Chapter 15
15
Kit
The staff’s gone except for Jake. I’m jittery and weird after everything. With the asshole at the bar going after me in the parking lot. With Jake.
I took a photo of the creep’s license plate. I could call the police.
But the last thing I want to do is get Jake into trouble, which is a real risk given his past.
I watched him walk back inside earlier, saw the way his back stiffened when the few remaining diners stared. Taylor said something to him which he ignored.
Right now, he’s in the kitchen, scrubbing the place like it’s punishment. I’m behind the bar, washing a rack of martini glasses that looked streaked in the low light.
If he doesn’t quit soon, I’ll go and tell him it’s time to take off. Knowing he’s back there—feeling his presence—the antsiness is killing me.
The song I’ve got blasting through the speakers comes to an end. It’s a slow anthem of lost love, sung by a deep-voiced woman who knows what she’s talking about.
The first few notes of the next sad love song slide into the air. The kitchen door creaks open.
Every cell in my body goes on alert and somehow I can’t move. Can’t turn or look.
“Mind if I grab a drink?” He’s a few feet away.
I shake my head, elbow deep in suds and caught in this flash-frozen state. “Go ahead.” After a second. “Help yourself to top shelf.”
His footsteps pause.
“Top shelf, huh? As a thank you?”
I nod.
I think he’s watching me. I won’t look. I can’t.
“What if I don’t want top shelf?” He moves in, closer. “What if I want something else?”
“Something else.” The words aren’t words, they’re sounds I’m repeating. Meaningless huffs of air and pressure from vocal cords that have lost all power.
“Yeah.” Another step brings him so he’s right beside me.
Finally, my head swivels enough to look his way and I immediately recognize my error. This sacrosanct space might be my territory in civilized times, but this isn’t a man I’m currently facing, it’s a beast. Giant and wild. The light in his eyes isn’t rational. It’s hovering at some halfway point between cagey and hungry, watching me like he’s some massive, sleek creature hidden deep in the jungle and I’m an intruder he’s considering making a meal of. There’s a danger to that liminal place.
“What if I want another go?”
Everything inside me goes liquid, hot and loose and syrupy thick. My body doesn’t even pretend not to know what he’s talking about.
“Would that work for you, Kitty?” A final step brings him right up against my back, not quite touching, but there.
Here. Right here.
“It’s against the rules. The contract?—”
“I don’t give a shit about the contract, Katarina.”
“Well, I do. We agreed this would never happen at work.”
“Yeah?” His bulk shifts, tilts, close enough that he barely has to voice his next words. I feel more than hear them against my ear—a warm puff of air, a cold shiver up my spine. “Stop me.”
Is that a dare? A request? I can’t tell. Can’t move. Can’t, apparently, meet the challenge at all.
The fabric covering my butt shifts. Is he…touching my skirt?
He is. Oh, God, he’s pulling it up, slowly, a panther playing with its food.
I should tell him not to.
“Spread your legs.”
After a few seconds’ hesitation, I obey, giving tacit consent.
What rule is he breaking right now?
No doing it in the restaurant. That’s the rule I’m letting him break by widening my stance.
Just that one move. The rest of me is immobile. The rest of me wants the rules. The contract. The framework. Guidelines to make sure this doesn’t get out of hand. I need them. They’re essential to absolutely every part of my life—my existence —and yet, I can’t for the life of me find my voice to make him back up.
“Good girl.”
Oh, those words . They settle into my marrow, warm me from the inside out as cool air hits my thighs. He’s dragging the skirt up and up and up and then…
Behind me, Jake expels a low, grating sound. It’s my thong, I imagine. Probably. It’s not meant for seduction, which I’m sure he wouldn’t believe. I wear them because my ass is big and I’ll wind up with material inching up between my cheeks anyway. At least like this, it’s minimal. My choice.
“Fuck, yes,” he mutters, like I’ve somehow done something right.
I haven’t. I’ve done absolutely nothing. I haven’t lifted my hands from the water or straightened my spine. I haven’t mentioned our contract or the one—well, two—time restriction.
As I stand here, not for one heartbeat denying him, I can only thank god that I locked the door before closing out the till for the night. Though if anyone pressed their face to the front window, they could see us. My reputation is on the line here. My business.
