Page 7 of The Fake Boyfriend Fiasco

Keynes talked too fucking much. “That’s true. I don’t.” But if you’d like to change that, feel free.

“Cool.” She took a moment to chew on a few bites of egg, her expression thoughtful. Meanwhile, Nik sat in silence and tried to figure out how to keep her with him at all times, forever-and-ever-amen, if she wouldn’t even let him take her out. He may have to get creative. That was okay. He worked best under pressure.

Finally, she swallowed, took a huge gulp of orange juice, and focused on him again. “So, you want, like, an escort?”

Ah, yes. His quest for a human shield, which she had somehow invented entirely on her own. “Are you an escort?” How much did escorts charge? Could he conceivably hire her for… the rest of his life?

“Never done it before,” she said cheerfully, “but everyone starts somewhere, right? No, I’m actually a tattoo artist.” She raised one heavily inked arm, waving it about like a prop rather than a limb. “And, you know, a walking cliché.”

“There is nothing cliché about you,” he murmured. As soon as the words left his mouth, he realised he’d said them all wrong. They were too fervent, too earnest, too fucking obvious. But her self-deprecation made him want to outline her perfection in detail. With his tongue. Between her legs.

Just an idea.

Clearing his throat, Nik moved on. “So, you’re not an escort, but you are open to fulfilling this… this need I have?” Christ, that sounded terrible. But it also sounded like an excellent fucking idea. He could hire her to stay by his side, they’d get to know each other, some stuff would occur—he was hazy on that part of the plan, but he assumed it would involve charming the pants off of her—and boom. She’d be in his life, eventually in his bed, and hopefully at least half as into him as he was into her. He might even accept a quarter. An eighth, perhaps. Because he was pretty fucking into her.

With a smirk, she asked, “Do you need someone to protect you from the horror of pretty girls who want you bad? Oh, and boys?”

“It’s usually the women,” he admitted. The words weren’t a lie, but Nik was uncomfortably aware that the conversation had taken a… misleading turn. He didn’t need anyone to protect him from sex.

Although, actually, he kind of did. Because he was leaving his days of carefree sluttery behind him, and he did have trouble telling people to fuck off, and he also had the strangest feeling that if he tried to sleep with anyone but Aria, it might not work. Where was this feeling coming from? Nik had no idea. But his father had always said, “Trust your gut”.

Also, “Don’t kick that damned football in my damned house.” But that mantra didn’t really apply here, and Nik had never listened to it anyway.

So, he pushed down his disquiet and decided to go with Aria’s insinuations, to let the conversation take the path she seemed to expect. “When people are especially determined, they struggle to accept refusals. Which usually means I have to be unkind. I hate to be unkind, but especially to women. Hence last night’s fiasco.”

She cocked her head. “Especially to women?”

“Well, men are brutes. But all my life, women have been so sweet to me. And they are delicate.”

Aria gave a derisive snort, flicking a few stray platinum hairs out of her eyes. There were ink stains all over her fingers. “You do realise that’s incredibly reductionist, right?”

He had no idea what that meant. She was, apparently, smarter than him. He was not surprised. “It’s what?”

She rolled her eyes, speaking slowly for his benefit. “Do I look delicate to you?”

Nik studied the little curve of flesh that spilled out between her arm and the strap of her vest. Then he eyed the dip in the bridge of her nose, the tilt at the edge of her lips, the way she angled her head just an inch to the right. “Yes.”

Aria coughed. Coughed some more. Grabbed a glass of water and choked it down. “Oh. Right. Okay.”

“To be frank, I cannot make a woman cry.”

“I highly doubt that any woman would cry because you refused to have sex with her.” He didn’t say anything, but something must have shown in his face, because a second later she spluttered, “Oh my God. Seriously? Are you serious? Women cry because you won’t have sex with them?”

“Not all the time.”

“What the hell have you got down there, fucking Excalibur?”

“I don’t believe size matters,” he said.

Aria stared. “I don’t believe you’re serious.”

“About size?”

“About anything.”

Well. In all fairness, that wasn’t generally inaccurate.

“However, this is an interesting problem you claim to have.” She brought a little bunch of grapes to her lips. He watched, every muscle in his body tensing, as she sucked a grape from its stem with a pop. Fuck. “Sounds more like you need a 24/7 bodyguard.”

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