Post Mate: A Standalone Racy Read (Deep Desires)
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Table of Contents
POST MATE
All Rights Reserved.
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Also by Liza Mitchell
About the Author
POST MATE
Deep Desires
Liza Mitchell
Published by Feather & Bleed Press, 2019.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for review purposes.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is intended for mature, adult audiences only. It contains extremely sexually explicit and graphic scenes and language that may be considered offensive by some readers. This book is strictly intended for those over the age of 18.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older. All acts of a sexual nature are completely consensual. No one is related in this book.
POST MATE
Copyright © 2019 Liza Mitchell
Edited by Jennifer at Mistress Editing
CHAPTER ONE
____________________
ELISE
Elise slipped into her house, kicking the door closed behind her, grateful to escape the punishing heat and humidity of the southern summer afternoon.
She slid her bag off of her shoulder, dropping it to the floor. Well, almost dropping it to the floor. “Mother of dragon fuckers!” she screamed as the straps snagged on her cast and jerked her still very injured arm, sending blinding pain through her entire right side.
People walked around with casts all the time, and they looked like brightly colored tape covering a completely normal limb. Elise was not that lucky. Deep purple and yellow bruising covered her arm in circular splotches, like some kind of skin disease in a sci-fi movie. On top of that, her fingers were bruised and swollen sausages sticking out of the end of a black cast. Black, so no one would get the fancy idea of signing it.
The contents of her bag had spilled out in to her entryway. Lipsticks rolled in every direction—why the hell did she carry two dozen? She could only wear one at a time—while everything else seemed to throw itself as far away from her purse as possible, creating a spread of crinkled receipts and half empty packages of gum across her wood floor.
She threw her head back and groaned. Today was not her fucking day.
Elise kicked everything into a pile and paused when she saw the prescription bottle the hospital had discharged her with. Her wrist did kill. They did say she could take one when she got home. But those pain pills legitimately scared the shit out of her. She was probably being naïve, probably over cautious. But half the people she knew addicted to something started with a football injury in high school.
Wine could numb her pain—and her bruised ego—and didn’t come with any of the terrifying side effects.
Except her fridge was devoid of booze.
Elise pulled her phone out of her shorts, held it in her left hand, and tried to stretch her thumb to unlock the screen. Her fingers shuffled against the case almost involuntarily, trying to settle into a comfortable position. For fuck’s sake, Left Hand, you’ve held a phone before, haven’t you?
She gave up trying to unlock the phone one-handed and instead pressed her swollen index finger against the home button. The phone buzzed and an error message flashed. She pounded the button harder and shrieked as pain shot up her arm. The same error message appeared.
Taking a deep breath, she entered her passcode and finally succeeded in unlocking her phone. She found her food delivery app and ordered a bottle of rosé. She could have been halfway to the store by now, but that would have involved going back outside into the six-thousand-percent humidity. Plus, she was participating in the local economy by providing work for someone in her community. Right? Right.
Confirmation came though that her delivery would be made in thirty minutes. Perfect, just enough time to take a cold shower and wash off the horror of the day before she drank a bottle of wine… alone.
CHAPTER TWO
____________________
JAMES
No tie. No schedule. No boss. No quotas. No tie. No schedule. No boss. No—
“Oof!” James’s front tire drove into a pothole, causing his chest to slam into his handle bars, knocking the wind out of him and disrupting his mantra. He had a fucking mantra.
No tie. No schedule. No boss. No quotas. No tie. No schedule. No boss. No quotas. His mantra actually perfectly matched with the rhythm of his feet on the pedals and the song blasting in his headphones.
Some days he needed to constantly remind himself why he’d chosen to leave his job and work almost solely off of gigs from apps. Today, when his car was in the shop and he was biking around downtown in ninety-degree heat, was one of those days.
All afternoon he’d been running between cafes and office buildings picking up sandwiches and sweet teas and dropping them off in massive, obscenely ornate reception areas. And everyone he’d encountered had given him that same look of pity. His face was beet red and covered in sweat. Graciously his soaked armpits were hidden by the company’s black uniform shirt. But he was pretty sure his ball cap was ringed with salt stains from hours of sweat that had soaked the fabric then evaporated under the brutal afternoon sun.
He turned a corner down a residential block and eyed the house numbers, closing in on 5762. Delivery number sixteen for the day, a single bottle of wine. Rosé. Probably a mom of three facing dinnertime alone. Or a group of barely legal twenty-one-year-olds. No, they would have ordered three bottles.
James tore his headphones out of his ears as he jumped up the front steps and rang the doorbell. He entered the delivery in his phone while he waited and skimmed the other orders in the area, scoping out his next gig. But he couldn’t claim his next order until this one was complete…
He pressed the doorbell again. Harder. As if that would make it ring louder.
