by M. S. Parker
“Let me go,” I said more insistently, jerking my arm.
Instead, he hauled me in closer and dipped his head. “You’re a pretty little thing. I bet you taste as sweet as a strawberry.”
I turned my head as he got closer, his fingers close to bruising the bone.
But his mouth never touched mine.
Quick as a wish, he was yanked away, and I gulped in a breath of air as I stumbled a few steps back, smacking into the rough brick of the nearby building. A big, towering figure stood between me and my would-be attacker. “You’re going to back the fuck off, or I’m going to break your arm off and feed it to you an inch at a time,” he said, his voice flat, the deadliest neutral I’d ever encountered.
“Hey, why don’t you back the fuck off?” the man said, puffing out his chest. “We saw her first.”
I never even saw what he did, he moved so fast. There was a blur of movement, then Beer and Nacho Breath was bent over at the waist, his face red. My rescuer turned to look at the other guy, a man he towered over by almost a foot. He took a step in that man’s direction. “You want to try a round?” he asked in a menacing tone.
The man shook his head wildly and took off running. A minute later, his friend staggered off after him, huffing and puffing, wheezing as he tried to suck in air.
The guy turned to look at me. “You okay?” he asked, his voice softer now.
“I’m…” Licking my lips, I nodded at him. “I’m fine, thank you.” I glanced in the direction the men had gone and added, “And thanks for that.”
He took a hesitant step toward me, gesturing to where I was rubbing my arm through my thick coat. It ached a little, but it wasn’t anything bad. I’d probably have a bruise from where that asshole had been pawing at me. It could have been so much worse.
“You’re rubbing your arm. Sure you’re okay?”
Looking down, I stared at where my hand was cupped over my upper arm, feeling a little dazed. Blood roared in my ears. Reaction, I thought dully. It was the reaction settling in, that was all.
Swallowing, I tipped my head back to look up at him.
He’d gotten closer.
When had he gotten closer?
Dark, shaggy hair hung in his eyes. I couldn’t make out the color in the dim light, but I wished I could.
His gaze dipped to my mouth as I licked my lips again and my heart started to hammer in my ears.
Abruptly, the chaos and noise from the street I’d left behind grew deafening, and I jumped.
“Easy. It’s just…” His eyes dipped to my mouth again. He shrugged. “It’s New Year’s. Happy New Year.”
He looked at my mouth again.
Without thinking, I looked at his.
And then his mouth was on mine.
I sucked in a sharp, startled breath.
The brush of his mouth against mine was light, almost gentle. He didn’t try to force his way past my open lips, and I caught just the faintest hint of his taste, something I couldn’t define.
But desperately wanted to.
Which meant I shouldn’t.
Two
Kane
Her mouth was every bit as soft as I thought it would be.
That was my first thought. My second thought…Kane, what the hell are you doing, man?
I was kissing a total stranger on New Year’s Eve, that’s what.
And it was a normal, sweet, innocent kiss…then it was over. So over, and not likely to be repeated because even as I contemplated doing it again, she jerked back and glared at me.
“What the hell?” she demanded. Without waiting another second, she hauled her hand back and let it fly, slapping me across the face.
There wasn’t a lot of power in the blow, and I wondered if she’d ever hit anyone before, which was a stupid thing to be wondering since I’d clearly pissed her off. What I should have been wondering was how to make an apology.
She was gone, though, ghosting through the crowd on feet so fast I’d be hard pressed to catch her. I was long-legged and big, but she was fast and moving at an all-out run.
A few people turned to look at me, which led me to realize they’d seen the whole damn thing.
Great.
Just great.
What in the hell had I been thinking?
Easy answer.
I hadn’t been thinking. At all.
Shaking my head, I turned on my heel and headed back through the crowd. I’d just dropped off the keys for a car I’d finished for one of my regulars. He was the manager at a hotel on W. 35th Street and had promised a nice tip – and delivered – if I’d bring the keys to him tonight. Since I was still struggling to pay off what I owed on the garage, so it would be mine free and clear, I never ignored a request when it came with the words nice tip.
The tip had indeed been nice, and I’d already hit an ATM, depositing the cash so I didn’t have to worry about getting mugged. It wasn’t really a big concern in my mind. Most muggers went looking for somebody who came off as being far less trouble than I’d be, and while I wasn’t the tallest guy I’d ever come across at six-two, I was one of the roughest bastards in the area. Heavy with muscle, tattoos roped my arms and marked my hands. A scar bisected my left eyebrow courtesy of a fight where my opponent had gone for a knife – it could have taken the eye if he been just a little faster than me.
Fortunately, I’d been the faster one, and he’d ended up with that buried in his thigh. He was lucky I hadn’t gone for that big artery there. But I hadn’t wanted him dead.
My looks probably had something to do with how people tended to fall away when they saw me in a crowd, and made it a little bit easier to cut through the masses as I headed for the subway. I deliberately chose one a little farther away from Times Square because I didn’t want to wait for the crowds to ease up.
