Love to Hate: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Only Him Series Book 3)

by Nicole Casey

  “Should we move?” Ashton didn’t seem ready to go, and neither was I.

  “Not yet, let’s just wait a little while longer, just to be on the safe side. Then we can go and check for your car.”

  Much as I wanted to escape, I was absolutely petrified about going to look for the car in case they were waiting for us there. Maybe it would be walking right into their trap by going back. Maybe they were just waiting there, guns ready, and they’d shoot us as soon as we showed up.

  “Maybe we should wait until the sun comes up. Just to be totally certain that they’re definitely one hundred percent gone.”

  Ashton

  I wasn’t sure about staying here, hiding in this random shed, but I could see what Jamie was getting at. It was a scary thought to go back there.

  “Maybe I should call a cab instead?” I asked a bit pathetically. I would’ve loved to be a stronger person, a man who could take control, but as previous experience had shown, that wasn’t really my strongest point.

  “Where will you get it to pick us up? Where the hell are we even?”

  “I don’t know, but surely I can find out on my phone?” The bright white glare from my screen was a little too much, I could barely stand it since I’d been in the dark for far too long, so I blinked a number of times until my eyes adjusted. “There must be some way I can locate us?”

  “Well... why don’t you call the police?” Jamie gave me the obvious solution, but it was the one that I really wanted to avoid. I didn’t feel right getting the authorities involved when I’d been up to so much illegal activity myself.

  My silence must’ve spoken volumes.

  “Oh right, you can’t, can you? You can’t call the cops when you’re a criminal yourself. What, is there some sort of code?”

  “No, it isn’t that...” I started needlessly since Jamie was on a roll now.

  “I just cannot believe all that you’ve done. I tried to help you in the beginning, and you repay me with this? You drag me into the middle of the mess that you made all by yourself, dragging me right down into the pits of hell with you, and now you won’t even get help for me. Fuck yourself, what about me?”

  “I’m sorry, I know what I did was wrong.” I spoke quickly, forcing him to listen carefully to me. “I shouldn’t have done any of it, but I was desperate. All I want is for my company to work. I love my business, and I adore my employees. I know it sounds silly now, but I’ve been so scared of them ending up jobless because of some silly choices I made.”

  “Better jobless, than with you,” Jamie snapped nastily. I could feel anger burning off him in waves.

  “Maybe you’re right, but sometimes when you get yourself into such a pit of sadness and trouble, it’s hard to see a way out. I know that I dug my own hole, but I didn’t want to pull anyone else down with me. I know I failed at that.” I wanted to get that in, before he got a dig. “I acted wrong. I made more and more stupid decisions, and now... well, now this.”

  A stray tear fell down my cheek as I considered what a mess I’d made. I hated myself more and more with every second that passed. I knew that I’d made a mess of things, but it was only now that the reality of it all was hitting me hard in the face.

  “Please just explain to me why you felt the need to come into my office and to fuck with my stuff. I just need to know why you decided to do that to me.”

  I sighed deeply, hating that it was time to have this conversation. I would’ve much preferred it to be anywhere else in the world but here, but it wasn’t my choice now, was it?

  “I got so wrapped up in trying to get myself out of debt, of trying to get my company out of debt. I wasn’t thinking straight; I just needed a solution. I was paying off the loan shark as much as possible, as much as he asked, but I could feel it spiraling. I thought that by slowing down your company, I would get more jobs and it’d help me. I admit, it sounds stupid now saying it aloud, and I have no excuse here. I was so wrong in every way.”

  Jamie didn’t answer me, not that I expected him to. He slumped his head back and hit it hard on the wall behind him with a thump.

  “All that I can say is sorry. I know it wasn’t right. I got tied up in knots, just like I always do. This is why I’m a mess. This is why my dad doesn’t want to help me.” It was obvious now. I had spent far too long blaming him for all of my issues, but actually the only problem was me.

