Abby

My mind was racing a million times a second as we pulled into Colin’s apartment complex. It really wasn’t a complex, but more like a looming tower of suites that overlooked the ocean. I hadn’t been ready to come here yet and see all my boxes strewn about, but after the paparazzi attack at the restaurant, I couldn’t wait to get inside. I hadn’t understood I was going to be Colin’s personal P.R. representative. I thought I was taking the position as the company’s representative. This meant I would be responsible for dealing with Colin’s image in the media.

Which meant interacting with them and being in front of a camera.

I was shit in front of a camera! I figured that out at the conference. Sure, it may have looked like I’d held my head high, but in reality, I was a cowering little woman with clanking metal knees and a hollow head. It took all the education and personal experience I’d garnered up until that point to simply field the media barrage in that press room in Wichita.

But Colin expected me to do that full time!?

We pulled into the parking garage underneath the complex and he parked right next to my SUV. The car stopped and we sat for a moment, giving me a few seconds to breathe. I knew Colin was trying to give me the best he could and I really was appreciative, but it was just all so much so fast.

“You ready to go upstairs?”

I turned my head towards Colin and found those bright blue eyes staring back at me. Instantly, I felt my nerves calming and the voices in my head receding. That was the thing about him. The thing I just couldn’t nail down. There was something in his eyes—in that look he gave me whenever he saw only me—that settled my mind and tempered my racing heart.

“I love you,” I said breathlessly.

The smile that crossed his cheeks was one of stunned relief. He leaned forward and captured my lips and I felt a quick heat growing in my core. I reached over and cupped his cheek before my fingers made their way to his hair, pulling him closer to me as our tongues danced like wildfire.

“Let’s get you inside,” Colin said with a whisper.

I grabbed our food and he dragged me to the elevator. The moment the doors closed his lips were all over me. His hands raced underneath my red coat and pulled my body towards him. I could feel his thickness growing against my skin. His lips raced down my neck as his hand took the bag of food, then he pulled me close to him as my hands fisted his coat.

“The things I’m going to do to you,” he said.

Our lips peppered each other in kisses until the elevator brought us all the way to the top. The elevator lights blinked, signaling the need for Colin’s key. He reluctantly pulled away and fiddled with his keys, trying to find the one he needed to open the elevator door into his home.

I reached around and palmed his bulge as a groan slipped from his lips.

The elevator doors finally opened and we poured into his home. Our hands made quick work of each other’s clothes, leaving them in piles on the floor. We knocked up against the walls with our bare backs, our bodies heating for each other as our lips began to swell. I could feel my arousal pooling between my thighs as he picked me up and carried me across the threshold into his bedroom.

He laid me on the bed before his hungry lips raced down my body. He was needy. Primal. Resisting urges I knew he had in favor of what he wanted the most. His tongue parted my folds as my juices coated his tongue, and I could feel his growl rumble my ribcage as I moaned for more of him.

His hands wrapped around my thighs and pulled me closer to his lips. The way he sucked and flicked my swollen nub had me breathless from the start. The satin sheets underneath my body caressed my skin as my heels dug into his back. His hands pressed deep into my thighs, threatening to leave bruises behind as I undulated into his face. I could feel him lapping deep, drinking me down as my body poured out more for him to eat.

It wasn’t long before my back was arching off the pillow and his name was filling the corners of his room.

Kissing up my shaking body, his eyes met mine. They were blown wide with lust as he settled between my legs, his dripping girth teasing my entrance. He slowly slid in, his eyes never leaving mine as my jaw unhinged in pleasure. The way he stretched me and filled me always robbed me of my voice. Like the first time I ever had sex, only without the pain.

Our bodies moved together as he sank his lips onto mine. I could taste myself on him, the sweet intoxication swirling around my head. I ran my hands down his back and gripped onto his muscles. My legs wrapped around his waist just so I could feel him deeper inside my body. All the doubts I had running around in my mind washed away the moment our bodies intertwined.

It was during these moments with him that I knew he was the one for me, whether my brain was willing to accept it yet or not.

I could feel his curls raking against my clit, teasing shivers from my body as his lips slid to my neck. He grazed along my pulse point before moving to my shoulders where his teeth sought their fill. I could feel him pulsing against my walls, his thickness growing within me, like a plant searching for the sun to let it bloom. I moaned as he nibbled at my shoulder and gasped when he sank his teeth into my skin.

