Chapter 27
27
Kit
The shift goes by painfully slowly. Everything I do feels too slow, too syrupy, nervous, and also caught in someone else’s headlights.
The waitstaff takes forever to leave. Finally, finally , I lock the door behind Cora, then Toni, then Frida.
When Jake turns the kitchen light off and comes out, I set the credit card receipts down so he can’t see how hard my hand’s trembling.
“You ready?” He asks, like there was no six-hour break in our conversation. No offering of red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting brought out to me on a plate, wordlessly. Just the cake and a look. Just him watching while I take my first bite and then work very hard not to moan through my second. That’s two cakes in one day. I can’t help but feel like things are ramping up.
Through it all, the way we seem to communicate without words feels…meaningful. Real.
It scares the crap out of me.
“What, um, what changes did you want to make?”
“One.” He leans over the bar, eyes glittering with a light that’s somehow both burning hot and ice cold and cuts straight through to my marrow. “We’ve already established that I touch. I lick. I suck. I bite.”
Oh, god. My knees go weak. Bite? He wants to bite me?
Crap, he already has, hasn’t he?
It takes everything I’ve got not to reach up and run my fingers over where he did it the other night.
“You afraid of this?” With the flick of one thick finger between us, he somehow encompasses whatever this is.
“No. No. ” I back up a step and bump into a chair, feeling hemmed in. “This wasn’t the deal, okay? We agreed.”
“We did. You’re right.”
Somehow, though perfectly adequate, his words only make me feel worse. Guilty and dishonest. Like I’m the one doing something wrong here.
Which I’m not. He’s pushing things.
But you let him get away with it. Every time.
Okay, that voice needs to shut the hell up.
There are still rules. This isn’t about affection or communication. And it’s definitely not about the attraction simmering— boiling —between us.
An attraction I was sure I’d imagined until he offered to knock me up, as he put it. Since then… Oh, god, since then everything’s gone to absolute hell.
“Come over to mine for a drink, okay? No rules against that.” He’s got that opaque thing going in his eyes again—they’re hard and dark, the blue nothing but eerie rings around his bottomless pupils. For some reason I can’t begin to explain that hardness both irritates and excites me. “Pretty sure we’ve got a session on the schedule for tomorrow night.”
My thighs tighten in response to that sentence. My entire body’s on a string and he’s just leading it around, entirely separate from my brain.
“Um, yes. Yes, we do.”
“We’re moving it. I want the session tonight.” When I don’t respond, he smiles. “Grab your keys. Let’s go.”
I should insist that I’m in charge here. At work and, yes, for the other thing we’re doing, too. Nobody bosses me around like this.
But I guess we’re both pretty aware now that none of this is what it’s supposed to be.
Entirely complicit, I slide the cash into the bag uncounted, take it back to my office with the receipts, and lock it in the safe, then walk back up front with my keys and purse and coat.
Throughout all of this, I’ve got plenty of opportunities to back out. To change my mind, to argue that he’s wrong and take off, angry. I do none of that. Instead, I go out like a zombie, get in my car, and follow him back to his place.
We pull up to what looks like a garage, but sort of old school. A vintage brick warehouse that’s been redone in the last twenty years. It’s got huge roll-up doors, which would make amazing front windows for a restaurant. I’d call the place The Garage or something equally unimaginative.
He leads me around to the side through a door and into a space that looks exactly like one of those old-fashioned New York gyms from ’80s movies about boxers. Smells like it, too.
“What is this place?”
“Place I bought years ago.”
I blink. “You own this?”
“A friend was being evicted a while back. He needed cash and I figured it was a good place to put some cash.” He leads me up a narrow iron staircase to a sort of catwalk overlooking the whole space, which from this vantage is truly massive. “Got the building at a seized property auction.”
“Wow.” I lean over the railing and look down at all the punching bags and weights and the big ring in the middle of it. “It’s kinda nice.”
“Yeah?” He leans beside me and stares down. “Ricky’d appreciate the compliment, although…”
I wait.
“Ah, nothing. He’s retiring. I’m selling the building.” He shrugs and, despite his easy smile, there’s something behind the words that feels strained. “Meeting with a real estate agent tomorrow. End of an era, I guess.”
“You have to sell?”
“Don’t need the money, but with nobody to run the place…”
“Nobody wants the business?”
His head shake is quick “Not much money in it. More of a community service than anything.”
I look up at him, curious at how level, almost monotone, his voice has gotten. “How so?”
His stance is relaxed, but there’s a muscle ticking in his jaw, a strain to his neck. “Ricky’s the guy who saved me. Before prison and after.”
I watch him, waiting for him to go on, hungry for any morsel of insight he’s willing to share.
“Think I told you I was a brawler as a kid.” I nod. “Well, Ricky’s gym’s where I learned to fight. To take that energy and focus it.” He lets out a bitter, humorless sound. “When I got out, Mom had…” He sniffs, looks away. I fight the urge to reach out and put an arm around him. “Ricky gave me a place to stay. Helped me figure out a job.”
