Happily Ever After: A Romance Collection

by Amelia Wilde

  My head drops back against the doorframe, making contact with a heavy thud, pain spiking through the back of my skull.

  “Shit, that hurts,” I hiss, leaning forward into him, rubbing at my head.

  “Sorry, Ellie,” Dash says, sliding his hand away from my breast as if he’s going to back away.

  I catch it down by my belly button, pinning it with my free hand. “You’ll be sorrier if you move that hand another inch.”

  His answering smile is pure sex. I want some of that. “Oh, will I?” He moves his hand back up, teasing me with the pad of his thumb. I’m wriggling under his touch, moving as close as I can get without stopping the movement of his hand. Jesus, it feels so good, it feels so right, and I want to know what he can do between my legs. I have to know.

  “I’ll make you sorry.”

  He grins against my lips, then takes my bottom one between his teeth, a gentle tug. “I’ll make you happy.”

  I’m floating in a sea of pleasure, but those damn coffee shops pull at the last corner of my conscience that’s still above water. I let my hands curl into fists, clutching more of his shirt, and hold him still while I pull back, an inch between us.

  “Don’t open this coffee shop,” I command.

  He looks right back at me. “I’m going to do it. You can’t stop me.”

  I breathe more of him in. “Then we’re sworn enemies.”

  He raises a hand to the side of my face, his thumb against my cheek, and searches my eyes. “How about part-time enemies?”

  The words this isn’t a negotiation are on the tip of my tongue, but he rolls my nipple between his fingers again. I don’t fall to my knees in a puddle of desire, but it’s a near thing. “Fine, but which parts of the day are we going to—”

  “Shh,” he says, and it’s a long time before either of us speaks again.

  22

  Dash

  I don’t ever want to leave this moment, but eventually my inner alarm starts sounding the warning. The afternoon light streaming in through the front windows of the shop is my cue to get Rosie from Norma’s.

  It takes a superhuman effort to pull myself away from Ellie.

  “Oh, no,” she says softly, resting her forehead against my chest. “What’d I do wrong?”

  “Nothing. Not a damn thing.” I would never wish for any other life than the one where Rosie exists, but right now—right now—it would be nice if I wasn’t the only person responsible for her. The selfish, raw side of me wants to be with Ellery. That part of me wants to lower her down to the brand-new floors, throw down my t-shirt, and fuck her senseless right here. Everybody on the sidewalk can watch if they want to. I don’t care. “I have to pick up my daughter.”

  Ellie backs down instantly, her hands dropping away from my chest. There’s an emptiness where her palms were. “Right. Right. You should get out of here. I didn’t mean to make you late.”

  I take her hands in mine and put them back where they were, then lean down and kiss her again. I cannot get enough of the taste of her. I cannot get enough of the sweetness. I cannot get enough of the way she wants to go to war, but only when we’re not wrapped around each other.

  That’s a deal I can live with. Maybe not forever, but for now, what other choice do I have?

  “You didn’t make me late. I’m glad you stopped by so we could...talk.”

  She laughs, a shy giggle. “I think we have more to talk about, don’t you?”

  I let go of one hand so I can lift her chin and look into those big gray eyes. “This is going to sound stupid as hell,” I say. “Given what we just did. But...I’d like to ask you for your number.”

  Her smile gets bigger. “You know,” she says, breathing in deep, “for an asshole, you’re astonishingly polite.”

  “For my mortal enemy, you’re astonishingly sexy.” I leave off I like you so much that you almost make me want to back down from this whole fucking project and start something, anything, else.

  Before we leave, Ellie demands my phone, opens the contacts, and types her number in. “Don’t call me,” she says. “I hate talking on the phone.”

  Two minutes after I put Rosie to bed, my phone buzzes in my pocket. A text message. It’s from Ellie. She’s put herself in my phone as Ellery Collins. How fucking delightful is that? Ellery Collins. It’s a name that rolls off the tongue.

  I’d like to be rolling other things off my tongue, but I’ll settle for her last name in the meantime.

  You sure you want to open that shop?

  She doesn’t give up, does she?

  You sure you don’t want to close yours?

  It’s not about what I want.

  The sun is still high above the horizon, and Rosie is out cold, sleeping peacefully. She had a busy day at Norma’s. My girl isn’t quite walking yet—she does this funny scoot with one leg in front of her body and one leg behind—but Norma says she’s trying harder every time she comes over. She always has the scoot for backup.

  If Serena doesn’t come back from China, she’s going to miss Rosie’s first step. My jaw clenches at the thought of it. I’m not going to, damn it. She can miss whatever she wants, but I’m going to be here for every moment.

  What is it about, then?

  Honor, obviously.

  I wander toward the back door of the rented cottage. It’s going to be a shame to leave this place. My grandfather’s house is a lot bigger, but it doesn’t have a view of the lake. It does, however, have a big old oak tree with a swing, and a wide green hill in the backyard.

  This isn’t a conversation I want to have via text message, and the reasons are entirely selfish. I want to watch Ellery’s lips move while she talks. I want to be able to lean in and kiss her.

  Do we still have a truce? Or is it only on certain days of the week?

