Hired by the Single Dad (Single Dads of Seattle #1)

by Whitley Cox

  “That’s good.”

  She needed to get going. She needed to get home, get away from the delicious-smelling single dad standing in front of her wearing a black T-shirt far too tight to leave anything to the imagination, and gray sweatpants she wanted to rip off him with her teeth.

  “Well, I … uh … I guess I should get going. Those fish aren’t going to feed themselves.” She slid her hand along the cool quartz countertop, letting it ground her and bring down her body temperature. She was in a full-on inferno. The way Mark was looking at her … it was giving her false hope. It was giving her the wrong idea.

  The wrong idea to be bad. To do bad, bad things.

  Bad, bad fun things.

  But, no she couldn’t go there.

  Nope.

  Not ever.

  Not with her boss.

  Not with the single dad.

  His gaze never left hers as his head bobbed in a nearly indiscernible nod. “I guess so.”

  Was that disappointment on his face? Were his eyes asking her to stay? Were they asking her to strip naked and bend over the counter?

  Oh God … Uncle John eating chicken wings without a shirt on, his enormous, hairy, barrel chest covered in barbecue sauce, sitting in a kiddie pool with water wings and a floaty ring.

  Phew. Crisis averted.

  Keeping her hand on the counter for balance, because her faculties seemed to have suddenly escaped her, she went to move past him, only her fingers knocked something off the counter onto the tile floor.

  “Shit,” Tori murmured. She glanced down, only to find Mark’s phone, of all possible things, on the floor. “Oh no!”

  “It’s okay.” He bent down to get it.

  She bent down too.

  Just as her hand wrapped around the phone, his hand wrapped around her wrist. Electricity ripped through her the moment his fingers grazed her skin. A pulse so intense, so hot, so charged she felt like she’d stuck a fork into an electrical socket. She leapt back, dropping the phone and pulling her hand free from his grasp.

  “Sorry.” He stood up.

  Tori swallowed the lump in her throat, pushing down the emotions, the arousal, the pure animalistic lust she felt for the man standing in front of her. “I—I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t crack the screen.”

  He turned the phone over in his big, sexy palm, a roguish grin pulling at the corners of his delicious-looking lips. “Not a scratch.”

  She licked her lips. “That’s good.”

  His eyes locked on hers. “Yeah.”

  Tori’s mouth parted, little puffs of air coming out as if she’d just run a mile. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, and her palms grew clammy.

  Mark’s gaze burned into her. “Tori … ”

  “Yes?”

  “Ah, fuck!”

  And then he was on her.

  She welcomed him.

  Encouraged him.

  Finally.

  All her fantasies and dreams were finally coming true as he thrust his hand into her hair and smashed his lips against hers, pushing her back up against the harsh, unforgiving quartz countertop. They were all hands, all lips, all tongues, grappling and grabbing, pulling and unzipping. There was nothing romantic about it. It was fucking. It was raw, feral, animal mating.

  He palmed her breast over her T-shirt as his teeth grazed her jaw and his tongue drew erotic figure eights down her throat. Her hands fought their way down from his shoulders to the hem of his shirt, pushing it up just enough so she could feel his skin beneath her fingertips. He was hot to the touch, practically singeing her as she drew her nails up from his narrow hips to below his ribcage, feeling his muscles flex and bunch as his hands roamed her body.

  She reached the waistband of his sweatpants and tugged it down, feeling his erection beneath her fingertips. He groaned against the hollow of her throat when she fished him out of his boxers, stroking him, reveling in the silky smoothness of his skin.

  She was doing everything by feel, but that’s all she needed. Her other senses took over as she shut her eyes and let Mark take control. His ragged breathing and hot breath against her skin, the thundering pump of her pulse in her ears, the intoxicating manly smell of him. Every sound, every touch, every smell drove her forward. Drove her deeper into the need to be taken by Mark, to give him everything she’d fantasized about all these lonely weeks.

  A drop of precum beaded on the crown of his cock, and using her thumb, she swirled it around the tip. His groans grew louder, more frantic.