A muffled yell came from somewhere inside the house, and he heard someone running across the floor. Just when he expected the door to open, something—someone—crashed into the other side and erupted into a series of elaborate curses.
“Son of squirrel fucking… cheap ass greedy Scrooge McDicklessDucks and their useless shitty non slip rug. They can take that claim and ram it straight up their…”
He took a step back and quickly swapped out his phone for the bottle of rosé. Whoever was on the other side of the door clearly did not have three kids within earshot and definitely needed to chill. He should make a quick exit and avoid being on the receiving end of her next tirade.
The deadbolt snapped, and the front door opened abruptly, revealing a mass of dripping wet blond hair. The woman was talking to the ground, straightening a rug with her feet. “Hey, hi, sorry about… all that.” She waved a hand around and flipped her hair back, showering him with a spray of water. “And that too,” she added with a grimace. “Although, maybe that felt damn good, given the fact that it’s hotter than Satan’s nut sack today.” She smirked and canted her head like she was waiting for him to agree.
James just stood on her front porch, mouth agape, unsure what whirlwind he�
��d just wandered into. The woman standing in front of him was a fucking gorgeous disaster. She’d have been stunning in sweats and a turtleneck; instead, she’d answered her door in a worn, see-through tee… and shorts? Maybe? If they were there, they were short. Her sopping wet hair hung in ropes over her shoulder and dripped down her front, perking her nipples to life.
He blinked slowly, trying not to laugh. Or touch her. He wasn’t sure which urge was stronger. Satan’s nut sack. Right. Wrinkled old demon balls easily calmed the hard-on growing in his shorts.
“Yeah, it’s a scorcher,” he said in his bright, customer-service voice.
“That’s why I’m in here asking you to bring me the wine.” She giggled and reached for the bottle. “Shit! That was rude.” She bit her lip and lowered her eyes. James’s cock immediately came back to life. He wanted to bite the lip. Her fingers collided with the bottle, jarring him from his fantasy. He looked down to see her trying to grab the rosé with a hand that was eighty percent plaster.
She fumbled for a few seconds before snatching the wine with her other hand. “It’s new,” she said waving her cast around. “And apparently there’s a learning curve.”
James finally noticed the bruises and discoloration that covered her arm. His gaze slid back to her nipples, still pebbled under her shirt, and up to her mouth, a safe place… kind of. He asked, “That looks brutal, what happened?” Mostly out of obligation.
“You know the falls up by Old Rag?”
“Hell yeah.” He perked up and made eye contact again. Her eyes were as blue as those falls, a cool and icy blue, almost unnatural. “That’s one of my favorite spots, especially in the winter when there aren’t many tourists.”
“Well, I went up there to swim and dove in—like I always do—and found the one fucking boulder on the bottom of the lake, apparently.”
“Shit,” James hissed, reaching across her body and gingerly picking up her cast to get a better look at her arm. The cast only went halfway up her forearm, and he stepped closer, morbidly curious now just how bad the bruising was.
During his examination, his own arm skimmed over her nipple inadvertently, sending a jolt straight to his cock. He dropped her arm. Don’t touch her. He knew once he started, there’d be no stopping. “I should go. Hopefully, you’ll at least get a cool scar. I’ve got some wicked ones from some of my adventures, and I kind of like them.”
His heart was pounding, and he felt like such an ass hat. First staring at her tits, then touching them. The worst thing was, in the tenth of a second between realizing what happened and dropping her hand, he’d wanted to do it again, just to push her boundaries and see she if she’d stop him.
CHAPTER THREE
____________________
ELISE
“Wait!” she called out. What the fuck was she doing? “This might sound stupid, but could you help me open the bottle?”
His eye twitched, and he stood frozen on her front porch. All right, maybe she’d read this situation all wrong.
Elise took a deep breath and dove in—what’s the worst that could happen? “It’s just that learning curve with this thing. I’m right handed and I can just see myself bent over with the bottle between my legs trying to get the cork out with my left hand and having it shatter all over the floor. Usually a rosé would twist off but…” She trailed off, slowly drowning in her endless flow of words, like somehow if she kept talking he would move. Why won’t he move?
His eyes moved between her and his bike. Well, not even her, her chest. She hadn’t missed that. She hadn’t intended to answer the door half naked; he’d arrived a full five minutes earlier than the app estimated, and she’d panicked.
She’d planned on making the wine exchange as quick as possible, but then she ate shit at the door and opened it to find him on her doorstep.
Fuck, that man was attractive. Powerful legs, angular jaw, and those fucking hands. He was staring at her mostly exposed nipples, and she couldn’t tear her eyes from his hands. They were massive, roped with veins, deeply tanned from hours in the sun.
