by Hettie Ivers
I giggled in return and said that I was game for anything tonight.
Tomorrow, I’d deal with what I was going to say to my dad when I stormed his office.
29
Lauren
I made the drive to Seattle in under four hours. Within five I was out dancing with Abbie, still wearing my skirt and heels from work. My feet were starting to hurt, but I didn’t care. I was halfway to feeling so pleasantly inebriated I could almost forget the fact that I was a seer with a mother who was nuts and a sperm-donor-father who was a selfish asshole, when Abbie stopped dancing, grabbed my arm, and tugged me closer. “Don’t look now, but there’s a sexy as F, mysterious-looking James Bond-type at nine o’clock eye-fucking the shit out of you.”
“Huh?” I whipped my head in the direction Abbie indicated and nearly fell over when I saw who it was.
“I said don’t look.”
It was Stranger-Danger—here, in Seattle! He’d come back.
There was no way he’d come to Abbie’s favorite dive bar to dance—dressed in a suit. Which meant he’d come all the way to Seattle to see me. It’d be too much of an insane coincidence to be anything less. Holy shit, this was happening. Kai was into me! I wasn’t crazy.
The nervous, tenuous smile he gave me in greeting sent ripples of excitement through me, obliterating the last of my sober, functioning brain cells.
“No way.” Abbie squeezed my arm. “You know that guy?”
“Yeah. Sort of. We’re um … casual acquaintances.”
There was nothing casual about the way Kai was looking at me. His eyes were that intense blue shade that I still hadn’t found an explanation for. In the dim light of the bar, it almost seemed as if they were glowing now.
Goosebumps flowered over my skin, and my stomach dropped out of me as he began to make his way through the crowd of bodies, heading in our direction. I was used to seeing Kai overdressed by Bumfuck, Washington, standards, but he looked especially out of place tonight—far too sharp and sophisticated for his surroundings. And sexy as hell.
“Oooh-ooh, bab-y.” Abbie knocked her shoulder against mine. “Looks like you’ve found your hookup. This calls for celebratory shots.”
Now was not the time for another shot. But I didn’t object to Abbie’s suggestion, nor did I stop her from making a beeline for the bar, because I wanted alone time with Kai.
I had no idea what I was going to say once he got to me, or whether I should greet him with a handshake, hug, fist bump, or lip-lock. Our parting in the hallway a week ago didn’t give me much to go on—considering he’d left me on the floor with a bloody lip and shards of glass all over me. So I resumed dancing, and hoped that it would prompt him to come dance with me. Nonverbal, carnal communication was definitely the way to go, I decided. It was too noisy to talk anyhow.
But when Kai got close enough to touch me, he didn’t. He didn’t sweep me off my feet and kiss me like he’d done in the hallway. Neither did he say anything. He simply stood there and rubbed the back of his neck, looking lost and awkward as he watched me dancing.
I gestured for him to come closer, and with a questioning look, I mouthed, “You’re not dancing?”
He shook his head and took two hesitant steps nearer. “I don’t dance,” he mouthed back.
That, I believed. Oh, screw it. This was ridiculous. “Hey, you know what?” I shouted to be heard above the music. “If you want to go out with me, you should just ask me out—like a normal person would do.”
His disapproving eyes darted away from mine to scan the crowd of people around us—as if he was seriously concerned someone might’ve overheard. And actually given a fuck.
He bent closer. “I’ve told you, I’m too old for you.”
A fit of crazy-lady laughter burst from me. “Right. And that’s how you happen to be in a college bar wearing a perfectly fitted Italian suit tonight—eye-fucking me from across the room. I knew I saw you on campus today. What is your deal? Are you spying on me? You told me a week ago you were going abroad and never coming back.”
“That was true. Then.”
“And now you just happen to be in the same bar as me—in Seattle—four and a half hours away from where you normally hide in the shadows stalking me.”
“I am not—” He stopped short, his jaw clenching, his eyes glowing a brighter shade of blue. “Can we go somewhere more private to talk?”
