Falling For Her Fake Fiancé (The Beaumont Heirs 5) (12 page)

Her lips parted and her mouth opened—right as the elevator did the same. They were on Ethan’s floor. He held her like that for just a second longer, then released his hold in time to keep the doors from closing on them.

He held out his hand for her.

And he waited.

Twelve

“Y
ou
want
me complicated?” Frances stood there, staring at Ethan as if he’d casually announced he wore a cape in his off time while fighting crime.

No one had wanted her messy and complicated before. They wanted her simply, as an object of lust or as a step up the social ladder. It was when things got messy or complicated or—God help her—both that men disappeared from her life. When Frances dared to let her real self show through—that was when the trouble began. She was too dramatic, too high-maintenance, her tastes and ambitions too expensive. Her family life was far too complex—that was always rich, coming from the ones who wanted an association with the prestige of the Beaumont name but none of the actual work that went into maintaining it.

She’d heard it all before.
So
many times before.

The elevator beeped in warning. Ethan said, “I do,” and grabbed her, hauling her past the closing doors.

She didn’t know what to say to that, which was a rarity in itself. They stood in the middle of the hallway for a moment, Ethan holding on to her hand tightly. “Do you?” he asked in a gentle voice. “Want me, that is.”

She felt the cool weight of the diamonds he’d laid against her skin. How many thousands of dollars had he spent on them? On her? It was not supposed to be complicated. If they had sex, then it was supposed to be this simple quid pro quo. This was the way of her world—it always had been. The man buys an expensive, extravagant gift and the woman takes her clothes off. It was not messy.

Except it was.

“You’re ruining the last of my family’s legacy and business,” she told him. “You’re everything that went wrong. When we lost the Brewery, I lost a part of my identity and I should hate you for being party to that. God, how I wanted to hate you.”

Oh, Lord—were her eyes watering? No. Absolutely not. There was no crying in baseball or in affairs of the heart. At least, not in her affairs of the heart, mostly because her affairs never actually involved her heart.

She kept that locked away from everyone, and no one had ever realized it—until Ethan Logan had shown up and seen the truth of the matter. Until he’d seen the truth of her.

“You can still hate me in the morning,” he told her. “I don’t expect anything less from you.”

“But what about tonight?” Because it was all very well and good to say that he liked her messy, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still a mess. And that wore on a man after a while.

He stepped into her. His body was strong and warm, and she knew if she gave first and leaned against him, breathed in his woodsy scent, that she would be lost to him.

She’d already lost so much. Could she afford to lose anything else?

He stroked his fingers down her face, then slid them back through her hair, pulling her up to him. “Let me love you tonight, Frances. Just you and me. Nothing else.”

It was real and honest and sincere, damn him to hell. It was true because he was true. None of those little lies and half glosses of compliments that hid the facts better than they illuminated them. And for a man who did not grasp the finer points of sweet nothings, it was the sweetest damn something she’d ever heard.

A door behind them opened. She didn’t know if it was the elevator or another guest and she didn’t much care. She took off down the hall toward Ethan’s room without letting go of his hand.

He got the door open and pulled her inside. “I won’t like you in the morning,” she told him, her voice shaking as he undid the belt at her waist and pushed the coat from her shoulders.

“But you like me now,” he replied, shucking his own coat in the process. “Don’t you?”

She did. Oh, this was a heartache waiting to happen, this thing between her and Ethan.

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” she said in as commanding a voice as she could muster. More than that, she didn’t want to think anymore. She only wanted to feel, to get lost in the sweet freedom of surrendering to her baser lust.

She grabbed him by the suit jacket and jerked it down his arms, trying to get him as naked as possible as fast as possible. He let her, but he said, “Don’t you dare hide behind that wall, Frances.”

“I’m not hiding,” she informed him, grabbing his belt and undoing it. “I’m getting you naked. That’s generally how sex works best.”

The next thing she knew, they were right back to where they’d been in the elevator, with the full weight of his body pinning her against the door, her wrists in his hands. “Don’t,” he growled at her. “I don’t want to sleep with your armor. I want to sleep with you, damn it. I
like
you. Just the way you are. So don’t try to be some flippant, distant princess who’s above this. Above us.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.” It didn’t come out confident or cocky or even flippant.

“Maybe I do.” He kissed her then, with enough force to knock her head back. “Sorry,” he murmured against her lips.

“It’s okay,” she replied because if they were getting to the sex part, they’d stop talking and she could just feel. Even the small pain in the back of her head was okay because she didn’t have to talk about it, about what it really meant. “Just keep kissing me hard.”

“Is that how you want it?”

