Chapter 36
Kas
I hate motorcycles. They’re too loud, the helmets are bulky, and the riders are obnoxious—Devon included.
So if somebody told me yesterday that I’d be riding on the back of his bike, I’d call it an impossibility. Yet, all it took was one panicked call from Violet mentioning something about Mari fighting Olive Ward and a gun for me to do what any sane man would do: Hop on the back of his best friend’s motorcycle.
The bright neon light of Wilmer’s blinks in the distance and I whack Devon’s side. He nods and skids into the parking lot, kicking up dirt and gravel in the process. He doesn’t reach a full brake before I launch myself off the back; the momentum forces me into a light jog. Violet, the security guard, and a couple of bartenders standing by the entrance gawk at Devon and me with open mouths.
“Where’s Mari?” I demand.
Dread writhes in my gut and I’m scanning the exterior of the building in search of her.
“Bathroom,” Violet sniffles. She steps around me with her heels in hand and rushes at Devon. “Never, ever ride your bike without a helmet, Devon Blackstone.” She turns to me. “You too, Paj?k.”
I nod and storm through the bar, past the security guy who looks like he’s about ready to clock out from whatever hellish shift he’s just had. Thankfully, the establishment is small and it takes me less than ten seconds to find the women’s bathroom.
There are three sinks on the left, the same amount of stalls on the right, and Mari is nowhere to be seen. There’s a purse haphazardly tucked under a sink and a large trash can lies dented on its side.
“Holy shit,” I say. What kind of fight was this?
A couple of steps forward, I find Mari sitting on the toilet seat in the center stall, the door of which is hanging on by a singular hinge. Her face is tilted downward, and her elbows rest on her thighs with strappy heels dangling from her long, dainty fingers.
She looks like me after a match, exhausted and roughed the fuck up. She doesn’t look too battered, but the badly wiped blood trails on her pretty face are enough to have me clamping my molars together. Her curls are still perfectly styled, and her flowery dress has a top half that looks like a corset; the lacing has come undone, but it still looks perfect on her. Mari looks like she’s stepped out of a dream, even after a fight.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Mari’s eyes flicker with resilience, and the corners of her mouth are upturned in silent satisfaction as she exhales at the sight of me. It’s like my presence has the power to provide her with relief, and it makes me feel like I can conquer the entire world.
“I’m fine, just so happy to see you,” Mari breathes.
Never mind, I feel like I can conquer the entire galaxy.
“I wish I got here sooner. How do you feel?”
I waste no time and dampen a handful of paper towels under the tap. Aside from the small gash on her cheekbone and a nick at her lip, there’s very little damage to her face but still too much damage for my liking. I crouch down to erase some of the dried blood from her cheek.
“Much better now you’re here.” Her voice is light and genuine as she smiles under my swipes of the paper towels. “Thank you for coming to me.”
“You don’t need to thank me,” I say.
Mari puffs out a laugh and looks at me with the softest eyes I’ve ever seen. “I don’t thank you enough. I wish you were here to see the fight,” she says. “It was crazy, I was like Jacqui Briggs.”
“Fatality,” we say simultaneously, our voices fashioned to be much lower in tone.
We laugh and I warm at her contagious joy.
“Where’s Olive now?” I press once our laughter subsides and wipe Mari’s feet with haste.
I’m desperate to make sure Mari’s all good so she can rest in bed all snuggled up in her pajamas. I just know she’s itching to start her night routine.
“Don’t know, don’t care. She was escorted out of the bathroom.”
I point to a huge dent in a hand dryer. “Did you do that?”
“Yes, I pushed her into it, threw that trash can at her, and then when she decided to run at me, I opened this door,” she says pointing to the broken toilet door. “And bam, knocked her out.” Mari’s hands are animated as she describes the whole thing. “I can’t believe this was all because Fletcher messaged me.”
My prideful smile drops, and I fist the paper towels until water streams between my knuckles. “Ward messaged you?”
“A booty call, hotel number and everything. Best believe I shut that down immediately.”
