HUGE HOUSE HATES: AN ENEMIES TO LOVERS REVERSE HAREM ROMANCE (HUGE Series)

The rage I feel is volcanic. A bubbling, surging, clawing fury that sends me into an emotional state that feels almost like I’ve stepped outside of my own body.

They were fucking in my bed.

My bed.

On my sheets.

With their naked asses on my pillows.

What in the actual fuck?

The floor to my bedroom is sodden, the rug beneath the bed is dark with a huge water stain. The sheets are rumpled, and I don’t want to look at them in detail. With frantic urgency, I begin to pull everything off the mattress so that I can take it to the laundry room. This stuff is all going to be washed on a hot cycle.

I shudder at the grossness of other people’s sex stuff on my bed, muttering that they’ve gone too far and raging that they had the gall in the first place.

The pile of bedding builds on the floor as I fume at Danny’s smile and the way he walked out without so much as a glance in my direction. Tobias had the decency to look contrite, but it’s too little, too late.

And Mark appeared to be as shocked as I was at his brothers’ actions.

I want to hate them all equally, but my hatred has levels, and Danny is currently standing on the top rung of the ladder.

Whatever I said seems to have enraged him more than any of the others, but I don’t give a fuck. It’s obvious that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in this family. Randolph is a cutthroat, selfish asshole, and his sons are the same. Or maybe they’re even worse.

As I heft the bundle of bedding down the stairs, I mutter curses under my breath and pray that I’m not going to stumble across another one of the Carlton demons on my way to the laundry room. I make a mental note to ask Ross to put a lock on my bedroom door that I can secure from the outside. Who knows what they’ll end up doing next? Stealing my underwear? Using my cosmetics?

My mind can’t even go to all the dark places they might be capable of exploring.

As the first pile goes into the washer, I’m torn between staying with it to make sure Danny doesn’t sabotage my laundry again and going back to my room to make sure they’re not already in there, finding new and creative ways to piss me off.

“Fucking Randolph,” I mutter, hating him even more for inflicting his spawn of Satan on my previously quiet life.

Deciding my room is more important, I jog back up the stairs and through the door, closing and locking it from inside. I rest my back against the cool wood, panting and out of breath, with balled fists tensed at my sides.

Why the fuck can’t they understand that I just want a quiet life without having to socialize with people who’ve wrecked my family and ruined my life once before. Instead of just respecting my perspective and wishes, the Carlton brothers are sprinkling salt over every one of my gaping wounds.

And now I’m faced with no other alternative than to retaliate.

I can’t let them think I’m a pushover. I won’t let them believe that they’ve won.

They think they can play a game with me and win, but they have no idea who they’re messing with. I have years of resentment under my belt. Years of raging hatred in my heart, born of missing the person my dad once was to me and the life I used to have when we were a family. All of that can be channeled into showing these flashy, selfish boys that they’re not big and they’re certainly not special. I want to take them down so many pegs that their mouths will be filled with dirt and their lungs choked with dust.

I pace in my room, waiting until I can go down and transfer my sheets into the dryer, but more importantly, waiting until they’re all in bed. Then the fun can really start. When my phone buzzes from its position on the dresser, I glance at the screen. It’s Maggie, my friend from college, who I haven’t spoken to in a while. She’s busy with her kid, and her eleven gorgeous foster-brothers-turned-husbands. It’s a miracle the girl finds time to eat and sleep, let alone keep in touch with friends.

“Maggie,” I whisper when I answer her call.

“Cora?” There’s a pause. “Why are you whispering?”

“It’s a long story,” I say, shaking my head even though she can’t see.

“Can you reduce it to a bite-sized story?” she says. “I’m intrigued, but Dale is fussing, so I won’t be able to talk long. I just wanted to check-in. We haven’t spoken in a while.”

I take a deep fortifying breath and try to come up with a way of explaining my ridiculous life without dwelling on all the minor details. “I’ve moved into my enemy’s house to live with five asshole soon-to-be stepbrothers who are now conducting a war of stupid pranks against me. I’m pacing while I try to work out how to retaliate.”

“Err…that was not what I expected you to say at all. Where’s your mom?”

“Antigua, with my enemy.”

“And who are the stepbrothers?”

I scowl just thinking about them, with their too-handsome faces and black hearts. “My enemy’s sons. I know…my life is like a Brazilian soap opera.”

“It really is,” she laughs.

“I came home to find two of them fucking on my bed, on my sheets.”

“Isn’t that incest?” she hisses with shock.

“Not fucking each other,” I laugh. “Fucking a girl. They were like a frigging centipede…all arms and legs and nakedness.”

“You realize you’re describing my sex life,” Maggie says wryly.

“Oh yeah,” I laugh as my cheeks flush hot. Even though I’ve been to her house and seen how Maggie lives her life, it still doesn’t seem like a thing that’s actually possible, so I forget what polyandry actually means for her in practice.

