BoyFrenemy: Enemies to Lovers, Step-Brother Romance

by L. L. Ash

  I laughed.

  “You think this is funny?” he asked, cutting his eyes to me.

  “A little,” I agreed.

  He stared, emotionless, then the expression cracked and he started chuckling, too.

  “This is insane,” he murmured with a wistful smile on his face.

  “On the plus side, they wouldn’t have to worry about getting along with their in-laws,” Mom said with a grin.

  “Let’s stop talking about weddings, ok?” Ivy interrupted Mom’s giggle fit.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said, standing to indicate that this was fucking over. “Ivy and I still have a lot to work out, and we’d like some space to do it.”

  Richard Bell eyed me again.

  “You’re still living together?” he demanded.

  It was my turn to laugh.

  “If I recall, you were more than happy with this arrangement.”

  “That was before—”

  “It’s too late to get housing now,” Ivy put in.

  “Well, we came all the way out here. We’re not leaving before we get some dinner,” Mom said, settling her purse in her lap. “Now that you’re dressed, let’s go!”

  “Our food’s arriving any minute,” I told them, just as my phone vibrated with indication that our delivery driver was close.

  “Then put it in the fridge. I’m not taking no for an answer,” Mom told me, getting that look on her face that told me there was no arguing.

  Fuck’s sake…

  “Fine,” I drawled, sitting back to wait for the doorbell.

  Not even two minutes later there was a super light tap on the door.

  “Meet you at the car,” Ivy’s dad said, taking Mom’s hand in his before they went to the door ahead of me.

  They went down the stairs while I picked up the food from the doorstep.

  “We’re really going out?” Ivy whispered. “I still smell like cum!”

  “I don’t mind,” I told her with a wink.

  All that got me was an eyeroll.

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “But you still love me.”

  She turned to me, her face melting to solemn honesty.

  “Yes, yes I do.”

  Well fuck me. She fucking meant it, too.

  - 56 -

  Hunter

  EightYears Ago

  Yeah, I was going to marry her.

  I wasn’t like the other kids in school with asshole parents. Nope, it wasn’t the idea of marriage that scared me. Being married to the wrong girl was what scared the hell out of me.

  This girl though? She was the right one.

  The kids around us erupted in jeers and gags, but my damn idiot heart was filled to the brim with awe and pride.

  She’d just eaten a worm.

  A fat, juicy, wriggly earthworm, just to prove that girls were better and stronger than boys.

  And hell if I didn’t believe it.

  Mom was the strongest person I’d ever known, and Ivy was right there with her.

  “Pay up!” she said, holding out her hand to the boys who’d bet money that she wouldn’t actually do it.

  “Can you feel it in your throat?” one kid asked.

  She just shrugged.

  “Nah. I chewed it up, so it’s dead. I didn’t want to make it suffer and melt to death in my stomach acid.”

  Kickass and thoughtful.

  I just wanted to blurt all over the place that I loved this girl, but we hadn’t even kissed or held hands yet. I mean, we slept together, but that was childish.

  Well, mostly childish. I still woke up most mornings with a boner that I had to hide from her, which wasn’t my idea of fun.

  Ivy turned to me with a triumphant grin, handing me half of the ten bucks we’d managed to win because I was the only one who bet on her to succeed.

  That was basically the entirety of our relationship. We were the only people in that school that bet on each other. And dammit, we’d do it the rest of our lives if I had any say in it.

  I might’ve asked Mom how early was too early to ask a girl to marry me, hypothetically, and she’d just stared at me with glee in her eyes. She knew I was talking about Ivy. Turns out I had to at least wait until I was eighteen, which put a little bit of a kink in my plans.

  Either way, we’d be together.

  Maybe after college.

  Yeah, that sounded like a good plan. That way I’d make some good money and we can have one of those big, fancy houses.

  Yep.

  After college and that girl was going to be all mine.

  Didn’t mean I had to wait ‘til then to kiss her, though. I just had to get the balls to do it.

  - 57 -

  Ivory

  Two Years Later

  Dear God, I was getting married.

  Like, legit wedding dress and everything.

  Ok, well, currently I was getting fucked, but I was still in my wedding dress, and the ceremony was only a few minutes away.

  “It’s bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony,” I hissed, eyes squeezed closed as he bucked into me while my ass was on top of the dressing table.

  “We don’t need luck,” he ground out, slamming his hips into me so hard the whole table rocked.

  “What happened to making sweet love?”

  He snorted. “That’s an after-the-wedding sort of thing.”

  A groan tried tearing from my throat, but I choked it down so nobody could hear us. The last thing we needed was a bunch of people listening to me come right before we said our vows in front of our officiant.

  “Oh, fuck,” I gasped, feeling my orgasm blooming in my belly.

  “Atta girl,” he breathed, obviously feeling how I was fluttering around his cock.

  “If you ruin my makeup—”

  “What’re you going to do about it?”

  “Kick you in the balls.”

  He snorted again, then choked as I clamped down around him, tightening even more.

  I’d been practicing my kegels because it absolutely drove him crazy when I gripped him in my vag and choked him off.