She tested her wrists against his grip. There was a little give, but not much. “Yes,” she said, knowing full well that he was a man who knew exactly what that meant. “That’s how I want
you
.” Hard and fast with no room to stop and think. None.

A deep sound came out of his chest, a growl that she felt in her bones. His hips shifted and his erection ground against her. Yes, she wanted to feel all of that.

But then he said, “Tell me if something doesn’t work,” and she heard his control starting to fray. “Promise me that, babe.”

She blinked up at him through a haze of desire. Had anyone ever said that to her before? “Of course,” she said, trying to make it sound as though all of her previous lovers had put her orgasms first—had put her first.

He raised an eyebrow at her. He didn’t even have to say it—she could still hear him telling her not to pretend.

Then he moved. “Whatever else,” he said as he slid her hands up over her head and put both her wrists under one of his massive hands, “I expect complete and total honesty in bed.”

“We aren’t currently in bed,” she reminded him. She tested her wrists again, but he wasn’t playing around. He had her pinned.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t turned on—she was. But a new kind of excitement started to build underneath the standard sexual arousal that she normally felt. Ethan had her pinned. He had a free hand. He could do anything that he wanted to her.

And he’d stop the moment she told him to.

For once in her life, she wouldn’t have to think about anything except what he was going to do next.

“Turn around,” he ordered as he lifted her wrists away from the door just enough that she could spin in place. Then he swept her hair away from her neck and—and—oh, God. He didn’t just kiss her there, he scraped his teeth over her exposed skin, raw and hungry.

Frances sucked in air at the unexpected sensation. “Good?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he said, biting a little harder this time, then kissing the sore spot.

Frances shifted, the weight between her legs growing hotter and heavier as he worked over her skin. Then he was pulling the zipper down on her dress, and the whole thing fell to her feet, leaving her in nothing but a white lace pair of panties that left very little to the imagination.

“Oh, babe,” Ethan said in undisguised appreciation. She started to turn so she could see his face when he said it, but he gave her bottom a light smack and then used his body to keep hers flat against the door. “No, don’t look,” he ordered. “Just feel.”

“Yeah,” she moaned, her skin slightly stinging from where he’d smacked her. “I want to feel you.”

His hand popped against her bare bottom again—not hard. He wasn’t hurting her. But the unexpected contact made her body involuntarily tighten, and the anticipation of the next touch drove everything else from her mind.

Ethan’s free hand circled her waist, pushing her just far enough away from the door that he could cup one of her breasts, teasing the nipple until it was hard with desire. Then he tugged at it with more force. “Yeah?” he asked, his breath hot against her neck. He shoved one of his knees between her legs and she sagged onto it, grinding her hips, trying to take the pressure off the one spot in her body that made standing hard.

“Yeah,” she moaned, her body moving without her permission, trying to find release, that moment where there was a climax that only Ethan could bring her to.

“You want more?” he demanded, tugging at her nipple again.

“Ethan, please,” she panted, for no matter how she shifted her hips, the only pressure she felt did not push her over the edge.

He pulled away from her. “Don’t move,” he said. Then her wrists were free and his knee was gone and she felt cold, pressed up against this impersonal hotel door. Behind her, she heard the sound of plastic tearing. The condom.
Good.

Then Ethan put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her away from the door. “Hard?” he asked again, as if he wanted to make absolutely sure.

“Hard,” she all but begged. “Hard and fast and—”

He led her to the bed, but instead of laying her out on it, he bent her over the edge. Her panties were pulled down, and she was exposed before him.

Her body quivered with need and anticipation and excitement because this was not gentle and sweet, not when he grabbed her by the hips and lifted her bottom against his rock-hard erection. His fingers dug into her flesh in a hungry way.

“Ethan,” she moaned as he smacked her bottom again, just hard enough that her muscles tightened and she almost came right then. She fisted the bedclothes in her hands and tensed, hoping and praying for the next touch. “Hard and fast and now. Now, Ethan, or I won’t like you in the morning, I swear to God, I’ll hate you.
Now
, Ethan,
now
.”

Then he was against her, and, with a moan of pure masculine satisfaction, he was in her, thrusting hard. Frances gasped at the suddenness of him—oh, he was huge—but her body took him in as he pounded her with all the aggression she needed so badly.

She hit her peak, moaning into the sheets as the wave cascaded over her.
Thank heavens
, she thought, going soft after it’d passed. She’d wanted to come so badly and—and—

And Ethan didn’t stop. He didn’t sputter to a finish. Instead, he paused long enough to reach forward and tangle his hands in her hair and pull so that her head came off the bed. “Are you nice and warmed up now?” he demanded, and a shiver ran through her body. He felt it, too—she could tell by the way he twined her hair around her fingers. “That’s it, babe. Ready?”

