Chapter 21
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— Handful —
I’d made up my mind on the ride over. Today was the day.
Fewin took the wine delivery out back at two thirty, which left the two of us alone — her behind the bar polishing glasses she’d already polished, me on a stool with my so-called emotional support clipboard, which I hadn’t looked at in ten minutes.
Fewin wasn’t wrong about it, either. The clipboard was mostly something to keep my hands busy when Austen was in the room.
I’d given her space. A wide berth, clean handoffs, never a word out of line.
I’d told her on her sidewalk I’d back off, and I’d done it.
But watching her all these weeks — watching her laugh at Fewin, watching her hand move toward me last week before she caught it — I’d figured out the thing nobody tells you about giving a woman space.
It works right up until it doesn’t. After that it’s just hell with good manners — same room, same wanting, and you’re still playing the patient man.
I was done.
“You’re staring,” she said, not looking up from the glass.
“Yeah.”
That got her to look up. Something in the way I said it, I guess.
“Handful—”
“I kept my word.” I set the clipboard down on the bar. “I said I’d give you space and I gave you space. You can’t tell me I didn’t.”
She went still, a glass in one hand and a cloth in the other. “No. You have.”
“Good. Because I’m about to stop.” I stood up off the stool.
Didn’t come around the bar — left the wood between us on purpose.
“Fewin’s got a theory, by the way. His professional advice, brother to brother, is that I should throw you over my shoulder, drive you back to the clubhouse, and not let you out of my room till you’d forgiven every sin I ever committed.
Says it worked on his old lady. Took a weekend. ”
The corner of her mouth moved. “And you said?”
“I said you’d have my balls in a jar before we cleared the parking lot.” I let that sit. “So I’m not doing that. I’m doing this instead, which is harder, because it means standing here and telling you the truth with my hands where you can see them.”
“Handful, we’re at work—”
“I told you on that sidewalk you weren’t my first. But I also told you that you were my last, and I want to be real clear about something, Austen, because I don’t think you believed me.
” I put both hands flat on the bar and leaned in.
“I didn’t mean it the way a man means a nice thing to get a woman back in his bed.
It’s a fact. You are the last woman I am ever going to want.
That’s already true. It’s been true since the first Old Fashioned, and every day since you walked back into my building it’s gotten harder to pretend otherwise. ”
She set the glass down.
“You want to know how much harder?” It wasn’t really a question and I didn’t wait for an answer.
“I jerk off in the shower thinking about you. Every morning. Sometimes again at night if it’s been a long one.
Six weeks of it. I stand there and I think about your mouth and the sounds you make.
I take care of myself like a teenager, because you’re right here every day and I can’t touch you. ”
The flush had started up her throat but she didn’t tell me to stop.
“I think about going down on you more than I think about anything else in my life, and that includes the club, which should tell you something.” My voice had dropped and I let it.
“I miss the taste of you so bad. I want my tongue back inside you. I want to spend an entire night down there doing nothing else, no clock, no reason to be anywhere, just you coming on my tongue as many times as I can make you. I think about it when I should be doing the books. I thought about it four times during church on Sunday, which Dutch would kill me for.”
Her thighs pressed together behind the bar. I saw it.
“There it is,” I said, quiet. “Don’t be embarrassed.
I’m the one standing here with a hard-on in a strip club in the middle of the afternoon talking to a woman who won’t have me.
” I stepped back from the bar. Her eyes dropped to my jeans.
“Yeah. You see that. That’s all you. Every bit of it.
It’s yours. I’m not being cute — it belongs to you, Austen, the same way the rest of me does.
You can do whatever you want with it, whenever you want, as long as it’s your hands or your mouth or you around it.
The day that happens I will die a happy man and thank God on the way out. ”
Her tongue touched her lower lip. Just barely. She didn’t seem to know she’d done it.
“I could take care of that for you.” I nodded at the bar, where her thighs had been. “Right here. Right now. Fewin’s not back for an hour.”
She wrinkled her nose. “In a strip club.”
“You’ve got somewhere better in mind? Yours is ten minutes. Mine’s twenty.” I let that sit. “Or I go full Fewin — throw you over my shoulder, drive you to the clubhouse, tie you to my bed and fuck you senseless, have you back at Velvet before your shift. He swears by it.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would,” I said. “If you asked. That’s the point.”
Her breath wasn’t steady. I wasn’t in much better shape.
“You’re playing dirty,” she said. It came out rough.
“I’m playing to win. There’s a difference and you taught me it. There’s more, which I need you to hear because I’ve stood here making this sound like it’s all about getting you into bed, and it’s not — that’s the easy part to want.”
I wasn’t playing anymore, and I wanted her to know it.
“I miss you calling me out when I say something stupid, and I say plenty stupid. I miss your voice. I miss the way you walk into a room and it lights up around you. I miss you on the back of my bike with your arms around me, trusting me to get you home. I miss showing up at the end of your shift just to know you got to your car safe. I miss opening my eyes in the morning and finding you there.”
She’d gone still but her eyes stayed on mine.
“But here’s the part that matters, so listen.
I’m not going to lay a finger on you. Not today, not until you tell me to.
In words. No maybe about it. I’m going to keep my hands to myself and you’re going to go back to Velvet.
Tonight, while you’re falling asleep, you’re going to think about everything I just said and it’s going to get you all hot and bothered, which is exactly what I wanted and I’m not sorry. ”
“That’s not fair.”
“No.” I picked my clipboard back up off the bar like a man who hadn’t just said any of that.
“It’s not. I’m done being fair.” I headed for the back, because if I stood there one more second I was going to break my own rule.
“I’m right here, Austen. Every day. Whenever you’re ready. You just say the word.”
I made it to the hallway before I heard her say, low, almost to herself, “Bastard.”
I grinned the whole way to the office.
She left at four like always. I watched her go from the office window — out across the lot to her car, where she sat for a minute before she started it, the way she does when something’s gotten to her.
I’d promised to keep my hands to myself, and I’d keep it. But I hadn’t promised to make it easy. Weeks of standing in a room being decent to her. She knew where I stood now.
Her car finally pulled out. I went back to the books with a hard-on.
Worth it.