The Cowboy's City Girl - An Enemies To Lovers Romance

by Emerson Rose

  Things could be over in the blink of an eye. The threat of his old personality constantly looms in the back of my mind. Right next to it is that ugly insecure piece of me that doesn’t believe I deserve any of this: the gifts, the sex, the overwhelming feelings of being loved, being cherished… none of it.

  I finger the gown hanging in front of me. It’s stunning, made of silver sheer material with a bit of shimmer woven in amongst tiny crystals that run in vertical lines down the length of the dress.

  I’m surprised it’s not purple; every piece of clothing he has given me has been lavender or purple. I can’t wait to put it on, but I’m praying someone has removed the price tag. I’m still recovering from our visit to Tiffany’s and I didn’t even see the price on my bracelet.

  It’s a rare occurrence to be alone in his house. He sent me to my room to get ready for dinner, so I figure I’ll take advantage and fill the tub in my bathroom.

  I soak away all of my anxiety and emerge smelling of jasmine, compliments of an amazing bottle of body wash that is always magically full on the table next to the tub. I tap open an app on my phone and listen to some music.

  A heavy danceable beat bumps from the small speaker while I dry my hair and apply my makeup. I feel happy, the deep-down-bursting-at-the-seams kind of happy as I shake my hips and make silly faces in the mirror.

  I love being a goofball and I’ve missed it being here. It feels good to just mess around and be silly with no intensity, no worries, and no tension. That’s why I love music so much, it’s the perfect escape.

  I move into my room and find two boxes on the bed that weren’t there before: a shoebox and another larger, flat, glossy black box.

  The floodgates have been opened. He’s never going to stop with the gifts now. Sighing, I open the shoebox first because I adore shoes.

  Inside is a pair of four-inch silver heels encrusted with crystals with thin ankle straps. They’re exquisite, as is everything Marcus gifts me. I can hardly wait to put them on, but first the black box.

  I remove the lid and, nestled inside layers of tissue, is a set of sheer panties and a matching bra, complete with a delicate garter and sheer delicate stockings.

  Oh yes, he knows what he likes. I drop my silk robe and slip into the undergarments and my new bracelet. The dress can wait; I need to get those shoes on my feet. I slide them on and stand in front of the freestanding antique mirror. A stranger looks back at me.

  I am elegant, and sexy, and delicate, a far cry from scrubs and tennis shoes. My wavy raven hair cascades down my back with only a few pieces from the front gathered loosely at the nape of my neck.

  I tilt my head to the side and get lost in thought. I startle when the door clicks behind me. Marcus opens it a crack and stops in his tracks when he sees me standing there in the heels and lingerie he bought for me.

  He bites his lip and pushes the door open wider for a better view. He’s already dressed for dinner, the picture of perfection looking like a male model in a custom-tailored tuxedo.

  Then, without a word, he steps out and closes the door quietly. Alone and perplexed, I wonder why he didn’t seize the moment. Why didn’t I?

  My heart is racing. He ignited a familiar heat between my thighs after only seconds in his presence. Every molecule in my body is awake.

  Focus on getting dressed; the faster you get ready, the faster you’ll be with him.

  The dress makes me feel like a queen when I step into it. The chiffon flows softly around my legs. There is a slit all the way up one side and the pale color of the dress is a perfect complement to my brown skin. I make one last mirror check, I adjust the diamond sapphire cuff on my wrist, and I’m ready.

  The smell of Italian food fills the house, and my stomach growls. I haven’t eaten much today. Marcus is usually very punctual about meals, but our day hasn’t exactly gone according to his plans.

  The dining room has been transformed from every day ordinary into a dreamy romantic wonderland. The crystal chandelier is dim, bathing the room in a soft glow.

  Flickering candles line the breakfront on my right and the long mahogany table is covered with a deep purple cloth. Glass bowls with huge floating lilies run down the center of the table, which has a place setting on each end. I don’t want to sit so far from him; how are we supposed to talk?

