by Anne Calhoun
“You must not be an Eastie,” she said with a laugh, using the nickname for second-or third-generation residents. “I’ve lived here my whole life. The angels watch over me.”
Chad gave her a sharp glance, then said, “You’re a woman living alone in the roughest part of town.”
Okay, so maybe it was a little naive, but this was her home turf, and anyway, the Riverside Business Park could change all of that. “This is an investment strategy. As soon as my cash flow stabilizes I’m going to rent it out and move,” she said, bending over to undo the strap on her heels. She straightened and stepped out of the heels, sighing her pleasure as her cramped toes uncurled into the worn linoleum. “Want a drink?”
“I’m driving,” he said, back to the door, arms crossed over his chest again. “Get changed, Eve,” he said, remaining up against the wall as if he’d been nailed there. Something primordial in her liked how he used her name, the commanding way he said it, liked the way anticipation surged in her veins when she obeyed.
The anticipation fueled the impulse to leave the door open while she unzipped the side zipper on her black leather shorts, and pulled the cami and white T-shirt over her head. The tops went in the laundry basket; the shorts went back on a hanger. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a fitted thin T-shirt with faded butterflies curving over her chest and around to her shoulder blades, slid her feet into Birkenstocks, and ducked into the bathroom to wash her face.
When she reentered the kitchen, Chad was right where she left him, all hard-muscled man, leaning against the door with his hands shoved into his pockets. She saw his chest, rising and falling with his breath, stop mid-inhale, but he didn’t move. Without her heels, he towered over her, and she couldn’t look away from the heated light in his eyes.
Anticipation, the dark, silent night, and impulse crashed together and caught fire. She walked right up to him, pressed the whole length of her body against his, tilted her face up, and kissed him.
It was a simple kiss, chaste, close-mouthed, but he froze. A smile teasing at the corners of her mouth, she brushed her lips back and forth across his once, twice, waiting for his warm, firm lips to soften and open. Nerves popped and fired as one moment stretched, elongated into timelessness, then a soft groan rumbled in his chest.
“You’d think you’d never been kissed by a woman before,” she whispered, then licked his lower lip.
“Not like this,” he said.
Then his tongue slid against hers as he turned her so her back pressed against the door. Palms braced on either side of her head, he leaned into her, trapping her between the door and his hot, hard body. She ran her hands under his shirt, exploring the warm skin covering the muscles and ribs of his torso.
Any reluctance was gone. He melded his mouth with hers like slow was a distant memory. His tongue thrust deep into her mouth before he backed off, gently licking at the curve of her lower lip. He broke away to plant firm, hot kisses along her jaw and nuzzle her ear. One muscular thigh slid between hers and pressed hard against her desperately needy sex. Catching her breath, she buried her face in his neck, getting a little drunk on the musky smell of his skin. His hands slid up her torso to cup her breasts, his thumbs sliding back and forth across nipples that peaked at the attention, and she sagged further against his thigh, intensifying the pleasure building between her legs.
Forget slow. She wanted to go to bed with Chad Henderson right now.
“Chad,” she whispered.
He froze again, then pulled away to look at her as if she were from another planet before his eyes cleared. He backed up a step into the kitchen, and clasped the back of his neck as he blew out his breath.
“I said your name, not stop,” she said, puzzled. “Want to work up an appetite?”
“No,” he said. “We’re going out. Now. I said slow, and I’m going to keep it that way.” He opened the door and stepped out onto the landing.
She stayed where she was. “Are you trying to singlehandedly prove chivalry isn’t dead?”
“No,” he said.
When it became clear he wasn’t coming back inside, she picked up her purse and crossed the threshold. She locked the door and preceded him down the stairs to the parking lot. The Jeep had no doors, so she climbed in and buckled her seat belt while he did the same. “Do you mind the top down? I don’t even have it in the Jeep right now. No rain for days.”
