Chapter Thirty-Two
Thirty-Two
“You know,” I said when Eamonn was rinsing off the cookie plate and stacking it on top of the others in the sink, “I never did get the full tour.”
“There’s not a lot to it,” he said. “I moved in here when I was young and just grateful to have a job that came with a place to live, so I barely looked at the flat. If I had, I would’ve noticed that there are holes in the floors and I can only stand upright in half the bedroom.”
The bedroom was exactly what I was hoping to see, but I felt shy suddenly, like it was too forward to even ask. “What about downstairs?” I asked. “I’ve been dying to check out the books.”
We each took a candle down the same flight of stairs we’d come up earlier, and even standing in that small entryway again made me feel flush with fever.
I stood close enough behind Eamonn while he worked the key in the side-door lock that I could smell that pine soap on him, or maybe I was smelling it on myself.
It was strange to finally be inside the waiting area, when it was the first thing I’d seen of Eamonn or his shop, technically. There was that checkered linoleum floor, some chairs set up around the rim of the room, a table with what looked like the stuff to pour a paper cup of coffee.
“So do you make coffee for your clients?” I asked. “Or customers? I don’t know the right word.”
“When I remember,” he said, setting his candle down on the front corner. “I admit, I sometimes forget this room is even here. If you were waiting for your car to be ready and went to pour yourself a drink, there’s about a fifty-fifty chance there’s anything in there. But I try.”
“You said you have a guy who works here part-time? Maybe it could be something he helps with.”
“Paul is twenty-one and comes in with his shirt inside out more often than not,” Eamonn said. “He’s sound, an encyclopedia of car models and parts, but I don’t know that I would trust him with the coffee.”
I smiled. I liked the idea that maybe it was Eamonn’s turn to mentor someone, the way that he’d been mentored by the man who’d given him his first job, the person he’d bought this shop from.
It seemed to me that he’d probably built more of a community around himself and this shop than he gave himself credit for.
I walked around the edge of the room, skimming over titles on the book spines that lined the walls.
He’d said that these books were anyone’s for the taking, without any particular significance or special connection, but I still liked looking at his collection.
There were quite a few I recognized—mass-market bestsellers from the last twenty years, some of the Sweet Valley High series I’d read as a teenager even though my namesake was a complete asshole in them. He even had some romance.
“You have to read this one,” I said, reaching to pull a purple spine I recognized out from the shelves. “This book altered my DNA. It’s so sexy and angsty and good.”
“I’ll read it,” he said. “Just leave it there with the coffee so I don’t forget.”
“To read the book, or to refill the coffee?” I said, but set the book down where he’d indicated. I crossed over to the front counter, touching a finger to the top of an old-fashioned rotary phone that sat there.
“That doesn’t work,” Eamonn said. “It never has—it came with the place. All the actual calls get forwarded to my mobile.”
“What you need is a receptionist,” I said.
“Oh?” He grasped me by the waist, lifting me up to seat me on top of the counter. “Are you volunteering?”
“Volunteering? I have almost ten years of professional experience, and I’d expect my compensation package to reflect that.”
“Ten years,” he said, as if doing the math. “So what did you do before?”
“I had what I thought was a dream museum job out of college,” I said, “until I realized fifteen hours a week at basically minimum wage was never going to pay my bills, and it didn’t matter if I got free admission.
I supplemented that with retail jobs before I got my first receptionist gig, and the rest was history. Wait, is this a real job interview?”
Eamonn had set himself up between my legs, giving my bare calf a squeeze. “Let’s see you at work,” he said. “I want to see what you can do.”
I rolled my eyes, just so he could see how silly I found this, even though I could feel my heart start to race.
I picked up the handset of the rotary phone, holding it to my ear.
“Good morning, Eamonn’s Garage,” I said, putting on my best receptionist voice, the right blend of cheerful and carefully modulated.
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry, but we don’t provide that service here. ”
He was watching me, that dimple popping in his cheek even as he twisted his mouth to pretend he wasn’t smiling.
I paused, like I was really listening to what someone on the other line was saying.
“I totally understand,” I said, giving him a look like you won’t believe what this lady is on about.
“It’s a travesty. I’ve been telling him, what kind of mechanic doesn’t know how to do a standard oil change?
But you know how these lads are, they don’t—”
Eamonn tickled me behind my knee, and I yelped, almost dropping the phone. I made a big show of fumbling with the handset to press it back to my ear. “Hello? I am so sorry about that, ma’am, I’m being sexually harassed at work.”
He took the phone from me, hanging it up. He ran his hands up my thighs, his fingertips disappearing under the fabric of my shorts. I rubbed his short hair in the same kind of motion until he closed his eyes, leaning into it.