“So, you’re trying to come up with ways to get them back for being assholes?” Maggie says, bringing me out of my thoughts.

“Exactly. Are you good at pranks?”

She clears her throat, and a child whimpers from close to the receiver. “I’ve never had any need to play pranks. Only-child perks.”

“Exactly. Me too.”

“But I’m sure my guys would have a ton of ideas. Shall I ask them?”

“Sure. That would be awesome.”

Maggie’s voice becomes muffled as she speaks to someone in the background, and then she starts laughing at their response.

“Hide their shoes,” she says. “They’ll be so pissed when they can’t find them. They won’t be able to go out without footwear. It’ll be like the most annoying game of hide and seek.”

“I like it,” I say. “What else?”

There’s more mumbling in the background. “John says you can switch out the centers of the Oreos with toothpaste.”

“Good one,” I chuckle, finding it hard to reconcile the suggestion with the huge menacing man I know John to be.

“Put paint along their windshield wipers,” Maggie instructs. “Steal all the toilet paper. They won’t notice until it’s too late.”

“Ooooh, those are good.”

“Fill donuts with mayo.”

“Gross,” I snort.

“Hide the batteries from all the TV remotes. Make glitter-bomb water balloons. Hide all the spoons, or how about making some special brownies and leaving them in the kitchen.”

“Oh my God, Maggie. I seriously wouldn’t want to cross any of your husbands.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m worried that I’ve started giving them ideas.” A voice rumbles in the background. “Actually, scrap that. John has reminded me that they’re all grown men with better things to do than waste time on pranks.”

“I wish I was so lucky,” I muse.

“So, five soon-to-be stepbrothers? It sounds like you’re living one of those romance novels you like so much.”

“Err…no. Absolutely not. The men in my romance novels are decent human beings with hearts of gold. My stepbrothers have black rocks in their chests and daggers in their eyes.”

“They sound interesting,” Maggie muses as Dale cries in earnest. She asks John to take him so that she can continue talking to me.

“You remember how Justin was before he mellowed out?”

Maggie hums as we both recall her baby daddy’s bad attitude and selfishness. “That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

She hums again as I stroke my hand over the smooth ceramic vase that was practice for a new technique. “Justin was an asshole, but he was sexy. Are they sexy, at least?”

They are, but the prospect of admitting it feels like I’m surrendering something important. Acknowledging their physical appeal negates their awful attitudes in a way, but Maggie’s my friend, and I’m not going to lie to her. She might visit one day, and then what?

“They’re good looking in that alpha rich-boy kind of way. All designer clothes and perfect teeth. Expertly styled hair and glowing skin.” I don’t tell her about the perfection of Danny’s body. The way his muscles move beneath his skin with all the sleekness and power of a big cat, or the way Tobias’s broad shoulders and huge biceps obliterate the world behind him like a wall. I don’t tell her about their thick thighs or stacked abs that lead like a ladder down to places I shouldn’t want to dwell on, even in my mind. Let’s just say, if dick size runs in families, they were blessed with scarily impressive genes. My pussy squeezes involuntarily, the traitorous bitch.

“How selfish of them,” she chuckles, not knowing the half of it. “Well, at least you have something good to look at while they’re making your life a misery.”

“I’d rather watch paint dry,” I moan. It’s a half-truth, I tell myself. A person’s external appearance is only their packaging. What’s in their heart and mind is what’s important, and the Carltons are severely lacking in that regard. “Seriously, how am I going to stay here with people fucking on my bed as a sport?”

“You’ll show them that Cora isn’t a pushover,” she says. “Or you’re going to find somewhere else to live. You know you’re always welcome to stay here for a little while. I can’t promise it’ll be quiet or without drama. There are so many people in this house. It feels more like a bus station than a home sometimes.”

“You’re so sweet,” I say, “But it’s too far for me to travel every day. Before I moved in here, I went through just about every alternative option to taking up residence in the Carlton house, and I couldn’t think of anything. My aim was to stay here for a few months and save up enough that I can move out on my own.”

“That sounds prudent.”

“But now I’m stuck wasting my time washing sheets that should be clean and hunting for my clean clothes in the trash.”

“They didn’t.”

“They did, the fuckers. And they keep walking around naked, pretending I’m not there to see…”

“…see what?”

I blush, which is a ridiculous and infuriating reaction. “See things that would make your eyes water, Maggie.”

She giggles, but there’s nothing sweet or tinkling about it. It’s a dark and knowing kind of sound that immediately makes my mind drift to the eleven men my friend gets to sleep with on the regular and imagine what they’ve got packing in their pants. Damn. I don’t need to be going there.

“I doubt there is anything about men that would make my eyes water,” she says. “But babe, this is war. You cannot play fair. You know that. Fight fire with fire.”

