Sometime during the night, something woke me. I sat up, unbreathing as I listened. I heard the back door slam, recognizing its weak wooden frame as opposed to the heavier door that led to the shop. Then I heard giggling. I sagged in relief. Klayton brought a girl home. That’s all. Soon, however, I realized that wasn’t all. It was quiet at first. And then … it wasn’t. She started moaning.
I tried not to picture it. To imagine Klayton forcing her down. I knew she wanted it. She was willing. She was giggling. But in my mind, it was me, and I wasn’t willing. I plugged my ears and hid beneath his pillow. It wasn’t enough. I ran into his bathroom, closed the door, and hid in the corner with the overhead fan on. That helped some. I tried to block the images from my mind, the smell of cigarette smoke, the feeling of him forcing me down.
I was running away from him. He lay bloody on the ground. His ashtray lay broken, and he groaned, promising me he’d find me. In Klayton’s bathroom, I was safe. It was the first time I’d ever felt that way since I was taken from my college campus. And it was the first time I truly understood the horrors I’d been through.
The old me and the new me clashed. I had an idea of who I was. But I didn’t like it.
I curled up on the bathroom floor and used a towel as a pillow. When I woke, the house was silent. I used the bathroom before going out. After a round of inner conflict, I decided to leave his room. There was a sound down the hall to my right, like running water. Someone was showering.
When I got to the living room, there was a woman sleeping on her side on the couch. She was using his pillow. A white sheet lay loosely around her naked body. Parts of her were covered in tattoos. She looked like the woman he’d been talking to the other night.
Feeling a rush of relief, I went back to his bedroom. She was okay. She was willing.
It was me who never was.
Chapter Five
Klayton
There was glitter all over my body.
I washed myself four times before I got the tiny pink specks off my skin. With an angry jab, I shut the water off and stepped out to dry off. I gave my reflection a grunt of disapproval as I got dressed. All the while, I couldn’t get the look on Madison’s face off my mind.
Look, I knew I wasn’t a prince. I was far from it. I didn’t always do the right thing, I more often than not said the worst thing, and I had a rap sheet from my early twenties. But I wasn’t a piece of shit who hurt women.
I knew it wasn’t fair of me on some level to be this upset at her. She’d been through things I didn’t want to know, horrible things. But I didn’t like her looking at me like I was the monster who would hurt her next. I’d tried all night to erase the memory of the fear in her eyes when I went into my bedroom. I drank enough shots to give myself a headache and happened to run into my feline-loving friend while I was at the bar down the street. It worked, and … it didn’t work. Mostly because I knew the reason Mad was afraid of me was simply because of me.
And what could I do about that? Stop being myself? That wasn’t going to happen.
My bedroom door was still closed when I came out. Now that I’d had her, I wasn’t in the mood to play nice with my one-night stand. But I would. I bit my tongue and made coffee. Normally, I’d kick her out as soon as it was over. What was there left for us to say? Thanks for the blowjob? I probably should say thank you. It wasn’t bad, as far as drunk, whiskey-laden blow-jobs went. But thanks to my houseguest, I thought I’d try something different. Not be an asshole and do something that contradicted the absolute terror in her eyes.
I wondered what Mad was doing in there. Listening to me, starving and alone. I closed my eyes in regret. I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? I made her a cup of coffee and knocked on my door. A few seconds later, she opened it, making sure it was me before letting the door swing open.
She wouldn’t even look me in the eye.
I wanted her to. I wanted her to stop looking at me like I was a monster. She was wearing a pair of my shorts. Good. “Coffee?”
“Um, thank you.” She took it in her small grasp and stared at the dark surface. “Is your friend still here?”
Friend? Negative emotions slithered in between us alarmingly fast. “You heard us?” I asked in dismay.
She whispered, “Yes,” into her coffee.
She was back to whispering. Back to avoiding me. Back to wanting me gone.
