Fake Love (For Now) by Penny Wylder (great novels .txt) 📗

“I understand. But I want to tell you that we’ll figure everything out. I will help you in any way that I can. You’re going to get into fucking vet school because you’re amazing and brilliant, and then you’ll get the job of your dreams. Have your own practice. Or you can move to Blue Mountain with me and take care of the animals there. You can do whatever you want, and I will do it with you. Because I want you. I’m falling in love with you.”

Erin still stares at me. I can see the way she’s listening to my words and pulling them apart. Letting them sink in. Her hands grasp my shoulders, and slowly, a smile appears on her face. “You’re falling in love with me?”

“Yes,” I say simply. There’s no other explanation. Every second I can’t stop thinking about her. I breathe her.

Her smile grows wider, and there’s a brightness in her eyes that could light up the whole damn world. And that smile, I make myself a vow to try to see that smile every fucking day. I want her that happy—this glowing—all the time.

“I’m falling in love with you too,” she whispers.

I can’t keep my hands off her now, running my hands up her ribs and pulling the neck of her t-shirt aside so that I can kiss her shoulder. “You’ll be with me?”

“I’ll be with you.”

My arms come around her hard, locking us together again, and I take her mouth. I can’t be without her anymore. But she pulls back for a second. “You got my parents to help you?”

“They helped me seconds after you were gone, when Asher had to wrestle me to the ground to keep me from going after you. They wanted to give you time, and this whole week I’ve been going crazy. It took everything in me not to come before they let me.”

Erin wraps her arms around me and holds me tight. “I thought you just didn’t want me.”

“I will always want you,” I growl. “Always.”

Without another thought, I stand up with her in my arms and carry her into the bedroom. “And we can talk about everything that needs to happen. But right now, we have to make up for lost time.”

Erin grins. “My neighbors might not like it if you make me scream too loudly.”

“They can deal with it,” I say with a smirk. “Because I’m a man on a mission.”

She laughs as we fall onto the bed together—the best sound in the goddamn world.

Epilogue

Erin

Eight Months Later

I’m sitting in the car staring at the nondescript building that feels like it’s the center of the universe. The testing center. I’ve been here before, and the last time that I walked out of this stupid place I was devastated. I don’t want that to happen again.

But my mind is already spinning, even though I’ve studied until my brain felt like it was going to melt. And Hudson helped me study too in…uniquely creative ways. My husband got the idea that I had to earn my orgasms with correct answers to test questions and has taken great pleasure in driving me out of my mind.

I’ll never tell him that there were times that I got them wrong on purpose.

My ring spins around my finger as I twist it. It’s a nervous habit that I’ve picked up over the last few months. It’s comforting, feeling the ring that connects us. Makes me feel a bit of the calm that I have when his hands are on me. Not quite as effective, but close.

My mom got to help me plan a wedding, and even though it was smaller than I think she wanted, it was nice. Intimate. And all I really cared about was the fact that I was marrying Hudson. It was a struggle not to let him carry me directly away from the ceremony to consummate our marriage. But when we did manage to escape…I’ll never forget that night as long as I live.

I push the thoughts of our wedding night and honeymoon away, because getting distracted with that will be almost as bad as my classic overthinking and spinning.

Fucking hell, I still have a half-hour before the test starts and my mind feels like scrambled eggs.

I hear the screech of tires, and I look in my rearview mirror to see a familiar car pull into the parking lot. Hudson gets out of the car, hair still mussed with sleep and eyes like fire, and stalks towards my car. There isn’t a moment where my husband isn’t sex walking. But the determined set of his walk right now has me pressing my legs together.

This morning I got up before him, and he was still sprawled naked in our bed. I would have much rather stayed with him, but the last thing I wanted was to be late for this. Even being close to late would make the anxiety that much worse.

I unlock the door as he approaches, and he opens my door, leaning against the door with one eyebrow raised. There’s a sternness on his face that makes my heart race. “You didn’t wake me.”

“I wanted to let you sleep.”

Hudson narrows his eyes. “You shouldn’t have left before I was awake, beautiful. I had plans to help you with your test.”

I blink. “What kind of plans?” He hadn’t said anything about plans.

That sternest melts into a grin and he reaches down to take my hand. “Guess I’ll have to improvise.”

He pulls me out of the car and I barely have time to lock it before he’s pulling me toward the building and around the back of it. In one movement, he pushes me against the brick wall and takes my mouth in a powerful kiss. One that makes me moan.

Hudson and I have chemistry that’s undeniable. It’s never gone away, and I hope that it never does. “This is your fault,” he says playfully against my lips. “We could have done this in our bed.