Hate Story

  “I just thought that if Nathan heard that we were a couple, you know, that way, he’d leave us alone. Or at least give us a little space.”

  I nodded through the fog. Being on her bed, feeling her sheets against me, smelling the faint scent of whatever she washed them in, it was messing with my head. Making me feel like I was stuck in some dream I couldn’t wake up from. “I think you’re right. And it’s better than my top idea of hiring a hit man to ensure Nathan ‘gives us some space.’”

  She looked at her hands spread open, palms up, in her lap. “Okay. So how should we start?”

  “The way make-up sex usually starts. Hard and loud.”

  She wet her lips, and my fingers twitched with the urge to grab her face and pull her to mine so I could feel her lips against mine. So I could wet them with my tongue. So I could taste them.

  My eyes squeezed together, clearing the image.

  “I can’t do this looking at you like this.” Nina collapsed back onto the mattress, her head burying into her pillow as she stared at the ceiling.

  “Okay. So we’ll just scream and grunt and make fucking noises while staring at the ceiling.” I laid back into the other pillow beside her. “I could make that work.”

  There was another minute of silence. Then I looked at her from the corners of my eyes to find . . . she was already looking at me from the corners of her eyes.

  We both started to laugh. Which was great and eased the tension. Right up until I noticed the way her chest was moving with her laugh, bouncing because, shit, she wasn’t wearing a bra. Because why would she when it tortured me that much more?

  “Some time tonight, Maximilian,” she said, her laugh rolling to an end.

  “It was your suggestion. No way I’m taking lead on this.” I was still laughing, concentrating on the ceiling instead of her chest a foot away.

  “Why not?”

  I lifted my arms. “Because what if I set the tone at hard porn levels when you meant something more along the lines of NC-17? No way I’m running point on this. Your idea. You start.”

  She rolled onto her side and rested her head on her hand. “The difference between hard porn and NC-17 make-up sex noises being?”

  I kept looking at the ceiling. “The fact that you have to ask that tells me you’ve clearly not been watching porn.”

  “You have?” She slugged my arm.

  I rubbed at the spot she’d just nailed. “I’m European. We’re different about that kind of stuff.”

  “A European willing to pay a million dollars to become a US citizen,” she mumbled.

  “And I was a teenage boy once who spent half of the day with his dick in his hand. I had to give my mind a break. Fresh material, you know?”

  Why was I admitting this to her? Why was I telling her about my prolific masturbation habits as a teenager and my familiarity with porn?

  Because I was an idiot. That’s why.

  So much for wanting to dismiss the beast beating its chest and speaking in grunts and snorts theory.

  “So?”

  Her voice was like a magnet, pulling me closer against my will. I couldn’t fight it. I moved closer to her because it was in my nature. Rolling onto my side, I found her eyebrow raised, her breaths a little shallow, her green eyes that liquid hue.

  “So?” I said back.

  She fought a smile, then she squeezed her eyes closed and opened her mouth. It was sexy as hell watching that pretty mouth of hers fall open . . . and then some noise fell out of it . . .

  That was not sexy as hell. At all.

  “What in the hell was that?” I asked right as she was opening her mouth to let out something else. Hopefully, this wouldn’t sound like a cat was being humped by a grizzly bear.

  When her eyes flashed open and caught me fighting a smile, they narrowed. “That was NC-17 make-up sex. In case you never got around to something so ‘clean.’”

  I choked on the laugh rising. “So you haven’t been watching anything sexy. Ever.”

  “So? Who says a person needs to watch sex on a screen to know what sounds to make when they’re pretending to have it?” She slugged my arm again.

  “No one. But, FYI, Nina, that is not the way people sound when they’re having make-up sex.”

  She rolled onto her back and punched the mattress. “Give me a break. I’ve never done this before.”

  My brows came together. “Make-up sex?” Who hadn’t had make-up sex? It was the best kind. It was like the anger was like some damn aphrodisiac.

  “Pretend make-up sex,” she clarified.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, this is my first time too. We can pop each other’s cherry.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut again. “Not helping.”

  She was right. I wasn’t, and we were only wasting time.

  “Well, pretty sure the pretend kind should sound like the real kind.”

  She nodded, a shake running down her body like she was psyching herself up. When she opened her mouth again, I never would have believed that horrendous of a noise could have passed through that beautiful of a mouth.

  She groaned, glancing at me, already knowing. I managed to keep a straight face and not wonder what kind of pathetic lovers she’d let into her bed that she’d learned those kinds of sounds.

  “Here. I’ve got an idea.” Lifting up, I grabbed her hands and pulled her up with me.

  “What are you doing?”

  I held onto her hands because I couldn’t let them go once I had them. Then I started moving. “Bouncing.” I jacked my brows a few times as the mattress springs whined in protest.

  She smiled like we were doing something obscene, then she started to bounce with me. Just a few little ones at first, and then she was really going. Higher than she’d gone on the trampoline earlier.

  And fuck. The trampoline.

  Watching her jump on that from half a room back had made my balls ache. I felt like someone had just kicked them into my ribs having her a foot in front of me. Bouncing. Braless. Boobs.