And then he’d touched her. She could have stood there all day letting him look at her injuries. She’d leaned into his touch, making his arm graze against her. He’d reacted like she’d burned him… Maybe she had started some kind of fire. There was only one way to find out. Although, with her luck, her stream-of-consciousness invite or proposition or whatever might have doused whatever fire her flirtation had kindled.
His eyes bounced between her and his bike before a sly grin crossed his face. “Yeah, okay. But can I charge you a few minutes in your AC in exchange?”
Her pulse raced and a warm tingle spread through her core. Hell yeah, you can! “No problem. I’ll even throw in a glass of wine.” She stepped aside and let him in.
“I’m Elise, by the way,” she said over her shoulder as she led him to the kitchen. She swung her hips and walked with a light bounce in her step.
“James,” he answered. “Do you swim up at Old Rag often?”
She set the rosé on the counter and dug a corkscrew out of the drawer. “Oh yeah, I like to go pretty early, before it gets too hot or busy. I mean the park isn’t usually open, so I have to just park on the side of the road and walk a ways in, but…” She shrugged and smiled mischievously. “Some things are worth it. Ask for forgiveness instead of permission.”
Elise handed him the corkscrew and turned to retrieve some glasses from the cupboard. “How about you? Do you go there for the falls or the trails?” She reached toward the top shelf with one hand, stretching on the balls of her feet to snag the stem of a wine glass. Her fingertips brushed the cool glass as she closed her eyes and arched her back to get that last little half an inch of height.
“Whoa!” James yelled as he ran up behind her, pressing the entire length of his body against hers. Even his arm extended up behind hers, holding her cast against the cabinet shelf, his palm cradling a wineglass that was threating to jump to its death. “You weren’t kidding about that learning curve.”
“Nice save,” she said in a breathy whisper, partly in awe of his reflexes, partly because he had actually knocked the wind out of her, and partly because of the fucking erection he was pressing against her.
CHAPTER FOUR
____________________
JAMES
He slowly lowered his arm, cradling the rescued wineglass between his fingers. If only he could make his hand’s trip from the shelf to the counter last forever. As soon as that glass hit the stone counter, he would have to back away. And he did not want to fucking back away.
The bottle of wine sat on the counter unopened and abandoned because Elise had been too distracting. Holy shit, did that woman know how to use her body. He’d seen the broken wineglass coming a mile away, but he’d chosen to stay frozen in place, unwilling to disrupt the scene in front of him.
Her chest strained against the threadbare shirt as she reached her arm over her head, her nipples pressed so tightly against the fabric that he caught the shadows of the pebbled skin around them. Meanwhile, the tee rode up in the back, exposing the smallest pair of loose sleeping shorts. Her legs stretched underneath her, and she arched her back, forcing the very curve of her ass to peek out from under the hem of her shorts.
He’d had a hard time controlling his cock watching her reach for the glasses, but that final slip was his undoing. He was completely hard and straining against his own shorts when he’d finally jumped into action at that last possible moment. And now, here he was, wanting nothing more than to slip his hands under her shirt and hold her against him for just a little while longer.
The sound of glass against granite rang throughout the kitchen. James exhaled slowly through clenched teeth as he stepped away from Elise and went back to the rosé.
CHAPTER FIVE
____________________
ELISE
“So, um, Old Rag?” She slid the glass back and forth on the counter, unsure what to do with herself.
She wished that she was bent over the stone, her cheek pressed against the cold counter top as James shoved her loose shorts to the side and drove that really fucking impressive cock into her.
But he’d jumped away from her just as quickly as he’d dropped her hand.
“I love that hike. My buddies and I used to skip school and just hang out on the trails there all day. I was never really meant to be kept under fluorescent lights.” He uncorked the wine and Elise slid the wineglass over to him.
“I know what you mean. During the winter, when all I see are the four walls of my cube and no sunlight, I feel like every day is just work and sleep. I called in today because I was planning to spend the whole day at the park. Now I’m going to have to explain this tomorrow,” she said, waving her hand toward her bruised side, indicating, well, everything.
James laughed; his eyes lit up and his mouth opened into a truly genuine smile. “I once called into work and came back the next day with this fucker.” He lifted up his shirt and showed her an absolutely ripped torso. She stood there, stunned and distracted, her fingers itching to reach out and travel the deep V that disappeared beneath his waistband. “I was bouldering with some friends and made a really dumb decision. Forty-six stitches later—”
Right, injury. A white scar of puckered skin stretched down his flank.
“I was just lucky enough that no one at work could see it.”
She reached with her uninjured hand and traced the outline of the rough skin with her index finger. “What happened exactly?” Her hand traveled down his side, as if drawn magnetically to the defined muscles by his hip bones.
“I— Well, bouldering is done close to the ground so we don’t use ropes, just really thick mats.”