Make Me Forget: an Enemies to Lovers Romance Read online

  I squirmed away at the tickle, but he held me tight in his arms as he reached my face. “Hello,” he said.

  I smiled the first real smile I’d given anyone in a long time. It felt good too. “Hello.”

  He dropped a kiss to the center of my chest. “Any special requests?”

  “I wouldn’t know what to request, nor what constituted special.”

  He shrugged and scooted down to trace my nipple with his tongue. My brain went fuzzy, and I grabbed his shoulder for support.

  “I’m content on spending as much time as necessary to learning what you like.”

  He popped my nipple out of his mouth and trailed up toward my neck. I could smell myself on him and his cologne. The heady scent of sex. Something I never considered having a smell.

  “What have you learned so far?” I asked, in an attempt to distract myself, so I didn’t beg him to touch me harder, faster, anywhere I could get him.

  As he flicked his tongue into the hollow at my throat, my pulse ratcheted higher, my heartbeat roared in my ears with unfulfilled need. Even after he’d taken the initial edge off.

  “I learned you like my mouth on your neck. And you are ticklish. Also, you sigh in such a pretty way when I suck on your clit.”

  Each word he spoke licked across my skin, pushing me closer to begging for him. Maybe it had been his plan all along to reduce me to a whimpering pile of ash and body fluids.

  “You can tell me what you want, you know,” he murmured, never moving his mouth too far off the surface of my skin. “As I said, I’m open to special requests.”

  I blinked down at him and the lazy way he traced my body. “It’s not really a special request, but I’d like you inside me. Now please.”

  He stopped, lifted his face, and grinned. “I think that is the nicest way a woman has ever asked me to fuck her.” With his eyes hooded and his hair mussed, he looked darker, more devilish mostly naked draped over my lower extremities.

  “Are you going to do it?”

  Another chuckle. I suspected this one was at me not with me. “We are going to do it, probably as many times as you can handle. I’ve thought of little besides you wrapped around my dick for years.”

  “Must make working difficult.” I tried for funny, but the tremor in my voice gave me away.

  He tilted my chin up and looked into my eyes. “Don’t worry. You’ll catch on. Just like riding a bike.”

  “I wouldn’t know. My doctor suggests I don’t ride bikes, or horses, or anything that can cause an impact to my head.”

  Murphy sat up on his knees and climbed off the bed to remove his underwear. “Doctor is a smart man. Let’s keep this safe and clean. Do you want me to get you a helmet? Would that make you feel better?”

  If I had anything within hand’s reach, I would have thrown it at his smug face. “Shut up and get over here.”

  He sank down onto the bed and shifted my legs around his, so he knelt in between my open thighs. He’d grabbed a condom from somewhere and rolled it down his length. I couldn’t help but stare. Then he finished and locked his eyes on me.

  There were many things in that stare. Heat, longing, and a gentleness I already knew him capable of. He shifted my hips and then spread out on top of me, his legs between mine, his dick pressed…

  “Oh,” I said.

  He slid himself against me, the head of him rubbing my clit with each pass. He shifted a little higher until each pass brought him closer and closer to dipping inside me. Fucking tease.

  When he finally slid home, we both gasped in unison. “Are you okay?” he asked, bracing his weight on his hands next to my rib cage.

  I nodded, incapable of human speech at the moment. For a second, we stayed there, joined together, but I was too far gone to sit and wait. I wanted the friction, the heat of his body on mine, the scrape of his chin everywhere.

  Not waiting, I wrapped my hands around his waist and tried to make him move. He didn’t budge but watched my feeble attempts with a soft grin. “Do you think I could help here?” he asked.

  Bastard.

  “Yes, please. You’re inside me. We should probably, you know…”

  “Fuck,” he supplied, and even though I was broaching thirty, my face heated at his words. The blush fled in the wake of him arching his hips up into me. The pressure agonizingly building in my belly started to ebb and make way for a different kind of need.

