Love: In the Fast Lane

by Rie Warren

  And I fucking lost it. I kicked my pants all the way off. I locked her legs around my hips, stalked to the desk, and lay her on it. I pulled back then thrust in to the hilt. Pounding, ramming, furious hammering. Growling, snarling, grunting. My orgasm ripped down my spine and rocketed out of my cock. I came with shockwaves incinerating every muscle in my body and pleasure so intense I shouted up at the ceiling.

  Distantly, I heard Cat come again. When my vision cleared, I withdrew from her tight channel. I yanked her hips to the edge of the desk. I got on my knees between her dangling legs. And I ate her out some more, my cock ever-fuckin’-hard.

  Then I fucked her doggie style on top of my desk just because I wasn’t finished with her yet, not by a long shot. I got right up behind her, too, my knees punching her thighs wider. And I used her hair as a leash. Heedless of the papers falling to the floor, mindless to everything but Cat thrusting back onto my cock, I impaled her over and over again.

  I almost went blind from that orgasm.

  She flattened beneath me, her hips still moving, her pussy convulsing around me. She was whispering, “Ohgodohgodohgod. NickyNickyNicky.”

  “That’s what you get for teasin’ me, Wildcat. Fucked on my desk, twice,” I growled against her neck.

  ****

  It seemed I had a thing for carrying Cat. I held her tight in my arms as I walked bare-ass naked upstairs. It seemed I had an even bigger thing for her holding onto me—my badass, so strong woman snuggling in close. My feet slapped against the floors as I made my way to the bedroom. Late afternoon sun blanketed the house in glowing warmth from all the floor-to-rafters windows. Viper only whined once as she watched my retreating back. She lay at the bottom of the stairs, her meaty jaw drooping over her crossed front paws.

  I was well fucked, wiped out in the best possible way, boneless. Seemed Cat was, too. She burrowed under the covers and against me when I slid into my side of the bed.

  “Hungry?” I dropped a kiss on her shoulder where her flowering tat trailed off.

  “Uh uh.”

  “Because I brought you a piece of cake from downtown, triple fudge awesome.”

  Her raven-black hair spread across my pillows, my chest. I felt her smile against me. “Mm. You’re always so indulgent of your girls. Mimi, Viper . . . me.”

  “Don’t be putting yourself last on that list, Wildcat.” I clasped her by the waist to pull her across me. Damn if I was gonna be jealous of a mattress feeling the bounty of her curves. “Thirsty?”

  “Nope.”

  “Happy?” I asked.

  “Uh huh.” Pressing above me on her elbows, she teased my lips with a fingertip. “Tell me something. Why did you decide to become a writer, Nicky Love?”

  I drew lazy designs on her hips with my fingers, mirroring the swirls of her intricate ink. I gave her a wink, a smirk. “Why? You don’t think I’m good enough?”

  “Oh, I know you’re good enough.”

  Her sultry tone struck all the right playful notes, but suddenly I wanted to come clean with her. Cat deserved to know the truth.

  I sat up, skimming my hair back. “I had to reinvent myself once. That’s what writing good characters is all about. Taking them to the breaking point then pushing them over the edge.” I peered at her. “Building them back up again.”

  She watched her hand drift down my stomach, my muscles rippling in the wake of her touch. She nodded.

  “You know what I’m saying. You’ve done it yourself.”

  “But you’re not just talking about your characters, are you?”

  Suddenly tied in tense knots, I stilled her hand and brought it to my pounding heart. I’d held Daniel’s death and the circumstances surrounding it bottled inside for so long. Seeing my parents, Cat telling me about her own mistakes . . . it all bubbled up.

  “I saw my parents for the first time in three years today. That’s where I was earlier.”

  She shot up. “You said they were gone.”

  “They are. They were. They left me on my mimi’s doorstep when I was sixteen.” I shrugged. “Actually, they didn’t so much leave me as send me away on a plane by myself.” I watched Cat frown. “I think you met my grandmother at Gigi’s picnic.”

  Cat laughed. “Did I ever. The one with the braid, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s her. She raised me because my folks couldn’t keep me around anymore. Not after my brother died.”

  “Nick,” she gasped.

  I shoved off the blankets and strode to the window. “Daniel Loveland. He died when he was eighteen. Josh doesn’t even know about it.”

