31. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I shoot up straight in bed.
“Fuck! Fuck!”
I throw back the covers and grab my phone to silence the alarm.
It’s gonna be a bad day.
Shit!
What the hell is gonna happen?
Distress courses through me as I frantically gather my clothes.
Pulling on my pants, I hop across the floor as I push my legs through. Then I grab the spare shirt Kai procured me from places unknown, and shrug it over my shoulders.
Fuck, he’s undone my tie again.
Such a bad fucking day…
With no time to shower, I race to the bathroom, haphazardly brush my teeth, and spray a liberal amount of cologne over my chest to disguise the faint undertones of sweat and sexual frustration that cling to it.
I only ever set my alarm for days like this. Those rare occasions when my body clock doesn’t wake me. And nothing good ever comes from those days.
Shoving my shirt into my khakis, I buckle my belt and run for my boots. Grabbing my phone as I scuff them on, I trip and stumble into the door. No time for secluded embarrassment though, so I fling open the door to be met with Kai—his hand poised into a fist, ready to knock.
“Good morning, sexy,” his smoldering just-out-of-bed voice rasps at me as he leans his arm against the frame, studying my appearance.
“Yeah, good morning.” I duck under his arm.
“That’s all I get?”
Turning around, I scurry back to him and press a chaste kiss to his lips. “Good morning. We’re gonna be late.”
“No shit. Why d’ya think I’m here?” He gives a pity-filled shake of his head. And as I turn to walk backwards to the lift, I watch him enter my room and return with my jacket before locking the door.
Agitated, I repeatedly press the lift buttonlike it actually does make it arrive quicker.
“You need to calm down.” Kai takes my wrist and returns it to my side. “Why are you so worked up?”
“Something bad’s gonna happen.” I cross my other arm over my chest and grip my bicep in a juvenile protective way.
“How do you know that?”
“Just do. I can feel it in my waters.”
“Your waters?” He laughs and looks at me like I’m speaking in tongues as the lift doors clang open and screech along the runners.
“Yeah, it’s really bloody serious,” I snap at his inability to understand the fortitude of the situation.
With both our coats over one arm, Kai takes me by the biceps and forces me into the corner. “There’s no need to get short with me,” he scolds, fastening my top button and flattening out my shirt with his palms. Taking my tie, he starts working on the knot. “Now why don’t you tell me why you just know something bad will happen?”
“I slept through my alarm.” I look away sheepishly, understanding full well how dumb it sounds. But it’s the truth. Every time in living memory this exact thing happened, some seriously nasty shit went down.
“Babe, come on.” Kai looks like I just tried to convince him the world is flat and the sun revolves around the moon. And the cavalier nature with which he’s considering my plight only continues as he changes the subject. “God, you look sexy with your hair all messed up like this.” Reaching behind me, he pulls out the ponytail I’d slept in and combs it with his fingers. “Might be a bit too much for the guests, though.”
“I know it sounds daft,” I continue unabated, even though I know my cheeks and ears are burning hot. “But the facts are hard to ignore… You’d know I wake up just before my alarm every morning if you stayed over once in a while.”
He shoots me a look akin to throwing a pie in my face.
“Look.” I raise my hand and start counting on my fingers. “The day Romeo got beat up and Sax and I were suspended. The day I found out my first girlfriend cheated on me. The day my grandad died. They all have one thing in common.”
Cupping my jaw in his strong tattooed hands, Kai looks me dead in the eye. “Last night was pretty bad. Saxon getting his face bashed in and Andy running to hide in the snow like an idiot surely qualifies. It was just after midnight too, so… There you go.”
He’s not wrong. This past week has been choc-a-block full of bullshit, all revolving around Saxon.
“That doesn’t count,” I tell him as he squishes my cheeks together. “Are you okay, though? Sorry, I didn’t ask before.”
Kai raises his left shoulder towards his ear in a lop-sided shrug. “I’m fine. Not being able to help Andy wasn’t ideal, but I’ve been pushing for those two to get together for weeks… Hey…” His expression changes to a more analytical one. “I hope you’re not stressed out because of me. There’s nothing that can happen that’ll be worse than what I’ve already gone through. Besides, I’ve got you now.”
Before I have a chance to respond, his lips are on mine and my hands are crawling up his back.
The lift doors ding open, and as two people step in, I realize that fourteen straight days of spending nearly every waking minute together has brought my guard so far down I don’t even flinch.
Despite being on full alert, the morning has been annoyingly uneventful. Annoying, because, with every minute that ticks by smoothly, my anxiety continues to grow until the bad thing that’ll happen will be me exploding all over the goddamn place.
“You really need to relax.” Kai steps behind me, massaging his thumbs into the muscles beneath my shoulder blades before swiping his hands down my biceps and wrapping his arms around my waist. “Got a lot of aftershave on today.” He rests his chin forward on my shoulder.
“Wouldn’t need to if you’d just get in the shower with me.”
“Being too lazy when we got back this morning isn’t an excuse.”
“You wouldn’t come in.”
“You can have one by yourself.”
“And leave you? No thanks. I don’t mind smelling like sex… Even if we’ve never had it.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?” he hums and rubs his nose into the crook of my neck.
“Have you changed your mind about letting me top you?” I ask hopefully, in contempt of already knowing the answer.
“Not a chance in the world.” Kai’s breathy chuckle penetrates my skin, but it only works to drive my disappointment deeper.
I spin in his arms. “But you’d be so good at it.” Pushing against his chest, I force him into the blind corner. My hand is around his throat by the time his back hits the wall, and he reeks of submission. “You crumble to pieces when I treat you like this, but you still insist on that kind of control?”
Glancing down, I see Kai has pulled his hands behind his back—no prompting needed. But also that his hips are desperately rocking forward.