  An instrumental version of Adele’s Rolling In The Deep is playing on the sound system when Marcus arrives. He stops behind me and presses his front to my back as he sweeps my hair from one shoulder onto the other for better access to my neck.

  “My God, you are stunning. I have never seen anything more beautiful than you are right now. I don’t know how I am going to make it through dinner without ravishing you.”

  A shiver runs down my spine as his warm breath tickles my ear. I turn in his arms to face him and zero in on his mouth. I place my hand on his smooth, freshly shaven cheek, and he closes his eyes and tilts his face into my palm. He inhales deeply as if to breathe me into his body and turns his face inward to place a kiss there.

  A waiter from Dominus enters the room, breaking the spell. Marcus follows me to my seat and helps me scoot in as well as he can since hampered by his crutches and then takes his seat a mile away at the other end of the table.

  “You look very handsome, Mr. Castillo.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why are we so far from each other? I don’t like it clear down here.”

  “I am an extremely disciplined man, but even I know my limits. I apologize for the distance, but there is no way I could make it through dinner in a private dining room with you in that dress. I’ve already imagined tearing it off of you and bending you over the table to fuck you hard and proper. Especially knowing how delicious you look underneath.”

  He gazes at me with his elbows on the table and his hands steepled in front of him. He’s a smart man indeed. I already need a change of panties and we’ve just sat down.

  I am dying to be closer to him, but I have business to discuss with him at dinner so I focus on that and stay at my end of the long table. It’s a challenge to stay poised, a game maybe, and I really hate to lose a game.

  We both take a drink of the wine the server has poured for us. I’ve never been a big wine drinker but clearly I was not choosing the right one because this is amazing. I could down the entire glass in one gulp but I mind my manners.

  Dinner is served in courses, we make light chitchat while we eat, and I drink more wine than I should before I remember that I need to talk to him about going back to work at the hospital. I hate to ruin the mood, but it’s actually to my advantage to do it now when he has us seated so far apart.

  “Marcus, I have something I want to talk to you about,” I start hesitantly.

  “No good conversation ever starts with those words, Imani.” He leans back in his chair with a sigh.

  “No, it’s not anything terrible. I just… I want to go back to work at the hospital.”

  There, I said it, no sugar coating. His face goes cold and a bit ashen. He isn’t frowning, he’s expressionless. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all.

  “You’re not happy here?”

  “No, it’s not that at all. How could anyone not be happy here? I love being with you. I just don’t feel like I’m really earning my salary. I’m not doing anything for you that you can’t do for yourself. I’d rather be your girlfriend and not your nurse. I feel a little whorish accepting money while we are sleeping together and having a relationship.”

  Thank God for the wine buzz, I’d never have been able to admit all of that if I were sober. Silence covers us like a heavy blanket as he sets his wine glass down, surveying me carefully. He crosses his arms over his chest. He looks like he’s scheming.

  “You go back to work at the hospital, move in here with me permanently, and I’ll sell your apartment,” he says.

  It’s a command, an order, twisted to sound like a compromise. I can’t deny that it’s what I want, to be with him permanently an
d to have the fulfillment my career brings me. My family and friends are going to freak, but, for him, I’ll suffer their wrath; let ‘em bring it.

  “Okay,” I breathe, after a few seconds. I’m not sure if he heard me from so far away, but his entire body relaxes, and it’s only then that I realize how tightly he had been wound.

  His head drops forward chin to chest and his shoulders slump. I’m overwhelmed with the need to connect with him. I want to touch him, I need to taste him, breathe in his familiar scent.

  The surge of passion to be skin against skin with this intense romantic man consumes me. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol or Marcus’s words but I am filled with newfound confidence. I push my chair back and stand up. His head snaps up and his eyes track me as I carefully step onto my chair and then onto the table. I pause to catch my balance and watch his eyes go wide and his mouth drops open, a first for him I’m sure.

