Five Parties With My Worst Enemy

by Sharpe, Elle

  He caught my lip and nipped it.

  “You’re stupid.”

  Our lips came together again, and suddenly I understood. I hadn’t known the rules to this game before now. Everything meant its opposite. Up was down, black was white. “You’re so stupid” meant, “It’s stupid, how much I want to kiss you.” Or “It’s so stupid, how we haven’t spent every single day kissing for the last four years.”

  I felt like this was an important revelation to share.

  “You’re the worst,” I said, sighing happily into his mouth. “I hate this so much.”

  He shuddered, and pulled me closer by the small of my back.

  “I’ve never enjoyed anything less,” he agreed.

  Now I was practically on his lap. He had dangerous access to the tops of my breasts, and he took full advantage. I gave a small yelp when he nibbled on me. I nearly screamed when his teeth grazed my nipple through the dress. Luckily I managed to hold it back in the nick of time.

  “Fuck,” I groaned. “How can you be so terrible?”

  “This dress is terrible. It needs to go.”

  “Your suit is worse than my dress. What is this, Armani? Uh, awful.”

  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to take off someone’s suit jacket while they are also trying to unzip your dress from the back. Let me tell you, it is a challenge.

  “Put your arms down, Baylor. Stop resisting.”

  “Sorry, Green, you can’t win this round.”

  The dress slid down off my shoulders. I had no bra on underneath, just little round pasties to cover my nipples. Ronan feasted his eyes on my bare flesh. I understood that turn of phrase much better now. I felt like I was being eaten alive, and he wasn’t even touching me.

  “Stop gawking,” I snapped. “Your turn.”

  I finally defeated my foe, the suit jacket. Several thousand dollars worth of Armani landed on the floor next to my old receipts and an empty take-out box. Ronan didn’t seem to mind. Next on my kill list was the black tie, followed by the white dress shirt. And then all of Ronan’s bare chest belonged to me.

  Despite the fact that I’d held his cock in my hand, I had never seen him as undressed as this before. It struck me how bizarre and backwards that was. He looked glorious without anything covering him—no armor of style and money. Just him. Golden, glowing skin. Firm under my hands, but smooth to the touch. For some reason this made me just as angry as any of his insults ever had—like he’d been hiding this away from me.

  I bit at his chest in revenge.

  The next few minutes were a scramble for dominance. He had the size and strength advantage, but I was crafty. When he started to wrap his hands around my wrists I pulled my hands inwards, towards his crotch. I distracted him by stroking his erection through the fabric. When he groaned and moved his hands to my shoulders, like he was getting ready to push me down, I moved in close to him and tickled behind his ear with my tongue. His hands dropped down to knead my breasts instead. He moved to take the coverings off my nipples, and I-

  Ut-oh.

  “Wait. Don’t do that.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Green,” he said, grinning villainously.

  “No, sorry, I mean really don’t. If you try to take those off right now it will be very painful for me.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  He blinked at me like he was coming out of a trance.

  “How do you get these things off then?”

  “Coconut oil,” I told him. “I have some in my room.”

  “Perfect.”

  Without another word of warning he gathered up my body and carried me towards the bedroom door. It would have been very “ravaged-by-a-caveman,” except that the door was closed, and his hands were occupied with holding me up, so I had to open it for him.

  “Show me the oil,” he commanded.

  I pointed at my bedside table.

  The next thing I knew I’d been tossed onto the bed, with my dress still falling off my body. Ronan clearly found this unacceptable. He made quick work of peeling it the rest of the way off me.

  “So, how does this work?” he asked, picking up the bottle of coconut oil. I tried to grab it out of his hands, but he held it high out of my reach.

  “It needs to be rubbed...on the nipple area.”

  He grinned.

  “That sounds like something I can do.”

  The process of massaging oil onto my breasts forced us to slow down. It was ironic, I thought, that the things I’d worn to make my dress look sexier were holding up the whole affair. Since Ronan wouldn’t let me take the pasties off my chest myself, I was forced to lie back and wait.

