Mr. Blackwell's Bride: A Fake Marriage Romance (A Good Wife Book 2) Page 13

  “Noriko,” Drake’s voice broke through my sleep. “We’re here.”

  I groaned and stretched before sitting up in the limo and rubbing my eyes. “You damn billionaires.” We’d been flying all night. We couldn’t be in the States anymore. “This is a long way to go for breakfast. It better be worth it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find it was worth it.”

  Drake got out of the car first and held out his hand for me. I stepped out after him, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the light. Wherever we were, it was morning. Glancing around, I saw a stone house and a beautiful garden. It all looked familiar. Except it couldn’t be. I’d never been here before.

  I heard the limo driving off and it was just Drake and me now.

  “Where are we?” I took a step towards the start of a garden path. The place seemed painted in light and magic, drawing me in with its quaintness and too-vibrant colors.

  Drake didn’t answer. He held his arm out as if to say, after you.

  The garden was in full bloom, growing around a stone house covered in ivy, green shutters flung open. Along the paths grew roses, tulips, lavender and many other flowers I couldn’t name, their fragrances perfuming the air and lifting my heart. It was gorgeous, just like a painting.

  Oh shit.

  It looked like a painting because it was one.

  This was Monet’s house. His fucking house. His garden. There was the lake and the water lilies and the Japanese bridge that he painted. We were in Giverny, France.

  Oh my God.

  I grabbed Drake’s arm, trying to speak but failing. He had stolen my voice. My head was spinning so hard, I thought I might pass out.

  “It’s usually open to the public,” Drake said. “I convinced the trust to let me book it out privately for the day.”

  He did this for me.

  Suddenly his awkwardness in the car shone under a different light. He wasn’t being distant. He was nervous.

  Emotions bubbled up inside me and I clasped my hand to my mouth to try to hold them in. To no avail. Sobs tore from my lungs.

  “Noriko,” Drake cried out in alarm, “what did I do?” He cupped his hands on my face, urging me to look at him. He peered at me with such concern, I could only cry harder.

  “Oh, Drake,” I said between sobs. “No one has ever, ever, done anything so wonderful for me.” It had always been me doing for others. Me putting my needs and wants aside for everyone else.

  Drake blinked at me. “But…but you’re crying.”

  I started to laugh through my tears, shaking my head. Tumbling and fluttering inside me like I was a cage full of birds. More tears and more laughing. Until I let out a scream. “Monet’s house! I can’t fucking believe this,” I yelled to the sky, giddiness overwhelming me.

  Claude Monet’s house. His garden. Holy shit.

  “Did you just swear?”

  I turned to him. “You… You, Drake Blackwell, are the most wonderful man.”

  He shifted his weight. “Not everyone will agree with you.” How was it that a man so confident it bordered on arrogance, could be uncomfortable with my compliment?

  “Whoever doesn’t, can’t see what I see.”

  He stiffened. “I’m not perfect, Noriko. Far from it. Just, please…remember this moment when…” he trailed off. When I fuck up, I finished for him in my head.

  I took his hand and we walked through Monet’s garden. He led me to a table set up with breakfast goodies like croissants and jam and scones.

  I laughed as he pulled out my seat. “What, no waiter?”

  “No waiters. No one else is here. I wanted you all to myself.” He flicked out the napkin and laid it across my lap.

  I mock-gasped. “Drake Blackwell, how much shall I tip you?”

  “Careful, Noriko. My price might be too much for your body to handle.” The glint in his eye had me squirming in my seat.

  When we finished breakfast, Drake took me by the hand and pulled me to my feet. “And now…you must work for your breakfast.”

  He led me to the lake’s edge where a picnic blanket waited for us. Beside it was a large suitcase and a large bag.

  I stood on the water’s edge and let out a sigh. I remembered this exact view from several of Monet’s paintings. He stood right here. Looked over the lake as I did. Tilted his face up to the same sun. Filled his lungs up with the same air. “He painted right here.”

  “And so will you.”

  Drake opened the suitcase, actually a painter’s suitcase filled with tubes of paint and paintbrushes. From the bag, he pulled out a small framed canvas and handed it to me.

  This was all too much. I half-sat, half-collapsed on the blanket.

  Was I really here? In Monet’s garden about to paint my own version of his Japanese bridge? Or was this a dream?

  Drake lay himself across the grass and flung his arm over his head with a flourish. “Paint me like one of your French girls.”

  I let out a snort. “Perhaps you should leave that to Kate Winslet.”

  He smirked at me. For this moment, I forgot about the secret I was keeping from him. That I would one day betray him. I forgot that I could never return his love.

  I tried to focus on my canvas, each stroke of paint done with equal bliss and anxiety. How could I ever compare to the Man himself? How did I even deserve to be here? Drake kept staring at me, drawing my attention to him like a magnet, making it even harder to paint.

  I didn’t notice his hand reaching out for a paintbrush until he’d drawn a wet blue line on my knee.

  I shot him a glare.

