by Trixie More
He shook his head. “No, that’s not how this goes. I don’t owe you anything for this.”
It was her turn to be surprised. “Of course not, how could you?” She was sincere in that answer. She owed him so many times over, they would never be even. The thought kept her up at night. “But if I give you this, you have to understand, it’s about me.”
“How so?”
“Because you’ve always been worth capitulating to, always worth bowing before. You were always perfectly strong and smart and worthy.”
He grabbed the back of her head and pressed it forward, toward his erection. She lowered his pants, his underwear, let his penis rise up freely before her, proud and curved. Dark bruises slashed across his thighs. Where had those come from? He pressed harder, and she put her palms on his hips, resisting, not allowing him to rule her. Soon she would kiss every black and purple blemish, but not before they cleared this matter up. He thought she saw him the way Marley did, a guy who was too nice, someone lesser, someone she wouldn’t have capitulated to before his little outburst. She knew better. He was her construction god, and he was her wrecking ball too, come to shatter the walls around her. She stood, and he let her, as well he should.
“I always do just what I want,” she said. “Do you believe that?”
Derrick tipped his head to the side, leaning back slightly, watching her. A twitch of his mouth was all the answer she got. She’d take it.
“Have you ever done anything you didn’t want to, where I’m concerned?” She watched the grudging understanding on his face.
“You’re no lackey of mine.” There. Point made.
“By that logic, we don’t owe each other anything,” he said. It was her turn to blink slowly at him. Was he right?
“You want me to surrender to you?” she asked.
Derrick’s mouth curved sensuously. They were toe to toe.
She leaned forward, getting into his business.
“Make me.”
Chapter 18
Make me, she’d said. Every sexy image Derrick had ever conjured burst into his imagination. Her, with palms flat on his running board. Her on his worktable, flinging metal and plastic parts aside with wild sweeps of her arms. Her. In the morning.
No lackey of mine. He shuddered as his musculature worked out if he was going to throw her over his shoulder or shove her to the floor. He wanted to make her. He wanted to make her his.
And here she was, standing before him, her arms looped around his neck, her face turned upward, eyes shining. His prick was wedged between their bellies. She was laying down a list of rules for them. He practically shook his head. She never friggin’ stopped. He would have been irritated, but she’d already given him what he’d asked for.
You’re no lackey of mine. You were always worth capitulating to, strong and good and worthy. Derrick thought that’s what Allison had said. He wanted her to repeat it slowly, he wanted to have it notarized and framed on his wall. Allison Walton thought he was worthy. That was saying something. She pinched his neck.
“Hey! Not that relaxed,” she said with a smile. “Did you hear what I said?”
His mouth couldn’t contain his answering smile. “I think when your tits brushed my prick, that was the end of it for me.”
She hung her head for a moment and then looked up again. “Ok, let’s just get to the important stuff. If I say Beetlejuice, that’s it, we stop, OK?”
He couldn’t keep a straight face. “Beetlejuice? That’s the secret, fifty colors, get-out-of-jail word you want?”
She laughed. “Absolutely. Look how effective it is. For sure you’ll have to stop beating me if I say that. If I say it three times, a miniature Michael Keaton shows up in his black and white pajamas.”
“I’m not going to beat you.” Was he? Make me. What kind of man had a woman like this?
“I’m going to beat you,” she said waggling her eyebrows. When Derrick had pushed her to her knees, he’d just wanted her to admit he was a match for her, and maybe suck him off. He really hadn’t thought this far out. On the other hand, the thought of bossing her around the bedroom was definitely appealing to him. He leaned in.
“You, are a lodestone.”
Her eyes shone like stars.
“I’m iron.”
Her mouth went into a little O. That worked. Amazing.
He whispered, “You, are … very bad.”
A wild flush raced across her face, and that was it. Derrick pushed her up against the wall and devoured her mouth, pressing his tongue inside, pressing his cock into her soft belly, rubbing it there as he worried her lower lip, kept his tongue to himself, let her chase it back into his mouth only to have him suck on hers, hard. She moaned and started unbuttoning her jeans. He pushed on her head and down she went. He stopped her, and she squatted there, not kneeling, not standing, her thighs shaking. Pre-come ran down his cock, his arousal all he could think about now.