“No problem,” she said. Her hair waved naturally; to get it straight and styled required so much product it would take a hurricane to tangle it. Her mind jumped from tangled hair to oh what a tangled web we weave and from there to Chad’s reluctance to get physical.
“Are you married?” She grabbed his left hand after he fastened his seat belt, feeling the skin just above the joint connecting the long, tanned finger to his palm. “If you’re married, I’m getting out of this car right now, and God help you if you’re lying to me.”
No tan line, no dent from a wedding ring. Without a word he let her explore his fingers and healing knuckles. Seriously abraded skin drawn tight around scabs gave way to pink patches where the scabs had fallen off. “Good grief,” she said.
He reclaimed his hand and ignored her quiet comment. “I’m not married, engaged, or anyone’s significant other,” he said, turning the key in the ignition and accelerating out of the parking lot. “I haven’t been on a date in months, much less had a girlfriend.”
Which made his reluctance to take the edge off what must be seriously frustrated desire all the more odd. The wind buffeted her hair around her face. She set her purse between her calf and the console, gathered her hair against the nape of her neck, and said, “You are a very strange man.”
“Because I don’t climb on top of you every chance I get?” he said. “Call it respect, boss. Or foreplay.”
She looked at him. They were on city streets, moving at ten above the speed limit down the empty main drag, yellow lights turning red as they flew under them. The breeze tossed his hair around his battered features, blowing the reddish strands flat against his broad forehead, then back from his face, which had tuned again to unreadable as he drove. In the dark he looked like the kind of guy who’d take what he wanted without a care for her feelings. She wasn’t above choosing a bed partner based solely on physical response. Her body rarely led her down the wrong path. But something about Chad’s wavering resistance set off an alarm, a distant one.
Chad braked the Jeep to a halt in front of a twenty-four-hour diner near the interstate. Once inside, she slid into a booth and shook off her sandals, propping her tired feet up on his bench seat with a sigh. He reached for the laminated menus tucked behind the napkin dispenser, then shifted one bare foot into his lap and massaged it with his free hand as he scanned the menu. Eve slid further down in her seat and rested her head on the back of the booth, her eyes and brain completely unfocused by the deft, deep strokes.
“So here’s what I want to know,” Chad said without looking up from the menu. “Bust many couples in that alcove?”
Laughter pealed into the empty diner, the sound startling a curse from the fry cook in the kitchen window. Chad looked up, humor gleaming in his eyes.
“Oh, more than you’d suspect given that it’s a completely public space right next to the bathrooms. That’s why I installed the mirror, so Natalie or I see them before we’re all really embarrassed.”
The waitress arrived, pen poised above a blank notepad. Chad ordered four eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and orange juice. Eve, her head back to its position on the back of the booth as he worked his magic on her other foot, ordered one egg, an English muffin, and a side of sausage.
“Coffee?” the waitress asked, stifling a yawn.
Eve shook her head. “I’ve got to get some sleep in a couple of hours.” Chad declined as well.
“So here’s what I want to know,” she said when the waitress left. He stiffened, but she continued. “What did you do to your hands?”
He closed up, bricks layered and mort
ared before her eyes. The massage faltered, then resumed. “What do you think?”
“Boxing. Workouts, not fights. Not anymore,” she amended.
“What makes you think that?”
“No marks on your face,” she said, studying his eyes, the muscles in his cheeks, the tightness around his jaw. “Or on your ribs, but you’ve taken some hits in the past. Now the hits are all inside, hidden away. No weakness allowed. The workout’s how you deal with it.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw as he glanced at the pies in the glass case, then back at her. “You can tell all that from looking at me.” It wasn’t a question.
She shrugged. “You said bartenders should be good listeners. So are cocktail waitresses, but men don’t talk with words. They talk with their bodies, and what they don’t say during three hours of sports or stock market bullshitting. Am I right?”
