LOL #3 Romantic Comedy Anthology Read online

  He began to thrust. Slow, powerful strokes, as darkly hot and intimate as the snow outside was cold. We’d created our own little cocoon of heat and pleasure, wrapped up safe away from the storm.

  My legs opened a little wider and I groaned as he began to move faster. My foot slipped out of the blanket and I quickly pulled it back under, hooking the fabric around it. The contrast between the heat we’d created and the chill outside was incredible.

  His hands were planted either side of my head, now, and he was lightly kissing me, his tongue teasing my lips. My breasts were bouncing and shaking between us, his chest rubbing back and forth across my nipples. His thrusts grew harder, faster, his hips pumping between mine.

  “God,” he panted, “I can’t hold back. You’re incredible. You make me crazy.”

  The words blazed into me, lighting me up from the inside out. My own climax was bearing down on me fast, tightening and tightening in my core until I had to clutch at his ass with my fingers and grit my teeth. His hips were hard between mine, his muscled bulk holding me open as he hammered into me—

  I got there a second before him, groaning loud and low as I felt myself spasm around him. Then he gave one last thrust and buried himself deep, and I felt the throb of him as he reached his own release.

  He bent his arms and sank slowly down on top of me, until we were pressed so close together there wasn’t an inch of us not touching, from head to toes. He kissed me slow and deep as our breathing returned to normal. We were like one creature under the blankets, a single mass of warmth. The wind lashed at the windows with freezing snow, but it couldn’t reach us.

  When I woke up, it was dawn. I was lying half on top of Jarrett, my head on his chest, and the blankets were layered over us to form a cozy nest.

  I felt a dull, pleasant ache inside me and remembered. A slight lurch as the enormity of what we’d done hit home. But then I turned—gently, so as not to wake him—and looked up at his peaceful, sleeping face, and I relaxed. No one who looked like that in their sleep could wish me harm. We’d be okay.

  I snuggled back down and went to sleep.

  He woke me with a kiss on the top of my head and then another on the lips when I tilted my head up. “Morning,” he said, and gave me one of those grins that I’d once found so annoying. I grinned back.

  We got our clothes on and assessed the situation. There was still no power and it would be another hour or so before any customers were likely to show up. There was no way to make coffee but I found a packet of pork rinds and we reasoned that they were sort of bacon and therefore could be breakfast.

  My phone bleeped and I grabbed at it. A Facebook update. Actually, twenty-seven Facebook updates. “The signal’s back!” I said, delighted. “Is yours working?”

  His was still lying on the counter. I picked it up and saw a similar long string of Facebook inanity. His buddies, the football team, Georgina…

  Georgina?!

  I tapped the message. Georgina, asking if anyone had seen Jarrett because “party’s not a party without bf.”

  I stood there frozen for a moment, staring at the screen. No. It can’t be. He was so nice. He was so sweet. He wouldn’t…

  What? Sleep with me and then dump me, just like all the others? A wave of humiliation washed over me. How could I have been so stupid?

  “You’re still with her?!” I yelled. “Are you kidding me?!”

  Jarrett went pale. “I can explain.”

  “Oh, let me guess, bf is best friend?”

  “No. But—”

  Hot rage cascaded through me, a chain reaction that spread to every inch of my body. I’d let him use me. He’d stopped in here for snacks, gotten trapped and thought hey, I might as well fuck the geek girl while I’m here. That’ll be a story to tell the guys tomorrow. And like the pathetic idiot I was, I’d fallen for his charm.

  “You said you’d broken up!” I could feel tears in my eyes. God, no. Don’t cry. Don’t humiliate yourself any more.

  He flushed. “I meant to—”

  “You meant to?!” I grabbed a random bag of snacks off the shelf and hurled it at him. “Get out!”

  “Hey!”

  I hurled another bag. “Get out!” I yelled.

  “Arabella, calm down!”

  I picked up a can of soda and raised it warningly. “Go!” I wanted him out of there before I started crying.

