It’s Only Temporary by Iona Rose

Connor

My whole body came alive as if it had been lit, when she said those words. She looked so vulnerable that all my protective feelings woke up. I entered the room and shut the door. There was no way that she was going to feel unattractive a second longer if there was something I could do about it.

I stood close to her. “I asked you because I thought you’re the sexiest woman I’d ever seen. But I never in my wildest dreams thought you’d say yes.”

She bit her lower lip.

“Do you want to know what I’m thinking right now?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“I’m wondering if your lips are as soft as they look,” I murmured.

“You’re welcome to find out,” Bianca said.

I slipped my arms around her waist as naturally as if I’d been doing it for ages. She felt so good in my arms, so soft. Her body molded against mine as if she was made for me. I wasn’t embarrassed when my cock roared to life and pushed against her belly. I wanted her to know how hot I thought she was.

Her minty scent enveloped me as I angled my mouth over hers. Her lips were soft and she immediately opened her lips, inviting me to deepen the kiss.

A warning in my brain went off. I was still hung up over another woman, even though it was over between us. Was it right to kiss Bianca? Just once, I told myself. Just to feel how her mouth felt against mine. That was the last coherent thought I had.

She tasted so fucking good. Like chocolate with a dash of strawberry. I groaned into her mouth like a sex starved maniac. My hands dropped to cup her curvy ass and pull her against my cock. I was not in control of my hands or body.

Then she moaned softly and the last bit of common sense in me exploded. She draped her hands around my neck and pressed her full breasts against my chest. An overwhelming need to taste her skin came over me. I slipped my hands under her top and cupped her breast over her bra. I had to feast my eyes on them and suck her nipples.

A sound came from somewhere pulling me out of the heaven that I was in. I dropped my hands from Bianca’s breasts when the knock came again.

“Fuck.” I drew away and went to the door.

Before opening it, I untucked my shirt to cover the large hard-on I was sporting. I opened the door to find Peter, the porter standing there.

“Your mother said to tell you that everyone has gone to the slopes in case you want to join them,” he said.

Talking to another person was like having sense drummed into me. It didn’t matter how hot Bianca was. Kissing her was wrong. I’d just come out of a relationship and sleeping with another woman just wasn’t fair to her.

“Thank you, Peter,” I said.

I inhaled deeply and closed the door. I turned around and one look at Bianca and I didn’t know how I was going to resist her while sharing a room with her. I considered asking my mother for another room, but that would look suspicious. What engaged couple didn’t want to share a room?

I’d just have to keep my attraction for Bianca under control. I turned my attention back to her. She looked so fucking hot standing there with her lips slightly parted and her nipples straining against her top.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kissed you,” I said.

An expression that I couldn’t decipher came over her features before she spoke. “It was both of us. Anyway, I was just about to go into the shower.” She turned and crossed the room to the bathroom.

I had a feeling that I’d said the wrong thing but I couldn’t figure out what. The sound of the shower filled the room and I decided to go for a walk in the lodge to give her some privacy.

I spend the next hour or so catching up with the staff. In the kitchen, I chatted with James, the head chef who had been in the lodge from the very beginning. With most of the guests out on the slopes, I got a chance to look around. It was nice to see that my parents still maintained the lodge at a high standard.

I gave a slight knock on the door to warn Bianca that I was about to enter before pushing in my key card. I smiled when I saw her sprawled on the bed, her gorgeous hair arranged behind her like a pillow.

Of their own accord, my eyes hungrily rippled down the lines of her body as she lay on top of the bed in a fluffy bathrobe. Feeling like a perv, I tore my gaze away and tiptoed to the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind me.

Exhaustion caught up with me after my shower. I slipped on a bathrobe and quietly returned to the room. I looked at the bed longingly. A heaviness came over me. The bed was big enough for both of us. Giving in to the need to lie down, I stretched out on one side, being careful to leave enough space between us.

I ignored the minty feminine scent surrounding me. Images of Bianca in my arms filled my brain. My mouth tasted her again and I almost groaned out aloud. I deliberately emptied my brain and made myself count sheep.

Ruthlessly, I pushed away thoughts of Bianca when they crept back into my brain. My pulses slowed down as did my breathing as I was slowly pulled in by the lure of sleep.

Iwoke up feeling disoriented. It was dark and I couldn’t make out where I was for several seconds. Then I remembered. I was at the lodge with Bianca sleeping—I sat up with a start and flicked on the light.

The other side of the bed was empty. She was gone. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and reached for my phone. Half past seven. I ran a hand over my face. How had I slept for so many hours and why hadn’t Bianca woken me up?