  Suddenly, she found herself back on her feet on the tile floor, and Mark had pulled out of her grasp. He knelt down and, with an air of desperation to his actions, awkwardly relieved her of her shoes and jeans. Her panties were still on, though they were a sexy nude-colored lacy boy short, so she wasn’t sure if he missed them or was in full-on rut and didn’t care. He gripped her by the hips and plunked her back on the counter, pulling her forward so the head of his cock knocked the juncture of her thighs.

  Damn, that felt good. She shut her eyes again and sank her top teeth into her bottom lip.

  His fingers pushed the stretchy fabric of her underwear out of the way, and he explored her cleft.

  She was sopping wet.

  Tori gasped as spirals of heat pirouetted through her. Her hips lurched off the counter into his palm, encouraging his quest, begging him to go deeper. She relaxed into his touch, her bones and every other part of her turning to jelly.

  “So fucking wet,” he murmured, leaning forward and tracing the shell of her ear with his tongue.

  Tori’s mouth parted. Her breathing was already shallow and quick. Little noises escaped her. She was incapable of holding them back. It all just felt too good.

  “Mark … ” she breathed.

  He lifted his head from her neck. Fire burned in his eyes. Fire just for her. Without a wavering glance, he cupped her butt with one hand, pushed her panties to the side with other. She scrambled to grab his cock and positioned him at her entrance. Sparks of gold flickered in the soulful green as his eyelids slipped to half-mast. He squeezed her butt cheek and drove home.

  “Oh God,” Tori cried. Once again, after far too long of a dry spell, she was full. And it was by the most incredible man imaginable. She wrapped her legs around his torso, locking her ankles at the small of his back as he leaned her over to get a better angle, hitting her deep inside on the cold, hard countertop.

  Mark’s grunts and pants filled her ears and spurred her on as his lips fell next to her temple. He was too caught up in the moment, just like her, to do anything but fuck. No kissing, no petting. Just fucking.

  “You need a good fucking,” her sister had said after everything with Ken had gone down. “Exorcise that motherfucker from your mind, heart, body and bed. Start with the latter two and work your way to the former.”

  Well, that’s exactly that Tori was doing … or getting. She was getting fucked good.

  Mark’s hand slipped from holding her panties to the side and pushed beneath the fabric. His fingers found her clit and rubbed.

  Her lips opened on a silent gasp. She was hanging on by a thread.

  So close.

  He grunted. “Fucking amazing.”

  “I’m … I’m … ”

  Gone!

  A million tiny stars burst and flew behind her tightly shut eyelids as the queen of all orgasms crashed through her. She stilled in his arms, squeezing her internal muscles around him, prolonging her release and feeling the luscious girth of him hit her walls, her neurons, her soul.

  Her toes curled behind him, and her head lifted to the sky, taking it all in and never wanting to let it go. Never wanting the moment to end. For the first time in forever she felt desirable, she felt sexy, she felt like a young woman not past her prime and destined to live a life alone with six dozen cats and an addiction to The Home Shopping Network.

  A loud grunt and exhale next to her ear, followed by Mark halting his thrusts, had her squeezing her muscles around him again, heightenin
g his release and milking him for everything he had.

  When they’d both come down off their high, neither of them moved. Instead, they stayed there in their post-coital cocoon for a moment, letting their breathing and heart rates return to rest.

  She wasn’t sure what she should say, of if she should say anything at all, but the ringing of his phone next to them on the counter solved that problem.

  Mark pulled out and tugged his sweatpants back into place before reaching for his phone. Without glancing back at her, he put it to his ear and wandered off toward the home office muttering things about getting another MRI done because he couldn’t make heads or tails from the first set.

  Tori slid her butt off the cool counter and stepped back into her jeans and tennis shoes.

  Should she wait for him?

  Did they need to discuss what just happened?

  What had just happened?

  You had filthy, hot kitchen counter sex with your boss, Dr. Dirty Dreams, and you did the nasty where you make his kid PB&J.