  “What?” he asked, his voice all innocence.

  “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?” He made another mark, and another. Until he’d written Drake4eva on my leg. “I think blue suits you.” He smirked at his “artwork.”

  I could only stare at him. Could this playful, lighthearted man be the same cold, arrogant brute I’d met four weeks ago?

  Before I could think it through, I’d dabbed a spot of green on his nose. “What do you know? Green suits you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You, Noriko Blackwell, will pay for that.”

  He lunged for me and I let out a squeal. We ended up rolling in the grass, laughing, smearing paint on each other.

  Somehow the mood turned heated. Our clothes were discarded and our bodies came together, streaked wet with paint, sweat and desire, until we were both crowing each other’s names to the sun.

  35

  ____________

  Drake

  Much later, Noriko resumed painting wearing only my shirt, looking so sexy I almost lunged for her again, her skin marked by dried streaks of paint and flecks in her hair where we rolled across her pallet. The grass was streaked with paint too. Whoops.

  We needed a shower but not right now. Neither of us wanted to leave this beautiful garden.

  I sat in my briefs—it was warm enough to be almost naked—reading papers I brought along with me. It was still a workday after all.

  “Is that work?”

  I looked up from my papers to find that Noriko had abandoned her painting. She was watching me instead. I gave her a wry look. “It’s always work.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “Contracts.”

  “For the company you just bought?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a big government contract we’re thinking of applying for. I’m reading through the job terms and conditions now.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  I snorted. “Not really. Contracts are always overwritten drivel by a bunch of stuffy-suited lawyers trying to cover their asses while using big words to show off how smart they are.”

  “Oh.”

  “Luckily I have my own group of stuffy-suited lawyers. I still like to read through the contracts. I am the one signing them, after all.”

  She nibbled her lip, and I knew she wanted to ask something. “Drake, do you…like what you do?”

  “Do I like…?” What a s
imple question. What a beautifully simple question and yet…I began to laugh.

  She frowned. “What’s funny?”

  I shook my head as my laughter faded. “You know, in all my years, all the hundreds of interviews I’ve done, no one has ever asked me that question. They all want to know what the secret is to my success or how I feel about my success. They want to know what my tips are for other business owners or what my plans for expansion are… No one has ever asked me if I like what I do.”

  “So, do you?”

  “I…” I felt like I’d been slapped. “I don’t know.”

  She made a humming noise. “If it was your father’s company and it was handed to you when he died, I guess you felt you had no choice but to continue.”

  There it was. The reason I fell in love with her to begin with. The thing I saw in her when she was just X, the girl with the Mona Lisa smile, the thing that made her stand out to me even from the beginning.

  She saw me.

  36

  ____________

  Noriko

  “You see me so effortlessly, don’t you?” he said.

  I shrugged, suddenly feeling hot under the intensity of his stare. “You’re easy to see.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m rude, arrogant, I piss more people off than not. The only ones who care about me are paid to.”

  “You’re more than that!”

  He was right. I did see him. I saw the rude armor that he wore, the arrogance he carried like a shield, his inability to act the “right” and “proper” way when he tried to express something meaningful to him. They were all lies. I saw past them as if they were children’s games, as if they were mere sheets of rice paper, right into the broken, scared boy inside of him that screamed, love me! Love me, because no one ever has.

  Something surged up inside of me. A need. An all-consuming need.

  I crawled to him and straddled his legs, pushing his papers aside. He didn’t protest. He only watched me with a hunger and underneath, a kind of weariness. His cock, already hard, pressed against my core. I whimpered. I wanted him. I wanted that. But there was something else I wanted more. A need more than physical. More than sex.

  I leaned in, cupping my hand on his cheek.

  He frowned. “What are you—?”

  “Shhh.”

  “But—”

  “Are you going to argue with me about everything?” I asked lightly, repeating words he once said to me.

  He didn’t reply. I didn’t give him a chance to. I closed my lips on his. He tasted like champagne and croissants with jam, his cologne wafting around me like a fresh breeze.

  For a moment he didn’t move, and it was just me, brushing my lips against his, surprisingly soft, taking in his taste, his smell, giving myself to him, taking as much.

  He started to move, slowly, as if he was unsure.

  Perhaps he was.

  Perhaps he’d never kissed anyone before. Really kissed someone. With his heart and his soul and the strength of all his hopes and dreams.

  His lips grew firmer, exponentially surer. His tongue explored my mouth, dancing with my tongue. I slid my fingers through his silky strands and he weaved his fingers into my body.

  Our first real kiss.

  It was glorious. I never wanted it to end.

  Our kisses grew hungry, needy. Desperate. Suddenly these scant clothes were like steel walls between us. I needed to feel him. All of him. With my hands between us, I pulled his shirt off me and his briefs off him. I pressed my breasts against his chest, our two hearts beating like drums against each other, both keeping the same glorious time. My arms wrapped around his neck, his palms flat against my back crushing me against his hard body.

