Between Never and Forever: Dex and Keelani’s Fake Engagement Story (Hardy Billionaires)

The question about her past relationships shouldn’t have mattered, and I shouldn’t have asked it. Yet, it literally took everything in me not to sock my brother in the face for kissing her forehead in front of me after he’d offered to undress her.

“You’re a dumbass, you know that?” she said with a face of disgust.

It was a fair assessment. I felt disgusted with myself, not only for the question but for the jealousy. “Do you intend to answer the question?”

“I mean, you want to know if I’ve kissed him? Because you know good and well I never fucked him.”

“Did you kiss him?” My blood was starting to boil.

“So what if I did?” She shrugged and then turned around. “Help me get out of this bralette since you’re so ridiculously territorial you won’t even let your brother do it. As if he hasn’t seen me naked already.”

I practically choked on my own saliva as I tried to work through her confession. I grabbed at the string, but it tangled more as I cinched it this way and that. “Why the hell has he seen you naked?”

“Dex, literally most of the nation has seen me naked. I’ve posed for Vogue naked. Don’t get me wrong, it was classy but it happened. And Dimitri has taken me to model shoots and sat there working through some of them. I don’t know what he does on his computer.”

“Probably nothing because he’s staring at you,” I grumbled.

And then she wheezed because I pulled the string the wrong way. “Oh my God. You’re done helping with this. And we’re done talking about this.” She tried to take over the strings.

I shoved her hand away. “Who else has seen you naked?”

“Do you even hear yourself?”

“I do. I sound deranged.” At least I was admitting it out loud.

“Exactly.” She turned and smiled at me. “You sound like a man who cares.”

“And I shouldn’t.” I took in a deep breath, and she nodded. We were aiming for the same goal.

“It’s okay. I was jealous of your girlfriend last night too.” She chewed her cheek. “We need to work through that.”

“Want to work through some of it now?” I asked, looking down at the strings. I unthreaded them with purpose, and the scrap of clothing finally loosened enough that she could get it off. Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the ꜰindNʘvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

She glanced over her smooth shoulder and licked her lips. She knew exactly what I meant by that statement, and my cock hardened just staring at her. Keelani wasn’t only beautiful. She stood in my room half naked, and it made my damn knees weak with how fast and hard her appearance in the light of day struck me. She was fuller in the hips and breasts than I remembered, but her skin had stayed perfectly sun-kissed. Every curve of hers was mouthwatering, every facial expression distracting, and every movement mesmerizing. Whatever God was up there had blessed her and cursed and condemned me with the sight of her.

“I don’t think screwing around is going to help us, Dex,” she murmured.

“It’s the one thing that helps me always.”

“Right.” She gulped, and her eyes seemed so innocent as she asked me, “How?”

“How what?”

“How does it help you?” I saw the blush rising to her cheeks. And then she cleared her throat. “I haven’t… Well, I haven’t experienced any of this before.”

Jesus, I wanted to corrupt the fuck out of her. I wanted to be the one to stain the blank canvas that she was, make her my own and only mine. It wasn’t healthy though. “I’m aware you haven’t,” I ground out.

“So, well, maybe you could help me.” She offered up the idea like it was a good one.

“Help you how?” I asked even though I shouldn’t have. I should have left the room right then, backed away from her and saved my sanity.

“Well, I don’t know. I’m trying to… I want to change. I’ve been this person who hasn’t done a thing, Dex. I’ve been doing what the record label wants me to for years. I was a freaking virgin. And what if I can find out who I am and experience all this while I rebrand. Become who I want to be with you helping me. You could…teach me.”

“Teach you?”

She sighed and shrugged her tiny shoulders before walking over to her rolling wardrobe rack and pulled at some of the fabric with one hand while the other held up her bralette. “I’m inexperienced, Dex. If I could figure out who I am—”

She might not have been saying it outright, but I was going to end the idea right then and there. “We’re definitely not maturing you so you can sell fucking sex with a rebrand and the type of voice you have,” I ground out. She could have done that for sure with the rasp in her voice. She always had a rawness underneath all the bubbly music she sang. “You have more to give the world than that.”

“You think? I seem to recall you saying I am what I’ve been faking to be.”

“You couldn’t hide the gift of your voice under anything pretend, Kee. When you sang down in that garden to me, you came alive. I fell in love with…”

“With what?” she whispered.

The words clogged in my throat. The heartbreak and pain of losing her, seeing her here, remembering what we’d been and what we’d lost all stopped me from speaking the words.

I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t matter. The past between us can’t matter. Just keep the damn room,” I said, stepping back and away from her, away from the honesty between us.

“But Dex—”

“And if you want me to teach you something, learn something about me first. I’m not here to help you any more than I already have. I don’t want to help you at all.” My voice held finality, and I walked away like I didn’t care.

I wanted to not care. I needed to try. I’d try everything to rid myself of her.