Certified Heartthrob: An Enemies to Lovers Romantic Comedy (Heartstring Dating Agency Book 2)

by Lauren Wood

  “It’s really me?” she struggled to say, breathless.

  “It’s definitely you.” I grinned, pressing my lips to the damp fabric.

  She writhed against the bed, bucking against my mouth. I started tearing off her clothing, one piece at a time, until she was naked in front of me...at my mercy. For all the times I had pissed her off or hurt her, I intended to make up for it with pleasure right then and there.

  With everything else out of the way, I stood back and looked her over. “God, you’re beautiful.”

  A smile curled at the edges of her lips as I pulled off my own shirt and yanked down my pants. She squirmed in the sheets, reaching for me...silently begging me to come back to her. I had to give her what she wanted. Not just because she wanted me to, but because I wasn’t strong enough to resist whatever pull she had over me.

  I moved over her, meeting her face to face. We kissed slowly, breathing in and out with a matching, rising pace as if we were sharing the same breath...passing it back and forth between our lungs, unwilling or unable to break away. She was wet and open wide, pressed against my throbbing desire.

  She lifted her feet in the air, wrapping her legs around my hips...just as we had been in the hall, only now there was nothing to keep me from slipping inside of her. I kissed her neck and teased her with the tip of my hardness, but she hiked her hips closer...sliding me inside.

  I hissed into the curve of her neck, relishing in the slow burn of her stretching around me and taking me in, inch by inch. The moment I settled deep into her core, everything inside of her seized up and tightened. Our lips crashed back together as I started to thrust in long, slow movements.

  We lost ourselves there for an unknown amount of time. Our lips, teeth, and tongues thrashing at one another like our lives depended on it, while I took my time moving inside of her...pushing her where she wanted to go, and did she ever take me there right along with her.

  We were both shaking, barely holding on by a thread after a while. I moved faster, desperate to give us both the relief we needed.

  Her nails dug into my back, dragging from the top to the bottom like she was branding me. And good God, did it ever drive me wild. Everything she did sent me over the edge, and it only felt better now that I was letting go...letting her consume me in the way I had been fighting against all along.

  “Fuck...Mark…” she whimpered breathlessly.

  I pushed harder and faster still, groaning against her ear. Our bodies stayed pressed tightly together so that with every draw, I felt every inch of her warm, soft skin gliding against mine.

  Our eyes locked and our fingers intertwined as our breaths grew even more ragged and broken. I thrust into her over and over, dancing along with her cries, growing louder each time. Until finally she shuddered around me, clenching tightly and milking me dry. Our bodies shook with the rise and fall that ripped through us, until silence fell and I collapsed on top of her.

  We laid in silence for a long time with my head buried in her hair, pressed up against the pounding pulse I could feel through her neck. Finally, I resorted to rolling over to her side, but I kept her pulled close...as if she might slip away if we separated too much.

  Her eyes looked deep into mine, studying me. “You’re kind of a jerk,” she said after a while.

  “What?” I laughed. “That’s not the first thing I expected to hear out of your mouth after that.”

  She smirked. “That may have been amazing. And sure, maybe you’re amazing, too. But everything you’ve done and said up until tonight…”

  “Okay, fair enough,” I admitted. “You’re right. I am kind of a jerk. Or at least I was acting like one.”

  “I guess I can’t blame you.” She shrugged with a sigh. “Whoever that woman was who broke your heart...She was a real idiot.”

  I kissed her cheek, twirling one long strand of her hair around my finger. “I could say the same about anyone who’s ever hurt you.”

  “Including yourself?” She giggled.

  I pinched at her side as she burst into laughter. She smacked me playfully, which sparked a full-on naked wrestling match right there in the bed. Just as I’d pinned her down for another kiss, she managed to wiggle free and take off running into the darkness of her apartment. I chased her down into the bathroom, where she instinctively turned on the shower.

  We stood under the hot water, washing and stroking each other’s bodies until it turned cold. Bundled up in towels, we went straight back to her bed, where we made love until the sun came up.

  When we finally woke up again sometime closer to noon, I was determined not to let us have another horrible morning-after. It was just another thing I needed to make up to her.

  “I’ll order us breakfast,” I suggested.

  She tugged at my arm with a mischievous grin. “Have me for breakfast instead.”

  “You’re trying to kill me,” I growled against her lips.

  “Seems like a good way to go.”

  And just like that, I was lost in her lips again. I don’t know how many more tries it took before we were finally able to pull away from one another long enough for me to order food. But even after it arrived, we stayed camped out in her bed, refusing to put clothes on even as we ate.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent all night and day in bed with a woman, alternating between fucking each other’s brains out and talking, laughing. I must have forgotten what it felt like to go so long without it. Or maybe, in all the times it had happened before, it had never felt quite as good as it did with Camille.

  Finally, when the sun started to set again, I knew I should go home to take care of some things. It was hard to leave her, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before we saw each other again.

  “So, what happens now?” she asked as she walked me to the door.