“Use your tits,” he said, uttering the first thing that came to him. Allison complied, kneeling gracefully and with her slender fingers cradling her breasts, lifting them and making an opening for him. She knelt up high, but the angle wasn’t right.
“Don’t say a word.”
She shook her head, no, she would do as he said. The way his cock reacted was pure insanity. He wasn’t a man who dreamed of having women obey him. Hell, he wasn’t even a man who dreamed of women in general. He was a man who built robots and defied death at work to prove something. Not now. He kicked off his pants, grabbed Allison by the waist and lifted her like she was a rag doll, carrying her back to the same damn worktable again. He set her on it and backed up.
“Take off your boots.” He was not going through that again. He stepped back and stroked himself. Allison started to untie her boots, and the light from the ceiling fluorescents showed him the dark circles beneath her lush lashes. She was flushed and beautiful, but she was also exhausted.
For fuck’s sake. One time inside her, that’s all he wanted.
He reached over and stopped her. “Don’t bother.” She looked at his rampant cock and then at his face. He could practically hear her brain working and then, she lifted her tits again. The look on her face, eyebrows raised, uncertain, was so out of character and cute, he couldn’t help it. Derrick laughed.
“No?” she asked, confused.
“No. No.” He bent over, grabbed his pants.
“But I thought I was a Derrick magnet!”
The statement caught him funny, and he guffawed then, and that set her off.
“You are, love. You are such a dick magnet, I swear.”
Her voice quivered with laughter. “Maybe you said Beetlejuice and I missed it?” That set them both off.
“Look, how about we leave all of this mess? OK? And we go back to your place, and we both get into your bed, and we curl up like spoons and sleep the sleep of the just? How about that?”
“You want to sleep?”
No. Hell no. But she needed it.
“Hell yes, I want to sleep,” he said, tossing her shirt and bra at her. Bless her heart, she looked crushed. She’d been ready to kill him fifteen minutes before that. He was signing up for a lifetime of work here, there was no doubt. For tonight, he was taking his cavewoman home and putting her to bed. “And then, when the sun starts to come up …” He told her his dirty fantasy as she dressed.
“Not for our first time! I don’t want to be asleep!” He laughed again, picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. Lucky him, she only kicked him on the left side of his ribs.
Allison climbed the white marble stairs to her apartment, behind her, Derrick followed. She felt like he had a secret force field around him, an outpouring of heat and energy that only she could feel. Her back tingled, so aware of him, behind her, so close. It started the strangest impulse in her like she wanted to break and run away, knowing he would chase her, catch her, lay her down and claim her. The idea was immediate, the feeling of awareness strong and unnerving.
This wasn’t like her. Normally, if you could call the couple of men she dated enough to be a normal pattern, she led them up the stairs, and they followed, just like now, but she felt in control, magnanimous, allowing them entrance. She would set the tone, she would run their coupling. This time, with the massive bulk of him behind her, his hands gentle on her waist when they came to the landing, everything was different. With him stepping close behind her as she unlocked her apartment door, his dick pressed into her lower back, his chin whispering against her shoulder as he simply watched her unlock the door, it didn’t feel like she was the one leading. It felt more like he was guiding her, more like when you rode your two-wheeler for the first time, and you knew someone was holding the back fender, just a bit, running along. It was you, but with help.
She turned the key in the lock and looked over at Derrick’s face, his stubborn jaw, his coffee eyes. “We’re here,” she said.
“Finally.” He kissed her behind her ear, one hand coasting down to her bottom, rubbing it, measuring it. “All I want to do is rub your ass until I fall asleep.”
