Take Me Over: A Protector Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Read online

  He’d been wearing a two-piece Louis Vuitton suit that had looked perfectly tailored to the contours of his body. He stood at a massive six-foot-four or five and was built like he’d been chiseled from solid stone by a group of the most precise Greek sculptors. His eyes, were green and seemed to pierce through the haze of smoke and relative darkness—like a cat.

  He was freshly tanned—the real kind and smelled like vanilla and coconut. A hot guy. That made me skeptical. What the hell would a pretty boy want to do with me?

  My intrigue quickly shifted to concern.

  This is why we carry mace, I thought.

  “It’s got to have been something like what...” He sat in the stool beside me without so much as an apology for his interference—with a smile that seemed to hook around his ears.

  He was a good-looking man, though I suspected that he’d be worthy of a magazine cover—had his cheeks not been plumped and the whites of his eyes not been as red as the devil’s ass (both, I assume, were courtesy of the strong bourbon on his breath).

  “...ten years?” He continued.

  “Nice try, buddy...” I sniped at him as if each word were a five-inch steel bullet. I gripped my can of mace a little tighter. One wrong word, and a spinning room would have been the least of his concerns for the night. “I don’t know you.” I wasn’t sure. I just wanted him out of my face.

  “Really?” He snarked back at me—suddenly seeming to slip into an involuntary moment of sobriety. At the sight of his disappointment, I let my pupil killer down and decided to hear him out. The worst that I expected, was that his day was worse than mine and he wanted to talk about it.

  At Shaky’s Bar, that was a fair request.

  And I could’ve used the laugh.

  “Look,” I swung around to get a better look at him—contemplating my route home and sifting through my mental list of rejections. “...I pride myself on my memory. It’s my...was, my job. If we’d ever met, don’t you think that I’d remember you by now?”

  “Hmm...” He snickered in my face as if I was the one to approach him. “Still stubborn as all hell I see...” He cocked an eye-brow and placed his beers on the bar. “Want one?” he asked.

  “Excuse me...Who the hell are you again?” I said, as he pushed over that sweating bottle of brown goodness. He’d been trying to win my favor. A lady knows better than to make it so easy.

  “Just a friend, wondering what a beautiful woman like you, is doing in a bar like this, all alone?”

  “You’re not serious?” I said.

  “What?” He answered.

  “Is that really the best that you’ve got?”

  “Well..” He popped the caps off of our beers and raised his toast, “...to be fair, I’m not used to having to try this hard anymore...How about we toast to effort.”

  It still wasn’t mace-worthy, but he’d been testing my patience.

  “To effort...” I answered and fought to steady my eyes as our glasses clinked. The bulge between his thighs kept drawing my eye like a firework in the night sky.

  He noticed.

  “Hey, Vicky...”

  “Hmm...” I muttered as if I didn’t know what was coming next.

  “My eyes are up here.”

  “Indeed they are...” I quipped as if he’d been the one doing something wrong. “I think you might be a little too excited.” I stole another glace at his cock, just because I could. Where I expected embarrassment, he only seemed to find humor.

  “Oh...Yeah...It just sits like that when it’s soft...If I were excited, I’d probably rip through these like a scissor to paper.” He laughed. Even though, he’d meant it as something of a joke, I couldn’t help but believe him. I almost asked him if I could see it.

  Then again, it may have just been the liquor talking.

  “Who the hell are you again,” I said—hoping to clear the image of him diving inside me from naughtier parts of my mind.”

  “You really don’t remember me...do you?”

  He’d looked as sad as a puppy in a cage. Suddenly, I’d felt like a bitch all over again. Before he could open his mouth, we heard...

  “Brenton!” screamed from the bar entrance like it was an answer on Family Feud. “Come on, buddy. Uber’s here.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got to go...It was nice seeing you again Victoria.”

  “Wait...Wait... I—Brenton? Brenton Fox? Brenton Fox from math class Brenton?" I could hardly believe the words as they came out of my mouth. It felt like my brain was melting inside of my skull. "Booby Brenton Fox?" I shot like some crazed fan-girl.

