Sleeping with the Enemy (An Enemies to Lovers Collection)

But freaking poo. That’s a much nicer word for shit when I can’t think of a better substitute, isn’t it? Does Esme have to be so gorgeous? I remember Silas saying she had some bad experiences in the past. She’s so beautiful that it’s basically the only thing that could explain how she’s single. She’s gorgeous in every kind of way beautiful can be—a little of everything—the classic Hollywood, the old-style black and white, and the bohemian kind of stunning. She likes to walk ahead, which gives me a great view of her rear profile. Like her back and stuff, too, not just her rear. Jesus. I try to be a gentleman and keep my eyes from her hips and the way her jeans outline her perfect bottom, but I’m only succeeding somewhere around thirty-two point eight percent of the time, and the end result is that my balls feel like they’ve swelled to somewhere around the size of watermelons.

The huge kind of watermelons, too, not those tiny, cute little fuckers that are around the size of a grapefruit. No, we're talking the big Texas jumbos.

God, she smells good too. I swear I can smell Esme’s scent on the slight morning breeze. She smells amazing, sensual, womanly, fruity, crisp, delicious, wondrous, and ‘nut-swellingly.’

With all the pets she has, you’d think she’d smell strange. Like a crazy cat lady or like dog poo or turtles or spider legs or something—whatever those smell like, please god, don’t let me have to find out anytime soon—but she doesn’t. She doesn’t smell like eggs, hot sauce, a crazy cat lady, crazy crafty lady, an ancient musty house, or anything else. I imagine she smells like her, and now that I’m learning what it is defined as, and my best guess is a cross between roses and cherries, I’m finding it hard not to get tingles and swelling all over.

And that’s putting it mildly because I’m trying to be a gentleman, remember?

As much as I’m enjoying being left in Esme’s wonderful, fragrant dust, I realize I’m accomplishing nothing other than giving myself the bluest of blue balls, so I increase my pace to catch up with her. Esme tries to outwalk me, but I only speed up. She glances at me, breathing harder, and realizes I can play this game all day. With clear resignation on her face, she slows her pace.

“Is this the part where you ask me a thousand questions about myself and pretend to be interested when really, you just want to get in my pants?”

I’m so astounded by her question that I nearly fall off the edge of the sidewalk. My ankle half turns over as it grazes the concrete edge and thin air, but I quickly steady myself, and I’m good. No sprains or breaks today.

“I…no! I was just going to ask you a hundred questions I actually want to know the answers to and not try and get in your pants.”

She snorts, and it’s clear she views me as the enemy. Not sure if she’s onto me, or if it’s because I invaded her space, or just because I’m a male in general. If she’s been burned before, she’s probably not going to trust guys anytime soon.

I’ve never hit anyone in my life. I’ve also never kicked anyone or physically done anything to another person before, aside from contact in contact sports like football, which is far and clean during a game, but I’d like to find the douche canoe who ground that distrust into Esme’s wrinkled brow, and maybe even ground her heart to dust while he was at it. I’d like to teabag him so freaking hard that his tiny little nuts—because he obviously had tiny little nuts—would hit the stratosphere. By the way, it’s an unwritten rule that guys don’t teabag each other except in the most extreme circumstances because it’s just wrong based on how wrong it feels when it’s done to someone, and as such, one could never, ever do it to another person in good conscience.

“Yeah, right,” Esme says dryly. She stops to let the little white fluff ball sniff at a signpost.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Are you six?”

“Thirty-five, actually.”

“So thirty-five going on six.”

“Just thirty-five.”

Esme rolls her eyes. “Fine, go ahead. It’s not like I can stop you. You earned this walk, I guess, so I might as well get the inquisition over with.”

“I really do just want to be friends.”

Esme’s frown could melt even the most indestructible machine. Like a tank. Yeah, she could face down a tank with that expression. “I have no idea why. I clearly don’t.”

“Because we’re stuck with each other, so we might as well make the best of it.”

She rolls her eyes and resumes walking when her dog takes off after thin air. “We might as well just make the worst of it. I don’t see any hard and fast laws that say I have to be friends with you or be happy about you being in my house or any of it. We could just keep avoiding each other.”