No Damn Good (Enemies-to-Lovers Contemporary Romance series)

by Gwen Gavin

“I’m going, boss. Don’t worry.” Keith smirked at me and I wanted to deck him.

  The hope that was sitting in my chest was turning into anger. I couldn’t let the hope grow into something else, something where I did something stupid. Hope would not get me anywhere.

  Loni

  I was shoving tips into my apron as people were leaving the paint night at Mike’s bar. It was the best night that I had in a long while. Apparently, when people have the chance to eat, they drink more and drinking more meant people were quicker to hand out tips.

  I glanced towards Jazz behind the bar and I knew that she was thinking the same thing. When she turned to cash someone out at the register, she flashed me a quick thumbs up and quirked up a smile.

  “Thank you. Don’t forget to follow me on social media. We’ll be doing this again soon!” I yelled after patrons as they were closing up their bar tabs and heading for the door.

  I rushed to clean up the tables because the regular evening crowd was coming in. I shoved the used tablecloths in the trash and put away the easels and paintbrushes in the tubs. I tucked the tubs at the edge of the bar.

  My cheeks were sore from smiling so much. “It was a great night, Jazz.”

  She smiled at someone who was coming in. “No kidding. I haven’t seen our tip jar this full the whole time I’ve been working here. I bet Mike will be happy with it.”

  My face turned dark when she mentioned Mike. Why did she have to go and do that? Why couldn’t we pretend that he didn’t exist at all?

  My sister must have seen something on my face when she spoke because her own smile faltered. “Still?”

  I shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

  Jazz looked around the bar, making sure that Keith and the customers couldn’t hear her. “It will pass. It always does. I know you like him.”

  I pulled away from my sister’s hand. “I don’t like him. I hate him.”

  Jazz’s eye almost rolled out of her head with how strongly she rolled them. “Yeah, okay.”

  “No, I mean it. I hate him. He’s a jerk, and he’s unnecessarily rude and confrontational. He disappeared for days without talking to me and now he pretends that nothing even happened between us. Well, two can play that game. What’s there to like about Mike?” I ranted in a loud whisper. I wanted to yell it. I wanted to yell it so loudly that Mike could hear me from that tiny back office, but I wasn’t about to go back there.

  Jazz pressed her lips into a tight line. “Sure thing, Appolonia. I don’t buy that shit for a second.”

  I huffed and tightened my ponytail. “Is that why you keep giving me shit about it? You don’t believe that I don’t care. I can show you I don’t care. I’ll go into Mike’s stupid office and act like nothing happened and be a professional and an adult about the situation. That’s the only way that I can prove to you I am one hundred percent over whatever bullshit Mike has to say.”

  Anger was coursing through me now. It had been a long time since I let some man influence my feelings like this. I would not let Mike with his dumb gruff expressions and how he always stood with his arms crossed over his chest and the stupid way his biceps flexed under those plain cotton t-shirts control what I could or couldn’t do. I would not cower down in Mike’s presence. I would show him exactly who was mother fucking boss here.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mike

  My office door slammed open, banging against the sidewall as though someone had kicked it in. I threw my phone down from where I was scrolling through old movies that I could stream.

  “What the fuck?” I screamed, my voice deep and loud. It was jarring and booming in the small space. The office door swung back closed for a second before a hand curled around the edge and pushed it back in.

  Before I knew it, Loni was standing in front of me with her finger pressed into my sternum, poking at me in fierce pushes.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” She yelled. Her voice was loud to match mine.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” I towered over her. There was only a few inches difference between the two of us but I puffed up my chest and rolled my shoulders forward.

  She didn’t cower. Her eyes were fiery and angry as she stared up at me. She licked her lips, and I tried not to stare at them, but I glanced at them briefly.

  “Who the hell do you think you are to storm into my office like this? Did you kick the damn thing in?” I tried to close the door behind her but I didn’t know if that was a good idea. I didn’t know if I wanted the entire barroom to hear us scream at each other or not.

  Thankfully, someone turned up the music in the main room to cover us and the office door clicked closed.

  “Who do you think you are with pretending like I don’t even fucking exist? I gave you probably the best night of business that this bar has ever seen and you can’t even come out and greet your guests? See how it’s going? I set up. I tear down and I’m waiting around for you to seem like you give a shit like a total asshole!”

  She was shaking with anger. Her eyes were shiny with mad tears and her fists that hung at her sides were trembling.Then, she started poking me in the chest again, pushing me backwards against the desk.

  “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. You’re the one who acted like I was some invisible man earlier. I tried to talk to you and I couldn’t get a word out of you. I thought I was being polite, giving you space to do your business, stay out of the way. Isn’t that what you want, Loni? Someone to stay out of your way?” I turned my voice down just a little because she was so close to me, but I was still angry. She burst into my office without so much as a hello and then she has the nerve to act like I am the asshole in this situation? No way.