“In theory. But I don’t see the point since you’ve already decided you’re too old for me.”
“It’s not a decision I’ve made, Lauren. It’s a fact. I am too old for you.”
“So I’ve heard—because you keep randomly showing up to tell me. I feel like we’re talking in circles. Maybe ‘riddles’ would be more accurate.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but then Abbie walked up.
“And here is more love for you,” she trilled gaily, handing me my shot. “Oh, hey!” Beaming, she turned her full attention on Kai. “I’m Abbie. You must be Bond.” She cracked up at her own dumb joke before she’d even finished delivering it. “James Bond?”
It was completely asinine and juvenile, yet I couldn’t help giggling along with her. Kai’s exasperated eye-roll, which wordlessly projected just how “too old” in spirit he was for me, didn’t help matters.
I was still reining in my laughter when Kai’s head bent to Abbie’s and he said something I was unable to catch. An odd expression flitted across Abbie’s features, and she nodded. Turning her attention to me, she threw her thumb over her shoulder, smiled, and said, “I have some friends I need to check in with. Catch up with you guys later, okay?”
Wait—which friends? “Abbie?” She walked off before I could stop her.
Kai took hold of my arm and was soon guiding me from the dance floor over to some tables in the corner.
“What did you just say to her?”
He didn’t answer. Whether he hadn’t heard me or was choosing to ignore me, I couldn’t say. Every table in the small seating area of the bar was occupied. Kai walked straight up to a couple who was holding hands across their table and said, “Go dance.” To my shock, they got right up out of their seats and headed for the open floor.
“What the heck is going on? Why would that couple just—”
“Sit down, Lauren.” He pulled my chair out for me—like we were out on a date in a fine restaurant and not in a noisy dive bar. “Please,” he added when I hesitated. “I just want to talk to you for a few minutes.”
I sat, and I placed my full shot glass on the table next to my wristlet instead of throwing it down my throat like I really wanted to as he took the seat across from me.
And then … nothing happened. He opened and closed his mouth a few times but didn’t manage to say anything. Good God, this was a letdown.
Belatedly, I recognized I had no right to be disappointed. I had clearly given him qualities in my head that he’d never actually demonstrated. I mean this was the same guy who’d kissed me and then dropped me on my ass in the hallway. Somehow I couldn’t help but think that every time he professed that he was too old for me, he was really saying he was too good for me.
“Was there something you wanted to ask me?” I prompted in my outdoor voice. Last chance, buddy.
He frowned, opened and closed his mouth two more times, then leaned forward and asked, “Will you be graduating this year?”
He’d pulled me off the dance floor for this? I shook my head, stubbornly refusing to give him any more than that.
He nodded like that had somehow satisfied him, and he sat back in his chair.
I gave him my best resting bitch face, wondering how much longer I should humor this humiliation before getting up to find Abbie.
Annnd … more awkward silence.
“What’s your major?” he finally shouted across the small table at me.
“Sociology,” I shouted back. This earned me another frown. “What?”
He shook his head, mouthing what looked like, “Nothing.” Th
en he glanced away, drumming his fingers against the tabletop. He seemed disappointed. Or … annoyed.
“What?” I repeated, eliciting a shrug as he returned his attention to me.
“That’s a fairly worthless major, don’t you think?” he announced in a voice loud enough to carry.
Assuming he was razzing me, I busted out laughing. Until I realized that he wasn’t smiling or laughing along with me—he was serious. Seriously insulting my choice of a major. My expression straightened along with my spine.
Superiority complex. Check. Douchebag. Check.
“What was your major?” I countered. “Back in the olden days when you went to school?”
“Medicine,” he answered, stone-faced. “I’m a physician.”
Hot as hell. Check. No sense of humor. Triple check.
And fail.
“Well, congratulations to you,” I said, saluting him with my shot glass, “on your worthy choice of major and profession.” Upon downing the cheap liquid courage, I set the empty glass onto the table, smiled, and slowly, very sensuously licked my lips. “So nice to have met you. Doctor.”