“He sounds like a good guy.”
“The best.” His smile’s more of a grimace. “He’s still saving kids down at the gym.”
“Yeah? Kids like you?”
“Some things don’t change.”
“Except he’s retiring?”
“Got himself a lady friend.” Now he’s grinning. “She wants to go on cruises, not hang out in a smelly gym filled with people beating the crap out of each other for fun.”
“You don’t know anyone who could take over?”
He swallows, seems to consider, and then says an abrupt, “No,” and turns to a door behind us. “Come on in.” He unlocks it, letting us into an industrial-looking lobby area, complete with one of those open freight elevators and everything.
“You’re kidding me.”
He grins, shuts the door behind me, and turns to a last set of double doors. “I kid you not.” Another lock opened, doors thrown wide and…
“Oh. This is nice .”
“Whole building belonged to an outlaw biker gang. This was the president’s digs before the feds got him—all of ’em, actually—on racketeering charges.” He turns on a light and puts out a hand for my jacket, which he hangs on a set of antler coat hooks by the door.
“You hunt?”
“Nah. That was here when I bought it.” His head shake is dismissive. “I’m only recently allowed to own a firearm.”
“Oh. Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Not much interested in shooting guns. I could use a bow and arrow, I guess. If I got a sudden hankering for fresh meat.”
I ignore the innuendo—intentional or not. “So, a motorcycle club. That’s pretty wild.”
“Yep.” He leads the way to a wide-open kitchen and the massive, rough-brick-walled space beyond. “Had it deep cleaned before staying here the first time. Twice.” From a big, professional grade fridge, he pulls out a wine bottle and a beer. “Get you a drink?”
I pause, look at him, and then down at the selection. “I…” A puff of air escapes me. “Is this a date?” My light laugh is so clearly forced, he’s got to hear it.
“You want it to be?
“I don’t date.”
“Fair enough.” He grins, completely unfazed. “I’m gonna have a beer to unwind after a long, busy shift. Want one?”
I nod, although I’m not sure I do. What I really want is a moment to think.
He knocks the cap off on the counter’s edge and hands it to me, indicating the massive leather sofa in his living room. “Sit.”
I comply, itchy at how easy I’m being. But also…maybe part of the itch is that I like this bossy side he pulls out occasionally. A lot.
“You always like this?”
“No.” He opens his own beer and walks over to tap it against mine. “Just with you.”
“I’m not sure I like it.”
“Noted.” I watch him take a long swig, head back, Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’re not sure you like it.” He sits in a huge leather armchair that somehow looks small once he inhabits it. Relieved by his choice to sit across from me, I settle deeper into the sofa, as far from his wide-spread knees as I can get. “See, not sure that you like it kind of insinuates that you’re not sure either way. Not sure you like it. Not sure you don’t.”
I open my mouth to object and realize he might be right. There’s something to his bossiness. Something almost…relaxing maybe?
Maybe it’s all the decision fatigue from living with a man who never took charge for so long. Or maybe being the owner of a successful business and a house that’s falling apart. Maybe it’s that I’ve been alone, making the decisions, doing the things, and when he tells me what to do, it’s a vacation.
No way will I admit to any of that, though. And right now, we probably need to focus on getting this whole thing back on track.
“I…we…” I take a swig from my bottle, start to set it down and then drain half of it. “I think you’re right. Things have changed and we need to re-establish boundaries.”
“Ah. So, you’re into a little negotiation?” He takes a sip of beer and smirks. The expression is maddening and cocky and it looks so good on him, I have to turn away. “Should I call my lawyer?”
“You know, Jake, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.” Maybe if I’m prissy, it’ll destabilize him the way he’s done me.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I don’t know if I’m pregnant yet, but the moment it happens?—”
“You taken a test yet?”
Oh, I’m so busted. No. No, I haven’t. And I can’t go into the whys right now, because if I do, I might have to face the truth of my denial. What I come up with is, “Hasn’t been long enough,” which has the benefit of being the truth, although it doesn’t begin to explain why I don’t want to know if what we’ve done has worked. Knowing, after all, would mean stopping. “The point is, I…” I finish off my drink and set down the empty bottle and straighten up as best I can in this slouchy, too comfortable sofa. Then, because I’m a mess inside and can’t focus when he sits there like that, staring at me like I’m lunch, I spit out, “I only need you for one thing, okay? Once you do your… Once you finish, we’re done.”
“Are we?” He leans forward and he’s got that look again—the one that tells me he’s not the kind of lion who toys with his food. He’s the one who goes straight in for the kill. The kind that devours its prey and leaves nothing behind but a pile of shining white bones, picked clean.
Well, and maybe an essential organ or two. Like my heart.
Shit. Why did I go and think of that? What is wrong with me? This is sex. I’ve done sex before. I’m an expert at the no-strings part. No heart involvement whatsoever.
“You know what?” I stand, all business. “Let’s do this. Let’s do our session.”
“Sit down, Kitty. We’re not done.”