10. Ten
Ten
Payton
A insley storms out of her building wearing cut-off white shorts that do wonders for her long, tan legs, and a blue button-down shirt that looks like a perfect match for my eyes. How sweet of her.
Her head whips from side to side, scanning the street. She’s wearing the same pink baseball hat from yesterday, but her blonde hair is down, falling below her shoulders, so it blows around her in the warm breeze as she looks for me. She frowns, pulling her phone out of the back pocket of those shorts that highlight her perfect little bubble of an ass that has me biting my lip as I stare.
Muffin: Where the fuck are you, Mr. Insists On Dictating My Day But Doesn’t Make It Apparent Where He Is?
I give her a minute to stew before I text back.
Me: Blue Maserati MC20. Behind you.
She reads the text and spins around, finally catching sight of me as I wave a hand out the open top of the sports car. She walks down the block to my car and fumbles with the door handle, not sure how to work it. She makes a frustrated noise and glares at me through the top.
“How do I get into this expensive toy, you stupid asshole?”
I laugh, flipping my navy baseball cap backward, leaning over the small space to pull the handle and activate the butterfly door for her. She steps back as it rises at an angle in front of her instead of toward the curb as expected.
“Careful. Remember what I said about your mean words and what they do to me, Spitfire. Now get in here so we can get going. Atlanta is fucking hot and I want to jump into a warm lake with you.”
She slides her hazel eyes from studying the door to drinking me in, and for a moment, they don’t contain the murderous expression I expect but hold lust, and I smile in welcome to that change. Caught not being prickly, she quickly narrows her gaze and slips into the low car. She’s maybe five-foot-three, little enough to fit in my small Italian sports car like a sun-kissed dream. She’s fun-sized, and I’m more than ready to have fun with her.
The sunlight glints off her golden legs, drawing my attention to the smooth expanse of skin my hands itch to roam over. I mutter a curse under my breath and look away as she fumbles with the door to close it. I’m once again thankful for the small cockpit of the car, despite being six-two and finding it a bit cramped for my long legs. I still picked it for this drive, knowing it would put us in the closest proximity of all my vehicles.
I lean across her body and she stills. I suck in a greedy breath of her intoxicating coffee and vanilla scent. She smells fucking delicious. I reach up and grab the leather handle right over her hand and pull the door down, shutting it with her. I allow myself to stay close to her the entire time out of necessity but enjoy the feel of her heart hammering against my back anyway. I let go of the door and reach across for the seat belt next, pull it over her body, and buckle it for her as her chest rises and falls quickly under my arm.
“Safety first,” I say with a low chuckle. Once she’s set, I pat her smooth leg and can’t help the caress of my thumb across her outer thigh. Just as I start to pull my hand away, she slaps her hand over mine, keeping it there, and I meet her eyes curiously.
“What’s your deal?” she asks, her voice shaking.
“You have to be more specific. I have lots of deals,” I answer, wanting her to be very clear about her request.
“I don’t date, and you’re not even my type, if I did. Why do you want me to be your fake girlfriend when I’m sure there are a hundred willing women you could pick from?”
I laugh at her finally getting to the point, but I think she’s lying about me not being her type. I see how she looks at me. I’ll play along for the sake of answering her question.
“I don’t date, either. It’s convenient for our fake relationship that you don’t like me all that much so you don't fall for me.”
She shakes her head vehemently. “I won’t, but why are you messing with me like this? Every word out of your mouth is full of sexual overtones for strangers who met yesterday. If you don't expect me to fall for you, why are you flirting with me? Do you expect this to be a friends-with-benefits type of thing?”
I’m shocked she finally got up the nerve to approach my flirting head-on. It does something to me to hear her assertive instead of reactive or reproachful. I want to praise her with a well-placed good girl . I bite my cheek to keep the thought internal, despite knowing she’d likely preen under the praise. She’s exactly the kind of driven, overachieving, words-of-affirmation woman who’d have a praise kink.
I can’t help the involuntary squeeze of my hand on her thigh and she feels it, her eyes dropping to her lap to stare at our hands on her thigh before slowly meeting my eyes again. There’s heat in her hazel gaze, shading her eyes more amber than green. Fuck, it turns me on knowing she’s feeling the tension, too.
