by Kasey Krane
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Rocky shouted after me as I made my way through the crowd towards the door.
I was tempted to just quit. Right there and then. I was so close to pulling off my name tag and throwing it to the floor. I had just been physically and sexually assaulted by his customers, and he wanted me to continue going about my job like nothing happened?
“Fuck you, fucking Rocky,” I hissed under my breath as I walked out of the bar. I still had to think of Davey. I couldn’t afford to lose my job over this. Davey’s dental appointment was coming up. How was I going to pay for it if I lost my job that night?
I came out of the bar, hoping that the two guys hadn’t disappeared already.
Even though I was a little afraid of them, I wanted to thank them for what they had done. Besides, one of them had his nose bleeding and may have needed medical attention. And all this was because of me. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had done anything like that for me.
I looked down the sidewalk and finally saw them, walking away. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and they seemed to be laughing. This was a joke to them? They could have gotten seriously injured.
“Hey!” I shouted in their direction.
The one who threw the first punch looked over his shoulder at me and stopped in his tracks. His friend stopped too.
“Hey yourself,” he called back.
I made my way towards them.
“Thank you…for what you guys did back there,” I said. I still had to shout because they were some distance away from me.
They broke away from each other’s shoulders.
“Someone should have stepped in sooner,” he replied. “You okay?”
Those two simple words—you okay—seemed like a soothing balm over my burning skin. Nobody ever asked me that. I didn’t have anybody in my life who would bother with those words. Not even my mom who had her own life to deal with.
My eyes filled with tears and I desperately didn’t want to cry.
“Yeah…yeah, I think so. I’m fine,” I replied, fumbling with my words.
I drew closer to them. I wanted to see his face clearly. The way he stood there now, he reminded me of someone from my past. Someone I had met just once, for one night, and then never seen again. So it was highly possible I was just seeing things. Just making it up in my head because I wanted it to be true.
“Your nose is…bleeding,” I said, as I went closer to him.
He stood there with his legs planted firmly apart, his big wide shoulders heaving, studying me closely because he must have noticed it too—that we knew each other from somewhere.
He shrugged, like he didn’t care. Like he got his nose broken a couple of times every week. My words choked my throat because now I was sure it was him.
He was just older.
Bigger.
More muscular.
And definitely more sexy.
Four
Brendan
The girl looked concerned as she came towards us. I knew Tristian was with me, but I forgot about him. The only thing I could focus on was this girl with the blue eyes and the long golden hair.
I asked her if she was doing okay and she said she was fine, but she looked shaken up. I still couldn’t get it out of my head—that I’d seen her somewhere.
The closer she got, the more convinced I was that I knew her. Those eyes looked like eyes I’d seen before. Maybe if she smiled, I would recognize her.
But she stopped in her tracks abruptly. We stared at each other. Maybe she recognized me too.
“Your nose…” she said.
I hadn’t noticed. When I lifted my fingers up to my nose I noticed I was bleeding. I wiped my nose with my arm and got most of the blood off my face.
“What’s your name?” I asked, stepping up towards her. I didn’t know where Tristian was anymore. Nobody else existed in the world.
Her face was almost angelic—like there was light shining off her.
“Rosalie,” she murmured. The way she stared at me was different. She had to have felt what I felt too. Like deja-vu.
The name didn’t ring a bell. I’d never met a Rosalie before. At least not that I remembered. But this time around, I wasn’t going to forget her name.
“I’m Brendan,” I said, holding out my hand to her. She didn’t shake it, almost like she was too afraid to touch me.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look okay. Maybe you shouldn’t go back in there. You need to have extra security to work in a place like that,” I said. My eyes never left her body. I saw the way her perfect tits rose and fell. The blouse she wore clung to her body. She had the most delicious curves and wide hips. Her jeans were just as tight. She was in all-black, probably the uniform at the bar, but it suited her. Her makeup was dark and smokey to match too.
“I don’t really have a choice,” she answered. Her nostrils flared. She stuck her chin high up in the air and then whipped around. Before I could say anything more, Rosalie ran back towards the bar, making a smooth exit.
I looked over my shoulder at Tristian. My brother was still there and he gave me a shrug. He was just as confused by all this as me.
The only difference was I wanted to find out what was going on with her, while he didn’t give a shit.
I went back into the bar even though I knew I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t like the guys in there would be excited to see me. I was bad news. I had just started a brawl in their establishment and knocked a guy out cold.
When I ran in, I couldn’t see Rosalie in there anywhere. She was a waitress, so shouldn’t she have been working the floor? But the place was crowded, packed full of drunk idiots and she could have been anywhere.
I combed through the people crowding the place, looking at as many people’s faces as I could in order to locate her. The problem was that the lighting was shit, the music was too loud and the people were getting rowdy. I had to push past them to make sure I was doing a thorough-enough search.