  He raised his hands to placate me and backed towards the door. “This isn’t over,” he told me determinedly.

  I slammed the door behind him and locked it. “Yes it is,” I said to myself, and began to cry.

  The snow had stopped and his cell phone was working now, so I knew he’d be able to call for a ride. I didn’t have to worry about him freezing to death, which was good because freezing to death would have been too good for him.

  I called my friend and, still sniffing, asked her to come pick me up. She arrived fifteen minutes later with the car heater on full blast and a hot chocolate for me in a travel mug. I locked up the filling station and stomped out there, my expression bleak.

  “You were there all night by yourself?” she asked, horrified. “Oh, honey. That must have been awful!”

  “Yes,” I said, crossing my arms. “Now I just want to forget all about it.”

  9:58pm.

  The power had come back on by the afternoon and I’d returned to work. Another storm was forecast for that night but, for now, the snowplows had cleared the roads and everything was getting back to normal.

  Everything except me.

  Work was the same and, the next day, college would be the same. But I was changed forever. Just for a few hours, I’d thought I’d found something. I thought I’d experienced something magical, something once-in-a-lifetime that I didn’t think could happen to me.

  And it had all been a cruel trick. A clever bit of maneuvering by a guy who’d just wanted my body. He’d melted away all my defenses and left me vulnerable, and now I had to put myself back together.

  9:59pm.

  In a way, I didn’t even hate him. He was just being him—a goon. I hated myself for falling for the wrong guy. I bet he’s at another party right now, laughing at me… .

  10:00pm.

  I shut everything down and went to the door to go and turn my car headlights on. And just as I got there, he appeared on the other side of the glass. Still in his cowboy hat, still in his expensive jacket, but not grinning this time. He looked deadly serious.

  My voice caught in my throat. “We’re closed,” I croaked.

  “My watch says it’s a few minutes to,” he said, without looking at his watch.

  “Then you wasted your money on it,” I whispered.

  He slowly pushed open the door and I let him. “Two minutes,” he told me. “I just need two minutes.”

  I shook my head.

  “Please.”

  That won’t work, this time, I thought hotly. But, digging my nails into my palms, I nodded. Just hear him out and then I can be rid of him for good.

  “I’m an idiot,” he said. “I mean, I guess I knew that. Compared to you, we’re all idiots. But I was an idiot to lie. I hadn’t broken up with Georgina when I saw you. I was about to. I was going to meet her on the way to the party and do it then—it had been coming for weeks. But then we got stuck here and things happened and I knew I was ending it with her and… lying seemed simpler. I should have told the truth.”

  My eyes were hot. I wiped them savagely with my sleeve. “Damn right you should have!”

  “I’ve broken up with her now,” he said.

  “What do you want?” I sniffed. “An award?” I was building a wall around me, a barrier that wouldn’t melt away when faced with those eyes, that voice.

  “No.”

  “You want me? You want to just use me again and throw me away like one of your disposable cheerleaders?”

  “No.” He was carrying a bag and now he marched past me and took two things from it. A portable speaker with an iPod connecte
d to it, and a ball covered in colored circles. He plugged both of them in and turned off the lights. Music filled the room and the ball sprang to life, rotating as beams of colored light shone from every side. They painted slow-moving circles on the walls of the store, turning it into a… party?

  “I wanted to ask you to dance,” he said.

  I felt that wall I’d built crumble away.

  He crossed the room to me in three quick steps and grabbed me, pulling me to him. I let out a little “mff!” as his lips came down on mine but, as I felt his hands on my cheeks, my last resistance faded. We kissed and I felt a hot jolt of electricity pass through me, blazing down to my heart and thawing me, there. His fingertips stroked through my hair again and again as his tongue searched me out and then I was responding, our tongues dancing together. Deep within me, a tiny spark of hope began to burn brighter and brighter until it finally flared high.

  He slowly moved back and looked at me cautiously. I looked up at him with wide eyes.

