Broken: Enemies to Lovers Romance (City Slickers Book 1)

by P Mulholland

  “Yes. Let’s call it licorice.”

  I couldn’t stop smiling. My whole body was bubbling over with joy.

  “But…” she continued.

  “No!” I protested. “No buts. Just keep it at that. You licorice me and that’s all that matters.”

  “It’s just that-”

  “No! I know what you’re going to say. It’s like a damn record stuck on the same tune. We work. You know we work. We’ve lived together for fuck’s sakes. You. Know. We. Work.”

  “Do you think we can make this work long distance?” she asked.

  I stood up. “I will make it work long distance, until it doesn’t work. And then I’ll kidnap you and lock you in my closet with that Chucky doll.”

  “Ew!”

  “You bought it for me.” I stepped closer to her. “I have to keep the knives locked up in case it breaks free from its packet.”

  I was only a foot away from her now, the woman that I am madly in licorice with who just confessed that she felt the same way. Dreams were coming true. I pressed my body tightly against hers and wrapped my arms around her waist. “One day you might actually say the correct L word to me.”

  “Can you say it to me?” she whispered.

  I cleared my throat. “I’ve never said it to anyone.” I began to kiss her bare neck and ran a free hand under her tee shirt.

  “Say it to me,” she whispered.

  “You say it to me first.”

  “I think we should get drunk tonight,” she said sighing, as I massaged her breast with my hand, still kissing her neck. She smelt different on that side of the country.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “No one here to penalize us,” she sniggered. “Assholes.”

  “Fuckers.” I had her tee shirt right off now and she was unhooking her bra. “Good to see you can manage that on your own, now.” She dropped her bra to the floor and I leant down and starting sucking her left nipple while she moaned and arched her back. I pulled away from her nipple, wrapping my arms around her, lifting her up onto the kitchen bench. Then she ran her hands under my tee shirt and I pulled it off and pressed my hard chest against her, while her legs wrapped around me.

  I ran my hands up her bare thighs, slid my fingers under her shorts and started to work on her clit over her panties. She leant back and moaned. “I so licorice you,” she sighed.

  “Good,” I said, planting my mouth over hers and kissing her passionately, running my tongue over her teeth, dancing with her tongue, pushing further into her so she moaned into my mouth.

  My cock was so hard and throbbing against my jeans, I had to release it soon. My fingers pushed her panties aside and slipped inside of her sex. Two fingers in and out, then three. She was sopping wet, my fingers covered in her milk.

  I pulled her shorts and panties off in one go so she was completely naked, spread eagled on the kitchen bench. I dropped my jeans and entered her. She leaned back on her hands, while I started off slowly, thrusting to the beat of a slow song playing in my head.

  When she started to hit her heights, her thighs squeezed me tighter. I increased the pace of my thrusting, grunting in unison.

  “This is so good, Jake,” she sighed, her head back, her tits jiggling to the beat.

  Thrust. Thrust. Thrust.

  “Faster!” she begged. “Faster!”

  I increased the pace even more. She felt so damn good.

  Thrust. Thrust. Thrust.

  Then she dropped her mouth open, let out a cry of pleasure and clenched, shuddering all over.

  I was about to come when she cried out, “Don’t stop.” So I kept thrusting as multiple orgasms came and went and she sighed and moaned and…God I loved this woman.

  I ejaculated inside of her just as the last wave came and went. I was spent. I rested my head on her shoulder wrapped in a warm embrace with her long arms and legs and we stayed that way for several minutes.

  “We gotta go,” she whispered.

  I groaned, my face embedded in her neck. “Where?”

  “To the beach party. I bought beer. You can get me drunk and hit on me.”

  I laughed.

  Brydes was the best.

  Chapter Forty One

  Brydie

  It was true.

