Page 3 of Pretend I'm Yours
“Ooh, that’s the spot right there,” he says in a deep, throaty rumble.
“Right here?” I ask in a whisper, dragging my fingernails straight up the middle of his neck, combing his hair back against the grain.
“Fuck, Corinne, yes.” He turns his head, ignoring the TV, his nose pressed to the valley between my stomach and breasts. He shivers, lifting his hips a fraction in time with my circuit. Does he even know what he’s doing or what it looks like from my position?
I’ve slowly been spreading my legs, inch by inch, until he’s all but lying between my thighs, and now I’ve come to regret it. If I hadn’t moved, I’d be able to feel his cock every time his hips drop as I speed up. Actually, that’s probably for the best, or else he would have called it a night earlier if he thought I could feelit.
“What am I going to do when you grow up and get married, and I’m back to living on my own?” he mumbles, pinching and playing with the thin spaghetti straps of my camisole.
“Hmm?” I can feel his hot breath through my top every time he exhales, and my toes curl, wishing I could feel him breathing directly against my skin.
He flexes his biceps, tightening his hold on me as he pulls himself up my body another inch, resting his chin where his nose had been. His face matches his grumpy tone when he says, “I don’t think your future husband would take too kindly to me barging in every night and falling asleep on top of his wife while you scratched my back. I know I wouldn’t.”
“I guess you’d have to find a wife to do this for you.” The words taste sour on my tongue, and I dig my nails in a little deeper.
Uncle Declan groans and shakes his head. If he moved up another inch or two, his face would be right between my breasts. “Not gonna happen, sugar. You’re the only one who can stand my cranky, old ass.”
I didn’t drink enough alcohol for it to lower my inhibitions, so I can’t blame it when I tease him, saying, “We could be sneaky and take our lunch breaks at the same time, once I’m done with school and start working full-time. You could come over and napfor an hour while my hypothetical future husband is at work. It’d be our little secret.”
He grumbles, “I’d want more than an hour with you. And besides, once you have children, they’ll tell their daddy what Uncle Declan was up to with Mommy. Make it sound like we’re having an affair or something, and then your husband would have no choice but to shoot me in the back. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“You’ve really thought this through, huh?”
“Preparing myself for a depressing future,” he mumbles with a grimace.
The air turns thin and hot when I blurt, “It wouldn’t be like that ifyouwere my husband.”Oh no, I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Uncle Declan snorts. “Your dad would roll over in his grave, and I’m pretty sure Kason would have a thing or two to say about it.”
My heart is in my throat when I boldly ask, “Is that your only objection?”
He flicks his eyes back and forth between mine, trying to decide if I’m joking or if I’m asking a serious question. He must settle on thinking it’s a joke because he cracks a lazy smile. “You’re talking crazy. How much have you had to drink?”
“Hardly any.” It’s then that I do something I’ve wanted to do since the very beginning—I raise my knees and drop them to the sides so that he’s lying firmly between my thighs, my pajama shorts riding up high to the crease where my legs meet my torso, baring more skin. “If I were your wife, you wouldn’t have to worry about some future husband of mine getting between us or finding another woman who could do this”—I drag my fingernails across his scalp—“for you.”
“If you were my wife, sugar, this night would have started a whole lot differently.” His voice has deepened, something hotflashing in his eyes before he blinks twice, banking the heat, and he pushes up onto his elbows. “Maybe I’m the one who’s had too much to drink.”
I stop him by slipping both hands into his hair, because three drinks over the course of an hour and a half would hardly affect him at his size. “How would it be different?”
He pokes his inner cheek with his tongue, his brows drawing together as he looks off to the side.
“Pretend I’m your wife,” I whisper. “Tell me what you would do differently.”
Instead of calling me crazy again and leaving, he toys with my left camisole strap, pulling it toward the slope of my shoulder. Quietly, he says, “For starters, I’d have stripped you out of these clothes the second I walked through the door.” His breath quickens, and his eyes fly back to my face.
I grab his hand and tug, pulling the strap down my arm until the top half of my breast is exposed. “Then what?”
“Corinne…”
“Declan…” I mimic, dropping the “Uncle” for the first time ever. “What would you do next if I were your wife?”
It seems like an eternity that I wait to see what he’ll do until he finally pinches my right strap. It takes him even longer to slip it off my shoulder, pulling it down far enough that he can see the outer rim of my areola. “I would…I would…” His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat with his audible swallow. “Fuck, I would do this,” he says, bracing his weight on one elbow so he can hook his fingers under the top edge of my camisole and tug the material down below my breasts.
When he stalls, staring wide-eyed instead of touching me like I so desperately want him to, I ask, “And then what?” When he still can’t bring himself to say anything, I work my arms out of my straps and tug my top down lower. “Would you touch me…here?” I cup my breasts, well-endowed in that department.
“No, no. I can’t touch you, Corinne.”
“Maybe my Uncle Declan can’t.” I circle his left wrist. “But my husband, Declan, can,” I say, bringing his hand to my breast.
