Chapter 11
LIZZY
Everything was going well. Lizzy loved working at the diner in spite of her initial reservations.
She figured the lack of commitment helped keep her unguarded.
She’d built up a rapport with the regulars, and she’d learned to anticipate their orders and personal quirks, like a favorite seat or a specific way they wanted their food cooked.
And it wasn’t just the customers. She liked the waitresses and line cooks too.
Trudy had told her all about her kids, and Vivianne about her online master’s degree that she was working towards.
Clyde didn’t say much, but he always slid her fries without her having to ask.
And when Jason and Annalise weren’t all over one another, they were fun to work with too.
It was nice; she felt a part of something, if only for a little while.
She was halfway through her time in Pumpkin Hollow, and it seemed to be flying by.
There was one massive, sexy, scarred problem.
While it’d been embarrassing to be rejected by Victor, she’d recovered quickly and been on a mission to show him exactly what he was missing.
She felt a bit like a degenerate for trying to lure him into her seductive web.
But she had thought no-strings-attached sex was the answer.
She wanted Victor but feared commitment.
It’d seemed like a safe middle ground. Until Victor had rejected her.
Rather than dwelling on what could not be, Lizzy had thrown herself into the day-to-day management of the diner.
Victor was hopeless at the behind-the-scenes minutia of running the place, like scheduling and ordering inventory, and she’d taken it upon herself to set up Excel spreadsheets and contact forms and to formalize a schedule, improving upon her father’s former methods.
She should probably put all this on her resume.
But when she thought about starting over in another place, she got sad and pushed the thought aside.
She chewed on the end of her pen, studying the schedule for next week.
She had to find someone to take Trudy’s shift.
Her youngest had a doctor’s appointment this week, and Vivianne wanted off for a date on Saturday.
Lizzy could fill in the gaps, but once she was gone, they’d have to hire someone.
There just wasn’t a way around it. Maybe she should put an ad in the local paper.
She started to jot down a note on a sticky pad to do that later, then paused as she imagined her replacement.
In her imagination, it was a busty blond with big hips and a winning smile.
Victor flirted with her and introduced her to Brayden, and then they started dating, got married, and became the perfect suburban family with a minivan and a yellow lab.
And Lizzy was suddenly irrationally angry at this imaginary woman. She crumpled up the note about hiring a replacement and threw it at the door just as someone knocked. Vivianne popped her head into the office. “I know your shift is over, but we’re slammed and Rowen is here with a bakery delivery.”
“No worries, I’ll take care of it.” It was just the distraction she needed.
She set aside thoughts of hiring and went out to receive the order.
The magenta-haired baker was waiting at the back door that butted against the driveway to the house.
His arms were overladen with a stack of pies and desserts.
Rowen was one of their regulars at the diner.
He sat at the same booth every time and ordered the same meal—steak and eggs.
She directed him into the walk-in fridge behind her. Rowen carried the stacks in but stopped near the doorway. There were multiple towering piles of recent produce, meat, and cheese deliveries. Which had been plopped unceremoniously onto the floor of the walk-in, making it impossible to enter.
“I’m sorry. This is so embarrassing. Just set it there.” She pointed to a cardboard box of dairy.
“Sure.” He gingerly placed the boxes down, then they both left the walk-in. She signed the invoice and waved Rowen off.
She went into the kitchen, intent on asking the afternoon line cook, Clyde, to organize the inventory, but the smell of cooking meat hit her along with a cloud of smoke.
The entire flat top was filled with orders, and tickets were churning through the POS.
Vivianne and Trudy were hustling about, meaning there was no one else to organize the walk-in.
Lizzy sighed, headed back to the freezer, and got to work.
She started out by making a path to reach the shelves and checked the expiration dates on what was there.
She threw out a few questionable metal bins of prepared food.
She separated the produce from the meat from the dairy.
Minutes passed, and she’d hardly made a dent in the pile, and her breath was clouding in the chilled air.