  My back tensed when Cat padded up and hugged me from behind.

  I shook her off to pace around the room. “He was a junkie. And I couldn’t make him stop.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “No. No God would do that to a family. Daniel wasn’t bad, he wasn’t sick. He could’ve had anything he wanted!” I crouched in a corner. I rocked on my heels. “I thought he was invincible. It turned out he was anything but.”

  “You’re not to blame.” Cat slid down beside me.

  “The fuck I’m not!” I roared. “I’m the one who found him, Cat. I fucking found him when he OD’d! My big brother, the heroin addict.”

  “Nicky . . .”

  “He was hardly breathing. I pried his eyelids open and they were pinpoints. I watched his eyes roll back. I held him while he jerked in my arms.” My body wracked as I dry heaved. “Then he was gone. And I was still holding him. And I couldn’t resuscitate him. I waited, waited, waited until the ambulance arrived. The whole time I tried to do CPR like they taught us in school. I tried to breathe for him.”

  “Nicky.” Her hand skimmed up my back. “Nick.”

  I shook my head. My voice broke. “He wouldn’t come back. He didn’t come back. And after he died, neither did my folks.” Guilt and hate and shame swallowed me whole. “I didn’t save Daniel.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Cat pulled away. Dead white and trembling, she started scrambling into her clothes. “I can’t . . . I can’t do this.”

  “What?” I couldn’t, I mean . . . what?

  She dressed in a hurry. Her gaze remained on the floor the entire time. I scrubbed a hand over my face as if I could rub away the image of what she was doing, the idea that she was leaving just like everyone else.

  “What?” I barked.

  She hurriedly searched for pants, any pants to drag on for a fast getaway.

  Fuck this. I got right in her way. I grabbed her shoulders. I got right in her face. “Look at me, goddammit. LOOK AT ME!” I shook her shoulders. She blanched, but I didn’t let up until she brought watery eyes to mine. “Can’t do what? Be real?”

  “I have to go, I have to get out.” She tried to drag herself away.

  I pulled Cat against me. I wrapped my arms around her. But she struggled so much I couldn’t control her. My arms slid away and she rushed to the door.

  “The fuck, Cat? So it’s okay you were a goddamn stripper, but you can’t deal with my dead brother being a junkie?”

  She wheeled around, finally all fire and rage. Her finger shook as she pointed at me. “This is why I don’t do relationships!”

  Oh, talk about a kick in the nads. I stalked to her. I gripped her chin when she tried to look away from me. “Bullshit. You don’t do relationships ’cause you’re a fucking coward.”

  Her head snapped back. “That’s exactly what I am.”

  Free from my grasp, Cat sped out the bedroom door. I didn’t chase her. I didn’t watch her.

  I listened to her race down the stairs.

  The door slammed. Her car revved. Viper whimpered from below.

  I slid down the wall. Utterly and completely numb.

  Chapter Ten

  The Cat’s Out of the Bag

  THE NUMBNESS WORE OFF. The pain that had finally begun to heal after Daniel’s death gained new traction. I kept seeing Cat turning sheet-white and shit-scared for reasons that made no freaking sense
at all.

  The woman I’d built up in my head might’ve just as well have been a fictional Siren¸ because my Wildcat—the one I thought I knew—would never tuck her tail and run off simply because of one moment of truth amid all the fun and fucking and . . .

  My Wildcat. What a goddamn joke that was. She wasn’t mine at all, and she’d proved it time and again starting with the first boner-inducing slap to my face.

  Cat pulled a Houdini, and I made no attempt to find her. Not this time. I channeled my energy into Bitches. The book took off. It was a good fit for my creative outburst. Don’t think, just feel, just write. That was what I’d always done. Except the gnawing ache grew into a massive black hole so huge I worried Bitches might become too dark. The lighthearted interspecies romp became spectacularly wicked.

  But whatever. A little angst never hurt anyone. Just my characters. Just me.

  Over the next couple of weeks while mid-November loomed, I threw myself into my book, the bike, and beating the crap out of a punching bag at CrossFit. Totally in denial about hoping not to run into Cat during one of my debilitating workouts.

  One could say life sucked.

