Chapter 19
VICTOR
The diner was jam-packed, and there was a line out the door.
It was the day before Halloween, but Victor had never seen it this crowded.
It was all-hands-on-deck. Everyone who was free had come in to run orders, and the POS was moving so fast, Victor feared it might catch fire.
By some miracle, the appliances were holding on, and there hadn’t been a mechanical failure in days.
The air was perfumed with the scent of maple, bacon, and fries.
Even without the ice cream machine, they were making huge sales numbers.
They’d gone through an entire box of hamburger patties in just two hours of service, when usually it would last them all night.
“I’ll grab another box of patties,” Victor told Clyde.
“Yep,” he grunted, his focus on the packed flat top.
“Door,” Victor said as he pushed open the swinging doors to the kitchen.
But he ran into Lizzy, literally. She yelped, and he grabbed hold of her by the waist on instinct, and she looked up at him wide-eyed.
He expected her to recoil, repulsed, or at least pull away first, but she laid her flat palm against his chest.
“Thanks. I should have moved quicker.” She smiled up at him.
Her kindness somehow made it all worse. After Halloween, she’d be gone. And he’d be left to pick up the pieces of his broken heart.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
Their close proximity made his chest ache, but he didn’t move to pull away as he should have, and neither did she.
“If you’ve got time to flirt in the hallway, then can I be cut?” Trudy asked, coming in from the dining room with a large pitcher of iced tea in her hand.
He and Lizzy broke apart, and there was a pretty flush on her cheeks.
“No one is getting cut,” Victor said. “We’re slammed.”
“Uh-huh. Well, as soon as it slows down, I’m going home. The babysitter is charging me by the hour.”
“Noted,” Victor said.
“You can go home. I’ll cover your tables,” Lizzy told her.
“Are you sure?” Victor asked. “Don’t you need to pack or something?”
Lizzy waved off his question and instead took the pitcher of iced tea from Trudy and shooed her towards the lockers. Before Lizzy returned to the dining room, she gave him one last smile.
He didn’t want to hold on to hope. It would only disappoint him in the end. But his sensible brain wouldn’t listen to his heart, it seemed.
“Are those patties coming?” Clyde said.
“Yeah, on my way.”
Victor hurried into the walk-in, tried not to let his gaze linger too long on where he’d once fucked Lizzy, and went back to the flat top.
Each time he set out a new order, he looked for Lizzy flitting about the dining room. One time when he checked, she was standing with her back to the kitchen window, chatting with a regular. Dave. She tossed her head back, laughing at some corny dad joke Dave had made.
It was maddening to watch from afar like some voyeur, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away either.
“It’s great having you here, Lizzy,” Dave said. “Frank would have been proud.”
“I like to think I’m carrying on his legacy,” she said.
Victor’s heart fluttered in his chest. Please tell him this wasn’t a dream and she wasn’t teasing him with what he couldn’t have.
She refilled Dave’s cup and turned to the window, and their eyes met.
Realization dawned on her face, but she didn’t rush to deny it or correct his assumptions.
She just smiled, and his knees might have buckled if it weren’t for the adrenaline pumping through his veins.
He wanted to abandon the flat top and gather her up in his arms. But he held back because what if he was jumping to conclusions again?
That had gotten them into trouble before.
The diner was still slammed, and as quickly as the moment came, she was pulled away by the next customer. Victor felt like he was floating through the next hour or so of the rush. As the day wore on and the crowds thinned out, he bided his time until they were alone and he could talk to her.
Lizzy came into the kitchen. A few white strands of her fringe had fallen out of the bun she’d pulled her hair back into and were plastered against her forehead.
“Can we talk for a minute?” she asked him.
“Sure. You got this, Clyde?” Victor asked.
“Yep,” he replied, not looking up from the flat top.
Victor wiped his hands on his apron and followed Lizzy into the office.
The space was tiny, and he felt the heat of her body as they shuffled to find comfortable places to stand.
He chose behind the desk, rationalizing that putting it between them would give her more peace of mind.
He sat down in the office chair, but rather than sit on the opposite side, Lizzy came around the desk, then sat on it, dangerously close to him, her short skirt riding up over her thick thighs.
He kept his eyes up as she smiled at him with her ruby-red lips.
“What is it you wanted to talk about?” he asked.
She opened the drawer and pulled out the manila folder from the realtor and slid it towards him.
He looked down at it, a perplexed expression on his face.
“You found out? How?” His stomach sank. That was what had her smiling. She was glad that he was selling.
“I saw the folder. I put two and two together.”
“Fair.” He exhaled, bracing himself for their final goodbye. “I can’t buy you out, but I can sell the place, get you your half. It’ll take some time but?—”
“We’re not selling,” she said.
He couldn’t have heard her correctly. This had to be a dream, or he had finally lost his mind and he was hearing what he wanted, or…
His eyes flicked up to her. “I don’t want to entrap you, or make you feel obligated to stay here. I want too much. I can see now I was greedy.”
“Victor, your ambitions are what I admire about you most. I don’t need perfection. And not selling is my choice.”
“But—”
Lizzy leaned forward, pressing her fingers to his lips to silence him.
She was close enough that he could smell her rose-scented perfume, and his vision was filled with her ample bosom.
His heart hammered when she was this close, and it took all his self-control not to reach out and pull her closer.
She leaned back and ripped the folder in half, and then methodically ripped each brochure and document in it until there was nothing left but shreds of paper, which she tossed in the air and let rain down on top of them. Victor looked up at her, startled.