  At that thought, Tori quickly grabbed the disinfectant spray from the pantry cupboard and a few sheets of paper towel.

  She sanitized the counter.

  She could be dirty.

  But she was also clean.

  Mark’s voice from the office down the hall carried out to the kitchen. He didn’t sound pleased.

  She didn’t want to ruin their moment, didn’t want to kill her orgasm high. So, like a college coed after a hard night of partying, she ducked out of the house into the freezing February night.

  She shivered as she sat in her car, waiting for it to warm up.

  She’d bet Mark’s bed was warm. She knew Mark’s body was.

  Blowing her bangs off her forehead, she gave her head a shake. It was one time. He was probably going to say on Monday that it was a huge mistake, which it was. Would he dismiss her for it? Should she spend the weekend looking for a new job?

  That orgasm high hadn’t lasted long. Now she was just filled with dread. Dread and regret.

  She slept with her boss.

  What had she done?

  8

  Saturday night rolled around, and Mark found himself at Liam’s, sitting around the table with all his friends. He and Gabe spent the day grocery shopping and getting their haircut, only to have an early dinner with Mark’s parents before he ducked out for poker.

  As hard as he tried all day, and all last night, he couldn’t get Tori out of his head. What had they done? What had he done?

  He’d been waiting on a call from the hospital and had to take it—in private—when it came in, but he’d hoped she would wait around until he was done and they could talk about what had just happened.

  He hardly slept after that. As good as it felt to finally give in to his desire for her, in to the lust, the need, the craving, he knew it was so wrong, and he was probably going to lose the best thing that had happened to his kid—and himself, if he was being honest—in over a year. She could hit him with a lawsuit for sexual harassment, drag his name through the mud and the media. The hospital would drop him; the university wouldn’t hire him. And all because he let his dick do the thinking for just a minute.

  “Dude, your deal,” Liam said, breaking Mark’s train of thought and bringing him back to the moment. All the guys around the table were staring at him.

  “What’s up?” Adam asked, running a hand over his coppery-colored chin scruff, the same shade as his hair.

  Mark shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “That’s a starry-eyed look right there,” Zak joked. “If I knew any better, I’d say you were in love.”

  Mark cleared his throat and steeled his face. How did one look when they were in love? He needed to get control over his emotions, over his facial expression.

  “What’d you do?” Emmett asked, his tone so fatherly, so parental Mark thought he felt his asshole pucker just a touch.

  “Nothing,” Mark said, avoiding Emmett’s stare.

  “You slept with her.”

  Fuck, his friend knew him too well. He never should have let the guys meet Tori that night. They hadn’t let up about her since.

  “Who?” Scott asked, his honey-colored eyes going wide with intrigue.

  Zak’s eyebrows bobbed up and down. “Yeah, who?”

  Mark exhaled. “Tori, Gabe’s intervention therapist.”

  “The chick you tricked into a job interview?” Adam asked.

  God, that sounded so bad when he said it. He hadn’t tricked her. He’d bent the truth to get her to meet his son and take the job without her thinking he was coming on to her.

  His head hurt.

  “Dude, this isn’t good,” Emmett said. “How did she seem after?”

  “I don’t know.” He hung his head and stared at the faded green felt of the card table. “She left.”

  “What do you mean, she left?” Emmett’s voice had gone up a couple octaves. “Like you kicked her out?”

  “No, like the hospital called right after and I pulled up my pants, answered my phone and left the room to take the call. She was gone when I got back to the kitchen.”

  “You fucked her in the kitchen!” Zak lifted his beer in the air. “Dude, nice.”

  Mark rolled his eyes. As did Emmett across the table. His friend was trying his best to not freak out at Mark. Why did Emmett have to act like his fucking conscience all the time?

  Because you let your dick do your thinking, that’s why.

  “And you haven’t talked to her since?” Scott asked.

  Mark shook his head. He didn’t think a phone call or text was appropriate. They needed to discuss what happened in person. He needed to gauge her facial expressions and tone of voice when he checked whether she was okay and how she felt about it all.

  Was she going to even show up on Monday?

