Living On A Dare (Cheap Thrills Series Book 2) Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 Mary B Moore

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written expressed permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, places, events and incident are products of the authors imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Jay Aheer, Simply Defined Art

  Editor: B&C

  Formatting: CP Smith

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  This book is intended for mature adults only and contains consensual sexual content and language that may offend some. Suggested reading audience is 18 years or older. I consider this book as Adult Romance. If this isn’t your type of book, then please don’t purchase it.

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  Jose

  Every little girl dreams of a big white wedding with their knight in shining armor. They’d have 2.5 kids, a beautiful house, birds flying around with crowns made of flowers, and live happily ever after. None of us ever dreamed of being divorced with a baby because we discovered that the knight was an evil ogre when we came home from a prenatal appointment and caught him in bed with another woman. Yet, here I was, twenty-six, a single mom, trying to find a magic spell to keep the ogre out of my life.

  My sister Tabitha’s arrival on the day I found him cheating brought something I needed into my life - someone who acted and loved like a real family member. I hadn’t even known she existed until that ancestry DNA testing gift, but it felt like I’d known her my whole life.

  Now I wanted my dream, but I wanted to have a fresh start and be me for the first time in years. I wanted to live my best life with my daughter, laugh every day… basically I wanted the dream without the knight.

  Then, my soon to be brother-in-law’s best friend dares me to go out on a date with him, and it’s not a dare I can say no to.

  Ellis

  I’ve been a tattoo artist for years. I’ve met great people, weird people, pain’s in the ass, you name it, but I’ve never met anyone like Jose.

  We’re proof that opposites attract, but every time I ask her out she keeps saying no. So, I came up with a plan, a plan based on handing out dares knowing she wouldn’t say no to them. Why? Because she’s the most stubborn woman in the world.

  When that still wasn’t enough, I went ahead and submitted a photograph of the two of us into a competition in an ink magazine. Guess what - it won, so it’s now on billboards all over the country and she can’t get away from me.

  So now we’re living on a dare.

  And I dare Jose to say no.

  Chapter 1

  Jose

  What we’ve been through shapes us, right? So, people could be forgiven for thinking that what I’d gone through with my ex-husband had done that. They could even be forgiven for thinking the same about my mom’s parenting skills. It wasn’t true though, not one bit of it.

  Catching my ex-husband in bed with the town slut, Rita, hadn’t been a great experience. During the court case against him, it had been revealed that she was just the last vagina on a long, long, list of them as they’d questioned all of his ‘associates’ to see if there was anyone else involved in his drugs operations. So many women had admitted to having an affair with him that, even though I’d had routine tests done during my pregnancy, I’d gone ahead and gotten more carried out to make sure he definitely hadn’t given me any sexually transmitted diseases. That was not a good moment for me because they could easily have been passed onto my daughter Olivia when I gave birth to her. On top of that pile of awesomesauce was the document I’d received from him about our daughter shortly after his court case for his many crimes, signing over all parental rights to her. The letter that accompanied it was the cherry on top of it all, though. In the diatribe of written bullshit, he’d told me to take ‘it’ and do whatever I wanted, because he’d never wanted Olivia in the first place. In fact, he didn’t even want to be on her birth certificate, and didn’t give a shit what I ended up doing with ‘it’. I’d felt sick to my stomach reading the thing. I was devastated for my daughter that her father didn’t see and appreciate the magical human that he’d helped to create, but I’d also felt guilty for choosing such a piece of shit for her father. I’d put up with the years of abuse and lies from him - ‘accidental’ hits, using my money like it was water, locking me in rooms so I wouldn’t go out unless it was to earn money… I’d put up with so much that people didn’t know about. So, yeah, I could excuse them for thinking I’d be scarred emotionally and mentally because of him, but I wasn’t. Larry White’s actions were on him, not me. If I was to hold on to them and use them in my journey through life, I was continuing to give him control over me, continuing to bend to him, and I’d be doing my daughter a huge disservice.

  The same went for my mom and how she raised me. Wylda Harrison was the ultimate flower power woman, the epitome of the Age of Aquarius (and not the astrological definition for it). She wasn’t abusive, she was just selfish and lived life moving from one man to another, seducing my boyfriend’s when I was a teenager, and holding wild parties. To sum it up, she put men first. I wouldn’t call her a misogynist, but she’d always been of the mind that men were the priority, and without one a woman is nothing. We’d moved all over the country when I was growing up because of problems with men; from Chicago, to Ohio, to Kentucky, to Arkansas, and then onto Alabama for my last two years of high school. I’d moved out the day I graduated and had gone to college at the University of North Alabama in Florence, almost four hours away from where Wylda lived in Auburn. That’s where I’d met Larry, and we’d moved to Texas after I graduated because his parents had lived here before they died.

