Wear You Down (Book Two of the First Things Series)

WEAR YOU DOWN

By

Rucy Ban

*****

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Rucy Ban on Smashwords

ALL MY LIFE

Copyright © 2013 by Rucy Ban

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes. Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

*****

To the parents, husband and the son.

All of whom will never read this book.

Note to the sister – If you read this without rinsing your eyes afterwards, I promise to dedicate the next one to you.

*****

Contents

Prologue

THE FIRST MEETING, 2005, Paris

Chapter One – A Very Gunslinger Meets Fratboy – Emma

Chapter Two – Completely, Hopelessly Clueless – Harry

Chapter Three – A Night Free of Haunts - Emma

Chapter Four – The Eiffel in My Pajamas - Harry

Chapter Five – Men Are Like Drugs – Emma

Chapter Six – Cave Man Lingo – Harry

Chapter Seven – The Hottest Smack Evah - Emma

Chapter Eight - Do Parisians Put Anti-Freeze in Their Water? – Harry

THE SECOND MEETING, 2006, Rio de Janeiro

Chapter Nine – Sex on Stilettos – Emma

Chapter Ten – Me. Want. Girl. Now. - Harry

Chapter Eleven – Square Pegs and Round Holes - Emma

Chapter Twelve – We Had No Lift-Off - Harry

Chapter Thirteen – Lick Me, Pretty Please - Emma

Chapter Fourteen – Enough Rubber to Launch A Thousand Dicks - Harry

Chapter Fifteen – I Got Double Chin on My Thighs - Emma

Chapter Sixteen – Just Four Weeks Later - Harry

Chapter Seventeen – Does New York Have A Sex Noise Limit? - Emma

Chapter Eighteen – Never Ever Mock Edward God Cullen – Harry

THE THIRD MEETING, 2011, Quincy, Illinois, United States

Chapter Nineteen – Dudes Wear Mask - Emma

Chapter Twenty – My Little Curvy Brazilian Badass - Harry

Chapter Twenty-One – I Give You Aragon, You Give Me Ariel? - Emma

Chapter Twenty-Two – You’re Finally Home, Baby - Harry

Chapter Twenty-Three – Wild Make-Up Sex - Emma

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

Most girls dream about that perfect guy. Someone tall, hard and handsome. Someone who’ll make their hearts beat wild, their palms sweat and their girl parts clench.

It’s only when you cross over to the wrong side of the double digits that you realize love isn’t about how many pecs he has, how many hearts he’s broken or how his eyes darken and smolder.

And just so I know, what’s with all the darkening eyes in books these days?

Trust me, a man might be able to melt panties off women but I can guarantee his eyes will never ever darken, catch fire or even change color. Real men’s eyes don’t darken. They are just eyes! They might be 6/6, tawny irises with mile-long lashes or maybe even plain black and myopic. What? Clark Kent anyone?

In real life, most sexy men don’t even follow the tall, hard and handsome diktat. Some are lanky, some thick and brawny, some even short and plumpy because hey, just like cereal, real men come in all shapes and sizes. However irrespective of the girth and mileage, a sexy man does have this one basic common quality.

Apart from being hung like a horse, he always but always respects women. I don’t care if he’s the hottest alpha male alive, a beautiful bastard, a beautiful disaster or has fangs popping out during sexy times, if a man doesn’t respect women, he should be made to hand over his testicles with immediate effect.

Girls nowadays don’t get this. That’s why I want to lay it all out because just like many of you, I grew up with certain fixated ideas about love, romance and all the PG-13 hanky panky that goes on in-between.

I’m talking kissing, squeezing and maybe, just maybe, if you’re very, very lucky…a little thrusting. Hey, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I was some teenage pervert. It’s just that by the time I was fourteen, all the lame evasive sex scenes I’d been exposed to had driven me over the edge. No amount of cinematic foreplay could ever get me in on what really happened in the sack.

For a long time, I used to think the actor was rubbing against the actress because women were basically giant poodles who liked a little petting action. For even longer, I used to think blow jobs meant your job was to blow air on the thing.

I’m not even going to talk about what I took from the term oral sex.

Notting Hill, Harry Met Sally, Bed of Roses, Titanic – that’s the kind of stuff that corrupted my brain during my growing up years. A garden on the rooftop, a stolen kiss, a fairytale wedding…my eyes had a perpetual cinematic haze clouding them. I remember lying down on my bed in the night fantasizing about that special someone. The one who was going to take one look at me and lose his mind. I don’t know how many hours of my teen life were wasted dreaming up these chance encounters.

