Sweet Tooth: A Second Chance Romance

by Aria Ford

  The men are arguing but I’m not eavesdropping. It’s just pretty hard to miss when the shorter guy, Nice Lapels, drops a loud goddammit, Griffin. Heather comes back and crooks an eyebrow at me in question. I shrug, not knowing what they’re arguing about. I ask her to take the soup and she fortunately does. I’m loafing around, polishing wine goblets when I hear a chair overturn. I look out to see what happened, and it looks like Nice Lapels stormed off, maybe to the bathroom or maybe to leave. I go back to my goblets and wait for Heather to return and give me the gossip.

  Nice Lapels peeks into the kitchen, “Excuse me, miss,” he says, nice as can be, “I have a problem, could you…?”

  I set down the glass I’m wiping and go with him into the hallway. I hope there’s not a problem. Long blond hair in the salad is what I’m guessing. I touch my ponytail self-consciously.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask. “I’m sure we can fix it—”

  Then his mouth is on mine, and I’m pinned against a wall. It’s the dim hallway outside the bathroom. I push against him, but he’s really strong. I can’t decide if I should kick him in the nuts. I want to, but I’m for sure losing this job if I do. Maybe he’s drunk or he thinks I was coming onto him with the unbuttoned buttons on my shirt. I struggle and twist and push against him. Nothing works. I can feel his teeth. His tongue is in my mouth and his hands are yanking my shirt open. I turn my head as hard as I can and try to scream. He slams his hand over my mouth, pinning my head to the wall. I feel hot panic in me and start to cry. He’s going to rape me. I know it. This is going to hurt. It’s going to go on forever and there’s nothing I can do. He may kill me if I fight. He may kill me anyway. I should have kneed him in the balls when I had the chance. I cry. His hand is really hurting my jaw. He’s groping around in my bra now, and I just sob. I scratch at him and kick, but it’s no use. He’s going to do this right here in the hall, with people in the other room talking like nothing’s wrong.

  Maybe Heather will come looking for me. Probably not. She’ll think I went to pee just like she did five minutes ago. God, that seems like it was hours ago, a different life. A life where some creep didn’t just rip the button off the nice slacks my mom got me when she was alive and I was in college and I was safe. This is my worst nightmare right here.

  My brain stops the loop of what might happen, seizes up and just lasers in on the word no. No. No. He’s jerking my pants down. He has his dick out. How did he do that and still hold on to me? If I throw up will he let me go? Or will he hurt me worse? I’m so scared that I’m shaking, my legs and arms jerking involuntarily like my body is just shutting down, and I can’t even control it anymore. I’m crying so hard I can’t see. He’s got his hand around my throat. I could try to scream, but he’d just choke me, and I’m more afraid of not being able to breathe than I am of not getting help. I’m gasping already.

  He slams my head on the wall. I don’t know why. It hurts and everything seems to tilt and sway. I kind of wish he’d knock me out—his hand is on my throat again and then—he’s gone. Gone? His weight is off me, the punishing rough hands, the cruel rictus smile that showed his perfect teeth. He’s gone.

  Without him pinning me to the wall, I sink to the floor. My legs can’t hold me. I choke out a sob, surprised I can make any sound at all. I clutch my shirt around me. I see where he is now. Someone’s slamming him into the wall. Someone’s holding him by the throat. Nice Lapels/Rapist is getting his ass kicked. I want to cheer, but mainly I want to crawl far away from here and hide. I’m still shaking, still scared. I can’t look away. It’s the handsome man, Griffin. He’s saving me.

  “Give me one reason I shouldn’t beat your ass like the nasty little punk you are, Simpson?” He punctuates his words by bashing the man against the wall again.

  Simpson, which is apparently Nice Lapels/Rapist’s name, can’t give a reason since he’s gagging and coughing and can’t probably talk with Griffin’s hand around his neck like that. I rub my neck in memory of the way he was cutting off my air just a minute ago. Swiftly, Griffin has turned him around, shoved him back against the wall and managed to punch him in the kidney. That seems to hurt like hell if the sound Simpson makes is any indication. I wince a little.

