The Hunter: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Boston Belles Book 1)
The Hunter: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance: Chapter 1

Present

“Time to wake up, Captain McCrabson,” my friend/angel on my shoulder, Knight Cole, announced. The tip of his Margiela sneaker nudged my back.

Based on the hard surface underneath my aching muscles, I gathered I’d crashed on the floor again. And by the sticky feeling in my groin, followed by the breeze rolling through my neatly trimmed pubes, I knew I’d shoved my cock into holes I shouldn’t have the night before, and I was gloriously naked.

I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut and rolling over on top of another warm, naked body. Tits. I felt tits. Nice, plump, and natural. Without opening my eyes, I brought a nipple into my mouth, suckling on it idly.

“Want some coffee with your milk?” Knight wondered aloud.

My hand descended its way along the chick’s stomach, down to her holy grail. She was wet and hot, arching her back, her thighs quivering with need. I began to rub her swollen clit, prepping her. My cock yawned its way into a semi, just as another body pressed against me from behind.

Jackpot.

“Taking your coffee with milk is like going down on a woman with a condom on your tongue. The Italians would exile you for less,” I murmured, eyes still closed, my lips against this girl’s skin.

“Thanks for the imagery,” Vaughn Spencer, my other good friend, quipped flatly.

“Pay no heed to me, old sport.” My available hand patted the flesh behind me, curling the other chick’s leg over my waist. Where are my condoms? Why were Knight and Vaughn offering me coffee and conversation instead of a rubber? They should be fired and replaced with wingmen who’d actually help me score. Not that I had any trouble in that department. “Just throw me a rubber before you leave, will ya?”

“Give your cock a timeout and wake the fuck up.” A muddy boot found its way to the side of my head, threatening to squash my skull.

Vaughn, AKA the devil on my shoulder.

On anyone’s shoulder, really.

I had a love-hate relationship with the motherfucker.

Love, because he was, after all, one of my best friends.

Hate, because he was, despite the abovementioned title, a cunt of gargantuan proportions.

My eyes popped open. The rest of my body signaled my brain that this orgy might die prematurely. Grains of sand and dirt from his boot dusted my temple. I felt my nostrils flaring, my pulse spiking up.

The girl in front of me, Alice, grinned sleepily as she curved her back, plastering her breasts to my chest encouragingly. Shit. I was still fingering her. It was hard not to when she made all those delicious noises. I removed my hand from her pussy reluctantly. The girl behind me, at least, had the decency to stop humping my leg like a guinea pig that had just discovered its genitals.

“Get your filthy-ass boot away from my face,” I hissed through clenched teeth, “before I snap your spine and use it as a scarf.”

Both Vaughn and I knew this was an idle threat. My manicured hands weren’t big on violence. In fact, I wouldn’t hurt an ant if it killed my entire immediate family. I mean, I would be mad. Livid. And I’d sue for emotional distress, for sure. But get my hands dirty? Nah.

It wasn’t fear of fighting that stopped me but the sheer indolence that came with my aristocratic upbringing. As the son of Gerald Fitzpatrick, owner and CEO of Royal Pipelines, the biggest oil and gas company in the United States, I rarely needed to rise to the level of taking care of my own shit. The Fitzpatrick family was the fourth richest in the entire US of A, and that made me a lazy, self-entitled asswipe.

“You and another dudebro tag-teamed five chicks yesterday.” Vaughn kept his foot on my temple.

This violent act was probably the highlight of his week. Why he couldn’t replace the simple joys of life in booze, women, and overpriced clothes from aging rappers was beyond me. He made everything seem so fucking complicated.

“I did?” My eyebrows shot to my forehead, genuine surprise tinged with pride filling my chest. “Are the Guinness people on their way here? Will they bring actual Guinness? I replace stout to be far superior to lager.”

“Smash his skull. He deserves it,” Knight groaned above my head.

That was rich coming from him. He had a history with booze that could rival Lord Byron and Benjamin Franklin at an all-you-can-drink Koh Samui bar. Now that he had a girlfriend, I worried that if they were ever to conceive, she’d give birth to a bottle of tequila and two tickets to Coachella.

“I also answer to God and Damn, Hunter You’re So Big,” I mumbled, briefly considering a quick nap under Vaughn’s boot.