  I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Now, you wait for me to message you. And then you message back. And before you know it, we’ll see each other again.”

  “And then?”

  “And then the rest is history.” I grinned, pressing my lips to hers one last time.

  I reluctantly left and made my way down to the elevator. As soon as I was settled into the back of a cab, I pulled out my phone and sent a text.

  Mark: Miss you already.

  Camille: It took you awhile to come around, but now that you have...you’re really not holding back, are you?

  Mark: Never again.

  Camille: I’m holding you to that.

  Mark: Please do. :)

  15

  Camille

  Going into work on Monday morning felt like something out of a movie. I couldn’t stop smiling and my body was still buzzing from my reunion with Mark the night before. While I was normally stoic and straightlaced, I suddenly felt giddy, like I might start chatting with every stranger I passed on the street.

  I stopped at the bodega on the corner and bought a fresh bouquet of flowers for my office, but only after taking in big whiffs of every arrangement on display. I felt generous at the coffee shop and ordered extra to-go cups for half the people in the office. My arms were full by the time I walked into Heartstring headquarters, carrying all of that plus a box of pastries to share with everyone.

  The assistants and secretaries were thrilled with my gifts, but the minute I saw Lucas, I knew not all was right in the world. But what could be wrong now that our internet troll was officially taken care of? In more ways than one, thanks to me.

  “Your office. Now,” he boomed the moment I approached him at the other end of the work floor.

  “Don’t boss me around,” I huffed dismissively, but he followed in behind me and slammed my door shut.

  “You’re in an awfully good mood.” He sighed as I settled in behind my desk. “I take it you haven’t seen the news today.”

  “What now?” I groaned.

  He tossed a stack of printed articles down on my desk with a loud, crashing plop. I picked up the first few pages and started to read.<
br />
  CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, MARK SILVER: Retired millionaire and Heartstring nemesis, Mark Silver, put a call out to tabloids weeks ago to dig into the secretive, private love lives of the dating app’s sibling execs—insinuating that they might each be lacking romance of any substance, despite their pockets being lined by the promise of love for the masses. We accepted this challenge and found that CEO Camille Meadows has had a very active love life lately as it turns out, but with none other than...Mark Silver himself. Suspicious timing and circumstances to follow Mark’s tirade against the company. After her older brother, Lucas, went through great lengths to get hitched when his own playboy reputation came under fire last year...one has to wonder if Camille is taking a play from her brother’s book. Would she go so far as to seduce Mr. Silver for the sake of her company’s reputation? It does seem awfully convenient that these siblings tend to couple off only after people question their absent love lives. But what does this mean for the site’s millions of users who are in search of the real thing? Can we really trust these chronically single sociopaths to play matchmaker for so many lonely people?

  I kept reading, finding each article to be worse than the last. By the end of it, my head was spinning and I was starting to feel sick. Many of the scathing pieces were paired with a picture of Mark and me standing on the sidewalk, locked in a sweeping kiss.

  “Those toads,” I seethed. “They were following me!”

  “Because he told them to,” Lucas fumed. “What were you thinking!?”

  “What are you thinking!” I argued. “You don’t honestly believe I pursued him just to prove everyone wrong, do you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Lucas, please.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re one to talk after everything you and Victoria went through. You should know better than anyone that sometimes you set out to do one thing and end up...falling in love.”

  His face dropped, and I knew I had said too much. “Falling in love?” he scoffed. “You don’t seriously expect me to believe that whatever is going on with this guy is real, do you?”

  “Why is that so hard to believe? You think you’re the only one who can accidentally find love?”

  Before he could answer, my door opened again. Jada and Joshua came filing in, both of them looking just as worn and pissed as Lucas.

  “Oh, great. The whole family’s here.” I sank down into my chair, burying my face in my hands.

  “This is bad,” Joshua fretted. “This is really bad.”

  “Everyone calm down,” I pleaded. “It’s not that bad. What do we care if these people have nothing better to do with their time than try and drag our names through the mud? None of what they’re saying is true, so we shouldn’t even give it the time of day. And anyway...Joshua, you have no room to talk. This is the most I’ve seen you care about our company since we started it.”

  “Don’t try to switch the attention to me,” he shot back defensively.

  “He’s right,” Lucas added. “We’ll have to address his laziness another time. Right now, we have this to sort through.”

  “Laziness!?” Joshua gasped.

  I sat back with a smug smile, crossing my arms. “That’s right. Laziness.”

  “You two showed up just in time to hear our delusional sister try and convince me that she’s actually in love with this guy.”

  “You are!?” Jada squealed.

  All eyes turned to me. The weight of their stares made it hard to breathe or swallow. I never actually said I was in love with him...maybe I thought it, but I hadn’t said it. And now I was on the spot.

  “I didn’t say that exactly, Lucas.”

  “I would hope not. I’d hope you wouldn’t be that naive.”