  I hated it. Feeling him trace lazy, oily circles around and around...he wasn’t even trying to tease me. Except that then he started to slowly slide one of his palms down my side, so maybe he was.

  I could have fought back. Tried to keep the upper hand. But I was so captivated by the way his fingers were moving. For now I just wanted to lie back and enjoy…

  One pastie popped off, then the other. An explosion of sensation gripped both of my breasts, as he started to tweak my nipples. I didn’t have time to stifle my cry. It just happened.

  “Ah,” he said. “The sweet sound of victory.”

  “You’ll pay,” I gasped back to him. “Just you wait.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to wait anymore.” His voice rumbled in my ear. “I’ve been waiting quite a while already.”

  I had to know.

  “How long?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Oh, about four years.”

  It was like the air had been knocked out of my body. I hadn’t known just how much I’d wanted him to say that.

  “You shouldn’t say things like that to me.”

  He placed dastardly, delicate kisses on my neck.

  “Why not? It’s true.”

  I could hear it in his voice. I couldn’t stop shivering.

  “Maybe that’s why.”

  “Can’t handle the truth, eh, Green?”

  No, evidently I could not. Telling the truth was playing by a different set of rules. Scarier rules. How was I supposed to keep up?

  His eyes shone sharply down at me, and I could tell he was reading me like an open book. This new tactic was his secret weapon, and he wouldn’t hesitate to wield it against me.

  “You want to know the truth?” he asked me. “I’ve liked you since the first day I met you.”

  “Oh, unacceptable,” I said. I smashed my mouth into his, and unfastened his pants as quickly as possible. I needed to distract him. To stop him from saying any more things that made my heart spasm like that inside my chest.

  Ronan

  Norah wasn’t going to outwit me that easily.

  I was very sure about this, until her fingers infiltrated my underwear and brushed against the painful hardness of my erection. After that I wasn’t quite so sure.

  I stood, maybe hoping to regain the advantage of height. I certainly didn’t mind the intent way that Norah watched me as I hurried to remove my shoes and push down my tuxedo pants. When her eyes caught the bulge inside my boxer briefs I thought I saw her start to salivate.

  “Like what you see?” I asked her.

  “Nope. Hate it.”

  I gripped the waistband of my underwear and pushed them down too. Norah watched me with more focus than I could ever remember having been watched before. The evidence of my arousal was right there before her eyes, impossible to ignore.

  “What about now?” I asked.

  Her voice sounded heavy, like she was hypnotized, or drunk.

  “Pure. Hatred.”

  I laughed. She looked so gorgeous, lying back on the bed with her hair strewn out around her, and the perfect curves of her body completely exposed to my gaze. And she was mesmerized by me?

  If I didn’t get inside her soon my brain was going to short-circuit.

  “That’s too bad,” I told her, “because I’m really enjoying what’s happening he
re right now. Maybe I can persuade you to change your mind.”

  I didn't give her any warning before I dragged down her panties—the last covering she had left. And then I pressed a kiss between her legs.

  I heard her suck in a whoosh of air. Her fingers curled into a tight grip around her sheets.

  She was wet. So wet for me. Just like that first time. I pushed my tongue forward into her. I needed more of her reactions. More of her desire for me.

  I’d thought about that night at the graduation party so many times over the years, but memories paled compared to this. Her scent, her helpless sounds, her fluttering eyelids. She wanted me. I could feel the tension mounting in her. I could hear the way her voice kept growing needier and higher. She could say whatever she wanted to me, but her body couldn’t lie.

  And neither could mine.

  “I want to fuck you,” I informed her.

  “Mmmmhmmm,” she replied. I smiled wide. Apparently she was a little too dazed to answer in words.

  I reached down into the pocket of my discarded pants and pulled out a condom, which I swear I put there more out of a feeling of wild hope than cocky arrogance. Once I was sheathed I crawled over her. She held her hands to her head, like she was trying to recover her senses.

