Enemies With Benefits (Loveless Brothers, #1)

by Roxie Noir

Well, “friends.” It’ll have to do as a moniker, because I don’t know another word for “person who irritates the living daylights out of me until she takes her clothes off, at which point she becomes my own personal sex goddess, custom-built to satiate my physical desires.” “Friends” is at least shorter.

This is dangerous. It’s dangerous the way drugs are dangerous, because it feels too good. It feels warm and right, soothing, like there’s a deeply tangled piece of me coming untwisted in this moment. It feels like the world outside my Bronco has stopped so that we can be here, together, warm and safe. But getting drunk feels good. Cocaine feels good. Heroin feels good, and everyone knows those are dangerous.

both of us turned away from Payton like we’re giving her privacy. We’re not. There’s no such thing as privacy when you’re screaming about your pussy in public.

“I don’t see that one,” he drawls. “I just see this one called ‘Very hot porn,’ and it’s… all drawings of me, naked?” “Dammit,” I hiss, glancing at the door.

“That’s not your Bronco outside her house most nights?” Levi asks calmly. I feel like he’s felled a tree on my head, only the tree is made of information.

“We’ve got a problem,” Seth says, his voice dead serious. “It’s the doppelgänger scenario,” Levi agrees. He puts one hand on my shoulder. “Eli,” he says. “Someone’s been impersonating you. For weeks, now.” “Fuck off,” I say, resigned. “It does make the most sense,” Seth concurs. “I can’t imagine Violet sleeping with this grumpy asshole. She’s such a nice girl.” “Violet is not nice,” I say. “Always been nice to me,” Levi says.

“I also hear that she’s real nice to that doppelgänger you got.” I open my mouth. No sound comes out. My face heats up. I shut it.

“According to Clive, the two of you exchange morning greetings several times a week,” Levi adds in. “That’s her next-door neighbor.”

“Kiss me,” he says. “We’re in public,” I murmur. “And?” “And everyone can see us,” I whisper. My eyes drop to his lips. “Let them watch,” he says.

“I’ve been waiting all night to kiss you. I’ve been waiting since I left your house this morning.” Me too, I think.

“You won’t kiss me in public but you’ll fuck me in the barn?” he asks, teasing. “You make this sound so dirty.” “That’s because it is.” I open my eyes, drink him in again. Lord, he’s beautiful. “You promise?” I ask. Eli just laughs softly. “All this time together and you still want a promise?” he teases. “And here I thought maybe I’d proven myself.”

“Yes, I promise,” he says. “I promise that I’m drunk enough to throw caution to the wind and fuck you in the barn. I promise it’ll be dirty and perfect and you’ll think about it every ten minutes for the next week.”

“And I promise that if you don’t go right now we’re going to do it on this bench,” he whispers. “Get outta here.”

“I’ve had too much whiskey,” he murmurs. “For what?” I ask, suddenly alarmed. Eli laughs.

“For kissing you like this,” he says, his other hand sliding down my arm, taking me by the wrist. “For all this sweet foreplay bullshit where we kiss like we’re lovers and not like we’re trying to destroy each other.”

“I tried to talk myself out of this,” he whispers into my ear. I wrap my legs around him. He pulls back, pushes himself in, his arms tight around me. “Out of fucking me in a barn?” “Out of fucking you at all,” he goes on. “I know danger when I see it, and you’re nothing but.”

We fuck. We don’t sleep together, we don’t bang, and we sure as hell don’t make love. We’re on the floor of a barn and this is fucking, pure and raw and simple.

It doesn’t take long before I’m shaking and shuddering. Eli knows exactly what I need, how to touch me. He’s had weeks of near-constant practice, and he’s always been a quick study. But there’s something else. There’s the fact that Eli fits me like a glove. There’s the fact that he feels custom-made for me, the fact that what I need always seems to be exactly what he wants.

“Violet, I have a confession,” he says, his lips next to my ear. “I don’t already know all your sins?” “At the moment, you are most of my sins.”

but I don’t really care. I just want to document this moment, because I have a feeling that someday I’ll want proof that it happened.