Sometimes I would imagine myself as the smart, prudish, terribly successful, hard working girl with whom the hero couldn’t help but fall in love because of this urgent, overpowering ‘connection’. At other times, I would be the quirky, pretty blonde moaning her way through a sandwich or my favorite – the red-headed virgin indulging in hot steamy sex aboard a sinking ship. Oh! Jack…you make it impossible for me to hate you! Ahhhh…

Now that I think about it, I had pretty X-rated thoughts for a 14-year-old.

I still remember the biggest question that used to rattle my mind at that age. So what really happened after that raunchy pottery class in the Ghost? Let’s see, Swayze felt Demi up, pushed her down on the bed and then…the cameraman panned out and focused on an old-ass CD player instead. No! Stay focused on the bed my man…the bed! This is not the home shopping network, for Christ’s sake!

The other nagging issue was how Kate and Leo had managed to generate so much steam in that carriage. I tried to re-enact the same scene inside a Kombi once but the entire experiment turned out to be a big fat fail. I breathed hard for a full five minutes and even though I did succeed in popping a lung, I failed to fog up even a single window.

I’ve come a long way since then. My understanding of love is a lot clearer now. What I’ve got is this – Love is bliss but sex? Sex is nirvana.

Okay. No. Not really. To be brutally honest, falling in love is a lot less glamorous. It’s like that GIF I keep getting in my mailbox. The one about having a baby and deciding to have a part of your heart walking outside your body? That’s exactly the way it is with him and me.

See, Harry Colt is that man in my life. You know, that man? The one who finds you beautiful when you feel ugly, makes you whole when you’re broken, makes you leap when you’re afraid, gives in when you’re too proud to ask? A man whose one look, one whispered word, one touch makes you realize the beauty of what you have?

Harry is all of that and more. He’s the one I’d give a pinky, a boob and a pair of Louboutins for. The man I’d pee around just to keep the bitches away. And maybe in my drunken haze, I even have.

Hey, don’t let your romantic notions go on an overdrive. We’re hardly a shining example of the happily ever after. For one, we fight…a lot. My eyes aim icicles at his, he glares holes in my skull and we give each other aneurisms on a regular basis.

We’ve also given a whole new meaning to the term getting physical. I smack him hard on his shoulders, pound his chest and kick his shin. He tackles and mauls me. Of course, he always holds himself back, which infuriates me even more.

Actually, now that I think about it…ours wasn’t even a love-at-first-sight kind of meeting. To be honest, it was more a do-me-now kind of meeting because the minute my eyes landed on him, my clothes fell off…or at least that’s what it felt like.

Let me tell you about that day. It was about seven years ago at the Charles De Gaulle airport.

*****

THE FIRST MEETING

2005

Paris

****

CHAPTER ONE

A Very Gunslinger Meets Frat Boy

Emma

I read somewhere that people have a higher chance of falling in love at the airport than at any other place in the world. Which only makes me wonder why more people aren’t hanging out at the airports instead of bars?

Maybe having some grumpy airport official pat down your assets wasn’t worth getting a date after all. Whatever the case, being at the airport certainly worked in my favor that day.

Because that was the day my luck finally turned. The day I finally found him.

Let’s just pause here a bit and take a few minutes to admire this beautiful specimen of the human species. God, just look at him. Do you see him? There he is standing in the immigration line right next to mine, shuffling his bag with well-aimed kicks delivered by a sexy black-booted foot. Kind of hard to miss, isn’t he? Those black roper boots and those artfully faded jeans…so Damon Salvatore.

Then there’s the clichéd chrome-buckled belt and the triceps straining against the ‘I hate Lana’ shirt. And even though it’s starting to look a little bit put-together, a little bit contrived, let’s not jump to conclusions, shall we?

Let’s also consider the weathered leather jacket hanging from one of the wedges that make up for his shoulders. And how about that unabashed Stetson hat? Hmm. I’d sign off his whole look as grungy with a touch of Wild Wild West. A very gunslinger meets frat boy.

Now if his eclectic fashion sense hasn’t frazzled your mind enough, wait for the moment that is soon about to come. Wait for it. Wait for it. Ah! There it is! He’s raising his hand and is about to do something completely unforgivable. Something that will set off an alarming trail of reactions within my body. My mouth will go dry, my heart will flip and certain other parts will do a little number all on their own.

Oh, why in God’s name did he have to remove that damn hat? I’m sure if I hadn’t been introduced to his hair I would have never fallen for him.

Just look at that hair. Thick, gravity-defying tangle of raven black, speckled lightly with golden brown. Santa Maria. Control your twitching fingers, girl and tell me honestly, can’t really hold a grudge against that hair, can you? And the rest of him isn’t that hard on the eyes either, huh? Nope. Not one bit. Blazing blue eyes, aquiline nose, peppered horseshoe moustache, languorous lips, scruffy chin and that long lean body. Sam Elliot has nothing on him. In fact, if Sam Elliot’s moustache has dreams they’d be about that bushy patch just below this guy’s nose.