“Do you want it to be a friends-with-benefits type of thing?” I ask her question back to her with significantly more promise in my tone than hers held, unable to be anything but flirty with her. When she stays silent, I change tactics. “You hold all the power, Ainsley.” I run my thumb gently along her thigh. She doesn’t stop me. “You get to direct what this is in private. I just need a girlfriend convincing enough in public to keep Harlowe off my back. That means we’re going to have to touch and put on a compelling enough show for her and others. If we enjoy it along the way, well, good for us, right?”
“That sounds like a cop-out for how much you flirt.” Her tone isn’t that believable, but she’s fighting the good fight to stay prickly.
“I happen to like flirting and you’re very fun to flirt with.” I turn toward her and she meets my eyes, guarded but receptive. I decide to give her a truth so she’ll have some power of her own in our dynamic, given I’ve already taken so much just by reading her as easily as I do. “I’ll say things to get a rise out of you knowing I can. You can give me that satisfaction or not. It’s up to you.”
I give her thigh one last squeeze and slide my hand out from under hers, enjoying the pressure she keeps on it as if she doesn’t want to lose contact. I start the car, pull on a pair of sunglasses, and look over my shoulder for traffic before racing away from her apartment in a roar of Italian horsepower. Ainsley makes a muffled squeal that’s too fucking cute as she braces against the door and center console. The wind whips around us through the open top of the MC20, pulling at Ainsley’s hat. She quickly presses it down lower on her head and squints against the wind.
“There’s a pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment. There’s something for you to look over, too,” I say, loud enough to be heard over the rush of wind and engine.
She looks at me suspiciously, then reaches to open the glove compartment and sees the gold and pink aviator sunglasses. “Are these the whore glasses?”
I choke out a laugh and manage a quick look at her as I navigate through the early morning traffic in her neighborhood. “Excuse me?”
“Are these the sunglasses that are passed around to the girls who ride in this car with you? The whore glasses.”
“I bought those for you this morning before I picked you up. If you don't like them, we can make a stop before we leave the city and get you something you like better. Besides, I don’t drive women around, so there’s no chance I’d have communal sunglasses.”
“Oh,” she says quietly.
“I need you to sign the papers under the sunglasses.”
Her contrite expression over her misread of the sunglasses situation sharpens into distrust again. “What are they?”
“Non-disclosure agreement and the contract for our arrangement. Standard forms, nothing untoward or weird, I promise. To protect my privacy and your ethics as a journalist. Feel free to read through the packet before signing. I’m grabbing coffee and the drive to the lake is about an hour. We have time.”
“You seriously want me to sign an NDA and a contract to fake date you?”
“Yes.” I keep it simple and to the point.
I want to be protected from the start because I’m going to be spending a lot of time with this woman and I won’t be cleaning up my own fucking messes down the road like I have with my brothers. I’ve learned from their mistakes. Well, Zander’s, mainly, but Hayes isn't blameless. He married Paige on a whim without a prenup and then fucked up royally when he bought out her hotel legacy without so much as mentioning it. She left him for a few agonizing weeks where we weren’t sure if he’d be facing a divorce and subsequent loss of half of his considerable assets. I’ll be smart from the start and cut off any potential issues now with a contract that stipulates what can and cannot be said about our arrangement.
I weave around traffic and Ainsley presses her body back into her seat as she pulls the manilla folder and binder-clipped sheaf of papers out of the glove compartment and starts flipping through the document. I pull into a coffee drive-through and order for us while she reads. She doesn’t even complain, so I know she’s concentrating deeply. I pull forward and pay, take her drink first, and slide the iced coffee between her thighs, making her jump at the contact of the icy cup on her skin.
“Hey!” she says, flattening the papers against her chest and looking down at where her drink is now nestled with my hand on top. I press it closer to the apex of her thighs and she stares daggers at me.
“No cup holders. You’re responsible for your own drink, Muffin. If your hands are busy with those papers, your pretty thighs will have to hold it instead.” I dry the condensation on my hand along the inside of her thigh, making her squeal in protest.
“Use your own shorts to dry your hands.” She swats my arm with the sheaf of papers as she tries to hide her smile, which just makes me laugh.
“Your leg was so convenient, though.”
I turn back to the barista and take my drink, catching her slipping a phone away, knowing she likely snapped a photo of us. That happens a lot. People think I’m some kind of celebrity because of my business and status, so they feel entitled to take photos of me or my family whenever we’re out. Normally, it’d bug me, but this is convenient, given I want photos of us together to make it online. I tip the barista generously before we get back on the road.
“How’d you like it if I wiped my cold, wet hand on your bare thigh?” Ainsley asks.