  When I’d kicked Larry out of my house after I’d found him with Rita – and as she was hitting me - he’d called her to complain about it. Mom had called me as they were both being arrested and told me he should be allowed to take valuable items from our home so he wasn’t left with nothing, and to even give him the house and find something to rent on my own. She knew I was the one working every day, the only one bringing in money and paying the rent to begin with, but to her that was ok because men were ‘different’ to women. It was our duty to do that for them. Him cheating was just Larry feeling left out because I was pregnant, and he needed time to adjust to not being the c
enter of my attention. That way of living wasn’t for me, so I’d stuck to my guns and closed that door.

  Again, I wasn’t taking on her problems and whatever else were her shortcomings as my own. I was a woman with a strong mind who had dreams about how life was going to be for me and my daughter, and whatever problems I’d encountered that could have shaped me mentally and emotionally and deterred me from that path were not my issues, and they had no place in my life. The final example of this was my father, the man whose DNA mixed with Wylda Harrison’s and created Josephine Harrison (obviously, but it sounds like a better argument if I phrase it that way). Mom only had one night with him, one fueled by alcohol - and whatever else - that led to sex, a condom breaking, and me being conceived. She didn’t have a name for him, couldn’t remember what he looked like, there was absolutely nothing to go on. If it hadn’t been for Larry buying me a DNA kit for my birthday which led to me finding my sister Tabby, I wouldn’t have had anyone when I needed support the most. I could be a crying, bitter, angry woman who trusted no one, and who carried all the bad things that had happened to her as her shield, stopping anyone and everyone from getting close to her, but that wasn’t going to be my story, hell no. Part of my strength was thanks to my daughter, part of it was thanks to my sister, and part of it was down to me, and I was grateful for all of it. So, really, I thanked Larry for being the selfish loser that he was, I thanked Wylda for her wandering vagina, and I thanked my father for creating me and Tabby, because she was the most beautiful human being I’d ever met. Without all three of them, I wouldn’t have her in my life, and without Larry, I wouldn’t have Liv. Even though she’d only been in my life for just over eleven months, my half-sister knew me better than anyone. As you can see, my ex-husband was an asshole of the highest order, and he’d given the DNA kit to me as a joke but it had backfired on him in so many ways. She’d come into my life two days after she’d lost her mom to cancer, and months later had moved to Piersville, where I lived. I know a lot of people would be wary, bitter, maybe even angry in our shoes, but when we’d spoken on the phone it had been like finding a missing piece of myself. I’d listened to her cry before and after her mom’s funeral, I’d listened to her do it again as she sorted out her mother’s belongings and struggled to give stuff her mom had worn and touched to Goodwill. I’d heard her take a shaky breath and start making plans for her life without the one person she’d always had holding her hand, and I’d proudly become the person who took over that job. In return, she’d become the person to get me through Larry’s infidelity, to stop the beating I was getting as I lay on the floor trying to protect my stomach from the hits. Hell, she’d even used her bra to restrain Rita, after hitting her repeatedly with the breast pump that I’d been trying to figure out before I’d gone for my prenatal appointment. She’d gotten me through it all with her unending strength and love for life and had been there to hold my hand when I gave birth to my daughter. She got me, she understood me, she literally was the piece I didn’t know I was missing about myself.

  Which then brings me to my daughter – Olivia Tabitha Harrison. Naming her after Tabby and her mom had added more beauty to the little person who joined her aunt in being my entire world. That baby was the most amazing and beautiful little girl in the world, and I’m not just saying that because I’m her mother and I have to. She had a way of wrapping people around her tiny little finger the second they looked at her. Every day she did something new and blew me away, and now that she was seven months old, she was learning new tricks fast. She was the sun, the moon, the earth, the seas, and the stars in the sky. Larry not wanting to be part of her life was not her loss, it was his. Which led me to now. Was I scarred? Hell no. I was a woman and a Mama Bear who was going to live life and make her dreams a reality. I was going to give my daughter and myself the best life imaginable, laugh every day, cry when I needed to and then just let it go. I was going to learn from every mistake and embrace every achievement… I was going to live my best life. Actually, I’ll rephrase that – I was going to live my best mammaroni life. Why mammaroni? It’s what Tabby called what happened to a mother’s nipples after she has a baby. It was gross, it was hilarious, it was embarrassing, but I was proud of those things and the fact I was feeding my daughter with them. Nature was taking its course, and the milk was starting to dry up, so those days were numbered - which sucked, but it was just the way it was. I embraced those huge nipples even more now because of it, though. Well, under my bra and shirt and in private I did, because Jesus those things were no joke. Well, they kinda were which was why I was staring at the notebook I’d just gotten from Tabby with #LivingMyBestMammaroniLife on it. This was my sister – you said something once, she made it into a hashtag and a notebook. “I’m also getting tank tops made for us with it on,” Tabby squealed as she bounced in her seat. “How awesome can you get? I think we can make this an actual thing.”

  It took me a second to get over what I was looking at. “A thing?”

  “Yeah, like a new mama bear type slogan. The mama bear thing has been done a trillion times over, so now we need to introduce the world to mammaroni power.”

