This Marriage with a Billionaire Biker is Supposed to Be Fake

HE WASN’T supposed to touch her like that. Not with those hands—steady, engineered precision masked as control, the kind of hands that used to grip a motorcycle handlebar at insane speeds like he was bargaining with death itself. Not with that mouth, cutting and cruel when he wanted it to be, but now pressed against the inside of her thigh like it belonged there. And definitely not with that voice, low and strained and full of need. Not like this. Celeste shut her eyes as she shivered at the warmth of his tongue tracing her delicate skin. “I told you I don’t like to beg,” he growled, breath hot against her skin. “So don’t make me.” She should’ve walked away. Right there, right then. She should have told him to stop this. Should’ve reminded herself that this was fake. That she was only there because of a contract signed in blood and desperation. That this was about money, about business, about her saving a dream and him salvaging an empire. Nothing more. Nothing less. But his tongue flicked against the softest part of her, and her body answered first—arching, trembling, traitorous. “Nick,” she breathed. A warning. A plea. She didn’t even know anymore. He looked up from where he knelt between her thighs. His dark hair was a mess like he’d just taken a helmet off too fast, like the ghost of speed still lived in him. His jaw was tense. His eyes—God, those eyes—were too honest for a man who used to outrun consequence on two wheels at midnight just to feel something. He was still in the wheelchair. The same one he hated. The one he only used when the pain made pretending impossible. Parked crooked in the middle of his penthouse kitchen like even recovery refused to tame him. And yet he was there, arms braced on either side of her hips, strength still carved into him despite everything taken from him in that crash—despite the metal, the trauma, the months of learning how to exist without speed. “You think this chair makes me weak?” he rasped. “Because I’ve never wanted to ruin someone like I want to ruin you.” A moan clawed its way out of her throat. This was dangerous. And it wasn’t just the s*x, though that was part of it. It was him. Nicholas Whitmore—billionaire tech founder, empire heir, and former underground biker legend who used to treat roads like they owed him obedience. A man who once lived in motion, in chaos, in velocity… now forced into stillness that never fully fit him. And right then, that stillness was breaking. For her. She gripped the edge of the kitchen counter behind her, trying to anchor herself in something other than his mouth. Her tank top was bunched under her arms, bra long gone. She was half-naked in the middle of his penthouse kitchen, trembling like he’d short-circuited every nerve in her body and smiled while it happened. “You said—” she gasped. “You said we’d keep it professional.” He licked her like he was tasting sin. “You said that. I never agreed.” “Asshole—ah!” she whimpered as he slipped his tongue inside her wetness. “Nick! Oh—stop doing that!” He didn’t. Instead, he tightened his grip on her hips like she was something he had to keep grounded, like she was the only thing keeping him from spinning back into the version of himself that used to disappear into night rides just to feel in control again. His teeth grazed her inner thigh. “You say that,” he murmured, “but you’re not telling me to stop.” She didn’t. She couldn’t. Because she wanted this. She’d wanted it since the first time they fought—since he’d looked at her in that ER like she was the only thing louder than his pain. Since she saw the cracks in the man who used to live at full throttle and wondered what it would feel like to be the only thing capable of slowing him down. Since the night he woke up in that hospital bed after the crash—furious, broken, trapped in a body that no longer obeyed him—and grabbed her wrist with a strength he wasn’t supposed to have and said, “Don’t touch me unless you mean it.” That version of him—the one made of fire, velocity, and refusal—was still there. Just redirected. Toward her. He moved up her body slowly. He kissed the dip of her belly like it was something he had to earn. Braced himself on his good leg and the counter, then lifted just high enough to press his mouth to her chest. His tongue was hot. His lips unforgiving. Like a man who used to chase adrenaline and now chased her instead. By the time he reached her mouth, she was shaking. His kiss wasn’t gentle. It never was. It was impact. Collision. Like a bike hitting asphalt at impossible speed and refusing to break. It was a claiming—hot and greedy and full of things they hadn’t said out loud. She tasted frustration and want and something dangerously close to devotion. “I hate you for this,” she whispered against his lips. He kissed her again, slower. Deeper. And when he pulled back, he cupped the side of her face with one calloused hand—the same kind of hand that once gripped steel handlebars through rainstorms and chaos. “You don’t,” he murmured. “But I’ll let you pretend.” There were so many things wrong with them. But she knew… God, she knew that whatever this was, it wasn’t pretending anymore. He was fake. Their marriage was fake. But Nick Whitmore had never been good at anything fake—not speed, not danger, not survival… and definitely not her. “Let me take you to bed,” he said, voice rough. “You can’t carry me there.” His eyes flared—dangerous, possessive, alive in a way his still body couldn’t contain. “No. But I can make you forget you ever wanted distance.” Her breath hitched. Because she had wanted distance. That morning, when Lucille leaked that video. When tabloids called her a gold-digging distraction. When Leo Zhang told her she was walking into something she couldn’t outrun. When someone sent her a photo of her walking alone at night with a red X marked over her chest. She was scared. Exhausted. Half-broken. And yet she was still there—in Nick’s arms, in his penthouse above a city that felt like it was watching. Because somewhere along the line, she stopped surviving the arrangement… and started surviving him. And that was the most dangerous thing of all.