He wasn’t done. Oh, he wasn’t done with her. He was going to make her come again, so fast and so hard that when he began to thrust again, all she could do was take him in. He kept one hand tangled in her hair, lifting her head up and back so that she arched away from him and her bottom lifted up to his greedy demands.

All she could do was moan—she wanted to cry out, but the angle of her neck made that too hard. Everything about her tightened as Ethan gave her exactly what she wanted—him, hard and fast.

This time, when he brought his hand against her ass in time with his thrusting, she came equally as hard. She couldn’t help it. Her body acted without her input at all. All she was, all she could feel, was what Ethan did to her. The climax was unlike anything she’d ever felt before, so intense she forgot to breathe even.

Ethan held her there as waves of pleasure washed her clean of everything but satisfaction. When she sagged against the bed, spent and panting, he let go of her hair, dug his fingertips back into her hips and pumped into her three more times before groaning and falling forward onto her.

They lay there for a moment, his body pressing hers against the mattress while she tried to remember how to breathe like a normal human. She didn’t feel normal anymore; that was for sure.

She didn’t know how she felt. Good—oh, yes. She felt wonderful. Her body was limp and her skin tingled and everything was amazing.

But when Ethan rolled off her and then leaned down and pressed a kiss between her shoulder blades—she felt decidedly not normal. She didn’t turn her head to look at him. She didn’t know what to say. Her! Frances Beaumont! Speechless! That was hard enough to accomplish by itself—but to have had sex so intense and so satisfying that she had not a single snappy observation or cutting comeback?

Not that he was waiting for her to say something. He kissed her on the shoulder and said, “I’ll be right back,” before he hefted himself off the bed. She heard the bathroom door click shut, and then she was alone in the hotel room with only her feelings.

Now what was she going to do?

Thirteen

E
than splashed cold water on his face, trying to get his head to clear. He felt like a jackass. That wasn’t how he normally took a woman to bed. Not even close. He usually took his time, making sure the foreplay left everyone satisfied before the actual sex.

But pinning Frances against the door and then bending her over the edge of the bed? Pawing at her as if he were little more than a lust-crazed animal? That hadn’t been tender and sweet.

He didn’t want to be responsible for his actions. He’d smacked her bottom—more than once! That wasn’t like him. He wanted that to be her fault—she’d worn the red dress, she’d been this
siren
that pushed him past sanity, past responsibility.

But that was crap, and he knew it. All she’d said was that she wanted it hard and fast. He could have still been a gentleman about it. Instead, he’d gotten rough. He’d never done that before. He didn’t know...

Well, he just didn’t know.

And he wasn’t going to find out hiding in the bathroom.

He’d apologize; that was all there was to it. He’d gotten carried away. It wouldn’t happen again.

He finished up and headed out. He hadn’t even gotten undressed. He’d stripped her down, but aside from shoving his pants out of the way, he was still dressed. Yes, that was quite possibly the best sex of his life, but still. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d gone too far.

That feeling got even stronger when he saw her. Frances had curled up on her side. She looked impossibly small against the expanse of white sheets. She watched him, her eyes wide. Was she upset?
Hell.

Then her nose wrinkled, and he was pretty sure she smiled. “You’re not naked,” she said. Her voice was raw, as if she’d been shouting into the wind for hours.

“Is that a problem?” He tried to keep it casual sounding. He wasn’t sure he made it.

She uncurled from the bed like a flower opening for him. “I wanted to see you. And I didn’t get to.”

“My apologies for the disappointment.” He started to jerk open the buttons on his shirt, but she stood and closed the distance between them. His hands fell around her waist, still warm from the sex. He wanted to fold her into his arms and hold her for as long as he could.

Where was all this ridiculous sentiment coming from? He wasn’t a sentimental guy.

“Let me,” she said. He saw that her hands were trembling. “And it wasn’t disappointing. It was wonderful. Except that I couldn’t see you.”

Ethan blinked twice, trying to process that. “I didn’t go too far?”

“No,” she said, giving him a nervous smile. “I—” She paused and took a deep breath. “Honestly?”

“Even though we’re still not in bed,” he said with a grin, tilting her chin up so he could look her in the eyes.

She held his gaze for a moment before forcibly turning her attention back to his buttons. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

That was not quite what he’d been expecting. “For what? I think I got just as much out of that as you did.”

She undid the last button and pushed the shirt off him. Then his T-shirt followed. Finally she shoved his pants down, and Ethan kicked out of them.

“Oh, my,” she whispered, skimming her fingers over his chest and ruffling his hair.