She shivered a bit. She hadn’t brought a jacket, and the gooseflesh on her arm made her regret it.
But once she started something, she couldn’t stop.
She’d lose momentum, and it’d never get done.
Then she felt something large and warm drape over her shoulders.
She turned to see Victor filling the door to the walk-in. “For someone who wants nothing to do with the diner, you work harder than anyone else.”
She pulled his jacket tighter around herself. It smelled like him.
“We got a bakery delivery, and I was free so I figured why not…” She gestured to the piles of boxes she’d been sorting through.
She wouldn’t admit she was starting to feel a twinge of guilt at the thought of leaving the diner behind.
But she didn’t choose this. It had been thrust upon her. She was done pleasing others first.
“I’ve been meaning to get to that. I’ve been a bit distracted lately.” His heated gaze landed on her, and her face flushed.
“You can’t trick me. I know you’re a secret slob,” she teased, recalling his messy locker back in school and the messy office she’d reorganized when she arrived.
“You caught me.” He chuckled. “But still, you don’t need to trouble yourself. I’m the owner.”
“So am I,” she replied.
“But do you really want to be?” he asked, arms crossed.
She avoided replying by reaching down to pick up a box to set on the shelf, but it was heavier than she’d realized and she strained to pick it up. Victor grabbed it from her one-handed and placed it on the top shelf behind her, pinning her between him and it.
She looked up at him, heart racing. “What if I told you I don’t know what I want without someone else telling me who to be?” she said, crossing her arms over her body as she pulled away from Victor.
“I’d say I get it.”
“Do you, though? You were captain of the football team, top of your class, all honors classes.”
“Because I had to. Because my creator expected nothing less.”
He leaned in, his dark eyes searching her face. Her breath hitched.
She wanted him to kiss her so bad it hurt. But he backed away, turned to pick up another box, and placed it on the shelf.
“It’ll go faster if we work together,” he said.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat and joined him. As much as he would allow. He did most of the heavy lifting while she explained her organizational system. They were careful not to get too close, as if they were hovering in each other’s orbits, painfully aware but fearing touch.
But no matter how they danced around, they kept drifting closer together, like a pair of magnets.
There was a single box left. They both reached for it, hands touching.
She didn’t pull away, and then his hand drifted over her arm and lingered on her shoulder before gliding up along her jaw to cup her cheek.
Lizzy tilted her head up, staring at his scarred face.
He’d been stitched together by his creator.
That was all she knew, but she wanted to run her fingers over every seam, map out his body with her hands.
Then he kissed her, pushing her back against the shelves of the walk-in. His searing hot mouth was against hers, parting her lips with a desperate sort of need that had her moaning against him, opening herself wide for him, letting his tongue invade her mouth and claim every part of her.
Victor pulled away, panting, forehead pressed against hers. She could see his cock pushing against his slacks, and her panties were drenched.
“Why am I torturing myself?” he groaned.
“Your superior morals?” She smirked.
“If I had superior morals, I wouldn’t be thinking about bending you over and fucking you here and now.”
The thought sent a thrill through her. Her chest was heaving, and her face was flushed despite the chill of the freezer. “What’s stopping you?”
His breaths were labored, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he grabbed her hands in his, rubbing them together as if to keep them warm. She tilted her head, looking at him as he slowly raised them above her head.
“I wanted to fuck you the other night. And I’ve regretted not doing it ever since,” he said, holding both her hands in his single massive one.
With his other, he traced down her face, her neck, then cupped her breast, finding her nipple beneath the fabric and pinching it between his fingers.
She arched her back, needing more of the sensation.
“I think if I don’t fuck you, I might lose my mind,” he said.
“Let’s fuck.”
“Brayden is home,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be in a bed. Let’s fuck here in the walk-in, get it out of our system.
” She writhed against him, desperate for contact, but he kept her pinned in place, at his mercy.
All her common sense and reasoning abilities were gone.
She’d never been one to have sex in public, but the thought excited her, and she was soaked through.
