Chapter 16 #2
“Put me down before you drop me,” I screeched, reaching down to smack his own ass as payback. “I’m too big for you to carry.”
He smacked me again, leaving more of a sting on my butt cheek this time. “I deadlift twice my body weight almost every single day during my workouts. That’s four hundred and fifty pounds, darlin’. Trust me when I say you are not too big, and I am not gonna drop you.”
The feminist in me wanted to protest his caveman attitude. The romance-book loving woman in me told the feminist to shut the hell up because being carried around like this was top-tier book boyfriend behavior and it was so fucking hot.
Ten minutes later, I was on my knees, with warm water cascading over me and Trick’s hard cock pulsing down my throat as his shout of pleasure echoed off the tiled shower walls.
He helped me to my feet, then soaped up my body, thoroughly washing and rinsing every inch of my skin.
Afterward, he reached for a towel and tenderly dried me off, taking extra care since my more delicate parts were definitely feeling a little sensitive.
“You are incredible,” he said, placing a soft kiss on my shoulder before wrapping the towel around me and tucking it in under my arm.
“So are you,” I murmured, reveling in the gentle aftercare. This is what I’d missed last night, and I was enjoying every second of it.
He grabbed another towel and quickly dried himself off, then walked out of the bathroom bare-assed naked. I admired the taut globes, wondering how many squats he had to do to maintain that part of his anatomy.
While he got dressed, I combed out my wet hair, then towel-dried it, leaving it in damp ringlets to finish drying on its own. It would be a curly, frizzy mess, but that was a problem that future me would just have to deal with tomorrow morning.
It was approaching six-thirty by the time I dressed and joined Trick in the living room.
He motioned for me to sit with him on the couch, then curled his arm around me and snuggled me into his side.
“I fed the cat. He was pacing up and down the hall outside the bathroom, impatiently waiting for us.”
I laughed softly. “I’m sure he was. He has very rigid ideas about mealtimes.”
Trick asked why I’d named him Elvis.
“He has a little scar on his upper lip, probably from getting into a fight at some point. It causes his lip to curl up on the end, and when I saw him in the cage at the shelter, it reminded me of Elvis Presley. My grandmother used to play his records all the time when I was a little girl.”
“How long have you had him?”
“I adopted him the week after I moved back to Indy.” I didn’t volunteer the fact that I’d adopted Elvis because I’d been lonely.
Even though Indianapolis had been my home for the first fourteen years of my life, in reality, my uncle was the only one I knew in the city, since I’d long since lost touch with my childhood friends.
My stomach chose that moment to let out the most embarrassing growl, causing me to blush as Trick laughed and told me he would get started on dinner since we’d both worked up an appetite.
I offered to help, but not surprisingly, he declined. I was pretty sure he didn’t trust me to use so much as a butter knife after hearing my exploding egg story, and honestly, that was fine. The kitchen was definitely not my favorite place to be.
I went back to reading on my Kindle as the aroma of sautéed onions and peppers filled the air. Thirty minutes later we were sitting down to eat a delicious chicken stir fry with vegetables and brown rice.
Trick smugly pointed out how much healthier it was for us than the microwavable Chinese meal I had in the freezer.
“The sodium content in that shit is off the charts, not to mention the added sugars in the sauce which are completely unnecessary.”
I rolled my eyes and threatened to poke his eye out with my chopstick if he didn’t stop bitching about my food choices. He responded by blowing me a kiss, then putting another spoonful of the stir fry on my plate.
We watched a movie after dinner, or part of one, anyway. I got distracted by Trick’s wandering hands and we started making out until his phone rang a few minutes later.
The call had gone to voicemail by the time he got to his phone, and he swore under his breath when he saw who the caller was.
“I’m sorry, darlin’. This is one of my clients at the gym, and for him to be calling at this time of the night, there must be a problem. I’m going to go to the guest room to call him back.”
“No problem. I’ll rewind the movie since someone made me miss what happened in the last scene,” I teased.
I was engrossed in the action on the TV screen when the alarm went off – a shrill, ear-shattering noise that startled me so much that I screamed. My heart was pounding as I jumped to my feet, frantically looking around as I tried to make sense of what was happening.
The door to the guest room slammed against the wall and Trick came thundering down the hall, yelling my name. The alarm going off had terrified me, but the sight of the gun in his hand almost made me faint. This shit just got very real.
Trick grabbed me, shielding my body as he forced me back down the hall, all the while scanning the living room for any signs of danger.
He practically shoved me into the guest room, ordering me to lock the door. “There’s a knife on top of the nightstand. If anybody but me comes through this door, go for the crotch or the neck and don’t stop until he’s down,” he commanded.
Before I could utter a word, he slammed the door shut.
I scrambled to lock it, then slowly backed away from the door.
I glanced around in a daze, spotting the knife.
I recognized it as a switchblade, only because a guy I’d dated a few times in college had carried one.
Honestly, that’s why I’d only dated him a few times.
He had the habit of taking it out of his pocket and playing with it. It had creeped me the fuck out.
I had the same feeling when I picked up this one, gripping it tightly as I pressed the button to release the blade. I jumped slightly when it sprang open, then stared at the gleaming, wickedly sharp high-carbon steel in fascinated horror.
The shrieking of the alarm shut off, and in that moment I truly understood the meaning of the phrase “deafening silence”.
It was then that I registered how hard my heart was pounding, and how shaky my limbs felt. I sank down onto the edge of the bed, only to spring to my feet with an audible gasp when the doorknob rattled a minute or so later.
“It’s just me, darlin’. Open up.”
I dropped the knife onto the mattress and dashed for the door, fumbling to unlock it. I’d barely managed to open the door when Trick pulled me into his arms, running his hands over me as if checking to make sure I was still in one piece.
“It’s OK, there’s no one here now,” he murmured, repeating it over and over while I clung to him, my body still trembling as I came down from the adrenaline rush.
He led me down the hall and sat me down on the couch, crouching down to look me in the eye as he explained that King and the others were on the way.