  I did love him. More than I expected to. I failed to get him out of my mind when I traveled, and I missed him. A lot. Yet, I had the same ol’ conflict; his age was a barrier. Ideally, I should’ve turned my back and dropped contact. But I couldn’t. I loved him too much and I couldn’t wait to see him again.

  When I turned to see his bearded face in the airport my heart skipped a beat and my knees went weak. I hadn’t felt like that since Aaron. I needed to see him to test if those feelings were real or just blown up in my mind to a fantasy level. But when I saw him, I knew right then and there my exoskeleton had been smashed. My heart fluttered in my chest and I was so nervous, I could hardly breathe.

  Damn it. He’d got to me. We’d been through so much together that a tight bond was created that was hard to break. He knew how I liked my coffee, what food I hated, what food I loved, my favorite music, how to touch me, how to make me beg for more. He knew everything. He knew all my secrets, except one, and I knew his. I had nothing left but my raw soul to give him. And he took that as well.

  We were both buzzing from our chat and the sex afterwards when I drove to the beach. There was nothing like a good conversation to clear the air and good sex to calm the nerves. Now we were back to our normal selves, poking fun at each other and talking about whatever topic we felt like.

  There was a bonfire set up on the beach when we arrived with several party goers sitting on the sand around the flames. Lani, who was subleasing my apartment. Her boyfriend Chad was having his thirtieth birthday and in beach bum style, they organized a beach party. Chad and Lani were in a band together so they had their acoustic guitars and drums ready for a whirl.

  I introduced them to Jake and they in turn were very warm and welcoming, handing him a beer and asking what work he was in. Lani, who was privy to some of my Jake dilemmas, pulled me aside and whispered that he looked older than 21 and I sighed in relief.

  “It’s the beard,” I whispered.

  “He’s sexy,” she said, and I had to agree. The dark disheveled hair, white tee shirt firmly fitted over his broad shoulders, a sweet, shy smile. I took my place next to him on a piece of driftwood and cracked open a beer. Then we did a little private toast to us for surviving captivity for five months and coming out the other side as besties instead of enemies.

  We took off our shoes and dug our toes into the sand as everyone sung an old John Lennon tune. When the sun dropped over the horizon and the temperature cooled we snuggled up together, mesmerized by the crackling flames of the fire.

  “So if you saw me in your club, what would your pick up line be?” I asked Jake as he finished off his beer.

  “I’d probably maneuver my way through the crowd so I ended up dancing next to you. Then ask if I could buy you a drink.”

  “And if I said no?”

  “Then I’d ask if I could buy you the ocean.”

  I smiled and gazed out at the glassy horizon that went on forever, stained orange from the dying sun. I dropped my head onto his shoulder.

  “Were you serious about us traveling together?”he asked, opening his second beer.

  “I’ve never been more serious about anything.”

  “When were you thinking?”

  “That depended on you,” I said. “You have more commitments than I. Plus, we’d have to organize it properly. Where we’re going. How long we’re going for. Is there anywhere you’d like to go?”

  “Africa,” he said.

  “Really? Which African country?”

  “All of them. Well…the ones that aren’t in a civil war or have guerilla warfare. Madagascar would be cool.”

  “To see the lemurs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know they don’t really tal
k and dance like those ones in the movie.”

  “Don’t they?” he mocked. “Shame. Maybe I’ll change my mind and go see the penguins instead.”

  “This is exciting,” I said, buzzing as the musicians began to play Mull of Kintyre that everyone knew the lyrics to, except Jake. I took his hand and led him away from the circle of people and we slow danced in the dark, bare footed and in love.

  “I just have the small matter of a little dog and a big boss to contend with,” he said, holding me tightly, as if afraid to let me go. “So, don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Maybe we’ll just go for a month somewhere,” I suggested.

  “Sounds like a plan.” Someone requested an upbeat song and we stepped up our pace, dancing like it was 1954, jiving and dipping and twirling. We giggled the whole time. We had no idea what we were doing, but we were having fun doing it.