  “Hold on just one damn minute.” I shot up from my chair, noting how the flowers I bought earlier suddenly didn’t seem as bright and cheerful as they had before. “You nearly destroyed us in your manipulative little quest to win over your high school sweetheart. And now you have the nerve to call me naive? You were lucky everything went the way it did. Victoria could have just as easily refused you, and your little stunt would have been the nail in the coffin for this whole company.”

  “You do realize this guy is conning you, right?” he fired back. “Think about it, Cam. A few weeks ago, his whole sad, pathetic little life revolved around scamming our site. He conned women into botched dates because he had an obsession with ruining us. What kind of guy does that!? You don’t think that when you tracked him down, he wasn’t thinking he hit the jackpot? He gets laid while becoming front page tabloid fodder and tearing us down in the process!”

  “That’s not what’s going on between us,” I insisted. “You don’t know him. He’d never do any of this on purpose. These gossip columnists were just waiting for one of us to throw them a bone!”

  “Because he got them all warmed up for it! He’s the one who sicced them on us all over again!”

  Jada interjected. “I thought you said you could never let anything happen with him. You said you wouldn’t even have a drink with him...because he was trying to destroy our company.”

  “Well, things happen.” I blushed. I hated having my intelligence and integrity questioned, especially when it put my blundering love life in the spotlight...in front of my siblings, no less.

  “Things happen because you let them happen,” Joshua proposed with a daring look in his eyes...one that warned me against trying to turn this back around on him again.

  “Mark didn’t do any of this for the tabloids.” I pushed on, despite my tightening throat and the sick feeling growing in my gut. “And neither did I. He was jaded, and that’s why he came after us. But now he’s not anymore.”

  “Not jaded anymore?” Lucas asked. “Or not coming after us anymore?”

  I shrugged. “Both.”

  “Even if what you’re saying is true,” Jada said, “what are we going to do about all of this? You know as well as anyone that what’s really happening isn’t always what matters. It’s about how it looks to everyone else.”

  “That certainly didn’t stop Lucas,” I reminded them. “And it’s not going to stop me either. I’m not going to let these gossip vultures run my life.”

  “Maybe you aren’t. But who’s to say Mark feels the same?” Lucas suggested.

  “I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

  “And you’re putting all your trust into this troll,” he huffed. “You realize you’re effectively asking us to do the same? You want us to accept this guy who has not only called out my own marriage in the press, calling it a sham, but now he’s putting you in the middle of it all, too?”

  “Actually, he called out us all for being single,” Jada added, looking embarrassed.

  “Enough!” I yelled. “Everyone out of my office. I fixed the trolling problem—”

  “I’ll say,” Joshua grumbled.

  “I took care of it! And I’ll take care of this, too. If Mark and I have to make a statement, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I’m sure he’d love that,” Lucas scoffed.

  I ushered them out the door, one by one, all but shoving them out. Lucas stormed out first with Jada behind him, but Joshua lingered behind.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked when the others were out of earshot.

  The way his doubt burned into my confidence left me feeling less certain than I was before. It wasn’t like me to be the optimistic one. I was usually the skeptic, not the other way around. Could it be that I really was blind to Mark’s true intentions?

  “Yes,” I insisted, trying to push down any threatening feelings inside that suggested I might be wrong.

  “I hope you’re right,” he offered before walking off towards the others.

  Just before closing the door, I noticed my siblings all reconvening in Lucas’s office. I imagined them meeting about me, insisting that I had lost my mind or that I was about to let the whole company go down through my stubbornness.

  But they did
n’t know Mark like I did. Sure, it looked bad, given his former vendetta against us...but he was done with all that now. And he hadn’t meant to fall for me anymore than I’d meant to fall for him. The man gave all his spare time to soup kitchens and community centers for Christ’s sake! He wasn’t the manipulative monster they all wanted me to believe he was.

  At least I hoped not. Because if he was, it’d be even harder for me to forgive myself than it would be for my siblings to get past it. I returned to my desk, even though it was impossible to focus. Soon, I would see Mark again, and all of my doubts would disappear in his arms. I knew that what we had was real, and that was enough to be scared of without all the extra stress of their doubts.

  16

  Mark

  The clock hanging in my office ticked away, taunting me as I stared down at the computer screen. Deleting your dating profiles when you started seeing someone new was an anxious moment for everyone, wasn’t it? You wonder if it will jinx things somehow. Doom the whole relationship to failure, so you have to go crawling back to the apps with your tail between your legs.

  But I had better, more tempting thoughts rattling around in my head, too. Like wondering whether, if things kept going well, Camille would want to move in with me or if we’d find a whole new place together. I imagined converting my extra guest room into an office for her. My place was further from her corporate office, though.

  Getting ahead of yourself much, Mark? I laughed at myself, shaking my head. For someone who’d been terrified of love and romance before, I sure was plummeting headfirst into all the same old, hopeful optimisms. I just had to hope I wouldn’t end up looking back with regret, the way I had with my ex.

  Things with Camille felt different, though. Different enough to bring me to that moment with the prompt displayed on my computer screen: