by Anthology
Meanwhile, Ken had pulled at least half a dozen suitcases down into the aisle and was scratching his head and grunting at them like a primate.
That was my last memory before I opened my eyes again in Rome. The cabin was cheerful and sun-drenched. My head was clear. My thoughts came in the form of words rather than static images and smells from the 1980s. And I … was almost naked.
Looking around our seats was like waking up in the hotel room from The Hangover. I tried to piece together the events from the night before, but all I had were hazy bits and pieces of information. There was a black garbage bag on the floor next to my feet, which I vaguely remembered putting my puke-covered clothes into, but the trash bag had more puke on it, indicating that I had gotten sick again at some point in the middle of the night with absolutely zero memory of it. There was a T-shirt strewn across my lap, which seemed odd … until I lifted it and found my own bald pussy staring back up at me.
Dropping the shirt back into place, I remembered that I had gone commando the day before in preparation for joining the Mile High Club, so when I’d stripped off my puke-covered clothes, I guess I ended up wearing nothing but a bra and a pair of flip-flops.
That was when I realized whose shirt it was.
Glancing over at my husband, I found him topless, sound asleep, and slumped so far over in his seat that his head was nearly touching the ground in the aisle. The suitcases had been put away, but a few of the compartment doors were still open.
Jesus Christ.
“Ken,” I whispered, trying to pull him into an upright position as the pilot asked us to return our tray tables to their upright positions and prepare for landing. “Ken, we’re here.”
“Hmm?” He sat up and yawned, stretching his arms until they smacked against the low ceiling. At that point, his eyes finally blinked open, and he surveyed the wasteland that was Row 52, Seats A and B. Only his eyes weren’t reptilian and vacant anymore. They were clear and calculating. He deduced everything I had in about half the time and looked at me with the severity of a man who’d just discovered that he’d morphed into a werewolf the night before and killed a small village full of toddlers and puppies.
With a snort, I erupted into a full-bodied fit of hysterics, prompting Ken to burst out laughing too.
By the time we got to the hotel, I felt amazing. I was surprisingly well rested, in a beautiful country with my beautiful husband, and my puke-covered clothes were long forgotten in a trash can back at the Aeroporti di Roma.
We were greeted by a crowd of authors and readers, all milling about in the lobby, waiting to check in for the event.
Most were jet-lagged, a few were nursing coffees the size of fire extinguishers, and the obligatory question on everyone’s lips was, “How was your flight?”
I might not have been able to say that I’d joined the Mile High Club, but it was definitely the most memorable flight I’d ever taken. And isn’t that the point? Adventures aren’t guaranteed to go according to plan. That’s what makes them so damn exciting. But regardless of whether you win, lose, or end up getting a body cavity search by a TSA agent with freakishly large hands, if you get to share the experience with your best friend and laugh about it later, that’s all that matters.
“How was our flight?” I glanced at Ken over my shoulder with a knowing smile. “It was great.”
To which Ken made a snorting sound in the back of his throat and replied, “Was it?”
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this little sexual (mis)adventure, you should pick up my hilarious, HOT, heartwarming memoir, 44 Chapters About 4 Men (the inspiration for the Netflix original series Sex/Life), and then read the sexy, angsty, intense backstories for each man in the 44 Chapters spin-off novels: SKIN, SPEED, STAR, and SUIT!
Books by BB Easton
STEAMY COMEDIC MEMOIR
Inspiration for the Netflix Original Series Sex/Life
44 Chapters About 4 Men
The 44 CHAPTERS SPIN-OFF Series
Darkly funny. Deeply emotional. Shockingly sexy.
SKIN (Knight’s backstory, Book 1)
SPEED (Harley’s backstory, Book 2)
STAR (Hans’s backstory, Book 3)
SUIT (Ken’s backstory, Book 4)
The RAIN TRILOGY
A gritty, suspenseful, dystopian love story.
Praying for Rain
Fighting for Rain
Dying for Rain
For updates on new releases, sales, and giveaways, sign up here.
About the Author
BB Easton lives in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, with her long-suffering husband, Ken, and two adorable children. She recently quit her job as a school psychologist to write books about her punk rock past and deviant sexual history full-time. Ken is suuuper excited about that.
BB’s debut memoir, 44 Chapters About 4 Men, is the inspiration for the Netflix original series Sex/Life. Because she had so much fun writing it, she decided to give each of her four men his own backstory novel: Skin, Speed, Star, and Suit.
The Rain Trilogy was her first work of fiction. Or at least, that’s what she thought when she wrote it in 2019. Then, 2020 hit, and all of her dystopian plot points started coming true. If you need her, she’ll be busy writing a feel-good utopian rom-com to see if that fixes everything.