She laughed. On the way over, he’d told her about his day. She shouldn’t have been surprised by it. Of course, he’d been up and working as early as she had. She’d become aware of construction sites now, watching the silhouettes of the ironworkers against the sky as she went about her deliveries. He’d fallen today, been stopped by his harness and she blessed the dark contusions on his perfect thighs. “Come on, Luke Skywalker, let’s get you inside then. I happen to own the best bed on the planet.” That much was true. Here, in this, she could reign supreme. Her mattress was sublime, a feather bed on top, fluffed and heavenly. The linens were soft, white, cotton and the duvet, full of down. “It’s so fine, I could spend the rest of my life in bed.”
“You smell like garlic,” he said.
“What?” Oh no. Her hair had picked up the smells from the kitchen, and she couldn’t tell. It happened all the time to cooks.
“I didn’t notice it in the kitchen,” he said.
“I don’t want to wash my hair tonight!”
He laughed at that and squeezed her. “Love, you were ready to have balls-to-the-wall sex less than a half hour ago.”
“I know,” she whined. “But I was worked up then! Now, you’ve promised me sleep, and I want that.” Allison felt split into personalities. The part of her that wanted to find a man to love, who was interested in Derrick as a partner and lover, wanted to get into the shower and wash, even if she had to stay up for hours until her hair dried. The other part of her, the part she thought of as herself, was no fuckin’ way sleeping on wet hair all night and Derrick could sleep on the couch.
He kissed her neck, closing the apartment door quietly behind him, locking the deadbolt and then squatting down, untying his boots.
“Turn around, love.”
Bemused, she pivoted back to him, looking down at the top of his dark head, the back of his neck, the bruising there. His hands, large and gentle, began working on her laces. She placed her hands on his shoulders to steady herself, all the voices in her quiet as she just watched him. He tapped her calf, she raised her foot, he grabbed the heel of the boot and pulled it off, placing it gently aside. So careful in his movements, she realized. He was precise, every action clean and sure. She still had her hands on his shoulders. His dark velvet eyes looked up at her.
“I want you to tell me what happened to your feet.” Allison felt tense, she could tell him in five words, but that wasn’t what he wanted. The story was a long one if she answered his real question. He kissed her knee through her pants. “But not now.” She exhaled, and he moved to her other boot. Before he stood, he put their boots on the shoe rack and picked up their socks, following her down the hall with them hanging from his hand.
Her bedroom was on the left, just past Dorothy’s doorway, the bathroom across from Dorothy’s room, the kitchen across from Allison’s room. She didn’t want to give her home up, she didn’t want to go back to Sheepshead Bay. Did that make her a bad daughter?
“Nice place,” Derrick said, bringing her back to the now. Allison opened the door to her inner sanctuary. The room had the same hardwood floors as the rest of the apartment, but she had a thick wool carpet, in beige, with flowers in pale rose and sage bordering it. The bed was made up all in white, and the headboard was covered in rough burlap fabric. The wall behind the bed was exposed brick, left natural. Her eyes landed on the art she had above her bed, and she felt immediately foolish.
Always kiss me good night—the phrase was written on a white canvas, in large, looping, brown script. Foolish! She felt embarrassed as if she’d exposed a part of herself that she never meant to let out of this room. She turned and looked at him but Derrick wasn’t staring at the words, he was staring at her bottom. Allison smiled. “Are you going to be OK with sleeping here if I have garlic hair?”
He laughed. “You mean you aren’t going to shower for me?”
“Buddy, it takes hours for my hair to dry. I’m doing bupkes for you tonight.” She shucked off her pants, took the socks from him and dropped them all in her laundry bag, his included. “If you’re lucky, I’ll brush my teeth.”
Derrick stroked her face, looking down at her with a half-smile. Then he kissed her gently. “You’re fine as you are.”
Warm and warmer. That’s how Allison felt. Stupid, stupid tears threatened, just a little bit, as she looked up at the expression on Derrick’s face, gentle-eyed, slight smile, head tipped, all his attention on her. That look could only be called affection, or maybe … She wrapped her arms around his waist, laid her head against his left shoulder, careful of his bruises and squeezed. “Thank you,” she whispered into his shirt.