  After taking a long walk along the beach hand in hand and in the dark, we spent the night in the back of my van, roughing it. It wasn’t even a long drive back to my place, but we were a bit tipsy and very frisky and it was safer to stay there. I could feel his body relax as the stress of his job and family slid off him and the happiness of the moment shone through. I let him seduce me. Drunk and smelling of beer, we bumbled our way through sex, then slept until dawn. Our backs ached from the too thin mattress and we were craving fried eggs and toast. So I drove us back home and Jake had a shower while I cooked breakfast.

  This was the life. But something inside of me felt it was all going to come crashing down. Yes, I knew I had only three days with him, but I wondered if these plans of travel were ever going to come to fruition, or were we just fantasizing? Once we got back to our normal lives on the other side of the country from each other, were we just going to drift apart?

  After breakfast I took Jake out surfing, which was hilarious. He was willing to try anything, even with lily white legs on show. I had never laughed so much in my life. He failed to stay on the board for longer than a second in two inches of water, and was drenched before he even hit the waves. One thing that I loved about Jake was he made a great clown, but not the Pennywise variety. Even passersby stopped and laughed at his antics. He soaked it all up. Making people laugh made him feel good, I could see the sparkle in his eyes.

  In the end, he threw me over his shoulder and threatened to dump me in the water. I shrieked and giggled and then when he lost his footing we both landed in the frothy waves.

  I laughed so much, my jaw hurt. We went into a local café for lunch. We were starving and wet, but didn’t care. We were local people and that’s what local people did.

  Jake took a sip of his cappuccino, rested his chin on the palm of his hand and just gazed at me lovingly. “This has been the best time ever,” he said.

  “And you’ve still got two more days to go.”

  “What else have you got planned for me?”

  I winked at him. “Wait and see.” Actually, I had nothing planned. I just wanted us to hang out and talk.

  “Soooo,” he started, and I knew he wanted to talk about us, as in our future, “does this mean I can change my status on social media?”

  “What have you currently got?”

  “Single. Bachelor.”

  “The media might hunt you down, asking about your mystery girlfriend.”

  “You’re hardly a mystery, Brydes. Everyone thought we were an item, before we even were an item.”

  “Huh. Okay, I give you permission to change your social media status to…”

  “In a relationship,” he said, finishing off my sentence. “With you. Brydie O’Neal.”

  “You want the whole world to know who your latest is?”

  “Yep.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Did your activist friends get upset at you for living with the ex-shareholders of Neptune Fisheries?”

  “They didn’t even know about it. If they did, they didn’t say anything. Too busy fighting for the oceans to worry about small things like that.”

  His lovely brown eyes dropped down and a somber expression crept across his face.

  “Don’t say it,” I said, reading him.

  “Say what?”

  “You’re going to start talking about our future. Me being here and you being in Chicago.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I’ve already worked it out in my head. I’ll fly here once a month for three to four days and work a couple of Saturdays to make up for it.”

  I grinned and grabbed his hand, kissing it. “That makes me so happy. But why did you have a sad face just now?”

  “I was just wondering if you still have nightmares about the prison?”

  “Oh. That.” I looked down at my coffee to find the froth was in the shape of a flying bird, a seagull maybe. “The nightmares rear their ugly heads now and again. I often think about her…the woman in the prison. She must’ve felt so desperately sad and hopeless to do that. It seems ridiculous and wrong that I’m sitting here enjoying my freedom, while she’s…”

  “What did she do?”

  “Ummm, she smothered her baby with a pillow.” My words were dry and without emotion, but on the inside I was dying. That moment was the first time I’d ever said it out loud. “I wasn’t fast enough to stop her.” I shook my head, watching the seagull fade to nothing in my coffee. “Silence. The silence is something I’ll never forget for as long as I live.”

  I felt his large warm hand grasp my trembling hand. I couldn’t look up, because I knew I’d cry. I wasn’t crying for me, I was crying for them, the mother, the baby born in prison and the other women locked up for being some asshole’s drug mule.

