by Rebel Carter
“Got it.” She reached into her apron and pulled out her notepad, scribbling the order. “I’ll get that to ya in just a bit, okay?”
“Thanks, a lot. Appreciate it.” I nodded, swaying slightly and made to move towards the restrooms but Melissa stepped in close, a conspiratorial smile on her face that made me stop.
“It’s just that there’s this super hot man in one of the private rooms. He requested me specifically.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Oh, wow!” I exclaimed, because that seemed like the thing she wanted to hear from me. I was half a bottle of wine and a beer, plus a couple of shots in, so I couldn’t be sure. I put a hand out on the wall because I was right earlier—I wasn’t tipsy. I was drunk. And, I was doing what drunk girls the world over did best, I was being supportive as hell when a woman was dishing on some hopeful man news. Why she was choosing to tell me this information I had no idea, but I was going to cheerlead as best I could, because that’s what you did.
“I’m pretty sure he’s going to get my number soon, or you know, like ask me to stay and have dinner with him.”
“Really?”
She nodded, biting the end of her pen and grinning at me. “Oh, yeah, he’s been eye fucking me all night. I’ve seen him before. I’ve waited on him all the other times he’s been in and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he requested a private room in my section. I think he’s finally making his move tonight.”
My brows furrowed and my drunk girl support faltered. “You don’t think that’s a little weird? What if he’s stalking you?”
Melissa laughed at me, and even drunk I knew the look she was giving me was a little pitying. “It’s not stalking, it’s romantic,” she said with a shake of her head.
I nodded along as if she made sense, because I knew she didn’t. Showing up at someone’s work was the opposite of romantic. It was one of the things I liked about moving around so much with BaristApp. If someone made me uncomfortable, I didn't have to worry about them being able to find me again. There was safety in anonymity. But putting down roots? Choosing one place to work and exist was risky. Always had been, always would be.
I couldn’t take Tiffany up on her offer, even if the tips at A Different Brew were amazing.
“Anyways, I’ll get those drinks to your table, okay hon?” She stopped and gave me an assessing look as if she were really seeing me for the first time. “You good though?” She asked.
“Yup,” I said with a bigger nod than was needed, “just on my way to the little girl’s room. It’s that way, right?” I pointed behind her.
“First door on the right.”
“Thanks, Melissa.”
“Sure thing.” She gave me another smile, this one didn’t seem so bubbly and then she was off, her dark ponytail bouncing as she hurried away. Probably back to her private room with her sexy stalker man.
I screwed up my face and shook my head. “Why would anyone think that’s romantic?” I asked, walking down the hallway and towards the restroom. I stopped when I got to the end of the hallway and saw there was no door in front of me. Shit. I’d gone too far. What had she said? The door was on the right...or was it the left? I turned back and looked around the hallway.
“Did she mean her right or my right?” I threw out my hands in frustration and then settled on the door in front of me. It was to the right of where we’d been standing and it was the first door, so this one was probably it. I was about 95% sure this was it, so I reached out and slid the paper door open, striding into it with all the confidence in the world. It was only when I had slid the door closed that I realized I was definitely not in a bathroom.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” I blurted out. There was a table with sizzling meat and a man sitting at the end of it. He had his head bent over his phone, tongs in his hand while he scrolled. “Shit, I am so sorry,” I continued, reaching behind me for the handle of the door and missing. I accidentally pitched to the side and bumped against the wall. I winced, but was grateful he was still looking at his phone, but then he was lifting his head and looking directly at me.
Blue eyes the color of tropical waters hit mine and I felt like the air had been punched out of me. Those eyes. I knew those eyes. I’d been thinking about those fucking eyes all week and now here they were when I was drunk and lost on the way to the bathroom.
“Fuck,” I blurted out, because my stupid brain refused to keep my inside voice on the inside of my fucking head.
“Honey?”
That sucker punch felt more like a body slam because–he remembered my name? He didn’t just remember it. Lawson Sokolov didn’t even hesitate to say my name.
“You remember me?” I asked, because my brain was still hosting a revolt and bent on embarrassing the fuck out of my drunk ass.
Lawson gave me a slight nod, his eyes scanning over me before he stood from the table and set down the tongs. “What are you doing here? Have you been drinking?”
“I came here because I was hungry and I had a bad day,” I said, mouth continuing on before I could stop it. I shook my head, “Wait, do you mean here like this room, or the restaurant? I thought this was the bathroom and-”
“Why did you have a bad day?” He was striding towards me now and I backed up again, hitting the wall and bouncing off it slightly, my arm going out to the side to steady myself. Lawson caught me then, a hand at my waist with the other curling around my outstretched arm. “You have been drinking.” He was frowning at me and I blushed hot under his attention. I didn’t like that he was frowning.
“Honey, who are you here with?”
I licked my lips and dropped my eyes to my feet. “A friend.”
Lawson’s fingers flexed on my waist and he stepped closer to me until there was no space between us. I went tense where we touched. We were flush together, my waist against his front. I could feel the hard muscle of his chest against my breasts. My breath caught, nipples hardening at the pressure because he was so close. Too close, really, for people that didn’t know each other. Okay, we were too damn close even for people who did know each other in a non-sexual way.