The pressure in my head becomes almost too much with the added information.
“Ward messaged you trying to fuck you ?”
As if Ward couldn’t be any more insufferable. It’s almost like he’s giving me reasons as to why I should knock him down a peg or two.
“What else would he message a woman for?” Mari asks rhetorically as I slip on her heels.
I stay crouched and pat the top of my thigh, prompting her to place her heeled feet there so I can secure the straps around her foot.
“I’m very happy that he’s my opponent,” I say, trying hard to conceal my anger.
“And you better win. His wife thinks you’re going to lose, and I told her you were going to win.” Mari twists her lip and raises a brow at me. “You wouldn’t want to prove her right, would you?” she asks with a small laugh.
I look between the superficial injuries on Mari’s face and allow her smile to extinguish the vexation attempting to unfurl in my gut. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Mari emits a loud sigh of relief, and the sound of pattering water softens when she steps into the shower stream.
After Mari and I left the restroom at Wilmer’s, Devon rode his bike back to the hotel and I decided to be safe and take a cab back with the girls. The drive was short and during it, I found out that the entire reason they went to the bar was to eavesdrop on Davina’s solo investigation about the steroids in my bag. Now I feel massively responsible for Mari getting hurt.
The high-pitched squeak of an almost empty bottle sounds from the bathroom.
“I think Davina just wanted to go on a date with Clive. It’s just unfortunate that Olive walked in, could’ve happened anywhere,” Mari calls, her voice echoing.
Our bathrooms here are huge. The shower spans the entire width of it and is separated from the toilet and sink with one glass screen; it could probably fit three or four people inside.
“Don’t try to make me feel better, you went there because of me.”
“It was worth it because I got to tell Olive that you’re going to win.”
I press my tongue into my cheek and chuckle at Mari’s effort to make me feel better. “You made great use of your environment. I think you need to get into wrestling. The ladders and foldable chairs might be great for you.”
Mari hisses between her teeth. “Ouch,” she says.
“You okay?”
“I think I’ve fucked up my side.”
“How? In what way?”
I scoot to the edge of my seat, preventing myself from walking into the bathroom to see what’s wrong.
“Like, I don’t know? It just aches when I angle my arms to wash.”
“The adrenaline probably wore off and now you’re feeling the aches and pains from the fight.”
I pause for a moment and strain my ears to make sure Mari is okay.
“Kas, I think I have a broken rib,” she says and emits a very fake and dramatic wail.
“I don’t think you have a broken rib. Didn’t you get checked by the EMTs before I arrived?”
“Yeah, but what if they missed it?”
I lean forward, placing my elbows on my knees. “Can you breathe okay?”
“I don’t know. I am struggling to catch my breath a little bit.” She does a loud exhale. “I think I’m breathing like that because I’m panicking.”
I muffle a laugh at her unsureness. “Can you see any bruising or swelling?”
“No? Maybe?” Mari’s wet feet slap across the bathroom floor and she pokes her head out of the door. Her hair is sodden and water drips out of her curls onto the carpeted floor. “Could you just check for me?”
I stand and take a step toward her. “If this is your way of seducing me, you can just ask.”
“I could be severely injured and you’re making sex jokes. If you’re going to be weird, you can stay in that chair.”
She points to the seat I’ve vacated while securing a towel above her breasts.
I swallow down a groan. “Do you want me to come in and check or not?” I ask. “I know you’d feel a whole lot better if I just came in, felt the area, and told you if I think you’re falling apart at the seams.”
“Yes, I want you to come in and check.”
She steps back into the steam-filled bathroom to let me in, and I shut the door behind us.
“Where does it hurt?” I ask.
I’m desperately trying to keep my eyes from dipping.
“Here,” she says pointing to the right side of her rib cage. “Hold on.” She turns her back to me and drops the towel until it’s at her hips. “Full access,” she says.
“Jesus Christ,” I say under my breath.
