Chapter 4 #2
There was no need to trick people into staying here. In another life, I might’ve been a person to find myself in a similar place, enjoying some fruity drink and watching the sun set over the ocean while Jimmy Buffett played over the speakers.
No, who was I kidding? There was no life in which that was me. Unless I’d been lobotomized.
Give me a lounge that smelled of expensive cigars with plenty of dark corners to disappear into while enjoying an expensive glass of scotch.
My eyes scanned over the tables. Again, they were tasteful yet stuck to the theme.
They were all white with white wicker chairs. The light shades were a tan wicker, hanging over the tables inside and outside on the covered terrace.
Inside, the bar was painted a light blue and white, had a polished, wooden top, and open shelves were mounted on the wall with bottles neatly lined up on top of them.
I saw my brother and Kip’s work in the place.
It looked great. Simple, clean, unique and unassuming yet comfortable.
Enough for the locals to feel like they were coming to a familiar haunt while also drawing in tourists who would inevitably pose in front of the décor for whatever vapid social media reasons people had.
The walls were adorned with various ocean and boat paraphernalia along with an entire wall of photos—all black and white with mismatched frames.
I walked through the empty space, heels clicking on the floor to get a closer look.
Most of the photos looked to be taken inside the restaurant, with various iterations of it.
One was a middle-aged man with his arms around two gangly teenage boys standing in front of the sign, all of them grinning.
So fucking wholesome it should’ve made me gag.
Except it didn’t.
“You’re here.”
I jumped, so engrossed in the picture—in particular the boy on the left, younger, thinner and obscured slightly in black and white but still with the same smile and piercing eyes as the man from yesterday—that I hadn’t even realized I wasn’t alone in the room.
Sloppy. My brother might’ve been trained by Uncle Sam to establish all threats in any room, but I was a woman trained in New York City in a man’s industry which meant I was always aware of other people, most especially of the opposite sex entering my personal space.
I turned, schooling my features as Elliot walked from some back room, arms full of boxes which he set on the bar before turning back to me.
His arms were exposed in a sleeveless shirt that was worn and read Shaw Shack in vintage, red script.
I immediately wanted that tee. Not from the section in the corner of the restaurant where crisp new ones were hanging, but that one, clinging to Elliot’s body, worn countless times that meant it definitely smelled like him.
His biceps were bulging from the exertion, healthy sized.
He was much more muscular than I’d pegged him to be in his sweater yesterday.
His skin was tanned from what I guessed was life underneath the coastal sun, his muscles sculpted from manual labor instead of lifting weights.
There was a scruff of beard on his jaw, making him look more rugged.
No hat on, his blond curls framed his face perfectly, jeans encasing powerful thighs, and the Birkenstocks on his feet revealing somehow attractive toes.
Men didn’t have attractive toes. Men didn’t pull off Birkenstocks and make my pulse spike at the same time.
Yet Elliot Shaw did.
In short, Elliot Shaw was hot as fuck.
My eyes shot up to his warm blue ones, remembering that I shouldn’t have been checking him out. This was not a trip to find a fuck buddy. It was an expedition to swallow my pride, deliver a check, then get the fuck away from Elliot Shaw.
“I knew I’d be seeing you again,” he said warmly, again taking stock of my body in that simple gaze of male appreciation that lit up my synapses. “But color me shocked that you willingly set foot in here.”
I bit my lip, surprised and unnerved that he seemed perceptive enough to correctly make a statement like that. “I wouldn’t say willingly. ” I recovered quickly. “I would say I was bullied into it.”
He tilted his head, making no effort to hide that he was trying to figure me out, cataloguing every inch of me. “Something tells me a woman like you couldn’t be bullied by Lucifer himself.”
I wanted to smile, since it was a rather astute observation, but nothing in me found it humorous that this mild-mannered fisherman seemed to be able to read me so easily.
“Lucifer himself would rightly walk the other way if he saw me coming,” I told him with a bite in my tone. “You know, if he existed, which he doesn’t since he was invented to subdue women and anyone else who wasn’t an old white man in power.”
I walked forward, purposefully, wondering if Elliot’s expression would change under my blasphemy.
