Chapter 10 #3
I nod, storing away his music preferences. “More 85 to 95. And Janet Jackson. The way she looked for the Janet album? Goals right there.”
Over the pizza, which we absolutely devour and to hell with the caloric problems, and a couple more beers each, we share other favorites.
Colors, smells, TV shows, movies, even shoe styles and anything else that comes to mind.
It’s light, fun, almost like playing a game or a long speed dating session where we’re both clicking left and right.
It must be the beer talking because somewhere around hour three, I ask, “Are you ticklish?” It seems like something I should know for our cover.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Kaede’s brows climb high and that sexy smirk blossoms. “I think the better question is . . . are you? And where?”
He doesn’t let me answer but rather lets his fingers slowly walk up my bare arm. Goosebumps break out along my skin, but not because it’s tickling.
Oh, yeah, here we go, girl! Don’t do anything weird to stop this freight train a-rolling. Let’s get it on! Sing it, Barry!
“It seems like maybe you are ticklish.” Kaede’s voice has gone husky and his eyes dark. He sounds like he’s promising sex and chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles at the same time. In other words, my dream come true.
But as he gets higher on my arm, he suddenly tickles my armpit. “Ahh!” I squeal, jumping around like I’ve been shocked by a cattle prod.
Kaede takes the scream as an affirmative answer. “There’s one spot. Are there others?” He tackles me to the couch, and we wrestle, each looking for spots that make the other scream. Not in the really good way, but this is fun. And silly. And new.
I laugh wildly, high and giddy, and he does too, low and in his chest. Both sounds are foreign and so intriguing.
He tickles my side . . . I jump.
He tickles my hip . . . I jump.
He tickles my knee . . . I don’t jump. I almost kick him in the face with the reflexive jerk of my leg.
“Oh, my gawd . . . stop!” I beg, breathless.
But he’s not done. He catches my flailing foot, stopping me from kicking him, and that’s when I really lose it. My feet are ridiculously ticklish, and I squirm and thrash about, trying to get free.
Kaede laughs. “Ooh, I found your spot.”
I wish you would. I can draw you a map if you want.
He teases each toe. “This little piggy went to market . . . this little piggy stayed home . . .”
Hope and horror war in equal measure through my body.
He’s touching me, and fuck, do I want him to wee-wee-wee all the way home and find my clit, which is throbbing in beat with his silly song.
But at the same time, it tickles so much I can’t stay still, my hips dancing as I try to get away even though I want more of his touches, however they come.
Yeah, I’m that desperate. I’ll gladly sign up for ticklish torture just to have his hands on me. I’m not saying there’s no shame in it, but it is what it is.
Can you orgasm from having your feet tickled? Oh, shit, that would be awful . . . and amazing.
But it’s not all fun and games. We also share some memories and stories—childhood, college years, and work now.
We’ve lived these parallel lives that somehow never truly crossed.
And though I’ve had a crush on Kaede for years now, I realize that it was based, at least partially, on things I thought I knew about him. The real Kaede is much . . . more.
Somewhere over the last couple of hours, especially after the tickle fest popped the seal on getting comfortable with each other, we’ve rearranged ourselves on the couch multiple times.
We face each other, legs crossed between us.
We slouch and spread out. Kaede even gets up to pace when he tells me about how it felt to not make the cut for pro football when it’d been his lifelong dream.
Now, we’re sitting again, but our thighs touch, and Kaede’s arm is slung across the back of the couch. I’m aware of every millimeter of him, so close and now, so real.
I want to put my hand on his thigh, to feel the muscles flex beneath my palm.
Maybe run my hand up higher. Instead, I snuggle into his side, putting my head on his chest. Something that only yesterday would’ve been impossible to do without some awkward stuttered moves comes easily and comfortably after everything we’ve shared.
“Courtney?” His voice is gritty and low.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you again for doing this. I think we could pass a Newlywed Show pop quiz about each other now, but we need to figure out a plan for the rest of it. What do you think?”
I nod against him, listening to the thud of his heartbeat, slow and steady and so unlike mine, which is racing faster than a horse’s at the finish line of the Kentucky Derby.