Her entire top half is completely exposed, minus the breasts she conceals with crossed arms. The towel looks like it could fall off her waist with less than a tug, and there’s droplets lingering on her skin where she hasn’t dried off. I feel like I need to turn her shower to the coldest setting and throw myself under it to cool the heat pummeling through me.
“C’mon, Kas, don’t make this awkward.”
I clear my throat to remove the lump and step to her. I gently palpate the area around her right side. She flinches slightly at my cold hands. Aside from that, she’s unreactive and doesn’t seem to have any broken ribs.
“Does this hurt?” I whisper.
The feel of Mari under my palms has me threatening to combust. She’s so soft and her skin is warmer than usual because of how hot she has her showers; the water must be a few degrees away from boiling.
“No, not at all,” she replies just as quietly.
“I think you’ve just pulled the muscle a bit. If you punched her hard with your right hand”—I act out a punch across my body—“see how it stretches?”
She turns to watch me pat the area around my rib. Mari nods and looks down to make sure she hasn’t accidentally flashed me.
She smiles shakily. “So ... no broken rib?”
“From what I can tell, no broken ribs. Just some strain.”
“Thanks, Kas.”
I nod at her and slowly fist my hands as if subconsciously savoring the feel of her. “No problem.”
I should leave now. I should get very far away.
“Do you want to leave?”
Mari’s tone is sarcastic, but I take it literally and respond with a similar question of my own.
“Do you want me to stay?” I choke out.
“What will happen if I say yes?”
It’s so similar to her answer to me in the club. Only now, we aren’t surrounded by dancing bodies, we aren’t in front of our closest friends, and we aren’t unsure of our attraction to each other.
“What do you think would happen?” I ask.
Mari’s eyelashes have adhered together into soft spikes. She blinks hard when a droplet drips over her eye and down her cheek to settle into the corner of her lips. Her tongue pokes out to catch it and I exhale a serrated breath.
“We’d keep responding to each other with questions until you do what I want and kiss me again,” she whispers.
I catch the gentle curve of her lip and as much as I’d love to respond with my own smug expression, I can’t. If anything, I gawk at her before slamming my lips on hers.
She totters backward into the shower and pulls me with her until her back hits the tiled wall and I’m directly under the stream. Mari grunts out a moan and snakes her arms around my neck. When she fists her hands in my hair, I respond with a moan of my own. She snags my bottom lip and soothes it with her tongue until each gentle bite encourages the rushing of blood to my cock.
The sodden towel around her waist lands in a soaked pile at my feet. I kick it aside and move my hands to her breasts, pinching her nipples lightly until she buckles under me.
“This is a health hazard,” she whispers.
“I’ve got you.”
I bring us both to the shower floor without severing our kiss, laying down so Mari can straddle me while the shower’s stream rebounds off her back. She pulls away to peer down at me. I take a long, drawn out look at her. All of her.
Her hair has shrunk, and the low porosity of her curls means that the definition of them is still there. Some cling together, causing thick droplets to collect at the end and fall onto my cheeks.
She looks unreal with her long, toned torso stretching endlessly above me heaving with each labored breath she takes. She’s like a siren and I’m some mortal ready to follow her into the depths to perish, or in this case, waterboarded within an inch of my life. I flinch when a large droplet of water lands on my face.
“You’re beautiful,” I blurt.
She smiles and re-engages the kiss, more tender than I was. “You’re beautiful -er .”
The gentle grinding of her hips is synchronized with each thrust of her tongue, and her pussy rubs over the soaked, nylon material of my shorts that’s adhered to the shape of my cock.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
I need to be inside her.
Mari falls on top of me when I glide my finger around her clit and over her pussy to get an idea of how wet she is. I dip my finger inside of her to find her soaked. Her back bows at the intrusion and she presses her breasts into my front.
“That feels good,” she moans, shuddering under my touch.
I smile against her neck and relish in her praise. “You’re so fucking wet,” I mumble.
The running water sluices over us and when I dip my finger into her pussy for a second time, the water adds an unpleasant friction. I want to fuck Mari and the shower is not the place to do it.
“Get out and bend over the sink,” I demand.