Chapter 16 What Are Fake Girlfriends For? #2
And still…it surprises the hell out of me. It rocks me to my core.
“I know but, what are fake girlfriends for?” I whisper, like it doesn’t matter.
His jaw tightens, eyes darkening, and then he finally pushes into me. Slowly. Inch by inch.
Every nerve in my body lights up as he fills me, stretches me, takes his time with me. And even then, even when he’s buried deep and my breath is coming apart, I know—he’s still not done surprising me. Still not done filling me.
“I won’t let you do that for me,” he says softly, the words pressed into the space between us.
I frown, searching his face as he lets himself settle inside. Deeper with each motion. “Do what?”
“I won’t let you be for me what I can’t be for you.”
“I don’t understand,” I admit, because I don’t. Not fully.
He exhales and then searches my eyes like he’s choosing each word with care. “Let me be what you need, too.”
I shake my head slightly, still lost. “I still don’t get it.”
He kisses me again. “Exactly,” he whispers against my mouth, his tongue lingering where his lips just were. “A woman who gives herself the way you do. Who offers herself without hesitation.”
His thumb sweeps my cheek, unexpectedly gentle. “Something tells me no one’s taken care of you like that in a long time.”
The words are too…accurate.
Who told him?
How does he know?
My therapist says I’ve developed a nasty habit of people-pleasing. Growing up, I saw how much my mother sacrificed for us, and I became the child who refused to add to her burden. I trained myself to absorb everything—to be the silent, steady one who never had a need of her own.
It’s a skin I’ve been desperately trying to shed, but I’ve never quite mastered the art of putting myself first. I've never fully tried.
Maybe this is the sign I’ve been waiting for. Maybe Eli isn’t just an escape. Maybe he’s the conduit I need to finally break the silence. I want to learn how to ask for what I want. To finally demand more for myself without the crushing guilt of having nothing left to give in return.
There’s a sting in the corner of my eye. A tear I didn’t authorize. Didn’t invite. I don’t even recognize it as mine.
What the fuck is happening right now?
I’m a thug.
I don’t cry.
He kisses my cheek, gently, then licks the tear away before it can fall.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry, Max,” he whispers.
And I’m abruptly, painfully, blissfully reminded that this man is still inside me. Still there. Still pressing in. Still trying to consume me. He’s so patient.
“Trust me,” I say through a sarcastic laugh. “This was not in my plans either. I don’t do this.”
His head dips, his mouth finding my neck.
He bites down just enough to pull a gasp from me, a perfect mix of pressure and restraint.
His hands slide to my thighs, firm and possessive as he pulls me open, stretching me slowly, easing deeper.
Unrelenting, but careful. Like he knows exactly how far to push without breaking me.
The firm table top presses into my ass as Eli holds me in place, connecting us.
The greenhouse hums softly around us—plants shifting, glass ticking as it cools, the air thick and alive. And somehow, the world keeps going while mine quietly comes undone.
“You don’t do what, Mama?” he grunts through gritted teeth “Tell me what else you don’t do?”
The question shouldn’t matter. It’s a simple thing. But it lands like a crack in the foundation I’ve spent ten years reinforcing.
Because I built myself this way on purpose. I became the mouthy, crass nerd with sharp edges and thicker skin so no one could get in. The girl who learned how to sort things neatly. Sex over here. Feelings over there. No overlap. No mess.
And here Eli is, standing right in the middle of it, dismantling the system like he understands exactly how it was built. Like I’m a firewall hardened by a decade of bad data, and he’s the one vulnerability I didn’t account for. Quietly cracking open the black box I locked my heart inside.
His hands move with slow, grounding certainty, guiding me along his length and opening me up, refusing to let me retreat into the safety of my own head. He keeps me anchored right here. He stays—deep in my body, locked in this moment.
“I can’t hear you, Mama,” he grunts again. “Tell me what it is that you don’t do.”
The emphasis hits deep enough that I lose the fight for composure entirely.
“Fuck!”
He exhales, almost laughing, his voice strained. “What was that now? Because I’m fairly certain that’s not the answer you meant. You feel too good to have never fu—.”