I know. I know. I told you earlier not to fall for a guy’s looks but in my defense, I’d just turned twenty three and everyone knows, at that age the only thing more dangerous than a good-looking boy with swag is a good-looking man with sexy stubble and sexier boots. Especially him. Because he looked like a man who could ride horses, read Moby Dick and eradicate half the world’s female population just by putting his billboard up on Times Square. The other half? Well, that has already been taken care of by Cristiano Ronaldo’s 30 feet high billboard showcasing his crotch cleavage underwear. Oh, don’t take my word for it. Google it and see for yourself.

Okay. Enough of the perving. Now turn your head to the left to the second immigration line. Yes. Right there. That’s me. Standing there ogling at the handsome cowboy and his prolific features while feeling extremely self-conscious of my own appearance. Moon-crested armpits, limp hair and scowling lips. Nothing that would make his sturdy tuft turn in my direction.

But once you know my story you’ll probably cut me some slack.

You see, that day had marked a milestone of epic proportions in my life. I had just taken my first flight ever. Though woe be me, it had happened to be an eight hour long flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The duration was unfortunate because that also happened to be the day I discovered I hated flying. Not just hated…detested flying. If it had been possible in some alternative universe to go back in time and paddle across from the powdered sugary beaches of Rio to the bustling ports of Calais, I would have done exactly that.

I don’t know how actresses manage to portray aerophobia as something sweet and endearing. I can tell you from my first-hand experience that there was nothing sweet about having my heart crawl up my throat as the plane took off and nothing even remotely endearing about constantly squirming (in a very non-fun way) against the seat just to stop myself from shaking my co-passenger by his shoulders and screaming Mayday! Mayday!

So eight hours of heart-crawling and ass-squirming had left me standing in the immigration line looking like a Walking Dead certified zombie.

For the all-pervading master of the universe lounging on the clouds above, this opportunity was golden. As my track record of previous humiliations will tell you, God never missed any unsuspecting moments to sprinkle some divine retribution my way. And it’s almost as if he’d been waiting for that day, that exact moment to fling the most attractive guy on the planet right across my crusty-eyed way.

Now how fair was this? How could he pull off that supermodel-who-slept-on-the-park-bench kind of look after flying from…wherever it was that people like him lived? Hollywood? Cover pages of GQ?

I stared at him again from across the counter where I was now waiting to have my passport stamped and I was so dazzled by GQ boy’s ability to chat up his big scary hulk of an immigration officer that I didn’t even hear mine asking me a question.

Huh? I looked down and saw my immigration officer. Do you see her? That woman who’s scowling at me like I’m some alien dodging the men in black? Either they put the vilest people in immigration or maybe there’s just something about me that elicits the nasties from this genteel force. I have yet to figure that one out.

I’m sorry! What? I asked again as I stared back at her unblinking green eyes. I read the name tag pinned to the lapel of her blazer. Mavis, it said. Early thirties, frizzy red hair and unsmiling lips. Mavis looked behind at what I’d been staring at, took in the whole 7-feet of hotness standing in such close-range to our mortal selves and then turned back to give me an evil cheeky smirk. Any other reasons for visiting Paris?

I blushed and shook my head. And then nodded furiously. Yes. I mean…I’m a tourist!

She gave me a long suffering sigh and then with a very reluctant hand stamped my passport. I picked up my backpack and fled from the airport, not wanting to give the vixen another chance to change her mind. I didn’t want anything screwing up my life-long dream of visiting Paris. Paris. Amelie’s diner, that Shakespeare and Company bookshop, the majestic Eiffel, Woody Allen movie backdrops, hot crepes, creepy gargoyles, skull-lined walkways of the catacombs, handsome strangers, cheap hostels. What was not to love?

I had booked the Fabulous Paris hostel after scouring the internet for the best deals available. And I hadn’t been random about it. Much like the other hostels I’d selected for my month-long backpacking adventure, I had combed through the online reviews of the Fabulous Paris hostel. Apart from a few picky people bad mouthing the place for having a rude front desk and a miniscule bathroom (bah! This was Paris! Had they not seen Ratatouille?) there was nothing dismal being said about the place.

A clean bed in a room I’d be sharing with three other strangers. It was more than what I could’ve asked for that price. And money was the all-important factor working against me, was it not? Especially, since the Sisters had refused to fund this trip.