Not that I knew exactly why I gave a shit. She literally ran away from me in the middle of a conversation, while I was trying to determine how I knew her. And now that she had run away, it made me suspicious that she had something to hide.
And I hated not knowing the full story. If she was trying to hide something from me, I needed to get to the bottom of it.
But that wasn’t the only reason why I was determined to find her.
I saw something I liked.
She had the kind of body that made a woman, a woman. The kind of body I could sink into. My cock throbbed to life the moment I set my eyes on her, and I had kinda gotten into the bad habit of always getting what I wanted.
And right then, I wanted Rosalie. I wanted her sweet cherry lips wrapped around my hard cock. Right after she told me exactly why she ran away from me.
I looked in the toilets, slamming the doors of the cubicles with my fists. She wasn’t there either.
Finally, I decided I would have to get past the asshole staff and check in the back storage rooms for her. I expected them to stop me when they saw me but I didn’t care. I was willing to knock out a few more of them if I had to, if that meant finding Rosalie again.
Thankfully the bar was too busy and nobody seemed to notice when I strode past the counter and into the back hallway. It was dark and empty with only two doors. One would have led me out to the back alley behind the bar, and if she went through there then there was no chance of me finding her tonight.
So I opened the other door. It was the store room.
There was one flickering bulb hanging from the ceiling while crates of liquor and bar snack supplies filled every wall and corner.
Right there in the middle of the room stood Rosalie, staring at me wide-eyed like a deer caught in the headlights. And it looked like she had been crying.
“What are you doing here? Why are you here? How did you find me?” She blurted out these questions one after the other, her eyes darting everywhere
. And even in the dim light of that cramped store room, she looked like the most beautiful woman on Earth.
She had delicate fairy-like features, big eyes and long eyelashes, a soft chin and a long smooth neck.
“Those are a lot of questions, but I have an important one for you—why did you run away from me?”
Rosalie said nothing, just kept her lips tightly pursed together. That made me even more determined about finding out the truth. She made an effort to not speak to me or reveal anything.
“You’re not helping yourself by not talking to me and explaining,” I added.
Her nostrils flared again, and it almost made me smile because she looked adorable. Did she really think she was intimidating me with that look?
Slowly, she crossed her arms over her chest.
“And what are you going to do to me, Brendan?” She said my name in a way that made it sound notorious. Like she had a personal vendetta against my name alone. This chick clearly knew me and I needed to find out how.
“I’m going to wait here until you tell me what’s going on,” I replied.
“I have nothing to say to you. I have to get back to work,” she said.
“I’m sure you do, which is why things will be a lot easier if you start talking.”
The truth was—I had no idea what to make of this. I couldn’t think of one good reason why she would act cagey around me.
“Don’t you think I’ve been harassed and assaulted enough for one night?” she hissed.
“Yes, I do think so, and you can be sure that I won’t be doing either of those things to you.”
“But you’re here, locking me in this room and demanding things from me. What do you call that?” Even though she was clearly angry with me, she took care to not raise her voice. Which made me believe that she didn’t actually want me to get caught with her in the store room.
“I haven’t locked you in here, Rosalie. You are free to leave whenever you want. I’m just saying that I want an explanation and I’m going to get to the bottom of it eventually. If there is something you would like to say to me, now is the time to say it.”
She had her hands clasped together. What was she crying about? What had I done to make her cry? Or was she crying over the men who were assaulting her? Was I completely wrong in my interpretation of the situation? Was she just having a tough night?
The more she stared at me with those big beautiful eyes, the more I started entertaining the idea that I had been wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have made it all about me. Maybe she was going through a trauma from what happened to her tonight and she just needed to be by herself.
Maybe it was all in my head—just because I was attracted to her.
Rosalie shook her head, hanging it low as she stared at her shoes.
“Really, Brendan, there’s nothing to say.”
I stepped towards her. She looked up at me with a jerk.
What was I thinking? Why did I put her in this position? I should have left her alone.
As she stared at me, it seemed like she was close to tears again. And the last thing I wanted to do was make her cry.
“Okay, look. I didn’t mean to scare you, all right?” I said.
Even though I had moved closer to her, she hadn’t stepped back. So maybe she wasn’t so scared of me after all.
“You don’t scare me,” she claimed with quivering lips, voicing my thoughts.
Lips I wanted to kiss. Lips I wanted to own.
“All right, if I don’t scare you, what do I make you feel?” I asked.
She was close enough for me to touch her, and I wanted to touch her. If this was any other chick, I would have grabbed her and taken her. She was right there with nowhere to go. But there was something holding me back. I didn’t want to treat her the way I treated every other woman I encountered.
“I don’t know…I don’t know if I’m thinking straight right now,” she said, trembling a little.
