Never Marry Your Brother's Best Friend (Never Say Never, #1)

Samantha wrinkles her nose. “I hate that shit and you know it. La Croix is water that they wave fruit over and pump full of more air than a puffer fish’s ass. And raisins are not candy, no matter how much chocolate you cover them in.” I have a split second of thinking I’ve gotten away with the deflection before she shatters the illusion. “Body signals, that’s the topic at hand.”


“Nope, I happen to love Raisinets.” I make a run for the kitchen, but with the size of my apartment, I’m not exactly far away and Samantha keeps talking.

“You owe me a story. How was dinner with your husband?”

I shove a large handful of candy in my mouth and gesture that I can’t talk right now. I should use the time to think of how to explain the craziness of the dinner with Carter, but instead, what pops out as soon as I can talk is . . .

“We had fake-sex.”

And also, a stray Raisinet that was somehow going ninja on my tongue. I cover my mouth with a hand, chewing and swallowing as quickly as I can without choking.

Samantha sprints across the room to my side. “You had sex with Carter Harrington? Seriously?”

She picks up a candy and beans me in the forehead with it. Luckily, I catch it on the drop and hold it in my hand with the others. “Fake sex,” I repeat, “Not peen in vag. That’s your specialty.”

“Details, Luna,” she says, not offended at all by my comment. “Are we talking dry humping, fingering, or what?”

“Samantha!” She tilts her head in a threat to continue listing sexual acts until I start explaining or die of embarrassment. Given the heat of my cheeks, death by mortification is entirely possible, so I spill my guts. “We had dinner and it was fine. Except we had to take Grace and Peanut Butter. But still, fine. And the tour was amazing. Thomas’s collection was all I hoped and more. Surprisingly, I think my favorite was one of his personal works. It was beautiful in a different way than I expected. The technique was flawless, but it was the emotion in every stroke that showed how much he loved Elena, his wife.”

Samantha holds up a finger, halting me. “Who are Grace and Peanut Butter?”

“Carter’s niece and his brother’s dog. There was a family mix-up and he ended up emergency babysitting, so we had to take them with us to dinner.”

“To a business dinner? Oh-kay, you know that’s weird, right?” When I nod, she rolls her eyes. “But then y’all did dinner, a tour . . . unless there’s something I need to know there, get to the fake sex part. I want to hear all the wet, juicy, sloppy details.”

“It was late. Elena suggested that we stay over and leave the next day.” I pop a Raisinet into my mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Once we got in the bedroom, Carter made a joke about them expecting us to have sex and that we could fake it. I thought he was nuts, but then he crawled onto the bed with me and started banging the bed against the wall. I kinda had to go along.”

Another Raisinet, and I chase this one down with a swallow of wine. Samantha waits impatiently, now nibbling popcorn faster than a chipmunk stuffing its cheeks for winter.

“It was ridiculous. But it was kinda . . . fun?” I tilt my head, thinking back. “I said some stuff that was . . .” Shyly, I smile and meet Samantha’s eyes. “Kinda kinky. Stuff you told me about, and Carter seemed to like it. He said some stuff too.”

“Did you like what he said?” Samantha asks carefully. She’s not quite in professional mode, but almost.

Chewing slowly, I confess, “I did. But we didn’t . . . do anything. Or not anything sexy. We didn’t even touch during the fake sex. But we talked after, and he was different than I thought. He puts a lot of pressure on himself . . . and he called me pretty.” I shouldn’t have told her that part, but it blurted out before I could squash it down.

“Shit. I told you not to fall for his act, Luna, and you went and fell anyway with the slightest compliment from a man who gives them out like a shady masseuse gives out hand jobs.” Samantha shakes her head, frowning in disappointment.

“It wasn’t like that,” I argue.

“It wasn’t?” she questions. “Are you sure?”

I drop my eyes to the rapidly disappearing candies in my hand and then toss the last few back in one go. “I didn’t fall for him. I just maybe-sorta-kinda don’t hate him as much as I did. And there was no hand job involved—for either of us.”

“Luna, he’s no less of an asshole than he was before. He’s pulling a fake marriage charade for a business deal and he fake fucked you to really sell it. Who cares if he’s slightly human deep beneath all that?”

Maybe I do.

The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t say them aloud. Mostly because I’m not sure whether I believe them or not.

Carter was different than I thought, but he also assumed I’d continue the farce until Elena agreed to the deal, which was not what we discussed. And there’s a definite sense of ‘poor, pitiful prince’ to his worries about impressing his family.

But there was something surprisingly sexy in the way he looked at me sometimes . . . in his hand squeezing my thigh . . . and in waking up in the cage of his arms with him pressed to my back. Or maybe I’m horny and the mere proximity of a man is sending me into a stupor?

Beep-beep-beep.

“Saved by the bell,” I sigh gratefully as I realize the alarm means it’s time to work again. “Forty-five minutes and we’ll reconvene.”

“Of course,” Samantha huffs. “This isn’t finished.”

Despite claiming that, she does return to her spot on the couch and drops her eyes to her notes as she grabs a pink highlighter. “Note to self, get Luna a new toy so she doesn’t hop on Carter’s dick and get her heart broken in the process.”

“Samantha!”

She shrugs, not embarrassed in the slightest to be talking about letting your fingers do the walking. I eat two more Raisinets before I sit down to work on Alphena some more.

I’m on page twenty-three now after several sleepless nights of work. Not sleepless because I couldn’t actually go to sleep but because every time I did, Carter was waiting in my dreams. Only the sex wasn’t fake. It was very, very real, and I’d wake up hot and liquid, so burying myself in work was preferable to burying my fingers in myself.

As I focus on Alphena, I can’t help but ask myself WWAD? What would Alphena do with this whole situation? Would she take the fake marriage in stride and continue helping someone in need or protect herself and walk away before it all blows up in her face? Maybe she’d fuck him for fun, her heart clad behind some Alpha-bitch armor?

Or maybe take the biggest risk of all and see if there could be anything real with Carter?

I honestly don’t know.





CHAPTER

THIRTEEN





CARTER