Bad For You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Taylor Holloway

  “Shouldn’t she, like, go to jail for stealing medical records and making them public?” Lucy frowned deeply at the thought. “It’s a crime, right? I mean, I wouldn’t want her to get her greasy fingers on my medical records and throw them up on a PowerPoint in front of a bunch of colleagues. They don’t need to know about my ear infections and IUD.”

  I nodded. Lucy was totally right.

  “We talked about that, actually,” I told her. “The lawyers said that trying to go after her would be pretty pointless. She did do something illegal and unethical, but unfortunately, she’s going to get away with it. It would cost us way more than we’d recover from her. Her punishment is losing her job and being disgraced.”

  She made a cute crunched up face that indicated her disapproval. “That just doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “I agree.” I shook my head in frustration. “It’s all so fucked up.”

  “What happened with Brandon?” Lucy asked. “That was a real twist right there at the end.” She was looking at me significantly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you talk to him after that?” she prodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “And?” she pushed. Her eyes were fixed on mine in a way that made me sure she’d already guessed.

  “And we’re, um, sort of seeing each other now,” I admitted.

  Lucy’s eyes widened to become huge. “What?!”

  I ran my fingers through my hair nervously. “Yeah. It’s, um, it’s complicated. It’s also a secret.”

  “I knew it!” Lucy cried. “I knew you two had a thing for each other!” We were sitting in the theater waiting for the previews to start and it was still early enough that the sound wasn’t on. People looked over at us in surprise at Lucy’s raised voice and I cringed. I could feel myself blushing.

  “It’s going good,” I confessed. “Better than I could have guessed it would. Great actually.”

  “I knew that whole hating each other thing was just a smoke screen.”

  My mouth popped open. “It wasn’t. We really did used to hate each other,” I told Lucy. “I promise.”

  “Mhmm,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Sure.”

  “No really,” I insisted. “When we were teenagers, we couldn’t stand each other. And when he first came back to Austin, too.”

  Lucy didn’t need to know about the hate-fucking. Nobody did. That was for me and Brandon and nobody else.

  “Okay, okay,” Lucy told me, patting my arm patronizingly. “I believe you.” She was grinning at me knowingly. “So, you two are keeping everything on the down low at the hospital though?”

  I nodded. “We pretty much have to. I don’t want Martin to know and the last thing I need is for the whole hospital to gossip about me some more.” I sighed. “I hate how political the hospital is sometimes.”

  “That makes sense,” Lucy agreed. “Especially with you about to take on your promotion. You don’t need to rock the boat with the board.” She paused. “Why don’t you look happy?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her question. All this time, ever since graduating medical school and getting my job at St. Vincent’s, Martin had been grooming me to take over for him. It had been my dream, and his, for years. I’d given all my focus, my whole life, to make this happen. And now, right as I was on the verge of achieving my goal, I felt… nothing.

  “I guess it just doesn’t feel real,” I told Lucy. It wasn’t a very honest answer, but I didn’t know what else to say. “Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet.”

  The other thing that was weighing on me was Brandon’s impending departure. We still had a few months, but every day that passed took us closer to the end. Thankfully the movie started before Lucy and I could discuss that impending life change. I was glad to focus on the silly Romcom, because I definitely had no answers to the problems in my own love life. I did, however, know with absolute certainty that Brandon was going to break my heart.

  49

  Brandon

  Sooner than I was expecting, Aimee and I fell into a routine. Coming home to her was a joy. The first time I found Aimee cooking something delicious in my kitchen it was almost too much to bear though. She was leaning up against the counter, round ass poking up in the air as she reached horizontally for the pepper grinder. I was suddenly dumbstruck by how ungodly hot she was. This happened on a regular basis with her, but it never got old. I dropped my gym bag to the floor, glad I’d taken a shower already, and swept her up in my arms.

  “Hey!” she squealed, dropping the pepper grinder in surprise. It hit the floor and rolled off under the kitchen table and out of her reach. “I’m cooking here!”

  “It smells good,” I told her, kissing her neck, feeling her up, and untying the apron from her waist. “What is it?”

  “A pot roast,” she replied, squirming to get out of my arms and back to work. I flicked the button of her jeans loose and unzipped her pants as she attempted unsuccessfully to free herself. “And I need to put the pepper on it or it will be too bland,” she continued seriously.

  “Pot roast, huh?” I mumbled against her warm, soft skin. She smelled so good. I slipped a hand between her legs down the front of her jeans against her satin panties and she gasped. “You look really cute in my kitchen, Aimee. Especially when you bend over all sexy like that.”

  “I’m not trying to be cute or sexy,” she replied. “I’m just trying to make a pot roast with a very complicated recipe.” She sighed while I rubbed my thumb against the wet satin over her clit. “I really need to work on it.”

  What she needed to work on was my cock. With her mouth.

  “How long does it have to cook?” I asked, continuing to tease her with my fingers.

  “Another hour,” she said breathily. “But I really need to--”

  I scooped her up. “Come with me to the bedroom right now,” I answered for her.