The Sisters, as I affectionately called them, were the nuns who had taken care of me since I was just a seven-year-old bag of hip and bones. I’d had a very Dickensesque start to my life. The born in a dumpster, lived in rags and fed off street rats kind of thing. Actually to be honest, it was more like street hogs. Not many people know this but in Rio, the favelas (or slums as high-browed west-funded NGO’s call them) were once home to many exotic species of pigs, giving a whole new meaning to the term free range meat.

So there I was living up my life in my very own manufactured version of Hogs and Warts, when a gaggle of no-good do-gooders chanced upon me and made it their lives mission to nurture the hell out of me.

After having spent fourteen years of my life with them, I had finally come to the conclusion that the Sisters weren’t all that bad. In fact, they were actually a lot like coconuts. Hairy on the outside. Pure with a touch of slime on the inside.

With their wrinkled faces, bushy eyebrows and toothy smiles, they managed to put up a deceptively warm façade but do not be fooled. These women were no softies. I’d seen them pull some serious respect in the mean streets of our favela. A sister with her foot jutting out and a hand on her hip could turn hard-nosed thugs into sullen, shamefaced men. A disappointed shake of her head and bakers would carry a bagful of warm bread to her battered Kombi. Just the hint of a scowl and even the most belligerent girls would fall on their knees, begging for mercy from the Lord of powers, his blessed and glorified holiness.

So as eventful as the first nine years of my life had been, the next eleven were completely and absolutely devoid of any incident whatsoever. Thanks to the Sisters I’d had a very predictable childhood. No. You don’t get it. It was predictable, like a person observing my life for just a week could forecast what I’d be doing two months after my twenty-third birthday, on a Tuesday at 10 in the morning.

The answer would be…cramming up for my mid-weekly surprise tests. Obviously, the term surprise was played fast and loose with because I’d been doing these tests from 10 to 12, every Tuesday, every week for the past fourteen years. No variations. No exceptions.

The fact that I had just graduated from college a week back had no bearing on my schedule whatsoever. I mean who studies after they’ve passed out from college? While all my friends were busy prepping for carnival, I was breaking my head over another godforsaken test. Dammit! Why? Why me?

Of course, I never risked getting a clarification on this from the Sisters. Instead I did something I’d never ever done before in my life. Something that flew in the face of all that had been ingrained in my brain till then.

I faced off the Sisters. That’s right. I matched their hands on the hips stance and told them I was done having my life charted, scrutinized and graded. And right then, I also revealed my plan of embarking on a backpacking adventure across Europe.

To be honest, I’d had the courage to do all this because just a day before, the Sisters had told me a faraway relative of mine had died and left me some money. Twenty thousand reals to be exact. I’d had nothing to my name since the day I’d been born and suddenly, I had twenty-freaking-thousand-reals! You get why I lost my head? I had glimpses of visiting the land of Gilmore Girls, becoming a governess and meeting my very own Mr. Rochester.

But all my philosophies and rants didn’t even cause a dent on the local toughies. Notwithstanding the Sisters’ scorn, for an entire month afterwards I planned my trip.

I researched hostels, planned the cities I’d visit, the trains I’d take, the money I’d have to dish out on airfare, the currency I’d need. And all that while, the Sisters pretended like I was running a fool’s errand. If Walt Disney had been caricaturing my life at that point, he would have drawn five crazy-assed nuns with hands sticking in their ears going, ‘lalalalala…’

Then on the day of my flight, just four hours before I was to leave for the airport, the Sisters pulled out the big guns. They threatened to expel me and told me they wouldn’t take me back if I left. It broke something in me when they said that but I never hesitated. Not as I walked down the winding streets of my favela. Not as I climbed aboard the bus that would take me to the airport. Not once did I look back.

I remember it distinctly. The sun shining hard on my head, the salty breeze drying my tears and my nose stinging with the deluge I was trying to hold back inside. Maybe I was being young, foolish. Maybe I should have been more patient and built my life first. I could’ve become a lowly minion in some corporate. I could’ve rented a little apartment with those twenty thousand reals and started a mediocre life. But at that moment my mind had refused to cave in. My life had been nothing but a purgatory till then and I refused to keep living like that anymore. I just refused. For one year I was going to live out my dreams in the world outside.

I’d reserved the first five months of my backpacking trip for exploring Paris, Pisa, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, Munich, Berlin, Amsterdam and then London, Dublin, Edinburgh. The next seven months were exclusively for…America. Thanks to the cable connection I’d gotten on my fourteenth birthday, my knowledge of American life was prolific.

The Simpsons, Friends, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars…all had contributed extensively to my cultural education. And now, I was going to see it, breathe it and probably live it for seven whole months! God help me but if this trip left me starved, homeless and back in the dumpster like I’d started, then so be it.

This long-winded backstory was what flashed through my mind