Lovestrung: A friends to lovers romance

by Karen Ferry

  “All right. I can work with that,” I muttered.

  “What’s going on, Penelope?”

  I stood up and stepped into his space before I met his eyes. The line between them was deeper than ever, and the suspicion that shined down on me almost made me waver.

  Almost.

  “I want to kiss you, Ethan. Let me tell you goodbye in my own way.”

  He gritted his teeth and I held my breath. I’d prepared for his rejection all night, steeling myself against the hurt I was bound to feel when he turned me down. But he didn’t. He kept staring hard into my eyes, as if he could read my mind. I didn’t dare to let go of his gaze and like the stubborn mule I was, I held it. I hoped he could see how determined I was. That I wasn’t going to go down without a fight this time.

  “All right.”

  The hoarseness of his voice surprised me, and I gulped for air.

  “What?” I whispered.

  He uncrossed his arms and took a step closer.

  “If that’s what you need before you leave, I’ll give it to you.”

  The tension inside his room was so thick it was palpable. Our chests were so close, they almost touched, and as he kept staring down at me, I felt a flush spread on my skin. I couldn’t read him, but it didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was that what I’d hoped for, no craved for so long wasn’t out of my reach anymore. Instead, it was so close I could taste victory.

  With slow movements, he raised his hands to frame my face. The warmth from his skin made me burn and as he bent his head, I gripped onto his shoulders. A part of me still feared that he’d regret saying yes this time, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.

  “Penelope,” he sighed.

  I liked the way my name sounded on his lips. Heated. Soft. Exasperated. If he’d say my name like that for the rest of our lives, I wouldn’t mind. I’d rejoice each and every time and cherish the sounds as they fell from his mouth.

  “Ethan,” I whispered. “Kiss me.”

  He leaned closer and brushed my lips with his, all the while keeping his eyes open. The kiss should’ve felt innocent – it was so light, the touch of his lips so faint – but I felt the burn as if was the most passionate of kisses at once. Then the burn intensified, and I fell under his spell. Sighing into his mouth, I kissed him back, longing for more than this.

  He gave me more.

  His hands around my face tightened, then moved until I felt his fingers buried in my hair, and I hummed when he tilted my head to the side. Unable to keep my eyes open any longer, I gave in to the flames coursing through my veins. When he deepened the kiss, my knees buckled, but he didn’t let me fall. Instead, his left hand left my face and he banded his arm around me, keeping me up and close to his body. The groan that fell from his mouth was the most erotic sound I’d ever heard, and I wanted to hear it again. And again.

  This kiss was nowhere near the innocent kiss he’d given me when I was fifteen years old. It was so much better. Instinctively, I knew that this kiss between us would be the last, but I was determined to prolong it. The tip of his tongue ran along my lips and I opened my mouth while I pulled his body closer. His tongue swept in to tangle with mine, and I delighted in the way he pressed his hips into my tummy; when I felt the hardness of his cock, the throbbing between my legs gave way to wetness. I couldn’t believe that I had the power to make him want me, but the physical evidence of his arousal wasn’t a lie.

  Oh, God, please don’t stop.

  When his tongue pushed further, a violent shudder moved through me, making me clench my thighs to alleviate the building pressure between them. I sucked hard on it, and when he rewarded me with another long groan, I rubbed my hardened nipples against his chest.

  I wanted to feel like this forever.

  Wanted. Desired. Worshipped.

  I wanted the taste of him to linger inside me for all eternity, for it was the most delicious taste I’d ever had.

  He tasted like sunbeams and starbursts and a passion so out of this world, I feared I was dreaming. Because how was it possible for one kiss to render me more lovesick than ever? It wasn’t fair, but it was my reality – not a fairy tale.

  And like all fairy tales, you have to wake up and come down on the firm ground instead of floating around on pink clouds.

  I knew it in my head as well as in my heart, and when his kisses turned slower, more tender, I knew my moment was ending. I clung to his arms for as long as I could, basking in the sweetness of his full, wet lips as his mouth left mine to trail over my cheeks, my forehead, and my closed eyelids. Finally, his mouth stopped on my neck. His tongue swept over my heated skin, making it break out in goose bumps, until finally, the puffs of air against me – he was breathing as hard as me – reminded me to let reality set in once more. Of their own volition, my hands found their way into his hair, and I sighed at the silky touch of it against my skin.

  “Pen,” he rasped, his voice hoarse and needy. “I think it’s best you leave now.”

  I nodded against his neck, breathing in his scent.

  But he didn’t let me go. His hands were still tangled in my hair.

  “You—.” I cleared my throat and tried again. “You’re still holding me.”

  I didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice.

  “It’s hard to let go,” he admitted and placed a small kiss on my neck. “Harder than I thought it would be.”

  I didn’t know what to say but waited for my heartbeat to slow down. The seconds ticked in the big grandfather clock in his room, and I counted them as I allowed myself to remain in his embrace for a full two minutes. As I stood there, I thought I felt his lips run up and down my neck, as if he couldn’t get enough of my skin, and that he tightened his hold around me the longer I stayed, but it couldn’t be true.

