Contingency Plan Read online

  “There’s coffee there for you,” I told her, nodding toward the center console.

  “Um, thanks,” she murmured, picking up the steaming cup and taking a sip. Surprise registered on her face. “How did you know what I like?”

  I glanced at her, smiling. “I pay attention, particularly to anything that touches those kissable lips.” Damn, the sweet color on her cheeks was going to be the death of me. It never failed to have my dick standing at attention. The drive to the airport took less that fifteen minutes and I parked in a private hangar at the small airstrip. When I’d informed Elisa that I would take care of our travel arrangements, she put up a little argument, but it wasn’t hard to convince her to make the trip in Maddie’s husband’s private jet. We boarded and took off for Tahoe in no time at all.

  A young, male flight attendant served us drinks, then asked, “Is there anything else I can get you, Mr. Mariano?” He didn’t once glance in my direction, too busy staring at my woman’s chest. Resisting the urge to resolve the situation with a broken nose, I growled, “No, I’ll take care of her. You won’t be needed any further.”

  His dopey smile drooped and he finally looked my way. A glance at my expression had him scurrying to another part of the plane, leaving us alone.

  Elisa smacked my arm lightly and glared. “You didn’t have to be so rude to him, Brysen.”

  I rolled my eyes, but kept my thoughts to myself. If I opened my mouth, I was sure I’d say something in Cavemanese and I didn’t want to piss her off and start our weekend on a bad note. Though Caleb was a scotch man, he’d stocked the bar with beer for me and I took a swig of the pale ale. I almost moaned. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted, though I was positive Elisa would taste better. That’s when I noticed the label marking it as a winner of the World Beer Awards. I chuckled at Caleb’s need to always have the best, but that didn’t stop me from texting my housekeeper to order some.

  To my surprise, Elisa had ordered a beer too, not wine or champagne. That was fucking hot as hell. Her expression of delight while drinking it had me doubling my order. I hoped to be the one putting that look on her face for the rest of our lives, but I still enjoyed seeing it now.

  I unbuckled and turned toward her in my seat. It was time to get down to business. “We need to get to know one another.”

  Elisa nodded. “Okay. Tell me about your injury.”

  I was used to this question, but it didn’t make it any easier to talk about. Although, telling Elisa the story seemed less uncomfortable. “The short version is I was taken down during a pass and landed wrong. The landing was bad enough by itself, but the other player came right down on top of my shoulder. I tore both ligaments in my AC joint. It took two surgeries and eight weeks of physical therapy for the doctor to tell me it wasn’t likely I would ever regain full motion. I could hope for the best and continue to play, but I knew I’d be playing backup for the rest of my contract. I’d had a true movie moment where the quarterback’s very last throw of his career wins the game. I decided to let the team buy out my contract and end on a high note.”

  I had Elisa’s full attention. I loved that she was so openly interested in my life and her eyes hadn’t glazed over at the talk of football. A while back, I’d discovered she’d been raised as a New York Giants fan. Elisa was gorgeous, laid back, a beer drinker, and I could teach her all about football. So, I decided those things outweighed her choice of team. However, we’d need to correct the fault before long. Our kids would be Jets fans; I had no wiggle room on that issue.

  “What else?”

  I reached across her seat, grabbed her hand, and brought it back to my lap. Absently playing with her fingers, I gave her the basics. “I’ll be thirty-one next month. No siblings, though Maddie is like a sister to me. My parents live in Syracuse, both teachers. I’ve tried to get them to retire, it’s not like they need to work, but they constantly remind me they would be bored. I’ve got my hands in several businesses right now, basically trying to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life. Lately, I’ve been concentrating on the ones that will keep me close to home so I can be with my family.”

  “But, you’re looking to buy a house just outside the city.” Elisa’s face was adorably confused. “Wouldn’t being close mean moving upstate?” I mentally fist bumped myself at the disappointment she wasn’t able to disguise in her deep brown eyes.