  She continued to weakly struggle as I dropped her on the bed, got on top, and pinned her wrists, but I knew her well enough to know that she was just playing now. Her eyes were wide, and she kissed me back eagerly. She was wearing one of my T-shirts—she was always borrowing my clothes—and I reclaimed it roughly, stripping her out of her top and delicate little bra with hands that couldn’t get enough of her warm, sweet-smelling skin.

  Aimee relaxed submissively into me while I played with her chest, sighing and whimpering when I licked and sucked her nipples into hard, eager points. She liked being played with almost as much as I liked playing with her. I loved seeing how turned on I could make her with nothing below the waist going on. I pushed her to the limit this time, keeping her wrists pinned to the mattress and continuing to give her tits attention until she was arching and bucking her hips up against mine.

  Finally, when she was whimpering and clearly needing friction and pressure between her legs as much as I needed to give it to her, I relented. I flipped her over on her stomach, pulled her jeans and panties the rest of the way off her and took her as she was prone beneath me.

  In this position she was totally at my mercy and her little noises said she loved it. I controlled the depth, speed, and intensity, and I let her know it with hard, eager thrusts that settled into a quick, demanding rhythm. She met me stroke for stroke, pushing back as hard as she could from beneath. I’d never been so sexually compatible with someone as I was with Aimee. She seemed to intuitively know what turned me on.

  “You look good like this,” I whispered in her ear. “I like you face down and desperate even more than I like you barefoot in the kitchen.”

  “Harder,” she whimpered back. “Brandon, harder.”

  “Rub your sweet little clit for me,” I ordered her, releasing one of her wrists. She slipped the hand beneath her body and between her legs. “Make yourself come.”

  After just a few strokes she came at my command, shaking beneath me and making muffled noises against the sheets.

  “Good girl,” I growled in her ear. “Now do it again.”

&nbs
p; I redoubled the pressure against her clit with my hand on top of hers. The pressure of her second orgasm hit me a few seconds later. It pushed me into my own climax, and I came hard into her, emptying my body and soul into the rush of pleasure. It wasn’t until my brain returned to halfway normal fifteen minutes later that I heard the smoke detector going off.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Aimee said, rushing off in the direction of the kitchen. “Brandon, get the fire extinguisher!”

  I rolled out of bed reluctantly and headed toward the extinguisher. I wanted to cuddle. I didn’t want to put out fires.

  The damn pot roast was black and smoking. It was almost certainly ruined. I didn’t much care. We could just order pizza. If I had to choose between sex with Aimee and pot roast, the answer was obvious. Aimee every time.

  50

  Aimee

  The weeks rolled by and turned into months. I was blissfully happy while also acutely aware that our relationship was about to expire. Like milk you bought at a convenience store with a smudged expiration date, I was just waiting for things to abruptly go sour. But every day was better than the last. Brandon and I slowly became accustomed to staying over at each other’s houses, and I found myself getting more and more comfortable populating the left-hand bedside table with my stuff.

  First a hairbrush, then a phone charger, and soon an entire drawer full of my stuff was there in Brandon’s drawer. I started to view his home as mine, and it was clear that he was starting to do the same. We gave each other keys. We got used to our routine and the newness and excitement deepened into something more comfortable and profound. It felt good. It felt terrifying. I couldn’t resist it.

  I’d never been in a real relationship before, but I was fairly certain that this was exactly what we were doing. I was heavily invested. We weren’t just fuck buddies or frenemies or anything. We were in love. I texted him ten times a day. Every evening we spent countless hours curled up against each other naked or cuddling on the couch and watching Netflix or even just talking. I never meant to fall in love with him. But all of a sudden, I wasn’t just falling. I was all the way down the rabbit hole, staring up at the tiny point of light at the top and wondering how it happened.

  Meanwhile, the hospital busybodies never figured us out. Somehow, we managed to keep our sexy, dirty secret. All our coworkers, and even Martin, thought we still hated each other with the same passion as ever. We continued to be nasty to each other in public, and everyone seemed to buy it, even though we’d gone totally over the top with our insults. People even avoided talking to me about Brandon because they were frightened of the way I’d react, which in hindsight was absolutely ideal. I couldn’t have planned it better.

  Everything was going along perfectly until the day when Brandon’s commanding officer showed up.

  Martin and I were doing our inspection rounds with the residents, a standard part of their evaluation process. We had to review all their decisions with them and make sure they were learning everything they needed to. Martin had told me prior that this was the last time he ever wanted to do this particular task, and it would be my responsibility going forward. He was doing that with more and more of the hospital administration as he edged closer to retirement. As a result, I was paying much closer attention to the residents’ patient charts than usual. I missed the man in uniform passing by. Martin didn’t.

  “Victor?” Martin asked, looking up from the chart he was looking at and blinking owlishly from behind his glasses. “Is that you?”

  The man turned around, recognized Martin, and grinned. “There you are!” He was about Martin’s age, gray haired and slim but clearly in good shape for a man his age. He strode over excitedly. “I was trying to surprise you, but apparently you beat me to it.”

  “I am surprised,” Martin replied as the two shook hands. “I’m very surprised! You didn’t say that you were coming to Texas. I would have rolled out the hospital red carpet.”

