From Fake to Forever (Newlywed Games 2)

Astride his muscular frame now, she placed both palms on his chest, like she’d been fantasizing about for days. Years. “Much better.”

She began to move and flung her head back to keep him from seeing anything extra in her eyes that she didn’t want to reveal.

Pure pleasure. Nothing wrong with that.

And pleasure her he did. Jason reached up to cup her breasts as she found her rhythm, tweaking her nipples expertly. Losing herself in him wasn’t hard.

He groaned. “I love your body. It’s the hottest I’ve ever seen, even in airbrushed magazines.”

“And it’s all yours, for now,” she teased and pretended the catch in her throat was due to the physical pleasure instead of how sad “for now” had suddenly made her. What was wrong with her?

Hot. Dirty. Wild. Crazy. These were the things she should be focusing on. She threw herself into it, abandoning her thoughts to the heat Jason had created. His hips matched her thrusts, spiraling her into the heavens in another climax.

She slumped onto his chest, resting her cheek against his thundering heart. His arms held her tight and she shut her eyes. But she couldn’t go to sleep cradled by this man like she desperately wanted to. It meant something different now than it had in Vegas.

She’d made the monumentally earth-shattering discovery that when she’d dreamed of reconnecting with Jason Lynhurst, it hadn’t been about sex. Not solely. Maybe it hadn’t even been just sex in Vegas, but she’d never stopped to examine it.

Her heart hurt and not in a good way. Was all this why she’d gotten so teary over his simple romantic gestures earlier? Why she couldn’t forget him? All she’d wanted was a taste of his magic again, the feel of his body and the rush of a release only he seemed capable of giving her.

And he had. What else could she possibly ask for? Once she had the divorce, she could move on, go home and become a successful businesswoman. That’s what the Grown-Up Pact was about, what she wanted. Didn’t she? Frustrated, she bit her lip. This emotional muddle was not on the agenda.

After a few minutes of struggling to hold back the flood of confusion inside, she finally thought she could speak without tipping him off that she’d experienced a total freak-out. “You’ve still got the moves, sugar. Anytime you want wild and crazy, you let me know. I’m your girl.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He kissed her on the temple and spooned her against him. “Do you want me to stay?”

Of course she did. But coupled with the swirl of uncertainty and the fact that he’d actually asked made her blurt out, “You don’t have to.”

And then she hoped he’d see right through her words and insist that he wanted to stay. But he nodded and rolled away, taking his heat with him. “I do have an early meeting.”

She smiled and faked being okay with him jetting off in the middle of her crisis. After all, she’d given him permission to leave. This wasn’t a vacation where they could lounge around in bed for a whole weekend. He was busy. So was she. “See you later.”

Actually it was better if he went, for both of them. This is what adults did when having a short-term affair. It was what she did. Always.

She didn’t watch him get dressed and didn’t glance up when she heard him turn the doorknob to leave. It was cold in this icebox of a hotel room. She pulled the blanket up to cover herself.

Long after he left, she stared at the wall, wondering how in the world they’d managed to get naked and have cataclysmic orgasms and yet she hadn’t gotten what she wanted at all.

Eight

With something akin to a herculean effort, Jason managed to hit the threshold of his office by eight o’clock. How, he had no idea. He’d tossed and turned all night, only to fall asleep at 5:00 a.m., thirty minutes before his alarm.

If only he could blame the inability to sleep on Avery’s thievery or the merger plans or the damaging press he had been combating. As bad as all that was, it couldn’t hold a candle to the vision of Meredith on permanent repeat in his head.

Oddly, the memory wasn’t of her naked—though she had the body of any breathing man’s wet dream. No, the image haunting him was of her in the car, when she’d mounted him with that little skirt hiked up and her breasts half spilling from her clothing.

The look on her face...rapturous. He couldn’t stop watching her as he pleasured her. Sure, he’d been touching her intimately while in public, which was the very definition of the kind of crazy she induced. He should have been appalled at himself. Instead, he’d felt alive, invigorated. Powerful in the knowledge that he could make her come as many times as he wanted and she’d cry out his name.