  He laughed.

  “The one and only,” he answered and that perfect smile returned. “Though, I hardly think that the "Booby" is warranted anymore. I know that I look a little different, but I—”

  “Brenton!” His friend cried again. “We’ve got to go, man! Flight’s in an hour.”

  “Sorry...” he said again, and just like that, he was gone—his broad shoulders cutting the crowd like Moses staff in the Nile river.

  Brenton fucking Fox, I thought.

  He’d grown from a guppy into a god.

  "Who the hell was that?" Milton grumbled as he wiped down a muggy glass. "...Boy look like a goddamn model. I would've swore that the two of you woulda'…"

  "Just the past," I interrupted—before he could go on one of his famous rants. "...Nothing more."

  2

  Victoria

  As had become my nightly ritual that month, I closed down the bar—long after Milton had forced the last of the stragglers out into the cold.

  Luckily, he'd never tried as much with me. He said that it was because I was a "doe-eyed broad," but I knew that it was just because he cared. I finished up my sixth drink just as he'd been locking up the nights' revenue.

  "You ready, V?" He asked as he swung his decades old wool coat around his uneven shoulders.

  "Ready..." I chugged the rest of my drink and slammed it back on the bar. Milton wouldn't bother washing it. Whenever I'd gotten that drunk, I'd had a habit of drinking until I couldn't stand. The last thing that he'd wanted was to have to carry me home. Though, he likely would have tried.

  I threw on my own coat and followed him to the front door—where his 83' Toyota Corolla sat on two spare tires and a flat—behind a bed of snow from the nightly rounds the snowplows had made.

  "Looks like we're walking..." He extended an arm to me—the gentlemen's gesture—and smiled his crooked grin.

  I locked my arm into his and we started our way up the block—my apartment was about a half-mile away...Within spitting distance of his own.

  After several minutes of silence and shivering, that bubbling curiosity that he'd been holding back erupted to his teeth. "So, who's the guy? Old friend. Old flame. Or old fuck?" I'd never known Milton for his subtlety.

  "Is that really an appropriate question, Milty?" It was. In the year and some change since we'd met, Milton hadn’t so much as seen me flirt with a man—let alone ogle one like he was an oasis in the desert.

  "As appropriate as it needs to be." A snort. "Gal like you don't just know people for the sake of knowin' em'. No pretty girl does. Either you're fucking him. Have fucked. Or he's funding you. There ain't any wiggle room there."

  "And what makes you so sure?"

  "Hmm..." He mocked. "Alright then. You don't have to tell me. But at the very least, you need to be honest with yourself. I haven't seen your eyes light up like that since Migdy said you looked like Anne Hathaway..."

  Midgy was his wife.

  And, for the record, I didn't agree.

  "Am I not allowed to just have friends? What are you, jealous?" I said.

  "Ain't nothing to be jealous about," he defended. "...I just thought that it'd be nice to see you tied up with something other than your job and my bar."

  "Well, right now, I'm tied up with you Milty..." I jabbed in his side to let him know that I didn't want to talk about it.

  A compliment with him always went
a long way. Milton was the kind of man who could be disarmed by some unexpected kindness. I guess that I was the same. It's why we got along so well.

  "Ooohhhh, girlll..." He dragged with that fleshy grin—slightly parted to expose his gold rimmed teeth. "Careful now...If I was thirty years younger..."

  "...You'd still be married," I joked and couldn't help but giggle a bit.

  Afterward, a strong gust of that winter wind careened over us—bringing a hush to the conversation that had nearly annexed the shivers and goosebumps from our minds.

  It was in that moment, that I remembered something I hadn't thought about in years.

  "His name is Brenton Fox," I said, as if he'd still been asking. His eyes shot open—wrinkling his brow and nearly shifting his wool cap to the top of his head.

  "So..." He chided. "Mr. Pretty has a name now. How convenient."

  "Oh, come on, Milton. Can you not tease me right now?"