  The kind poets wrote about.

  The kind people paid money for.

  The kind I didn’t know existed.

  I should hate him a little bit for showing me this side of sex. Otherwise, I’d be oblivious, and most of my information involving the actual biology would center around romance novels and late night TV. Oh, but I couldn’t hate him when he stoked to life such delicious sensations inside.

  His cock grazed my clit, and I nearly shattered right then. I’d had orgasms before. A twenty-something woman does not go years without at least exploring her body’s needs. I’d just never found a man I wanted to spend time with enough to get to the act.

  This was not the same as doing it myself. The scent of our joined bodies, the sweat, all of it had a carnality and barbarism to it I didn’t anticipate. And it wasn’t displeasing, anything but. I arched into him now, trying to meet him thrust for thrust as a bead of sweat rolled down the center of his chest. I licked my lips. I wanted to lick it off and bite the skin afterward. What kind of person wants that?

  He changed the angle and lifted my knees up around his hips, and I marveled at the way a simple move could change the entire experience. My orgasm loomed easily ahead. I needed a little extra push. I eyed him for a moment. Would touching myself put to question his masculinity.

  I rolled my eyes, and threw my hands to the bed. He stopped and met my eyes. “Are you ok? Do you want me to stop?”

  “Can you even do that?”

  He made to pull out, and I clutched his forearms tight. “No. Please. Don’t.”

  He settled back on me and forced me to maintain eye contact. “So what was that all about?”

  “I just need more…”

  “Then say something, Beautiful. I’ll take care of you, or you take care of you and let me help.”

  He shifted back into position and arched into me. As he instructed, I kept my eyes on him as I slid my hand between us.

  His jaw tightened, and he groaned softly as he kept his gaze on my hand. When I started a hard swirl over the swollen bud of my clit, he started pumping into me faster. “I’m going to come, and it’s going to be soon. I want you to come first.”

  The pressure felt too much, until he shifted his knees up and changed the angle once more. With the new position and the sensation on my clit, I fell over the cliff, kicking and screaming. It rattled me from scalp to toes, and I had to jerk my hand away from my body in the aftermath of the sensation.

  Murphy kept going until he dropped his forehead down and surged inside me once more holding to my body tight. I could feel the pulse of him there, and I wanted more.

  Once he came back, he went to the bathroom, cleaned himself, and me, as I watch bemused, and then he lay down in the bed next to me, still naked. “What was that?”

  He didn’t answer right away, but nuzzled the sensitive skin of my neck with this lips. “That was me taking care of my woman.”

  “Your woman, huh?” As archaic as him saying such a thing sounded, I sort of liked to hear it.

  The thought started a cascade through my brain like a house of cards tumbling from the top. I didn’t stay and cuddle him. I didn’t ask him to join me. I didn’t offer any explanation. On the outside, I looked like an asshole right now, curled up in the shower, but on the inside, everything that had been holding up that house of cards was crumbling too. The structures I’d built against others to keep me safe, broken, cracked, ruined. The walls I’d erected to ensure no one could hurt me. Nothing but drywall and paint chips.

  I rocked forward as I sat in the shower until a soft knock came a
t the door. “Mara, are you alive in there.”

  I sniffed as delicately as I could and called back. “Fine, be out in a minute.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to open up to Murphy. What scared me was with these foundations and boundaries decimated, I’d have nothing to keep the rest of me in. I’d spiral and break and splinter into rubble.

  I rocked and let the hot water turn cold until my teeth chatter, and my fingers turned a little blue.

  See. Already happening. I couldn’t even care for myself properly. Out of sheer embarrassment of having a breakdown at his house, I pried myself off the cold tile and shut off the water. I wrapped a towel around my body and opened the door to find Murphy standing there.

  “Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you did I?” Of course he’d ask if he hurt me.