I padded into the bathroom and freshened up. Back in the room, I quickly dressed, ran a comb through my hair and left the room. I wasn’t worried about Bianca. Having been in the hospitality industry for so long, my family was good at entertaining and making someone feel at home.

Dinner had already started, judging from the animated voices coming from the dining room.

“Connor, finally,” Ben, a cousin said as I strolled in.

The trouble with having all your relatives in one space was that I had to stop and chat to everyone as I made my way to where Bianca sat with my parents, aunts, Sarah and Brian.

I bent and kissed her cheek, inhaling her sweet minty scent that reminded of how hot it had been to kiss her. “You should have woken me up.”

She looked up at me and flashed me a smile that did not reflect in her eyes. “I thought you needed your rest more.” She seemed different or maybe it was me still feeling disoriented from over-sleeping.

I excused myself to grab some food and moved to the buffet table. I piled my plate high and returned to the table.

“I’m glad to see that your appetite is as good as ever,” my mother commented, eyeing my plate.

I sat down next to Bianca.

“We were telling Bianca how pleased we are to finally meet her,” Aunt Catherine said. She was my mother’s older sister and my closest aunt. “We knew she existed but we’d despaired of ever getting to meet her.”

Everyone at the table laughed.

“My brother is very mysterious,” Sarah said. “He likes to keep us all guessing.”

Comments were thrown in about how secretive I was. If only they knew. I’d tried to get Angie to come home with me and meet my family. Each time, she had a reason why she couldn’t and like a fool, I’d believed her.

With the hindsight that came with distance, she probably hadn’t been into me as much as I had been into her. It was a bitter, hard pill to swallow but there was no other explanation.

“How did you two meet?” Sarah continued and I tensed up.

She had directed that question at Bianca. We hadn’t discussed the details of our fake engagement. I hadn’t thought that anyone would ask how we met.

“I’d stopped for a red light when I noticed the guy in the car next to mine staring at me and then smiling. I smiled back and looked away. He honked and shouted to introduce himself.”

I stared at Bianca in disbelief. What the fuck was she talking about? I would never hit on a woman in traffic.

I wasn’t the only one shocked by her tale. Everyone was looking at her in stunned surprise. I reached for her hand under the table and squeezed. Hard.

“When the traffic lights turned green, he followed me until the next lights. I told him my name then and my number. At first, it was simply to get him off my back but when he called and we went on a date, I started to like him.”

“That doesn’t sound like you at all Connor,” my mother said.

“No it doesn’t,” Aunt Catherine said. “But love does crazy things to people.”

I was livid. Bianca was making me out to look like a fool.

“How about the proposal?” Sarah asked. She turned to Brian. “Ours was pretty simple but romantic. Brian took me to the highest slope to propose. It was perfect.”

I gave Bianca’s hand a warning squeeze. She shrugged off my hand.

“It was really romantic,” she begun in a dreamy tone. “He had organized for his friends to fill hundreds of balloons with helium. Then he got someone to play the cello by the balloons. He proposed, I said yes and then we untied the balloons and they floated away. It was perfect.”

I’m not an over-the-top kind of guy except between the sheets.

“I would not have believed that if another person had said it,” Brian said, voicing everyone’s thoughts, I was sure.

Bianca laughed. “It surprised me too.”

I could feel my mother’s gaze on me. I couldn’t meet her eyes.

“That’s a lovely proposal,” Sarah said. “I hope you guys have your wedding real soon. It’ll be nice to know that it’s official.”

“We plan on making it a long engagement,” I said, trying hard to keep my tone even.

“Always a wise thing to do,” Aunt Catherine said. “Don’t be like me. I married my ex-husband within two weeks of meeting him. It took us another two weeks to know just how wrong we were for each other. I never touched that institution of marriage again. I prefer boyfriends.”

“Catherine!” my mother said.

Bianca giggled. The rest of us knew that story. I was surprised that Aunt Catherine had shown up without a date for the wedding. Every time the family got together, she had a different man. It embarrassed the hell out of my mother and amused the rest of us.

When the attention turned away from us, I hissed into Bianca’s ear. “What the hell was that about?”

“I thought you’d want me to be creative,” she whispered back and then smiled sweetly.

“You made me look like a fool,” I said.

She widened her eyes. “I’m sorry. Just trying my best. I’ve never been a fake fiancée before, you know.”

I got the feeling that her apology was not genuine. “Have I offended you in any way?”

She shook her head. “Why would you think that? Everything has been going smoothly, hasn’t it?”