  Why?

  Are you hungry?

  You ask a lot of questions.

  I smile down at the phone like an idiot. I’ll ask her even more if she comes over because I’m desperate to get under the surface. The surface is where we’re going to fight about coffee shops and whose should be open and whose should close. The surface is where we’re going to compete for customers, and one of us is going to lose out. That’s the only possible ending in a place like Lakewood. Stores come in and out every season.

  I go into the little kitchen and open the fridge. I have a package of ground beef from the grocery store yesterday. I have a green pepper. I have an onion.

  The cupboard is the final test. I fucking pass it. I have Italian tomato paste and spaghetti noodles. The loaf of bread is icing on the cake.

  I’m cooking dinner if you’re hungry...

  There’s a long pause. In that pause, I don’t hang around, waiting to see if she’ll answer. Whether she comes or not, I’m making spaghetti. If I end up eating it by myself, so be it.

  I dice the green pepper and the onion and tip them both into a pan on the stove. I want Ellie to come over. I want her to come. If one happens, then the other will happen, based on our limited time in the store today. God, she was so hot in my hands. I had to nurse a painful erection all the way to Norma’s house. My list of unsexy things to think about very nearly failed me. It’s failing me again now, and she hasn’t even agreed to visit.

  My phone buzzes again while I’m rinsing off my hands.

  What’s your address?

  23

  Ellery

  This is definitely a sex date. Definitely.

  My hands tremble on the steering wheel. Dash is renting a place on the lakefront. I’m all for wading in the lake, but I’m a hundred percent certain we won’t be doing any of that once I get there. I can’t quite decide if the dinner invite is real or an excuse to pick up where we left off at his shop.

  You can bet I rushed into the shower when I got that invitation, scrubbing my hair extra hard to get rid of the coffee smell. I forced myself to slow down and do it twice, and then I did a quick survey. A shave is all I needed.

  It’s the first t
ime Dash is seeing me outside of my Medium Roast uniform, but damn did that make things harder. I didn’t want to seem like I care too much. I’m not showing up in a prom dress or anything, but I did debate for a solid ninety seconds over whether to blow-dry my hair. It always turns out frizzy and weird when I do that, so I went with a classic bun at the nape of my neck, my hair still wet.

  My phone beeps to signal that I’m at the right place. I pull into the driveway and take a deep breath. It’s not like I’m going to jump on his D the minute I get into the house. We can take our time.

  The property is nice. On either end, there’s a cottage, and a huge lawn in the middle dotted with mature trees.

  Ha. Mature trees. It reminds me of Dash. He’s fucking mature. Not old. He’s definitely not old. A few years older than I am, maybe, but we’re roughly the same age.

  Oh, God, this is a sex date. This is for sure a sex date, and here I am, turning into a nervous teenage version of myself.

  I approach the cottage with caution. The front door is painted a jaunty red that sets off the pine siding nicely. All of it looks well-maintained. Sharp. The opposite of my life, which is bursting at the seams.

  Keep it together, Ellie. You were making out with this man in his coffee shop mere hours ago. There’s nothing to freak out about.

  I raise my hand to knock on the door with all the confidence I can muster, but before my knuckles hit that red paint, it swings open.

  Dash has changed out of his jeans and into a pair of shorts.

  That’s the first thing I notice, but it’s not the last one.

  Or the smallest.

  Midway through checking him out, I realize what I’m doing and look into his eyes with a gasp. He’s waiting, his green eyes sparkling. And, holy shit, he’s actually holding a tray in one oven-mitted hand. Dinner is real.

  “Oh, man,” I blurt out. “This isn’t a sex date?”

  Once the words are out of my mouth, I stand frozen on the cement slab in front of the door.

  Yes, it is true that we had several hot moments back at his shop. But this looks like a real honest-to-God sit-down dinner that he’s planning, and I’ve opened it by making a total ass of myself.

  Dash grins down at me. “Come in.”

  “Okay,” I say, nodding my head too many times. “Okay.”

  He ushers me inside the small entryway, which opens into the kitchen, which becomes the living room after a few steps. In the back is a nice view of the lake.

  It smells so good in here.

  Dash steps to the side and puts the tray carefully down on a cooling rack propped up next to the stovetop. He takes the oven mitt off and lays it next to that, then picks up a spoon from a tile spoon rest and pokes it into a frying pan. Meat is sizzling in spaghetti sauce. It’s not from a jar, I can tell that much. After a moment he puts the spoon back down and turns back to me.

  “You thought this was a sex date?”

  I nod, speechless still from my embarrassment.

  “What gave you that impression?” He steps closer. The air between us heats up. I want to fan myself with my hand. “I said I was cooking, didn’t I?”

  I swallow hard. “Yeah, but you—” I cut my glance down at the front of his shorts. “The store—”

  He looks down at his tented shorts and nods. “It’s a dead giveaway, isn’t it? My fault, in a way. I saw you pull in and watched you get out of the car.”

  “You watched me step out onto the driveway and that—”

  “That’s what happened,” he says, moving closer still.

  We stand that way for several heartbeats. His breath is in my ears. Is that his heartbeat, or mine?