  “And you really think mammaronis are the answer?”

  She was silent as her thumb skimmed across the screen of her phone, finally nodding and then looking up at me. “Of course, they are,” she replied seriously, leaning forward and swapping her phone for her cup of coffee. “Jose, those puppies feed your precious baby girl. Even when I give her a bottle, your mammaronis are to thank for it. Some women never get that chance with their kids for a variety of reasons, but a lot do. Hell, some women never want to whip them out in public and shove a booby in their baby’s mouth,” I winced and nodded at that – I was one of those women. I wasn’t ashamed of it, far from it, but I’d read a book about a guy who got off on lactating mothers and took videos on his cellphone to jack off to afterward. The thought of someone intruding on that beautiful moment between me and my daughter in such a gross way meant that, unless I was in a safe place when I was out in public, Olivia got a bottle with my milk, or formula if it was an emergency. “Some women don’t mind,” she continued. “But if you can be a mama bear, then you sure as hell can be living your best mammaroni life, even if yours aren’t what your baby is living off of. Studies show that a majority of women who bottle feed their baby do so with its head as close to the area of their breasts as possible without realizing it, and babies get comfort from that. Booby, mammaroni, bottle, mama bear, biological or not, whatever – mammaronis are the answer.”

  I had absolutely nothing to say to this whatsoever. In a way it made sense to me, and in a way I wanted to check and see if she’d made her coffee an Irish one. Fortunately, Liv made a noise at that moment, distracting us both from the awkwardness that we’d just found ourselves in. Getting up, I walked over and grinned down at her. “Hey, princess,” I cooed, picking her up and breathing her in, regretting it almost instantly. Normally it was a beautiful and fresh scent that followed her, but right now it was making me wish I’d not taken such a deep breath in.

  “Here, let me take her,” Tabby offered, her hands appearing beside me and wrapping around Liv’s waist. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday and I need some Livvy loves.”

  Snorting, I gave up my stinky butt of a daughter and moved back to where I’d been sitting, waiting for Tabby to smell what I had. “Who’s auntie Tabby’s big girl? Who’s my precious baby? Who’s…,” she broke off and sniffed her. “Whoa, girl. Your ass stinks worse than the broken sewage pipe in town, and that cleared an entire block. Holy Jesus,” she wheezed, turning her head to the side and gagging silently.

  “Strong, isn’t it?”

  Nodding, she moved her head around trying to find a pocket of fresh air, before gulping and looking over at me with watery eyes. “Kinda burns your throat.”

  We were interrupted just then by a knock at the door that made both of us look over at it and then back at each other. Thinking I’d check the app that the feed
from the cameras outside streamed on, I looked around for my cell but came up empty. Seeing my predicament, Tabby rolled her eyes, balanced Liv on one arm, and reached into her back pocket to get hers out.

  Looking at her screen, the side of Tabby’s mouth tipped up, and she made her way toward the door. Figuring it was probably her fiancé Dave – who was the sheriff here in Piersville – I picked my coffee up and leaned back. The two of them meeting had been a complete fluke which had started with him arresting her, mistakenly thinking she’d broken into her house, and then he’d refused to take no for an answer when he’d asked her out. So, after numerous arrests, including when he proposed, they were now on the track to marriage and their happily ever after, and I loved that for her. Did I want it for myself? Abso-fucking-lutely, one day, just not now.

  “We’ll shelved the mammaroni topic for another day, but it is happening,” she informed me as she walked toward the door. “Wait ‘til you see who’s on the other side of the door, Livvy. It’s your favorite person in the whole world,” Tabby told my daughter, but she was mistaken. Liv’s favorite person in the world was Ellis Beauregard, the six-foot-two, co-owner of the tattoo store in town, the baby whisperer, the Josephine Harrison whisperer (although I would deny that until I turned blue), and the most awesome man I’d ever met. If I could go back in time and meet him instead of Larry and still end up with Liv, I’d give a limb for it. Like I’ve said, I wasn’t scarred or damaged, but I wanted to use that ‘millennial mentality’ of living my best life and it didn’t include a man. Giving Liv the life that I’d always dreamed I’d give my kids was my priority, and now that I was a single mother I wanted to do that by myself without the risk of her being let down by another man. Not that I thought he would, but I didn’t even want to risk it happening to her. Maybe much further in the future, but not now. And I couldn’t expect someone to wait around for me to be ready, so it was likely that the man I ended up with wouldn’t be Ellis, because any woman worth her salt – who wasn’t trying to ‘live her best life’ – would snap him up in a heartbeat. Apart from me. The me who was a twat. The me who was so set on this plan for herself and her daughter that she was an even bigger twat. The woman who wanted to cave more than she wanted the cookies and cream Hershey’s kisses in the refrigerator. The woman who fell asleep reliving the moments I’d spent with him that day pretty much every damn night. The me who didn’t want the future that didn’t have Ellis in it. The woman who was settling for having him as a friend, so long as it meant being able to keep him in our lives.