  Chapter Forty Two

  Jake

  We spent the next couple of days together, lazing about, talking, walking on the beach, drinking coffee in cafes, and falling into bed. The perfect life.

  The time for me to leave came far too quickly. We stood in the airport in a tight embrace for several minutes. I didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want me to go. A strange cruelty. I wondered if this situation would’ve been different if she hadn’t been attacked, she might be more open to moving back to Chicago with me. But the ocean was there, as was her career and I came a distant second. Corey’s stinging words rotated in my mind. Even Aaron Trews came a distant second to her fish friends.

  I couldn’t get over how damn depressed I was flying back without her, the woman I fell in love with. I drank on the plane, in business class of course, to suppress my sadness. My only glimmer of hope was that I was flying back in approximately 4 weeks, for another 3 days, and it couldn’t come soon enough.

  We talked at great length about our travel plans. The first step was for me to broach the subject with Red. So on Tuesday morning when I got back to work, I asked to see him briefly.

  “Your nose is sun burnt,” was the first thing he said to me when I sat down behind his grand desk.

  “Been surfing,” I said. “So…Brydie and I are talking about going away for while.”

  “Where?”

  “Europe, maybe Africa. She wants to head back down to Australia and New Zealand.”

  “That’s a lot of travel.”

  “Yeah. So, we were wondering if it’s possible for me to take a few months off.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific. How many months exactly?”

  Brydie wanted us to go for 6 months, but I knew that was too long, so I said, “three months.”

  “That’s a long time. Who’s going to do your job when you’re not here.”

  “I thought maybe it could be shared between Sophia and Corey.”

  He frowned. “Have you asked them if they want extra responsibilities?”

  “No, not yet.”

  He flared his nostrils, then sighed irritably. “You know son, it’s a privilege for you to be in this job, considering that you’re undereducated and your behavior has put an ugly stain on the Austin name. If it wasn’t for your mother and the fact you are my son, I would’ve sacked you mont
hs ago.”

  “I’m good at my job,” I argued.

  “Lots of people would be good at your job, if given half the chance.”

  “So, is it a no?” I asked, cutting to the chase. It’s going to take me years to work off the stigma I created through drinking and other unmentionables.

  “Not entirely. You’re young and I think seeing the world would do you some good. Maybe open your eyes a little to how good you’ve got it here.”

  “I know I have it good, Red. Just being with Brydie has opened my eyes massively.” My girl crying in the café after telling me about the baby in the prison was still fresh in my mind. I bet none of the Austin clan had ever experienced something like that. He said I needed to open my eyes, yet what things do my family see on a day to day basis that made them so much more worldly than I? What do they see from the private plane when they’re flying over slums, drought-stricken farms, and trailer parks? Answer, nothing. Because they’re too damn busy reading the latest Wall Street Journal, or checking the stock market or chatting on the phone to an investor. Give me a break. What a load of shit.

  “Let’s make a deal,” Red said, leaning back in his chair with the gold fountain pen mom gave him for Christmas in his hand. “When you finish your degree, I’ll give you six weeks.”

  “Six weeks. That’s good, I can work with that.”

  “Finish the degree first, pass your exams, then we’ll talk,” he said sternly.

  I reached out my hand to for him to shake and he took it firmly, asserting his dominance.

  “And where are you two thinking of going?” he asked, as I was leaving.

  “Africa maybe.”

  His eyebrows shot up.

  “You seem surprised.”

  “Well…I half expected you to say Monaco or Dubai or some other magnet for wealthy party-goers.”

  “I’m hardly going to open my eyes if I’m mingling with people of my own creed. I want to see the real world dad, not the gold-plated version.”

  I detected a flash of pride on his face. It was short-lived and I might’ve been mistaken that it was there in the first place. But I held on to the fact that he at that moment, was proud of his youngest son.