  “Don’t ever lie to me again,” I said quietly.

  “I won’t.”

  He slid his hands down to my waist, warm and comforting, and started to move me to the music, turning and swaying. Around us, the darkened filling station became a black void full of slowly moving lights, like dancing in space.

  “They say there’s another storm on the way,” he said softly, his mouth close to my ear. “Maybe this time, we should go to my place and get stranded there.”

  “Soon,” I told him, clutching him a little tighter and resting my head on his chest. “Just dance with me a while, first.”

  Outside, the snow became a thick, impenetrable void, shutting out the rest of the world. But I wasn’t alone anymore.

  Author’s Note - Victoria Wessex

  If you like the idea of sweet but steamy romances set in the small Wyoming town of Mustang Falls, you’d probably like The Curvy Astronomer and the Cowboy, a longer story also set in the snow (but with more stars. And a sexy bath scene. And a bear).

  The Curvy Astronomer and the Cowboy - on Amazon

  Each time I release a book, I price it at $0.99 for the first 24 hours. My mailing list subscribers get an email so they can snap it up cheap before the price goes up. To get on the list, sign up here! (you must be over 18).

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  Victoria Wessex

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  It Was Always You

  A Gaming The System Short

  Brenna Aubrey

  Two friends discover their feelings are more than just friendship, but timing has never been on their side.

  DESCRIPTION: When Jeremy, her brother’s best friend, came back into her life, Michaela cursed the fact that she was in a relationship. Now Michaela’s single again, but he’s dating her roommate.

  GENRE: New Adult Contemporary Romance of approximately 10,000 words or 40 pages. This is a standalone short story with a happy ending. The characters exist in the same world as Brenna Aubrey’s bestselling Gaming The System series, but you don’t need to have read any of those books to enjoy this story.

  HEAT LEVEL: Sensual

  Turn the page to begin reading It Was Always You by Brenna Aubrey, or click here to return to this anthology’s Table of Contents.

  It Was Always You

  Brenna Aubrey

  Chapter One ~ Michaela

  The nausea from the twists and turns up this mountain road was nothing compared to the pukey feeling I was getting from the couple in the front seat of the car. They were going at each other. Again.

  “I’m not saying I’m not happy for them but do they really have to drag us up this godforsaken mountain just for a party?” my roommate, Tiffani, said to Jeremy, her boyfriend of six months, who was also my friend.

  “They didn’t drag us anywhere, Tiff. We all agreed that it would be fun to rent a cabin and have a whole weekend-long last hurrah instead of stupid bachelor and bachelorette parties.”

  “I dunno. I could have hired her an awesome male stripper and then we all could have had some fun.”

  “Yeah, because Donna really wants some oiled-up beefy dude wagging his junk in her face,” I quipped.

  I should really have stayed out of it. I knew better. When these two were bickering—which was often—it was always best to keep my mouth shut and leave the room. But as I was a captive audience during this two-hour drive from Orange County to Big Bear, I had no choice and I was a bit bitter about that fact.

  Jeremy was cracking up but clamped his mouth shut when Tiffani jerked a glare at him through narrowed eyes. “I had better things to do this weekend,” she said with an affected sniff and a toss of shiny, raven-colored hair.

  “It’s not like our friends get married every day. This is their time. Let’s let them enjoy it. It’s not about us. It’s about them,” Jeremy said.

  But Tiffani wasn’t buying it. She folded her arms tightly against her chest and turned her head to stare out the window.

  They hadn’t been getting along lately and though I worried, I couldn’t help but hope that they might decide to call it quits. It wasn’t entirely for selfless reasons, like wishing them to be happy with someone who better suited them.

  No, part of it was the fact that Jeremy had been a longtime crush and the day he’d asked out Tiffani and they became a couple had been a difficult one for me. But what could I have said about it? At the time, I’d been in a relationship with Sean. What a mess, I thought. By the time Sean and I had called things off, Tiff and Jeremy had gotten more serious. And then… I’d had no idea if Jeremy would ever see me as anything besides his best friend’s kid sister.

