Chapter 9
CHASE
Could you still call it hate fucking when you weren’t sure if you hated the guy anymore or not?
I pondered this question as Lee railed me in the walk-in after work one afternoon.
My back was wedged up against a bag of flour, my legs were wrapped around Lee’s waist, and his dick was shoved so far up my ass that I was pretty sure I could taste it.
And I wasn’t complaining. Well, I was, but not about that part.
“Come on,” I urged him. “Fuck me harder!”
Over the past couple of weeks, we’d gotten into the habit of fucking every afternoon.
It was a pretty good habit, actually. We locked the store up, waited until Tyler had left, and then I jumped on Lee’s dick.
There were worse ways to kill a few minutes, for sure.
And it usually was just a few minutes. It was hard, fast, and dirty as hell.
Just how I liked it.
But yeah, I was pretty sure I didn’t hate Lee anymore.
Like, I was even starting to think about everything that had happened since I’d begun working at Gobble de Goose, and okay, maybe—maybe—Lee hadn’t been being a condescending prick when he’d shown me how to work the coffee machine and brought in the cheat sheets for me.
Maybe he’d actually been trying to help me out not just to show me up, but because it was the decent thing to do?
It still didn’t sit right, but I was slowly coming around to the idea that it might have been a me problem instead of a Lee problem.
Which, let’s be real, wasn’t that much of a stretch. I’d been the problem my whole life.
“I said harder.” I grunted in his ear.
“Fuck you.” He readjusted his grip on my thighs and plowed back into me so hard I saw stars.
I bit his ear to repay him for it, and a shudder ran through him. It didn’t take long after that for him to fuck an orgasm out of me, and he came seconds later, slumping against me as we both fought to catch our breath.
So yeah, the sex was phenomenal. That part of what we were doing was easy, and I loved it.
It was the other parts, the parts that were seeping into our daily interactions, that I didn’t get.
Like how I made him a coffee now, and how he smiled when I did.
How I liked his smile. How this morning he’d made peanut butter cookies and said, “You like peanut butter, right?” Like maybe that had been a part of his thought process when he’d decided to make them.
Or how I’d started sending goose memes to Sam, and sometimes I also sent things like “Your brother is such a dick” and she’d send back “OMG I know right?” and we were friends or something now.
I nudged at Lee’s shoulder. “Move. I gotta go.”
Lee sighed against the side of my throat, but he moved.
He’d tried snuggling me once, but I’d told him to fuck off.
I didn’t cuddle. Sometimes I thought it might be nice, and Lee did seem like he’d be pretty great to curl up against, all warm and solid like a giant teddy bear, but that wasn’t what this was about.
And it seemed like it would just make things weird if we started to cuddle.
Like, a hot second ago—well, a hot couple of weeks ago—I’d hated his guts.
And I wasn’t ready to walk that back now, or probably ever, by cuddling.
I wasn’t very good at admitting I was wrong, and getting all warm and snuggly seemed like it would be yelling that from the mountaintop. If Goose Run had a mountaintop.
Besides, if I ever felt the urge to cuddle, I had Cash.
Lee pulled out and tossed me the pack of wet wipes we’d started keeping around the place so I could clean myself up. I wiped my stomach and tossed the wadded-up wipe at him with a grin.
He peeled the condom off and tied a knot in the end. Slipped it into his pocket along with the wet wipe, because he wasn’t dumb enough to put them in the trash here.
I shivered, the chill finally working its way through the heat we’d made while we were fucking.
The walk-in was probably a dumbass place to fuck, but that was my fault.
Lee’s answer to my “So, how cold do you think it would have to get before you couldn’t get it up?
” had been a practical demonstration. And apparently the answer was colder than the walk-in.
Side note: the cold hadn’t caused any shrinkage either.
My ass throbbed, just like it always did after we got down and dirty.
I tugged my pants back up and Lee did the same, and when we were both dressed we walked out into the kitchen—just in time to hear the bell over the front door jingle merrily as it opened. I froze, the hair on the back of my neck prickling.
Someone was in the store.
Lee stared at me, eyes wide, and whispered, “Did you lock the door?”
“Of course I locked the fucking door,” I snapped.
“Hey! You boys back there?” a familiar voice called, and I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or horrified.
It was Bobby—which was better than a burglar, sure, but did that mean he could have walked in any time in the last few weeks while we’d been fucking in the back?
A shudder ran through me at the thought.
