Outmatched

She keened, whimpering as though she might actively cry if she didn’t get closer. She was driving me out of my mind with the way she sucked at my mouth, sliding her tongue over mine.

Cradling her head in my hands, I let her have what she wanted. Shit, I’d give her anything right about now. Our kiss became sloppy, bruising. Parker rocked her hips against my hard dick, and I was the one whimpering.

“Hell yes,” I panted against her mouth. “Give it to me.”

The second I’d uttered the words she froze. And I knew I’d broken the spell she’d fallen under. Fuck. No, no, no. Don’t stop. But she was already lurching back, her eyes wide in shock and horror.

I opened my mouth, trying to think of something to make her stay, but she scrambled off my lap as though it were on fire. When she got a few feet from me, she simply stared, panting faintly.

I tried not to look at her breasts trembling under her blouse. They’d felt so good pressed against me. The silence felt like condemnation. What to say? I had no fucking idea. She’d knocked me on my ass.

Parker proved yet again to be the steadier one.

“I’m sorry.” She licked those swollen lips. “I… uh…haven’t done this before. Faking it. Was, uh, that okay?”

Faking. It.

Right. That’s what we’d been doing. She looked at me with a plea in her eyes, and I knew she needed me to make this okay. She didn’t want the reality; she needed the lie.

I ran a hand over my mouth, trying to wipe away the feel of her. Jesus, my hand was shaking. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, we’re cool.”

Parker sagged in relief. And I gave her my standard bullshit smile, letting her know we were back on script. But in my head, the truth rang clear as a bell. We were anything but cool.

Ten

Parker

“Okay, is everyone happy with the teams?” Jackson asked, glancing between the two groups he’d created with a random generator app on his phone.

I stood at Rhys’s side and ignored the smirk Creepy Pete gave me. We were on opposing teams, and he had Jackson on his. And gossipy Evan. Pete was also the only one who had brought his own paintball gun.

“It’s more powerful than the guns they supply here,” he’d said when Evan asked about it, puffing up his chest as he did so.

“Someone’s overcompensating for something, huh?” Rhys had winked at me, and I’d almost choked trying to stifle my laughter.

Now we were ready to play. Ten staff members plus their partners had shown up for paintball. The grounds were a forty-minute drive west of Boston, and to say it had been the most awkward forty-minute ride was an understatement. I’d rented an electric car to take me and Rhys to paintball and those babies were so quiet, they only enhanced the silence between me and my fake boyfriend.

So, I rambled. I rambled the entire way to distract myself from the memory of Rhys’s mouth, from his hands on me, and the delicious feel of his strong body against mine.

The kiss on our fake date had gotten out of hand.

Understatement.

My toes curled in my sneakers at the mere memory.

Rhys had offered to give me a ride home after we pretended like our kiss hadn’t been explosive and hot and pretty much the best kiss of my life.

Guilt suffused me.

It might have been epic for me, but I had to remind myself that it was probably nothing new to Rhys. He’d most likely had a million kisses with similar physical effect. It was a sexual kiss.

I’d had better romantic kisses.

I had.

Struggling to remember a specific one made me feel like hell.

My only recourse was to forget the night in Rhys’s awesome loft or die of self-flagellation.

“Let’s do this.” Jackson grinned at us, buzzing with energy. His fiancée, Camille, stood at his side, somehow still glamorous in her army fatigues. She and Jackson had taken dressing appropriately seriously. They both wore a light khaki T-shirt under a matching camouflage shirt and pants, and Camille had tied her shirt in a knot at her waist.

Except for Pete, who not only wore camouflage but a chest guard too, the rest of us dressed in comfortable green or khaki clothing to help us blend with the woodland. When Rhys and I arrived, we’d changed into our paintball clothes so as not to get paint on the seats of my rental car on our way home.

Upon advice from my colleague Stuart, I wore layers. Despite the nice weather, I had on yoga pants beneath loose-fitting cargo pants, and a long-sleeved T-shirt beneath a button-down shirt.

Rhys had come out of the changing rooms in a long-sleeved Henley and cargo pants, the muscles of his biceps flexing with every movement. He stood among my colleagues like Thor surrounded by fans at a comic book convention.