Hey, it wasn’t like he’d shifted any real weight onto it.

The two girls unglued themselves from me. They were now making background noise, picking up their clothes, getting dressed. I checked my surroundings for the first time since opening my eyes. I was in Vaughn’s living room, judging by the plush, crème upholstery, dripping chandeliers, and 8k-a-piece brass lamps.

The carpet felt sticky, and the blinds were torn. Daddy and Mommy Spencer would be glad to get rid of their asshole spawn, who was flying out to England for an internship soon.

“You fucked up big time.” Knight hoisted me out from under Vaughn’s boot, hurling me on the sofa and throwing a quilt over my now-impressive, raging hard-on.

He didn’t look directly at me as he spoke, like it was my fault I’d been blessed with a physique fit for constant nudity and an eight-inch dick.

“All I heard was the word fuck, and I’m definitely game for that.” I patted the table next to the couch, found a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t mine and a lighter, and lit one, puffing smoke upward. I only smoked occasionally, but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to look like an asshole when it presented itself. “Why’d you cockblock me?” I squinted, pointing the cigarette between Vaughn and Knight, who stood in front of me, hands on hips, full-fledged and shit.

“There was a leak.” Vaughn’s icicle eyes tapered with displeasure.

I waved him off with the cigarette. “That’s just a natural discharge designed to tell you the female body is ready for mating. You’d know that if you fucked women who were alive. Is this about your parents’ carpets? Because I’ll send Syllie the bill.”

Syllie—Sylvester Lewis—was my father’s right hand and COO back in Boston. He did solids for me on the reg. His job, among others, was to keep me alive and out of trouble, which meant he was basically set up for failure. I didn’t call him often, but when I did, it was because I needed to bail out of something heinous I’d gotten myself into.

My parents hated when I gave them bad press.

So far, Syllie had helped me pay fines, avoid a DUI charge, and discreetly deal with a nasty case of the crabs.

“A leak on social media, you moron,” Knight clarified, leaning down to flick the back of my head.

It wasn’t like my friends to be serious or worried. I sat up and secured the quilt around my narrow waist, resting my chin on my knuckles thoughtfully.

“I’m listening.”

(I wasn’t. I was thinking about who I wanted to fuck tonight.)

Maybe Arabella.

No, definitely Arabella. She was the hottest piece of ass that was still single in town.

“Recap.” Knight clapped his hands once. “Yesterday, after Vaughn’s internship party, we came back here to kick it. You had an orgy with five girls on the main floor. At some point, some other guy butted in—pun intended—but mostly, it was you doing the fucking. It wasn’t in the media room, so phones weren’t confiscated. Vaughn and I were upstairs and couldn’t save you from your moronic self.” He turned to Vaughn, jerking his chin for him to finish the story.

Vaughn crossed his arms over his chest and took it from there. “To make a long, excruciatingly gross story short, about a dozen people filmed the entire thing with their phones. Some uploaded it on YouTube, some to Twitter, some to Snapchat. Those were taken down, as far as we know. But the ones on the porn sites? Those are still available. And let’s just say what you lack in academic achievements, you make up for as an adult entertainer.”

As soon as Vaughn finished his sentence, Knight handed me his phone, the browser open on said sex video. (Why did people call them tapes? That was so fucking eighties.) I hit play. It was the most popular site on the internet, actually. It was also free, which, I’d heard through rumors on the street, was something middle-class people were fond of.

The video already had 1.2 million views and an 89-percent customer satisfaction rate.

Damn.

The tags on the video included: #FratParty #Orgy #Hotsluts #Cheerleaders #Billionaire #Anal #Oral #69 #Creampie #TagTeam #BestFriendsEx

And all I could think was, I managed all those things in the span of twenty minutes with one dick? Im-fucking-pressive.

I was dead-ass serious. Were the Guinness people coming for me, or what?

The title of the porn video was “Polo Billionaire Prince Fucks Five Chicks.”

The prince part was dope. It had a noble ring to it. Polo wasn’t my passion, but I still played it to please my never-pleased father. All the rest seemed solid as well, other than the frat party part. And since all of us were of legal age (I knew all the chicks in the video), I guessed it would be a bitch to take down.

