Chapter 22
Ash
The sound of my name on Gray’s lips sets off a deep longing I feel in my bones. Her eyes are soft as she lies beneath me, and I recognize the desire in them. She wants me as much as I want her, and I groan as I savor how perfectly her body fits against mine.
“Ash,” she says, her voice a purr.
“I’m here,” I tell her, and my cock hardens even more as she wiggles beneath me. “Do you want me to fuck you? Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”
I lift myself off her enough to part her legs, then settle myself between them. I notch my cock at her entrance and press forward.
“Ash,” she breathes.
I’m about to bury myself inside her when her face fades, and my vision goes a bright white.
“Ash.”
My eyes flutter, and it takes me a moment to realize I was dreaming.
Well, mostly dreaming. The voice calling my name is real, and I force my eyes open against the sunlight streaming through the window.
The sheer curtains were drawn last night, but I forgot to pull the shade, so the room is painfully bright.
“Ash, are you awake?” Gray asks.
I groan. I don’t usually drink wine, and the feeling in my head says I should never do so again. I had a headache the day after that first dinner with Gray as well, and now I wonder if there’s something in wine that doesn’t agree with me.
“Yeah, I’m awake. You okay, baby?” I ask softly.
“I…need to go to the bathroom,” she says.
I blink, wondering why she woke me to tell me that. Then I feel something shift against me and realize the issue. My body is wrapped around Gray’s. She’s spooned up against me, and my arm is banded around her torso to tuck her into my chest like I’m a wide receiver and she’s a football.
She can’t move until I let her go.
“Shit, sorry,” I say, pulling my arm back and rolling away from her.
“Thanks,” she says. She throws off the covers and heads for the door.
My eyes follow her the whole way. Her blonde hair spills down her back, hiding the wing tattoos I know are there, but the camisole and sleep shorts she wears do nothing to hide the curves of her body.
I nearly groan again as I watch the sway of her hips and imagine holding onto them as I pound into her from behind.
I’d guess her breasts are at least a C cup, if not a D, and her waist tapers in to give her a lush, hour-glass figure.
Gray leaves the room, and my trance breaks enough that I remember I was having a wet dream about her before she woke me.
I swear and quickly lift the elastic waist of my sleep pants and boxers to look down at my dick.
Mercifully, I haven’t come in my pants like last time.
The dream hadn’t progressed far enough before Gray woke me, but I still have a raging hardon.
When Gray gets back, it’ll be my turn to hit the bathroom.
I lie there patiently until Gray returns a couple minutes later, and I’m once again mesmerized by the way her breasts bounce gently when she walks. Rather than coming back to the bed, she goes to the dresser where my dad dropped her overnight bag and begins rummaging in it.
“I should hit the bathroom too,” I murmur as I get out of bed carefully and make my way to the door. Gray is still busy in her bag and doesn’t notice anything as I head out and hurry down the hall.
I hear my parents clanking pots in the kitchen and smell the coffee as I slip quickly into the bathroom, close the door, and turn on the shower.
I showered last night, but the sound of the water will help mask what I really need to do, which is fucking come. I jerked off last night too, but my parents were asleep then.
I undress, step into the shower, soap up my hand, and wrap it around my cock. I close my eyes and remember what it felt like to touch and kiss Gray last night. Her skin was so soft, and the way her body surrendered made me hard as all fuck.
When I suggested I shouldn’t fuck her last night, part of me wanted her to say she didn’t care, that she wanted me to take her then and there, my parents’ house or not.
Another part was glad she didn’t give me the go-ahead. We would’ve needed to be quiet, and if I fuck her, I want to be sure we’re free to make noise, because I want to hear her cry out my name.
Yeah, forget if. When I fuck Gray, she’ll cry my name.
I want her so bad. It’s become increasingly difficult to control myself, and last night was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now that I’ve touched her and kissed her and woken up with her wrapped in my arms, I can’t go back.
I grip my cock and picture what might have happened last night.
I picture myself nestling into the cradle of her heat.
I press a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet as I push into her, and I watch her eyes widen as my cock fills her up, stretching her tight little pussy wide.
Her body tenses and she makes that whimpering sound I love, but I hush her and tell her how well she’s taking me as I begin to thrust. Her body relaxes, and I pull my hand off her mouth as she moans my name.
In the shower, I pump my hand over my cock.
I’m already close, so this won’t take long.
It only takes a few seconds more of picturing Gray coming apart beneath me before I climax.
Milky jets of cum shoot onto the tile, and I splash water to wipe them away.
Then I lay a forearm on the wall and press my head against it as my body sags in relief.
I nearly jump out of my skin as a loud knock sounds at the door.
“Ash? Is that you?” My mother’s voice carries over the running water.
“Yeah,” I call, praying she didn’t hear any of what I just did.
“Do you want eggs?” she asks.
“Sure. That sounds great,” I say, and my heart slows again.
“Do you know if Gray wants eggs?”
“I don’t know,” I call back. “She’s awake if you want to ask her.”
“Okay.”
I wait a few seconds, but I don’t hear anything more. I check the shower stall to be sure I haven’t left any evidence of jerking off, then I shut off the water and towel dry.
I forgot to bring in clean clothes, so I toss on what I slept in and go back to the room. Gray isn’t there, so my mother must have coaxed her into the kitchen for breakfast.
I can’t help looking at the rumpled bed as I dress.
All things considered, my restraint last night was admirable.
Gray would’ve given in to me if I’d tried to seduce her.