  “Not my parents, my wife and kids, baby,” I informed her with a wink, my fingers tracing lazy circles on the inner skin of her forearm. Tiny goose bumps followed their path.

  She looked at me oddly for a moment, then burst out laughing. My only response was a single eyebrow arched in question.

  “I’m sorry,” she sputtered. “The image of football’s star manwhore settling down with a wife and kids is hilarious.” I vehemently disagreed, but showing was better than telling, and I fully intended for her to have no doubt about our future together by the end of the weekend.

  “The right woman can change everything,” I said meaningfully, then changed the subject. “Your turn. Tell me more about you.”

  Her cute, freckled nose scrunched and I could see her mind whirling, trying to get out of talking about herself. Eventually, she sighed, “I’m twenty-five, I have one sister, she’s twenty. My parents are gone, no other family. I have a degree in business management from Columbia and I’m a real-estate broker. There, you know everything.”

  Her answer had me chuckling, amused she thought I’d be satisfied with that. “I don’t know nearly enough. However, if we’re going to be a couple, there is one thing that is essential for me to be able to pull this off.” I entwined our fingers and tugged her forward, slipping my free hand into her hair and cupping the back of her neck.

  “What?” She eyed me warily, but her choppy breaths gave away her rapidly growing desire.

  Leaning in, my hand brought her forward until our mouths met and I couldn’t suppress the instant groan at the feel of her soft lips on mine. My tongue ran along the seam and her body softened, her lips parting so I could taste her. Consumed by her, I kissed her like a drowning man fighting to breathe. The small whimpers she was making and her body wiggling to get closer, proving she was just as overwhelmed, gratified me. Letting her hand go, I glided my palm up her thigh and unsnapped her jeans, shoving it down the opening until I brushed against the fabric of her panties. “Holy shit. You’re fucking drenched for me,” I whispered against her mouth. Using one finger, I dragged her underwear to the side and dipped into her pussy, spreading the wetness from bottom to top. Her whimpers became moans when I circled her tight little bud before plunging two fingers into her hole.

  Our mouths were still fused together as my fingers touched and teased her pussy. When her breathing became so erratic that she had to tear her lips from mine, I knew she was almost there. “Want to know what else I need, baby?” I purred.

  “Y-yes,” she panted.

  I curled my fingers up to just the right spot as the heel of my hand pressed and rubbed her clit. “To see what you look like when you come.”

  With a scream, she exploded, and I was blown away by the sight. It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.

  Chapter 4

  Elisa

  Holy crap! One minute I was having the usual first date get-to-know-each-other conversation with Brysen so he’d be prepared to convince people he was my boyfriend, and the next, I was experiencing my first non-self-induced orgasm all over his hand. I wasn’t exactly a blushing virgin, but I’d never had this kind of chemistry with any other man. Hence the need for me to get myself off—none of the guys I’d dated in the past had been able to do it for me.

  Brysen evidently had the magic touch. He should have played baseball instead of being a quarterback since he’d managed to make it to third base before I even realized his hand was in my panties. By then, I was too turned on to argue, racing toward a climax one thousand times stronger than any I’d given myself. Between the orgasm, my nerves about this weekend
, and the beer, I promptly fell asleep in his arms and managed to avoid the awkward moment after until six hours later when the plane landed in Lake Tahoe.

  I was startled awake by the sound of the landing gear being lowered and found myself settled on the couch, my clothes back in order and a blanket spread over me. My feet were resting in Brysen’s lap, right on top of his hardened length—a fact I promptly discovered when I stretched out and curled my toes right into his groin. “Sorry,” I mumbled, yanking my legs back and blushing as I remembered what he’d been doing right before I fell asleep—how easily he’d made me come and how I hadn’t returned the favor.

  “I’m not sorry,” he quipped, pulling my feet back onto his lap. “Not even a little bit. How could I be when I got exactly what I wanted?”

  I wiggled my toes a little. “It feels to me like there might be something you wanted and didn’t get.”