  “Dammit,” he groaned into my shoulder.

  I felt him release, throbbing inside me. It made me grin and sigh in contentment, just like always.

  It’d been a long two years getting finished with school, and I still had several years to go to until I had my degree, but we’d chosen not to wait any longer to get married now that we both had our bachelor’s degree.

  He gave me two more pumps, grinding against my g-spot and my clit. My orgasm washed over me warm and pulsing while I hugged him to me, arms practically strangling him while I came down.

  “I fucking love you,” he said, breathless, pressing a sloppy kiss to my lips.

  I grinned into his lips, opening my mouth to accept his kiss.

  We hummed into each other’s mouths, just enjoying the feeling of being so close.

  A gentle knock on the door told us that it was time.

  “Get your ass out there,” I told him, reveling in his lips traveling down my neck to indulge in the slight cleavage pushed up from my sweetheart neckline, sleeveless gown.

  His tongue dipped between my boobs, making me squeal a little, though I tried to douse it.

  Hunter chuckled, the sound reverberating against my skin.

  “Dammit, Hunt,” I whined.

  “Fine, I’ll go,” he eventually agreed.

  “Give me those wipes over there—”

  “No,” he growled, kissing my clavicle one more time before pressing his mouth to my ear and biting down on the lobe. “I want my cum dripping down your leg the entire ceremony. I want you to feel me inside you when you say ‘I do’.”

  A shiver ran up my spine, splashing pleasure up every single nerve.

  “Are you going to lick it off when we get back to the hotel?”

  He backed away enough to grin at me.

  “I’ll stick you in a bath and fuck you again,” he promised, reaching down to pull up
the pants of his tux.

  I watched him dress, the same way I had about a million times since the day he stormed into Jamie’s house and proclaimed his love for me.

  “Better get that lipstick fixed, he said to me,” wiping off his own face from the icy pink gloss covering my nude lipstick.

  “Sometimes I hate you,” I told him flippantly as he left the room, shoving his hand through his James Dean hair to straighten it out since I’d run my own fingers through it and ruined his style.

  “And sometimes you love me,” he said, winking at me with a grin before he slipped out the door, leaving me alone to fix myself before facing our friends and family.

  I took a deep breath and got back to my feet before looking into the mirror.

  Dammit, Hunter…

  My hair was loosened, my lipstick was smeared, and my face was flushed with a post-coital glow.

  I stared at those wipes again, but refrained from using them to clean myself up any. To be honest, I wanted to feel him dripping down my leg when I said ‘I do’, too.

  I mean, the whole wedding thing was just a formality because we’d been living together for so long, but we wanted it. I wanted to wear his ring and take his name, and he was going to have to take on my honey-do list like nobody’s business.

  “Girl, you’re a mess,” came Hillary’s voice.

  I turned and saw her sneaking into the room.

  “They’re ready for you.”

  “Just a sec,” I said, hurrying to wipe up my lips and reapply my stupid makeup.

  She strode over to me with a clickety-clack of her high heels before messing with my bobby pins to set my hair straight again.

  God, I was a mess.

  “Really? Did you have to do it right before the ceremony?” she asked with a laughing lilt to her voice.

  “Try saying no to that man,” I muttered, fussing with my lip line before standing back to look at myself again.

  Between the two of us, I was a little less rumpled and a little more bride-like, but I still had a pretty glow about me. Maybe I could blame it on the whole wedding shenanigans? That was a thing, right? Bridal-glow?

  “There you go,” Hillary said, smiling at me with tears in her eyes. “I always knew you were going to get married first.”

  “You and Gauge aren’t that far behind us,” I told her, giving her ‘the look’.

  Hillary just rolled her eyes and put her arm through mine.

  “C’mon. Everyone’s waiting for the bride.”

  It all hit me as we stepped outside the bridal suite and I saw Dad standing there in his dapper suite and a weepy expression.

  Great, as if my makeup hadn't already been through enough, now I was going to cry.

  “Stop it!” I told him, choking up while he wiped at his eyes. “You’ll make my mascara run!”

  “Sorry kiddo,” he said, trying to rein himself in. “You look so beautiful!”

  My heart melted all over again, and I could hardly contain the tears of seeing Dad so emotional.

  It was a big day for all of us.

  “I think we’ve made Hunter wait long enough to see you,” he whispered conspiratorially.

  I’d die before admitting that the groom had just come from my room.

  He also came in my room.

  He came in me, too.

  “Love you, Dad,” I whispered as we stepped into the little chapel.

  Sure enough, they’d roped off the seats like any traditional wedding, and one side was practically empty.

  I had to try so hard not to bust a gut laughing until the wedding march echoed through the room and my eyes landed on my groom.

  I was a lucky, lucky girl.

  - 57 -

  Hunter

  I was a lucky man.

  I might have just been inside her, but it was like a blow to my chest the moment she walked through those double doors on her dad’s arm.

  Mom was already sobbing in the front pew, and Gauge was giving me a vigorous thumbs up from his spot beside me as best man.

  Him and Hillary had been dating off and on for the past two years, but I had zero question that those two would eventually get married. You know, once they got their heads on straight.

