The Rental (26 page)

• • •

I
WAS ON
the office desk and Rick stood between my legs, hands on my thighs and his gaze roamed my face. I couldn’t help but to allow my eyes to wander, looking down his tensed arms perched on me, and then up at the sternness in his expression, jaw tight, lips pulled.

We’d already had this discussion. We didn’t want hands, eyes, lips or otherwise on the other, but when it occurred, we didn’t
really
hate it.

I ran my hands down his stubble, watching his lips and how they parted at my touch and opened more with my caress. God I loved the way he affected me. Was this such a big jump, letting people watch me drop my hands to his belt, open him up, and pull him out and into me?

Mmm,
I thought, and then blinked out of my fantasies. Yes, it was very different. “What do you think?” I finally asked.

His eyes had shut and he remained that way, revealing his neck for my passion. Jesus, was my Rick submitting to me? It was incredibly hot, making my sex swell. I twitched my thighs, stiffening my toes and running them along his calves and a path all the way to his ass.

“I think you should go on. I love you taking the lead.” His lips formed a smile, and he opened his eyes.

“I want the world to know you’re mine, Genevieve Wyland. I know to some degree we want this, but I don’t want to rush. And not for me—I could walk down bloody Main Street in my birthday suit right now and not care. I care about
us
.” He kissed my cheek, breathing out hotly. He must have known it would make my toes curl, feeling the prickle of the tender, yet erotic, gesture.

I let my hands fall to his chest and felt the pulse of his life beating beneath. I didn’t think he understood I’d do anything to feel that explosiveness between us. “Will you be jealous?”

“Fuck yes,” he said. “You are mine; I’m protective of what’s mine. But I know it gets you off, you little vixen. Will you be jealous?”

I gritted my teeth, which made him smirk. “It gets you off so hard, you bad boy. I’ll deal with it.” I had my eyes downcast. Actually, I was imagining pulling back the elastic of his boxers so his cock would slip out and then I’d run my gaze over it, but not touch. I liked it better when he was pent up with emotions. He gave me so much more in return because he couldn’t tame the animal in his heart that was usually subdued by his mind.

“Bullshit.” He fastened me with one hand and sunk two curved fingers around my sex, rubbing the wetness all over my opening. “You’re so wet thinking about it, I could fuck you now.” He rubbed me again and kissed my jaw. “I’m learning what you want, but I want to be extra sure we’re ready to reveal ourselves like this. It’s going to be a mind fuck.” He kissed the outermost point under my jaw, and I tilted my head up and thrust my hips at him as he kissed the hollow. I swallowed loud from the angle.
God
. “And I’ll happily do the fucking once your mind is set.”

He removed his fingers and licked them clean one-by-one. I flamed in the very spot he’d just been.

I pushed him back by his chest and re-adjusted my panties. The bastard teased me how
I
planned to tease him.

I said, lower, “And there’s Mum to think about. She’s against this. She told me not to come here again for her.” I paused for effect. “And I realised something. I
am
here for me. Because I love this freedom even if sometimes it scares the bejeebers out of me.”

“We’ll take another few days to think, perhaps?” he asked, one thoughtful brow raised. “If our desires are enough to deal with the downfalls?”

We both looked down to the growing erection that pushed his pants to its limits. Everyone would see that—and me and us. How would we be ready for such things when our relationship was still in infancy stages?

We waited for another five or so minutes, and then exited, leaving a message for Amber who had to attend to other duties.

17

R
ICK AND
I spent the night and the next day apart. He’d given me a chaste kiss on the forehead and said he’d be fine, but had to figure the whole accommodation thing out with another friend.

Mum arrived before dinnertime with the scent of take-out steaming from bags. We made small talk while preparing the table and dishing chips and chicken onto our plates, piling forkfuls with kind smiles while brewing with anger.

“Thanks, Mum,” I said and headed to my room after we were done. I shut my door and left reverent fingertips against the wood, reminiscing on times when we would sit at that table for minutes afterward, chatting and discussing lame jokes. I shook my head and turned away, distancing myself from woe. Life had moved on, and so had that happy girl and my father.

I sat at my desk, opening a drawer that held stationary. A pad lay inside. I rolled a pen over the top, thinking, wondering. Maybe finding a hobby would help me express my anger and sadness.

Wrestling with my words, I rolled the pen back and forth, but the words and emotions were tangled up in a mess. The task was useless, so I shut the drawer.

I noticed a presence then and turned to my door. Mum was resting on her elbow, head rested in her palm. She tightened her lips into a smile—or at least the formation of one, since her demeanour didn’t exactly scream ‘happy.’

She crossed her hands around her ribs. “Vee, I believe we’ve been running around like headless chickens on treadmills. None of anything has made much sense, and if you’d like to, I believe it’s time to buy a new washing machine. That is if you want to come shopping with me on the weekend? If we trade it in while it’s working, we’ll get a discount on a new one that’ll last. We might lose out, but it’ll be better in the long run.”