  Ethan certainly hadn’t rejected me this time – in fact, his lips had seemed just as hungry for mine after the initial tenderness of his kiss – but that didn’t mean that he harbored any romantic feelings toward me. I wasn’t crazy enough to delude myself into believing that he’d turn into my very own Mr. Rochester or Mr. Darcy and declare how much he loved me.

  Fairy tales in books were so much easier to believe.

  I knew it would only become harder if I remained in his embrace, so as carefully as possible, I untangled my hands from his hair and took a step back. I knew what he meant when he said it was hard to let go. Every limb of my body felt as heavy as lead, reluctant to leave the passion I knew only he would ever be able to ignite inside of me, but he was right. It was best I left now.

  While this had been the best kiss I’d ever had, it was over. I was leaving in three days, and I didn’t want him to get the idea that I was binding him to me in any way.

  I wasn’t. I was telling him goodbye, and we both knew it.

  “Goodbye, Ethan.” I kissed his neck and once I felt his hands leave my hair, I turned around and walked back to the door.

  I was proud of myself for not looking back.

  That didn’t stop me from feeling his eyes burning into my neck until I closed the door behind me.

  Back in my own room, I changed into my pajamas, my thoughts a mess. But oh, what a lovely mess it was. I could still feel Ethan’s mouth on mine. I could still taste him.

  I turned down the covers of my bed and closed my eyes.

  I’d never forget his taste.

  Never.

  II

  Ethan Collins

  I stood at the airport, hidden from her view as she told her parents goodbye.

  I didn’t want any of them to see me, but I couldn’t keep away.

  After our kiss, I had to see her one last time.

  How could I have ever believed I could keep my feelings for her in check?

  It was impossible.

  As she hugged her parents and turned away, her shoulders square and head held proud,

  I felt my heart crack and gasped for air.

  This was it. She was leaving.

  I
knew she’d come back, but what would happen then?

  There would never be a last time where she was concerned.

  8

  Longing

  I didn’t know I was in love with her until she was gone.

  I did know that I was in lust with her and had been for years, but that was entirely different. It was forbidden because of our history and because I was too old for her. In all honesty, it was a piss-poor excuse – the three years between us was nothing – but that’s how it had always felt to me. Ever since she was fifteen, and I had given in to be her first kiss, I had grown used to forcing myself to only think of her as my little sister, but now…now, things had changed between us.

  That kiss…fuck me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. When her lips had touched mine, it was like I’d been sucker-punched in my gut. All the missing pieces inside my soul clicked into place, and a whirlwind of emotions had pierced through me the longer we kissed. It was like a veil had been lifted from my eyes, but it still felt forbidden. Maybe that was the reason I’d found it so hard to let her go in the end? The forbidden was alluring. It ensnared you if you let it – it would consume you, heart, body, and soul if you allowed that to happen. It could make you weak, or it could make you stronger, depending on which way you looked at it.

  But no, I knew that wasn’t the reason I’d wanted to keep kissing her. Why it had been almost impossible to let her go. While I was definitely still in lust with my best friend, I could no longer deny the truth from myself.

  I was unequivocally, helplessly, definitely in love with her as well. Her taste was embedded firmly inside me, I couldn’t imagine never tasting it again.

  A lot of my friends in Blacksburg believed that I got laid on a regular basis because of my side job as an erotic model-slash-porn star – and it wasn’t because I didn’t get a lot of offers – but if they knew I turned down more women than I slept with, their eyes would bug out. They’d never believe me. The easiest thing to do had been to let them keep thinking I went home to a different girl every weekend, got my dick well and truly fucked, and that was that. It wasn’t as if I cared about the assumptions they made about my lifestyle, anyway. No, the job had been necessary for the past two years, and if my co-stars and I sometimes ended up in bed together after our paid gig was over for the day, that was fine. I was a man, plain and simple. I had needs that needed to be seen to from time to time, though I managed to bury them more often than not, and as long as the women were consenting adults, who was I to turn down their offers when we both needed an itch scratched?

  It wasn’t as if it was a bad job, but I’d never have considered doing it if it weren’t for the fact that I knew the owner – my best friend, Lucas Michaels, had started it five years ago when he was only twenty-two years old. Some people might say that it was strange that a man decided to go into the porn industry, but Luke had never done what was expected of him. Born and bred into one of the wealthiest, southern families in Charlottesville, he’d defied any and all things that would turn him into “a boring stickler for traditions”, as he tended to say when people asked him what had possessed him to set up his business.

  I kind of understood what he meant – his parents were snobs, it was that simple. They never saw their son as more than a troublemaker who sought out to embarrass them at every turn, but they underestimated him and his brilliant knack for business. Everything he touched turned into gold, but despite his own success, I sometimes worried why he never seemed to be content, always striving for more.

  The night he offered me to become an erotic model at Privé, we’d been at a bar, and at first, the job seemed like the perfect solution for me and my need for independency: I got paid to model with beautiful women and we had to be naked or close to it. Our faces were either cut out of the photos, hidden in shadows, or behind masks for the more explicit, erotic movies the company also filmed and produced for their monthly subscribers – and there was respect on all sides.