I watched as three fellow recent high school graduates—Alice, Stacee, and Sophia—giggled into the camera and strutted their way to me, asses dangling, high heels on full display. I was on the couch, getting sucked by a chick named Kylie while another one, Bianca, was circling my nipple with her pierced tongue. I was wearing an open varsity jacket with no shirt, my jeans rolled down to my shins. The camera zoomed out, and the person shooting the video and I pounded it. He lowered the camera to show that he was fucking Kylie from behind while she was sucking me off. He came on her lower back, stepping back and tucking in his semi. After five minutes of acrobatics, I somehow managed to get my hands, mouth, and dick on all five of the girls combined.

The video was almost twenty minutes long, and—in my humble opinion—hot as sin. I looked up from it when I was done, handing Knight his phone back. There was a beat of silence as my friends waited for me to process the information they’d pummeled into my hungover brain.

“Who was the other dude?” I yawned.

“Brian something.” Knight scrunched his nose.

“Branson,” Vaughn completed.

“Brian Branson?” I blinked. Unfortunate name. “Wow. His parents hate him more than mine hate me.”

“Not after the pile of porn shit you left at their doorstep this morning,” Knight commented helpfully.

I hadn’t even heard of Brian Branson before today, but I’d shared a sexual encounter with him. Which I guessed was something I could say about the majority of people in Todos Santos. I slapped my thigh, moving on with the plan.

“So, are we heading to Benny’s for breakfast or…?”

“You idiot.” Knight white-knuckled his phone, resisting the urge to hurl it at me. “You’re in deep trouble. Stacee, Kylie, and Bianca are pressing charges against you. They’re already at the police station. We just got the text.”

That explained why Alice and Sophia were the only ones here this morning.

“For what? I wasn’t the one doing the filming. If anything, I’m as much a victim as they are.” I stubbed the half-finished cigarette on its pack to put it out, smoke skulking from my mouth as I spoke. “Besides, they can hardly claim it wasn’t consensual. I mean…” I motioned with my hand to Knight’s phone. In the video, Stacee let me pull out of her, peel off the condom, and jizz all over her face. She’d licked the hot, white cum from her cheek and giggled in delight while Kylie sucked my cock so hard she almost swallowed it. Not to mention Bianca, who did all the work while we did a reverse cowgirl with Kylie sitting on my face, bouncing it like I was a trampoline.

“You’re as stupid as a rock, and sadly, just about as endearing,” Vaughn said gravely, turning around and lifting shit up, looking for something. “You’re an heir to a multi-million-dollar company. They don’t need a reason to want to sue you. You sneeze on them? They’ll say you gave them the swine flu. You hug them? They’ll claim you broke their bones. You fuck them…” Vaughn trailed off, replaceing what he was looking for on one of his lamps—my jeans—and throwing them in my direction.

I caught them in the air.

“Now get dressed. I’m going to have to refurnish the entire fucking house after your STD-fest yesterday. I need to bleach the walls.”

“I need to bleach my eyes,” Knight added.

“I need to Men in Black my brain,” Vaughn shot back.

Knight picked up an imaginary remote and clicked it in Vaughn’s direction.

“And Home Alone your life to avoid any more public orgies,” Knight offered.

Har-har-ing dryly, I stuffed my legs into my jeans. I still hadn’t fully comprehended what was happening. I expected, as with everything else, that Syllie would get me out of it. If not him, then my aunt and uncle, Jean and Michael Brady. (Yes, they were the Brady bunch, and yes, I found that endlessly amusing, seeing as my parents had sent me to them in hopes that they’d be able to cram into me some of the manners and upper-class demeanor the private schools they’d enrolled me in couldn’t.)

Point was, someone always got me out of trouble, and that someone was, unfailingly, not me. Getting out of trouble myself seemed like tedious business, and don’t get me started on the potential paperwork.

However, lesson learned. From now on, I would pay attention to where I conducted my mass orgies. One could only be so reckless. It was time to be more careful. And while I was on the subject, perhaps I should limit myself to three girls at a time.

I stood up, buckling my Louboutin spiked-leather belt, and turned to Knight.

“Okay. I think I’m ready for that coffee now.”

Knight smacked the back of my head. Again.

“You’re not getting it, are you?” His brow wrinkled. “Tell me who to call. Do you know your lawyer’s name?”