I smiled despite the tension between us. I wanted to try and so did she. She was my mum and I loved her, and I wanted to be close to her again if that were possible.

Rick had texted me earlier to say things would be okay, but already, I knew Justin would complicate things somehow. And I really didn’t need that obstruction. I didn’t feel safe living at this house for much longer. I’d need to live away from Mum in case he happened to get past Rick and to me. The idea of renting reminded me saying no to Amber’s offer was nearly impossible with the added cost.

I’d only know if the outcome of my choices would ward Mum off if I faced the big elephant between us.

“Sure. I’d love that. Time for that cruddy old thing to move on.”

She inspected me for a few seconds longer and bit at the inside of her mouth, but said nothing. I wasn’t sure I was ready for much else, and so seemed she, walking away.

If she was hiding her true feelings, she did a shoddy job; I saw her lip curled up in one corner.

• • •

R
ICK AND
I met at a little outdoor table setting of a quaint café in the inner city suburbs. Customers from other tables and passing cars surrounded us, but there wasn’t much privacy we could afford right now, so I reached out and he took my hand, squeezing it and accepting what we had.

While the waitress left to make our orders, Rick chuckled, chin angled down. An inside joke?

I asked, “What?”

“We’re back to the beginning … almost.” He regarded me with a grin and walked his fingers in patterns along the tabletop. “Before we had this discussion, before you were a rental. And I tried to dissuade you from living this life, warning you of the consequences. I still feel the same.”

I licked my dried lips. “Me, too.”

Overnight, I’d thought of the consequences under the dull lamplight on my bedside table. I turned away from it and slid under the darkness, into a dangerous spot in my head. Rick would be mine, yet also shared property in ways that made my forehead and underarms slick. I panted at the thoughts of who we would need to be in order to accept and succeed in our role as a rental couple.

It felt oddly similar to porn, acting in ways to satisfy a person, but it somehow also felt private. It would be a show between my boyfriend and I and another person, or
with
another person, or over or under them … My head spun. Rick would finally be mine, and we could settle our pasts that held us back, but it’d be at a cost that would test us to our limits. The sex would be otherworldly, but the jealousy could consume us, the peering eye would spotlight our strengths as well as our weaknesses, and we’d be bound to each other. Contractually.

How odd, that over the years of our coupling being forbidden, we would now be contractually obligated as lovers. What would that formality do to the spirit of two people in love? Crush us? Or build us?

“Vee, I love you from the depths of my soul. You are my lover, my best friend, and companion. I can sacrifice parts of what we could be in search of something infinitely supreme. I never want to stop exploring you. I wouldn’t want to be bound to anyone else in the world, except with you. It’d be my pleasure if you’d have me.”

“Why, Rick Delaney, that sounds awfully romantic for a speech about fucking.”

His eyes flew open to their limits, and then softened, radiating warmth. I sucked in a long breath and pulled the midsection of my top down, adjusting the fit. My breasts now perked higher and I stared between them. I wanted Rick there forever.

“You made me your woman, Rick. How could I say no to something that might both enlighten and support us? I love you with every cell of my reborn person.”

I had to think of me. Mum didn’t want me taking this route, but I had to do this, wrong or right. I wasn’t going to be a middle-aged woman who dropped her kids, husband, and responsibilities to go back and experience her regrets. Mum and I would work through this—at least I told myself we loved each other enough to.

Rick beckoned my hand and I took it once more, sighing at the heat he provided every time we connected, my quickened breath, my soothed heart.

“Vee will keep my heart; Victoria will share my body.”

I nodded, repeating the same testament back to him as he leaned forward, his breath a whisper on my lips. We sealed it with a kiss.

• • •

Want more of Vee and Rick’s story? Discover book two of The Rental series:

The Reversal
.

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Acknowledgements

This book was a fairly decent document until it had beta readers who helped me transform it into the novel it is today.

I have to give special thanks to Ava Manello, Maureen Mayer, and Emily Tippetts. For your acute questions and comments, I’m extremely grateful that you helped this novel in such an important way.

Thanks to Monique Kharkrang and Leighta Bennett for your insights too.

Christina Jean Michaels and Cassie Boss, what do I say to the two people who practically saved this novel? Thank you, and then some. Thank you for being
The Rental
’s heroine when my manuscript and I needed you. Thank you for your relentless time, dedication and excitement for this project. You questioned and pushed my way of thinking, and this book is so much better for it.

Thanks to the individual readers and bloggers who have been with me all along. You know who you are, and your support drives me.

Ashley Wellwood, thank you for being my sun, my smile, and my soul.

About the Author

Rebecca Berto writes stories about love and relationships. She gets a thrill when her readers are emotional reading her books and gets even more of a kick when they tell her so. She’s strangely imaginative, spends too much time on her computer, and is certifiably crazy when she works on her fiction.

Rebecca Berto lives in Melbourne, Australia with her boyfriend and their pets.

You can find Rebecca at:

Her website/blog,
Novel Girl

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Table of Contents

About the Book

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17

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright © 2014 Rebecca Berto

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.