I dropped the word “doctor” like I was saying “asshole.” I could only hope his humor-impaired intelligence was superior enough to catch the distinction.
30
Lauren
I’d already sashayed my heart-shaped hiney halfway back to the bar in search of Abbie when I felt someone take hold of my elbow and steer me in a different direction. I didn’t have to look to know that it was him—my hot campus stalker-slash-doctor who thought I had a dumb major.
“Dude, what is your problem?” I grumbled, allowing him to guide me through the throng of dancing bodies toward the rear of the crowded club.
He couldn’t have heard me anyway, it was so damned noisy, so I proceeded to bitch aloud for my own gratification, “You’re the one with less than zero social skills who’s been following me around, spying from the shadows and leering at me like some hot, older James Bond on a foreign affairs mission to fuck my brains out. Well, trust me, Dr. I’m-too-good-for-the-dumb-college-girl-I’m-stalking, you could stand to take a course or two in the social sciences.”
Bond barked something at the two bouncers blocking the rear exit as we approached, and oddly, they stepped aside. “Close the door and allow no one to come out this way after us, understand?” Dr. Bossypants further decreed as he led me through the back door and into the dark alley behind the club.
“My problem”—he rounded on me once the metal back door had shut with a heavy thud, silencing the noise of the club—“is that you insist upon wearing clothing that is too short and too tight.”
“Oh … Em … Gee.” I jerked my elbow from his grasp. “You did not just say that to me.”
“My problem,” he continued, stepping right up into my personal space, “is that your ass in that pencil skirt makes me want to drop to my knees and thank God for finally creating a perfection worth sinking my teeth into.”
Uh … wha—?
I backed up a step, reclaiming my personal space and praying that my eroding equilibrium would follow suit. He stepped closer, stealing it right back.
“My problem is that just looking at your face gets me hard. So hard I’m afraid I’ll come in my pants like a horny teenager if I stare for too long.”
Oh.
Wow.
“My problem,” he told me in a matter-of-fact tone of voice as he proceeded to back me up into the brick wall of the building we’d just exited, “is that none of this should even be happening. I never should’ve noticed you or your luscious round ass and angel face and perfectly formed tits”—he slammed his fist against the brick wall behind me—“with the perfectly diabolical nipples that are constantly, constantly fucking hard, in the first place.”
“Did you just call my nipples … diabolical?” I asked in a strange, breathy voice that came out as sultry as the molten inferno his words had ignited in my sex.
“Yes.” He reached for the buckle of his pants.
My eyes tracked the movement and saw that he was so not kidding about the “hard” part of his rant. No part of him was touching me, but he was standing so close, I swore I could feel the heat emanating off of that big cock—warming the butterflies scattering in my lower belly through the fabric of my high-waisted skirt.
“My problem … is that I’m about to fuck you in a dirty alley, unless you set a clear boundary right now and tell me to stop.”
My clit began throbbing so rapidly at his ultimatum that I was certain had there been more light in the alleyway, its fluttering would’ve actually been visible against the front of my tight skirt.
“Fuck no, I am not stopping this!” I blurted.
I saw his eyes momentarily widen and his lips part in the dim light of the alley.
“Fine, then. But understand that I am not calling you tomorrow,” he warned, abandoning his belt to reach for the hem of my skirt.
“Damn straight you aren’t.” I gasped as he pulled the hem of my skirt clear to my waist and simultaneously spun me around to face the brick wall. “Because I’m not giving you my number.”
I yelped when his palm connected sharply with my now-exposed thong-clad ass. “Brat. You would give me your number, and you know it,” he scolded in my ear, squeezing my smarting ass cheek in his hand.
I meant to groan an “Oww,” but somehow it came out as “Ohh” instead. This seemed to irritate him further, because it earned my other cheek a smack.
“Cut it out or I’m gonna come in this alley before you even get that hulking cock of yours inside me,” I complained.