He shrugged, neither confirming nor denying her assessment, then shifted his attention to her other foot. The pressure of his thumb against her arch made her jaw go slack and nearly had her purring when he said, “My turn. Here’s what I want to know. Who’s the guy you took upstairs tonight?”
Nice right cross. It was her turn to freeze. She sat up straighter and unintentionally tugged at the foot trapped in his strong grip. He tightened his hold, pushing one strong thumb against her arch in a move that made her entire body relax as he watched her with those all-seeing hazel eyes.
“Why?”
“No one goes upstairs except you and Nat. That’s smart when you’ve got thousands of dollars in the bar at the end of the night. But he went right upstairs with you, like he belonged.”
She hadn’t told her family, her brother, her best friend about making herself the bait for a sting operation on Lyle Murphy, so she wasn’t about to involve a near-stranger, no matter how well he could handle himself. “He’s a friend. We went to high school together and he’s looking for investment opportunities here in town.”
“So I might have another boss besides you,” he said, his finger lightly caressed her skin.
No way in hell. “More of a silent partner,” she said. “I want to buy the building across the alley from Eye Candy, knock it down, and put up an outdoor seating area for live music and parties. I can’t afford it without a loan, but my credit’s maxed. He needs somewhere to put some cash. We’ll see.”
All of that was true. It would be so easy to take Lyle’s money, go after her dreams, compromise herself and everything she believed in. She could tell herself that she’d use his money to improve the East Side and put him out of business, but she knew better. The East Side needed big, bold moves resulting in arrests and prison sentences to discourage the dealers and encourage people to force them out. Community activism started at home. It started with her.
The waitress slid platters of food in front of Chad, and a single plate in front of Eve. Relieved the conversation was over, she sat up straighter in the booth and reached for her silverware, her feet cooling against the scratched linoleum. He dug into his food with the focus of a big man coming off a twelve-hour fast.
She let him get half the sausage and eggs in his stomach before she said, “Here’s what I want to know. Why are you still bartending? You have a degree from the U.”
In reply he pushed the plate containing the hash browns across the table to her. At the shake of her head, he said, “Go ahead. You’ve been eyeing them since she brought out the plates. Something wrong with bartending?”
She took half the untouched fried potatoes and shook a glop of ketchup onto the side of the plate. “I’m the last person to tell someone to give up a dream for the day-to-day, but you don’t seem like tending bar is your dream. What was your major?”
“Sociology,” he said without looking up. “Not much of a job market for sociology majors. Never got out of bartending.”
Fair enough. “What do you do when you’re not working?”
“Sleep. Fix up my house. It needs a new AC.”
She gave him paragraphs of answers and got monosyllabic responses to her questions, but before she could ask more questions the waitress cleared the plates and left the check. Eve dug in her bag for her wallet.
“I got it, boss.” He tossed a couple of bills on the table. “Let’s go.”
Chad was even more closed off on the way back to Eye Candy, as if mulling over the exchange that had swung between friendly banter and intensely personal questions. He made a wide circle in the parking lot and backed into the alley with the speed and confidence of a racecar driver, braking to a halt in the narrow lane leading behind the bar. She got out and made her way around to his side of the Jeep, just a few feet from the stairway leading to her apartment door.
“I’ll wait until you’re inside,” he said.
She was tired of waiting. He was mystery and intensity and muscular temptation personified. She wanted skin-to-skin contact and she wanted it now. “Here’s what I want to know,” she said softly. “Want to come up?”
“Not tonight, Eve.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears, then laid a hand on his thigh. “You know, guys usually can’t wait to get me flat on my back, yet you keep trying to make this mean something. I’m just looking for something simple. No strings. No promises. You’re off the hook for a commitment.”
“You deserve better than that, boss,” he said.
He radiated desire, the potent masculine kind full of heat and promise, yet so tightly leashed he was almost vibrating. If anyone needed to succumb to an impulse, it was Chad Henderson. “That’s sweet. Very sweet, but your timing sucks. I’ve got a lot on my mind, and I could use a fast … dammit, I left my purse in your car.”