You can find BB procrastinating in all of the following places:
Website: www.authorbbeaston.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/author.bb.easton
TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeEKRLyS/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bbeaston
#TeamBB Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/BBEaston
Twitter: www.twitter.com/bb_easton
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/artbyeaston
Goodreads: https://goo.gl/4hiwiR
Amazon: https://author.to/bbeaston
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/bb-easton
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/bbeaston
Etsy: www.etsy.com/shop/artbyeaston
And giving away free e-books from her best-selling author friends every month in her newsletter: www.artbyeaston.com/subscribe
Copyright © 2021 Kennedy Ryan
All rights reserved
Published by Kennedy Ryan
Free to Love is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are all products of the author’s twisted imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Free to Love
“I’m divorcing my fiancé.”
My best friend Kiera meets this grim assertion with the “teeth-sucking, shaking-my head” playful scorn it deserves.
“Shawna, I’m pretty sure you can’t divorce someone you haven’t married yet,” she says, folding long legs beneath her on the couch in our living room. “But may I ask why Markus is getting kicked to the curb?”
“For one, he’s allowed his mother to add like twenty people to the guest list.”
Comfortably attired in shorts and T-shirt, I flop onto the couch beside her, cover my eyes with one arm and release a weary sigh. Dramatic, I know, but the situation almost merits histrionics. With our wedding only a few weeks away, Markus’s family keeps showing out, as relatives often do when nuptials are involved. Instead of trying to make this as easy as possible for the prospective bride and groom, these folks keep adding to an already bloated guest list, changing their steak to seafood, swapping their meat for vegan and requesting special seating arrangements left and right, with complete disregard for the seating chart that by now resembles a metabolic map.
“If I have to hear one more time that Markus’s Uncle Jasper can’t stand Aunt Jessa Mae.” I lift my arm to peer at Kiera. �
��His wife, by the way, and must be seated on the opposite side of the room, I’ll pull my hair out.”
“Ten of ten recommend,” Keira says with a grin, running a hand over her smooth brown pate, bald as a newborn’s. “Hair is one less thing to worry about. It’s very liberating.”
“Everybody can’t pull that look off so beautifully, and if I ever shave my head, it probably won’t be this close to my wedding.”
“You’ve got a great veil if the bald goes bad.”
We exchange a look and a grin. I haul myself up and over to lay my head in her lap. She knows the drill and pushes the hair away from my face, massaging my temples. We’ve been together since college freshman year, and if there’s anyone who knows how to soothe my savage beast, it’s Kiera.
“I should marry you instead.” I smile up at her dreamily. “We could run away together.”
“If you liked pussy as much as you like dick, I’d take you up on it.” She wags her tongue at me and laughs, tugging one of my blonde dreadlocks. “But since you don’t, that honeymoon would be hella awkward.”
“If Markus don’t act right, it’s not off the table.” I close my eyes, but open one to squint at her and wag my tongue back. “By the way, I’m a quick learner.”
“If we haven’t hooked up by now, after all these years, honey, it ain’t happening.”
I manage a laugh, no more than a grunt and a huff of air through my nose. My bones are tired. My plasma aches. My cells refuse to regenerate.
“Them kids wore you out in summer school?” she asks, knowing fingers seeking and finding the knots of tension along my neck.
“Yeah, but it was worth it.” My lips soften into a smile. “Shyla looked me right in the eye and said my name today. I almost shed thug tears right there in front of the whole class. She barely said a word at the beginning of the year, and her vocabulary just keeps growing. She’s an amazing kid. They all are.”
“You guys are angels,” Kiera says. “Special needs teachers. So much patience.”
“When you have to fight that hard for every word, it means even more when you get them. If I wasn’t doing this for a living, I’d find a way to volunteer. I’m getting paid to do something I used to for free when I was a kid.”
A lunch buddies program in high school paired “typical” students up with kids on the spectrum who were sometimes in self-contained classrooms. This was years ago, and there are more inclusive settings now. The administration thought we would be modeling something for them, improving their social skills, but I got so much more from it than I gave. Penny, my buddy, quickly became one of my best friends, and showed me that when we disregard people, render them invisible and excluded, we’re the ones who miss out. I’d always wanted to be a nurse to help people, but after Penny, I knew teaching would be my path.
“You and Markus both help so much,” Kiera says. “It’s why you make a perfect pair.”
“Yeah, except he gets paid a lot more for his help. I told him I’m marrying him for his money.”
“He’d make an excellent sugar daddy. Must be nice being an athletic trainer for an NBA team. When’s he getting us tickets to a San Diego Waves game? They’re in the playoffs this year.”
“I guess whenever we want. You know I’m not really into basketball.”
“Yeah, I don’t have to be into basketball to want to meet that fine August West.”
“You also aren’t into men, so . . .” I scrunch my face up at her. “I’m confused. Plus he’s notoriously happy with his wife Iris.”
“Their kids are adorable. She posted a family pic on insta the other day. Even my ovaries twitched, and you know damn well I have no intention of putting those things to use.”
A low chuckle shakes my shoulders in her lap. I reach up and grab her hand, overwhelmed with deep affection for my ace boom.
“Thank you for taking my edge off,” I tell her. “Weddings should not be this hard.”
“You’ve obviously never gotten married.”
“Last I checked, neither had you.”
“But I’ve been a bridesmaid for two sisters, four cousins and a gajillion friends. Everybody gets so turned up. Brides, mamas, wedding planners. It can become such a production.”