  “Plus,” he’d said, tilting his beer at me, brown eyes serious and determined, “the pay is fucking good, man. It’ll solve all your problems.”

  And that’s how it started. I quickly found out that it wasn’t a sleazy firm that made crappy, unrealistic or cheap porn at all; no, it was tasteful, sexy as hell, and I had actually enjoyed working there for the most part. The bad part was that while my friends were accepting – some were even envious – there were the Montgomerys to consider. I’d hate for them to be disappointed in me if they ever found out what I’d been doing, and I didn’t want to lie to them if they asked me what I got up to. That was the main reason I’d kept away from them for a year.

  Yes, it was better they didn’t know.

  And now…now there was Penelope.

  Sweet, feisty Penelope who refused to let me keep my distance. The girl who’d always preferred to be called Pippa because it was similar to the fictional character, Pippi Longstocking – the girl who was as strong as a hundred men and travelled the world alone, only accompanied by her horse and a tiny monkey. My Penelope was still the same and yet so different from when we grew up. No, she was definitely not a girl anymore – it would be wrong to keep seeing her as that now that her taste had awoken me with a hunger that unmatched anything else. She was a woman.

  A woman I craved and loved like crazy.

  Fuck my life. Things were about to get a whole lot complicated, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.

  Nor did I believe I wanted to.

  She’d been away for eleven months now. Eleven long, lonely months. Months filled with craving her as if she was a drug, and nights spent dreaming about her so often I’d lost count. Nights where I’d wake up, my dick so hard and achy I’d have no choice but to jack off to the memory of her lips. To imagine her lying beneath me, spread wide and writhing as my mouth and my words showed her how crazy with lust she made me feel. The way she’d felt in my arms – as if she’d fitted perfectly and no other woman would ever come close – was my favorite memory in a sea of favorites I shared with her; it was always at the back of my mind, almost impossible to ignore, even at lectures or at work.

  I felt like a fraud, a liar, when my side job needed me to focus on another woman. On make-believe and fantasies to cater both men and women. Thank fuck that part of my life would be over in a few months. I hadn’t taken another woman to bed since I’d kissed Penelope, and to say that it felt like my balls and dick were weeping from the lack of female attention it was getting would be an understatement.

  It had been torture.

  Now, there was only one month left until, I hoped, my suffering was over.

  Thirty days and nights left to endure until she was home.

  Seven-hundred-and-twenty hours – not that I was counting or anything.

  I worried if she’d changed a lot while she was away. I hoped to fuck she hadn’t, but I’d learned early in my life to always expect the unexpected and to never get my hopes up about anything.

  Hoping was for the weak, like my old man used to say.

  It wasn’t often I thought about what my life had been like before I’d been taken into foster care and then came to live with the Montgomerys, but lately, my thoughts had been plagued by him – about what he’d done to my mom. The grief had never disappeared over the years, but I’d managed to compartmentalize my memories so that when I allowed myself to think of her, I remembered the good things. I never thought about the night she’d been taken away from me; if I did, I feared I’d bury myself into a black hole so deep I’d never get out of it again. The sorry excuse of a man was still alive, so maybe that was why my mind couldn’t find the rest it so clearly needed. Knowing that he was behind bars, never to be released, was a small win, but a victory nonetheless.

  But what I couldn’t push away were the letters he kept sending me. Every year, without fail, I would receive one on my birthday. They’d started the year I turned thirteen, and I’d learned to expect them – but I’d never opened one of them. He didn’t deser
ve my time or attention, and whenever another year passed, and I saw the gray envelope with the prison’s name stamped on the back taunting me when I opened my mailbox, I’d tear it to pieces at once and either throw the scraps away or burn them. It was my silent way of saying Fuck you to him. I might share his DNA, but he would never be anything but filth to me.

  A letter shouldn’t hold that much power over someone, but to me, it represented a noose that was being tied around my neck, slowly choking me to death.

  I forced the unwelcome memories away and turned off the light before I locked the door to the animal shelter I still worked at from time to time. Even though I was only months away from becoming a veterinarian, I loved working there so much that I knew it would be difficult to quit. As I went to my truck to drive home to my loft, I thought only about Penelope.

  Yes. I could handle the next thirty days. Soon, she’d be home, and then I’d make my move.

  And that was to make her mine forever.

  I wouldn’t give up, no matter what rocky road was in our future.

  Astrid was a gorgeous woman, and one of the best to work with at Privé. A tall, voluptuous brunette who owned up to her curves and I usually enjoyed posing with her.

  Just not today.

  “Ethan,” she purred, her lips grazing my ear, “don’t be such a spoilsport.”

  She was leaning against me, her back to the photographer, her arms around my neck and tits pressed tight to my chest. Naked from the waist down, her bare crotch was on full display, her ass cheeks spread by my big hands. Completely on display, and very much getting off on being watched while doing the shoot with me. And not just when she was with me – being watched when she did a shoot, or a film, was her kink. I wasn’t an exhibitionist, but I didn’t mind having a couple spectators once in a while. When I first started working here two years ago, I’d been invited to watch some scenes, so I went. It was important to get a feeling of what the company, and the concept, was really about, after all.