  The man, who I belatedly realized was wearing an army uniform (having learned to distinguish between the different military branch insignias from Brandon), laughed lightly. “You know there’s no need for that. I don’t deserve any special treatment.”

  Martin shook his head. “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that, but it’s good to see you. Have you met Aimee?” he asked, gesturing to me. “Aimee, this is my old friend General Victor Sharp,” he said to me. “Victor, this is my protégé, Aimee Ford. She’s going to take over this hospital from me in a couple of weeks when I toddle off into the sunset to sip Mai Tai’s with my wife on a beach somewhere.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, shaking the man’s hand.

  “Same,” he replied. “It’s good to see that Martin is finally going to pass the torch.”

  “Are you implying I’m old?” Martin snipped.

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” the General replied. The two men exchanged a smile.

  “What brings you to St. Vincent’s today?” I asked curiously as Martin got pulled away for a moment. We didn’t get many military visitors at the hospital despite our close proximity to Camp Mabry, the local base. Mostly they stayed on their side of the fence. This had to have something to do with Brandon.

  “I’m here to check in on my officers,” the General explained. “Three of my top trauma doctors have been embedded here.”

  Of course. Of course, it was about that. I knew it.

  “Oh, you’re in charge of that program? Yes. The younger Dr. Koels, Dr. Martinez, and Dr. Alberta have been a great asset to us,” I said formally. “We’ve been lucky to have them here.”

  Martin returned to my side. “Very lucky,” he echoed. “I appreciate everything you did to make sure they got assigned here.”

  The two exchanged a significant look. There was something there. The General probably owed him a favor that resulted in Brandon’s assignment. Brandon had shared with me that Martin was behind his presence here, and honestly? I didn’t doubt it. He was known for his schemes. “Don’t mention it,” he replied with a wink.

  “So, you want to see what your folks have been up to, huh?” Martin replied excitedly. “Come to make sure they’re still alive?”

  The General laughed again. For a military man, he seemed to be a pretty pleasant guy. “As a matter of fact, yes. All three of them have been radio silent for a couple of months now. I’m worried that civilian life is making them soft. I wanted to make sure they’re still fit for duty since the assignment will be wrapping up soon.”

  My heart throbbed against my ribs. Two months and eleven days. That’s how long was left. Soon I’d be measuring in weeks. Then hours. Then… he’d be gone. I’d seen the letter from the manager of his apartment building on his dining room table. They wanted to know if he would be renewing his lease. We hadn’t talked about it yet, but I knew the answer was no. It hurt to even consider it.

  Martin was oblivious to my angst and I tried to keep my face impassive. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. All of a sudden, it was hard to even breathe.

  “Don’t worry,” Martin was saying happily. “We keep them in fighting shape. Don’t we, Aimee?”

  I thought about the particularly acrobatic sex that Brandon and I had on the new sex swing he bought and installed in his bedroom. I was sore all over, but in the best way. “Oh, yes sir. We certainly do.”

  51

  Brandon

  When my dad, Aimee, and General Sharp arrived in the ER that afternoon, I could feel my heart sink. I saw them way before they saw me, which allowed me to duck behind a curtain and eavesdrop.

  I doubted my ability to keep my relationship with Aimee a secret when face-to-face with her, my dad, and my superior officer. I also had a sudden, overwhelming fear that I’d be given new orders then and there. So, I hid. Was it cowardly? Sure. Somewhat. But I did it anyway. A few months ago, I would have jumped for joy to see Sharp. But now I was hiding like a little bitch. Love is grand.

  “Dr. Martinez is upstairs in surger
y, and as you’ve seen, Dr. Alberta is doing well in the burn unit,” my dad was explaining to the General. “Brandon should be around here somewhere, but he might be on break, or he may be on a consult in another unit.”

  “I’ll go check with the duty nurse to see what room he’s in,” Aimee said, and then I heard the sound of her footsteps receding.

  “How’s he doing?” General Sharp asked my dad. “He hasn’t complained to me lately.”

  “Things are going well,” my dad replied. “I really do owe you one, Victor.”

  What the fuck? Victor? My dad and my commanding officer were on a first name basis?

  “Martin, you don’t owe me jack,” General Sharp replied. “When Martina needed your help, you made sure she got in to see the best cataract surgeon in the country.”

  “How did the surgery go, by the way?”

  “She has 20/25 vision in both eyes. No readers, no night-blindness. She’s like a goddamn eagle now. I’m actually kind of jealous.”

  They both laughed and I rolled my eyes, glad that they couldn’t see me.

  Martina was General Sharp’s wife. This was the missing piece behind how my dad had managed to get me assigned here in the first place. He pulled some strings for Martina, thus indebting Sharp to him and ensuring that I would be selected for the program. Typical.

  “Good, I’m glad it worked out nicely,” my dad told General Sharp. “I’m sad the program is wrapping up though. It would have been nice to have more time.”

  General Sharp made a noise of general agreement. “I’m sorry. I can’t extend it any longer. The big brass wants these three back.”

  “I know.” My dad sighed. “Where will Brandon get sent?”