“We’ll need to basically act like a couple in truth.
A dinner with Jeffrey, if need be, but mostly, talk at the gym, wait for each other at night, and leave together, go on a few dates, smile, and act like you’re desperately and blissfully in love with me.
” I smile as his heartbeat speeds up a bit.
I think love might make Kaede nervous.
“Okay. That all sounds doable. The contract is signed, but we’re going to have to do this until Missy sets her sights on someone else to get her hooks into or forgets about me. We can’t risk pissing her off because I don’t want it to affect the deal. We’re stuck over a barrel on this one.”
Forever. That’s what I hear in my hopeful little heart. Maybe by the end of this, Kaede McWarren won’t be scared of love and won’t think I’m a cold, frosty bitch with only business on her mind. The way I’m seeing there’s more to him, maybe he could see that there’s more to me?
This one hurts to say, but I have to do it. “We need to keep this quiet too. Obviously, folks at the gym might find out, but we should play it off as dating, nothing too serious. If word gets back to my dad or the board at Andrews, shit is going to hit the fan.”
He flinches beneath me, and I pick up to look at him. His jaw is tight, his eyes hard.
“Kaede? It’s just that I’ve worked hard to be taken seriously at work, and if I go parading a fiancé around, one who used to work at Andrews, and then a few weeks or months later, say the engagement is off, I look like a flake.
It brings up too many questions and too many possible concerns about where my focus is. ”
Right this moment, my focus is on Kaede.
One hundred percent. Some people will joke and say one hundred and ten percent, but that irks the shit out of me.
There’s no such thing, and if you can’t do basic math, are you really giving it your all?
Doubtful. But I’m a “hundred percent” girl, and I’m giving that to Kaede right now, searching his face, his eyes for some clue as to why our being quiet about a fake engagement set him off.
But I can’t see any angle of why that’s a problem.
Hell, I figured he’d want to stay quiet so it wouldn’t blow up his life, either.
Oh, remembering bullet three . . .
“And no partying, no hookups, no cheating, even if this isn’t real. We never know who’s watching, or when and where. Don’t . . . don’t make a fool out of me, K-Dawg.” It’s an insult. I absolutely know it is as I say it, and I say it anyway so he understands exactly what I mean.
He licks his lips and is silent for a long second. Slowly, I sink back into him, unsure about the change in his mood.
“Do you know your ring size?” he says finally.
A ring! Shit! That’s bullet seven and I forgot, so tied up in his reaction. I shake my head.
“It’s okay. I looked up a trick today in case you didn’t.” He gets up, leaving me feeling alone on the couch, and disappears into the kitchen again. I hear a drawer open and close, and then he’s back beside me on the couch. “Give me your left hand.”
More meaningful words have never been spoken. I only wish they could mean what I want them to.
I hold my hand up and Kaede wraps a string around my left ring finger.
He holds the spot where they meet with a trimmed nail and then snips it with a pair of scissors.
Holding up the cut string, he says, “I can take this to the jeweler’s and have them figure out the correct size.
Anything special you want for the ring? It won’t be some huge rock—I’ll save that for the lucky bastard who gets to marry for you real—but I’ll get you something nice. Something you’ll be proud to wear.”
There’s something in the way he says that . . . hard and almost bitter? But Kaede is all smooth and chill. Unflappable to a fault.
“I’m sure anything you choose will be perfect.”
He drops the string on the coffee table next to the nearly empty pizza box and beer bottles. Earlier, I was tipsy, sipping for liquid courage, but I haven’t had much in the last couple of hours. Even so, a fresh buzz washes through me. It’s him, not the beer. I know that.
“I think that’s almost everything on my list. Just one more thing.” Bullet number ten. The one I’d hesitantly put on the list to begin with.
“What’s that?”
“We should get our first kiss out of the way. It’s better to have any spit-flying, nose-bumping weirdness here than when we’re trying to sell that we love each other.”
I cannot believe that I just asked Kaede McWarren to kiss me! Who the hell am I and where did this sex goddess come from?