  Unthinking, we shifted, me sliding up his body, him guiding me up with his hands until his erection slipped between my legs. Slowly, achingly slowly, I slid down to take him—all of him—willingly into my wet, open body.

  He moaned into my mouth, I breathed it in and groaned back into his lungs. We were a single being of soul and breath. Of tongues and wet lips. Of hearts and hands.

  Neither of us moved, not yet. We were mindless and dizzy and drunk from our kisses, sucking every drop of champagne out of each other’s mouths.

  I broke away from his mouth and pressed my forehead against his for just one breathless second. Before we started to move.

  When we moved, dear God, when we moved, I didn’t want it to stop. Every pull and drag and push piled fire upon fire in my body. My heart began to fill and kept on filling. I feared I might burst.

  He whispered to me in Japanese. “Your tight, wet pussy will be the end of me. I can feel your warm honey sliding down over me, dripping onto my thighs. I want to suck up each drop up but I can’t let you go. I will die if you leave. What did I do to deserve you, Noriko? Tell me?”

  Each sweet, dirty word was another added flame. My fingers dug into his back and I ground on him harder and he pushed up into me like he couldn’t get deep enough. And he pushed and I pulled and he rocked and we rocked and my hands and his hands and our lips and everything and nothing and all the pieces of our bodies became stars, all tightening and compressing and burning until…

  Everything exploded in waves so intense, I saw galaxies.

  My world became a space as vast and as infinite as the universe. Drake and I hung there like swirling pieces of stardust. Until the pieces of us fell back down towards the Earth.

  And when I hit the ground—oh, God, when I hit the ground—my eyes opened with a gasp as two swords of exhilaration and terror ripped through my insides.

  Oh my God.

  How could I let this happen?

  I was totally and completely in love with my husband.

  I had to leave him in less than eleven months.

  Suddenly, what had been my prison sentence has twisted, turning into a ticking clock.

  37

  ____________

  Noriko

  I was a paper butterfly torn in two.

  I was Noriko Blackwell, a woman who was desperately in love with this beautiful, complicated man. Drake was the first thing on my mind when I woke, my body rushing alive with anticipation to catch him before he left for work, me leaning into the open window of his limo, us kissing like teenagers until he was late. When he returned home and folded me into his arms, I was free.

  I was a woman who was tumbling and spinning, like autumn leaves caught in a breeze, deeper and deeper in love.

  Then I was Noriko Akiyama, a daughter who made a promise to her sick father that she would come home after one year. A girl whose husband wouldn’t let her speak to the family she left behind. A girl who still slept alone, whose husband still left in the dead of the night. Who woke up every morning in a cold marriage bed. And a wife carrying a secret as to why she was still not pregnant.

  The wife and the daughter were two separate people living in one body. It was the only way that we could live with ourselves. But this careful separation was fragile, the division was thin and tenuous. The daughter was growing to despise the wife, to hate her for loving her husband who kept her from her father.

  The wife was beginning to hate the daughter for reminding her that her love had an ending because of a promise she made to her father. The wife hated the daughter for continuing to take those secret pills so that the family she wanted would never come to be.

  The daughter and the wife were two different people, but they were both prisoners. As the weeks went by, the call for freedom grew louder and more desperate.

  “Drake,” I asked, one evening while laying in bed, “I want to take a painting class.”

  He paused his tracing on my stomach. “But you paint so beautifully.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re my husband. You’re supposed to think the world of me. It’s an actual requirement, you know.”

  “I think that because you are truly talented.”

  “There’s always room for improvement. I found a painting class in town that I’d really like t
o go to on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

  He paused, a frown growing between his brows. “Aren’t you happy here?”

  “Of course I am, Drake. But I’m bored. I need something to do with my days.”

  “I’ll get the teacher to come here, the best one money can buy, every day of the week if you like.”

  I let out a frustrated huff and tried to keep my voice steady. “I want to be in a class. With other people. I only get to see you, Drake.” The staff here always seemed too busy to talk to me.

  “And I’m not enough?” His voice was chips of ice.

  “Of course you are. I still want friends.”

  He stiffened. “Male friends?”

  I shook my head. “Male. Female. What does it matter?”

  He rolled aside, getting to his feet. “I am not letting you go gallivanting around some art school where there are opportunistic vultures sniffing around you.”

  I sat up. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Oh?” He began to pace. “You don’t think the whole of LA is obsessed with you now as the wife of the third richest man in America. Trust me, Noriko, this city is full of sharks who won’t think twice about using you.”

  “Drake—”

  “I just want to protect you. I’ll get you your own private painting teacher. That’s final.”

  I rolled over, my back to him, squeezing my eyes shut against the waves of frustration crashing over me.

  I was a prisoner here. He wouldn’t let me leave. He wouldn’t let me have friends. He wanted me to have only him. To sit at home and do nothing but wait for him. He loved me so much he was suffocating me.

  I loved him. But I hated that he was like this.

  This is why you have to get out when the year is up, the daughter in me screamed. If you fall pregnant he will never ever let you leave.