Rory
Her acknowledgement of my presence jolts through me, shocking me backward and bumping me into a shelf. I steady it and myself as best I can.
She smirks before asking, “Do you know anything about this one?” Her voice is like raw honey, sticky and warm, as if she’s stuck her whole tongue down my ear canal—which I desperately want to do to her.
I can’t see what she’s asking me about. I know it could be one of two things based on where she is, but her beautiful, round ass is blocking the view…and begging me to charge forward and sink into her.
I have to close my eyes for a second so I don’t say something stupid like, “I want to put my tongue on your everything.” Instead, I still my tail, clear my throat, and walk into the depths of the aisle, suppressing visions of sinking into her depths.
She doesn’t move, she just waits, ass in the air, eyes locked on whatever she’s holding, as I approach.
When I’m a few feet away, I can finally see she’s holding a teapot: not one of the normal, round ones, but one of the grotesque ones that only a certain kind of collector can appreciate: greenish glaze, three bulging feet, shaped like the approximation of a toad flattened as roadkill, but then reinflated into fine art.
Normally, it looks like something birthed from a kiln of nightmares, but cradled in her beautiful hand, it looks like a newborn kitten—adorable.
I clear my throat and try to compose myself. “That’s—uh, yes. That’s a late nineteenth-century Burmantofts—”
She cuts me off, glancing over her shoulder with a sly arch to her brow. “That’s fascinating. But is it haunted?” she asks, dead serious.
“Is it haunted?” I freeze, mouth open. Her gaze is entirely too direct—full of challenge, full of something feral and sweet…
intimate. My brain scrambles for footing.
“I…don’t believe so?” I manage, and immediately regret that it comes out as a question.
I stamp down the urge to stamp the ground in frustration.
Be cool, Rory. Confident. Knowledgeable. Casual.
I modulate my voice, but overcorrect when I say, “But if anything in this store is haunted, it’s that piece.” Instead of sounding like a knowledgeable shopkeeper, my voice comes out high and tight, like my voice forgot I hit puberty twenty years ago.
She returns it to its place on the shelf, saying, “I suppose I’ll have to keep an eye on it then.”
She pops upward, standing quickly in a smooth, dangerous motion.
I expel a startled snort that sounds like, “hhrrnnff.”
Normally, people cower when I startle, but she doesn’t; she just smirks and slinks closer to me.
She’s so small that she barely comes up to my chest. But her presence is formidable, humbling—she makes me feel small.
She’s so utterly irresistible, my body responds to her instantly, pulling toward her.
No, Rory. She may seem strong, but you would break her.
My body barely listens.
I clench my thighs to stop from leaping atop her, clench my fists to stop from reaching out to her, and clench my eyes to stop from getting an even more painful erection.
Even with my eyes clenched, I can tell she is still approaching me—her scent increases, and my body is fully aware of her precise location.
Is she going to hug me? Kiss me? Marry me?
Just when I think she will collide with me, she says, “Can I get past you, big guy?”
Of course. Duh. God, I’m so stupid.
I open my eyes and fold into a C-shape to let her pass. “Oh, um, sorry,” I breathe out, releasing the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
She glides past me, absentmindedly brushing her fingers over handles and rims. Despite my best effort to give her space, she grazes against me as she sweeps past.
If I weren’t a touch-starved, painfully aroused minotaur, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the slight touch.
But I am a touch-starved, painfully aroused minotaur, so every single nerve in my body notices.
It’s as if she plucked a chord of my nervous system, sending a vibration through me and tuning every nerve in my body to the key of her.
My tail swishes uncontrollably. My body screams to claim her attention, her presence, her body, her loins, her heart.
Luckily, she doesn’t seem to notice the effect the slight touch had on me; she just wanders away.
I follow her down the aisle, intent on returning to the counter and hiding behind it for the remainder of her visit—perhaps the remainder of my life. I need to get away from her before I embarrass myself or cum in my pants—which would also be embarrassing.
But I can’t. The aisles are tight—well, tight for me. The narrow aisle has no escape except through her. So, I just follow her slowly, pretending to adjust the various items on shelves, and dusting them with a cloth I pull from my pocket.
She pays little attention to me, which is both a relief and torture. I’m desperate for her to speak to me, desperate for her to accidentally touch me again.
Every time I think she might clear the way for me to escape, she switches her path, doubling back, looking at things she’s already seen. Every time she nears, the air charges, and my cock surges painfully. Every instinct in me wants to fold around her, protect her, envelop her.
Her movements are erratic, and she has me pinned—penned—like a bull in a bucking shoot, anxious to be let out.
I’m being weird. I should at least say something.
I try to keep my voice steady and say, “If you’d like to see anything up close, just let me know.”
She spins and practically skips toward me, when she says, “Hmm? What did you say?”