I enlist my stellar kegel skills and squeeze around him. It steals the rest of the sentence right out of his mouth.
“You were saying?” I tease, a sarcastic smirk tugging at my lips.
He stills. Jaw tight. Eyes dark and fixed on mine like he’s done being entertained.
“Stop fucking playing with me, Max,” he says, all humor gone now. “Stop stalling because you don’t want to be vulnerable.”
His forehead drops to mine. “Be with me,” he says quietly. “Right now. One week. Give me everything.”
This isn’t about sex.
This is about the way he refuses to let me disappear into the version of myself that stays safe.
He won’t let me be that version of myself here.
Not with him.
This is the Bear.
The man I knew would be dangerous if I let him close. Not because he’d hurt me. But because he sees me. The cracks. The defenses. The carefully engineered armor I wear like a winter glove. And he isn’t intimidated by it.
He wants it. He reaches for it.
My chest tightens. My pulse skids.
Fuck it.
Okay.
I can do this. I can stay right here. I can stop bracing for impact and let myself exist with him. I can give him my body, my presence, my truth—without vanishing into it.
Just this.
Just him.
One week.
“Fuck, Eli,” I gasp, and the truth finally rips its way out of me, claws and all. Everything I don’t do. Everything I stopped doing ten years ago, because it was safer that way. “I don’t give in. I don’t let go. I don’t—”
My voice fractures. Breaks right down the middle.
“I don’t fucking cry.”
The words hang there between us, exposed and shaking, like I’ve just handed him something fragile and prayed he doesn’t drop it. The way his eyes soften tells me he understands exactly what that confession costs me.
But he doesn’t rush to fix it.
Doesn’t fill the silence with promises.
“Okay,” he says simply.
And somehow, that’s everything.
He finally pulls back, the connection between us breaking with a soft, reluctant shift that leaves us both desperate for air. For a second neither of us moves, the weight of the moment still holding us in place.
Then, without warning, he slips his arms around me and lifts me from the table. I barely have time to gasp before he carries me across the greenhouse, his grip careful.
He lowers me onto a padded bench tucked along the wall and lays me down there. Instead of stepping away, he moves in close, his body blocking the draft, trapping heat between us.
He takes a moment to shrug off the last layers of clothing in his way before settling back between my knees with deliberate focus, his hands sliding to my hips again as the charged tension between us rebuilds, slow and inevitable.
He’s hovering, his presence wrapping around me instead of pressing down.
“Okay,” he whispers again.
“Okay…what?” I ask.
His hand drifts to my stomach, tracing slow, absent circles around my belly button. “You can be here for me. I’ll take care of you,” he says softly. “In all the ways we both need.”
I’m noticeably startled, but he continues. The casual way he talks about it, reminding me this kind of arrangement is nothing new to him.
“I won’t rush you. I won’t push you past where you can go,” he continues. “But you can fall apart with me, Max and I’ll hold it. I’ll hold you.”
The words undo something deep in my soul.
“But,” he adds gently, his eyes searching mine, “you can’t fall in love with me.”
There it is. The line in the sand.
And while I’ve spent the last ten years preparing myself for arrangements like this—indulging in dynamics exactly like this—something about the way he says it makes me pause. Makes me wonder why this is the one rule he’s laying down so firmly. This law.
I raise a brow. “Okay. And how do you know you won’t fall in love with me?”
He exhales, an almost smile tugging at his mouth. “Oh, Maxine Palmer. Don’t you see it? I am absolutely going to fall in love with you. I’m just not the kind of man who holds on to the women he loves. So let’s do each other this kindness while you’re here. One week.”
Those two words again. One week.
“So what—you’re some kind of hippie lumberjack who makes love to whoever wanders through town?”
That earns a real laugh. “Not at all,” he says. “I’m much more selective than that.”
And still… I don’t get it.
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t understand you, Bear,” I say.
He grins, easy and maddening. “That makes two of us, Mama.”
And when he kisses me again, it’s breath-taking. Reminding me what it feels like to be safe enough to let go.
This time, when he enters me, it isn’t about consuming or being consumed.
It’s about staying.
One week.