  I begin to walk the length of the table, sweeping flowers, vases, dishes, anything in my path onto the floor with my feet. When the chandelier blocks my way, I move gracefully around it like a punching bag and a few steps later I’m towering over Marcus who sits back in his chair in awe.

  His eyes rake over my body and back to my mouth where he focuses all of his attention. His tongue slides between his lips and back inside his mouth, taking his bottom lip between his teeth.

  I lower myself down in front of him, opening my dress at the slit to bare my legs to him. He leans forward and pulls me down into his lap. I hitch my dress up around my waist and straddle him in the chair.

  He leans close to my ear and says in a low feral voice, “You are the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. I cannot believe you’re mine, for my eyes only, here with me always.”

  I roll my hips into his rock-hard erection, and he moans long and deep.

  “Fuck, Imani, what you do to me.” I feel the zipper of my dress sliding down my back while he uses his other hand to burn a trail down my newly exposed skin.

  My pulse accelerates, pushing the alcohol through my bloodstream faster. I’m lost in a different place now, gone into a different stratosphere, a fantasy world, a fairy tale in a castle with the king.

  The most beautiful man imaginable is growing steely hard between my legs. His touch has me sinking helplessly into quicksand with the weight of his passion. I could die right here in this moment and not care. My life would be complete, and it would end in utter bliss.

  My gorgeous new dress is lifted over my head and abandoned on the floor haphazardly, leaving me nearly naked in lingerie and heels. My long hair would shield me from anyone entering the dining room from the door behind us if I cared, but I don’t.

  I’m not in any way concerned at this moment about anyone or anything other than Marcus. The entire kitchen and wait staff could pull up chairs and be an audience, and it wouldn’t bother me a bit.

  Marcus’s hands smooth over the sheer stockings from my knees to the inside of my thighs; dangerously close to my core, he stops to hover, teasing, before traveling up my belly.

  He cups my swollen breasts and circles his thumbs over my dark nipples simultaneously. I drop my head back with a moan as his hands glide behind me, removing my bra. I grip his broad shoulders as he takes turns sucking and gently scraping my nipples with his mouth and teeth. My body bows into him while he forges a path of passionate kisses to the hollow of my neck and ending at my mouth.

  His mouth is demanding and urgent. He takes what he needs, and I surrender everything I have to him. He slides his hands under my ass and guides me toward him. He moves the sheer material of my panties to the side and drags his fingers through my hot, wet folds, spreading the slickness back to the forbidden pucker of my ass where he pauses.

  “You are soaked for me, Imani. I fucking love it.” A crazed frenzy begins, and there are too many clothes separating us. I need him naked, now.

  I tug at his tie and fumble with the buttons of his shirt. When I can’t endure the tediousness of the task any longer, I pull it open and the buttons pop and bounce off the wood of the chair flying in every direction, but I don’t care. I can finally feel him, his hot skin pressed against mine.

  Breathlessly, I pull away just long enough to get him out of his jacket and shirt before burying myself in his neck. I kiss along the back of his ear and circle my hips against his. I thread my fingers through his soft hair and press my feet on the floor to roll forward and rub my breasts against his soft chest hair. I feel his cock strain against his tuxedo pants and reach down to stroke it through the material.

  I unzip his tux pants and slide my hand inside to grip his hot, silky length in my hand. “You’re wet for me, too,” I say between kisses. I slide my finger over his slit and spread his pre-cum around the tip of his cock.

  Who am I? This woman writhing against Marcus, grabbing and panting with want, can’t be me, can it? I’m insatiable; I can never ever get enough of this man. Thank God, it seems the feeling is mutual.

  Strong hands surround my hips and move me back until my feet hit the floor and I’m standing before him.

  He slides my panties down, and I step out of them, leaving the stockings and heels in place. I move to take my former position, but he stops me with his palm between my breasts.

  He gently feathers over my face, closing my eyes with two fingers as he brushes past my lips and down over my chest and belly.