  I gave my head a shake and kept my eyes above the neck. As much as I could.

  The springs were really singing now, the headboard joining in as it smacked against the wall like someone was getting seriously drilled. Nina was beaming, leaping into the air with me and kicking her feet back each time.

  God, she was beautiful. Too beautiful. I should have turned and walked out of the bar that night I first saw her. I should have known. But I hadn’t. And now I’d already fallen. There was no going back.

  Throwing her head back, she let out a sound that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. That same sound made my dick feel about to split.

  “Oh god, Max!” She moaned, making that damn hot as hell sigh-scream again. “Right there!” The last part she paid special attention to shout out the window. She winked at me, still bouncing.

  “You like that?! You want more of that?!” I hollered out the window, hoping that Nathan-fuck was getting an earful.

  We both grunted and moaned, bouncing so hard the headboard sounded close to splitting in half. She was trying not to laugh, and I was trying not to throw her down on the mattress and fuck her until I had her making the exact same sounds.

  “Fuck me, Max! Fuck me hard!”

  Fuck me. I stopped bouncing for a moment, totally falling out of character. Watching her, holding her hands, hearing her say that . . . it was a testament to my strength of will that she wasn’t pinned below me.

  I got back to bouncing when she gave me a look that implied get to it. “Yeah, baby, I’ll fuck you all night long! I’ll fuck the shit out of this tight pussy!”

  Her mouth dropped open, and she hissed my name.

  “What?” I hissed back.

  “You just referred to my . . .” Her eyes dipped to the very spot I was having far too vivid of fantasies about. “As a . . .”

  “Pussy? That’s what you call it when you’re having make-up sex, Liebling.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t t
ake her hands out of mine. “Fuck me with your cock, Max! Pound me hard, baby! Give it to me good!” She was screaming out the window so there was no way she could see the look on my face. “Pump me full of your cum with that huge, throbbing cock!”

  I tugged on her arms, hissing her name this time.

  “What?” she mouthed.

  “Too far. Too damn far,” I hissed.

  When she shrugged like she didn’t know what I was talking about, I felt a smile that had been gifted straight from the devil form. “Look who’s been watching their fill of hard porn now?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up and come already.”

  Hearing her say it, watching her get back to bouncing, almost really did make me come. In my shorts. Because that wouldn’t have been awkward or anything.

  “Okay, so when I start to go off, you have to scream harder and louder than I do,” I whispered to her as we kept leaping into the air. “If Nathan hears that I can do to you what you’re going to lead him to believe based on the way you’re screaming, he is going to bow out and bow out hard. No guy named Nathan who wears khakis could ever make a girl make the kind of sounds you’re going to make for me.”

  Nina’s eyes were kind of wide and her bouncing was slowing down, so I pulled her up and down with me until the mattress was starting to fold around us each time we bounced back down.

  “Ready?” I lowered my head toward the window with her.

  “I’m coming, baby! Yes! Yes! YES!!!!” Nina panted out the window, waving me closer. “Harder! Harder!! HARRRRDER!!!”

  I wasn’t much of a talker when it came to the orgasm part, so I just grunted and moaned my pretend release.

  Our bouncing came to a gradual end, and we were quiet for a moment. Both of us were panting hard from the effort, and I saw beads of sweat forming along Nina’s neck and chest. I felt my own trickling down the seam of my back. Damn, for all the effort, we might as well have done it.

  Nina stayed close to the open window, lifting her finger to her lips when I opened my mouth. I listened with her. Not even a minute later, we heard his front door slam closed, followed by the screen door right after.

  She lifted her hand and gave me a high-five, beaming, before we both crashed down onto her bed. It took us a few minutes before our breathing returned to normal. Then Nina rolled onto her side toward me. I was still hard and fighting a pull I’d never felt before. A desire that ran deeper than I’d ever experienced. I was fighting it every step of the way.

  It was a futile fight, but I wouldn’t stop. I’d made Nina a promise. She’d made me one and was determined to hold up her end of it. I’d return the favor.

  What had happened to me before—who I was now as a result—I wanted to protect her from, because I knew I couldn’t give her what she needed. I couldn’t love her the way she deserved to be loved. Someone else had stolen that from me years ago, and I’d made sure it never grew back.

  “Max?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “That was the best fake make-up sex I’ve ever had.”

  I wrestled with the smile tugging at my mouth. “Me too.”

  I wanted to give her a quick kiss on the forehead before leaving, but I couldn’t. One touch, innocent as it might have been, wouldn’t have been enough. I couldn’t let myself do it or else I might as well finish the process of selling my soul.

  Some girls I might have been content to just share a touch with, a night with, but not Nina. Never her. One touch, and I’d want it all. Forever.

  When I started to crawl out of her bed, her hand found my wrist. “You don’t have to go. We just had pretend sex in my bed.” Her tired eyes opened on me. A sleepy smile moved into place. “I think it’s okay for you to sleep in it now. So long as it’s pretend.”

  I knew I shouldn’t. I knew I should go back to the couch and try and fail to fall asleep. I knew I should keep whatever distance I could between us before I ruined everything.