“Let’s go inside.” I stepped into my room and gave her a hard look when she reached for the door. “Go sit down.”
She walked slowly over to my bed and sat. Finally, she looked at me. She didn’t like seeing my body, or anything to do with men. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine she wouldn’t want to be around sex either. I’d been too drunk to think about that last night, too pissed, the man she feared. I didn’t know if I could ever win with this girl. If I could ever do anything right.
I crouched down to her level close to her legs, making sure to keep distance between her skin and mine. It was the closest we’d ever been. At that level, our eyes locked. When we stood, there was at least a foot between us. I had a feeling that wasn’t entirely physical. It was figurative, too.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you need. If it makes you feel better, you have to tell me. I’ve been single for most of my life. I’ve never had to consider someone else’s feelings past my own. But I’m willing to do so. You just have to tell me. Hey, Klayton, you’re being an asshole, stop. That’s all I need. You hiding out in here while you suffer isn’t good for either of us. Tell me what you need, Mad, so I can help you.”
If she kept hiding, kept protecting herself, I’d keep hurting her and giving her reasons to hide. She had to tell me. I couldn’t predict anything. I didn’t know her thoughts and emotions. I barely knew my own.
Her silvery gray eyes glistened. I never noticed how there was a ring of light blue around her iris, and the rest mixed with the gray and soft blue. Her lashes were more honey, like the hair closer to her hairline. The rest was a dark blond. The smell of coffee was thick between us, and the steam curled into the air, giving us a weak wall to hide behind.
“Okay.” She gave me a small, timid smile. “I want her to leave.”
That smile calmed my soul. “You and me both.” I gave her a wink and stood. “Anything else you want?”
She thought about it. Her cheeks filled with heat, but she said it anyway. “Sanitary napkins. I don’t like tampons.”
It was times like that when she was a twenty-year-old. “I’ll see what I can do. That all?”
“I want …” She gazed into her coffee with her hair blocking her. “I want you to take your bedroom back. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Wasn’t happening. “How about this. I was going to buy a new bed for the room down the hall. I’ll turn that into your room. Put a lock on the door. Make it yours. You can have that bathroom all to yourself. That sound good to you?”
She peeked at me through her lashes. “Yes.”
“Anything else?” I was waiting for it. When she hesitated, I said it for her. “You want me to leave the women where I find them?”
She tried to hide it, but the relief in her gaze was difficult to disguise. “I know that isn’t fair of me to ask—”
“Done. No more sex in the house.” I nodded toward her coffee. “Drink it. I’ll take care of my sweet, generous friend while you do.”
She shook her head, and then she did something I thought shocked us both. Her lips lifted a fraction in the corners into what loosely resembled a smile. “She didn’t sound sweet last night.”
I stared at her lips and the glimpse of her straight white teeth. They looked so out of place, so perfect and clean. It told me a few things about her past. One, she hadn’t always been on the street. And two, there was a reason she didn’t want to go back. She’d mentioned her parents not wanting her to get a tattoo when she was eighteen. She was twenty now. I didn’t know how long, or even what truly happened to her in that time, but that wasn
’t a large gap between then and now. Whatever happened to her had to have happened in the last two years, maybe even less. And like her vulnerable question, her smile went straight to my groin. It faded fast, but I saw it, and a part of me wanted that teasing smile back on her face.
I turned and adjusted my jeans before she noticed. Seeing my body was one thing. Hearing me with my feline last night was another. I knew with absolute certainty that if she knew she’d given me two hard-on’s—even if I didn’t understand why—she’d freak the shit out.
I understood then why Cat left her with me. She couldn’t be out there on her own. She was leery and distrustful, but that didn’t mean she’d make the right choices. She was too busy looking for threats that weren’t immediate, that she’d walk right into a trap she wouldn’t see coming.