This was not platonic standing. But I didn’t care because since Monday, I’d had Lawson Sokolov on the brain. I arched my back, pressing myself to his front and when I felt his thumb on my chin, tilting my face up, I let him.
“Is it a friend, or is it a date?” His voice was lower and I felt the octave change down in my belly. Fuck, he was hot.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” I said instead of answering him. I watched him clench his jaw, the line of it hardening just like I remembered, and I smiled. “You're hot when you do that,” I said, nodding up at him. “But you probably know that.”
“Answer me, Honey.” His thumb brushed against my bottom lip and I hummed, as my eyes drifted closed.
“Why did you tell everyone I was your fiancée?” I asked.
“You know why I did it. What are you doing here drunk?” The hand at my waist flattened and slid up my side until it was at my back, cupping my shoulder and pressing me towards him.
I lifted the shoulder beneath his fingers and shrugged. “I needed to blow off some steam.”
He looked away and towards the closed door, brow creased. I frowned and reached up, touching his forehead. The gesture was slight, but his eyes snapped to me so suddenly my hand fell back.
“I’m sorry,” I began, but I didn’t get any further because whatever I was going to say got stuck in my throat when Lawson caught my hand before I could pull away completely. “Lawson.”
His blue eyes met mine and he stared at me for a beat before he shook his head. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“This,” he said, giving my hand a light shake. But even as he did he was sliding his hand against mine and threading our fingers together. The lines inked into the back of his hands stood out against my tan skin and I swallowed hard. It looked good. We looked right.
We looked perfect.
“But I
like this,” I told him.
He sighed heavily and pressed our bound hands back against the wall behind me. Outside the door, I could hear laughter and talking. Footsteps from a passing diner clicked by, and my mind dimly registered that Tiffany was probably going to come looking for me if I didn’t get back to her soon.
Lawson lowered his head, lips close to my ear and I bit my lip when the soft warm air of his breath hit my skin. If I turned my head towards him I could meet his lips with my own, but even as drunk as I was I wasn’t that drunk...or brave. “If you were mine…” he growled, lips grazing the top of my ear and I shivered.
“If I was yours I wouldn’t be here,” I replied, barely able to stop the pout I felt pulling at my lips. It was my default setting. Bratty. I didn’t know what to think about it coming out to play in front of Lawson.
His fingers tightened on mine and he pressed me back into the wall. “No, you’re right. You wouldn't be. If you were and you chose to get this drunk, you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.”
My eyes shot open. “What?” I whispered, turning my head to look at him. If I wasn’t mistaken Lawson Sokolov just threatened to spank me. The familiar warmth of desire and lust began to wake up in my body and it worked to sober me, because I couldn’t have heard him correctly. There was no way this man was saying he would spank me, I must have heard wrong. With my thoughts on the Cairn and my earlier need to find release and structure within the familiar bounds of BDSM, I had to have misheard. Lawson Sokolov was not into what I was into, he-
“If you were mine I’d turn you right over this damn table and spank the fuck out of you, little girl.” He leaned back and stared me down, he wasn’t happy, but there was more there now than just annoyance. He was interested, a spark in his blue eyes that was hungry. “Someone needs a firm hand, don’t they?”
Holy fucking shit. He was into what I was into.
My mouth fell open and closed, then it opened and closed again. I knew I looked like a fish out of water, but I’d had a lot to drink and the man I’d been obsessing over for the better part of a week had suddenly materialized on my way to the bathroom and was now saying he wanted to spank me.
Little girl.
Yeah, and he’d called me that. He was pushing all my buttons, lighting them up as easily as if he had taken his hand and slammed them down the side of a skyscraper elevator bank’s worth of buttons. We were going from the ground floor to the 85th floor at warp speed with each and every button lit up like a Christmas Tree. Was this really happening or was I just that drunk?
“Are you for real?” I rasped out, finding it hard to talk now that my tongue felt like it was about two sizes too big for my damn mouth. I almost groaned at myself, but didn’t dare move a muscle because Lawson was shifting.
His lips pressed into a thin line and he dropped his head so that he was eye level with me. “Deadly.”
I audibly swallowed. “Oh no,” I whispered. I might have said more if the door to the private room wasn’t sliding open. The sound of the restaurant in full swing of a late evening dinner rush spilled into the room along with the server from earlier.
“Hey, handsome, I just wanted to-” She broke off when she saw us pressed together against the wall. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?” She asked, and there was no missing the pointed tone in her question. She glared at me and I sucked on my teeth. She was pissed, but what for? She didn’t even know Lawson, so why was she looking at me like she wanted to throw me out in the street? If anything I should be mad that she had just interrupted me getting to the bottom of what Lawson was, wanted, or maybe still would do to me.
“It’s just that there’s this super hot man in one of the private rooms. He requested me specifically.”