We both dissolve into giggles, and for the first time since Mom told me she was moving, I feel a fraction of the weight on my shoulders slide away, but it’s only temporary. I wish things were different. I wish my friends were at the same stage as me, wanting to leave home and hang out. We could go to bars and clubs and mooch around markets, eat brunch, and drink prosecco. But Maggie has a kid and enough men to keep her busy for eternity, and my other besties are still studying or living with boyfriends.

I hate that this is my only option other than answering a Craigslist ad placed by a weirdo with a vacant basement filled with comics, empty pizza boxes, and jars of toenail clippings on the mantle. Shuddering at the thought, I perch on the edge of the bare mattress, wishing I could teleport my friend into this room. I’d feel so much stronger if I had her to back me up.

“Seriously, though, I need to get my ass in gear to strike back.”

“You’ve got this,” she says softly again. “All you need to do is walk around naked. They won’t be able to think of a single prank when you show them what you’ve got going on.”

“I can’t do that,” I snort; the very idea of baring my body to these men sends a shudder through me. A rumble of discussion happens in the background, and Maggie clears her throat. “The guys all agree with me. Nakedness would win the war in a second.”

“Do men only ever think with the brain between their legs?”

“Pretty much. At least, if there is female nakedness involved, the penis brain overrides the one up top.” Murmurs of agreement rumble again. “See? They know what I’m saying is true. Our bodies are powerful. It’s an evolutionary perk left over from our cave days.”

I think over the truth of her statement, imagining how powerful Maggie’s body must be to keep eleven men fixated and loyal. Do I have the same power?

Maybe. I’ve never looked at my body in that way before. It’s not perfect, but it’s strong and healthy, and womanly. It might be a little too curvy, but I like my food, and my body likes holding onto a little more protective wrapping.

I remember reading an explanation about why women naturally store more fat. Another evolutionary perk is that it means we’ll last longer if there’s a food shortage. Our role in feeding and nurturing the next generation makes us this way. Who am I to fight thousands of years of complex biology? Or the pull of another

“Are you guys okay?” I ask eventually, realizing that I’ve monopolized our whole conversation with my sorry story. “I can’t wait to cuddle Dale again. He must have grown so much.”

“He’s looking more and more like Justin every day,” she muses. “Come soon. You can have a snuggle, and then we can leave him with his daddies and go out. I really need some girl time. The testosterone around here can be overwhelming.”

“That’s not what you were saying last night,” a male voice pipes up in the background.

There’s a rumble of laughter, and another voice says. “Yeah…it was all ‘more’ ‘please’ ‘harder.’”

“TMI!” I shriek, but Maggie is laughing, and I end up joining her. When we’ve regained our composure, I say, “You seem really happy, sweetie. I’m so happy for you.”

“I’m happy for me too,” she says. “It’s been a long time coming. I felt adrift for so much of my life. It’s nice to be anchored in one place, even if it is by these big brutes.”

“I feel adrift now,” I admit, swallowing the catch in my throat.

“It’ll change,” Maggie soothes. “You’ll find your place and your person.”

“Or people,” someone yells.

“Can you stop interrupting my conversation?” Maggie snaps, but it’s in a good-natured teasing way. “I’m trying to console my friend.”

“If she needs us to beat them, we will,” another voice says

“No need for that at the moment,” I say, “But maybe.”

“Keep safe, Cora,” Maggie says. “And you show those boys that you’re not to be messed with. You never know. Once you’ve played a few of those pranks, maybe you’ll end up with a mini harem. Get naked girl, and all your troubles could be over in a flash.”

“Ugh,” I sneer, shaking my head vehemently and beginning to pace the room again at the very thought. “Anyway, five dudes aren’t a mini harem unless you compare it with yours.”

“Small can also be perfectly formed,” she laughs.

When we say our goodbyes, I feel a tangled mix of emotions. Longing for the familiarity of my friendship with Maggie and for the life she leads, mixed with sadness about my own situation and loneliness too.

I miss my mom, but not because I need her to take care of me. She was the one person I had in my corner, and that mattered, even if she wasn’t always fully engaged in what it should mean to be a parent.

You’re on your own, my internal voice whispers. Time to put on your big-girl boots and handle some shit.

It’s ridiculously late by the time I head downstairs to deal with the laundry, and even later by the time I finish setting up the pranks the imbeciles upstairs will find themselves dealing with tomorrow.

As I settle into the bed that was the setting for some extremely hot sex earlier, I can’t help but smile at the thought that I might just get my own back if everything goes to plan.

But as I drift off, I find my mind stroking over the muscular planes of Tobias’s big body and the painful beauty of Danny’s face.

If they weren’t such assholes, they’d be setting my body on fire for reasons other than anger, and for just a second, I feel traitorous heat between my legs and an unwelcome pang in my chest.