Rated Ex

  Rated Ex

  Ella Fox

  Rated Ex

  © Ella Fox 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of Ella Fox, except in the case of brief quotations or teasers embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Editing: Paige Smith

  Cover Design: Melissa King & Mayhem Cover Creations

  About the Read Me Romance podcast

  The Read Me Romance podcast is hosted by New York Times bestselling authors Alexa Riley and Tessa Bailey. They bring you a new, original audiobook novella every week from one of your favorite authors! Simply subscribe and listen for free on your phone’s podcast app. Prepare to swoon!

  Dedication

  Thank you to Melissa King for asking me to write this for the Read Me Romance podcast that she, her writing partner Lea Robinson, and the lovely Tessa Bailey host each week.

  The book community is better for having these strong, incredible women in it. They're the best kind of examples.

  Chapter One

  Women everywhere can cross feeling anxious about blind dates off their lists because they have nothing to worry about.

  How do I know?

  Because this is it—the worst blind date in history. Anything that isn't this is a walk in the park. If a team of armed assassins burst into this bottom-of-the-barrel restaurant, put a bag over my head, and abducted me, I’d thank them. That’s how bad this is.

  Hamilton Wood—or Ham, as he prefers to be called—is a living, breathing nightmare. On steroids.

  “The last chick I nailed was a fuckin’ stick, which was awesome. Sometimes I wondered if I was going to snap her in half during sex. You have some junk in the trunk, but I’m willing to deal with it while you lose a little weight—ten to twelve pounds,” pausing, he looks me over critically. My eyes widen when he leans out to the side of the table and looks down toward my legs.

  “Well, actually,” he says as he rights himself, “I’d say fifteen or twenty. I've dated chicks with eating disorders before, so if you need any pointers, I’m your guy. I’ve got the inside track on the whole thing. Did you know some people eat cotton balls to get the feeling of being full without taking in any calories?”

  According to my last physical, I’m six pounds underweight for my height, so this dickhead telling me I’ve got junk in the trunk is laughable. If I lost five pounds, I’d look unhealthy—fifteen to twenty would result in my being skin and bones. I guess Ham thinks all women should look like a more emaciated version of Kate Moss circa nineteen ninety-four.

  He waves his hand dismissively when he notices I’m glaring at him. “Don’t panic, babe. I’ll work with you,” he says, as if that’s somehow appealing. “Besides, at your current weight, you can handle the ol’ helmet head without any problem. I might not have the biggest, but it’s the best. Whoever said size matters doesn’t know how to work with wood.”

  He stares at me expectantly and wiggles his professionally shaped eyebrows dramatically. “Get it? Work with wood?”

  Work.

  With.

  Wood.

  “Uh, yeah,” I mumble. “I get it. Your last name is Wood.”

  I stare at him in silent horror as he roars with laughter at his joke. Realizing he’s laughing alone, he abruptly stops. Cocking his head, he narrows his eyes and studies my head like there might be a test later. “What the fuck is the deal with your hair?”

  Reaching up, I finger the bottom of my chin-length hair. I love my hairstyle and get regular compliments on it. “Huh?”

  “It’s blonde, but I prefer redheads,” he says, as if I should have (a) known that already and (b) gotten my hair dyed just for this date.

  “Also,” he continues, “I think you’d look better with extensions. More for a man to grab onto, you feel me?”

  What I feel is sick to my stomach. Please, Jesus. Take the wheel. I don’t even care if you steer me right over a cliff. There’s a reason Thelma and Louise decided to drive into the Grand Canyon— and men like Ham Wood are it.

  He doesn’t seem to notice my lack of response, or if he does, he’s unconcerned. Lifting his glass of soda, he chugs like it’s a red cup full of beer from a keg at a frat party. Slamming the empty glass onto the table, he opens his mouth and belches. Loudly. Paralyzed with mortification, I contemplate sliding under the wobbly Formica table to hide. I’m basically frozen in a stunned kind of horror, similar to how you might feel if a stranger walked in on you in the shower while you were in the process of shaving your cookie.

  The one positive here is that there are only two other tables with people seated at them. The less in-person witnesses there are to this insanity, the better. This whole thing is a disaster. Ham is a beady-eyed, bleach-blond, short-statured guy with a distinct air of steroid use and a habit of flexing his muscles several times a minute, almost like it’s an uncontrollable tic. Also, the longer I sit across from him, the more nauseated I am by the overwhelming odor of self-tanner wafting my way from his side of the table.

  I pegged him as an actor within seconds of when he walked into the restaurant because his first priority—after looking me over like one would a used car—was to check himself out in the dirty-looking mirrors on the top half of the wall that run the length of the room. On the brief journey from the front of the restaurant to our table, he managed to look at himself in the mirror more than a dozen times. Before taking his seat, he gave his reflection two thumbs-up as if he were The Fonz.

  The amusement I felt when he asked me to call him Ham and I put together that he went by Ham Wood, evaporated in the face of his disgusting behavior. The only thing keeping me from tossing my soda in his face is the growing certainty that this whole experience is a practical joke. The things he’s saying are too ridiculously outlandish for this to be real.