That did it.
My panties were shredded straight off of me, and his hands were suddenly groping me everywhere at once, so fast it made my already-dizzy-with-lust head spin. I made a noise that sounded something like a cat getting strangled when both of his hands attacked my soaking core—his fingers scrambling to penetrate me like they were starving to get inside.
“You’re going to feel me for days,” he threatened, pressing his naked, hard length up against my ass as he thrust several fingers inside me.
“Bring it,” I managed to rasp.
“Shut up,” he snarled back, his voice gruff.
I couldn’t have found words if I’d wanted to then as his fingers began fucking me like I was in trouble for something. His other hand grabbed hold of my silk top at the front neckline and ripped it apart.
My bra was torn off next and my naked breasts were pushed up against the coarse, harsh texture of the cold brick building as my wristlet dropped from my hand and hit the pavement.
Oh, shit.
He grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked my head back. I was trying to find the voice to tell him to slow down, when he found my G-spot, and I started emitting involuntary sounds I’d only heard on Animal Planet before as my body went wild—squirming and jerking against his fingers.
No one but me had ever found my G-spot before. And clearly, I hadn’t known what to do with it. Because this was like nothing I’d experienced. I felt as if I was rapidly losing control of my own body’s functions as he worked places within me that I hadn’t known existed.
“You are obscenely wet,” he hissed in my ear. It sounded like a reprimand. The next yank he gave my hair confirmed it. “So ready to be fucked.”
Dear God, I really was going to come before he even got his dick in me.
“Any male could smell you from miles away right now,” he grumbled. His thumb rolled over my clit for the first time, and I almost came apart in squealing orgasm. But he took it away too soon. “You smell like a bitch in heat.”
That’s not—What?
“Have to mark you.” He said it as if it was a problem he had to take care of; a chore that he was cross about. “Fill you.”
Whoa, wait just a minute …
“Condom!” I managed to screech. It sounded more like “Con-daaaaaaamn” as his teeth sank into my earlobe—and not in the cute love-bite kind of way but
in the he-definitely-drew-blood kind of way.
Stars exploded behind my vision as he mashed the heel of his palm into my clit and growled over my smarting ear in his mouth the one word no man is ever supposed to say in response to a safe-sex request: “Never.”
I came with my knees buckling and my limbs flailing like a marionette, held up by the cold brick wall scraping my nipples and his palm still rhythmically pressing against my sweet spot as I gushed so hard over his fingers inside me I feared I was going to leave a puddle in the alley.
His other hand left my hair to spread my ass cheeks apart, and the broad head of his cock sought entry from behind the moment he withdrew his fingers from my convulsing core.
Fuck sakes, he felt huge entering me.
Because he was huge.
And I was still coming—my insides contracting in orgasm, my muscles squeezing and pushing against him. Despite how beyond slick I was from my orgasm, and how much I wanted this, my body was struggling to take him.
“May God help you,” he swore before shoving his length hard and fast all the way into me.
I cried out and went up onto my tiptoes as he bottomed out.
He grabbed me roughly by the hips and yanked me back down, bumping hard against my cervix. “All,” he grunted. “Or nothing.”
Reality smacked me then—like a cockhead to the cervix. I was getting fucked in an alley by a virtual stranger who may or may not have been stalking me for months.
He’d looked big and fit to me before, but now he felt far stronger than he looked. Strong enough to overpower and maneuver my body as if I were a weightless ragdoll—as he was doing now. And he was ramming into me with the desperation of a man recently released from prison. Like a man who hadn’t been inside a woman in over a decade.
This was the most dangerous, irresponsible thing I’d ever done.
And by far the hottest.
Then I heard an animal growling loudly behind me. Directly behind me.
Sharp teeth nipped the top of my shoulder. My reflexive shriek of alarm was squelched—downgraded to a whimper of distress—as a rough-skinned palm caged my throat and a large, clawed hand scraped down the wall right in front of me, slicing and crumbling solid brick and mortar in its path.