It’s good. It’s nice. It’s better than nice; it’s a thousand things that I don’t want to admit to myself. It’s enough to make me wish that I was someone else, or that she was. It’s enough to make me wish this could actually work. I kiss her long and slow. I kiss her like we’re in love. She kisses back the same way, her hand soft against my face, her lips gentle.

“Good job,” I say softly. “You deserve it.” Holy shit, I meant that.

I’m disappointed. I’m bummed. I’m sad I didn’t win, and yeah, there’s a part of me that’s annoyed that Eli did. But there’s a bigger part that knows he deserves it, and that part’s actually happy for him.

Take Violet somewhere she’s never been. Forget a bed and breakfast in the mountains. Go to Paris. Put a down payment on a house of your own so you can move out of your mom’s house. Buy a new car, for the love of God.

In a flash, I remember the time I kissed her here. In the middle of that awful wedding. We’d been up all night and just made five hundred cranes together, and when I saw her come in here, I had to follow her. I had to kiss her just that once or I thought I might die.

I feel like I’ve swallowed the hook, like something sharp and merciless is wedged behind my ribcage and I’m just waiting for it to destroy me. Every time I think about her, it tugs. Every time I remember her saying I like you or think of her on the roof, looking at the stars, it tugs. Even though apparently the last two months don’t matter, it hurts. Even though she thinks I could do this to her, it hurts. It hurts and I have to do something to try and fix it, no matter what.

maybe you don’t worry about what you think she deserves or what she’s earned. Just be kind because you like her and everyone deserves kindness sometimes.” I run a hand through my hair and look out at our back yard: a quarter-acre of grass before the forest starts. “What if she’s a jerk and I’m happy to be rid of her?” “Is that why you’re drinking whiskey and sharpening knives?” Fine.

I stop. I don’t even know what the point is, anymore. The point is that I’m hurt she could even think that and I’m hurt she wouldn’t listen to me for one second and the point is also I’d probably take her back in a second if she walked in here right now.

“You get the deleted files and I’ll distract him by talking about how perfect Pam and Jim are together,” I say. “We just need the files. That’s all I care about.”

Part of me wants to say no and never talk to him again. Part of me wants to be angry forever and hurt forever and nurse my wound until I’m a crazy old woman living in a cave on a mountain, incessantly telling the birds about the man who broke my heart one time.

“But I want to be someone you can always trust. I want to always have your back. I want to always be there, behind you, and I want to be so constant you never have to think about whether I’m yours or not. I just am. I’m there. I’m there and I always am and you never have to wonder whether I’d hurt you, and can you believe I rehearsed this?” he asks.

“You’re it, Violet. You’re all there is for me. It’s you or a life of austere hermitude. Let me be yours.”

That night, I just hold her. It feels important, somehow, just being there. Just being with her. Just being hers.

This is love. I’ve known it for a while but the understanding flashes through me again as I move inside her, as I feel her body underneath me and worship it with my own. It’s love. It’s dirty and rough, physical and tangible, but it’s love. The way I need her like this is love. The way I feel her in my soul is love. The way she says my name, the way she moves, the way she shudders and moans and says come inside me is love. It’s hard. It’s deep. It’s ruthless, raw, primal and needy, but it’s ours and it’s love.

“Did I ever tell you why I took that picture?” “Which?” “That picture.” He means the one Montgomery got, of course. I flex my fingers, then squeeze his hands. “Because you were drunk and wanted spank bank material?” I say, lightly. Eli pauses for a moment. “Well, that too,” he admits, and I smile into his hair, planting a kiss on top of his head. “But mostly, I wanted to remember the moment I realized I was in love with you.” “When we got drunk and had sex in the barn?” “When you wouldn’t kiss me in front of people, even though they already knew,” he says. “I didn’t know that mattered to me until then, but it did. I wanted you to be mine and I wanted people to know.”

“And that was when I realized that sooner or later, I was going to have to come to terms with that. So when we were in the barn, and I was drunk, I just… I wanted that moment. That memory. When we were in love and didn’t even know it yet.”

We stay there for a long time, kissing in our kitchen, in the house we bought, in the life we built together. The life we’re still building.

She hasn’t stopped surprising me. I don’t think she ever will.