  I didn’t dare call him Saint Murphy now. Not while I was so close to crumbling to the floor. Instead of talking to him, I dressed quickly and flashed him the cheap smile I pulled out when I wanted men to leave me alone. “I gotta go. I’m supposed to meet that woman again, Martha.” I lied.

  He stood in his boxer briefs with this hands on his hips watching me make my way to the door. “Can I give you a ride home?” he asked. The hurt etched into his face pushed me out the door faster.

  He didn’t sign up for this shit. He didn’t know what I held back inside me. The rage, the depression, anxiety, everything that could break a grown person into rubble and rock.

  I made it home and barely shoved into my hotel room before a sob broke loose. I tucked my knees up, my core tight and sore with each movement. It reminded me of him and what we shared.

  The tears stopped after a while, and the room stopped tilting like a carnival ride, so I got up off the floor. I snagged a tissue out of the box on the table and wiped my face. No doubt I’d have mascara down to my chin by now.

  I tried to wipe what I could away and ended up staring down at the notebook Parker gave me. The one I hadn’t brought myself to use yet. I toed off my boots, sat in the chair at the desk, and opened the cover. A pen sat in the tray by the lamp, so I grabbed it and settled back in.

  The notebook and I stared each other down. It asked me if I wanted to spill my secrets, and I asked it if it had more paper stuffed in the back for all my issues.

  Obviously, I was losing my grip on reality if I considered a conversation with an inanimate object to be valid.

  I poised the pen on the page and thought about what made me feel safe. Only one word sprang to mind.

  Murphy.

  See You on the Other Side

  Murphy

  I crawled out of a bed in a haze. All night, I tossed and turned, thinking about Mara and why I couldn’t break through to her. Every time I felt something in her fortress give, she ran away long enough to shore back up the holes.

  A less stubborn man might take it personally. Regardless, I got maybe two hours of sleep before my alarm blared. My phone sat silent next to the clock, and I glared at it, too, for not alerting me to a text from her.

  How can a person not send a dang text? Not even an, I’m alive after you fucked my brains out and I had a meltdown in your shower.

  I cleaned up and dressed quickly, loathe to wash the scent of her from my skin and hair. At least my sheets might smell like her for a few days, unless I could convince her to come back. And stay. Definitely to stay. I had more room in my apartment than a single man could ever need, and she didn’t have many possessions from what I saw at the hotel.

  Her return seemed unlikely considering I heard her sobbing on the bathroom floor. I wanted to break down my own door and comfort her, but I could only push so far, and the little voice in the back of my head gnawed at me. Blaming me for why she fled. I asked her several times while we were together. I don’t think I pushed her, but a tiny fleck of my brain always worried I could take something too far one day. Not that I spent enough time with women for it to become a real anxiety.

  I locked up, climbed in my truck, and headed toward the bar. It sat on the side of the main route through town the way it had for fifty years. A place I’d never leave, more home than home for me. I pulled into the lot, sat there, and stared at the worn brick and the refuse I needed to clean up in the parking lot, and I never felt more like I belonged there. Just right there, at the bar, working, making love to Mara at night, and seeing her open up to me one day. It might be slow progress, but I assumed she tried. The therapy was helping. At least, I thought so. She’d never hear it from me though.

  Now, I stared at the door of her hotel room. Everything in me screamed to go see if she was okay. And yet, I remember her distinctly informing me she was a big girl and had to do things her way. In fact, she was adamant on the phone. I remember it, because she ripped me a new one, and she made it clear she didn’t need anything from me unless she asked for it.

  Murphy, she did not ask you to check on her. She did not ask you to call her. She fucking did not give you any sign, hint, or warning she needed to see you this morning.

  Where was the line between too much and not enough? I’d never been able to draw it.

  Saint Murphy, indeed.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to work if I didn’t check on her. At the very least stand on her threshold and see for my own eyes I hadn’t been the one to hurt her. So I walked across the parking lot, hoping she wouldn’t snap at me for asking. I knocked softly and waited.