“You’ve had a shock. Those men are assholes. You can’t let them get to you,” I said. My voice was a deep gruff. Every time I thought about those idiots touching her with their grubby hands, it made me mad.
I didn’t know the first thing about her, but I knew I didn’t want any other man touching her.
Rosalie looked surprised, then she gulped and nodded.
“I’ll be fine. I just need some time. This job is…it can be difficult,” she said.
She stared up at me again and it was getting harder by the minute not to touch her. It was almost like she expected me to do it. She expected me to touch her.
“This is not the kind of place you should be working at then,” I said.
I knew I had no business saying it. I knew nothing about her. I didn’t know why she had this job, why she hadn’t quit already.
“Like I said before, it’s not like I have a choice.”
“Yes you do, you can walk out with me right now and never come back,” I said. What the fuck? What was that supposed to mean?
“And what are you going to do, Brendan? Save me?” she asked, half-laughing bitterly.
I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t hold back. I reached for her, grabbing her by her waist. She gasped when I pulled her to me. Then she did something that convinced me she wanted this as much as I did. She tilted her head to the side and lifted her chin up towards me. She wanted me to kiss her.
So I did.
Five
Rosalie
He didn’t recognize me. In fact, he had no idea who I was. The only reason Brendan followed me to the storage room was because he was the kind of man who needed to know everything about everything.
I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when I saw him. I shouldn’t have run away. If I’d managed to keep cool when I recognized him, spoken to him politely and parted ways amicably—this wouldn’t have been happening.
He wouldn’t have chased me down and demanded to know why I was behaving this oddly with him. It was all my fault.
And now I had nowhere to go. He had me cornered.
Well…not technically. Like he said, he hadn’t locked the door. He wasn’t forcing himself on me. I could have walked out any time I wanted. And yet, I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Just like the first time we met, Brendan Doherty had a kind of debilitating effect on me. Like I had lost complete control of my body and mind. I surrendered myself to him, and the closer he came to me, the worse it got.
I should have put a stop to it and walked out. Just like I should have the first time. But instead, when he kissed me, I kissed him back.
I closed my eyes, raising myself up on my toes so I could reach him better. He kissed me slowly, softly—parting my mouth with his lips so he could thrust his tongue in me.
I was powerless against him. Powerless and hungry. I wanted this, I couldn’t deny it—even to myself. I wanted him with every fiber of my being. I felt safe there with him. Then slowly, he engulfed me in his arms and my need for him became more intense.
I pushed myself into him, melting into his body. The urgency with which I kissed him back would have made it very clear to him that we both wanted the same thing. However, the reason for wanting it was different for both of us.
For him it was pure sexual need. The same reason as the first time we met. He liked what he saw and even though I had no idea why he wanted me, he did. And he took it.
My reason for kissing him back was nostalgia. Kissing him transported me back to that time in my life when I had no responsibilities weighing me down. When my life was my own, and open. When I had choices and a whole future ahead of me.
Kissing Brendan Doherty was like tasting freedom again.
Four years ago, I wasn’t supposed to go to Mia White’s house party. I was supposed to be at home, working on a college essay that needed to be submitted the next Monday. And usually, I was known to be the girl who would skip a party to stay home and finish her homework.
And a part of me wished I did. Another part of me knew that if I never
went to that party—I wouldn’t have experienced the night I was about to have. And there were lots of things that were special about that night.
My friend, Petra, forced me to go. When at first, trying to emotionally blackmail me into going with her for moral support didn’t seem to work, she told me how people thought I wasn’t cool enough. That I was ashamed of myself for being a bad drunk, which was why they apparently thought I never showed up at these parties.
I didn’t want to believe her, but I also wanted to prove her wrong.
Yeah, sure, I wasn’t a big drinker. I never truly enjoyed those parties where everyone just got drunk and high and ended up sleeping with each other. But that didn’t mean I didn’t know how to have fun, right?
So, I put on the most sparkly dress I owned. I grabbed a pair of heels and blow-dried my hair, then we were out of the door. My mom was actually a little excited that I was going to go do ‘normal’ eighteen-year old things.
Mia White’s house was large and lavish. She lived in American suburbia, and even though this was New York, her family still had a pool out at the back of the house. Her folks were away for the weekend, and it was only natural that Mia invited everyone she knew.
Someone handed us a joint the moment we walked in through the door. I’d never smoked weed before but Petra had, and she showed me how. It took a full fifteen minutes for the effects of the weed to show up. In that time, I had already drunk through half a can of beer which I hadn’t enjoyed.
But the weed calmed me. It soothed my nerves and smoothed all the edges. Petra wanted to dance. Everyone was dancing everywhere. On the stairs, on the family dining table, out by the pool.
Petra grabbed my hands and pulled me to the backyard. I wasn’t much of a dancer. Usually, I felt too self conscious to do something like that, but that night I didn’t care who watched. That night was all about letting loose.