  “What do you think,” I asked, looming over her. “Have I persuaded you to like me yet?”

  She glared at me, green eyes flashing, but she didn’t reply. It seemed that words were still off the table. Instead she grabbed my cock and pulled it inside of her.

  I allowed myself to slowly thrust forwards into her. I watched with relish as her neck tipped back and her eyes rolled back in her head. God, it felt so good to be inside of her. Her body squeezed tight around me. It felt right, and necessary. Our bodies needed each other. Every thrust brought us closer to that simple fact.

  I knew she had to be feeling it too. She had to understand.

  “Norah, I like you,” I said hoarsely against her ear. I wanted to tease, but I could hear myself coming undone. “I like you so much,”

  She leaned her head back, letting the words flow over her. I pressed kiss after kiss into her neck.

  “And I want you to like me,” I whispered. I gripped at her waist and pushed hard into her. I wanted to torture her. To force her to listen. But I felt less like a torturer and more like a confessor. “I don’t want you to hate me. I want you to like me.”

  She rolled her body up into mine, and I nearly lost my mind.

  “Fuck, Ronan,” her harsh whispers brushed my ear. Her softly clenched fists pounded weakly against my arms, in feeble protest. “Fuck. Fuck it. Yes. Okay. I like you. I like you. Oh, God.”

  Something inside me snapped. I surged forwards into her.

  “Say it again,” I told her.

  I wasn’t sure if I was commanding or begging. Somehow there didn’t seem to be much difference anymore.

  She let out a giggling, gasping breath.

  “I like you.”

  “Again.”

  “I like...I... Ronan, I...Fuck.”

  It was happening. She was rolling like waves underneath me. She was going to come apart.

  “Yes. Tell me.” I wanted to hear her say it, over and over again.

  “Ronan, I’m...you’re making me…” she grabbed at my back, and gritted her teeth. “This is all your fault.”

  God, that voice was going to wreck me.

  She was such a liar. It was her fault. Her fault that I was holding back with all my effort. Her fault that I was teetering dangerously on the edge of a release threatened to engulf me.

  But if it was going to make her eyes go dark like that, like deep green pools...If it was going to make her drag her nails along my back and mew helplessly, then sure. I would take the credit.

  “Yes,” I said, and I kept my gaze fixed on her so that she would understand my full meaning. “My fault. All. Mine.”

  She gasped when her body gave in to me. So much tightly-clenched resistance, and it all exploded in one moment. Her pupils spread wide, like she was trying to look at something too big to take in. Her body spasmed like mad around me. She was pulling me in after her, tightening all around until I couldn’t escape. I pumped her harder through each convulsion of release, until she screamed out like she was in pain.

  And finally all my self control gave out. I emptied myself into her, thrust after satisfying thrust, until there was nothing left.

  When it was over she looked shaken. She let her fingers dance lightly over my arms, like she was trying to evaluate whether or not I was still real.

  “So,” she murmured, “Who won that round?”

  I looked down at her, still feeling the peaceful effects of my body’s surrender.

  “I think it was...a tie.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Is there such a thing as a tie? Or is there some tie-breaker rule I don’t know about?”

  I placed a few last kisses on her neck, letting myself enjoy another taste of her skin.

  “I guess you’ll have to stay until the end of the game to find out.”

  Norah

  Some time in the night I felt Ronan’s strong, firm arms wrap around me. Or maybe I only dreamed it.

  When I woke up he was gone. There was just a rumpled sheet where his body had been.

  The first thing that I thought was, “Figures.”

  Then I smelled the sweet scent of sizzling batter wafting in from the kitchen.

  Oh.

  I pulled on a baggy t-shirt and a pair of boy shorts from the pile of “sleep clothes” that lived beside my bed. I walked into the kitchen, and my eyes were met with a ridiculously glorious site: Ronan in nothing but boxer-briefs, flipping pancakes.