“Frank’s isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “And you’re not buying me out. This place would fall apart without me in a week.”
He blinked at her, his brain slowly catching up with her words. After so long hoping and wanting, had he finally gotten exactly what he’d dreamed of?
“Does that mean…?”
“I’m here to stay.”
“And us?”
She slid off the table, legs parting so he got a glimpse of her red lacy underwear. She straddled him on the chair, skirt riding up to expose more of her creamy thighs. The chair groaned under their combined weight as he groaned when she pressed against his hard dick.
“Does this answer your question?” she said, leaning in close, filling his vision with her cleavage.
He kept his hands on the arms of the chair and didn’t touch her, even though he was dying to take hold of her.
“I have one more question,” he said, inhaling the scent of her floral perfume. “I want you to come to me because it’s your choice. Because it makes you happy, not me. Is this what you want?”
She leaned back and met his gaze, her expression laid bare. “I want you, Victor, and the diner, and this life. It all makes me happy. Not because it makes you happy, or because my dad wanted it for me. I can see it now. You’re what makes me whole.”
He grabbed both sides of her face, pulling her down to him. Lizzy opened up to him, her mouth warm and tasting of maple. He spread his hands across her hips, cupping her rear, and grinding her against his hard cock. This was what he wanted, what sewed together the broken pieces of his tender heart.
She giggled. “I’ve missed you and that dick too. But this time I want you to fuck me in a bed.”
“But Brayden…” Victor started to protest.
“Taken care of. He’s sleeping over at a friend’s tonight.”
“The diner…”
“Covered.”
He groaned against her mouth. He’d never been more turned on in his life. He was hungrier for her than ever before and wanted to lick every inch of her delicious body until she was screaming his name.
“Then, what are we waiting for?” He picked her up two-handed and carried her out the diner’s back door as she licked and nibbled on his neck.
He practically kicked down the front door in his eagerness to get into the house and carried her past a squawking Igor and into the bedroom, where he laid her down. She began to sit up and shed her clothes, but he grabbed her wrist, stalling her.
He wanted to commit this vision of her to memory forever. To carve it into the back of his eyelids so that it was what he’d see every night when he fell asleep.
“You look like a present I’m going to unwrap,” he said.
“I’m yours.” She smiled seductively.
It took all his self-control to not pull her panties aside and thrust into her.
Instead, he savored the moment, peeling her layers off one by one.
First with her apron, which he tossed to the floor.
Before that red, skintight dress. He began at the shoulders, kissing her exposed skin, nipping his way down over the tops of her breasts, then kissing his way over her full belly, and grazing her thighs with his teeth as she squirmed beneath him, panting.
Until she was in nothing but her matching red lacy panties and bra.
She’d planned this all, the little minx.
He ran his hands over the mounds of her breasts, tweaking her nipples through the rough lace of her bra.
She arched against his touch, and he loved the way she reacted to it.
He’d never get tired of it. But he wanted to set the pace, so he laid a flat palm against her belly to still her.
He slid the bra off, licking each nipple one at a time, teeth grazing them lightly as they stiffened.
“Please, Victor,” she said.
Victor smirked at her, delighting in dragging out the tension, luxuriating in every moment she was his.
Because she would be his forever, of that he was certain.
He hooked his fingers into the band of her panties and pulled them down as she arched her back, legs spread wide and waiting for him. Perfect.
He positioned himself between her legs, the tip of his cock against her clit, and he vibrated it gently.
It was a test of his own self-control, drawing out her pleasure like this.
He wanted sex as much as she did, and his tip was wet with pre-cum, which he used to glide against her clit.
She bucked, and he grasped her legs, holding them in the air, as he coated his dick with the wetness of her pussy.
He brought her right to the edge before pulling back.
He placed the head of his cock at her entrance, and she looked up at him, eyes glazed with lust.
He loved the sounds she made and the way she writhed against him as pre-cum leaked out the tip of his head.
He thrust into her, dragging each ridge of his dick against the walls of her tight heat.
He moved slowly at first, building the pressure, watching as she came undone beneath him.
What an honor, to wring pleasure from her.
To know that it would be him who got to map every inch of her body, to worship her as she deserved.
Maybe he wasn’t perfect and never could be.
But this thing between them, this was perfection, he thought as he thrust into her once more, vibrating his dick, curving his tip just enough to hit both her clit and G-spot at the same time.
Her eyes were rolling back in her head as he increased the intensity, his hard dick thrusting into her. When he brought her to the edge again, this time he followed through, letting her orgasm hard on his cock, milking out his own orgasm.
When they were finished, he lay down on the bed beside her, their legs tangled together and her heartbeat slowing. He wound her hair around his finger, and she laid her hand across his chest, fingers tracing over the scars there.
“I could get used to being this thoroughly fucked.”
“And I will happily oblige for as long as you’ll let me.”
She rolled up onto her elbows and smirked at him. “I’ll hold you to that, I hope you know.”
“I’m counting on it.” He kissed the top of her head. “How about something to eat?”
“That’d be divine. I’m craving an Italian sub.”
“Your wish is my command,” Victor said.
He headed into the kitchen and threw together a couple sandwiches for them to eat in bed.
And when they were fully satiated, they went back to his new favorite pastime—fucking her until her eyes rolled back in her head.
And after their second time, he decided that if the rest of his life was spent making love to Lizzy and eating in bed, he’d die a happy man.