The plan worked well enough, and it was only a little after one when I got to the party some friends in Brooklyn were throwing.
Briefly, I wondered if the cute redhead I kissed had made it home okay.
I hoped so.
Briefly, I wondered if maybe I should have caught up with her and made sure she had made it home.
But that really wouldn’t have gone over well after I went and smacked the kiss on her. I didn’t understand the slap though. I’d felt something the second I looked at her. I could have sworn she felt the same tug I did, but maybe I just needed to get laid.
Music blasted through the windows as I approached the house. Nobody would think about telling them to turn it down, and nobody would think about calling the cops.
It didn’t mean the cops wouldn’t come by here and tell these guys to quieten down, but as soon as the uniforms left, the music would go right back up.
I knew the drill. I’d been to parties like this.
The house belonged to Russell Carpenter. He went by Rusty, although whether the nickname was because of his red hair or because he hated his first name, I didn’t know, nor did I care to ask.
I’d known Rusty since before I’d gone to prison.
We’d both run in separate gangs then, but we’d never caused each other problems, and we didn’t now. He and some of the guys in his were some of my steadiest customers, although they came in late, paid in cash and never wanted anybody but me working on their cars or bikes.
As I entered the house, ears already vibrating from the music, I peeled out of the jacket I’d worn and hung it up on the coat rack, trying to bury it under a layer of other coats so it might still be there when I left.
If not…well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d lost one at a party like this.
“Oh…you’re here…” A soft, feminine voice purred up at me, and I looked down to see Calie Smalls giving me a seductive smile.
She was taller than a lot of women and must have been wearing a pair of stiletto heels because now her mouth was just an inch lower than mine. When she would have leaned in to kiss me, I eased back.
Calie and I had an on again and off again thing goi
ng on between us. Lately, it had been in the on switch quite a bit, which might explain why she kept sidling closer, but I hadn’t come to see her.
“Hey.” I managed a smile for her, but before she could loop her arm through mine, I said, “Nice seeing ya. I need to go say hi to Rusty. Happy New Year, Calie.”
I lost myself in the crowd and didn’t look back, not even when a low crash reverberated behind me, and a bunch of hooting broke out. A piece of furniture had likely just been broken.
This was why I didn’t ever want to have parties at my place. When it came to guys like this, if only one thing got broken, it probably wasn’t even considered a party.
Rusty was in the back of the house, smoking a joint and nursing a bottle of beer while his girlfriend leaned up against him. He met my eyes and lifted the beer in greeting then pointed over to the far wall. I craned my neck around and saw the cooler, nodding my thanks as I moved to grab a beer for myself. I snagged another one and lifted it, showing it to Rusty. He mouthed something that might have been, “Fuck, yes.” I had no idea but took the bottle along. If he didn’t drink it, I’d need it in a few minutes.
One of the guys saw me and got up, vacating the chair without me having to say a word. I wouldn’t have, I would have been fine standing with my back to the wall, but I took the seat. It was mostly turned to the wall, like a lot of the chairs and it gave me an almost full view of the room.
That was how I preferred it.
Seated next to Rusty, I nodded at his girlfriend as I passed him the beer.
His girlfriend, Bernadette – Bernie to all of us – saw me and swayed forward to wrap her arms around my neck in an overly enthusiastic hug. She wasn’t the flirtatious type unless she was plastered so I didn’t think much of it, just eased her back toward Rusty. “Had a bit to drink, Bernie?” I asked her.
She snorted and laughed. “A bit? Nooooo…” Then she fell back against Rusty and said, “I’m tired, baby. Let’s go to bed and fuck.”
He grinned down at her. “We’ve got company, baby.”
She wiggled her eyebrows and giggled. “They can come watch!”
He patted her cheek, then shifted on the chair where he sat so she could curl up against him better. The two of them had been together for as long as I’d known them.
“How’s that bike coming along?” Rusty asked as Bernie snuggled into his heavy frame. He stood almost four inches taller than me, and Bernie, at five-six, looked almost delicate next to him. She buried her face in his neck, and I had no doubt she’d be asleep in no time, never mind the noise and chaos going on around her. And Rusty would just sit there holding her.
For some reason, the thought hung there with me as I thought about the bike one of Rusty’s guys had brought me the other day. “Need a few more parts. They’ve got to be ordered in. Already placed the order, but with the holidays, things are moving slow.”
Rusty rolled his eyes and muttered, “Fuck the holidays. I want my bike.”
“You might be able to get it quicker if you took it to a bigger garage,” I offered.
“I don’t want a bigger garage.”
I knew he didn’t.
Off to my right, two women broke out into a screaming argument, and I grimaced as the splatters from what was probably beer hit the side of my face and neck. I was going to smell like the inside of a brewing vat by the time I left here.
“You find yourself a pretty girlie to kiss at midnight?” Rusty asked.
Shooting him a glance, I said, “What?”
“Midnight…kissing in the New Year.”
“It’s ringing in the New Year,” I told him.