“Damn, son. Why so serious? You need a shot of dirty Sprite.”

Also known as codeine. Also known as Knight’s version of water, before he got clean. I knew I was a jerkface for mentioning his substance-abuse problem, but he let it slide. Plus, he had his shit together now. He and Vaughn got to go study what they wanted, choose what they wanted to do with their lives. My ass was going back to Boston to study at Harvard, majoring in business, economics, and all the stuff that made a man want to hurl himself off a skyscraper. Don’t ask me how I got into Harvard. Da probably donated enough money to feed the entire state of Massachusetts for a decade to make that happen. I wouldn’t trust me to write a grocery list, let alone an essay.

I also wasn’t looking forward to the forced internship at Royal Pipelines during the summers.

“Your dad? Your mom? Your brother? Sister? Who should I call? The Bradys, maybe?” Knight waved his hand back and forth in front of my face.

I opened my mouth, and there was a knock on the door. Vaughn went to answer. A second later, three policemen came in. I swear one of them flexed his biceps. They were hella high on the power trip. The burliest one, whose face reminded me of a constipated baboon with cropped coppery hair, recited my Miranda rights as he grabbed my hands and handcuffed me.

“Hunter Ernest Vincent Fitzpatrick, you are under arrest for sexual harassment, statutory rape, and obstruction of justice. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer…” The police officer stopped, letting out a grotesque snort. The other three burst into hysterical laughter.

Yeah, yeah, I’m loaded. Hilarious.

“If…if…” he tried again, throwing his head back and laughing with such mirth, you’d think he was the one swimming in it. “If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at the government’s expense,” he finally finished, wiping a happy tear from the corner of his eye.

I stared at him with a clenched jaw, feeling a stir of anger coursing through my veins for the first time since I woke up. I didn’t rape or harass these girls. Or any girls. It was a setup.

The officer reached for his pocket and took out a fifty-dollar bill, slapping it into the open palm of the cop next to him.

“Dang, I really couldn’t say it with a straight face, Mo.”

They’d bet on my arrest. Sweet. The handcuffs felt cold and tight around my wrists, and bit into my flesh unnecessarily. I was obviously in no danger of escaping or pouncing over the female cop standing there, in all her balding patches, post-acne scars, and three missing teeth glory.

Knight and Vaughn appeared next to me.

“Hey, assholes, do you mind not justifying every police brutality stigma alive?” Vaughn asked. “As for you—” He jerked his chin toward me. “—I’m calling my dad. He’s in Virginia with my mom, but he’ll fly in, if need be.”

Knight asked again, “Who should I call, man? Talk to me.”

The answer was Jean and Michael, of course. At this point, they felt more like my parents than the ones who’d sent me away from Boston as soon as I was out of diapers. The officers began pushing me toward the door.

Vaughn came after us, hissing to me, “Don’t tell them anything, you hear me?”

I nodded. “Tell Knight not to call my da.”

“What?”

They shoved my back in the police car’s direction.

“Just not Da,” I managed to howl before my head was ducked into the back seat. “Anyone but Da!”

Knight gave me two thumbs up, nodding from the doorway.

“No problem, dude. I’ll call your dad!”

“I said not to call my father,” I yelled as the back door of the police car slammed in my face.

Knight didn’t hear me.

Fuck.

“The statutory rape charge is the one I was most concerned about, but it turned out to be bullshit. All six of you are over eighteen. The police hadn’t even had the common sense to check IDs when they filed the report, which means not only are they going to drop this charge, but we can also slap the boys in blue on the wrist—always a good form of damage control.”

Baron “Vicious” Spencer, Vaughn’s father, sat across from me in my uncle and aunt’s stuffy attic, flipping through the thick pages of my case. The attic was the shape of the roof. I had to crouch on my seat like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Barbie dollhouse to accommodate my height.

Twenty-four hours had passed since my arrest, and I had yet to take a shower, a dump, or beat my meat to decompress. Although Baron was a lawyer by trade, he didn’t practice criminal law. But it was my understanding that sometimes he helped relatives and close friends with legal shit. It was also my understanding that he charged $5,000 an hour to justify his reputation as a world-class cunt. He needed the money like Kylie Jenner needed more lips. The first thing he told me was that he was going to overbill me.