  “I liked it earlier,” I whisper, putting my hands up on his chest as if I’d never taken them away in the first place.

  “Are you sure?” he murmurs, bending down to speak directly into my ear. “We’re always going to be working against each other, you know. I’m going to open my shop.” There’s a breath of a pause. “Even if you beg.”

  The word beg is hot between my legs, a jolt of pure desire. “I’ll never beg you for anything,” I say, brushing my lips across the side of his neck. He smells like safety, like cooking and a recent trip to the shower, like he’d never have a reason to run away, even if something truly fucked up happens. That kind of thing has happened to me before. It could happen again. That’s why I’m working in Lakewood. But I can’t think of that now.

  The coffee shops drop away into the corner of my mind that I usually reserve for shit I don’t care about, like actually drinking coffee and horror movies. I press my lips into his skin a little harder as his hands slide around my waist, tugging me into him that last inch.

  His hand comes up to my chin, tilting my face up until our lips are almost touching. I forget that I spoke until he answers me, his words melting the rest of my thoughts away.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  24

  Dash

  Ellie is mine again from the moment I kiss her. She presses the length of her body against mine, taking special care to wriggle her hips a little, brushing against my cock.

  The spaghetti can wait.

  I don’t break the kiss when I reach around and flip the switch on the front of the stove to turn the burner off. And I definitely don’t look back at the garlic bread on the tray. What’s a little garlic bread gone cold when there’s an Ellie here, her hips swinging against me, her pretty lips opening to let my tongue in?

  Filthy. Filthy thoughts. I haven’t had thoughts like these since before Serena. When she left, I thought I might never have them again. Staying out of the kitchen, and all that.

  I’m literally in the kitchen with Ellie right now, and it could light on fire before I’d leave. It’d have to be a pretty terrible fire, too.

  Ellie braces against the countertop, leaning back. She’s switched into a black tank top for the occasion, and I flex my hands against the fabric.

  “That doesn’t have to stay on,” she says, tilting her head back to give me access to her neck. I linger there for a moment, teasing, before I say anything.

  “If you were hot, you could have said so.” I flick my tongue against her earlobe and strip the shirt off in one quick motion. It drops to the kitchen floor next to our feet. “Damn, Ellie.”

  “What?” she says innocently.

  Her bra is unbelievable. No—it’s not the bra. It’s her breasts. They’re perky and full and gorgeous, and the black lace number she’s got on is doing them all kinds of favors.

  “You’re gorgeous.”

  “You’re not being fair.” She leans back onto her elbows and bites her lip.

  “How am I—” I get it a heartbeat later and whip my shirt off over my head. “Is this fair?”

  Ellie takes me in, and her breasts rise and fall with her breath. “We’re almost even.”

  I move back in, sliding my palms over the smooth skin of her waist. “Almost?”

  “I feel like...” I lower my head to her neck and kiss downward toward her shoulder. “I feel like you might owe me...”

  “What could I possibly owe you for?”

  “Well,” she shrugs her shoulder so it presses back against my lips. “You won’t close your coffee shop and let mine survive.”

  I pull back to look into her eyes. “I’m not opening a shop to run you out of business.”

  She snakes one hand around the back of my neck and toys with my hair. “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m really not. I’m opening it because of my grandmother.”

  “I don’t think now’s the time to talk about your grandmother,” she whispers.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “To keep the inappropriate topics from getting out.”

  “My grandmother was not inappropriate,” I say with a laugh. This conversation is going off the rails, but somehow I care not at all. “But you’re right. I don’t want to talk about her right now.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

/>   “I don’t want to talk.”

  Ellie smiles.

  “You challenged me before,” I say, hooking my thumbs into her shorts.

  “I did?”

  “You said you’d never beg me for anything.”

  Her body tenses under my hands. “I did say that.”

  I tug the shorts down an inch, then another. “Are you sure you meant it?”

  Ellie leans her head back, her hips jutting forward, making it easy to slide the shorts down below her ass. She’s wearing matching panties. “I’m sure,” she says, and then she leans forward to look down. “Do you like them?”

  “Your panties?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d like them better if they were off.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “You can tell me anything,” I say and slide the shorts over her knees, over her shins, down to her feet. It takes kneeling down in front of her to get them all the way off.

  “I’d like them better if they were off, too.”

  It’s an easy fix.

  I stay kneeling and breathe her in. She is immaculate.

  Ellie looks down at me. Her lips are slightly open, and there’s a high pink in her cheeks. “I don’t normally do this,” she says.

  “I know,” I tell her, cupping her ass with my hands. “It can take some getting used to when you’re not in the habit of begging.”

  I reach around from behind and tug her legs apart. She doesn’t resist me, not at all, and spreads her legs open a few inches.

  “You’re going to need to open more than that,” I chide her.

  “For what?” she says, her voice breathy and trembling.

  “For this.”

  I spread her open with my hands and dive in.

  Her knees tremble on the first stroke of my tongue. Holy fuck, she is sweet. It takes exactly no time at all for her shyness to dissolve into my mouth. Her feet inch outward and she lets go of the countertop with one hand to bury it in my hair.