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes, his gaze on the girl fight carrying on next to me. I was paying it a fair amount of attention myself, watching from the corner of my eye. When the two women practically tumbled into my lap, I shifted automatically, shielding them from accidentally striking Bernie, who had started to snore.
I rose, letting them fall from my lap. One of them hit the table which set the bottles on top to wobbling. They continued to fight right up until the bottles fell and the domino effect had beer, cocktails, and wine pouring down on the two screaming and scrapping women.
They stopped, half choking.
“If you’re done,” Rusty said in a level voice. “Can you do something about this fucking mess you just made?”
Three
Raye
As I closed the door behind me, I realized something.
My lips were still buzzing.
It had taken me almost forty minutes to get home – it was normally a twenty-minute trip, both the subway ride and the walk, but tonight it had been double.
So just over forty minutes since some big, sexy stranger with a scar slicing his left eyebrow had smacked his mouth over mine and kissed me.
It had been a quick, light kiss really, now that I think of it.
And it had been the New Year.
Maybe I shouldn’t have slapped him.
I didn’t know.
What I did know was that my mouth was buzzing.
I hadn’t kissed anybody in recent memory who’d actually had the ability to make anything buzz. That made this pretty…well…I couldn’t call it epic, except it kind of was.
And I’d slapped him.
He’d helped me, dealing with the two creeps who’d been up to no good, then midnight strikes and…okay, maybe I’d been gawking at him a little. It might have seemed like a moment, now that I think of it. Not that I’d understand what a moment really felt like.
A kiss on New Year’s Eve was a simple enough thing, wasn’t it?
Strangers kissed strangers on New Year’s Eve, right?
It wasn’t a big deal, but I’d gone and made something of it.
He hadn’t been grabbing at my ass or my boobs or anything.
“Just a kiss,” I murmured.
I might have felt exceptionally silly if I let myself think about it too much. It would be hard to do that though. Every time I tried to clear my mind, I was left thinking about the ever-fading buzz on my lips.
I licked them, fleetingly wondered if I could catch a taste of him like I had when he’d actually been kissing me. But if any taste had lingered, it was long gone now.
“You shouldn’t have slapped him,” I told myself. And it was the truth.
But hindsight was twenty-twenty.
Nearly a half an hour later, I stood under the hot spray in my minuscule shower, letting the water beat down on me. My apartment was tiny, barely big enough to be called that, and I was actually lucky to have this much space. I’d been living in an area half this size, forced to share a bathroom, but my current manager’s sister worked in real estate, and they’d helped me find this place. Friends from the store had helped decorate and improvise with the vertical space.
Sadly, there was nothing to be done about a tiny, cramped bathroom.
I fit in there just fine, if I didn’t do a lot of turning around. If I’d been anything other than what some people called fun-sized, I had no idea how I’d manage in the little shower.
As the heat billowed around me, I thought again about the guy who’d come out of the crowd to chase away my harassers and a tingle raced through my entire system. It wasn’t unpleasant.
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about my kissing hero, and the more I thought about him, the more surreal the event seemed.
I wished I hadn’t slapped him.
I wished I had kissed him back.
If I had, what would have happened?
I must have been more tired – or more dazed – than I realized because I found myself cupping a breast in my palm as I relived that short kiss and let it play out in my mind to a better one, a longer one. One where I opened my mouth, and he slid his tongue inside to taste me.
I’d kissed a few guys who seemed like adequate kissers and a couple who were even pretty good at it. I think he would have qualified for really good. He hadn’t tried to mash his mouth to mine or choke
me with his tongue.
I groaned, closing my eyes. Now I was fantasizing about opening for him and taking his tongue into my mouth, sucking on him as he cupped one of my breasts.
That tingling sensation spread, and I let my hand slide lower.
I found the folds between my thighs, which were damp – and not only because of the shower.
Curious, I rubbed myself, and while I felt something that seemed like pleasure, I didn’t know what else to do. Nothing felt right, and the more I thought about it, the more awkward this whole situation seemed.
Frustration grew inside me, replacing that wonderful tingling sensation, and as the pleasantness faded, I smacked my head back against the tiled wall of the shower.
There was something broken inside me.
The part that was supposed to enjoy all of this just…didn’t.
“Maybe you’re thinking about it too much,” I told myself as I pushed off the wall and finished up the shower.
It was possible, I guessed.
Anything was possible…like having some big, tattooed sexy stranger swoop down out of a crowd to chase off some roughnecks, then linger long enough for a kiss.
Heaving out a sigh, I turned off the water and reached for a towel. Since clearly, I wasn’t going to be able to relax via self-induced orgasm, I’d dry off and pull on some PJs. I wasn’t ready to sleep, but I had other plans in mind.
Classes started in a little over a week, and I wanted to get a head’s up on the courses I was tackling for the next semester. So far, I’d been able to hold up my GPA, and none of my scholarships were in jeopardy. Even so, I wasn’t the sort to take any of that for granted, especially since I was carrying a heavier class load this time around.