  ****

  Aside from busting open my knuckles on the leather punching bag and burning the midnight oil on Bitches, I started taking Josh’s wedding seriously. With two weeks to go, I had a shitload of details to tie down, thank you Google with a helping of advice from Mimi and Marjorie. Double-checking their hornymoon reservations to Bora Bora, I made sure champagne and all the newlywed works would be ready at their arrival. I arranged the big groom’s gift from the guys. Whatever Josh needed, I was there. Including my plans for the stag night.

  Screw it. I shook off the doldrums. I made it my civic duty to make sure the Hens, the Widows, and ditto our arch-frenemy Jules Gem were coming and had their travel plans in order. Excited messages flew at a rate of twenty tweets per minute for #Stones #ThnxgivinIdos.

  Fuuuk yezz! @Jaque_line was enthusiastic as ever.

  Count us in. @BarebackGirlfriend aka Fawn replied.

  Cunt you in, you mean. @Felicity, one of Josh’s favorite Widows and a huge Leelee fan, didn’t have a problem bringing on the raunchy.

  Plus 1, or 2 or 3. Depends on my slaves. @MizzMistress threw her hat in the ring.

  @LeeleeSong, that lucky bitch. Janice, @WryterGoddess dropped in.

  They all retweeted that motherfucker with a resounding *le sigh*

  Nicky’s next w his Wildcat. My words, mark them. Missy got her Yoda on.

  It felt like my heart was ripping open as I typed: Not happenin’.

  Goddamn but I missed Cat. There were so many things to love about her and not just the superstar looks but fuck—her humor, her fricking hot Harley, her ability to possibly kick the shit out of me while she sucked the holy hell out of my cock. Fuck, fuck fuck. I was not going to goddamn cry about my break-up all over Twitter like some teenage loser.

  Roadblocked, cockblocked, headfucked by Catarina Steele once again, I took a page from her book and shoved it all away as I watched the sympathy tweets ping_ping_ping on my phone.

  Oh noez!

  Oemgee…

  {{hugz bb}}

  Gonna jump ur bonz, Love, now ur single and not gay. @Jaque_line made no bones about it.

  That constituted some form of commiseration, I guessed.

  @MizzMistress: I’ll restrain him for u.

  Yup, moving on . . .

  Slow ur roll, slappers. I called first dibs about 4 years ago. @WryterGoddess.

  O_o! R u avail @LoveN?

  The dreaded victory dance tweet came from none other than @PanDora. As if she didn’t scare me enough, the Dora part made me think of all the mornings I’d sat with JJ in front of Nickelodeon when he was still an infant. I’d hold him in one arm, giving him his bottle. He’d drift off to sleep then slurp-slurp-slurp with lazy pulls, as if on reflex. Moving the sleepy warm bundle to my shoulder, I’d burp him, waiting for the spit-up and the red-faced cries that always accompanied his colic.

  #cyalater tweets were wall-to-wall on my twitter wall when I tuned back in to my cell.

  #traitors more like.

  And I jumped the twitter-ship right after the Widows and Hens, shutting down my phone and hoping the battery drained dry, too.

  Rubbing both hands down my face, I pushed back my chair. Next I went for the scotch—Highland Park, eighteen-years aged. The thick caramel-colored whiskey had a nice smooth burn as it rolled down my throat. I parked my ass on the rug in front of the fire, lifted an arm and waited for Viper—my only girl—to take her place beside me.

  I didn’t need Pandora’s bizarre attentions compounding my pain over my breakup with Cat. I’d done my time with weird fans who thought brilliance leaked like liquid gold from my fingertips and my cock. That’d been the thing about Cat. She wasn’t enamored with the famous writer even if she did have all my books. She was real. She was so real she’d probably torched all those books in a bonfire already.

  She’d taken hits. She’d hit back and turned her life around.

  I chuckled darkly, sipping the whiskey. Maybe I’d had one too many already because I asked Viper, “Remember that one?” Which chick to pick—which piece of ass I’d tapped because I could?

  Viper whined as she pushed her muzzle against my side.

  “The woman who’d gotten a tattoo of my signature on her ass.” Slurring, I fell back to the floor, arms akimbo. “She wuuusn’t sooo bad. Not like the girl who climbed into my taxi, crawled onto my lap and open—” I hiccupped. “Opened her coat. Full replica of the Do It in the Dark wedding gown underneath. Aaaan’ the crotchless panties. Had to give an extra tip to the cabbie that time.”

