Chapter 12 – Kira
KIRA
“ I ’ll walk you home,” West tells me as I pass him through the door. He says it kindly, but it’s also clear it’s not up for debate. The gentle-and-firm cocktail sends a warm sensation straight to my loins.
“Thanks.” I fold my hands into the front pockets of my cut-off shorts. Side note: pockets are fucking awesome.
We adopt a leisurely stroll down the dark main stretch, illuminated by soft streetlights. West keeps pace with me, confidence in his strides.
“You look good,” he tells me, hooking a thumb in his jeans pocket. “I didn’t recognize you in the bar at first.”
“Thanks,” I smile coyly, looking down at my new-old Converse. “I feel good. It’s the first I’ve felt like myself, I think, ever.”
“Really?” He tilts his head up at me and I get another twinge at the sight of the scruff spread down his jawline. God have I been deprived. Exposed to nothing but stuck-up, clean-shaven suits that don’t like to get dirty or heaven forbid dress down in relaxed jeans and steel-toed boots.
“Yeah, I grew up under my father’s thumb. High Society Chicago and all that, I wasn’t allowed to dress in any way that suggested otherwise.”
“Even after you turned eighteen?”
“Yeah, if I didn’t want to be kicked to the curb without a dollar to my name,” I sigh out. “Working a part time job at Burger Mack also wasn’t a good look, so it was unpaid internships or Daddy’s money. And he did send me and my sister to school, which was the biggest Catch-22 you’d ever heard of.”
“Oh?” He glances at me as we turn the corner.
“Yeah, we had to be well-bred and all that shit; educated. But not to the point where we could out-succeed any men. So he picked what we majored in.”
“Holy fuck, I thought my dad was a douche-rocket,” he muses, blowing out a breath and when I look up at him, I see him swallow hard and face forward as we continue to stroll. We aren’t touching, but the way our elbows occasionally brush each other makes shivers dance down my back.
“Why, what’s he like?”
“I don’t usually talk about it.”
“That’s fine,” I murmur, looking back down at the cracked sidewalk.
I know all about not talking and sharing feelings and shit.
Also not allowed in my family. Thank God I made friends with Toby in detention back in tenth grade or I’d be a complete Stepford Bot, only with a few short circuits and a screw loose maybe.
“No,” he shakes his head, and I look over to find him looking pensive as he pushes a hand through his hair.
And with the few BushyTails I’ve got on board I don’t miss the flex of his bicep or the tattoo that looks like some kind of tire tread on his underarm.
“Let’s just say he was all too happy to let me idolize him, but actually being him was not acceptable.
Anytime I got close to being on his level he’d shut it down. ”
“Got it—another narcissistic egomaniac,” I roll my eyes. “I was just thinking we needed more of those on this planet,” I snark with a sarcastic smirk and I’m gratified to hear him chuckle as we cross another quiet street, putting another block behind us.
“Well hey, we seem to be from different worlds, and yet we both have dipshit dads that we got back at,” he quips.
“Oh?” I turn and look at him, intrigued, and a little bummed that we’re just a couple houses down from Agnes’s. “How’d you get back at yours? Don’t tell me you put on a wedding dress, stole a car, and gunned it for the horizon,” I tease.
He blows a breath out through his nose and shakes his head. “No to the wedding dress, but yes to stealing the car.”
“Whuuut?” I ask incredulously, looking over at him.
“It’s a long fucking story,” he sighs. “One I don’t usually tell, and I can’t believe how much I’ve told you already.”
“West, if you’re not a sharer, it’s cool,” I assure him.
“We don’t have to do this,” I say easily, looking away to give him space as we approach Agnes’s house, but he takes me by surprise by scooping his arm around my back and swinging me towards a tree just off the sidewalk.
He gently pushes me back against it, one hand on my hip and the other braced against the bark above my head.
“You’ve got it all wrong, Kira.” His voice has dropped to a low and gravelly level, and I don’t hate it. Nor does the little traitorous asshole in my panties. “Well I mean, you’re right in the sense that there are certain things I just don’t talk about, but … you’ve taken me by surprise.”
“How so?” I whisper up at him, letting his motor -oil and fresh musky scent infiltrate my nostrils.
“You’re so damn easy to talk to, these things just come out on their own.”
“Good thing or bad?” I watch his eyes dart between my eyes and my lips.
“Could be bad,” he croons, his thumb smoothing circles on the patch of skin between my shirt and my waist band.
“Why?”
“There’s plenty about me you might not like. ”
Who am I to say he’s wrong? I barely know him, and I could very well not like what I hear.
But I forget all about it when he leans his face into my neck, breathing me in.
I place a hand on his chest, his warmth greeting my palm through the soft cotton of his black t-shrit.
“I like you, West,” I admit breathlessly as I grip onto his shirt.
“I like you, too, Kira,” he returns, his voice low right beside my ear as his hand travels from my hip, up my side on the inside of my t-shirt. “It’s so confusing,” he continues before placing a small kiss to my neck. “Wanting someone to know me and not wanting them to find out the truth.”
“I’d like to know you. The good and the bad,” I squeak out.
It’s then I realize, I want that even more than I want him to hoist me up and fuck me senseless right now - and I seriously want that.
The bark burn up my back would be worth it.
But I very regretfully and gently push him back, just enough I can see his face.
My pussy is throwing an absolute tantrum between my legs and I stifle her with a kegel.
“But I don’t know if I’ll really get the chance, if we fuck every time we run into each other. ”
A groan is his response, but his lips pull back in a lazy smile. “That mean you’re sticking around for a while?”