I try to back up, but instead I overcompensate and bump a shelf with my hip—its display rattles.
My ears flatten in panic and embarrassment. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“No need to apologize. I run into things all the time,” she says, grinning up at me.
“I was apologizing to the coffee set…”
Her grin softens when she says, “That’s incredibly sweet.
” She cranes to see the set I’m apologizing to and exclaims, “Wow! Tell me about this,” while reaching forward.
Her arm brushes against mine. This time, the touch feels intentional, and this small gesture is enough to make me literally moo—quietly, in the back of my throat, but I’m sure she hears it.
I don’t turn, afraid that moving will cause a catastrophic Rube Goldberg effect—either toppling all the porcelain in my vicinity or toppling the control keeping me from rutting into her.
I don’t need to turn, though, I know exactly what is behind me.
“That’s a Tête à Tête coffee set, French, hand-painted—”
“No, I mean…” She picks up a cup and turns it so that I can see the pastoral woman painted on its side, then points at her. “What’s her story?”
I look at her, then at the cup, then at her again. She’s teasing, but I can’t figure out if it’s mean or affectionate or playful. I ask, “Umm, what do you mean?”
“Doesn’t she look like something is coming for her?”
“Oh, um…” I peer down at the cup. “No?” I state once again as a question.
“Oh, come on, don’t you think there’s something—someone—coming for her just on the other side of that bush?” She cocks her head to the side and giggles. “Maybe it’s a minotaur?”
I swallow. “But…she doesn’t look scared.”
She turns it, bringing it close to her face. “You’re right. She’s not scared. She’s horny.” She shrugs, then places it back on the shelf with a teasing smile and side glance that slides over me, making my skin prickle.
Is she…is she hitting on me?
That can’t be right…
I’m seized by an urge to control the conversation, to get things back to some familiar track.
“Are you, uh, looking for something specific?” I ask, hoping that putting her in the position of the customer and me as the shopkeeper will recalibrate this whole imbalance, but also realizing that, after all this time, my asking is incredibly awkward.
She doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she wanders down the aisle, kicking her feet lazily, like a little kid with nothing to do. “Oh, not really,” she says, as I follow behind her.
She suddenly stops, and I almost run into her. Then she abruptly bends, her ass skimming against my erection. “Why do you have paper—” she cuts herself off when her hands touch the cups. “Oh, my God. That’s not paper!”
I step back and, with the self-control of a saint, say, “It’s bone china. Tiffany. Made to look like a paper cup.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would they make it look like a paper cup?”
I consider the question for a moment, unsure what type of answer she is looking for, but I settle on, “It’s a piece from their Everyday Objects collection. Each piece demonstrates how even low-quality, utilitarian items can be transformed into a work of art and elevated to luxury.”
She smirks at it. “Seems like a way for rich people to say, ‘Hey, I’m so much better than you, even my paper cups are better.’”
I’m not exactly sure what to say in reply or if I’m meant to reply at all.
She straightens, whirls to face me, and narrows her eyes. “You’re afraid I’ll break something, aren’t you?”
“No!” I say, too fast.
She runs a finger over my name tag, the same way she’s run a finger over all the pieces, and gets so close I have to actively stop myself from reaching out and wrapping my arms around her waist. “You sure about that, Rory? Because I seem to make you very nervous.”
I swallow and take a small step back, squeezing my thighs tight, so my dick doesn’t reach out to her, and gripping the edges of my apron, hoping that tenting it will make it look less like the single-pole tent my dick is trying to make it.
“I’m…” I clear my throat, suddenly unable to form even the basics of sentences. “I’m afraid I’ll break you,” I finally confess.
She leans forward, closing the gap until she’s close enough that if she stood on tiptoe, she’d be in range of my mouth. Her scent is so thick in my nostrils, I have to fight the urge to huff. “What if I want to be broken, Rory?”
I have no response.
She says, “I’m Scarlett, by the way. Most people call me Scar. I run the tattoo shop that just opened up down the way.”
Scarlett. Such a beautiful name.
“Oh, um…hi, Scarlett. I’m Rory.” God, that was dumb. She just said my name.
“Hi, Rory. So what’s your deal, Rory?”
“What do you mean?”
She leans in, even closer. “Are you, like, the minotaur of teacups? Do you guard the entrance of your china shop labyrinth from all the basic bitches of the world?”
My face gets hot again. I want to laugh, but my mouth is full of static. “I—uh—I like to protect beautiful things.”
“That’s really sweet, Rory.”
I swallow.
She gets even closer—close enough to kiss me.
I squeeze my eyes closed, and this time, I cannot repress the moo that escapes me as I prepare for her to devour me.
She doesn’t devour me. Or kiss me. Instead, she giggles and slinks away, further into the shadowy maze of the store.
The path of escape is no longer blocked, but I follow her, unable not to.