uncle Declan drags his hands down his clean-shaven cheeks, then smooths out his mustache. “You know how I said we were going out dancing?”

“Yeah.” He’s been a grump since his favorite honky tonk went under after the owner, Mr. McCutcheon, finally retired at ninety years old, and no one stepped forward to buy the place.

“Well, we met up at a club in the city. One of those fancy places with techno music and strobe lights.”

“Ok…” I say slowly in a what’s the problem manner.

Uncle Declan slouches, his hands turned up and held out to the sides. “She was wearing tennis shoes, Corrine. Tennis shoes. They all were. Not a heel or boot in sight. Never seen such a thing.”

I roll onto my back with a laugh, propping my head up on my arm for a pillow. “That’s the new trend, duh.” It’s what I’d wear to a club if I hadn’t been raised with boots on my feet since before I could walk. I’m uncomfortable in anything else at this point.

“Like I said, I’m too old for this.” He begins unbuttoning his pearl-snap striped top, pulling the hem out of his dark blue jeans.

I try to ignore the sliver of tanned abs he flashes when his crisp, white undershirt rides up, showing off the dark line of hair that travels down from his navel to disappear behind his big silver belt buckle.

Uncle Declan is dreamy in a movie-star kind of way.

I’ve long had the biggest crush on him, though I’ll never, ever, in a million years tell him that.

The deep friendship between my family and his goes back generations, and I couldn’t bear it if I were to do something inappropriate that would break that bond for the next generation.

Although…in order to have that next generation, he kinda needs to make one of these dates stick.

Uncle Declan slaps his knees before he stands with a groan.

More than half of his life has been spent working outside on a neighbor’s ranch right alongside my dad.

It’s how he built his big, beautiful body.

Farm strong and oh so sexy. But it’s also done a number on his back—another reason he feels so old, as he’s said before, when I happen to think he’s just the right age.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” he says, bending over, sweeping my light brown bangs to the side with the calloused tips of his fingers. “Wanna watch our show when your movie’s over?”

I nod, my core fluttering when he gives me that signature, lopsided smile of his and places a quick kiss on my forehead, the skin at the corners of his early spring sun-kissed face crinkling around the most gorgeous set of sunflower eyes I’ve ever seen—eyes that would look all the prettier on his children, should he ever have any.

I’ll be green with envy of the woman who gives him those children, if he ever stops complaining and truly puts himself out there. Such is my life.

* * *

I stifle a moan of appreciation when Uncle Declan reappears in gray athletic shorts made of thin sweatpants material—and nothing else—his thighs and ass high and tight as I watch him move about the open kitchen to the left of the living room.

I almost fan my heated cheeks and pant when he stops right in front of me as the credits roll on my movie, blocking the TV mounted on the wall beside the brick fireplace, just the barest impression of his cock swinging right in my face.

With no idea of his effect on me, he asks, “Are you too tired for an episode?”

“Hmm?” I dart my hazel eyes up to meet his when I swear I see his cock twitch in his shorts, and I finally take notice of the bag of potato chips and six-pack of beers he’s brought with him.

“You can hardly keep your eyes open, sugar. I can find something else to watch if you want to save our show for tomorrow.”

“No, no, I, um…” I blink a few times, shaking off what must have been a lusty look that I really need to try harder to hide. “I’m wide awake.”

“Good,” he says, giving me that smile of his again. He squeezes my bare thigh and says, “Make room for me, would you?”

I bend my knees, sliding my feet toward my butt so he can drop down on the three-seater blue-gingham couch, smelling of his woodsy soap that I often sneak into his shower to steal when he’s not home.

He’s so large, though, that he takes up nearly two cushions and practically sits on my feet.

He jerks his hips up with a chuckle and quick apology, the impression of his bulge even larger now, so I can wriggle my feet out from under him.

I can’t stop looking at it, wondering if he’s wearing boxers or briefs beneath his shorts…

until he leans forward to pop the caps off of two beers and grabs the remote, breaking my stare.

“Cheers,” he says, passing one of the beers to me, slugging back half of his after we clink our bottles together. His satisfied sigh is what I imagine he would sound like when he lies in bed at night and strokes himself.

Ugh, why can’t I keep my filthy mind off of him when I know nothing will ever happen between us?

“I’d take this over some club any day of the week,” he says, sinking into the couch as he relaxes, spreading his knees wide.

“Me too.” I sip my beer throughout our show—an English true crime docu-series set in the 1980s that I’m not paying all that much attention to. I’m too distracted by Uncle Declan’s broad, golden chest, his right arm thrown over the back of the couch toward me.

My phone buzzes on the coffee table thirty minutes later, and I smile when I read the new text message.

Uncle Declan is grumpy when he finishes his second beer and reaches for a third. “Who’s texting you this late at night?”

“Uncle Kason.” My other biggest crush with the prettiest denim-blue eyes.

I turn the phone around to show Uncle Declan the photo Uncle Kason sent.

It’s a selfie of him grinning through a face pitched gray with grime and sweat, his white T-shirt and worn jeans streaked black.

Despite his unkempt look, he’s as handsome as Uncle Declan, resembling him in many ways except for his dark brown hair, scruffy beard, and a more laid-back personality.

Though he wasn’t joined at the hip like Uncle Declan and my dad were, having met later when they went to the same high school, I still grew up calling him “Uncle” as well.

Uncle Declan takes my phone, exiting the selfie I’d tapped to expand, reading through our last few messages. “I didn’t know you two were so close.”

At one time, we all were, but the distance strained our relationships when Uncle Kason took a job working the oil fields in West Texas when I was seventeen, leaving for months at a time.

I shrug. “I think he feels bad about being gone so much, especially since Dad passed.” Uncle Kason’s mama passed, too, three years ago, leaving us as his only family still left in Texas, the same as Uncle Declan and me.

When Uncle Declan starts scrolling through our older messages, I tell him with a slightly nervous laugh, “Hey, give that back.” I’m afraid he might get the wrong idea with all the pictures Uncle Kason and I send each other, even as innocent as they all are.

Well, Uncle Kason’s pictures are innocent. If he knew I take twenty plus pictures of each pose at a time and obsess over which one looks the sexiest before sending any to him, he’d probably put up some hard boundaries between us.

Uncle Declan locks the screen and tosses my phone to his opposite side without giving me a chance to respond.