Sleeping with the Enemy (An Enemies to Lovers Collection)

I was straight up panting while I was shoveling, and it wasn’t just from exertion. I’m straight up panting now, too, at the images seared onto my brain earlier today. I feel like someone just took a secret plug I didn’t know I had attached to me and jammed it into an electrical outlet. It’s jarring, feeling the charge rushing through me for the first time. I’ve never felt tingles, prickles, and a straight-up flow of wild energy like this before. It practically bows me in half. I’m so wildly full of current—or rather, hot desire—that it’s a miracle I don’t get a zap from being in the water right now.

Wait.

I spoke too soon.

I think what’s going on between my legs could be classified as quite zappy. Zippy? Zapful? Is that even a word? Anyway, my hoo-ha is having a heyday, my belly feels like it’s going to detonate way down low, and my nipples are pointing out, very literally, that I’m standing in water right now. Well, duh.

I take a deep breath and stare at my hand. I could trace it over my belly. Down. Lower. And relieve all the pressure gathering there.

I quickly pull my hand back, turn around with a gasp, and frantically shut the taps off. Climbing out of the shower while muttering angrily at myself, I grab my towel so forcefully that the whole towel rack shakes. I furiously scrub myself dry before I slip into a fresh set of clothes.

I tell myself that what happened in the shower isn’t going to happen again. I’m going to get in control of this. These…these urges or whatever they are. My lady cave is controlled by my brain, so I will force her to listen to reason.

I promise myself that tomorrow is going to be better. That tomorrow, I won’t get any crazy flowing electricity going through me. That tonight, there will be no dreams, no more thoughts of Finn’s rump, and no more nothing.

I’ll keep it up. All night, all day. All the next night, and all the next day until six months have passed, and I can regain my sanity again. No, no, it’s not going to take that long. I refuse to let it take that long. My body is going to accept that Finn is like a big, decadent cake—nice to look at but too sweet. Hmm, no, he’s more like a really fancy fast car. Nice to look at but quite hazardous if you’re not a good driver.

I’m definitely not a good driver. Not when it comes to this.

Finn could also be like a rushing river—beautiful, powerful, magnificent, and potentially lethal, even for an expert swimmer. He’s also like a beautiful endangered frog—one of those bright ones that are poisonous. Or a gorgeous rose—one so lovely, but you’ll prick yourself on the thorns if you get too close. No, that’s too overdone. He’s not a rose.

I can’t decide if the fancy fast car, the rushing river, or the poisonous frog is the better analogy to describe him.

Eventually, I come to my senses and realize I’m being silly, and if this is what too much free time does for a person, then I need to come up with more projects. It’s easier when I don’t have time to think or focus on myself. I haven’t done that for years, and tonight, I don’t like where my focus is going or settling—straight between my legs, which is still throbbing. I know I’m wet there too, and I just got into a fresh set of clothes not long ago.

I study myself in the mirror as I grab my toothbrush and liberally cover it with toothpaste without even looking to see the size of the blob.

Brain and body, repeat after me.

Free time is bad.

You will not think of Finn’s beautiful, finely shaped, spectacular, deliciously proportioned, very sinfully tempting, lush, and probably velvety soft on the surface and hard beneath, epically contradictory gluteus maximus.

Is this what my life has boiled down to? I have to be smarter than this. I have to have some control, some level of defense, some of something.

While I attack my teeth with a toothbrush and too much force, I vow that this is the last time I allow any part of my anatomy to think about Finn. Tomorrow, no more free time. Tomorrow, I’ll keep busy, and tonight, I’ll sleep like a baby with no dreams at all because I won’t allow my brain to conjure them. I’ve had enough of the brain-conjured chemicals causing havoc on my body.

I spit, rinse my mouth, and stare myself straight-on in my fully dilated pupils—I think that’s a bad sign when you’re as sober as one can freaking be. Everyone says repetition is key to remembering or something like that, so I start in on the repeated mantra again since apparently, it didn’t take the first time.