Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Claire
Iblink twice to make sure I’m not imagining what I’m seeing. But no. The fishnet stockings, thong and nipple tassels are still staring back at me from inside the plastic bag.
I’ve just rushed into Tartine’s staff locker room to change into my waitressing uniform, because my shift at Swet begins in twenty minutes and I’ve finally discovered why Pierre found my employment there so shocking.
With two little sequined black hearts covering my nipples and a thong leaving nothing to the imagination underneath the fishnets, I will essentially be working naked. Holy moly, I can’t wear this, can I?
With a gulp, I toe off the sneakers I’ve been wearing all day and drop my pants, followed by my basic white underwear.
I’m the only member of staff still left in the restaurant, and I don’t have time to return to the motel to change.
Draven is still in the kitchen working on some secret sauce that sits on the stove in a giant pot, but surely, he doesn’t use the same employee locker room as the lowly kitchen workers he orders around, right?
I should be safe for a quick change.
I stoop forward and drag the thong up my legs, wincing at the cinch of tight satin between my butt cheeks. It’s not…unpleasant, I suppose, but they’re the smallest size possible and I have to wonder if that is on purpose. They barely cover my privates.
The fishnets come next, the waistband reaching a few inches above my belly button, and I turn my butt to the full-length mirror that is affixed to the wall, my eyes nearly bugging out of my head at the lack of coverage.
Thank goodness I have my coat to cover up on the way down the road or I would swiftly be arrested for public indecency.
Knowing I’m going to be late to my shift if I stall any longer, I whip off my shirt and stare down at the tassels, fretting.
How the heck do I make them stick to my breasts? Is there a tape I’m supposed to use?
I’m resigned to pocketing the tassels and hustling my way to Swet, praying that one of the other waitresses will have some spare adhesive…
When the door of the locker room swings open and bumps off the wall behind me.
Heart in my mouth, I whirl around without thinking, my body going into fight or flight mode. I hold my hands out to ward off an attacker, but they change direction and cover my breasts when I see the man standing in the doorway is Draven.
Oh. My. God.
I’m standing in front of my mean, hot-tempered boss in fishnets and a thong.
Topless.
My hands are cupping my bare breasts now, but there was a good three seconds where they were totally uncovered—oh, and he definitely saw them.
I can still feel the caress of his shocked gaze on my nipples.
His bunched jaw and glittering eyes are my next clue that he just witnessed me totally nude from the waist up.
From the waist down, I’m not hiding anything, either.
The thong barely shields the seam of my sex.
Might as well face facts. I’m totally about to get fired. Draven runs a strict environment, and he already wanted me gone the moment I stepped foot in the kitchen earlier tonight.
This is going to be the straw that broke the camel toe’s back.
“Um.” I decide to brazen it out. My bravado worked for me before with this man, didn’t it? “This locker room is employees only. As the owner, you really shouldn’t be in here.”
“This is my restaurant, Claire. I’ll go where I want.” He steps into the small room, letting the door smack shut behind him. “And what the fuck are you wearing?”
“Um, hello. It’s a waitressing uniform,” I croak. “Ever heard of one?”
“Being that I own a restaurant, yes, I have.”
Inwardly, I wince.
Right.
“Well,” I say, shrugging. “Not all establishments are as upscale as this one.”
Draven points at me, a lump moving high and low in his throat.
It becomes obvious to me in that moment how hard he’s struggling not to ogle me.
Throw in the way he defended me to his lecherous brother earlier and I can’t help but acknowledge there’s a good man lurking beneath his grumpy facade.
“Where do you waitress in a uniform like that?”
His brother knew about the uniforms worn at Swet.
Draven doesn’t.
My tummy does a little flip at the nugget of information that he doesn’t frequent the nightclub where women walk around half naked. I’m…glad he doesn’t. Very glad.
Why?
Do I have a mini crush on my boss?
When he takes another step in my direction and I’m flushed with heat, I admit to myself that maybe the crush isn’t so mini. In fact, when my core flexes and dampens over the increasing proximity of this man, I worry the crush might be…maxi.
“It’s called Swet. And this isn’t the whole uniform,” I rush to say, sounding breathless.
Draven gives up his noble fight, finally allowing his eyes to devour me, thighs, belly, that clenching part of my anatomy barely hidden by the thong. “Where is the rest of the uniform?” he asks, his chest puffing up and down, those long fingers clenching into fists at his sides.
“Mmmm.” My face flushes as I indicate the nipple shields with a nod. They’ve landed on the ground at my feet. “There.”
My boss is already shaking his head adamantly. “You’re not going anywhere in that.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you are not,” he enunciates.
“I’m off the clock at Tartine. Technically, you’re not my boss again until tomorrow.” I swallow hard, letting myself lean back against the cool metal locker. “And as much as I appreciate the position in your kitchen, I need the second job.”
His nostrils flare. “I will triple your pay if you quit the second job.”
“What?”
Golden eyes lock in on mine. “You heard me, little girl.”
My knees threaten to buckle, a silk fist twisting in my tummy.
I open my mouth to issue a rejoinder, but no sound comes out.
There is simply no breath in my lungs after what he’s just called me.
Little girl. It’s almost like I undergo a transformation in the following seconds, those two shimmering words dangling in the air, turning the locker room to a dark den of sin.
Why am I reacting so strongly to being called such a condescending nickname?
I don’t know, but I can’t seem to stop my flesh from growing damper, my inner thighs softening like warm clay.
“Don’t call me that,” I whisper, shaken.