“I’d ask you to keep going because I like temperature play and your hands look soft.” I give her a coy smile. She smacks me again and I laugh harder.
“You’re incorrigible,” she huffs, but there’s another hint of a smile turning up the corners of her mouth that she’s trying desperately to tamp down.
“Oh, I see that smile you’re trying to hide. You like it.”
“Shut up. I have important documents to decipher and you’re distracting me.”
I slide my iced coffee between my thighs and move my right hand off the steering wheel over to her bare knee, where I stroke her soft skin and feel goosebumps rise under my touch immediately. “If you want a distraction, I’m good at providing those.”
“Payton, focus on the road and quit touching me while I’m trying to read. There’s no one to perform for.” Ainsley’s voice isn’t as certain this time, and when I glance her way, her bottom lip is trapped between her teeth and she’s staring at my hand on her leg. It looks good, like it belongs there, my fingers lazily making circles over her tan skin as I explore her thigh.
“Practice makes perfect, Muffin. I want us to be comfortable when the time comes to put on the proper show. Shouldn’t we know what it feels like and how we’d react in the moment? I’m a hands-on guy. I’ll be touching you any chance I get in public. You won’t be able to freeze or look uncomfortable with it and you’ll have to sell the idea that you enjoy it. So do you?”
“Do I what?” she asks, her voice unmistakably breathy while my fingers roam unchecked up her thigh, still drawing light circles over her skin.
“Enjoy having my hands on you?” I’ve reached the frayed edge of her shorts and brush along the strands, wishing I could watch her face instead of the road. I let my fingers graze below the edge and slowly slide toward her inner thigh. I feel her tremble before she finally grabs my wrist and moves my hand away.
“You need to drive and I need to read.” She evades my question, yet manages to answer it at the same time. She liked it more than she wanted to admit. That’s good enough for me.
Satisfied, I keep my hands to myself and stay quiet to let her read through the entire contract while I drive the familiar route to my lakehouse on Lake Lanier. It’s about fifty miles northeast of Atlanta and one of the largest lakes in Georgia. It’s quicker for me to get there than to the coast by car, and easier than getting the jet ready to fly somewhere farther away.
“I’ll sign it, but I want to add my own stipulations.”
I look over at Ainsley about fifteen minutes later. She's gorgeous with the sunglasses perched on her face under the pink hat I hoped she’d wear again. I was betting on that when I picked the shades out. The light pink and gold look nice against her tan and the champagne and honey strands of her hair that blow around her face in the breeze.
“I told you nothing weird was tucked in there. It’s all very standard, except the whole we’re dating for three months thing. So what kind of stipulations do you have in mind?”
“This whole situation inordinately benefits you, even if it’s repayment of a favor, which I still think is bullshit.” She glowers at me.
“You brought this on yourself by insisting on owing me the favor in the first place.” I chuckle at her annoyance at my reminder.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a rush before continuing. “I want you to give me a story. I need to get away from the Gazette, and the only way I’m going to do that is with higher-value topics than what our paper covers so I can prove my worth as a journalist. Let me write a profile on you and shop it around. Your name alone carries value to any heavy hitter in the business world, and a human-interest story would appeal to papers that cover soft news.”
Ah, there it is. I knew she wanted to learn about Olympus and get her piece of the pie somehow, but this is more than fair. And, frankly, I approve of her wanting to use the story to leave the fucking second-rate paper she’s at, so her reasons work for me, even if I’m not sure what she wants to write about exactly.
“There’ll be limits on what you can write about. I’m a private person and don’t like the idea of letting the world into every aspect of my life. Additionally, there are a lot of sensitive deals that can’t be discussed when it comes to Olympus, so I can't be an entirely open book on that, either. I’ll need to read a draft of the story before it goes to print to ensure my company and family are shown in the best light. I’ll even connect you with contacts of mine at the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and a few others when it’s done. If that’s amenable to you, we can include it in the contract.”
“Deal,” she says quickly. When I glance over, her face is cautiously optimistic, and I like seeing the hesitant smile turning up those pretty lips. Finally, an emotion other than reserved animosity. Fuck yes, it’s worth agreeing to a story just to see that smile alone.
“Add the details to the last page before you sign.” I pull a pen out of the pocket of my blue checked button-down and hand it to her without looking over. She takes it from me, her fingers brushing over mine delicately, and I wonder if she meant to. Maybe she’s trying out the whole touching thing, too. While she’s become easier to read the more I get to know her, she still manages to surprise me. Now we’ll see if I can surprise her.