by Nikky Kaye
Then again, for all I knew it was one of the neighbors that was stalking her.
I put my ear to the door, deciding that if I heard something, I’d start knocking.
Whump!
I jerked my head back as I heard a grunt. A wordless cry. My heart stopped, then restarted at double-time.
“Annie!” I slammed my fist against the door, adrenaline and fear surging through my body. “Annie!” My hand tugged at the door knob.
Godfuckingdammit! Of course, the door was locked. On the plus side, it was an older building and the door wasn’t steel. A crash came from inside.
I started thumping. Kicking. Ramming with my shoulder. The door creaked, but it wasn’t as easy to bust down as movies made it look.
A door down the hall opened; a head popped out before disappearing again. Breathing hard and my body and brain reverting back to the sandbox, I jumped back and lifted my leg in a powerful front kick.
Slam! Slam! Slam!
“Ja—!” I heard her voice inside.
My frustration burst from my body in a growl and stronger kicks.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
Another door—the wrong one—opened, and a middle-aged man stepped into the hallway.
“Hey!”
Wham! “Someone’s got my girlfriend in there!”
He strode down the hall, and when I glanced over he had a “Shit, do I want to get involved?” expression on his face—and a golf club.
I seized the club out of his hand and started whacking away at the doorknob.
“What the he—!”
The shaft vibrated in my hands at the metal on metal contact.
“Hey! You’re gonna pay for that!”
I looked down at the glorified tuning fork with disgust. It wasn’t much better than a miniature golf putter. I let out a roar of frustration and gave it all I had—and gouged the doorframe. The man jumped out of the way as I tossed the club aside.
“Jake! I need you!”
He stepped toward the door. “Is that her? Did you call the police?”
I backed up to the opposite wall. “Either help or get the fuck out of my way.” Took two powerful strides and raised my leg again.
Wham!
The doorframe splintered. Finally. I was about to lose my mind, not knowing what was happening inside. I took another run at the door, but this time Golf Club Guy put his shoulder into it as well.
Whump!
Two more kicks together and the door bust open.
When I got inside, I found Annie swinging around on the back of a man like a cape, her arm around his neck.
My ninja girl.
Her white dress was bunched up to her waist as she tried to wrap her legs around the guy, her creamy bare ass hanging out.
If the previous few minutes had been the longest of my life, then time flashed by in a split second as I stomped my foot into the back of the guy’s knee. As he went down, I caught Annie by the waist and pulled her off him.
She fell against me, trembling and close to hyperventilating. Her skin was chilled, but her face was red.
I needed to hold her; to make sure she was okay. The fact that she clearly wasn’t wearing underwear was freaking me out. What the fuck had happened?
But more importantly, I needed to beat the shit out of… her boss?
Annie clung to my arm as I kicked the back of his other knee as he moved to get up. Golf Club Guy elbowed us aside and sat down on the fucker’s thighs as he face planted on the wooden floor.
“I called the police,” he said, huffing a little as he straddled John and held the club to the back of his neck.
I nodded, sweeping Annie into my arms. She’d never seemed so slight, so tiny as she was right at that moment. I knew she was tough, but the memory of her frightened voice reverberated in my brain. I started to carry her over to the bed, but she yelped and dug her fingers into me.
“No!”
I wanted to puke. What. The. Fuck. Happened?
Cradling her to me like I would Stella, I carried her into the bathroom. Fell back against the door, slamming it shut. Slid to the floor, my legs stretched out, Annie in my lap.
My head banged against the door. Our chests rose and fell together, as though our hearts beat harder as one.
“Annie, honey…”
The silky gown she wore was slippery under my fingers, and I longed to feel her skin. Her whole body stiffened as I ran my hands over her—a marble statue—then she crumpled into gulping sobs.
“I’m not… hurt…” she managed to get out.
I didn’t believe her. I buried my face in her hair as she shook against me. “Shhhh.”
The sound of a siren grew louder, whooping to a finish nearby.
She sucked in a breath, but it didn’t seem to fill her lungs. “I’m sorry.” Sniffled.
“It’s okay.” There was nothing to be sorry for, unless she was sorry that she—or I—didn’t get to kill the motherfucker. I bit back a demand to know where her phone was, and sighed.
Reaching out with one arm, I awkwardly tugged a towel off the bar by the bathtub. Her shudders began to subside as I wrapped it around her. Noises penetrated the door behind us, voices in the living room.
We held on to each other.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ANNIE
“I don’t want to go back to work.”
“No shit.” Jake snorted as we lay in bed. I luxuriated in his arms, feeling no desire to move. I could live here forever.
It had been three weeks since… since.
It took the first two days to finish with the police and assure everyone that I hadn’t been raped. My security had been assaulted, and my self-assurance molested, but John hadn’t really touched me. Or hurt me.
Just scared the shit out of me.
Jake had dragged me to the hospital, but other than the GHB in my system and a sore body and soul, there wasn’t anything wrong with me. For the next few days I curled up on the couch in my sweats, under a blanket—at times too hot, but I preferred it to the alternative.
My nerves were frazzled for the first week. For someone who didn’t like crying, it felt like it had become my new hobby.
I cried when Evie came over. I cried in the shower. My whole body was sore from the effort of trying not to cry when I saw Stella. I cried when Dominic handed me a bottle of water to rehydrate.
Now, I was all cried out. And much calmer. I’d started seeing a therapist, at Evie’s insistence, but I really felt better. It was like I got it out of my system, and then closed the door on it. Jake said something about post-traumatic stress, which I waved off.
I was—would be—fine. I was a survivor. I had a force field of people around me, a restraining order, and an online wish-list full of self-help books.
John had been charged with assault and unlawful confinement, among a few other things. And he’d been fired. The restaurant’s owners put me on paid sick leave—without tips, of course—but I had given them no return date.