We went out front to meet him, and he said, “Well, here you are. And working up a real sweat, by the looks of it!”
Lee cleared his throat and yeah, his cheeks were pink. Mine probably were too. He didn’t meet Bobby’s gaze. “Yeah, we were just cleaning up the walk-in. Uh, what’re you doing here, Bobby?”
“I was driving by and noticed your truck was still here, so I thought I’d check in and see if you had any of those nice curled-up pastries with the cream inside laying around,” he said.
“Cream horns?”
“That’s them! Although I wouldn’t say no to any kind of cake. I’ve got something of a sweet tooth.” He wrinkled his brow. “Anyways, I was pulling in round back, and Chase, I think I ran over your bike. I’ll get that fixed for you and all, of course.”
“Oh,” I said. I wanted to be pissed about it, but he’d given me the bike for free in the first place. “Shit.”
“There’s no cream horns left, sorry,” Lee said. “We’ve got some cupcakes, though. I’ll box them up.”
Great. Fewer cupcake leftovers for me and he’d run over my bike.
But nah, it was pretty impossible to hate Bobby. And that was coming from me, even. He was just so weird that the usual rules didn’t apply. I’d say he was a father figure, but I liked him too much for that.
Lee disappeared to the back to get the cupcakes, and Bobby leaned on the counter and said, “So, how’s the job working out? You like it?”
I surprised myself by saying, “I guess I don’t hate it.”
“Don’t hate it, huh? That’s high praise coming from you,” Bobby said with a chuckle. “Tell you what, since I ran over your bike I can drive you home, if you don’t mind swinging by the vet to collect Lucille first. She’s having her checkup.”
“I can take Chase home,” Lee said, placing Bobby’s cupcakes on the counter. He glanced at me. “If that’s okay with you?”
My first instinct was to say no. Fucking at work was one thing, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it spilling over into the rest of my life.
But then I thought about the way Lee hadn’t hesitated to invite us over to his mom’s place when Gracie had cut her hair, and how me and Sam were text buddies now, and how Lee’s mom always made a point to ask how I was when she dropped by the bakery.
It looked like the streams had already crossed when I wasn’t looking.
And I really, really didn’t want to hang around the vet while Bobby collected Lucille. I’d seen how he could natter once the mood struck him, and Lucille was one of his favorite subjects. I wanted to get home sometime today.
“I guess,” I said, making sure to roll my eyes so Lee wouldn’t think I was happy about it or anything.
Bobby scooped up the bakery box and said, “I’ll get your bike back as soon as I can, but it might take a few days. You gonna manage until then?”
I shrugged. “I’ve got legs.”
It was maybe a twenty-minute walk from the bakery to home and I’d walked a lot farther than that before. Hell, when Cash and I had left home, we’d walked for days. This was nothing.
Once Bobby had gone, Lee asked, “Are you really okay with me taking you home?”
He was learning.
“I’m okay with it as long as I get to take the leftover quiches,” I said. Cash fucking loved those.
Lee divided up the rest of the stuff into two boxes, putting three quiches in mine, and then we got in his truck and I directed him back to my place.
We sat in silence as we drove, and when Lee’s truck bumped over the little bridge over the creek that separated the nicer half of Goose Run from the part that I lived in, I looked at him to make sure he wasn’t gonna be a dick about this.
“What?” he asked me.
“Nothing,” I said. “Take a right up here.”
The driveway was empty when we got to my place, so everyone was still at work.
Or at community college in Danny’s case, since he was all about becoming a paramedic these days.
One of the googly eyes had fallen off the mailbox and was glinting in the sun.
The house looked pretty sad and run-down, especially compared to Avery’s next door since his had been painted before he’d bought it, which had happened sometime this century.
Pretty sure the last time our place had seen a lick of paint was during the Nixon administration.
Lee turned the engine off. “So, I guess we shouldn’t fool around at work anymore,” he said. “If Bobby’s liable to just barge in like that.” He sounded about as bummed about it as I felt.
“Yeah, I guess not.” I glowered at the thought. It sucked. I liked getting dicked down on the regular. But it wasn’t like there was anywhere else we could go and hook up.
I scowled out the windshield at the driveway.
The empty driveway.
The empty driveway that meant an empty house.
“Uh,” I said.
Lee raised one eyebrow. “What?”
“There’s nobody home.” When he didn’t get it, I added, “The house is empty. If you wanted to fuck.”