If he denied her now, she might crawl into a hole and die.
He let her go, and her arms fell to her sides as she braced for the rejection.
Then he slammed the walk-in door shut and shoved a few boxes in front of it for good measure.
Victor strode towards her, then grasped her face and kissed her until she was breathless.
When they broke apart, she was trembling as his hands glided down over her belly, yanked up the hem of her dress, and spread her thighs to access her wet heat.
With his thumb, he pushed aside her soaked panties and swiped a digit across her clit, and she bucked against him.
“So wet,” he murmured against her neck as he nibbled at her collarbone and then down to the tops of her breasts. He rubbed her in slow circles, building the pressure, as she writhed against his hand, muffling her moans by kissing his neck, his chest, any part of his skin she could reach.
When his hand slid from between her legs, she let out a pathetic whimper. He stepped back and pulled down his pants, revealing his massive teal cock, lined with ridges across the top. She reached for it, eyes wide as her hand glided over it and felt the faint vibration of his cock.
“Your dick vibrates?”
“That’s not all.” He smirked and grasped her by the waist, hoisting her into the air as if she weighed nothing at all.
He flipped her over to lean against the shelves.
He spread her thighs and pushed up her dress to her midriff, she shivered as the cold air hit her bare skin, and he paused a moment to slide her arms into the jacket he’d draped over her shoulders previously, before pressing his vibrating dick against her slick folds through her panties.
He glided it up and down, letting slow vibrations pulse through the fabric.
She instinctively backed up against him, seeking more of the sensation, desperate to be filled, but he held her still with a hand on her waist.
“Are you that impatient?” he scolded and squeezed her ass cheek.
“Very,” she gasped.
Victor chuckled, but seemed in no mind to hurry as he peeled her underwear off achingly slow.
She was wriggling beneath him, pressing him, desperate for contact.
But he kept up the exquisite torture, running the vibrating head of his cock against her clit, sliding up and down against her opening.
It felt like a vibrator, but a thousand times better.
She was a squirming, desperate mess by the time he thrust into her.
And when he did, each and every ridge of his engineered dick dragged against her inner walls. She gasped as his cock twitched and flicked upward with a steady thump against her G-spot. She moaned loudly, and he reached around to cover her mouth with his hand.
“If you want me to fuck you proper, you’re going to have to be quiet or else the whole diner will hear,” he whispered in her ear.
She nodded against his hand as he thrust into her, each glide of his dick bringing overwhelming sensation.
Almost too much to handle. Thank goddess for his hand over her mouth, muffling her screams, because she was nearly out of her mind with ecstasy, babbling nonsense as he brought her closer to the edge.
“You’re doing great,” he murmured. “This dick was made for you, Lizzy.”
It was enough to send her over the edge.
She came violently, her orgasm ripping through her, leaving her a trembling, weak mess slumped boneless against the shelves.
Victor came after her with a shuddering grunt.
And they remained like that a moment, both of them panting for breath.
The only thing keeping her standing was his dick inside her.
But when he slid out, her knees gave with it, and she was saved from hitting the ground by his arm around her waist. He held her close against his chest.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been fucked to the point my legs gave out.”
“This is my bare minimum.” He chuckled.
If she wasn’t so tired, she might have asked him to prove it. But they were getting it out of their systems. One great fuck, and that was it. “I also don’t know if I can stand.”
She attempted to as she ungraciously put her panties back on and straightened her skirt, but her legs wobbled as she tried, and she nearly tipped over again. Rather than let her fall, Victor scooped her into his arms.
“Let me bring you back to the house.”
“I can walk.”
“But I don’t want to let you,” he said.
She should argue or fight. This wasn’t the sort of thing your one-night—one time in a walk-in—fuck did.
But she let him carry her through the diner’s back door and into the house.
They managed to avoid Brayden, and Victor brought her to the primary bedroom, where he tucked her into bed.
She hated to admit it, but she could get used to this.