Holy shit. Derrick didn’t think Allison even knew what she’d just said. She was warm and relaxed and hugging him tightly, with so much affection, he didn’t think his heart could take it. Thank you. It wasn’t the first time she’d said it to him, of course, but it was the first time he didn’t feel like what he offered her carried a burden attached to it by a rope. Thank you. She wasn’t reaching for her wallet, or searching for something to give him back. She was just pressing her breasts against his chest, her head on his shoulder, her arms around his waist. To say she didn’t trust easily was like saying the flat iron building was interesting, it didn’t come close to expressing reality. Her thank you, was the same as her trust, that she gave it to him, made him feel … powerful.
Inside his chest, his heart thumped, solid and sure. In the circle of his arms, he held a queen, a formidable woman of indomitable spirit. He wouldn’t be surprised if she told him her feet were injured as she walked over coals to earn her right to rule herself. He squeezed her gently and kissed the top of her head. How was he going to live up to that?
She muttered into his chest. He smiled, and the image of her sitting on her worktable, offering him her breasts came to him again. Her face had been priceless. His smile widened, and he leaned back, to get a look at her face. Her lashes fanned out below her dark and tired eyelids, her eyes closed, her mouth curved. He could see the shell of her ear peeking through the curls that were tumbling free of her braid and standing around her face in a mist-like riot.
Derrick had to get them both to bed. He squeezed her again. “Come on, sleepy.”
“Oh!” She was on the move again, turning down the covers, lighting a small lamp on one bedside table, trundling back, pulling her shirt off, unhooking her bra, her breasts, firm and perfect, not small, not large, swaying as she moved in only her underwear, back to her laundry bag. She wiggled her fingers. “Give me your clothes.”
“Don’t stuff them in there,” he said. “I gotta be able to get home tomorrow.”
She eyed him up and seemed to arrive at the only reasonable conclusion. No one in this apartment had anything he could wear. His clothes went on the dresser. He slipped his thumbs into the top of his jockeys. She raised her eyebrows. He tugged his underwear off. She tentatively fiddled with the
waistband of hers.
“Those aren’t going to save you in the morning,” he said.
Off they came. Best. View. Ever.
Chapter 19
The firm thrust of Derrick’s cock against her ass was the absolute best way to sleep. She glanced at her bedside clock. Not even four a.m., plenty of time. She snuggled deeper into her feather bed, the fluffy down comforter warm and perfect and now, she’d found the one thing her magic bed had been missing. Construction god. She thought of him last night. Wrecking ball.
Ugh, it was too much to think about. In Allison’s mind, she saw herself pushing piles of poker chips across the green, green cloth. All in. The decision was made. She was going to ride this train until its final stop. Smiling, feeling certain, she pressed her ass back into Derrick’s groin. So damn warm. She closed her eyes and drifted off again.
The next time she opened her eyes, she was curled on her side, facing into his chest. The palm of her hand rested over his heart. She studied the sexy, hard man in her bed. His chest was defined, a deep groove running between his pectorals. Around his neck, the muscles made a collar of smooth hills and valleys. It was likely all that muscle had prevented him from greater injury when the bat had hit him. She thought about a man like this, so strong and large, kneeling on the floor of a garage, waiting to understand if the person behind him was going to pull a trigger and the images of men, kneeling in a foreign land, came back to her, unasked for.
The aftermath of September eleventh left no resident of New York unchanged. Allison had been only eight, starting her life as a third-grader, when the towers fell. Her mother had still been with them. She remembered, of course, she did, the urgent whispers of Mrs. Faustine and Miss Bell at the front of the room. The looks on their faces igniting a buzz of excitement and worry amongst the students, sitting at their little desks, waiting for whatever was coming next. Miss Bell had started to cry, one large sob escaping into her waiting hands before she hurried, face covered, out of the classroom. Mrs. Faustine, who was much older, stood at her desk exactly the way she always did. Her short-sleeved shift hanging straight to just above her wrinkled knees, one arm straight, fingers curled into her palm, the knuckles resting on the top of her desk, ever ready to give a sharp knock, her seamed and not unkind face staring over her student’s heads, lost in deep thought. Allison stared back at her, suddenly glad she was in Mrs. Faustine’s third-grade class and not Miss Bell’s.