  “I promise you now that I will do everything I can to resolve it. I will go to the media and admit it to the world… I will tell my staff what I’ve done and allow them to make their own decisions… I will do whatever I need to.” Again I got nothing back, which only made me more desperate. “Fuck it, come on let’s go and get the car.”

  “But what if they’re there...”

  “Then I will let them take me,” I exploded. “I deserve it. I owe them the money. I never should’ve borrowed it off dodgy men, and I should’ve known that it would come back around to bite me in the ass, okay? I will finally get what I deserve after all these years of messing up.”

  I stormed out of the shed and determinedly stomped back in the direction of danger. My emotions had well and truly got the better of me, I was acting like a crazy, irrational fool, but deep inside it felt like I was finally doing something right.

  “Ashton,” Jamie’s voice wafted up behind me. “Don’t do this, think about what you’re suggesting. They will break every bone in your body if they don’t kill you. Is it really worth it just to prove that you’re sorry to me?”

  Yes, I thought without saying it aloud. It actually is.

  Admittedly, I did start to freak out as I edged towards the old dance hall. The walk was just that little bit too far that I’d managed to calm down a little by the time I got there, but I didn’t let that deter me. I was finally facing up to something, and that felt good... sort of.

  I peeked, mess scattered the area, but the van was gone. So were all the men, and their guns too. My car stood shyly in the corner with only one smashed in window. Clearly, it hadn’t seemed like a worthwhile vehicle enough to do any real damage, so after a small outburst they had left it alone. I slowly moved close enough to it to flick the engine on, and by some miracle, it actually worked.

  In a way, all of this was really good news, Jamie and I could get out of here and back to our homes, but in another, it was terrible news. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that all of this was over. Those men would come for me again; it was only a matter of when. And I imagined what they’d do next would be a million times worse.

  “We... we can get out of here?” Jamie’s voice stunned me. I spun around to see his wide eyes, his pale skin, and the fear fluttering behind his eyes. “The car looks okay, doesn’t it?”

  “I think that we are, for the moment anyway. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Jamie

  The car ride back into the city was awful. I couldn’t shake the fear that those men were coming after us, which left me totally unable to speak. Ashton whizzed along the road far too quickly, with an expression of utter determination, but I could sense a terror there.

  Despite everything, I felt bad for him. When I took off the glasses tinted with rage, I could see that he’d gotten himself into a real mess and it had spiraled out of his control. If I tried to put my own emotional baggage to one side, I could see that Ashton needed help. Clearly, help hadn’t gotten him far in life; it had allowed him to sink into messes over and over again, but this time it felt like he really did need it.

  “What do you want to do when we get back?” I asked Ashton wearily. “I know that you’re against going to the police, but don’t you think that might be the smartest choice?”

  “I just don’t think it’ll help...”

  “You don’t want to try?” He frustrated me. I wanted to punch him all over again, but this time to make him see sense. He’d gotten himself in deep, these weren’t the sort of men that would let things go. I was involved now too; I was at risk. Didn’t he care at all?
/>
  “I just think it’ll fire them up and make them even more determined to hurt me.”

  “No, you’re probably right,” I admitted dejectedly, sighing loudly with regret. “Well, do you want to come back to mine for a drink instead?” It wasn’t a sentence that I ever expected to say, but here I was saying it anyway. “We probably should discuss what we’re going to do next anyway, shouldn’t we?” Mostly, I didn’t want to be alone.

  “Erm, right okay.” Ashton sounded desperately unsure, which I couldn’t blame him for. Every other minute I was giving him hell for all the mistakes that he’d made, but not anymore. Rage wouldn’t get us anywhere; we needed to be smart. “If that’s what you want?”

  “Yes, I think it’s smartest. We have a lot to discuss.” If I said it firmly enough, then maybe he’d stop trying to fight it and he would just damn well agree already. What did he think was going to happen, that we would go our separate ways and never talk about it again? What happened if the police did get involved, or if the men came back for us? What would either of us do?