I nod, before looking around at the dark street, buying myself a moment.
“I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do next - with my life, I mean.
I don’t even know who I am or what I’m good at.
But I think this is a good place to figure all that out.
People like you and Agnes make me feel safe and welcome, and I think that’s what I need right now. ”
“Well then I’ll keep up the good work, if that keeps you around longer,” he brings his face around, his lips skimming a path across my cheek to my lips. “And you think we should stop fucking?” He quirks an amused eyebrow.
“I didn’t say that,” I tilt my head at him, and my libido tries to break free. Fuck, this is the longest kegel I’ve ever held, and I don’t know how long I can hold the little sex deviant back. What can I say, she wants West. “But maybe not just that?”
Our lips are touching, the breath of our words breezing across them, and I’m about to throw all morals out the window.
I fist my hand in his t-shirt and pull his body against mine and lock our lips together at long last. They massage and dance with each other as West lets out a groan that vibrates down my throat and pools in my sex.
Our bodies are flush, and I’m ready to let him make me writhe and forget my own name when another vibration reverberates prominently, and dangerously close to my vag.
Rather than be caught off guard by it, West seems to lean into it, letting his warm tongue delve into my mouth with another moan.
Holy fuck, I knew his cock was magnificent but I didn’t know it could actually - wait… it’s gone. No, there it goes again. It’s gone but then I feel the pulsation again, suddenly realizing what it is.
“I’m going to come on your thigh if you don’t answer your phone,” I rasp between our lips.
“Maybe I want you to,” he growls back and while I it would be so easy to give way to the urge - seriously, I’d only need like twenty seconds - my mind thankfully cuts back to what I thought before.
And while our lips continue to devour each other, I reach between us, slipping my hand in his pocket.
Pulling his phone out, I hold it buzzing against his chest.
“Please West, answer it,” I pant. “Or we’ll never be anything more to each other.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” he pants out, forehead resting against mine. “I’m sorry,” he adds, bringing the phone up to his ear.
“It’s okay,” I whisper back as he answers.
“You got West…”
His forehead is still against mine, and we’re both still trying to catch our breath. His hand has found the back of my neck and his thumb skims soothingly up and down the grain .
“Well what kind of a sound was it making before it died out?”
I do my best to collect myself and calm down the screaming sex fiend in my panties as he listens.
“Okay, I think I know what might be going on. Just sit tight, I’m going to grab a few tools from the shop and I’ll be there.
No problem, don’t even worry about it,” he finishes before signing off and tucking the phone back in his pocket.
“Freddy, he owns the supermarket. His car broke down on this way back from the Eagles club in West Bridge,” he explains. “I gotta go lend him a hand.”
Well if that’s not the biggest fucking turn on. A ruggedly sexy bad boy going to help someone without expecting anything out of it?
“That’s hot,” I murmur unabashedly and it earns me the sexiest smirk on the planet before he leans in and gives me a lengthy kiss. This one is hard; claiming.
“You’re not going anywhere?” He searches my eyes.
“No,” I shake my head.
“Good,” he gives one last kiss before backing away. “I’m going to see you soon,” he promises, before turning and jogging back down the street towards his shop.
West
“Alright Fred, we’re good to go,” I tell the middle-aged man with the leathery quality to his face after I get his Ford pickup tucked into one of my bays.
He shakes his head. “I swear, all I was hoping for was some advice over the phone. You didn’t have to drive out and get me at this hour.” He looks woefully apologetic, but I shut it down.
“Ah, come on. Not on that dark highway. Besides, I wasn’t doing anything,” I assure him as I type up his invoice on the computer.
Big lie. I was doing something major. Or I was about to.
But Kira’s right. If we want to get to know each other, this thing with us -whatever it is - has to be more than just physical.
And I’m surprised to find I want it to be more.
It was different when I thought I wouldn’t be seeing her again and we were both scratching an itch.
But I do like her. And the unexpected call of duty tonight saved me from a Guiness Book - worthy case of blue balls.
We’re talking death. Turns out my dick isn’t safe around her no matter what she wears.
So the drive out to rescue our local grocer gave me a chance to cool down.
“You’re a good guy, West,” Fred says down at me solemnly.
I look up and shoot him a frown. “Take that back,” I order and he chuckles as I hand over his invoice and he examines it.
“Okay fine, I take it back, you’re a shitty guy,” he chortles but I take him seriously.
“Can you handle that?” I ask.
“Uh…” he hesitates, still looking down at it before looking up and trying to school his features, feigning nonchalance. “Yeah, yeah. No problem.”
“You know what,” I tell him, standing and gently taking the paper from his hands.
“These things are always unexpected, so let me get you on one of our payment plans, and I have a pretty good idea where I can get an alternator for that model for cheaper - that is, if you’re okay with gently used?
” I sit back down and rearrange a few items in the cost equation.
“You can’t do that, West,” the poor guy looks like he feels an inch tall.
“I can,” I correct him. What he doesn’t know is that I have a bank account of petty cash to cover parts and labor when a customer can’t pay right away.
I stand and hand him his revised invoice.
“This community depends on you, and you need your truck to haul supplies and produce,” I point out.
“Besides, it’s not a free ride, it’s just a little help. ”
He sighs, before folding it and putting it inside his jacket. “I still say you’re a good guyhe maintains as I hear a honk outside the office.
“That Madeline?” I tilt my chin, in the direction of the headlights approaching outside. He nods. “Say hi for me,” I tell him, seeing him out.