  Last night he’d been clean-shaven. This morning he had a light shadow of stubble coming in. His hair was messy from bed—from my bed—with loose waves hanging in his eyes. The skin on his well-defined chest glowed a little in the sunlight that streamed in through the window. God damn it. Between him and the pancakes I couldn’t decide what looked more delicious.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  He turned towards me and smiled.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he replied, with one of his signature sly eyebrow-raises.

  But I could see by the way he was smirking at me that he knew exactly what I meant. I was ogling him like a convent girl who’d never seen a man before.

  But how could I help myself? God, by the light of day his body looked so unfairly perfect. He was toned, but not overly so. No rippling douchebag muscles here. Just a taut stomach and a firm, lightly hair-dusted chest, that I had an embarrassing urge to press myself against. The way his tight boxer-briefs hugged his ass was nothing to complain about either.

  “I’m guessing you’re shocked that I can cook?” he suggested.

  I shook myself out of my ogling-daze.

  “Um, yeah, a bit,” I replied. “I assumed you had ‘people’ for that sort of thing.”

  “Most of the time I do, but that doesn’t mean I’m helpless,” he said, pretending to be indignant. “I can flip a pancake with the best of them.”

  “Bold claim, Baylor. Let’s analyze.” I leaned over, close to his bare side, scrutinizing the pancakes. I was trying to channel Paul Hollywood from The Great British Baking Show. “Hmm, yes. Fluffy. Good rise. Even distribution of the chocolate chips. I’d say you’re looking pretty competent.”

  “Just wait. They taste even better than they look.”

  I managed not to say Just like you, though my brain supplied that joke way too fast. I noticed that a little splatter of batter had landed on his shapely upper arm. I was absolutely not thinking about licking it off.

  “Here,” he said. He slipped a few steaming-hot pancakes onto a plate, and smothered them with sinful quantities of melty butter and drippy syrup. My stomach made a growl of longing. This was far too tempting. And Ronan was still being far too nice. I felt like this must be some sort of a trap.

  I took the plate over the co
unter and sat down on a barstool. I picked up my knife and fork, but I didn’t cut into the stack just yet.

  “So, what exactly is going on here?” I asked him.

  “Well,” he said, “In many cultures the first meal of the day, which ‘breaks’ the ‘fast’ of the night before, is known as breakfast-”

  “No, I mean, what’s going on here.” I pointed to him, and then to myself, and then back to him. “What is this?”

  “Ah.”

  He turned away from me to concentrate on flipping a pancake.

  “What do you want it to be?” he asked me.

  Eep. Hard question. I tossed it back to him like a hot potato.

  “What do you want it to be?”

  He twisted his head around to scowl at me. Which I probably deserved. I was cheating.

  We sat in silence for a few awkward seconds. The only sound was the smacking noise of the spatula.

  I finally couldn’t resist anymore and started shoveling big bites of pancake into my mouth. Soft, moist, carbohydratey sweetness soaked into my tongue. I grinned with full cheeks.

  “Mmmm. So good.”

  “I wasn’t kidding about what I said, Norah. I’ve liked you for a long time.”

  I took a great big swallow.

  “Yeah. I know.” We looked at each other for a beat. “And?”

  “And,” he sighed. “And so I want this-” he repeated my back-and-forth hand motion back to me. “-to be something.”

  “‘Something’ can mean a lot of different things,” I pointed out.

  He turned the burner off and leaned over the counter, putting his eyes at the same level as mine.

  “Okay, how about this: I propose that you become my girlfriend.”

  Wow. Another bold move by Ronan Baylor. We’d slept together once, and he wanted to make it official, huh?

  I searched his expression for signs of mocking or joking. But his face was completely open. Though he was still cocking one eyebrow, seemingly amused by the suspicious way that I was examining him.

  “A well-stated opening offer,” I said finally. “But I’m afraid I can’t accept or reject until I hear more about your terms.”

  I punctuated this statement with another large bite of pancake.