  Living in Los Angeles means there’s always a possibility you might wind up on TV. Since my cousin Carly is the force behind this date, I should have expected it to be a setup. The girl lives for reality television and has spent an obscene amount of time forcing me to help her make her submission tapes. The Bachelorette, The Real World, Road Rules, The Amazing Race, Survivor, Big Brother—she’s auditioned for them all. She’s also sent tapes to Say Yes to the Dress (she doesn’t have a boyfriend), Dance Moms (she’s childless), and Keeping up With The Kardashians (she isn’t one). Carly would do terrible things to be involved in any reality show.

  My senses should’ve gone into overdrive when she forced me into this nightmare. I’m in no way ready to date, but she spent the last four days hammering at me about going out with a friend of a friend (“nicest guy in the world,” she’d said) who needed some “emergency help” to “get out of his shell”. She kept at me until I surrendered. When I agreed to this, I’d assured myself it would be painless—a quick dinner followed by splitting the check and going home, alone, without any kind of drama. Too bad that’s not what’s happening.

  Ham is so ridiculous it’s obvious Carly decided to branch out and set up a prank on her favorite family member in order to get a few seconds of airtime. Meanwhile, the longer I endure Ham’s commentary, the more likely it becomes that Carly’s reality TV debut will be on COPS, since I’m probably going to beat her silly.

  After a fruitless minute of camera searching, I turn my attention back to Ham. He’s selling
the douche persona wholeheartedly, which makes me think he’s probably a shit in real life. We’ve been sitting here for less than ten minutes and I’ve contemplated leaving at least a hundred times. Only the fact that the things he’s spewing are so over-the-top has clued me in.

  I’ve decided I’m the victim of a how-long-can-they-stand-it type show. That being the case, chances are good I’ll walk away with some money—as long as I manage to maintain my cool through dinner.

  At the moment, the thing keeping me in this chair is a gorgeous bag in the window of the Tory Burch store on Rodeo I’ve been eying on my lunch breaks for the last few weeks. I’m going to count it as a win if I walk away from this with the cash to buy it. I bet if I withstand this through an entire dinner, I could walk away with a thousand dollars—so maybe a purse and a pair of heels. Yeah. For that, I can do this. A girl can endure a lot of things for great fashion. Forcing myself to at least pretend to be invested in the date, I prop my chin up on my hand and tune back in to what Ham is saying.

  “I bet if you lost fifteen pounds and got liposuction on the fat in your ass, you’d be a solid seven and a half. One of the girls in my acting class works for a plastic surgeon, so if you do me right, I might be able to get you a discount,” he says, his tone and expression both serious. “You’ll have to find a dentist on your own, though. The surgeon can’t do anything about your teeth, you feel?”

  Well, hell. That’s a wrap on my dreams of the purse and the pair of Louboutins I saved to my shoe board on Pinterest. Whatever prank show is recording the date from hell can kiss the fat in my ass. I like a joke as much as the next person, but being told I need to drop some pounds, get plastic surgery, and do something about my teeth isn’t hilarious. Especially not when it’s going to wind up on TV.

  Sitting up straight, I slow clap. “Bravo, Ham! You have sold the hell out of this. Wherever Carly is, someone needs to tell her to come out now. For what it’s worth, the cameras are going to want to get a nice, tight shot of that, because I’m going to strangle her. Where are they, by the way? I’ve been trying to look without being too obvious and I haven’t managed to suss them out."

  Ham stares at me as though I just confessed to smoking crack on my way here.

  “What cameras?” he huffs, looking annoyed. “What are you talking about?”

  He's still selling this role like a crook sells swamp property in Florida, but I'm not buying. If he’s run this scene before, the last person he did it to must’ve been blind, dumb, or both.

  “Come on, I caught you fair and square,” I tease. “If this were your real personality, someone would've ripped your nuts off and shoved them down your throat long before now."

  I’m startled when Ham’s fist slams down on the table as he leans forward and glares at me. “Listen up, Bucktooth Betty,” he snarls, “I don’t know who the fuck you think you’re talking to, but you’re goddamn lucky that I even sat down once I saw that ass and those teeth.”

  Whatever show this is must air on Netflix or something because there's no way cursing like he just did would fly on network TV. That’s probably better for me, actually. Less of an audience for my worst nightmare—although, this is the kind of thing that could become YouTube gold, and if that happens I’ll never live it down.

  “See.” I laugh. “This is how I know you’re kidding. There is nothing wrong with my teeth.”

  The angry shade of red his face is turning brings me up short. My stomach starts to churn as a horrible, god-awful thought takes hold.

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  Have I read this whole thing wrong?

  Is this all happening for real?

  “Yeah, well, here’s a wake-up call for you,” he bellows. “Your lateral incisor isn’t perfectly straight and it makes your smile look almost as shitty as the rest of your face—”

  “You have ten seconds to get the hell out of here on your own two feet,” a harsh voice announces. “If you’re not out by then, I’m picking you up and dragging you out. Believe me when I tell you that isn’t what you want.”