  Not everyone was as lucky as Ivy and I. Not everyone found their soulmate in second grade.

  We’d been through the ringer, sure, but through every level of hell, we’d somehow managed to come out the other side, and had stayed securely in some semblance of heaven ever since.

  We argued, sure, and we fought, but we communicated, too. And we fucked.

  We fucked a lot.

  Suddenly, Ivy was there, and I had her hand in mine. My girl.

  Just like I had promised myself when I was a kid, I was marrying the girl of my dreams. The girl who had survived her horrible Mom, the girl who played tag and ate worms for money and stood up to bullies when they were picking on other people, but never stood up for herself. The girl who had stolen my friendship, my love, my heart, and eventually, my soul.

  My eyes flicked over to the other side of the building; the one that was mostly empty, and saw Jamie there, in his fancy suit and perfectly coiffed hair.

  He wasn’t such a bad guy, after all. Not that we saw him much anymore. I could only imagine that it sucked watching the woman you liked so happy with someone else.

  Jamie met my eyes briefly and gave me the slightest smile, pain settling over his face, though he tried to hide it.

  The man slipped out of the pew and silently down the aisle before leaving.

  He was leaving LA right after the wedding, so I’d been surprised he’d even showed up, but Ivy had insisted on inviting him.

  She wouldn’t hear otherwise.

  Shoving the other man from my mind, I focused on Ivy and her pretty blues.

  Damn, she was beautiful.

  Each line and motion seemed to come robotically out of my mouth because before I knew it, I was slipping on the little ring that sat snuggly against her engagement ring.

  Mine.

  She was finally mine.

  Ivy took the tungsten band and put it on my ring finger, claiming me for her own.

  Finally, every last one of my dreams had come true. I looked forward to a future full of making and fulfilling new dreams with the love of my life. My wife, Ivory Rebecca Bell Hayes.

  - Epilogue -

  Ivory

  I pressed my fingers to my rounded belly and frowned.

  Our baby girl was due in four months, and I’d been outvoted on where to go for family vacation.

  “C’mon, you can’t frown while you’re sitting on a sugar beach, surrounded with sun and palm trees.”

  Hunter smiled down at me, salt water dripping from his hair, slightly curling over his forehead from all the surfing he’d been doing since sunrise.

  “You’re not the one that looks like a fat cow on the beach,” I bit back.

  No, I didn’t look like a fat cow, but how I loved to goad him.

  His eyes narrowed at me.

  He was just past thirty now, and was employed by the state of California to work on machines to help improve renewable energy. Hunter was passionate about his work, but not quite as passionate as I was about mine.

  Being a family therapist was exhausting, but it was rewarding in all the ways you could imagine. I helped couples work through their marriage issues, families with estranged or struggling teens, or even kids who were struggling with their adoption and integrating into their new family unit. I got to help people, kids and grownups included, and it felt so damn good to make a difference for the better in the world.

  My husband laid his hard body down next to me on the blanket, slicking his skin on mine and getting my side all wet in the process.

  I sighed, feigning annoyance, but he knew me too well.

  Hunter leaned over me, dripping that ocean water onto me while he pressed a long kiss to my lips.

  “How’re you holding up? Comfortable?” he asked, sliding his hand down my
stomach like he usually did since we’d found out I was pregnant.

  It wasn’t a surprise. We’d been trying sort of since my twenty-ninth birthday. We’d almost thought that we’d need medical intervention when I’d missed a period, then two.

  Needless to say, we had a perfectly healthy baby girl ready to join our little family, and the only people that could possibly be more excited about it were her grandparents.

  “You need anything, Ivy?” Mom asked, settling on the big blanket we’d spread out.

  Mom and Dad had taken off to get some lunch, returning with two sacks full of delicious smelling food.

  “Food, I need food,” I told her, struggling to sit up.

  Hunter laughed at me, then helped me up before framing me with his body so I’d have something to lean back against.

  Man, he’d only gotten more handsome and muscular since we’d gotten married. He spent a lot of time on his board on the Pacific ocean, but he also had started spending time at the gym when he couldn’t make it to the beach. His hands were still calloused, but his heart was soft and gooey as ever.

  “Only a couple more months!” Mom said, staring at my belly.

  “Mom, give it a rest already!” Hunter said behind me, stringing his arms around me to hug me to him.

  “I will not! I’m going to spoil that baby until I die. You can count on that!”

  I rolled my eyes, but just smiled at Penelope. She’d stopped being just Penelope to me a long time ago, and I’d started calling her just plain ol’ Mom. She’d cried the first time I did, and I never stopped since.

  “Let’s get the pregnant lady fed,” Dad said, voice laced with humor.

  But he knew better than to really joke about it. Since I got pregnant, the hanger was real. I needed food every couple hours, or I’d bite someone’s head off, instead.

  “I think we’ll take lunch back up to our room,” Hunter said, moving away from me to stand up. “I don’t want to chance Ivy getting heatstroke.”

  There was little chance of that, but I loved the way he fawned over my every need, trying to anticipate everything.