  His hands glide around and cup my ass while he lays his cheek against my belly. I can feel his brow furrow against my skin, and his lips move against my skin when he speaks.

  “I know this is moving very fast, but I always know what I want, Imani, and I want you. I will worship you until the day I die. You have complete control over my heart; it beats only for you. I’ll give you anything, follow you anywhere, take you everywhere, just promise to stay with me, never leave, and be mine. I love you, I have ever since the first time I heard your voice in the dark.”

  My heart explodes with love and my body with desire. I thrust my hands through his thick soft curls and I say the words he wants to hear, the words I want to say.

  “I will never leave you. I love you, too, Marcus, so very much.”

  Like a bull released from his pen, he surges forward on one foot and lifts me onto the edge of the table. He thrusts into me hard and deep, and before I can think another thought, he’s begun a punishing rhythm, pounding into me, his hands and mouth everywhere at once, desperate to prove the words he has just spoken.

  “Open your eyes, Imani, I want to see you when you come,” he grunts between thrusts. Gripping the hair at the back of his head, I lock eyes with him and feel the heat build between my legs with every powerful lunge of his hips.

  Heavy breathing and the sound of our bodies slapping against one another with unbelievable energy are the only sounds in the room. How he manages to put this kind of force behind every advance, I can’t imagine.

  I curl my legs around his hips and dig into his ass with my heels, encouraging him to go faster, deeper, harder. I can’t hold on much longer, and he sees it in my eyes.

  “I want you to come, baby.” His words send me into a downward spiral. A tornado tears through my body destroying everything in its path as my orgasm consumes me.

  I can’t help but close my eyes and drop my head back in ecstasy, and Marcus isn’t far behind me. Four more thrusts, and he’s gone.

  His cock pulses inside of me as I come down from my bliss. We’re a tangled mess of limbs, sweat, and wild damp hair, and the smell of sex hangs thick in the air. My mind returns from rapture as we stand there gasping for air. We are standing naked in the formal dining room with a house full of people from Dominus who just prepared and served us a four-course dinner. Now that the alcohol has burned off, I can’t believe I acted with such abandon.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and you can stop. No one is here. I didn’t plan on this exactly,” he says, motioning toward the mess of broken glass and crushed flowers. “But I did want privacy after dinner. No m
ore worrying,” he murmurs into my neck, and I relax.

  I’m not sure I could face his staff after this. We weren’t discreet, and that’s a lot of broken glass to explain.

  “I’m sorry about the mess. I don’t know what got into me.”

  He thrusts his hips gently where we’re still joined together and smiles.

  “I do.

  Me.”

  Thirty

  Marcus has been on the phone trying to get me back to work at the hospital all morning. After several calls to his lawyer and human resources, he’s finally gotten it all wrapped up.

  “You start back next week. Tuesday night at seven, to be exact. I am going to call the movers and my real estate agent. We need to put your apartment on the market.”

  We are sitting across from each other with his mammoth desk between us. I can’t keep my knee from bouncing up and down while he goes on efficiently rearranging my life.

  The news that I will be returning to work is comforting, but selling my apartment and moving into Marcus’s mansion is not. I’m still trying to figure out how I agreed to this compromise.

  It was done in the heat of the moment, and it didn’t help that I was a little tipsy and a lot turned on. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I should have known he would be full steam ahead with this arrangement first thing the next morning.

  It’s not that I don’t want to be with Marcus. Living here with him, sleeping in his bed, making him happy every day and, just as important, every night is a dream come true.

  But I still want the safety net of my apartment. I worked hard for years to buy my own place. My parents were always offering to help me, but it was part of the healing process for me.

  I needed to be independent and stand on my own two feet. I love my little corner of the world, and without it I’m afraid my life will have no anchor. What if something goes wrong? What if Marcus’s personality changes? What if he has complications from his accident? What if he falls out of love with me?