Kat Cantrell - In Name Only - Best Friend Bride (In Name Only) / One Night Stand Bride (In Name Only) / Contract Bride (In Name Only)

No. No, it could not.

He had a merger to manage. Reins to pick up from his grandfather. What was he talking about, letting Viv coerce him into a day-and-night screw fest? That sounded like a recipe for disaster, especially given how strong his reactions to her were. They needed to cool it off.

“We can’t.” She sighed. “I’ve got a mountain of paperwork and Josie requested the rest of the week off so she can study for final exams. As nice as this is, we should probably back off for a while. Don’t you think?”

“Absolutely not.” Wrong answer. Open your mouth and take it back. “We’re doing fine winging it. Aren’t we? There’s no pressure. If you come home from work hot and needy and want to strip down in the foyer to let me take care of you, I’m perfectly fine with that.”

In fact, he’d gladly etch that date on his planner with a diamond drill bit. Mental note: buy Viv more jewelry and more racy lingerie. If he really tried, he could space out the gifts, one a night for oh, at least two weeks.

She arched a brow. “Really? This isn’t feeling a little too real?”

His mood deflated. And now he was caught in a trap of his own making. He couldn’t lie to Viv, but neither could he admit that it had been feeling too real since the ceremony. The same one he’d tried to sell to Warren and Hendrix as a fake wedding when Warren had clued in immediately that there was nothing fake about any of this.

This was what he got for not nodding his head the second the words back off came out of her mouth.

“See, the thing is,” he began and would have sworn he’d been about to say that being friends with no benefits worked better for him. But that’s not what happened. “I need this to be real. I don’t have to pretend that I’m hot for you, because I am. We don’t have to sell that we’re burning up the sheets when we have dinner with your family on Friday. Why not keep going? The reasons we started this are still true. Unless I’ve dissatisfied you in some way?”

“Oh, God. No!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Not in the slightest. You’re the hottest lover I’ve ever had, bar none.”

That pleased him enormously. “Then stop talking about easing off. We can be casual about it. Sometimes you sleep in my bed. Sometimes you don’t. No rules. We’re just friends who’re having really great sex.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

She shrugged like she could take it or leave it, which raked across his spine with a sharpness that he didn’t like. She obviously wasn’t feeling any of the same things he was. She’d been a half second from calling it quits. Would have if he hadn’t stopped her.

“Great.” And somehow he’d managed to appease his sense of honor while agreeing to continue sleeping with his wife in what was shaping up to be the hottest affair he’d ever had.

It was madness. And he couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.

Eight

If there was a way to quit Jonas, Viv didn’t want to know about it.

She should be looking for the exit, not congratulating herself on the finest plea for remaining in a man’s bed that had ever been created in the history of time. She couldn’t help it. The scene after the most explosive sexual encounter of her life had been almost as epic. Jonas had no idea how much it had killed her to act so nonchalant about ending things. He’d been shocked she’d suggested backing off. It had been written all over his face.

That kept her feeling smug well into the dawn hours the next morning. She rolled toward the middle of the bed, hoping to get a few minutes of snuggle time before work. Cold sheets met her questing fingers. Blinking an eye open, she sought the man she’d gone to sleep with.

Empty. Jonas had gotten out of bed already. The condo was quiet. Even when she was in her bedroom, she could hear the shower running through the pipes in the ceiling—a treat she normally enjoyed, as she envisioned the man taking a shower in all his naked glory.

Today, she didn’t get that luxury, as Jonas was clearly already gone. Profoundly disappointed that he hadn’t kissed her goodbye, said goodbye or thought about her at all, she climbed out from under the sheets and gathered up her clothes for the return trek to her bedroom.

It was fine. They’d established last night that there were no rules. No pressure. When he’d gotten on board with convincing her that they could keep sleeping together—which she still couldn’t quite believe she’d orchestrated so well—she’d thought that meant they were going to spend a lot of time together. Be goofy and flirty with each other. Grow closer and closer until he looked up one day and realized that friendship plus marriage plus sex equaled something wonderful, lasting and permanent. Obviously she’d thought wrong.

The whole point had been to give him the impression she wasn’t clingy. That Independence was her middle name and she breezed through life just fine, thanks, whether she had a man or not. Apparently he’d bought it. Go me.

The sour taste wouldn’t quite wash from her mouth no matter how much mouthwash she used. After a long shower to care for her well-used muscles, Viv wandered to the kitchen barefoot to fight with Jonas’s espresso machine. She had a machine at Cupcaked but Jonas’s was a futuristic prototype that he’d brought home from work to test. There were more buttons and gizmos than on a spaceship. Plus, it hated her. He’d used it a couple of times and made it seem so easy, but he had a natural affinity with things that plugged in, and the machine had his name on it, after all. Finally, she got a passably decent latte out of the monstrosity.

She stood at the granite countertop to drink it, staring at the small, discreet Kim Electronics logo in the lower right-hand corner of the espresso machine. Jonas’s name had been emblazoned on her, too, and not just via the marriage license and subsequent trip to the DMV to get a new driver’s license. He’d etched his name across her soul well before they’d started sleeping together. Maybe about the third or fourth time they’d had lunch.

Strange then that she could be so successful with snowing him about her feelings. It had never worked with any man before. Of course, she’d never tried so hard to be cool about it. Because it had never mattered so much.

But now she wasn’t sure what her goal here really was. Or what it should be. Jonas had “talked” her into keeping sex on the menu of their relationship. She’d convinced him their friendship could withstand it. Really, the path was pretty clear. They were married friends with benefits. If she didn’t like that, too bad.

She didn’t like it.

This wasn’t practice for another relationship and neither was it fake, not for her. Which left her without a lot of options, since it was fake to Jonas.

Of course, she always had the choice to end things. But why in the world would she want to do that? Her husband was the most amazing lover on the planet, whose beautiful body she could not get enough of. He bought her diamonds and complimented her cupcakes. To top it all off, Viv was married. She’d been after that holy grail for ages and it had felt really nice to flash her ring at her sisters when they’d come to the shop last week. It was the best possible outcome of agreeing to do this favor for Jonas.

Convinced that she should be happy with that, she walked the four blocks to Cupcaked and buried herself in the kitchen, determined to find a new cupcake flavor to commemorate her marriage. That was how she’d always done things. When something eventful occurred, she baked. It was a way of celebrating in cake form, because wasn’t that the whole point of cake? And then she had a cupcake flavor that reminded her of a wonderful event.

The watermelon recipe she’d been dying to try didn’t turn out. The red food coloring was supposed to be tasteless but she couldn’t help thinking that it had added something to the flavor that made the cupcake taste vaguely like oil. But without it, the batter wasn’t the color of watermelon.