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?
Chapter 3
Colin
“So, I got a call this morning.”
“From who?” I asked.
“The landlord from that apartment complex I checked out a few days ago. I cleared all their hurdles, and the apartment is ready for me to move into. Isn’t that wonderful?”
I stopped brushing my teeth and glanced at Abby’s reflection in the mirror. She was standing at my double-sink as she rubbed moisturizer into her skin. She looked radiant as she talked about her own place. But a part of me was hurt by it. A part of me was hoping that if she stayed with me and saw how convenient and nice it could be, she would elect to stay. After all, we would be married in a few months anyway. Then she’d just have to move right back in.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.
She gave me this dumbfounded look in the mirror before she grabbed for her toothbrush.
“Of