  “You will never, ever lay your hands on a woman like that again, do you hear me? You will apologize to the server you just molested in the bathroom hallway. You will apologize to your brother for being a filthy piece of shit. Come on,” Griffin yanks him from the wall and turns him to face me.

  I scrabble away, still on the ground, not wanting him near me. Griffin doesn’t seem to notice me.

  “I said apologize,” Griffin says through gritted teeth and seems to do something to Simpson’s arm that makes him want to cooperate.

  “I—I—I—I—I’m sorry,” he babbles, looking at me with just as much contempt as he had when he was ripping my shirt open. I am a thing to him, not a human. He only says sorry because Griffin was hurting him. I just want to be far away from there.

  “You, up,” Griffin says to me, “You okay? Get up.”

  I nod, but I don’t quite make it. He shoves Simpson away and reaches down. I shy away from him and pull myself up by leaning on the wall. I hold my ruined shirt together, wonder if I should go back and look for the buttons. He takes my arm, leads me to the table. Oh God. I have to face these people who hired the caterers. The brother who wasn’t in on any of this. I shut my eyes and just let Griffin propel me forward.

  “Randy, I think your brother would like to tell you something. But first, I want to. He was attempting to rape a member of the catering waitstaff. Isn’t that right, Simpson? When I heard the whimper and went to see what was going on, he had this young woman pinned against the wall, ripping her clothes off. Before you say it wasn’t what it looked like, he had his dick out.”

  “Christ, Simpson!” Randy said, getting to his feet, “Is she okay? Are you okay, young lady? I’m sure you’re terrified. I’m so sorry for what my brother did to you. Do you need medical attention? We can have an ambulance here in minutes.”

  I shook my head mutely. The last thing I wanted was to be examined.

  “Please,” I said, backing away. Griffin held my arm.

  “Simpson, empty your wallet. You’re going to give whatever you have to this young woman to replace the clothing you shredded in your disgusting display of violence. Randy, you’re going to leave a very big tip after you sign this contract. You will also swear to me on your brother’s worthless life that you will make sure he never goes near this girl again. If he does, I will kill him. Do I make myself clear?”

  Randy nods, scrawls his name on a legal document, and passes the pen to his brother, who has dumped a lot of folded money on the table and is cowering in a chair. I don’t even want to look at him. He’s disgusting to me. If Griffin would let go of my arm, I could leave, damn him. He saved me, and I’m damning him internally right now because I want to hide. I want to be by myself somewhere away from all these people looking at me. Heather has come out to see what the commotion is, but I wave her away. She goes back to the kitchen. I don’t want her seeing me like this. Every person who knows just makes this worse.

  “I know that this in no way makes up for the pain and indignity you’ve suffered at my brother’s hands,” Randy says to me, taking money from his own wallet. I shake my head, stumble backward.

  “I don’t want it!” I say, and run.

  I’m out the back door in the quiet of the alley when I realize I’ve left my purse in the kitchen. I can’t even get a bus home without it. I slink back to the kitchen and snag my purse, swatting Heather’s hands away as she tries to detain me and ask questions.

  “I’m sick,” I say because it’s all I can think of.

  I’m crying again, if I ever stopped.

  In the alley I dig blindly through my purse for a safety pin. I have to get my blouse fastened together. It’s ruined, but I can’t go home on the bus like this, like the walk of shame or worse. I keep dragging air
into my lungs in big icy gulps. It’s not even that cold outside, but my insides feel hollowed out, and I’m still weak and shaky. If I had a safety pin, if I had some strong coffee with lots of sugar I think I’d be okay. As for now, I just lean back against the brick wall and let myself sag for a minute. I don’t have a safety pin, but I have privacy, room to breathe before I pull myself together.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Griffin

  She’s gone out the back. The blond waitress, the one Simpson was hurting in the hallway.

  The truth is, I wanted to kill him. My instinct when I saw him set upon her like that, his hand on her throat, his other hand digging at her clothes like a crazed animal—my instinct was to drag him off her and kill him. Just to keep hitting him, pounding him until he was nothing but a spatter across a crime scene.