  No answer.

  I knocked harder this time and listened at the door. The silence greeting me sent a chill down my spine.

  A spike of fear punted me up the ass, and I scrambled in my jean’s pocket for the key she gave me shortly after coming back home. I slid it in the lock and shoved the door open, preparing myself for the worst.

  The worst bed making job I’d ever seen in my life.

  She wasn’t there, and I checked the bathroom just in case she might have slipped or something…

  I didn’t let myself fill in the end of such a thought.

  I glanced around her room to make sure nothing was broken like she’d been kidnapped by coal miners or something.

  My mind jetted off to weird places if I left it untethered.

  I spotted a notebook on the desk, soft brown with my name scrawled across the cover. Opening a notebook with my name on it wasn’t invading her privacy, right?

  I told myself the lie and tried to believe it as I flipped open the cover and stared at the top. Mara’s mental health history and her race from my apartment last night nailed shut the coffin of my resolve as I glanced over the page. Dated the night before. She must have written it when she left my place.

  The chair sat pulled out, and I set myself on the edge while I squinted at her tiny cursive handwriting.

  Date: 2 February

  Dear Murphy,

  There are so many things I wanted to tell you. So many thoughts and ideas skittering through my mind, but I don’t know how to get them out. When I’m around you, everything in my brain sort of implodes, and I lose all the words except the bad ones.

  I think it did that before too. I wrote in my journal all we ever seemed to do was fight and fuck. That’s what the page said: ‘Murphy and I did two things well…fighting and fucking.’

  Maybe we haven’t gotten over it yet, and maybe it would take some time. It’s time I don’t have. You know who you are. I have no idea who I am, and it’s worse when I’m with you. I fold myself into your identity and cling to its solid jagged edges which give all the room I could need to balance. At some point, I need to find myself, but I fear I never will.

  There’s a darkness in me, a hole I can never quite fill up except with more darkness. The void slowly grows, eating away every safe space and semblance of a home I build in my mind. Until one day, I fear it will consume me too.

  Maybe that’s what black holes are. People ripped apart by circumstances and their demons set free to play. It sounds silly to me, but also really sad.

  I can’t keep you, not really, until I figure out w
ho I am. But I also don’t know how to fight these demons alone. You keep them at bay for another day, night, week…maybe years, and all that time, I’d lose trying to learn who I am so we can finally be together.

  I didn’t tell you before, but I love you.

  I’ll see you on the other side.

  I crumpled the notebook in my hand as everything started firing at once. My vision blurred, casting the room in a mass of orange and yellow. I’m not going to throw up, I repeated over and over to myself, until my vision cleared. All that remained was the anger shuttled by fear. Likely the worst combination of human emotion to intertwine. The chair tipped, and I swept the desk clear looking for pills or anything she could do it with. No way I’d lose her again. Not in this lifetime and not to the next.

  The delicate shell of the paper cover had curled over and stuck at a crease, a stamp sat inside the back cover, and I shifted it to find the address of the rehab center. It must have been where she picked up the notebook. Could she be there now?

  Did I hunt her down make sure she was alright, or…this time my mind didn’t give me the mercy of a fade to black. I pictured her beautiful face haloed by a body bag, and the sight caused a wave of nausea to roll over me. I thought I’d lost her once. If I could make sure she was fine, then I didn’t have to think about it.

  I jumped back in the truck and drove as fast as possible toward the small hospital on the other side of town. A place I used to work and hated stepping foot into. In fact, I hadn’t been there since my father passed away a few years back. He left peacefully, unlike Mara’s mother.

  The parking job didn’t bring me much credit, but at least I didn’t try to fit my truck between two SUVs in the handicap spots.

  My heart turned over and inside out as I jogged through the hospital. A nurse sat at the reception desk. Her pink lipstick made her weathered face seem meaner. “Excuse me, I’m trying to find the therapy rooms? I’m looking for a friend who might be in group therapy.”