I know that. As it is, she started to offer me either a hand job or a blowjob, but I shouldn’t have put her in a situation where she felt like she needed to offer either.
I run a brush through my hair. I thought the idea of fake dating Gray was genius when Kaladin first confronted me with the video of us.
It seemed like the perfect way to get closer to her, since she has to be near me to keep up the ruse.
We have to touch and kiss occasionally back home, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped.
As Cedric predicted, the media lost interest quickly, so we didn’t need to be seen in public together.
The problem is that I need more now, and the terms of fake dating don’t require the kind of intimacy I want. Gray may need to be near me, may even need to kiss me occasionally, but she doesn’t have to fuck me.
More importantly, I want her interactions with me to be real, not just an act. I want her to want me. I want the relationship to be real.
It’s not an impossible task, but I can’t force it like I tried to do last night. I have to take things slow. It’s possible I can convince Gray to date me for real, but it’s going to take time and patience.
Gray
Ash is quiet on the ride back to Connecticut, and I get the impression he’s lost in thought.
All in all, the trip to meet his family was a success.
Ash seemed genuinely happy to see his parents and sisters, even if he did butt heads occasionally with Inga.
He also managed to avoid giving her a definite answer about whether or not he was bringing me to the wedding, although he told me he thought it might be fun to go together.
After we left his parents’ house, he took me to several wineries in the area. He didn’t do much sampling himself, and when I asked him about it, he admitted to having a headache from drinking the night before.
People think it’s the sulfites in wine that give them headaches, but sulfites are just a preservative found in lots of foods.
For most wine drinkers, it’s actually a flavonoid in red wine that affects them because of its abundance in the grape skins.
Or sometimes it’s the tannins and histamines.
Either way, Ash likely has a sensitivity.
I’m lost in thought myself most of the drive. Something about the discussion with Ash’s family nags at me, but I can’t put my finger on what.
“You okay?”
I snap to attention at Ash’s voice. He glances over at me as he drives, and I smile back at him.
“I was going to ask you the same,” I tell him. “You’ve been quiet.”
“Just thinking,” he says.
“About what?” I ask, then add, “If you feel like telling me.”
He’s quiet a moment before he answers. “I’m thinking about this whole fake dating thing.”
My face falls. Is he regretting the plan already?
“What about it?” I ask casually.
He shrugs. “Just thinking how complicated it is. Some people know it’s fake, like the team, but others think it’s real, like my parents.”
Guilt grips me. “I’m sorry about your family. Do you really have to lie to them? Can’t you tell them the truth?”
He chuckles. “Honestly, I don’t really want to. As long as they think I’m dating someone, Inga won’t try to set me up with one of her friends at the wedding.”
I raise a brow. “Ah. Well…you’re welcome?”
He chuckles again. “Yeah. Sorry you had to get off your dating apps.” His tone turns sarcastic. “I mean, it seemed like you were having so much fun going out with those guys.”
I roll my eyes and huff a laugh. “Right. It’s sad that my fake dates have gone so much better than my real ones.”
“You’re welcome?” he says, mimicking me from a moment ago.
I smile. “I’m just too old and jaded for this bullshit.”
He scoffs. “Thirty is hardly old.”
“Just too jaded then.”
A few moments of silence slide by before Ash speaks again.
“If you think about it, we’re still getting most of the benefits of real dating,” he says.
I look at him. “Like?”
“Like someone to talk to and spend time with. And the occasional kissing and touching isn’t bad, right?” he says.
“No, I suppose not,” I say, side-eyeing him.
“And as a bonus, my family doesn’t try to set me up, and you have an excuse to give Celena as to why you can’t be on those dating apps.”
“True,” I admit.
“It’s a win-win,” he says. “I mean, the only thing we’re really missing is sex.” He pauses. “And we don’t need to have sex, right?”
There it is. The topic we’ve been skirting around since this started.
I’m not some inexperienced teenager that I don’t catch the subtext of his question. He wants to know if I want to have sex.
The big question is why he wants to have it.
Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation is that, since he’s fake dating me, he can’t date anyone else. If he can’t date anyone else, he can’t have sex with anyone else, so if he wants to have sex, it has to be with me.
Almost immediately I hear Celena’s voice in the back of my mind. That’s not the simplest explanation, you idiot. The simplest explanation is that he wants you.
I tamp down the voice. Nope. I still won’t let myself believe that.
A sound of disgust that sounds like Celena echoes in my mind.
“We don’t need to,” I say, emphasizing the need part. “But we’re consenting adults, so we could if we wanted to.” I pause to look at Ash. I think he’s stopped breathing as he stares straight ahead at the road. “The question is whether or not that would be a good idea.”
His lips part enough to release the breath he’s been holding.
“For the sake of argument,” he says, “what’s the worst that could happen if we have sex?”
The worst? The condom could break, my IUD could fail, and I could get both pregnant and a venereal disease, for one. Not that I think Ash has an STD. He seems responsible enough to practice safe sex, but with my luck…
I don’t say any of that, of course, and Celena would slap me for living under my usual cloud of doom, but Ash asked for the worst. I opt for something a bit less dire when I speak, though.
I shrug. “If we’re…incompatible, it could make things uncomfortable for the next couple months,” I say. “And what would Mr. Kaladin do if he found out? He’s not paying me to sleep with you.”
Ash nods slowly. “And what’s the best that could happen?” he asks.
The best? My brain isn’t wired to think that way, but I try anyway.
Great sex.
A relationship.
Love.
Happily ever after…
Yeah, right. Keep dreaming, Gray.