  I can’t believe I held it together and managed to leave him standing. Not that he deserved it, but I don’t need a homicide on my already blotted conscience. I could so easily have killed him, and I wanted to. It shakes me to the bone to admit that.

  But for now I’m going to find her, put her in a car, and get her home safely. It’s the least I can do. I don’t say a word to anyone. I just stalk out the back way to the alley. She’s there. I feel the breath I’d been holding release. Was I worried? I think I was.

  The girl is drooping against the wall, phone in her hand, head tipped back like she’s trying to catch her breath.

  “There you are,” I say.

  “No. I don’t—I don’t want money. I don’t want to be paraded around as exhibit A. Here’s the poor waitress that Nice Lapels roughed up in the hall.” She sort of chokes it out, and I wonder for a second what she’s talking about and whose lapels. She must mean Simpson.

  “Did it—you’re hurt, aren’t you?” I can feel the rage that’s been seething in me start to course to the surface.

  She shakes her head. Then she starts pulling on her shirt trying to hold it closed. It makes my chest hurt. I go to her without even thinking. I can’t help myself. I take her arm. She looks at me, but she’s not scared. She lets me hold her. She just folds into my arms, fits up against my chest and lays her head there. I feel her relax against me, and she’s shaking a little. I can’t believe she’s letting me do this, letting me hold her, envelope her. She’s small. I have to lean down a little so I can put my chin right on top of her head. When I feel how little she is, I see red again, because Simpson went after her and didn’t have any trouble holding her down so he could hurt her.

  I never want to let anyone hurt her again.

  I don’t actually know this person. I try and tell myself it’s because I have a little sister, because I don’t want anybody treating Gina that way so I’m comforting this stranger and making sure she’s safe. But I’m just lying to myself. This feels nothing like my baby sister. I feel kind of shitty that I’m turned on right now. That holding this frightened woman against my chest feels so right that the heat of desire rolls through me. I want to protect her just as much as I want to make her mine.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, “no one’s going to hurt you.”

  I need her to know that, to know I’m not like him, like that sewer rat who put his hands all over her. It makes me sick. I’m also glad it’s not my brother who did such a thing. I swear I’d stick him in some kind of rehab until he was seventy. Lock him up where he couldn’t hurt anyone. Then I’d tell everyone he was dead, because I was ashamed of what a piece of shit he was. I’m getting angry again just thinking about him. Just feeling how vulnerable she is, how vulnerable it must be to be a woman walking around knowing that anytime you’re working or eating or shopping, this could just happen. Some man may decide to grab you and use you like an object. You’d think since I have a sister I would’ve thought of this, but it’s not the kind of thing I think about, I guess until I saw the live show right up close. This is probably not even the first time someone’s done this to her, I think with a cold wash of horror.

  I want to punish Simpson. I want to strike at him in some way he’ll understand in his reptile brain.

  “You should take the money,” I tell her.

  “No,” she says. She’s not sobbing anymore, she’s just talking into my shirt. I can feel the heat of her breath, warm and damp through the Armani.

  “Why the hell not? There’s no way he can ever make it okay, what he did, but you should take anything from him that you can, make it cost him something,” I insist.

  “It’s too humiliating!” she cries out, pulling back from me.

  I see the wretchedness in her face, and my throat feels tight. I’ve been making it worse, hurting her more by trying to pay her off. It hits me all at once. I reach for her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that. I wasn’t thinking about how it would make you feel. I wasn’t thinking at all.”

  It occurs to me how strange that sounds. I’ve apologized maybe twice in my life before today. I don’t regret my actions, or if I do, I don’t mention it. I’m also sorry that I dragged a traumatized woman out to display before her attacker’s brother and tried to give her money. It sounds debasing when I think about it now. I touch her face softly, just my thumb tracing along her cheek. Her eyes are shining with tears and she’s worrying her lip with her teeth. I see that her bottom lip is split.