Okay, I’m nowhere close to a sex goddess, as evidenced by my even needing to ask, but it was on my list for tonight and I’m not leaving without checking off every item. It’s for both of our own good.
“Practice makes perfect, right?”
I don’t know if it’s just my ears or the pulse pounding in my chest, but that sounds hollow as fuck.
What doesn’t feel hollow is the feeling of his fingertips on my cheek as he slowly strokes along my cheekbone or the way he twines his fingers into my hair to cup the back of my head before his lips brush against mine.
It’s feather-soft at first, tentative as though we’re getting to know each other, but what’s supposed to be a polite, public ‘couple’s kiss’ quickly deepens, each of us hungry for the other.
His fingers tighten in my hair, his tongue demanding entry, and I open to him even as I push him back, straddling his waist and sitting in his lap as we devour each other.
Kaede’s hand leaves my neck to trace down my back, making me shiver as he explores my skin through the soft, thin fabric of my T-shirt. I arch into him, silently begging for more with the points of my nipples pressing into his hard chest.
My clothes are maddening, tight against my skin so that I can feel the heat building in his jeans and the rising bulge that’s wedged between our bodies promising so much more than I ever could have expected.
I moan into Kaede’s mouth as his hand comes to rest on my waist in that sensitive spot where my jeans pull away from my lower back, and I can feel his hand pushing against me, guiding me to grind.
I want that too, and I roll my hips, getting pressure right where I need it to satisfy the ache in my clit.
There’s a ding from my purse, and both of us pull back as if shot, our eyes wild with shock, desire, and a little bit of fear. I feel like a teenager who just got caught making out on the porch, honestly.
“Ah . . . well, at least we know the chemistry won’t be a problem,” I joke weakly, my voice shaking and my breath coming in short, hard gasps. I can still feel his lips on my skin and the little trail he was starting to lick down my throat.
“Nope, no problem at all . . . as long as I wear very tight underwear,” Kaede jokes as I climb off his lap. Looking down, I can see what he means, and I can’t help but lick my lips.
It looks like he’s got a Hillshire Farms summer sausage in there, and I am suddenly starving. “Holy shit,” I whisper, meaning to think it, not say it aloud.
He chuckles and adjusts himself, totally at ease. “Same, Courtney.” I meet his eyes, so hot and dark they look like coal. I feel it like a caress as he slowly drops his eyes from mine to my neck, to my chest, and lower.
I am not nearly as comfortable as he is, so I wriggle around, trying to get some relief.
“Oh, my phone!” I say, getting up on shaky legs and diving for my purse. I check the message, blowing a strand of hair out of my eyes as I do. “Jillian reminding me that she has a dentist appointment in the morning.”
It’s not her fault, but I’m super pissed at Jillian right now. I was about to follow her great idea and get some dick . . . and a huge, honking Grade-A, prime dick at that . . . and she interrupted me.
Maybe that’s a good thing, though. I don’t know if I could do this if I know what Kaede feels like inside me. It would make this too real for me, and I know that as well as I know I should go, no matter how much I want to pick up where we left off.
“I should probably get home. Need a good shower before bed tonight.”
“I need a cold one too,” Kaede says lightly.
“I was more thinking about the pulse mode on my removable shower head, but sure, we can go with a cold shower if that sounds less desperate.” I try to make it sound like a joke, but it comes off too much like a needy moan for that.
Kaede groans, and for a second I think he’s going to push me against the door, crush my lips in another kiss, and let the heat we’ve sparked burn it all down. Fuck tomorrow, fuck problems, let’s just get to it!
“Fuck, woman,” Kaede breathes, thrilling me even as he steps back and opens his front door. “Are we going to be okay with this?”
I nod, pausing to give him a kiss on the cheek so fast that it’s barely there, or else we’ll end up in bed together. “Yeah, we’re okay.”
As I crank the engine on my car and pull away, I check my rearview mirror. He’s still standing there watching me, his huge shoulders blocking out most of the light from inside and turning him into a large, sexy shadow.
And I’m not sure that’s true at all.
I’m in way over my head.