Chapter 16 What Are Fake Girlfriends For?
What Are Fake Girlfriends For?
Max
Okay. When I was walking the trail to get here, I played this out a dozen different ways in my head. Did I hope he might want to finish what he started in the kitchen? Yes. But after the way he stormed off, a quiet hotel room away from him felt far more likely.
Not this.
Not the way he’s transformed right in front of me.
The way he’s stopped asking. Stopped easing in.
This isn’t the gentle giant or even the careful man I met before.
This is someone done holding himself back.
And even when I first laid eyes on him—his size, his strength, his restraint—I never imagined this version.
This is the Bear. And he’s a savage.
Part of me regrets stubbornly storming out of the greenhouse because it’s freezing, but I’m so intoxicated by this man I can’t tell the difference anymore. I don’t know if the shiver racking my body is from the winter chill or the chilling, electric effect of his touch.
Is this how it starts? Is this how he takes women in? Slow at first, then all at once, giving them something they didn’t even realize they were craving? Is this how he makes them never want to leave his bed…or his side?
And because my brain can’t stand to let me be happy for too long, my mind chooses this random moment to drift to my ex, Alex.
Yes—that Alex. Alex motherfucking VanNuys. Tech mogul. Soul thief.
We dated for four years, and even now, I still can’t pinpoint what kept me there for so long. What’s worse is realizing how the memory of him has lingered—quietly, stubbornly—keeping me from fully opening myself up to love again.
He never made me feel like this. Not even close. He never unraveled me with a look or made my body feel as though it were waking up for the first time.
And yet, I gave him everything. My trust, my work, my heart. He was brilliant and influential, and I believed in him so completely that it never once occurred to me I shouldn’t. He was going somewhere, and we had a plan to get there together.
That’s the part that stings the most. It isn't just the betrayal. It’s the realization that a man who never truly moved me still managed to take all of me.
And now here’s Eli, igniting something in me with barely a touch, barely a word, and suddenly the idea of opening myself again doesn’t feel impossible. It feels…reckless. Tempting. Like standing at the edge of something warm after years in the cold.
My chest rises hard against his. His eyes are dark, blown wide, fixed on me. He tilts my chin, forcing my gaze up, then his mouth follows the long, sensitive line of my throat.
His tongue traces a slow, tantalizing path to my pulse, and the sound that slips from me is helpless. A soft, broken whimper.
“The only reason I don’t want you here,” he rasps against my skin, “is because when you’re near, I don’t think about a fucking thing except you.”
The words hit harder than his body does when he shoves me back against the thick tree trunk. The bark is rough and cool against my spine. He pins me there, all hard muscle and heat, and I’m already shaking under him.
Hiccup.
I whisper, my voice unsteady. “You always seem…so pissed off. Like I’m annoying you.”
His mouth curves, sharp and humorless.
“No, baby. I look like a man who’s been fighting to keep his hands off you.”
And then his hand is inside my leggings, no warning, no hesitation, going straight where I’m already dripping for him. I gasp as his fingers find heat and slickness and…
“Shhiiiit,” I cry, the sound ripped out of me.
His groan answers, low and wicked. “Jesus, Max. Still wet for me, baby?”
I smile as my head falls back against the tree, bark biting into my skin. “Finally waking up to the fact that you need to finish what you started, Bear?”
He kisses me again, and this one is all him. All hunger. No control. He sucks on my bottom lip and then his mouth takes mine like he’s done pretending.
And I’m grateful. Because I want him. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I need him. This escape.
“And I fucking hate the way you call me Bear,” he growls against my lips.
I smile, slow and knowing, because it’s a lie. He loves being the Bear I drag to his knees.
My fingers slip to his jeans, undoing the button with a hurried flick.
“Tell me what else you hate,” I breathe.
He inhales sharply when I wrap my hand around his length…and girth. It’s so pretty. If I licked long enough, sucked hard enough, I bet I could taste the rainbow.
I stroke him measured and merciless, watching his control come apart with every glide of my hand.
He licks my lips. “I hate that fucking mouth,” he hisses, thrusting into my fist. “I hate that you can read me like you’ve known me for years, not hours.”
“I know the feeling,” I laugh softly, never breaking eye contact as I take him apart piece by piece. Breaking my Bear down until there’s nothing left but want. But us.
“And just think,” I murmur, my voice dropping, “for the next few days…” I stroke him again. Harder, letting the promise hang there, thick and heavy. Like him.