“I really just wanted something intimate and small, but Markus’s mama keeps stretching this thing like Laffy Taffy. Adding guests, a fancy photographer, this expensive caterer. Spending so much money. Left to me, the wedding would have been in my Mama’s back yard. We’d have been done with it, but Markus’s family insisted on footing the bill.”
“They that high society Negro crew,” Kiera says, pursing her lips into a moue to convey disdain. “Hello, dahling. I’m so boujee. Bad and boujee to be precise. Scurry along now. Fetch me some escargots.”
“If his folks are the Cosbys, me and Mama are the Evans family.”
“Good Times?” Kiera laughs, tapping my head. “Bitch, you ain’t ever lived in no projects,”
“Maybe the Winslows?”
“Oooh, now you know I loved some Urkel. Laura was wrong for that. All that devotion? I’d take it even in suspenders. Even with a dick. She shoulda been grateful.” She drops a kiss on my forehead and gently pushes me off her lap, standing to her feet into a graceful stretch. “And you should be, too. Markus loves you. This wedding will be over soon and then the marriage can begin.”
“If it was up to me, the marriage would begin tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow.” Kiera executes a perfect body roll. “I have a tent at that Juneteenth festival. I’m selling some of my art.”
“Oh, that’s great.” I stand, too, matching her stretch and adding a yawn. “I was planning to come through. It should be fun. What time does it start?”
Kiera grabs her bag off the bar dividing the living room from the kitchen and pulls out a vividly patterned head wrap.
“Like three o’clock.” She slips on the head wrap and slings the bag over her shoulder. “I’m going to set up. Need to grab some pieces from storage. You sure you don’t wanna roll?”
“I’m sure.” I sit on the arm of the couch and trace its geometrical pattern. “I’ve always hated this furniture.”
Kiera releases a startled laugh and gives an eye roll. “You’ll be living in Markus’s lap of luxury soon. No more slumming it for you. Though I suspect you’d settle just to be in his lap.”
“Markus will be lucky if I ever straddle him again after this last time caving to his mama. He better have answers.”
“It’s Markus. I’m sure he has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he’s wearing that umbilical cord like a belt.”
I toss my head back, giggling despite the tension in my shoulders. “He’d die if he heard you say that.”
“Then don’t tell him I said it.” With one last chuckle and a wave, she leaves.
As much as I love Kiera, when the door closes behind her, I welcome the immediate silence that descends, starkly contrasting with a busy day in the classroom, the noise and rush of traffic and even the banter with my friend. I need this. Between work and . . . shudder . . .wedding plans . . .I haven’t had enough quiet lately.
My phone trills with an incoming text.
“So much for quiet,” I mutter, reaching for my bag on the floor and extracting my phone.
Markus: Hey.
Me: Hey.
Markus: Baby, I hate it when we fight.
Me: I hate when you do things that make me mad at you.
Markus: I know you said you needed some space to calm down, but could I come over for a few minutes?
My thumb hovers over the keys. In a moment of pique, I told him maybe we should wait and see each other tomorrow. There have been very few times either of us have requested space in the two years we’ve been dating. Neither of us has ever been very good at giving it. We’re like magnets, and resisting him, even when I’m angry, has never been easy. That’s why I asked for space. As soon as I see the man, my vagina starts having wild wild thoughts.
Me: Okay. A few minutes.
Markus: Open the door.
Open the . . .
I glance from my phone to the door of my apartment. The man doesn’t know when to quit. That cast iron will is what compelled him to complete his doctorate of physical therapy. It’s what drove him to apply for the position of head athletic trainer and director of performance rehabilitation for one of the NBA’s hottest teams. It’s what fueled him to approach me at margarita night even though I was obviously hanging with my girls.
When I open the door, I’m reminded why I sometimes ask for space when we fight. The man is fine as fuck. Six feet, five inches of rock muscles and suede skin and soft lips and sculpted cheekbones and square jaw and wide shoulders and long legs and . . .need I go on?
Irresistible.
Tonight his fine-ness just pisses me off because if you’re gonna look like this, don’t give me reasons not to fuck you.
“What?” I ask forcing a testy tone, hand on one hip, frown locked in.
His brows lift as if at my audacity. My fiancé walks with swagger down the fine line dividing confidence from arrogance. Money. Intelligence. Education. Success. It could go to his head. Lucky for me, most of it goes to his dick. He fucks like a pharaoh, but BDE won’t get him out of this.
“Can I come in?” he asks, his voice rich, thick like maple syrup sticking to my nerve endings.
I step back, holding the door open for him to enter.
“Kiera here?” He glances around the apartment, the open floor plan revealing the empty kitchen, living and dining rooms in one sweep.
“No. She went to set up for the Juneteenth festival tomorrow.”
“Selling her art?”
“Yeah.” I close the door and step in, but keep my distance. With the Waves in the playoffs, I’ve barely seen him lately and my body starts humming with the need to be close. We scheduled the wedding at the beginning of August in case the team makes it to the championship. I would have relished a night with him had it not been for our fight.