  I curse then, bolt away from her and jerk open the door. I’m going to hurt him now. He’s bitten her, torn the soft flesh of her lip with his teeth like an animal. I want his blood on my hands, want to hear him beg for his life. My vision has gone almost black with rage. I can feel the metal door under my hand as I throw it back. Then I feel small hands in my arm, at my elbow, dragging me back.

  “Please, don’t. Don’t leave me,” she says.

  I look at her, at her pleading face, cheeks red from crying. I turn back to her, forgetting Simpson. Forgetting everything but her voice telling me not to leave her. As if I could leave her now. Her hands are on my arm and, though I’m much stronger, it feels like she’s holding me back, like I can’t move away from her, all due to her wanting me to stay.

  “I wish I’d never let that man touch you,” I say. “You didn’t deserve that.”

  She smiles at me. This slow, knowing smile that looks almost indulgent. “Please,” she whispers again.

  I can’t stop myself, so I wait for her to stop me. I go slow, my face slanting down to hers, my mouth brushes her swollen lips tenderly, the barest caress. I feel it, the jolt of it down the length of my body, and I feel myself stiffen in response to this first sensual touch. She moves toward me, raising up on her tiptoes, one hand to my chest. Her lips cling to mine softly. I cup her head in my palm and kiss her, lightly at first until I feel her lips part beneath mine. I slide my tongue in her mouth and the pleasure of it is a hot rush, as overwhelming in its way as penetration would be—the way she opened for me, the responsiveness, the yielding softness of her body and her lips. She gives a soft cry, her arms sliding up around my neck. She tilts her head, opens her lips to take more of me, her tongue touching mine a little shyly. I coax her, tease her until she’s giving me a passionate kiss, until she’s controlling the rhythm, the depth, and I’m her instrument. I’m flooded with need for her, awed by her resilience, her warmth.

  I feel like she’s taken my soul with that kiss. I grin against her mouth and draw back, feeling uncertain for once. I want her too much. It’s not like me to be all in after one kiss, to care that much if she decides to call it a night. I need her. She’s like a fire in me now, and I can hardly see.

  “Please,” she says, her beautiful, full lips wet from our kiss.

  I brush back a lock of hair that has come loose. I tuck it behind her ear and press my lips to her forehead. “Anything,” I say, and I mean it.

  “I—I want you. If you will. If you’re interested…I want every trace of him off me. I feel like he left fingerprints on me, and I want you to burn him off me. Put your hands where his were. Put your—”


  “Are you sure?” I ask, disbelieving my good luck. I want to hold her and touch her and make her feel as precious as he made her feel worthless. I want to make her say my name while I drive her higher and higher. I want to take her until she’s too weak to stand.

  She lifts her fingers to my jaw and touches me there, turns my face with the barest touch and puts her mouth to my neck. A bolt of sensation drives through me with searing heat and my palms burn with wanting to roam all of her curves. The spot where her thumb strokes my throat throbs with my racing pulse. I wrap my arms around her, take her mouth again with mine. She’s quivering, with desire and excitement now, not fear.

  She takes my hands in hers and pushes them inside her shirt, over her bra. I pull back instinctively, “Not like that,” I say. I want to touch every inch of her, want to fill her with pleasure. I don’t want to grab at her the way he did. She kisses me back, and it’s like a conversation. I know what she wants just like she said it out loud. I have no idea how I understand her, but I do.

  She doesn’t want to wait for the healing gentleness of my touch. She’s keyed up on fear and anger like I am, and she needs release. Needs me to burn him off her just like she said, so I pull her shirt off and place my mouth on her shoulder, her collarbone, making her shiver with a delicious sigh. I stroke the curve of her stomach and dip my fingers lower, opening her pants and letting her kick them away when they fall. My fingers are in her panties now. Unbelievably, she’s wet for me there, my fingers slipping along her cleft. I feel the want rising in my mouth. I want to do it, so I do. I drop to my knees and loop her leg over my shoulder. Drawing her panties aside, I put my mouth to her. I feel her groan of pleasure at the first stroke of my tongue. I let myself taste her, let her feel my tongue inside of her and my thumb rubbing a harsh circle just above. She comes against my mouth, her legs jerking and a little cry of shock that splits the silence in the alley.