The second I’d uttered the words she froze. And I knew I’d broken the spell she’d fallen under. Fuck. No, no, no. Don’t stop. But she was already lurching back, her eyes wide in shock and horror.

I opened my mouth, trying to think of something to make her stay, but she scrambled off my lap as though it were on fire. When she got a few feet from me, she simply stared, panting faintly.

I tried not to look at her breasts trembling under her blouse. They’d felt so good pressed against me. The silence felt like condemnation. What to say? I had no fucking idea. She’d knocked me on my ass.

Parker proved yet again to be the steadier one.

“I’m sorry.” She licked those swollen lips. “I… uh…haven’t done this before. Faking it. Was, uh, that okay?”

Faking. It.

Right. That’s what we’d been doing. She looked at me with a plea in her eyes, and I knew she needed me to make this okay. She didn’t want the reality; she needed the lie.

I ran a hand over my mouth, trying to wipe away the feel of her. Jesus, my hand was shaking. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, we’re cool.”

Parker sagged in relief. And I gave her my standard bullshit smile, letting her know we were back on script. But in my head, the truth rang clear as a bell. We were anything but cool.

Ten

Parker

“Okay, is everyone happy with the teams?” Jackson asked, glancing between the two groups he’d created with a random generator app on his phone.

I stood at Rhys’s side and ignored the smirk Creepy Pete gave me. We were on opposing teams, and he had Jackson on his. And gossipy Evan. Pete was also the only one who had brought his own paintball gun.

“It’s more powerful than the guns they supply here,” he’d said when Evan asked about it, puffing up his chest as he did so.

“Someone’s overcompensating for something, huh?” Rhys had winked at me, and I’d almost choked trying to stifle my laughter.

Now we were ready to play. Ten staff members plus their partners had shown up for paintball. The grounds were a forty-minute drive west of Boston, and to say it had been the most awkward forty-minute ride was an understatement. I’d rented an electric car to take me and Rhys to paintball and those babies were so quiet, they only enhanced the silence between me and my fake boyfriend.

So, I rambled. I rambled the entire way to distract myself from the memory of Rhys’s mouth, from his hands on me, and the delicious feel of his strong body against mine.

The kiss on our fake date had gotten out of hand.

Understatement.

My toes curled in my sneakers at the mere memory.