  The muscle in her jaw flexed and her angry gaze faltered for just a second, but then her nostrils flared and she jabbed at my chest one more time.

  “You are the asshole who kissed me in this stupid office and then disappeared off the face of the earth for a week. When you came back, you pretended like everything was fine.” She spat the words out.

  “That’s what you wanted to happen! If you wanted something more, you should have said, but you didn’t. I was following your lead there, Loni. You can’t pretend to hate someone and then want them to fawn over you with attention at the same time.”

  Her voice reached a high pitch. “I never, never asked for you to fawn over me with attention. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just asking for a little of respect from you. We’re business partners now. Is this how you treat business partners?”

  “What? No! We aren’t partners. I told you that you could use this space. We both make a little of money. It wasn’t even a handshake deal. It was a deal that we made over text message.” I scoffed. I hated that she was this close to me, that she was spitting mad, and I didn’t realize what I had done. She just wanted to yell at me which seemed predictable but her being this close was dangerous. I could smell the coconut oil in her hair and it looked so soft that I wanted to let loose the curls from her ponytail and run my fingers through it. I wondered if she would make that delicious sound when I scratched her scalp.

  Something changed in the way that she was looking at me. Maybe my eyes were giving my thoughts away. I purposely pressed my mouth more tightly together to avoid betraying my mind.

  “And who’s fault was that, Mike? Who disappeared with the “stomach flu” for a few days and then resurfaced to only talk business via text?” She used air quotes with her fingers as she talked about the excuse that Jazz had given me about my meltdown.

  “Look, I don’t know what your sister has told you but—”

  “She’s told me everything. In fact, she’s probably pissed that I’m in here right now because she told me to leave you alone. She warned me you were a mess.”

  The words slid through me like a knife. I wanted to respond in anger. That’s how I normally would react, but I just couldn’t muster it. I was done being mad all the time.

  It was like she let the air out of me and I deflated, resting my backsi
de against the desk.

  “Your sister doesn’t know anything about that.” Sure, Jazz saw me at my worst and I’m sure I was mean and smelly, but she didn’t know why. The reason was dumb, but it still meant something to me, whether I liked it.

  Loni took a step back from me and tilted her head to the side, looking at me like I sprouted something from the top of my head. She wasn’t expecting the way I responded and honestly, I wasn’t either.

  “What...was it about?” Her voice was a little quieter now, but it was still teetering on the edge.

  “Nothing. It’s dumb.” I shrugged and rubbed at my beard, wrapping my other arm around my middle. I hadn’t told anyone about what happened when Maryanne ran away with Jordan. I only told my grandmother so that she would stop asking about Maryanne. Everyone else just assumed we broke up for the normal reasons. “I was in the process of buying this place, and my college girlfriend wasn’t so keen on the idea of me dropping out and starting a business. She thought it was a dumb idea. She thought it was such a dumb idea that she ran off with my best friend and left me. The day that you sister saw me? My ex sent me an invitation to their wedding and well, I wasn’t in my right mind.”

  I couldn’t look at Loni while I talked to her. The words came out of me whether or not I liked it. Even though Loni acted like she hated me, she was on the only people who didn’t take my shit, who wouldn’t let me push them away. She kicked in my damn office door just to prove that point.

  She tugged on the end of ponytail nervously and looked at her shoes.

  “So, yes. Your sister is right. Stay away from me. I’m a mess and an asshole, obviously.” I chuckled to myself sardonically. I didn’t like how my voice sounded. It sounded like I was an injured animal and I hated that. The walls were easier to erect and keep up and this was something different entirely.

  Loni still said nothing, instead her eyes roamed the small room around us.

  “I understand if you want to leave now. I’m sorry for being a dick. I really didn’t think about it. I thought it would be better for us both to just...move on.” I gestured with my hand like a plane taking off. With that, Loni’s eyes moved up to meet mine.

  I couldn’t read her expression. Pity. Sadness, maybe. But the anger was gone, and I didn’t know what to do with that. I knew how to respond to her when she was pissed at me, when she hated me, but I didn’t know if I could handle if she looked at me like that, like she saw straight through me.

  “Can you say something, please? Because I’m pretty sure this is the most amount of words I have ever spoken at one time and it’s really making me uncomfortable.”

  Loni silently took a step forward. My muscles contracted but I don’t think I visibly flinched. I wanted to touch her. I wanted her to reach out and touch me, but I didn’t know how to ask for that, how to move my body to do that.

  She reached up and cupped my cheek with her soft, cool hand. I closed my eyes and let her hand rest against my skin. It was electric and my breath hitched in my throat. I didn’t want to admit it. I would be a fool to admit but Loni was doing something to my heart, and I didn’t want her to stop.

  I opened my eyes, and she was smirking at me. “You’re right about one thing. You were being a total dick.”