“It’d be difficult to keep my hands off you,” he said. “That voice alone.”
I smiled. “My receptionist voice?”
“Your voice in general,” he said. “There’s something so gentle about it. If I had to listen to you taking phone calls and talking and laughing from the next room, I’d be hard all day.”
I wrapped my legs around him, pressing my heels into his back. “Then it’s okay for me to admit I’ve been objectifying you based on your accent this whole time.”
“Jess,” he said. “Whatever does it for you, I’ll take it. I’ll do it.”
“I’ve also been checking you out,” I said, reaching down to slide my own fingers under the waistband of the sweatpants he’d changed into after his shower. “You have a great ass.”
His hands were warm as he went up under my shirt, skimming my ribs, the undersides of my breasts, before running one finger down the length of my sternum.
“When I was looking at you in the bookshop, when you were leaned over reading that book, I got a glimpse down your dress. Just enough to know that your bra was black, that you had what looked like the softest skin right…”
He spread his palm flat over the top of my chest, only his thumb teasing at the swell of my breasts. “…here.”
I let him lift me off the counter, my legs still wrapped around him.
He kissed me desperately, hungrily, like he was worried I’d go away even as he held me tighter to him.
When I did finally drop my feet to the ground, sliding down his body, I hooked my fingers in the waistband of his sweatpants and pulled them down over his hips.
“I do really want this job,” I said.
He yanked his shirt over his head, and then he was standing in front of me completely naked.
There was something erotic about it, I realized, the same way that our roles had been reversed only a couple hours before.
Being the one who was exposed had made me feel vulnerable, a tingling sensation lighting up any part of my body that he looked at, that he touched.
Being the one who was clothed now made me feel powerful, like he was completely at my mercy but he trusted me with it.
Eamonn also had a beautiful body. I wanted to explore all of it, the corded muscles in his arms, the hard plane of his stomach, the fine trail of hair that led to his cock. I wrapped my hand around him, gratified when he let out a hiss between his teeth.
“How am I doing?” I gave him another stroke, trying to make my voice as soft as possible.
Nobody had ever told me my voice did anything for them before; I would’ve never even thought to use it in a particularly seductive way.
But I could feel him harden even more in my hand, could see the coiled tension in his shoulders, and I knew that he hadn’t been exaggerating. It really did affect him.
“Ah,” he said, looking down to watch my hand pumping his cock, letting out a groan when my thumb rubbed along its swollen head. “So good.”
“Really?” I asked. “So the job is mine?”
He covered my hand with his, tightening until I was gripping him harder, giving him a squeeze. “Get on your knees,” he said into my ear. “And suck me.”
The words sent a pulse right to my clit, and I realized that they were what I’d been waiting for this entire time.
Eamonn’s discarded sweatpants were at his feet, and he slid them gently toward me in such a smooth motion I almost didn’t understand what he was doing at first, until I saw that I could kneel on them to cushion myself against the linoleum.
I gave one hard lick against the length of him, and I glanced up to see his head tilted back, his eyes closed, until he looked down at me. “That’s it,” he said. “Put your mouth on me. Please.”
I took all of him then, until I could feel him hit the back of my throat, until I could get a good rhythm going, stroking up and down his cock with my tongue. He clenched his hands in my hair, and I braced myself against his thighs as I kept sucking.
“Fuck,” he said. “You have a perfect mouth.”
I stopped only long enough to take a breath, to rub my cheek against where he was wet with my spit. “If I swallow,” I said, “will you promise it’s mine?”
“Anything you want,” he said, gripping my braid in his hand and giving it a tug. “I’ll promise you anything.”
I devoted myself to my rhythm with new urgency, like this really was about me getting something I wanted, like there were actual stakes to getting him to come in my mouth. When he finally shuddered against me, pulsing and hot, I felt a surge of triumph like I’d really accomplished something.
Eamonn drew me to him as I stood back up on shaky legs, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing my ass. He kissed me, opening up my mouth with his tongue, no doubt tasting himself, until he pulled back to kiss my ear. “Where did you come from?” he whispered.
I hugged him tighter to me, resting my cheek against his bare chest. It was only then that I was reminded that the entire front of this space was windows, that even though it was late at night and mostly dark inside the room, we’d still technically been doing all of that on full display.
I thought of myself when I’d first come upon the garage, peering in through the windows.
I thought of Eamonn using this room in the course of his usual days, ringing people up at the counter, refilling the coffee when he remembered to do it.
“I don’t want you to think that’s how I actually get a job,” I said, and I could feel his chest rumble with a laugh.
“I don’t want you to think that’s how I would actually do my hiring,” he said. “Is it awkward now to ask if you’d like to see my bedroom?”
“Not at all,” I said, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “That was the whole reason I wanted a tour in the first place.”