  “Yeah, okay that sounds... best,” he stammered, barely daring to look at me.

  “I think so too,” I replied, far too gravely.

  A weird tension buzzed between us, but I tried not to worry too much about it. We could deal with that later on once we were locked inside my house, the one place I might actually be able to feel safe again.

  As I leaned on my elbow and stared out of the window, I felt separate from the rest of the world, like I was going to somewhere I’d never been before, rather than towards my home. Things had changed. That terrifying experience had petrified me, and now I wasn’t sure where I stood. All the buildings looked different, and I wasn’t sure where I would fit in anymore. I no longer felt like me.

  It wasn’t just Ashton and I who would change – although there was no way of knowing how we’d act around one another again – it was everything. Tomorrow would bring with it a very different day, and we needed to know how to handle it.

  ***

  “Here we are,” Ashton tugged at my shoulder, waking me up. I hadn’t even realized that I’d drifted off to sleep, but something about the horror of the night had wiped me out. “Did you still want me to come inside?”

  “Yes, come on.”

  I slugged up the stairs with him not far behind me, and as we went inside it felt weird to have him in my apartment for the very first time ever. In a weird way, Ashton knew me better than anyone else, but in some ways he barely knew me at all.

  “Take a seat, I’ll sort you out a drink.”

  I poured the liquid into the glasses, trying to shake the sleepiness from my brain. Now we were going to have a very difficult conversation, to sort things out. I didn’t want to do it without all my faculties switched on.

  I handed Ashton a drink and sat down on the couch next to him, sighing loudly while I racked my brains trying to find the right words. Then, my mouth opened and some almost unrelated words fell out of it.

  “I wish we were still friends, I mean I know we weren’t really, and we only spoke for a short while, but I’ve always missed that.”

  “Oh God, me too.” Ashton rubbed his eyebrows hard in distress. “I always regret afterwards acting the way that I do. I always feel like I have something to prove and that overshadows everything else. I shouldn’t have acted that way this time. I should’ve trusted you. Maybe if I had, everything would’ve been different.”

  “You reckon? You think you would’ve avoided all that mess?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think you would’ve ended up getting kidnapped on my behalf. I don’t think we’d have just been fired at by a crazy man.”

  Weirdly in that moment all I wanted to do was laugh; everything about this situation was just so ludicrous.

  A chuckle burst free from my chest, and although at first Ashton looked at me like I’d lost my mind, he soon joined in. A hysterical sort of madness consumed us and we both went a little crazy, acting like idiot school kids at the back of class.

  And then, without me even realizing that it was happening, we were kissing. One moment we were laughing like idiots, the next Ashton’s lips had crashed into mine, and we were kissing like there was no tomorrow.

  It was probably just a culmination of all the mixed emotions we’d suffered, the heightened insanity that we’d experienced, but something about it felt really right. There was a sense deep in the pit of my stomach that we should’ve been doing this the whole time, that this was absolutely right for both of us.

  I wrapped my arms around Ashton’s neck, refusing to let him move away from me. Although it wasn’t like he was in any rush to move away either, his fingers knotted up in my hair, an involuntary moan escaped past his lips. He was losing himself in me.

  My lips parted, his tongue snaked between them, and as it did I felt a powerful bolt of electricity tearing through my body. It was as if a fire had been lit in my chest and it needed more, it was screaming out for me.

  I want Ashton, I finally admitted to myself, I always have done, and thankfully it seemed that my intense desire was finally about to become a truly wonderful reality.

  “Come on,” I murmured into his mouth, not wanting to give either of us enough time to talk our way out of this. “Come to my bedroom with me.”

  Ashton looked stunned, but happy too, and very quickly he nodded and stood, placing his fingers in through mine to willingly come with me into the unknown.