  "Okay. Okay..." He pouted. "I'm listening."

  Brenton and I had attended college at SUNY Albany—the premier college for nanotechnology, digital services, and whatever the hell else students wanted to brag about majoring in.

  I'd met Brenton somewhere around the first month or two. We'd shared a dorm hall and had similar schedules. In college, that makes you friends.

  It started innocently enough—smoking weed, drinking, and rendezvousing for the occasional library date. I never took it as anything serious but I knew that he did. I liked it that way.

  Before long, he was doing my homework—and had even taken some tests for me to keep me from failing out. I would reward his hard work with sporadic hand-jobs and subtle hints that one day, I'd let him enter me. I was an evil little bitch back then. More manipulative than caring.

  More selfish than friendly.

  More a partier than an academic.

  After a few weeks of friendship with Brenton, I'd found my proper crowd—frat-bros and sorority hoes. Needless to say, it wasn't long before Brenton was as dead to me as pigtails and bedtime. I spent the remainder of the semester avoiding him...until finals came around.

  I fucked him for my A’s and told him that I loved him.

  It was just one time but for him, it meant the world.

  "Wait..." Milton startled. "You still talking about that NAVY SEAL looking asshole, or no? That boy looks like he eats books, not reads em'... "

  "Looks can be deceiving," I answered. "But, it's true. He used to look like Jonah Hill...if Jonah Hill had been cracked in the face with a bag of hot nickels." It'd have been funny if it weren't true. "But now..."

  "Now," Milton said, suddenly filled with life and an air of 'told-ya-so' "...that man looks he could give Brad Pitt a run for his money."

  "Is that really necessary?" I snided.

  "Necessary as a toilet seat."

  I was too buzzed to argue. Besides, I was on a roll.

  I'd been thinking about Brenton every other second since he'd revealed himself at the bar. A part of me truly believed that I'd blocked all memory of him from my mind. Maybe, I had. But, I couldn't any longer.

  "There's so much that I have to tell him, Milty..." I said.

  "What!" Milton mocked. "Don't believe in Facebook?" Milton answered.

  "No..." I said. "It's not that easy. It's something that should be said face to face...He was my friend. I betrayed him like he was nothing...I left him there to..." The reality hit me like a ton bricks and began to melt my spine with shame, guilt, and remorse.

  "To what?" Milton asked.

  When one of the frat-brothers—whom I'd been fooling around with—found out about me and Brenton's arrangement, he went mental. He caught him just before winter break and beat him half to death. Brenton missed the next semester. Every single one after that as well.

  The rumor was that he'd killed himself.

  I was too afraid to check. I spent the next few years, just wondering, until he'd started popping up on the news as the owner of one of the fastest growing companies that the country had ever seen.

  "What company is that?" Milton asked.

  "...SplitWire," I answered.

  "You talkin' about that digital currency nonsense."

  "That's one of the legs of his company. Yes..."

  "Oh!" Milton gasped. "So that's what's got your ovaries all up your ass...Ol' boy is richer than Ghana."

  "I guess..." By some miracle, we had gotten to my apartment building before Milton could dig any deeper into the cluster fuck of nonsense that was my college life. I'd long put that version of myself in a box and buried it. Now, I just hoped that I would have the chance to make things right.

  I didn't want anything from him but the opportunity to do that.

  "Well," Milton untethered his arm from mine, placed his hands on his hips, and stretched the cracks out of his back. "I wouldn't worry too much about it. Money tends to make men like him real forgiving. Besides, the way he was hawking you, I'd bet that..."

  "Stop!" I shot—barely realizing that I'd yelled. "Sorry...I just—I don't want that. I'm not some gold-digger. I just want to make things right."

  "Hmm..." Milton smiled and looked down at the melting snow that had collected on his shoes. "I'm sure that you'll get your chance, my girl. For now, get some sleep. Sun will be up soon—and you don't want to be late for work, do you?"

  "I think that I might just call out... Tomorrow's Luthor's last day."

  "Really? Feds finally came knocking for him, huh?"