His focus narrows on my face, which is no doubt rosy cheeked.
It’s obvious that he finds my reaction to his “endearment” fascinating.
“Why shouldn’t I call you that?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly, all too aware that my nipples have become throbbing spikes against my palms. “It’s not appropriate. Or accurate. I’m not a little girl.”
His attention settles on my hips, before trailing inward to my sex. Those golden eyes darken until I could swear they’re closer to obsidian. “You definitely don’t look like one right now. You look just old enough.”
“Old enough for what?” I whisper.
Draven drags a hand down his face, his conflict as plain as his…arousal for me.
Yes, that’s what it is. Arousal.
He wants me, I realize, perhaps late to the party.
I’m turning him on in this outfit.
I have the sudden destructive urge to drop my hands from my breasts. To let him look at me everywhere. To turn him on to an even sharper degree. But this man is my boss, and I don’t know a lot about the world—yet—but I know sleeping with an employer is frowned upon.
Also, I don’t even know how.
I’ve never even kissed a boy, let alone a man.
My parents made sure there were no opportunities to hang out with kids my own age growing up. Hence my being homeschooled. Confined to the house where I waited on them and my stepsiblings, hand and foot.
A need for freedom with my own body spikes inside of me, but I valiantly fight the feeling, keeping my breasts hidden.
“Old enough for what?” Draven repeats in a hoarse voice, sauntering toward me one measured step at a time. “If you don’t know, you shouldn’t be wearing that thong.”
What is happening to me?
He’s inches away from me now and I’m starting to tremble.
My body knows something is coming, but my brain is playing catch up, distracted by the rash of heat spreading inside of me, concentrated there.
In that place no one has ever touched me.
Draven plants a forearm above my head on the locker, his breath ghosting against my forehead, and I press my thighs together tightly, squirming back against the locker because my belly is so ticklish.
So ticklish with his huge body closing in on mine.
“Put your hands down, Claire,” Draven says against my temple, his breath accelerating. “Let me see how sweet.”
I trap a moan behind my lips, encountering a hot whip crack of…lust?
Is that the sensation turning me molten?
Yes. No. I don’t know. But my instincts tell me Draven is good, Draven is safe, so I lift my chin and look him in the eye.
And I slowly remove my hands, allowing him to look down at my naked breasts with their distended nipples.
There’s no trapping the moan that releases from my mouth when he leans in, rubbing his white chef’s coat against those peaks, causing them to swell and strain all the more, a hot shiver moving through me, head to toe.
“Oh, my goodness,” I whimper, arching my back to get closer to him.
His open mouth rakes up my ear, those huge chef hands settling on my hips and gripping them tight.
“Goddammit, I shouldn’t be touching you.
I’m your boss.” Not sure what to say to that, I bite my lip and look up at him for guidance.
Something about the way I’m looking at Draven seems to weaken his resolve, a low curse breaking from his lips as his palms skate higher along my sides, his thumbs dragging up and over my hard nipples.
“Ohhh,” I whine, vibrating. Clutching the front of his shirt, in desperate need of an anchor suddenly, because my knees are shaking. Everything is shaking. “I feel funny.”
He cups my breasts fully now, massaging them in his hands, his open mouth against my cheek. Right there. So close to kissing me. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re shaking with excitement. Not fear, right, Claire?”
He’s a good man. I shake my dazed head. “Not fear. Excitement.”
Draven releases an unsteady breath, his touch sliding down from my breasts, scraping low on my belly, before traveling around to my bottom and gripping the cheeks tight. Releasing, gripping, releasing, gripping. “When is the last time you had an orgasm, little girl?”
That blunt inquiry causes more wetness finds my juncture.
I think back to all the times in my bedroom when I rubbed inside my panties, my sounds of frustration muffled by the pillow. Always chasing that elusive relief that seemed to remain just outside of my grasp. “I…I don’t think I’ve ever had one.”
One of his eyebrows arches. “You’re a virgin?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“How much longer do you think you’ll be one dressed like this?” Draven asks, scooping me off the ground and pinning me hard to the lockers, yanking my knees up around his hips and surging his hips upward between my thighs, rattling the metal locks.
His stiff pike finds a button among my weeping flesh and presses. Hard.
Electricity streaks through me like a current.
I scream.
I scream and claw at Draven’s collar, the most indescribable release soaring down into the deepest regions of my tummy, pulling mystery strings that are connected to places I can’t even name, juice soaking my thong and fishnets so thoroughly, I wet Draven’s fly, but oh God, he doesn’t seem to mind at all.
In fact, it seems to drive him wild and he pumps several more times, his wild, infatuated eyes glued to my face.
Watching as he drives, drives, drives me up against the locker, my thighs locked in twin seizures on either side of his hips.
“Why did you have to be so fucking sweet?” He jostles me several more times, further fanning the flames of ecstasy, my whimpers filling the locked room. “Fate brought me a horny little thing to play with, didn’t it? I couldn’t stay away if I tried.”
Hot tears leak from the corners of my eyes, and I can’t catch my breath, I’m so overwhelmed by my first climax, elusive for so long.
Until this man. This man who I knew would be important to me the moment I laid eyes on him.
My body and soul just knew. Now, I cling to him, mewling, struck by a singular kind of clarity when our eyes lock together.
Clarity that seems to come from an untapped and unexplored reservoir deep, deep inside of me.
“Draven?”
“Yes, Claire?” he rasps, flattening me to the locker, his mouth moving in my hair, that part of him still so indescribably thick and hard.
“Will you be my Daddy?”