  I winked at Viper with one slow blink. “’Course that was before I decided to play gay, right?”

  I never indulged too much or very often because of Daniel. I kept those addictions at bay except for lust—my one sin with Cat. But it was more than lust. And this new, raw loneliness was my price to pay for indulging in her.

  Later, after I’d half-drained the expensive bottle of scotch, I rubbed Viper’s head. Or tried to. My handed ended up somewhere in the region of her—I squinted my eyes—rump. “Gonna sleep here tonight.”

  Waking in the morning, I had:

  One dead iPhone.

  One massive heap of a dog half on top of me.

  One half-finished glass of whiskey perched in front of my nose.

  And one bastard of a hangover.

  I also had one single regret I couldn’t get over. Catarina Steele. Over the course of a month, my garage parts girl had revealed more thrills up her inked sleeves than I could ever imagine.

  The idea that I was done with her didn’t make me queasy.

  Nope. Not in the least. That had to be the liquor sloshing around in my stomach.

  ****

  A bright autumn morning with a crisp cut to the clear blue air found me at Stone’s, cursing out the Beast.

  Full throttle? It was far more likely I’d throttle the vintage Indian Chief motorcycle and then remove my fingernails one by one with needle-nose pliers, à la Chinese torture. It didn’t matter that the bays were open to the sharp breeze, I sweated buckets as I hunched in my corner, swearing about nuts and bolts and books and editors and goddamn motherfucking fucking fuck fuck Cat.

  Even Javier knew enough not to give me any guff, and Mick kept his never-helpful Dear Gabby advice to himself. Gerald had adopted my broody look, and everyone was one big ball of pissed off because of the vibe rolling off me like a tsunami.

  Hoping to—and dreading I might—see Cat.

  I was the most masochistic man on the face of the planet. Amen and pass the wrench. Or a blowtorch to put me or my ride out of our misery. Possibly both. A BOGO, a two-fer . . . ha.

  A pair of scuffed—and Viper-gnawed—boots toed up in my peripheral. When my eyes flicked up, Josh stood against the wall beside my bike. He scraped a thumb across his stubbly jaw, glancing off in the direction of his garage whe
re all his workers growled and groused instead fucking around with their usual asinine antics.

  “Hey, man. Your ’tude’s kind of messin’ up the whole happy workplace thing I got goin’ on here.”

  Ya think? I grunted and reached for a socket wrench, pulling my hand back just before Josh’s steel-capped boot trampled it. He stood on the tool, bulking up above me. “Boomer came by. Said Cat’s off the Stone account. You know anything about that, braw.”

  I punched to my feet. A hard sneer formed on my mouth. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told her. That’s bullshit, man.”

  Gerald, Javier, Mick, et al., perked up, at the ready to give their Doctor Ruth/Doctor Phil psychoanalysis.

  My glare ranged around all of them with a big load of fuck off.

  “Do we need to take this to the office?” Josh shoved off the wall, becoming the wall between his crew and me.

  “Yeah.”

  Without a word, he headed through reception and down the narrow hall, his broad shoulders almost the same width as the passageway. I shut the door of his office behind me. Folding my arms over my chest, I took up a corner.

  “This ain’t like you.” He pushed his ass onto his desk.

  “There’s a lot of shit that ‘ain’t like me’ you don’t know about.”

  “Bullshit. Like what? I’ve been your bud since you moved here.”

  The so-called cat was already out of the bag with Catarina, and it would really suck nutbags for Josh to hear the truth from someone else. “Well let’s start with my bike—”

  “Hunk o’ junk.”

  “The last hunk of junk I worked on was with my brother.”

  “Your . . .” His eyebrows scrunched. “Your brother?”

  “Daniel.” My eyes glossed over. “My older brother. Died two weeks before I met you. Died.” I shook my head. “He overdosed in his squatter apartment and I found him. I tried to bring him back to life, but I couldn’t. I mean, I was only a kid. He was gone. “

  I swiped my eyes as Josh treaded back and forth.

  The muscle in his jaw jumped. He pushed a hand against my chest and pushed fucking hard until I back-splatted against the door. “All this time? All these years, Nicky? When you made me think I was family?”