He fought the urge to flex. The urge won. She giggled as his muscles moved under her hands. “Ethan!”

“Sorry,” he said, walking her back toward the bed. “I can’t seem to help myself around you.”

This time, they actually got under the covers. Ethan pulled her on top of him. He didn’t mean it in an explicitly sexual way, but her body covering his? Okay, it was more than a little sexual. “Why did you thank me?”

She laid out on him, her head tucked against his chest. “You really want me messy and complicated?”

“Seems to be working so far.”

She sighed, tracing small circles against his skin. “No one’s ever wanted me. Not the real me. Not like this.”

“I find that hard to believe. You are a hell of a woman.”

“They don’t want me,” she insisted. “They want the fantasy of me. Beautiful and sexy and rich and famous. They want the mystique of the Beaumont name. That’s what I am to people.” When he didn’t have a response to that, she propped herself up on one elbow and stared down at him. “That’s what I was to you, wasn’t I?”

There was no point in playing games about it. “You were. But you’re not anymore.”

Her smile was tinged with sadness. “I’m not used to being honest, I guess.”

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. He didn’t intend for it to be a distraction, but she must have taken it that way because she pulled back. “Why did you agree to a sham marriage? And don’t give me that line about the workers loving me.”

“Even though they do,” he put in.

“Most men do not agree to sham marriages as business deals,” she went on as if he hadn’t interrupted her. “I seem to recall you making quite a point of saying love wasn’t a part of marriage when we came to terms. So spill it.”

She had him trapped. Sure, he could throw her off him, but then she shifted and straddled him, and his body stirred at the thought of her bare legs wrapped around his waist, her body so close to his.

So, with mock exasperation, he flopped back against the bed. “My parents have an...unusual relationship,” he said.

She leaned down on him, her arms crossed over her chest, her chin on her arms. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but so? I mean, my mom was second out of four wives for my dad. I wouldn’t know a usual relationship if it bit me. Present company included.”

He wrapped his arms around her body, enjoying the warmth she shared with him. No, this wasn’t usual, not even close. But he was enjoying it anyway. “Have you ever heard of Troy Logan?”

“No. Brother or father?”

He wasn’t surprised. Her brother Chadwick would probably recognize the name, but that wasn’t Frances’s world. “Father. Notorious on Wall Street for buying companies and dismantling them at a profit.”

She tilted her head from side to side. “I take it the apple did not fall terribly far from the tree?”

“I don’t take companies apart. I restructure them.” She gave him an arch look, and he gave in. “But, yes, you’re correct. We’re in nearly the same line of work.”

“And...” she said. “Your mother?”

“Wanda Kensington.” He braced for the reaction.

He didn’t have to wait long. She gasped, which made him wince. “What? You don’t mean—
the
Wanda Kensington? The artist?”

“I can’t tell you how rare it is that someone knows my mother’s name but not my father’s,” he said, stroking her hair away from her face.

“Don’t change the subject,” she snapped, sitting all the way up. Which left her bare breasts directly in Ethan’s line of sight. The diamonds he’d bought for her glittered between those perfect breasts. “Your mother is—but Wanda’s known for her art installations! Massive performance pieces that take like a year to assemble! I don’t ever remember reading anything about her having a family.”

“She wasn’t around much. I don’t know why they got married, and I don’t know why they stayed married. I’m not even sure they like each other. They never made sense,” he admitted. “She’d be gone for months, a year—we had nannies that my father was undoubtedly sleeping with—and then she’d walk back in like no time at all had passed and pretend to be this hands-on mother who cared.”

He was surprised to hear the bitterness in his voice. He’d long ago made peace with his mother. Or so he’d thought. “And she’d try, I think. She’d stick it out for a few weeks—once she was home for almost three months. She made it to Christmas, and then she was gone again. We never knew, my brother and I. Never had a clue when she’d show up or when she’d disappear again.”

“So you were—what? Another piece of performance art? The artist as a mother?”

“I suppose.” Not that he’d ever thought about it in those terms. “It wasn’t bad. Dad wasn’t jealous of her. She wasn’t jealous of him. It wasn’t like there was drama. It was just...a marriage on paper.”

“It was a sham,” Frances corrected.

He skimmed his hands up and down her thighs, shifting her weight against him. His erection was more than interested in the shifting. “Didn’t seem like it’d be hard to replicate,” he agreed.

But that was before—before he’d seen past Frances’s armor, before he’d stupidly begun to like the real woman underneath.

She rocked her hips, and his body responded. He stroked her nipples—this time, without the roughness—and Frances moaned appreciatively. He shouldn’t want her this much, shouldn’t
like
her this much. Passion wasn’t supposed to figure into his plans. It never had before.