After a pause that is too long and too quiet for comfort, during which I shamelessly will him to touch me—anywhere he wants—I finally hear the slow slide of his zipper, the rustle of denim, cotton.
I shut my eyes, tight. Tight tight tight.
He grips more of my skirt and wraps it up into a ball at my waist, pulls my thong to one side, and pries one of my ass cheeks to the side.
Slowly, almost teasingly, his thick, hot cock slides between my legs.
Every hair on my body stands up, every cell goes molten.
The moan that escapes me is pure, unadulterated pleasure, born so far inside me I couldn’t keep it in if my life depended on it.
“Fuck, baby,” he whispers. “Fuck, look at that little pink asshole. Fuck .”
A long, slippery descent—both literal and figurative. When he bends his legs, the backs of his thighs cradle mine. Hair chafes my skin. My waterlogged hands move of their own volition to grip the rim of the sink and with my next breath, he’s in, deep.
Oooooooh.
I’m stock still, sizzling with shock at the fullness, the pressure, the very slight thrill of pain.
For a handful of seconds he keeps himself fully seated inside me.
Neither of us budges.
It feels… There’s not a word for it.
Like nothing. Like everything.
Right.
I’m wet, which would be a surprise if it weren’t the way I always am now when he’s near. Even so, that first thrust was hard enough to jolt me, deep, deep inside, the friction rough and explicit.
His next series of moves is purely practical—getting me wetter, opening me up—and every one of them turns me into his rag doll.
His grip on my skirt tightens, his other hand presses down on my upper back before grabbing my hip. When he pulls out, it’s with excruciating slowness. I hate him, a little, for taking his time. For the undeniable, hot friction of every inch of him.
Another deliberately slow penetration. Another leisurely slide out. There’s something about the way he’s doing it that doesn’t feel the same as before. I can’t see him. There’s no mirror out there that will show me how he’s covering me. So silent, this time.
But that’s it. That’s just it. With every advance of his body into mine, he’s saying something, staking a claim, without uttering a single word.
I can’t help how my back arches toward him when he moves impossibly closer, his bulk over me now, around me.
He plunges inside me, hard, harder, and I collapse fully forward, my soapy wet hands struggling to find purchase on the edge of the bar and then his hands are there, caging mine in. Every smack of his hips to mine winds me tighter, so my spine’s a taut bowstring and my insides clench and then—oh god—then he bends, right up against me, hides his face in the side of my neck. There’s the heat of his breaths, the slide of a tongue I’m not even sure he’s just used and finally, with a sort of rightness that is absolutely wrong, he opens his mouth and bites me, right at the junction of throat and shoulder.
I come. Harder than I’ve ever come. The pleasure a thing separate from me, alive and writhing from my center to places I’ve never felt. He’s tearing me open, fucking me like this. Like he’s a primitive creature and I am one, too. Like this isn’t a bar in a civilized city, and we’re not doing this with any objective in mind.
Behind my closed lids I see nothing but his feral, hopped-up eyes, so I open mine and stare at where his hands grip the wood, caging me in with their scraped, bloodied knuckles and the ink there. The words…
Love. On his fingers. It says that: Love. And Hate.
How did I never notice that?
His teeth hold me in place, never breaking the skin, but keeping me where he wants.
Pleasure bursts open so hard it hurts. A high whimper leaks through the tightly closed dam of my lips. My knees turn to jelly. The only thing stopping me from going face-down into suds is the thick arm that wraps around my middle.
I’m ruined, I realize, as he pumps deep and clamps me to him with his teeth and his hips and those raw-knuckled, love-hate hands. He’s gasping like he’s run a race and, it is a race.
It was . But it’s over and he caught me and I’m fucked .
“That’s one rule down,” he whispers against the place he’s just bitten. “Or is it two?”
“What?” I gasp, my mind pure mush.
“Restaurant sex. That’s one,” he lists off, sounding as out of breath as I am. “And biting.” He gives me a nip as if to prove his point. “Was that even in the contract?”
The answer’s no. No, it wasn’t in the contract. But it should have been. Because now, along with everything else I told him we couldn’t do, it’s on my list of things I want more than anything.
Which just confirms that I am, indeed, totally, royally fucked .