Page 19 of Faking Ever After

Niktaria and Dimitrios ate with us, which I was not just glad about but pleasantly surprised, too. Why shouldn’t they? It was just that I had never expected a family worth billions to eat with their staff. But my ideas of what billionaires were like fell into the depths of the Aegean Sea when I was around Percy. These people weren’t separated from their staff; they were a family of sorts.

Percy caught me twice looking at him with wonder in my eyes.

“Oh, darlings, Lawrence and I are so glad to have you all here,” Alicia said midway through the meal. We all ate at the most leisurely pace with chit chat sprinkled throughout. Emily was my savior, sitting across from me and engaging me in conversation whenever Judith, positioned to my left, began asking questions about my and Percy’s relationship. It was safe to say her questions were designed to make me think. Where didwe each see ourselves in five years? Did life in the public eye make me nervous? But Emily randomly brought up things to do on the island whenever I stammered through my replies.

“We’re very happy to see our Percy finally spending his time away from the computer,” Lawrence said in that elegant way of speaking, his words sharp and precise, his tone amused. “You finally found some time to be alive, son.”

“Relationships aren’t everything, Dad,” Percy said in a tired voice.

I could have smacked him right then. Grabbing his hand on the table, I made him stiffen and remember that he was here with a loving boyfriend.

“Of course, that was what I used to think,” Percy blurted. “But now, I see, erm, just how…”

“Just how wonderful it is to share these special moments with someone special,” I supplied.

Percy nodded with relief. “Yes. Of course.”

“Love is in the air,” Alicia said.

Lawrence drew a deep breath of air. “And it smells like ripe grapes and summer without an end.”

Alicia practically melted over her husband, whose eyes shone like shooting stars whenever his gaze landed on her.

What the actual fuck?I gaped as the two whispered sweet things at one another like two teenagers who had just gone out for the very first time and fell madly in love.

When dinner was over—the orange pie was the real banger of the night—Percy yawned just before Alicia suggested playing charades. “I think I, that is,wewill pass,” he said. “It’s been a long journey.”

“Of course, darling,” Alicia said. “And let Dimitrios know if you need anything for the night.” The way she saidanythingmade my face heat up, although I didn’t know why.

“No,” Percy said quickly, gaze darting at Dimitrios and head shaking. “There’s absolutely no need, thank you very much.”

Alicia didn’t seem to understand Percy’s abrupt reaction any more than I did, but she was unbothered by it, waving her hand. “Fine, darling. Sweet dreams, then.”

We retreated upstairs before everyone else, and once the door shut behind us, I asked what all that was about.

Percy, blushing and shaking his head as if to suppress past trauma from claiming him, looked away. “Once, years ago, I brought a boyfriend here—the last I ever brought for reasons that will become perfectly clear in the coming days if you didn’t get it already—and Mother tasked Dimitrios with setting the mood. Well, he and I entered my room to discover that Dimitrios had worked from a very specific list of requirements provided by my mother after some extensive Google research. The least of the problems were the rose petals scattered all over and around the bed, the curtains swapped from white to red, and the soft jazz playing from a portable speaker.” As if recounting the night he had been abandoned deep in the woods, Percy looked at me with horror in his eyes. “When we looked closer, we discovered a bowl of condoms of all sizes, two different bottles of lube because Mother couldn’t decide whether oil- or water-based was preferable, a jar of Vaseline, and a bottle of poppers. Do I need to keep going?”

My mouth dropped open. “What more could there be?”

Percy pulled on a sullen face, eyebrows flat and lips forming a little pout. “A prostate massager. When I demanded to know why on Earth that would be in my room, Mother had apparently read that people can be versatile, so she didn’t want the lack of equipment to hinder us.”

I was torn between laughing and crying, hysterically in either case.

“‘Why are you upset with me, darling? You’re ever so touchy,’” Percy said in a spot-on imitation of his mother. “Anyway, I forbade her from preparing any mood for me and my guests from that day forward. She refused to be ordered around, of course, so we agreed that I must tell her if I neededanyitems that would make my stay more enjoyable. What are you…? Stop laughing, Finn. That scarred me for the end of times.”

I didn’t even realize that I was biting my lip to stifle laughter, tears rolling down my cheeks and my tummy hurting. This was either the most inclusive house I’d ever entered or an insane asylum, but it sure wasn’t boring.

Percy spun away from me on his heels and marched to the right side of the bed. “I can’t believe this is amusing to you,” he muttered. He faced away from me, but it didn’t take much to know he was undoing the buttons of his shirt.

Here we were. The moment I’d been dreading and dreaming of since the moment I had laid my eyes on Percy Davenport. “I mean, you have to admit it’s funny that your mom researched prostate massagers.”

“It keeps a score of therapists employed,” Percy said, shrugging the shirt off and stopping my train of thought instantly.

I gazed at his broad back, the smooth skin taut over the knotting muscles and busied myself with my shirt. My fingertips tingled as I stole glimpses of Percy’s sculpted torso from behind the falling locks of my black hair. I swallowed, unaware until now of how tight my throat was.

As I turned away from Percy to place my shirt over the back of the desk chair, I heard the zipper of his shorts going down. The rustling of fabric against his legs made my breath hitch in my throat, and I copied his actions one after another.

When Kim had pitched this trip to me, getting hot for some abstract billionaire with an island villa was low on the list ofthreats to my well-being. I’d only just escaped a horrible human with ill intentions; feeling butterflies for one of the same kind had never crossed my mind as a real possibility. Except, as I turned back to Percy, wearing nothing but my black boxer briefs, shivers ran down my spine.

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