Weirdly, I don’t hate this idea as much as I would have expected. Although Iris kind of broke me. After putting up with all her drama, I told myself I never wanted to be in another relationship. Casual hookups have been my speed for the past year. It works for me.
Or it used to. But it’s just dawning on me that my crazy plan to stay married to Charli for a while means no more hookups.
That’s going to blow.
But not literally.
“By the way,” Charli says, bringing me back to reality. “I hastily packed up my apartment today.”
“Into several trash bags and a box,” I add. “Miguel delivered them after my mother left.”
Charli groans. “Classy, right? Sorry.”
“Who cares? At least you got out of that shithole. The landlord should have paid you to live there.”
She makes a noncommittal noise. “I’ll have to start looking around in a few weeks. It’s hard to find an apartment.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
She looks up at me. “Wait. How did you find your place? People say nobody ever moves out of that building.”
“They sometimes do.”
“So you just got lucky? Because apparently Tank and Bess had to buy their place in one hour or risk losing it.”
I hesitate, because the story suddenly seems a little outlandish. “There was no luck involved, actually. I had my realtor call everyone in the building and offer them a premium price to move out. The previous owner of my unit wanted to move to Manhattan. So I paid him an extra half million to leave.”
Charli makes a gagging sound. “You paid a half million dollars more than it was worth?”
“Not exactly,” I say defensively. “Having that place was worth that much to me.”
“God, rich people are weird.”
I poke her in the hip as we wait for the light to change. “You like me anyway.”
“Says who?”
I chuckle. “Need any help hunting for a new apartment?”
“From you? No.”
I just laugh.
Everything is copacetic until bedtime. But once again, falling asleep in a bed with Charli is hard.
Literally.
She’s lying beside me, smelling like freshly washed hair and pure girl.
I keep my eyes trained on the ceiling, where I can’t catch a glimpse of her bare shoulders with all those freckles I’d like to nibble. And I can’t see the press of her breasts against the fabric of the soft, stretchy tank top she sleeps in.
Although I can see it in my mind. And since I have a great imagination, I can also see my hands lifting that tank over her head…
Okay, nope. This is torture. I’m going to lie here in a state of distress every night, losing sleep.
My game might even suffer. If coach asks me why I’m so distracted, I don’t even know what I’ll say. My fake wife’s real tits are driving me insane.
But this is what I signed up for. There’s nobody to blame but me.
The tent pole in my pants would embarrass me, except that Charli is already breathing evenly beside me. She’s drifting off to sleep, while I lie here struggling to calm myself down.
It’s going to be a long night.
FOURTEEN
NIGHT, KITTEN
Charli
As I often do, I wake up suddenly, as if someone just shook me from a dream. I lift my head to get my bearings. I’m in Neil’s bed, and it’s still dark.
Quiet and safe, I tell myself. Everything is fine.
Except… hang on. Neil is missing. I’m the only one in this bed.
That’s odd.
I lay still for a moment, listening to the relative silence of his apartment. This is still New York City, so the silence isn’t complete. I can hear the distant sound of a truck rumbling down a nearby street.
But when the truck’s engine noise dies down, I hear another sound. A brief moan.
Still half asleep, I sit up in bed. Dr. Herberts had startled me with his request to put me on Neil’s blood-sugar patrol. What do I know about Neil’s diabetes?
I slide off the bed and sleepily try to discover where he’s gone. I start for the kitchen, but the door to the en suite bathroom is slightly ajar and light spills from the gap.
Then I hear the shower. Who takes a shower in the middle of the night?
When I spy Neil’s naked body through the cracked-open door, my breath seizes. He’s in the shower all right—water raining down on his muscular back, one colorfully tattooed arm braced against the tile wall.
His other hand is wrapped around an ambitious erection. Which he’s stroking. Rhythmically.
All the air whooshes from my body. Lorrrrd. In my twenty-four years, I’ve never seen such an erotic sight. My eyes are everywhere at once—on his muscular ass as it moves each time he thrusts. On the powerful flex of his forearm as he strokes. And on his grimacing face as he reaches for his own pleasure.
I’m sort of lost in my own shock until he straightens up suddenly. I freeze, panicked that he’s about to turn around and catch me staring.
But that’s not what happens. He reaches for my bottle of conditioner, squirts a white stripe of it onto his hand and then goes back to stroking himself lustily. “Fuckkkk,” he groans.
The sound of his voice raises goosebumps on my body.
And then Neil lets out a deep gasp, throws his head back, and paints the wall with his release, while I tremble and stare. He groans, his stroke slowing, his forehead coming to rest against his forearm on the tile.
I exhale shakily—like a person who just stepped off a roller coaster. And somehow I find the self-control to back away from the door. I scoot quickly toward the bed and slide back in, face down, heart thumping.
My nipples are hard, and my body feels loose and hungry. I press my nose into the starchy-clean pillowcase and try to slow my pulse. I shouldn’t be so turned on right now. And I definitely shouldn’t have watched.
Get a grip, Charli. I can’t lust after my fake husband. That’s just bad news.
Luckily, Neil takes a good ten minutes to finish his shower and dry himself off, while I lie still and play dead.
But the eventual sound of his footsteps padding across the carpet toward the bed makes my heart flutter again. The mattress is such high quality that I barely feel it depress under his weight.
It doesn’t matter, though. I sense him over there. The sound of his satisfied sigh brings my goosebumps back. And the heat of his body reaches mine—even if it’s only imaginary.
And now I have a very detailed mental movie of Neil Drake III stroking himself. And I know the gravelly sound he makes when he comes.
Damn it all. I may never sleep again.
“Morning,” Neil says cheerfully seven hours later.
“M-morning,” I stammer, walking into the living room where Neil is seated in the middle of the rug, looking edible in nothing but a pair of sweatpants.
“You look a little wrecked,” he says, having no idea that the sight of his happy trail is making my mouth dry right now.
“Uh…” Pull yourself together, Higgins. “Mornings, you know?”
I’d been awake for hours last night listening to Neil sleep, fighting off the craving to roll onto his side of the bed and climb onto his hot body.