  “Do you love her?” Emmett asked, his dark eyebrows lifting up on his forehead as he brought his beer bottle to his lips.

  Mark made a face that he hoped conveyed his confusion. He didn’t know how he felt about her. He knew he liked being around her. He liked how she was with his kid, how she smelled, how smart and funny and sweet she was. He liked coming home to her and his kid, having dinner with her, talking with her, spending time with her. Was that love? He honestly couldn’t remember what real love felt like. Things between him and Cheyenne hadn’t been good long before they filed for divorce. It was around the time Gabe got his diagnosis at two that their marriage started to go downhill. They faked it for two years, living in separate bedrooms, behaving more as roommates than a couple in love. So he really didn’t know what love was anymore. He also didn’t know if he was ready to open up his heart again, open up Gabe’s heart.

  “Love doesn’t exist,” Liam said, without an inflection in his voice or a twist to his face. He was so deadpan that if Mark didn’t know him any better, he’d say his friend was a psychopath.

  “Not this again.” Adam snorted. They’d all heard Liam’s spiel one time or another about how he no longer believed in love, marriage or monogamy, but there was also no stopping him when he got on one of his tangents.

  Liam shrugged. “It’s a fallacy. Created by Hallmark or Kay Jewelers, just like Valentine’s Day and engagement rings. Marriage is an institution devised to mark ownership or property, and monogamy is a social construct that ninety-five percent of other primates, other mammals don’t participate in. It’s wrong. It’s unnatural.”

  Eye rolls and exasperated exhales echoed around the poker table.

  “What about love for one’s child?” Emmett asked, taking a sip of his beer. “That can’t be a fallacy created by Hallmark or Cartier.”

  Liam held up a finger, his dimples extra deep as his smile grew wider. “The one exception. Yes, love for one’s offspring, one’s own genes does exist. I mean look at that poor orca mother who carried the corpse of her dead calf for something like three weeks. That’s love.”

  “So love does exist?” Mark asked. He was just hap
py they were on a different topic. He wasn’t prepared to discuss his whopper of a mistake with Tori last night.

  All the men exchanged smirks across the poker chips and cards. Liam loved spouting off his theory, to anyone and everyone. Mark had heard it at least half a dozen times.

  “It exists, but only in the construct of children. Lust, on the other hand, is a very big part of human, of mammalian nature. The lust for sex, the lust for blood, for continuing on one’s genetic makeup, for revenge, for money. Lust fuels us all. The need for fulfillment. But love, no. It’s a veil used to blur the true emotion of lust and the desire to both procreate and not be alone. Humans are social creatures. We prefer to be with others. And over the years, the decades, the centuries we’ve developed some warped ideology that we need to be with just one person for the rest of our lives. And then that morphed into commitment and marriage and women being considered property, and then of course the idea of love. Where one’s heart, an organ used for pumping blood and oxygen through our bodies, has such control over our emotions that it controls how we feel about a person.”

  “It’s a metaphor,” Emmett said blandly. “It’s really all in the amygdala.”

  “Either way. It’s a joke. We’re all still animals. Driven to fuck. To continue on our gene line. That’s it. Love. Does. Not. Exist.”

  Adam’s eyebrows rose up his forehead, and he puffed out his cheeks before exhaling. The cleft in his chin appeared extra deep. “And on that note, I fold. I’m out of here, boys. Catch ya next week.” He stood up, tossed his cards onto the table, grabbed his empty beer bottle to take to the kitchen and left the room.

  Mark pushed himself up to standing too. He’d had enough for the night. “You grabbing an Uber?” he asked Adam, joining him in the kitchen and rinsing out his beer bottles.

  Adam nodded. “Yeah, just ordered it. Wanna jump in?”

  “Yeah, sounds good.”

  “Had enough of the negativity?”

  Mark’s eyes bugged. “Little bit.”

  “Where you headed?”

  Mark glanced at his watch. It was only ten thirty. He had the respite worker as late as 2 a.m. if he needed her. He just needed to text Karen and let her know if he was going to be a bit later than usual.