  Ashton

  I really didn’t want to second-guess myself, but it wasn’t easy when I was acting like an insane person. Jamie was my enemy, the man I’d done everything that I could to screw over, the man who’d been kidnapped on my behalf... yet now we were here. There was no explaining away this crazy set of events.

  With my hand in Jamie’s, and him leading me to his bedroom, it seemed utterly clear that he was very much into this, so I didn’t have anything to worry about.

  As soon as we reached Jamie’s bedroom, he spun back around to kiss me hard. I wasn’t even given the opportunity to look around but that didn’t matter. All I wanted was right here in front of me. Jamie consumed me with his lips, his mouth soft and gentle against mine, but I could feel the intense passion flowing through regardless.

  My skin set on fire, flushing bright red with heat as my trousers slid down. Now that my legs were naked it truly was on, and that made me want to scream with joy. I wanted this, more than I even realized that I did.

  I pushed Jamie’s tee shirt up, tracing my fingers along his muscles, enjoying the perspiration that ran along his skin. It was as if all the craziness of the night had clung to him, reminding us both, bonding us closer.

  Passion got the better of me, and I ran my fingers right down his chest, dipping my hand into his underwear to brush lightly against his swollen erection. I was acting too quickly; this was moving too fast, yet somehow it wasn’t quick enough. I needed everything, and I had to have it right now.

  “Oh my,” Jamie gasped as I cupped hold of him, my heart beating a whole lot faster as I realized just how large he was. I figured that he would be because he just seemed the sort, but I was surprised all the same.

  “Oh, Ashton…”

  His mouth moved down onto my neck, sending prickles and flutters right through me. It seemed that Jamie had found an erogenous zone that I didn’t even know I had, or maybe no one had ever really done it for me before, not in the same way. I groaned noisily and I moved my hand up and down over his thick, pulsating cock. I started off slowly, trying to work out how Jamie liked it, but as his breaths came out louder and more vibrantly I picked up the pace. He grew harder and slicker as I moved, slowly losing his cool.

  “Take your tee shirt off,” Jamie groaned into my ear. “And I need that underwear gone too. There are so many things that I need to do to you.”

  His words intensified the butterflies in my stomach. Their flapping became more violent, affecting my crazed heartbeat. I wanted Jamie to do whatever the hell
that he wanted with me. I was so turned on that I would’ve allowed him to have everything.

  I stepped back and tugged at my top, enjoying the animalistic groan that he made. Once I slid it off, I pulled off my underwear too, needing that gone just as much as Jamie did. Then with a wicked smile playing on my lips, I fell back onto the bed sheets as Jamie shuddered and trembled with desire. My own cock twitched with an intense passion, and Jamie’s eyes widened with pleasure. I craved his body, more than I’d ever wanted anything before, and I could barely stand not having Jamie any longer.

  “Are you going to come here and join me?” I muttered gleefully. “Or do you intend to leave me here alone?”

  “I will,” Jamie smirked and grabbed a condom from his nightstand. “As soon as you turn over onto your front.”

  I couldn’t resist a command so delicious, especially when I knew that it’d get me exactly what I wanted, so I flipped over and I pulled a pillow underneath my face so I could bite down onto it when things got the better of me.

  Ice-cold lube filled me first, causing me to squeal with joy. Then I felt Jamie’s hot lips all over my neck and back. Thrilling anticipation burned brightly within me, causing me to tense up when maybe I should’ve been relaxing. To negate that, Jamie pulled on my hips and pulled me up onto my knees.

  I sucked in a deep breath of air, waiting, my heart racing, pausing...

  And then it happened. Jamie slid his way into me and I screamed with bliss. He felt wonderful, phenomenal, better than anyone who’d ever come before him.

  “Oh fuck, Jamie,” I gasped as the wild, erratic sensations flooded me. I fisted the sheets hard, buried my face into the pillow, and tried to catch my breath. There was a pulsing tremor in my chest, my heart was hammering, I could barely hold myself upright. “Oh fuck yes!”