Then I rolled him over and decided to take what was rightfully mine.

Slamming my hands down onto his chest, I bounced in his lap. I could feel my arousal coating his skin as I swirled my hips. His hands grabbed onto my ass, kneading my skin as he guided my movements. I had missed him. Oh, how I had missed this. It had only been three or four days since I’d seen him last, but to my body it felt like an aching eternity. To my body, it felt like decades had gone by. Like long lost lovers were finally rediscovering bodies they craved in their youth.

I dropped to Colin’s body and opened my eyes, only to find him smiling at me.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, just before he kissed me. “You’re so radiant when you’re sweating for me.”

I watched as a bead of sweat dripped from my brow and onto his cheek.

Slowing my movements, I dipped my body down to his. I felt his hands move up my back, his fingertips massaging my muscles as I rolled deeply into him. I sank my lips to his neck and kissed his skin, feeling the electricity building in my toes. I loved the scruff on his face. It was something I hadn’t experienced yet with him, and it sent shivers down my spine.

It also raised to the surface a silent but painful truth that hung between us.

My body jolted with my impending climax as my breathing became unsteady. I rose up from his body and picked up my pace, feeling the heady passion of my orgasm coiling in my stomach. I was so close I could taste it. I could feel my body locking up as my fingertips curled into his chest.

But before I could seek my end, Colin pushed me off him and scrambled to get behind me.

He lifted my hips into the air as I sank onto one of his fluffy pillows. He slid into my warmth effortlessly as I groaned. My legs were shaking with every stroke he took within my body, and I could feel his balls rising to smack my clit. He set a furious pace, pounding into my body as I lurched up his bed.

This was the first time I had seen his penthouse apartment in L.A., and the only parts of it I’d seen were the glimpses of his bedroom—those visible from around his shoulders.

He wrapped his hand in my hair and pulled my face off the pillow. Our moans droned out into the room and I could feel my end approaching. My gut tightened and my toes curled. The heat in my chest spread throughout my body. Colin’s hips were stuttering as his hand tightened in my hair, and as stars burst behind my eyes I heard those words drip from his lips.

“Abby. Oh, shit. You’re perfect for me. Perfect. I love you. Oh—shit—”

He spilled into me, triggering my own release. I felt my walls flutter around him, pulling him deeper and deeper into my body. He collapsed onto me, his chest heaving as we both plummeted to his mattress. I reached back to smooth my hand through his hair, and I felt his lips descend onto my skin.

He kissed me down my arm before he slid from between my legs.

Collapsing on the bed beside me, he pulled me into him. The evidence of the love we made was draining from between my legs onto a bed that was foreign to me as I breathed in the familiar scent of my fiancé. My body shook with lustful delight as I relaxed into his body, and I could feel Colin’s hands drawing faceless pictures into the skin on my back.

“I love you,” I said.

“I have a date.”

His statement caught me off guard as I threaded my leg in between his.

“What?” I asked.

“For the wedding. I have a date.”

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath.

“When were you thinking?” I asked.

“I was thinking a fall wedding. Maybe sometime this September. When the leaves are turning but haven’t coated the ground yet.”

“Sounds beautiful,” I said.

“It’ll only be a backdrop framing the beautiful woman I’ll be marrying.”

He kissed my forehead and I tried to smile at him, but all I could conjure was a plastered grin. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him and it wasn’t that I was regretting things. It was just that everything about him was still so foreign. His schedule and the way he ran his life. His home and the place where he worked. We had taken two botched road trips together and suddenly we were getting married?

“Do you know what colors you might like for the wedding?” he asked. “My mother’s going to want to know.”

His mother.

I hadn’t even met his fucking mother.

“Um. Let me think about it,” I said.

He kissed my forehead as my eyes fluttered shut and I clung to his naked body. This was what I wanted. The strength of him against me as the tides of my life changed. I didn’t need the fancy home or the decadent dinners or a penthouse office right across the hall from his. I didn’t need a lavish wedding that took months to plan or a wedding dress that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Right now, my life was in such upheaval that I felt myself spiraling. Sailing into an endless abyss of unfamiliarity that I now needed to figure out how to navigate.

The issue? Most of that unfamiliarity centered around Colin—the man I said I would marry.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Was it?