  I knew, but I didn’t heed my knowledge. Like a river rushing toward a waterfall, I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t pull back or slow down or stop. I knew I was going to fall. Hard.

  When I slid back into bed beside her, she lifted the blankets for me to slip under. She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t move closer or farther away. She just drifted off to sleep, her hand still around my hand like she was as incapable of letting me go as I was her.

  I stayed up the rest of the night, watching her. She never let me go. Once, when I tried to pull away, her grip tightened. Even in her sleep, she wouldn’t let me go.

  And that was when I started to wonder if maybe it would be okay if I fell in love with Nina Burton. So long as it was pretend.

  Starving. That was what I woke up feeling like. I would have thought I had been up half the night having voracious sex—the real kind, not the pretend.

  Max wasn’t in my bed when I crawled out of it, but that was probably for the best. Too much temptation to roll over and stare at him while he slept, which was creepy. Too much temptation to touch him, which was also creepy.

  I could still smell him on my sheets though, and before I crawled out of bed, I burrowed my face in the pillow he’d slept on last night and breathed in that scent. Which was also creepy.

  After grabbing a big hoodie from my dresser, I threw it on and moved out of my room. The windows were closed now—Max must have done that sometime last night—but too much cool fall air had seeped in while they were open.

  Last night had been unexpected, fitting most of the theme of Max’s and my relationship. It had been fun as well, getting to see that lighter side of him that seemed to get suffocated whenever he slid into a suit.

  It had been crazy sexy too. Having him in my bed, making those sounds, saying those things while he held my hands. There had been a few moments when I thought I saw something in his eyes—desire, maybe—but it passed with the next blink. I guessed that would have been normal for any two people doing what we had last night, no matter the extent of their relationship.

  I moved lightly down the hall, trying to keep the house from waking up in case Max had come out and crashed on the couch. We’d only fallen asleep a couple of hours ago, but we both had places to be this morning.

  When I rounded into the kitchen, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find him sitting at the little round table, working on his laptop, phone resting beside it, newspaper on the other side. His suit this morning was a lighter blue, and his expression was drawn back up into those serious lines he wore the majority of the time.

  “You’re up early,” I greeted with a wave.

  His gaze lifted from his laptop to me for half a second. “Not the only one.”

  “My grandma was an early riser. Can’t seem to break the habit.” I checked the clock on the stove. It was a few minutes past five, which was just all kinds of awful since neither of us had fallen asleep until three-ish.

  “Yeah, the New York Stock Exchange is an early riser too.” Max’s eyes flickered on me again, a smile working into position.

  “Coffee?”

  He nodded. “Love some.”

  I grabbed the coffeepot and filled it with water all the way to the top. Usually I only made half a pot, but now there were two of us in the house. Two of us who’d gotten a nap last night.

  “Working from home today?” I glanced at his screen. It looked like he had multiple screens open and was working on them all simultaneously.

  “At least until I make sure Nathan doesn’t come knocking on your door again this morning.” His fingers flew across the keyboard. “I don’t want him upsetting you. He needs to learn the new boundaries now that I’m here. What he can say and can’t say. Who he can covet and who he can’t.” He glanced back at me, his brow raised. “You being on that list of can’t covet now.”

  As I twisted the coffee canister open, I gave him the raised eyebrow look right back. “You’re kind of possessive, you know that?”

  His attention was back on his laptop again, but his head shook. “Not
possessive. Protective.”

  I made a face. “There’s a difference?”

  Max’s phone chimed, but he ignored it. “Possessive’s for my benefit. Protective’s for yours.”

  “Oh,” I said brilliantly, scooping grinds into a filter. That kind of made sense, but I wasn’t giving him a verbal confirmation because whatever Max was—protective or possessive—it trended toward the overbearing end of the spectrum. “So? How’s work going?”

  I rolled my eyes at my question. I sounded clueless. Which I kind of was. The stock market and currency trading and all of that made a whole lot of no sense to me, but it seemed second nature to Max. Obviously. The expensive suits and million dollars to pay a woman to marry him hadn’t cropped up out of nowhere.

  “Good. And bad,” he said. “That’s the tone of every work day.”

  “What are you planning on doing with all of that money you’re squeezing out of those stocks and . . . other things?” I flipped the coffeemaker button over.

  “Fill a pool with gold coins, of course.” He tipped his head back a little.

  “I knew it,” I teased back, pulling a couple of mugs from the cabinet.

  “No, my plan is to make what I need to in the markets, so I have enough assets to get into commercial development.” Max leaned closer to his screen.

  “Commercial development?”

  “I want to build skyscrapers.”

  I sighed. “Of course you do.”

  He shrugged and kept typing.

  “How much longer before you’ll be able to start building these skyscrapers?” I wandered to the fridge and pulled the door open.

  “If everything continues going according to plan, a couple more years.”

  If everything went according to plan, he’d be getting another wish in a couple of years too. “That’s why you want your green card so badly, isn’t it? So you can stay and build skyscrapers?” I doubted investors and zoning committees would look favorably on a man who was in the country illegally.

  “No, I want my green card because this is my home.”

  I pulled some eggs and creamer out of the fridge then slammed it closed with my hip. “Your home you want to build skyscrapers in.”