  “I hate to break it to you, baby,” he murmured, “but I’m always hard when you’re near. Even after I’ve come in my pants from the flavor of you on my tongue like a teenager who’s never tasted pussy before.”

  Brysen Mariano came in his pants because of me. The power I felt at his admission was heady. I hadn’t noticed it before, but he’d changed into jeans while I was sleeping, so I knew he was telling the truth. Not like it was something he’d lie about anyway. “Did I miss the best part while I was passed out? Because I don’t remember having your mouth on me and I’m pretty sure it’s an experience I wouldn’t forget.”

  The satisfied smirk he flashed me sent butterflies swirling in my belly. When he dropped my feet onto the couch and shifted until he was braced over me, his mouth an inch from mine, I practically melted into the cushions. “I’m offended you think you’d be able to forget the things I’m going to do to you when I get my mouth on you, but I know I’ll prove you wrong. I got my first taste of your pussy by sucking it off my fingers, and it was so damn good. Just thinking about it gets me harder than I’ve ever been before.” A quick thrust of his hips proved exactly how hard he was and made me drench my panties. “My next taste of you is going to be straight from the source and I’m going to eat your pussy until you’re begging me to stop.”

  I lifted my head that last inch, fusing my lips with his. I needed him to stop talking before I did something incredibly stupid, like begged him to show me his oral skills right now. My plan quickly backfired as Brysen took control of the kiss. His hands gripped my jaw and held me in place while his tongue swept inside to tangle with mine. When he lifted his head, I whimpered and tried to pull him back down to my mouth until my brain registered the sound of the flight attendant clearing his throat. The glare Brysen sent his way made me giggle a little this time around when it was irritating a mere six and a half hours earlier. Apparently a mind-blowing orgasm delivered by Brysen Mariano mellowed a girl out.

  “The helicopter is ready to go,” the flight attendant informed us.

  “Helicopter?”

  “What can I say? It’s the fastest way to get to the resort,” Brysen answered sheepishly. “And if I got the timing right, we’ll make one hell of an entrance.”

  I felt like Cinderella as he slipped my boots back on my feet and led me off the jet and across the tarmac to the black helicopter waiting for us. The flight attendant followed with our luggage and within minutes, we were back in the air. I’d never flown in a helicopter before and looked out the window in awe as the pilot gave us a running commentary of the landmarks. But the best sight of all was the look on Zachary Wright and his girlfriend Brittany’s face as they stepped out of a Hummer limo and watched me exit the copter. My ex was a pretentious bastard. He was visibly pissed that I’d managed to one-up him, and he hadn’t even caught sight of my date yet.

  All my doubts about Brysen’s plan melted away at the surge of triumph I felt. It wasn’t that I wanted Zach back. Brittany was more than welcome to him. It hadn’t taken me long to realize I was better off without him, but I still felt the sting of insecurity whenever I saw them together and remembered how our relationship ended. Catching your boyfriend in his office with his pants around his ankles while getting a blowjob from a twenty-year-old bimbo who couldn’t sell water to a thirsty man in the desert was a hit to the ego no matter how you looked at it. A blindside made worse when he blamed it on me for being a frigid bitch because he had apparently figured out I’d been faking my orgasms on the few occasions we’d had sex. When you added in the fact that we were co-workers, it was devastating. I had to deal with the gossip that followed our break-up while also being stuck seeing the two of them together on a regular basis.

  The warmth of Brysen’s hand on the small of my back was comforting. The shocked look of recognition on Zach’s face was even better. But the shivers down my spine from Brysen’s touch were the best. They reminded me that we’d proved Zach wrong. If I were the frigid bitch he’d called me, I wouldn’t have flown apart in Brysen’s arms the way I had. My satisfied smile turned into laughter as I caught Brittany staring at Brysen like she wanted to eat him with a spoon. Oh yes, this weekend was going to be even better than I’d expected.

  “I take it that’s the douchebag ex and his blow-up doll of a girlfriend?” Brysen whispered in my ear.