“What, Max? The next few days, what?” He grunts out as my motion intensifies.
“All this could be yours, Bear.”
I say it to him, but I’m talking to myself too.
“Use me,” I whisper, the words spilling out of something dark and reckless inside me. “For every frustration. Every deal gone wrong.” I swallow, eyes locked on his. “Burden me, Bear.”
The ache in his eyes makes my decision easier. For the next few days, I can disappear into the mountains and pretend this is real. That this—he—belongs to me. I’ll let myself tip into the kind of romance I’ve only ever read about.
Eli’s exactly the kind of man you’re told doesn’t exist. The kind of Black man the world tries to convince not to believe in.
Yet here I am.
His eyes on mine.
His breath uneven.
His dick in my hand.
And at this very moment, looking into his beautiful face, pretending feels ridiculously easy.
Before I can fully register what’s happening, Eli growls and yanks my leggings down to my thighs.
The fabric snags around my knees, the cold air hitting my bare skin so suddenly it assaults my lungs.
Every inch exposed feels shockingly awake, the brutal temperature crashing against the heat already building in my body.
I kick off my sneakers, nearly losing my balance as icy air curls up my legs, and fumble with the waistband, shoving the leggings the rest of the way down.
My fingers shake as I step out of them as fast as I can, the sting of winter against overheated skin only making every nerve ending spark harder, sharper.
His hands clamp onto my thighs and then I’m lifted, my legs locking around his waist automatically.
Instead of slamming me back against the tree, he turns and starts walking.
The sudden movement pulls a startled breath from my chest as he carries me, unhurried, with ease, straight toward the greenhouse.
The door creaks open beneath his shoulder. The air spills over my bare skin as he steps inside, glass panes catching the light. Green surrounds us. The world narrows.
He backs me against the nearest sturdy worktable, setting me down just long enough to fit himself between my legs. His need presses insistently against my entrance, heavy and demanding.
His eyes search my face. “Are you on the pill? Tested?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
“Good. Me too.”
I smile. “You’re on the pill?”
He bites my bottom lip and I hiss. “I’m tested. Clean.”
My hands caress the back of his neck and grips his hair as he holds me there. “The biting thing…” I admit softly. “It’s new for me. I think I might like it.”
I feel him shift as he presses into me, teasing just enough to pull a gasp from my chest.
“There’s a lot I’d like to show you while you’re here,” he murmurs.
I nod. “Okay.” Eager.
His voice drops lower, steadier. “But right now, I'm about to do exactly what you just gave me permission to do, Mama.”
He presses in more, deeper. It's enough to make me ache, and I can tell he’s forcing himself to slow down. I lock my legs around his hips, greedy, pulling him closer, silently begging him to go deeper.
“Say it, Bear. Tell me what you’re going to do to me.”
“Do you want a play-by-play,” he says, voice rough, “or do you want me to fuck you?”
I let out a shaky laugh. “I’m a tech nerd. I like knowing how everything works.”
He nudges in deeper, just a fraction more, and I’m so desperate for him. But he doesn’t give in. He keeps teasing, dragging it out. He’s done this before and I can tell he loves doing this to me.
He kisses me again and I feel it all the way down to my feet. “It’ll take much longer than a week to figure out how I work, Lil Mama.”
I wouldn’t mind. As long as it would take. Even if he does use that nickname, Little Mama, or any version of it. I usually despise it, but coming from him, it sounds like warm molasses—slow, dark, and sweet enough to coat my entire soul.
“A week,” I say. Another reminder for us both.
He nods once. “A week. For a week you’ll let me—”
“Burden me, Bear.”
He freezes. Then he shakes his head.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” he says quietly. “I don’t like how easily you give yourself to people. How little you seem to mind being consumed.”
The words land somewhere tender. Somewhere exposed.
I’ve never framed it that way before. We haven’t reached that part of therapy, yet. The place where I let someone close enough to see the pattern, let alone name it. Where they so easily see that I volunteer myself as the solution all too often. The fixer. The offering. The sacrifice.
“You deserve to be taken care of too, Max,” he says softly. “You know that, right?”
And for the first time in a long time, I don’t immediately know how to argue or fight back.
The vulnerability in his voice catches me off guard. It shouldn’t. Not after seeing how gentle this giant really is. How the same hands that swing an axe also tend a garden, choosing to build and grow instead of destroy.