I left the room without replying, feeling uneasy in more ways than one. I gave my dick a pep-talk as I went into the living room and stared down at my other houseguest. Wasn’t last night enough? You don’t normally want them younger than you, or you know, fucking damaged either. Leave her alone, you horny shit. That was all true. She was hurting, she was lost. The last thing she needed was me reacting to her. I hadn’t anticipated that would be a problem. Cat either. Mad was twenty. Seven years younger than me. Seven. A year ago, she was a teenager. That sobered me so fast I felt nauseous.
And pissed.
If I woke my kitten up now, I’d growl at her—prove Mad right. I waited for her to wake on her own. As I did so, I made peanut butter toast and shoved it down my mouth to get rid of the whiskey still in my system. I was cleaning up when she began to rouse.
She sat up, bleary-eyed and flushed. The sight of her perky tits and hard nipples caused the blood flow to head south again. This time, my hard dick made sense. I gave her a grin, knowing she was probably trying to remember last night. When she blushed, I figured she didn’t remember as much as I did. Good.
“Morning,” I rumbled. Please don’t need a ride.
She started searching for her clothes. To give her some privacy, I headed into the laundry room off the kitchen. I took the forgotten load out of the dryer, and then opened the washer.
“Umm … Korey?”
I grinned to myself. “Not even close.” I poked my head out of the laundry room, spying her legs in her skirt.
She huffed, cheeks burning. “Kyle?” she tried next.
“You going to keep trying names that start with K until you get it?”
“Well, do you remember my name?”
“No. I never asked, kitten.”
“Kitten,” she whispered, eyes growing dark as she remembered how I made her purr. “Right. I had fun last night.”
“You did?” I approached her. When I got close, I skimmed my fingers along her inner thigh, grazing the tattoo I’d given her; she hadn’t done that to have fun. She’d done it for the ink. “I’m glad I could help.”
She shivered and took a deep breath, stepping away from my touch. She wasn’t fooling me. She’d been on her knees the night before, and now that she’d done what she wanted, she wanted to pretend she wasn’t the same kind of woman Cat warned me about.
“Klayton?” came a familiar sweet voice. It was low, but it was loud enough for my kitten to hear.
“Klayton,” she said, like Eureka! “I have to get to work.”
“You want me to call a cab?”
She shook her head. “Nah. My car’s still parked at the bar.”
I didn’t know why, but I liked this one. She was so reticent this morning when she’d been so nasty last night. “What’s your name, Kitten?”
She sighed, like please let me leave, I can’t stand looking at you after I swallowed your load. I was tired of women running away from me. I fixed her with a hard stare until she gave me what I wanted. “Lynda.”
“I like Kitten better.”
“Uh, Klayton?”
I looked over to find Madison standing there, wide-eyed, and worried.
“What?”
She looked at my kitten and then shook her head, shuffling quickly away. I glanced at Lynda, to find her frowning.
“That’s your roommate? I thought it was a guy.”
Jealous already? Red flags went off, but I ignored them. I wanted to put her in her place. “That’s my roommate. You got a problem with that?”
She must have sensed that Mad wasn’t going to be a part of this because she dropped her frown. “No.”
“Give me your number and get out.”
She gave me an angry, uncomfortable look but did what I asked. She wrote her number on a receipt she found in her purse and handed it to me. “You know you’re setting a bad precedent for yourself snapping at me like that.”
“You know you’re setting one too, responding to me like that. You like it when I snap?”
She gave me those kitty cat eyes, all smeared mascara, and light brown color. “Try it.”
“Come get another tattoo this weekend. You’re paying for this one. So, don’t think you’re getting away with it for free. But you’ll be wearing a skirt. Preferably a school girl one with no panties. Aren’t I right, Kitten?” I bent down and pressed an after-sex morning breath peanut butter toast kiss to her chapped lips. Truthfully? I wouldn’t mind hiking her skirt up right now and doing her on the kitchen floor. But a deal was a deal. I wasn’t getting laid again in my house until Mad moved out.