  My eyes met Jeremy’s large green ones in the rearview mirror and he gave a slight eye roll. I shrugged helplessly at him. It wasn’t uncommon for him to send me unspoken pleas for help when it came to Tiffani, but I was in no mood to save his ass right now. I was barely managing to keep lunch down.

  “Can you either go a bit slower or maybe crack the window or something? I’m dying back here.”

  Tiffani sniffed. “It’s freezing out there. I’m not opening the window.”

  “It’s not freezing.” We might’ve been in the mountains, but this was Southern California and the sun was shining. There was snow on the ground, in patches, but as far as mountain weather went, the temperature was not intolerable. But Tiffani didn’t budge. “Oh well. You’re the one who’s going to be wearing a vomit shirt in a minute… ”

  With an explosive exhalation of air, she hit the window control, barely cracking it enough to let a tiny stream of air in on her side, though I could feel nothing. The only way you could tell that it was open was the flagging sound of air rushing in. I leaned back with a groan.

  “Sip some ginger ale or something, Michaela. God. Stop whining so much.”

  My eyebrows shot up and I glared at her. Tiffani had been a good friend, had been there for me through the worst of my grief when I’d lost my dad last year. At that time, I had felt like she’d do anything for me. But lately, pretty much since she’d begun seeing Jeremy, she’d changed. There was distance between us now and I had no idea why. I had always been extra careful to hide my feelings for her boyfriend. Perhaps I hadn’t been as good as I’d thought I was.

  I caught Jeremy’s gaze again in the rearview mirror. His eyes were crinkled in the corners as if he was trying to suppress his laughter. I stuck my tongue out at him and shot him the bird. His eyes widened and his gaze flew back to the road.

  The next twenty minutes, thankfully, were silent. Jeremy had slowed his speed, mostly because he was stuck behind a truck for much of the way and Tiffani was still pouting, but she soon got bored of that and tried to find a station on the radio that wasn’t ear-blasting static. When that failed, she decided—exasperatingly—to turn to one of her favorite subjects. My love life… or lack thereof.

 
“So when are we going to get you back in the game? It’s been six months since Sean.”

  I fell back against the seat, my face heating. I hated when she brought this up, especially in front of Jeremy. I’d asked her repeatedly not to, but like always, she ignored me.

  “I’m enjoying being single. Don’t harsh my mellow.”

  “Nope. Sorry. I’m on a mission to match you up with someone. There are some single guys coming up to the cabin, part of Nathan’s wedding party. Hey—what about Lucas?”

  “I don’t even remember which one that is,” I said, my eyes flying to the driver’s seat, focusing on Jeremy’s knuckles, which whitened where he gripped the wheel.

  “You know… sandy hair, big brown eyes. Broad shoulders. He’s a cutie.”

  Jeremy’s head turned, cocking a brow at her. Tiffani placed a placating hand on his shoulder. “Not as cute as you, sweetie, of course. Doesn’t he work with you at Draco?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. He’s an okay guy.”

  “What’s he do there? Does he work on the development team like you?”

  “No, he’s head of playtesting.”

  “Oh really, a department head? I bet he makes some good money!” Tiffani said, turning to give me a pointed look over her shoulder. Money was one of her top requirements in a boyfriend. She hadn’t even gone out with Jeremy until he’d been promoted. Not that Jeremy had ever figured out that was the reason for her sudden change of heart. Even though his promotion meant that he worked long hours on the newest expansion of Dragon Epoch, Draco’s top video game product. Tiffani didn’t mind as long as he was showering her with expensive gifts and taking her to fancy restaurants. “Did he get in at the company early?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “He’s been there a while, yeah.”

  “Oooh hm. I bet that means stock options! I’m hearing that there are sudden millionaires springing up from having opted to get paid in stock early on.” Then she turned back to Jeremy. “Too bad you didn’t get in on any of that!”