“You don’t have to go back to work, honey.”
I hummed. Part of me felt like I should; get back up on that horse and all that stuff—but the rest of me felt like I’d found a new calling in life, just lying in Jake’s arms.
I’d earned a break, and for the first time I had the breathing room to figure out what I wanted to do next.
I frowned. “You know that if I don’t go back to the restaurant then Evie’s going to put me to work with wedding planning.” The date had been moved up—a lot—to accommodate Evie’s pregnancy.
“That reminds me, you still haven’t confirmed as my ‘plus one.’”
I shifted, straddling my boyfriend. His hands went my hips and a smile stretched over his face. He could have been smiling at me, or at the “Self-Rescuing Princess” t-shirt I was wearing with my panties to bed. Either way, I loved making him smile.
I tried to look hard to get. “I’m not fucking you in the coat room. I told you that.”
“Well, shit.�
� He ran his hands up and down my sides, curving around from the bottom of my shoulder blades to the swell of my ass. “There are no other bridesmaids. What am I supposed to do now?”
“Besides,” I said, squirming on top of him, “Stella agreed to be my date.”
“Stella is the flower girl. She has to be there, anyhow.”
“So do you!” I pushed down on the hard muscles of his chest.
“So we’ll go as a family.”
I froze. “What?”
“You. Me. Stella. All dressed up, with someplace to go.”
“Oh.”
His eyes narrowed. “No?”
Yes. Yes!
I bit my lip. “I, uh, just didn’t think that was the kind of threesome you were into.”
“Ewwwww!” His face twisted as his fingers tickled up my sides. I giggled, relaxing in relief that he didn’t take my joke the wrong way. That little episode with Evie—both of ours—had been forgiven and forgotten. We’d moved on.
He made a horrified, retching sound. Tickled me again.
“Okay, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” I swayed on top of him, breathless with giggles. Laughter was an amazing antidote to just about anything in life. I’d learned that once I’d stopped crying.
“Ugh!” he spat out, but his eyes creased at the sides with a mischievous grin. “That’s our daughter you’re talking about!”
Our daughter? I lost my balance in surprise, my forearms falling to his chest. It was a slip of the tongue; that was all. Our bodies moved together as we breathed, ebbing up and down like a boat on a lake.
“We’ll go as a family,” he repeated. His expression was serious, and there was a glint in his eye that looked like challenge. Or pride. Or both.
I shrugged. “Weird family. The billionaire, single dad, toy store tycoon—“
“Not single anymore,” he interrupted. “Okay, the billionaire—” He paused to roll his eyes. “—toy tycoon and the ball-busting ninja waitress. And their trusty sidekick.”
“Not a waitress anymore,” I amended, wrinkling my nose at him. “And you know we can’t trust our sidekick.”
We were working on keeping Stella out of our bed. She had a tendency to turn sideways as she slept, like a human clock face, her legs flailing all night long. Recently she’d wanted to snuggle between us, and we moved her back to her bed after she fell asleep—mostly.
The times that we didn’t were an exercise in fatigue management the next day.
“It sounds like a comic book,” I said.
He nodded. When I went to push myself up, he pulled me back down. Stared at me. “I love you, Annie. You know that, right?”
He’d never said the words before—not out loud, not on purpose.
“I love you. I—” I stopped.
I felt like I should say more. There was so much more in my heart and soul, but there weren’t words for it all. I’d need a dictionary, a thesaurus, and many, many years to express it all. I sighed, meeting his foolish, abashed grin with one of my own.
Leaning forward, I kissed him. Softly, then harder. Open mouth, touching my tongue to his. Tasting him. Inviting him into me.
His hips tilted, pressing his growing arousal into me. I wriggled in response, making him moan. This was my new favorite position when fooling around, and he had no complaints.
I rocked against him, my core dampening. Softening. Tingling. Needing him. Reflexively, his fingers tightened over my hips and pulled me down to grind into him. The expression on his face flattened out in apology; his hands fell to the bed.
We hadn’t had sex—like, sex sex—since… since, but only because he didn’t want to push me.
I decided to push him.
I circled my hips, pushing down on him.
“Annie…”
“Jake…” I mocked his serious tone. “You don’t like it when I beg, remember?”
He didn’t make me beg—or wait. With swift fingers, he pulled away all the barriers between us, and sunk into me with a groan.
“Oh my god, yes!” My eyes fluttered shut at the feeling of pure completion. I couldn’t keep them closed though; I needed to look at him. Needed to be connected to him in every way I could.
His jaw flexed as we began moving together. “Fuck, Annie. I missed you.”
“I missed you, too. Missed this,” I panted. He drove up into me, filling all the nooks and crannies of loneliness left inside me. This was going to be a short-lived coming-together, but we had time.
Lots of time.
Our hands wove together on his chest, curling into shared fists as we pulled each other up to the top of our climax. It was clichéd to shout our love for each other as we came, but that didn’t make it any less true.
The scary part was over.
This was the blissful part.
This was the after.
THE END
You know that feeling you get at the end of a really great book, when you have a bubble of joy in your chest? That's what turns me on, as both a reader and an author. I love sexy, smart stories that make you giggle then fan yourself.
I could make up a bunch of crazy stuff about me here, like a penchant for skydiving (never done it) and a career as a cryptozoologist (actually I was a college professor). The reality is that I when I'm not writing, I'm being held hostage by half-finished house projects, and a horrible addiction to diet cola. But apparently, that's not often.
According to my young twin boys, "Mummy's hobby is work." It could be worse. Stepping on Lego all day long--that's worse.
If you’d like to find out more about me and my “fuction,” please visit my website at http://www.nikkykaye.com, my Author Central at http://author.to/nikkykaye or my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/officialnikkykayeauthor.
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