  "Something like that." I wrapped my arms around Milton and hugged him tight. "Thank you, Milty...for everything."

  "That's no problem at all, darling. I'll give Midgy your love as well."

  With a nod and jagged grin, Milton and I said our goodbyes for the night.

  Had the next day gone as I had assumed, we'd be having a similar conversation the following morning.

  By the time that I'd gotten home—somewhere in the area of two or three in the morning—I felt as if each of my feet had been weighed down by two twenty-pound weights a piece. The lead feet weren't helped in the least by the freezing water (courtesy of the snow) that had been soaking its way into my stockings.

  My first order of business was to address the discomfort. An instant after the door slammed shut behind, I'd begun the act of ferally stripping down to my bra and panties—tossing the articles of clothing on my way to the bathroom. The plan was to clean it up the next day.

  That was always the plan.

  It never worked.

  Finally, down black lace and bare skin, I ran the shower and counted the seconds until I'd seen the steam rise from its ceramic floor. Nothing fancy, I know, but it was mine. The whole place was mine.

  I lived in a three-story walkup in Upper Harlem—right next door to Milton and his wife. The apartment itself was nothing special. Though, I guess that any home in that bustling city was worth a few bragging rights. The rent alone was high enough to merit mutiny, but the city-goers just accepted it or moved.

  I made more than enough to stay there on my own but that's not to say that I found it ideal. If anything, I just appreciated the convenience. Living in the city cut about an hour off of my commute to work. Who wouldn't pay a little extra for that.

  For a little over two-thousand dollars a month, I had purchased a one-bedroom apartment—complete with a closet sized kitchen and a window that looked off into a brick wall. Again, it was worth it for the convenience...barely.

  After a few minutes, the steam had finally started to rise from the shower and I'd been all but naked—staring at my pudgy muffin top in the mirror above my bathroom sink and wondering about Brenton.

  Would he want this?

  Could he want this?

  Should he?

  The thoughts menaced my mind as I pinched the bit of fat that poked over my lace underwear and thought hateful things about myself. The liquor always made the self-loathing easy.

  In reality, I'd have called myself average. Not too thin. Not too big. Just a curvy woman who's per
fectly happy eating three meals a day (plus a snack during tougher shifts). Just your average woman.

  But that was just it. Brenton was far from average. He was far from the day-to-day office worker—who'd earned himself a bit of a beer belly. He was nowhere near the desk-jockey who hid treats beneath his useless brief case. And, he damn sure could afford to take better care of himself than any of my own male counterparts.

  The doubt returned. This time, more treacherous than the eye of a storm.

  Would he want this?

  Could he want this?

  Should he?

  It wasn't long before I'd decided that he wouldn't and resolved to perish the thought before I'd done something that I'd regret. Girl's like me, don't ever get second chances. But that didn't mean I couldn't have fun with the thought.

  I slipped out of my panties and unhooked my bra—before I knew it, I was in the shower, letting the warm water anoint me with its calm. Thinking of Brenton as my soapy hands caressed my breasts and crept down—in between my legs.

  My eyes slid closed as the water washed through my hair and dripped through every crevice of my skin like I'd been a sheet of mesh wire—filling my insides with the kinds of fantasies that I'd be ashamed to tell my parents.

  Suddenly—boiling like magma from the center of stomach to the surface of my skin, I felt my own juices flowing out of me with such surmounting desire that my legs had nearly buckled as I circled a finger around my clit and nearly bit my bottom lip clean off.

  For the first time, in a long time, I'd been so deep in my fantasy that it'd almost felt real. The tension in spine tightened as I spun backward to a time where I'd been innocent. Where I'd been that thin little girl who'd wanted pleasure and all the things that had come with it.

  My melting mind.

  Our sweaty skin.

  The passionate smacks of our bodies pressing into one another as if we'd been becoming one—all the while the echoes of ecstasy spiraled throughout my consciousness—daring me to scream. To moan. To flood out of myself and into an eternal bliss, the likes of which, I hadn't felt since our moments of passion together.