  I gasp as a shiver races up my spine. Even if he’d only uttered one syllable, I’d have known that sexy-as-hell voice anywhere. Everything halts as I look up to confirm the identity of the speaker. Sure enough, the god of a man towering over the table is no stranger.

  This horrific date takes a back seat in the face of this new development. Mason Cleary is here and he’s still hotter than a barbecue in Australia—which accounts for the fact that I’m suddenly all hot and bothered down under.

  “Who in the fuck are you?” Ham thunders.

  “I’m the motherfucker counting down your last few seconds of having a face that isn’t bleeding,” Mason answers menacingly.

  The fuck-hot timbre of his voice is my weakness.

  “Ten, nine, eight—”

  “Fuck it,” Ham squeaks as he shoves his chair back and stands. “Bucktooth isn’t worth—”

  “One.”

  Mason cheated and skipped a few numbers, not that I’m surprised. The sexy son-of-a-bitch has always hated having his time wasted. His arm is a blur as he reaches out and grabs Ham by the collar of his shirt, which he then uses to drag him toward the door of the restaurant.

  “What the hell, bro? You’re stretching my shirt and it’s a Hugo Boss,” Ham wails.

  I snicker and roll my eyes. Mason is pissed—being told the designer of Ham’s shirt isn’t going to change that.

  Meanwhile, I can’t lie—I’m fascinated by the turn this date just took and I don't want to miss what's about to happen. Rising from the table, I grab my purse, toss a five down to cover the sodas we got, and give a mental thank-you to the universe that the waitress never came to the table to take our order. I knew the second I walked in that I wouldn’t risk my health by eating anything, but Ham had been gung-ho about how good everything on the menu sounded. I would be seriously annoyed if I had to pay for his meal. After pushing in my chair, I hurry along behind Mason. I can’t help the way my gaze keeps going to his perfect ass as I walk.

  The sight of it clothed is ah-mazing, but it’s only half as good as the view when he’s naked. Nothing beats feeling it clenching beneath my hands as he thrust into me like a battering ram. Christ, the orgasms this man has given me make up the entire highlight reel in my spank bank. With Mason I’d learned that sex could be so much more than robotic missionary in a darkened bedroom. I’d only ever known bland, plain-Jane sex before he came along, but he changed that for me. Too bad he’s commitment-phobic.

  I push away thoughts of our past to focus on the spectacle before me—the one the four other customers in the restaurant are watching with blatant curiosity. Ham curses and carries on like a teenage punk when Mason uses his face to push the door open before he shoves him outside. I’m not even through the door behind them before Mason has let go of Ham’s collar, leaving his fist free to do what I can tell he wanted to do from the moment he arrived at our table. Ham’s dumb ass doesn’t even attempt to block the incoming punch, which is a mistake since he’s nowhere near being a match for Mason.

  Mason is a six-foot-one muscle machine. He works out nearly every single morning, and it shows. I’m not normally into fights, but I’m viewing Mason’s fist as an extension of karma—which is sexy as hell. Now that I know this isn’t a reality TV setup, there’s no doubt in my mind that Ham has subjected other women to his put-downs on the regular. That being the case, he more than deserves the punch Mason just delivered.

  Ham’s screech is ear-piercing. "What the fucking fuck!" he shrieks. “You knocked out my tooth, you crazy asshole!”

  He's got one hand cupped over his mouth, but the other is pointing to something. Sure enough, there's a bloody tooth on the sidewalk.

  “Your tooth would still be in your mouth if you didn’t behave like a little bitch,” Mason spits. “I’d think very carefully about your next words because I won’t hesitate to throw punches until you’ve got none left.”

&n
bsp; “Fuck this,” Ham wails. “I’m out of here!”

  I cringe when I see some blood trickle down from beneath the hand he has over his mouth before he turns to run away. He races up the sidewalk to a jacked-up yellow truck parked at the curb, and the tires are so big he essentially has to throw himself into the driver's seat. The thunderous sound of the engine starting seems to shake the ground beneath me, and I watch wide-eyed as he peels out of the space, smoke coming from the tires as he guns it down the street, which causes the giant pair of fake testicles on the tow-hitch to swing back and forth.

  As thrilled as I am to have seen the last of Ham Wood, I’ve got another issue now. Schooling my expression, I take a deep breath to center myself and turn to face the man I’ve had no luck getting over.

  I swallow past the nervous lump that takes up residence in my throat when our eyes connect.

  “Hello, angel.”

  His voice is liquid sex, and his use of the endearment he called me during our relationship rocks me even more. I hate that all the weeks without seeing him have done nothing to alter the effect he has on me. The feral expression on his face sends my pulse racing, and my clit immediately begins to tingle with need.

  It’s been less than five minutes since he strolled back into my life, and the resistance I thought I’d built up is nowhere to be found.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  Chapter Two

  “I see you’re back,” I say, sounding like Captain Obvious. In my defense, I didn’t think he’d be returning to LA until next week.

  “I got back late last night.”

  “Oh. Did you, um, have a nice flight?”

  Mason rakes both of his hands through his dark brown hair and looks at me with evident frustration. “Fuck the flight, Rory. We’ve got much bigger things to talk about. A fucking date? Really?”