As she spoke, she stepped on the running board and leaned across his body, reaching for her bag resting on the floorboards by the passenger seat. The strap hooked on the stick shift, halting her irritated retreat. She braced one hand on the crease between his hip and thigh to yank free the strap and glared at him as she pulled back, intending to snap out something annoyed and cranky just short of “You’re fired” because the last thing she needed was a sexual harassment lawsuit, but then his hand was under her hair, hot and firm against her nape, and his mouth was on hers, silencing everything. Thought, speech, memory. Everything in her went utterly quiet at the warm, drugging power of his mouth, and before she knew it she was in his lap, twisting on his lap to straddle his hips.
“Easy…” he muttered, holding his hands out to the sides until she settled herself.
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she watched his pupils dilate, the iris almost disappearing. She opened her thighs wide and settled against him.
They were both breathing heavily when he growled, “This is a really bad idea.”
“It’s this, go upstairs, or we’re done,” she said. “You choose. Now.”
Unease flashed in his eyes so quickly she thought she imagined it, but with a low curse he reached past her to switch off the engine and the headlights, plunging them into total darkness, a state that made the drift of his hands over her body that much more potent. His surrender was as abrupt and wholehearted as his resistance, nothing tentative in his kiss, or his touch. When his right hand slid up under the soft fabric of her T-shirt to cup her breast, she tore her mouth from his with a gasp that eased slowly from her mouth when his thumb rubbed slowly back and forth over the nipple.
His left hand still cupped her nape as he took her earlobe gently in his teeth and tugged. He pinched her nipple, rolling it between his fingers while she gasped into the hard muscle between his neck and his shoulder.
He pushed her shirt up to her collarbones. She caught the fabric between her arms and her torso when she reached for his belt to pull herself closer to that bulge she knew meant sweet release. The movement brought her swollen breasts closer to his mouth and he took advantage, flicking his tongue over each nipple in turn. In some dimly functioning corner of her mind Eve realized they were making out like high school kids, his hands everywhere, clothe
s disarranged, unwilling to stop despite the promise of nothing but frustration at the end.
Or perhaps not. The rhythmic motions of her hips pressed her clit against the seam of her jeans, and she found a hot, tight groove. He gripped her hips as if to halt the impromptu lap dance, then his rough, reluctant groan told her the dark, swirling tide of desire had pulled him under. Fingers flexing and releasing against the curves of her bottom, he let his head drop back against the headrest as he watched her move, his eyes heavy-lidded and moss dark.
Her mouth hovered over his, teasing him in gentle payback, her tongue dancing against his parted lips until he took control, one hand sliding up to cup her head and press her mouth to his. His tongue slid inside, mimicking the thrusts and retreats of their bodies. The other hand left her hip and unerringly found her nipple again. She rewarded his accuracy with a nip to his lower lip before luxuriating openmouthed in the stubble along his jawline.
He slid the hand on her hip around to the base of her spine. The pressure intensified, edging out all thoughts of modesty, all worries about getting caught on the edge of an orgasm in the front seat of an open vehicle. The delicious, blinding pleasure came at her in honey-thick waves now, pouring from her mouth, open against the sweat-damp skin of his neck to her nipples, as hard as diamonds between his fingers, down to her core.
“Oh God,” she said as the sensations coalesced into one pounding crest that crashed through her. The rippling eddies left her slack-limbed and panting against his hard, warm body. She buried her face in his neck. His erection still strained against his jeans, a steel rod pressed to the swollen liquid heat of her body. “It’s hot as hell out here. Want to come up and share a shower?” she whispered.
“Nope.”
Feeling exceptionally relaxed and more than a little amused, she cupped his stubbled jaw, settled against him and said, “You’re a liar and a tease, Chad Henderson.”
“A consistent one,” he replied. He leaned back in the seat and tucked one hand behind his head. “You’re not satisfied?”