Page 74 of Gilded Fake

“Why would you do that?” I ask, my voice choked again. “You’re royalty in this town now, Colt. You’re the comeback kid. Everyone loves you. You could have anyone you wanted.”

“I don’t want anyone,” he says. “I want you.”

“I want you too,” I say again, feeling happy and sad at once. “Every single day.”

He rests his chin on my shoulder and lets out a contented sigh. “I might fall asleep here.”

“You’d crush me,” I protest, picking up my phone and thumbing it on. “Though we have been awake for at least thirty-six hours straight.”

“Why do you have that troll on your lock screen?”

“That’s Jackie Kennedy,” I say indignantly. “She’s beautiful.”

“If you say so,” he says. “Not my type.”

“What’s your type?” I ask. “Marilyn?”

“Guess so,” he says, rolling his hips against mine. “By the way, I am enjoying these new curves.”

“I noticed,” I say, grinning over my shoulder at him.

He runs his hand down my side, tickling my waist. “What happened to the Gloria Walton who was afraid to eat ice cream?”

“I ate her,” I say, giggling and elbowing his hand when he keeps tickling. “Or maybe you did.”

“I did,” he growls into my neck. “And she was delicious.”

His hand moves down to my thigh, and he pulls it aside, sliding his hand between. He dips his finger into the mess he left and lets out a long, low moan, his body melting onto mine.

“I swear when you make that sound I spontaneously cum,” I say, arching my back and pushing my ass against him.

“Can I do it again?” he asks.

“Every single day.”

“I mean eat you,” he says, stroking a finger through my messy slit and flicking the tip against my piercing.

Pain throbs in my core, and I shiver with longing. My voice comes out breathy when I answer again. “Every single day.”

“See, we don’t need stars in the sky,” he says, sliding off me. “We can make our own.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“I’ll worry about that,” he says. “You just open your legs, close your eyes, and trust me. I’ll make you see so many stars you’ll think you’re in another galaxy.”

Hard as it may be to let go and trust after everything that’s happened to me, he’s the one person who can make me obey. Even though spreading my legs and closing my eyes is as hard as it would be to spread my arms, close my eyes, and fall into the abyss of the pit below us, going on the blind faith that he’d catch me, I can do it. For him, I can.

I can choose to trust him, even though I’ve been hurt before. I can choose to obey my king, to kneel, to worship at his altar. It’s my choice to make.

When he tells me to crawl, to beg, to swallow, it’s my choice to comply.

Afterwards, I choose to let him strip away my protections and leave me bare, defenseless, vulnerable for him. I choose to spread my arms and let myself fall into his blue-sky eyes, into the midnight black above, the storm-bruised clouds that swallow my cries like his hungry mouth. In this world and every other galaxy, I choose the stars he promised me.

If he hurts me again, I’ll still choose him. Every single day until forever, this time and next time and every time, I choose him.

Maybe it makes me a fool to trust again, especially to place my trust in a man who’s engaged to someone else. But there’s no woman more delusional than the love-drunk mistress who just heard the three little words she’s been dreaming of for a year and a half, as she hid her tears and watched him walk away with another woman every goddamn day. There’s no faith stronger than the blind faith that things will change, that they’ll be different this time, that he’ll finally leave her and really choose me.

And blind faith is the only one that really counts. That’s when surrender happens.

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