We were in a small town, which wasn’t overtly religious, but the steepled church always had a full parking lot every Sunday.
It wouldn’t surprise me that this blond-haired, powerfully built, all-American man would be God fearing too.
But his smile only widened at my words and at my approach.
I’d never paused when advancing on a man before, and I wasn’t going to start then, but it took more effort than it ever had to walk up to that grinning fisherman than it had any lecherous CEO.
He leaned back casually against the bar, lazily eyeing me with that relaxed air about him that should’ve set my teeth on edge—as a rule, I hated laid-back people. But instead, it sent electricity across my skin, my body alive and aware.
“I doubt anyone can subdue you,” he drawled, never taking his eyes off me.
Something deep inside—buried down and ugly where it was rotting—climbed up, making my mouth taste of bile and the tingles of my skin turn into knives.
I kept everything about my expression schooled, but my body no longer felt warm; I was freezing, covered in long-cooled blood covering my naked body. The flashback was quick, a mere second, then I blinked it away without a tremble.
Even though I was sure nothing had outwardly changed, I noted the slight flicker in his eyes, the tilt to his head, the more penetrating gaze as if he’d spotted something in me.
Impossible.
I tilted my chin upward, reaching into my purse. “I’m not here for idle conversation; I’m just here to return this.”
I placed the envelope on the bar instead of handing it to him. I didn’t want to risk our fingers brushing like they had on the boat. Contact with Elliot Shaw was far too tempting. This had to be the last time I’d ever see the jovial fisherman who awakened something in me best left to die.
Elliot didn’t immediately look at what I’d placed on the bar.
Instead, he held my gaze longer than was polite, his blue orbs more probing than was logical given we didn’t know each other.
The stare was far too intimate. It unnerved me.
But fuck if I was going to look away. I’d never lost a staring competition with a man, and I wasn’t about to start then.
I was seconds away from inspecting my shoes when Elliot’s eyes went to the envelope.
His brows furrowed, and I watched his shoulders tighten, his posture no longer casual. He even shifted his feet, as if a sudden weight had settled atop him. “Can take an educated guess as to what this is and am sure the check is good, not gonna bounce.”
There was a slight hardness to his words, that macho pride rearing its ugly head.
It put me on more of an even keel; masculine pride I could deal with.
“I’m sure it won’t,” I told him in a patronizing tone.
“But I’m under instructions to return it, along with an apology for collecting it in the first place. ”
Lightness returned to Elliot’s face as he looked from the envelope to me. “ You’re following instructions?”
Again, I didn’t like the intimacy in which he said that, as if he knew me.
“I’ve been known to do it, on occasion, full moons and such.”
I’d expected some kind of witty retort, the pattern we’d fallen into without effort despite my best efforts. What I didn’t expect was for his eyelids to flutter then sag into a serious, hungry expression of undisguised desire.
It hit me. Square in the ovaries. Not an unpleasant sensation. Not at all.
“I’d like to test that theory.” His voice had gone at least an octave deeper, mimicking the carnal expression on his face.
It took me a handful of seconds to get my bearings, to understand that he was alluding to… me following his orders. While naked.
Beyond the fact that he did not give off Dom energy—until right that second—and that I did not give off sub energy—until right that second—it came out of left field.
Usually, men making such sexual innuendos out of nowhere made me see red.
Because it was designed to shame, scare and otherwise remind a woman that a man could turn at any moment, try to take what they considered theirs.
Not this time.
I was too busy envisioning being naked while following Elliot Shaw’s orders. My pussy vibrated in response.
Elliot was watching me. More accurately, my lips, which had parted slightly, releasing uneven breaths.
I considered myself a sexual person; I had three different vibrators, a whole section in my closet dedicated to lingerie and different instruments meant to enhance my pleasure. Nothing shocked me. Nothing scared me.
Except how viscerally my body was responding without a man even touching me. With just a voice, a twinkling eye, a smile.
I snapped out of it quickly, realizing how easily he’d taken control of me and hating every moment of it. Well, not every moment. I’d actually liked it for a second there, but I was repressing that. By the time I left that place, I’d push out of the memory entirely.