  “Mmmhmm.” Too distracted by the feel of his lips on my neck as he nuzzled against me, I couldn’t manage actual words.

  “Show time,” he murmured before turning me in his arms and kissing the heck out of me, as if we didn’t have an audience.

  I’d never been into public displays of affection, but it didn’t matter. Brysen made me forget everyone but him. I was in a daze as he led me past my ex and into the hotel. I managed to snap out of it by the time we reached the front desk. “Elisa Young to check in please.”

  The clerk’s welcoming smile brightened at my name. “Good morning, Ms. Young. I’m Katie. Welcome to Lake Tahoe,” she said as she picked up a keycard envelope from the counter and walked around to our side without even glancing at her computer. “Your suite is ready, if you’ll just follow me.”

  “I think you must have me mistaken for someone else. There’s no way my employer booked me a suite.”

  “We don’t make mistakes when it comes to bookings for the penthouse, ma’am,” she assured me. “Besides, we were told to expect you to arrive by helicopter and I believe I can hear the sounds of one leaving right now. Yours, I presume?”

  “The confusion is my fault, Elisa,” Brysen added. “When I told you I was going to handle the travel arrangements, I meant all of them. Including our room.”

  “You changed my reservation?”

  “To the best room on the entire property,” the clerk confirmed. “It has a bi-level floor plan with almost fourteen hundred square feet, two bedrooms, two and a half baths, a dining area that seats six, and the best view of the mountain.”

  “It sounds lovely.” Because really, what else could I say after that description?

  “Not that we’ll need the second bedroom,” Brysen whispered in my ear as we followed her to our suite. “Because there isn’t a chance in hell I’m sleeping without you next to me.”

  This weekend wasn’t going at all how I’d pictured when I agreed to Brysen’s plan. I had figured on a few kisses here and there to sell our story, but not orgasms and sharing a bed. And when he told me he’d handle the travel details, I hadn’t expected a private jet, helicopter ride to the resort, and an upgrade to the penthouse suite. I’d never been pampered this way before. It was official: my fake boyfriend far surpassed my real ex-boyfriend—in all things, including his orgasm-giving abilities. A fact I was looking forward to him proving again in the near future.

  Chapter 5

  Brysen

  The look of wonder on Elisa’s face as she explored the penthouse was worth every penny. Not that it put a dent in my bank account, but I’d pay anything to see her happiness.

  “I placed the information packet for Ms. Young’s retreat and hotel information on the desk. Please let us know if you’
d like the fire lit or have any other needs. Is there anything else I can get for you?” Katie inquired.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but was interrupted by a yell from another room.

  “Holy cow! You could fit an elephant in here!”

  I chuckled and tipped Katie before escorting her to the door. “We’re all set for now. Thank you.”

  When she was gone, I grabbed our bags and took them to the master bedroom, placing them on the king-sized bed. I pictured Elisa lying there, wrapped in a sheet, looking flushed and well fucked. I shook my head to scatter the image. There would be time for that later. I would make sure of it.

  I went searching for my girl and found her reclining in an empty, deep soaker tub situated in front of a large picture window. She was staring out at the view of the snowcapped mountains with tiny little skiers flying down the slopes.

  She must have heard my approach because she turned and quickly scrambled from the tub, launching herself into my arms. “This is amazing! Thank you, Brysen. I’ve never been pampered like this.”

  I squeezed her close and took her mouth in a deep kiss before whispering, “Get used to it.” Elisa leaned back, her smile becoming a little shy.

  “You...um, said something about begging.” She looked away, the most adorable pink flush spreading across her cheeks. “I won’t beg you to stop if you...you know, want to test that theory right now.”

  And just like that, I was burning from the inside out, my cock painfully hard. It took everything I had not to haul her to the bed and make good on my promise, but I’d glanced at the itinerary before we arrived and knew there was a company pow-wow scheduled to start soon with a late lunch after. Douchebag may not be any competition, but I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to make sure everyone knew Elisa was mine.