The Pretend Fiancé

“I love to kiss, and be kissed. I love great sex too.”

He touched her face, covered her mouth with his without saying another word. Her wet arms wound around his neck and she murmured against his lips, a protest perhaps that was lost to raging passion as his tongue dipped into her mouth, tasting of chlorine and heat and everything she’d been wanting.

“There’s something about you that keeps me wanting more,” he said against her throat. “I want to make you feel what you’ve never felt before.”

She practically purred when he licked her neck and pulled her fast against him.

Bella melted then, as if all her resolve, all her perfectly rational objections to hooking up with Harvey, to hoping for a real relationship with Harvey, evaporated, burned up in the inferno of his kiss. She held nothing back then. The only thing that had kept her apart from him was the belief fact that he didn’t want her. Now that she knew it wasn’t all an act for Harvey, she was his.

Bella wrapped herself around him, that was the only way to describe the way her long legs and her arms enveloped him, winding around his hips and kissing him crazily, like she’d never stop. She put every ounce of love and attraction she felt for him into that kiss.

Harvey moved his mouth to her neck, igniting sparks of desire in her, sending hot and cold chills all along her body. She wanted more. So she reached for him, clung to him. Bella held on to his shoulders as his mouth dipped below her collarbone and into her cleavage. She moaned and pressed his face closer.

He untied the knot at the back of her string bikini and stripped it off of her, leaving the twin orange triangles of spandex to float off away from them. The chill of the water along her bare breasts shocked her, and she felt goosebumps creep along her skin before his warm palms engulfed her breasts. Her nipples beaded hard with longing at his touch. She rubbed up against him, pressing her nipples into his hands eagerly.

With one motion, Harvey lifted her up and set her on the edge of the pool, topless and trembling for him. He vaulted out of the pool and grabbed a towel, gently wiping the water from her face, her neck, then rubbing the soft terrycloth toweling across her sensitive breasts, teasing her nipples with the rough texture of the fabric, then brushing it against her stomach.

Bella wriggled at his ministrations and finally sat up, gripping his face between her hands and kissing him hard. She climbed onto his lap, straddling his hips. She could feel the pressure of his thick arousal and she rubbed against it hungrily, reveling in the sensation.

Within seconds, they had stripped off the remainder of her bikini and freed his erection. He probed the softness between her legs with the stiff, hard shaft and she sank onto him with a groan of pleasure. She bit down on his earlobe as she rocked on top of him. Harvey’s hand pressed on the small of her back, moving her against him at the rhythm he wanted, schooling her in the proper way to get him off. The wet slide of him made her feel breathless and needy, her nails digging into his shoulder as she held on tight.

Icy droplets of water from her hair slid down her chest as he thrust inside of her. The trail of chilly water on her sensitive nipples aroused her even more, and she started to grind against him until he took her by the hips and held her down, pumping into her hard until something bright and cold and amazing seemed to explode inside of her. As her high screams split the night, she felt him come, felt the tremor in his arms, the quickening of his breath and his guttural groan into her wet hair as he climaxed.

When Bella lay against him, spent and shaken, he kissed her face, kissing her forehead, her cheeks, her lips a hundred times. He stretched out at full length on the stone and let her lay on top of him, his arms closing around her. She felt the wetness between her legs where he had been and she wanted to cry from yearning to have him back there. She nuzzled against his chest.

He just stroked her hair, not questioning her rush of emotion. She scolded herself that he was probably used to having women so overcome with pleasure and affection that they got emotional in his arms. It was probably an everyday occurrence for Harvey Carlson. Momentary girlfriend. The hookup too moved by his prowess to realize that skill is no substitute for devotion. She reproved herself for thinking their coupling by the pool could be more. All he had said was that he wanted her. Which was hardly a declaration of love. She disengaged from his arms.

“I’m sorry, Bella,” Harvey said. “I got carried away. I know I promised our bargain would be platonic.”

“Please don’t apologize. I insisted on our little clause. I wanted this just as much as you did.”

“We wanted each other. We’ve been together so much, and all the posturing for the media is bound to build some sexual tension. For myself, I’ve had feelings for you for weeks. I was thrilled to find out that you reciprocated those feelings and had an interest in me beyond the payday.”

“We crossed a line. We had a deal and…”

“Why is a business arrangement the only way to be together? The world already thinks we’re a couple. Why not make it real? Why not be together all we want?”

“Because I don’t think it’s possible for me to be with you and not believe in it. I’d start to think it was true love or something, just the way we’re showing it to the world.”

“Why can’t it be?”

“Because life doesn’t work like that. Boys like you don’t fall for girls like me, Harvey. They might flirt with us or dance with us, or even have a roll in the hay, but it’s nothing but a fairy tale beyond that.”

“Do you really think you and I are bound by some sort of class system? You’re the girl I chose out of everyone to be my pretend-fiancee, after all.”

She laughed. “Is that supposed to be funny? Because I’ve told you. I don’t sleep around, and I’m at risk for falling for you very hard. It’s no joke.”

“I’m not joking, honey. I mean it. I like you, Bella, and I think we have a chance, as good a chance as anyone. Now come upstairs with me and let me prove it to you.”

“You have no idea how much I want to believe you, but it’s too risky for me. I washed dishes at the Hog n Tater! You went to Wharton. There’s a gulf there that no amount of—of sexual attraction could bridge.”

“I don’t think you can technically bridge an entire gulf. A moat maybe, or a great divide. But a gulf would be too huge, geographically speaking.”

“Your attitude isn’t helping your case here, buddy,” she said, cracking a smile in spite of herself.

“Maybe even a canyon but definitely not a gulf. Like the Gulf of Mexico is something like five hundred miles across at the narrowest point. Mississippi Delta to the Yucatan Peninsula. I read that when I researched our Mexican trip, just so you know.”

“How do you even know that?”