  Loni

  When Mike leaned forward to kiss me, I sighed against him. Relief. That’s what it felt like. There was the vibration of passion and thrill but overall, I felt relief.

  This is what I wanted ever since we kissed in his office last week. This was the thing that kept me up at night. And no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, it was probably the reason that I had come into his office in the first place.

  He turned his head and his kiss deepened. His arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me in between his legs so our bodies were flush against each other as he pressed backwards against his desk.

  When he pulled away, I was panting and trying to catch my breath. His eyes were lively and bright.

  “You’re lucky that you are cute when you’re angry.” He murmured, and he laid hot kisses across my jawline. I tilted my head to accommodate him. He kissed me unlike any man I had been with. This was just kissing, it was an experience.

  Mike kissed me like any minute, I was going to float away and disappear on him, like he wanted to enjoy every sensation while it lasted. It was intoxicating.

  “I’m going to ignore that statement because my brain can’t form real thoughts right now.” I murmured, closing my eyes. I leaned into the feeling of Mike’s hands roaming my body, grasping and feeling every part of me over my clothes. I wanted to see what he would do if he got me naked and alone. I wanted to feel his hot breath on my sternum, the brush of his short beard against the sensitive skin of my breasts.

  If this is how he kissed, I wanted to know what it was like when he fucked.

  “Are we going to fuck right here in your office?” My voice was low, but we could hear the people right outside the door.

  Without stopping what he was doing, he reached over and locked the door with a resounding click. I felt his smile against my throat as he sucked on the skin there. The feeling made my heart pound so loud in my ears that all the other sounds were drowned out.

  He reached up and let loose my ponytail, my long hair coming down around my shoulders.

  “You should only wear your hair like this. I want to touch it all the time.” He growled against my neck as he kissed back up to my mouth.

  A giggled bubbled out of my mouth. Joyful and happy and I didn’t think I sounded like that anymore.

  I came into the office angry, thinking I was going to burn the place to the ground. I didn’t mind if I yelled at Mike or poked at him. I wanted to look in the eyes and confront him. I wasn’t going to let him get away with all of that easily.

  But now it was gone. The anger that made my skin hot all over was replaced with a need to feel him, to have that hard cock that was pressing against the front of his jeans in my hands and inside me.

  I unbuttoned his jeans while he wiggled my shirt over my head. I pushed down the front of his jeans, allowing his cock to bounce in front of him. When my hand curled around it through his boxers, he groaned and thrust him into my grip. He pulsed with passion and I bite his bottom lip, hard enough to make him groan.

  “Touch me, please, Mike.” I begged.

  He made quick work of my clothes and spun me around so I was on top of his desk. I gasped at the feeling of the cold wood on my bare ass.

  Mike captured my mouth with his and he pressed into me slowly, savoring every inch as he stretched me. I clawed at his back, wanting him closer, impossibly closer. He held back, the muscles in his thighs were quivering.

  “I don’t want to rush this, Loni.” My name on his lips was musical, and I gasped as he pressed even more slowly inside of me. I could feel every pulse of his hard cock and every gasp against my cheek.

  His eyes never left mine as he entered me. They turned dark and hooded, a new look that I had never seen before and one that I wanted to retain to memory.

  Once he was fully seated in me, I wiggled my hips against his and he hissed in through his teeth. “You’re going to wreck me, Loni.”

  I pulled him for a juicy kiss. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It had been two weeks since I kicked in Mike’s office door and it was shaping up to be my greatest angry idea ever.

  “If you insist on using the same towel every time that you shower, can you at least hang it on the hook to dry?” Mike called out from the bathroom.

  I shrugged even though he couldn’t see me. “What? It eventually dries. That’s the whole point. It’s a thing that dries.”

  He opened the bathroom door with his own towel slung low on his hips. His body was still a little wet from the shower, a rogue droplet streamed down his bare stomach. His shaggy dark hair hung wet around his ears.

  “It won’t dry if it’s balled up on the floor, Loni.” His tone was o
ne of annoyance but the smirk on his face said something else. “Why don’t you just throw it in the dirty clothes hamper and get a fresh one? I know how to do laundry.”

  His apartment, for the most part, was more clean than anything I had ever lived in before. He was a minimalist, and he hated clutter. With me crashing at his place, I was tempting his patience every day but part of me felt like he liked it.

  “Why would you clean the thing that cleans you?” I smiled back at him and he rolled his eyes.

  It drove him crazy, but it was a nice kind of crazy. The kind of crazy that I could imagine us laughing about in a few years. One those things that I tell people, “He hates that I leave my towel on the floor but I love him, anyway.”

  Love. The idea had flitted across my mind more than once over the last couple of weeks as I crashed at his place, using the key he kept under the mat and making small talk with Mrs. Whitley on my way up to his place.