“Just to get a taste of being fucked. One cannot live his whole life only doing the fucking,” he’d explained point-blank when he entered the house an hour ago, after Jean and Michael bailed me out of jail.

I took a sip of my bottled beer, tugging at my leather necklace cord with the wooden Dala. “And the other charges?”

“The sexual harassment will be a hard sell, seeing as the girls seemed lucid, active, and present. The obstruction of justice charge is due to the fact that Mr. Cole had confiscated Bianca’s phone. According to Miss Evans, the order came from you. Fortunately for you, at the time she entered the media room and party with the rest of students who’d had their phones confiscated, your dick was already softer than marshmallow and you were passed out on the floor, long after the orgy. There are several witnesses to attest to that time discrepancy. In other words, your incompetence saved you.” He glanced up from the pile of documents, his arctic blue eyes dropping the room temperature by ten degrees.

“Always happy to be a loser. Sláinte.” I toasted the air, taking another sip of the lager.

Baron had the same ink black hair as his son, identical glacial eyes, and the hunger to be successful, powerful, and capable. I wondered what it felt like to be a Spencer—adept, driven, motivated. Talented.

I had not so far been any of those things. I had money, yes—more than I could ever spend—and the looks to match. But other than those superficial features, I was nothing. An empty jar. My father had warned me that the day people would call me out on my frivolity was near. I believed him.

Which was why I dreaded going back to Boston and starting college—moving back with my family. Not doing so hadn’t been an option. Royal Pipelines had passed through six Fitzpatrick generations thus far.

Needless to say, I was interested in running a business a little less than I was interested in another public orgy, followed by a mini-vacation in a jail cell. But here was the reality of things: my older brother, Cillian, was set to become the CEO of Royal Pipelines the minute Da kicked the bucket, and I was going to be COO.

“When’s the trial?” I sucked my teeth.

“Never.” Baron closed my file, linking his fingers together over the desk. “A trial would be public, messy, time-consuming, and above all—very bad press. The ladies—and I use the term fucking loosely—aren’t keen on hashing out the details of the mass orgy on the stand, either. I came up with a generous settlement package for each of them. They and their families are content to strike a deal. The packages include a two-million-dollar compensation check and a full ride through college. Your father and brother are pleased that the matter is settled.”

I didn’t for one second think my father’s eagerness to take the deal had anything to do with me. It was the headlines that worried him. As for Cillian, if he had his way, I’d be on a leash, locked in the basement of my parents’ estate, Avebury Court Manor.

I sat back, playing with the good-luck horse on my neck.

“Why are we signing a deal? I didn’t do shit. You said so yourself. They have no case.”

“That notwithstanding, even taking this to trial would put a stain on you and your family and piss off Royal Pipelines’ shareholders.”

“So I need to cave because my daddy runs a big-ass shop?” I scowled.

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“No,” I countered flatly.

Baron checked his phone as he spoke, completely unconcerned by my refusal. “If we take this to a jury, there’s no way of knowing how they’d react. A white, male billionaire in the middle of a whale-sized sex scandal is not, in fact, the most empathetic creature known to mankind.”

“I didn’t rape them,” I seethed. “I didn’t even hit on them. They came to me.”

Baron stood up, gathering the documents into his leather briefcase. He seemed to be done with the conversation and his client’s rage.

“Better a crook than a fool. Taking the deal and having them sign an NDA is the clever thing to do. Whenever you feel your precious ego needs a hand job, log on to that porn site and remind yourself that whoever ends up putting a ring on those women will always know you as the guy who fucked them half-dead and still managed to make them come.”

“I need a stronger drink.” I shook my head.

“What you need is a good spanking.”

I put the beer bottle to my lips again, sighing. “Fuck, you’re right. A kinky lay is just what the doctor ordered. But this time I’ll make sure it’s in a secluded bedroom.”

Baron threw me a condescending frown and walked to the door. I knew I should thank him for everything he’d done for me, but I wasn’t in the mood for niceties. Also, the check Da would sign was going to buy him another yacht.

“Oh, and Hunter?” Baron asked when he reached the door.

I looked up from behind the desk.

“Yeah?”

“Good luck with your next meeting. You’ll need it.”