He lifted her off long enough to roll on another condom, and then she settled her weight back onto him, taking him in with a sigh of pure pleasure.
This
was honesty. This was something real between them because she meant something more to him than just her last name.

She rode him slowly, taking her time, letting him play with her breasts and her nipples until she was panting and he was driving into her. He leaned forward enough to catch one of her breasts in his mouth and sucked her nipple hard between his teeth.

She might not like him in the morning, and she’d be well within her rights.

But he was going to like her. Hell, he already did. It was going to be a huge problem.

As she shuddered down on him, urging him to suck her nipples harder as she came apart, he didn’t care. Complicated and messy and his.

She was his.

After she’d collapsed onto him and he’d taken care of the condom, they lay in each other’s arms. He had things he wanted to say to her, except he didn’t know what those things were, which wasn’t like him. He was a decisive man. The buck stopped with him.

“Are we still going to get married next week?” she asked in a drowsy voice.

“If you want,” he said, feeling even as he said it that it was not the best response. He tried again. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about the deal tonight.”

“We aren’t,” she agreed and then immediately qualified that statement. “It’s just that...this changes things.”

“Does it?” He leaned over and turned out the light and then pulled the covers up over them both. When was the last time he’d had a woman spend the night in his arms? He couldn’t think of when. His previous relationships were not spend-the-night relationships.

He tucked his arm around her body and held her close. Something cold and metallic poked at his side—the necklace. It was all she had on.

“We were supposed to barely live together,” she reminded him. “We weren’t supposed to sleep together. We weren’t...”

He yawned and shrugged. “So we’ll be slightly more married than we planned on. The marital bed and all that.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I’m okay with you.” He kissed the top of her head. “I guess... Well, when we made the deal, I didn’t think I’d enjoy spending time with you.”

“You mean sex. You didn’t think you’d enjoy sleeping with me.” She sounded hurt about that, although he couldn’t tell if she was playing or actually pouting.

“No, I don’t,” he clarified. “I mean, I didn’t think I’d want to spend time with you. I didn’t think I’d like you this much.”

The moment the words left his mouth, he knew that he’d said too much. Damn it, they were supposed to roll over and go to sleep and not have deep, meaningful conversations until he’d recovered from the sex and had some more.

Instead, Frances tensed and then sat up, pulling away from him. “Ethan,” she said, her voice a warning. “I told you not to like me.”

“You make it sound like I have a choice about it,” he said.

“You do.”

“No, I don’t. I can’t help it.” She didn’t reply, didn’t curl back into his arms. “We don’t have to rush to get married. I’m willing to wait for you.”

“Jesus,” she said. The bed shifted, and then she was out of it, fumbling around the room in the dark. “Jesus, you sound like you
want
to marry me.”

He turned on the light. “What’s wrong?”

She threw his words back at him. “What’s wrong?” She grabbed her dress and started to shimmy into it. Any other time, watching Frances Beaumont get dressed would be the highlight of his day. But not now, not when she was angrily trying to jerk up the zipper.

“Frances,” he said, getting out of bed. “Where are you going?”

“This was a mistake,” was the short reply.

He could see her zipping into her armor as fast as the dress—if not faster. “No, it wasn’t,” he said defensively, trying to catch her in his arms. “This was good. Great. This was us together. This is what we could be.”

“Honestly, Ethan? There is no us. Not now, not ever. My God,” she said, pushing him away and snagging her coat. “I thought you were smarter than this. Good sex and you’re suddenly in love—in like?” she quickly corrected. “Unacceptable.”

“Like hell it is,” he roared at her.

“This is causal at best, Ethan.
Casual.
Casual sex, casual marriage.” She flung her coat over her barely zipped dress and hastily knotted the belt. “I warned you, but you didn’t listen, did you?”

“Would you calm the hell down and tell me what’s wrong?” he demanded. “I did listen. I listened when you told me you expected to be courted with flowers and gifts and thoughtfulness.”

“I did not—”

But he cut her off. “I listened when you told me about your plans for a gallery. I listened when your family caught you off guard.”

“I do not like you.” She bit the words off as if she were killing them, one syllable at a time.

“I don’t believe you. Not anymore. I’ve seen the real you, damn it all.”

She drew herself up to her full height, a look on her face like a reigning monarch about to deliver a death sentence. “Have you?” she said. “I thought you were better at the game than this, Ethan. How disappointing that you’re like all the rest.”

And then she was gone. The door to the room swung open and slammed shut behind her, leaving Ethan wondering what the holy hell had just happened.