“Oh, you’re so right.” She kissed me longer, pressing herself into my body. She tasted like whiskey and me. “Call me before then.”
I raised my brow. “You tellin’ me what to do?”
“Maybe.” She winked as she reached for my door handle.
When she was gone, I looked down at her number. I turned the receipt over and read her purchase. Yesterday afternoon, she’d bought a happy meal from McDonald’s. Shit. She had a kid. I put her number in my pocket and then went to see what Mad wanted, trying to shake the feeling of taking advantage of a mother.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, stepping into my room.
She was wringing her hands on my bed, her coffee halfway empty on the floor. “I don’t want that back room.” Her eyes were guilt laden and heavy.
“Why not?”
“There’s a group of men on the roof next door.”
“Yeah, the owner of the pizza place below rents it out.” She couldn’t look at me again. “You can keep my room. I’ll take the back room.”
“I feel bad.”
Not as bad as me. “Well don’t.”
“I still do.” She chewed on her bottom lip and then met my gaze. “Maybe I can pay rent?”
Hell. My balls ached, and I wanted to say something that made me the opposite of a monster. What was it about her vulnerability that turned me on? What was it about her asking me for something she deserved? I didn’t get it, and unfortunately, that turned into anger. “You’re not paying rent.”
“You’re mad again.” She looked smaller in seconds.
I closed my eyes and breathed through my nose. “I get mad sometimes. It doesn’t mean I’m going to hurt you.”
“How do I know that?” she whispered.
And it broke my heart.
Telling her she had to trust me would only add to my monsterish mask. She didn’t have to trust me. She’d probably never trust anyone ever again. Even though it upset me, I gave her what she wanted. “Would paying rent make you feel better?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have rent per se. I pay one lump sum for the entire property. You still interested in working for me?”
She nodded, her gaze less unsure. She wanted to work.
“I could use an assistant. You mind being mine?”
“As long as you’re patient. I’m not familiar with …” She waved her hand at me, presumably gesturing to my tattoos. “This kind of stuff. And I’m not … I don’t feel well sometimes. I know—”
“You take your time. We’ll start slow. You’ll work when you want, and if you want to stop, you com
e up here and relax. You don’t have to talk to anyone. You’re my assistant. If those greedy assholes want one, they can hire one their selves. We’ll talk about rent later. That cool?”
“Yes, I think so.” She did it again. She gave me a smile that showed a flash of her teeth. “Thank you, Klayton. For letting me stay here and letting me take over your space. Cat was right about you.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. Cat wasn’t right about anything. I didn’t need to hear her thanking me. I hadn’t done anything to earn it. “You want to get started today? We’re closed today too. We can get you started while there’s no one around.” I didn’t wait for her to reply. I nodded at her dirty clothes that lay in a neat pile by my bathroom door. She’d cleaned up, and I wondered again if I’d ever do anything right by her. “You want to wash your clothes? The washer’s off the kitchen. Get dressed, too. We’re going shopping.”
She looked at her dirty clothes, and then at me, and then at my basketball shorts she wore.
Hiding my smile at her overwhelmed expression, I grabbed up her pile of dirty clothes, taking away one of her tasks so she’d be able to wrap her head around whatever she struggled with. I didn’t say anything more. I started a load and then found my cell in my jeans pocket.
I scrolled through my contacts and then pressed SEND.
After a few rings, a familiar groggy, “Hello?” whispered through the phone.
“You’re fired.”
“Yeah right. You fire me once a month.”
“Where are you?” When she hesitated, I knew the answer. She’d met another guy, and was deep in the honeymoon phase. “Am I forgiven?”
“Where’s Madi?”
“I don’t know.”
That woke her up. “Klayton, so help me, if you kicked her out, I will strangle you.”
“You sure you care? She’s had to deal with me all week by herself. Poor thing. Some friend you are.”
“She’s in good hands. Is she still in your bedroom?”
I didn’t say anything.
Mad Love (Guns & Ink Book 1) Page 5