“Filthy,” I scoff, and his Adam’s apple jumps beneath my palm. “You wanna be used so badly, but you’re just too goddamn stubborn.” My hand creeps to his jaw and my thumb tugs at his bottom lip. “I might just fuck your mouth instead?”
“What makes you think I’ll be okay with that?” It’s almost comical he’s even attempting to be against the idea. His words might be feigning refusal, but his eyes are practically begging me to force him to his knees.
Sliding my thumb up, I hook it one knuckle deep into his mouth and press down against his tongue. For several seconds he holds steady, but with a simple tilt of my head, his teeth bite together gently before his lips close around it and he sucks the whole thing inside. He licks it all over. His eyes close, like he’s somewhere safe. And he exhales with a contented whir that vibrates my thumb.
Allowing him to indulge, I scan the foyer behind me to confirm we’re still alone.
With my focus back on Kai, I’m caught off guard by how natural it’s become for us to fall into our roles. I’ve never been overly dominant, and Kai looks like he’ll slit your throat if you breathe too loudly in his direction. Yet, here he is, sucking on my thumb like a self-pacifying toddler. But he’s a man—rough around the edges, fiercely loyal, tattooed, and bigger than me with sexy veins in his neck that bulge and strain as he swallows.
“Just as I thought.” I drag my thumb from his mouth and run it down his chin as he tilts his head back further. “All I’ll have to do is wave it in front of your face and you won’t be able to help yourself.”
Kai sucks on his bottom lip as his chest rises higher. “Does that mean you’ll be sharing the love?”
“Ah…”
Fuck!
God knows I want him choking on me, but returning the favor? Honestly, he’s probably got a better chance of fucking me.
Retracting my hand, I step back until I’m leaning against the desk.
“That doesn’t seem very fair.” I can see on his face that Kai isn’t mad, but it doesn’t dislodge the lump from my throat. “I wanna see if your mouth feels as good as I imagine it does.”
“So do I.” I raise my brows in reply.
“I will if you do.”
“Does that go for sex as well?”
“Jess,” Kai sighs deeply. But his eyes dart towards his phone as I open the drawer to fetch mine. “I’ve got a text,” he says, holding out his hand instead of just asking for it.
I slap it in his hand. “We need to both be able to give and take if this is gonna work. I want nothing more than to see you between my legs, but…” My voice trails off as my attention is stolen by Kai’s quivering chin. “What’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”
He throws his phone across the desk so hard it’ll be a miracle if it escapes without a cracked screen.
I step back to him, grab his arms, and make him look at me. “Kai, what’s wrong?” I repeat sternly.
“It was Mum,” he whispers—his eyes unfocused. And like a punch in the guts, all the air is sucked from my body.
This is it.
The thing.
My intuitions are never wrong.
“She wants me to come home for Dad’s fiftieth.”
My mouth opens to speak, but no words come out.
What am I even meant to say? He’s been so sparse with dealing out backstory that his parents may as well have been dead till this point.
“I haven’t spoken to her since I started working here. And now she texts, fucking texts, after all this time. And it’s about that prick!”
I lower my hold to his hands but contemplate whether I should give him my fingers to suck on instead.
“It’s because of him those cunts got away with what they did… When he saw me, he threw me out of the house.” His eyes refocus on me. “Literally… He threw me down the back stairs after ramming my head into the door… He was gonna kill me, and at the time, I wished he had… And you know what?” His gaze shifts over my shoulder as the muscles in his face and jaw contort with increasing rage. “That bitch didn’t do a damn thing.”
“I’m sure she wanted to help.” Goddamn it! Why did I open my mouth?
“No. She didn’t give a single fuck. If she did, she’d have stopped me from moving into the broken-ass shed in the backyard. It barely fit my bed. It had cracks in the panels and was freezing in the winter… I lived in there for two years. And for that entire time, whenever I needed a shower, I had to walk down the street to my friend Millie’s house…”
I squeeze his hands tighter.
“I worked my ass off in that shack… I studied hard and applied for scholarships to every college I could think of. I got a night job at a gym in town, so I could use the equipment for free. And by the time I left carrying a trash bag with the few things I had, I was bigger than Dad. And I could see in his eyes as he sat on that fucking recliner on the front porch, how much he hated it.”
“So you got a scholarship?”
“Yeah,” he smiles humbly, but I can see it’s rehearsed and empty. “A few, actually… I guess I was just too underprivileged to say no to.” He shakes his head and the self-loathing flies off him and slaps me in the face. “The one from the University of Winnipeg came with full room and board, so… it was a no-brainer.”
“What did you study?”
“Counseling and social work.” He pauses, then huffs. “Like I thought I could help myself through the backlog of shit in my system.” Bringing his chin to his chest, Kai then slams his head back against the plasterboard.
“Don’t!” I scoop my hand behind his head to stop him from doing it again.
Then, an almost insidious laugh gurgles from deep within his chest. “At least now I believe in Jesse The Oracle. Something bad did happen today.”
But why did it have to happen to him?
“Do you wanna take the rest of the afternoon off?”
He shakes his head indignantly. “I’ll only wallow.” Kai closes his eyes, and I can see the light reflecting from the tears sitting at the base of his lashes. “And being around you makes me feel safe.”
I force his head onto my shoulder and wrap my other arm around his back.
I know Esther will pop through the door at any moment, all bubbly and oblivious, but I can’t bring myself to let Kai go.
Three small words tug at my vocal cords, but I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and force them back into my stomach. It’s far too soon. Far too inappropriate of a time. And I’m so unfamiliar with the feeling I’m not even sure if it’s real or just a crazy, intense form of compassion. Either way, being Kai’s safe place fills me with more sense of purpose than anything else I’ve ever accomplished.