Oh. Ohhhhhhh. Shit. This was that man. The hot one that she was sure was going to ask for her number. The one in the private room. The private room we were currently all standing in like a weird sitcom gone wrong where the love interests have an intruder in their midst. I cleared my throat nervously and hoped I wasn't the intruder in this scenario.
“I’m pretty sure he’s going to get my number soon, or you know, like ask me to stay and have dinner with him.”
God. I was the intruder, wasn’t I? Shit fuck. How the hell had this happened? Oh, right, when I had drunkenly stumbled into this room instead of the bathroom. That’s how.
“Hey, um, I’ll just get out of here. I got lost,” I told Melissa with an apologetic smile. “I didn’t mean to-”
She crossed her arms over her chest and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I had your beers sent to your table. You can leave now.”
“Yeah, sure.” I made to move from Lawson, but he didn’t let me go.
“She’s good. She’s not going anywhere.”
Both of our heads snapped in his direction and I saw that he was looking at her with that slightly pinched expression that I knew meant he was genuinely unhappy. It wasn’t like when he was telling me he wanted to bend me over the dinner table and spank the shit out of me. That made me feel good. I knew I shouldn’t take as much pleasure as I was in Lawson shutting her down, but I did.
Melissa was silent, her eyes darting between the two of us, and I could see what she was thinking. She was thinking I’d stolen her man. Made a move on her territory, which was just insane given that Lawson and I had been alone for all of five minutes in this room. It had to be apparent that we knew each other previously in some capacity.
“I won’t be needing anything else but the bill. I’ll get that at the door when we’re ready to leave,” Lawson went on. Melissa’s eyes narrowed at his words, her hands going to her hips and she sucked in a deep breath when he was done speaking. “Thank you,” he added, as if it were an afterthought. The man was gruff, but he was trying for manners in front of me. Which was sweet for a man who had threatened to spank me. I liked that he was trying, even if it felt unpracticed by him. Trying was something.
“She’s shit faced drunk, you know that right?” She blurted out. Ah, there it was. That was what she’d been deciding on. “I told her about you in the hallway and she decided to come see for herself. You’re being played.”
Lawson straightened up, let me go and stepped in front of me. “It’s time for you to go now. I’ll get my bill at the door when we’re ready to leave,” he said, but this time I could tell the man wasn’t going to bother playing at civility.
Melissa gasped. I leaned to the side to see, and found that I was actually still drunk, because I didn’t just lean around Lawson, I stumbled into the wall beside me. Melissa’s eyes landed on me and scoffed with a shake of her head.
“Whatever, have a good night, sir.” She tossed the last word out like an insult and I couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up in me. Melissa left the room with a bang of the sliding door and Lawson looked over his shoulder when I kept giggling.
“Why do I get the distinct feeling that you’re trouble?” He asked. I clapped a hand over my mouth when he said that and shook my head at him.
“I’m not trouble,” I insisted.
He didn’t look convinced and pointed a finger at me. “You are.”
“Really? Because from here you seem like trouble. You’re the one threatening to spank me,” I reminded him.
He gave me a dip of his chin. “Because you’re trouble.’
I opened my mouth to argue but didn’t, because one very important thing came rushing back to me. “I have to pee,” I blurted out. “Now.”
Chapter Nine
LAW
“What the fuck are you doing?” The question was to no one in particular, seeing as my ass was alone and standing in a hallway outside of a women’s bathroom. I glanced towards the shut door and repeated the question. “What the fuck am I doing?” There, that was right, the clarification of that question made all the difference in the world.
What was I doing? I glared at my phone and shoved it back in my pocket. I’d texted Taylor letting him know I was going to need hi
m to bring the car around and that we’d be making a detour before home. There was no if's and’s or but’s, I was going to be taking Honey home the second she got out of the damn bathroom. I leaned back against the wall and looked at the door. The door to the bathroom Honey was currently in. How had this happened? One minute I’d been eating dinner and responding to emails in a private room. The server had been a little intrusive, but she was easily brushed off. I wasn’t interested and hadn’t given her an in, so when the door had slid open I’d thought it was her checking on me again and interrupting the peace I was enjoying. I hadn’t looked up from my email, choosing to focus on work. I’d let the silence speak for itself when she tried to strike up a conversation with me for what felt like the hundredth fucking time that night.
I’d already made a mental note to let the owner know on my way out that when I said private, I meant private. She knew me from the days when I’d been a familiar face on the streets of New York. She’d make sure I had my quiet while I dined.
But then I’d heard that first breathy ‘sorry,’ and I’d known exactly who it was. It wasn’t my nosey server, it was Honey. Just like that, it was like a switch being flipped in my brain—I’d just known it was her. Something in me had changed the day I’d met her, the second I’d laid eyes on her, heard her voice, had her smile at me. Something in me had shifted, the compass of me reoriented to zero in on Honey. I’d recognize her in a crowd, pick her low and sweet voice out no problem even in a crowded room.
Sonofabitch. How had that happened?
And then I’d been crossing the room and putting my hands on her before I could stop myself. She was drunk, which I hated. Having a good time was fine by me, but pushing boundaries until the lines of safety and recklessness were blurred and twisted together was beyond what I tolerated. I did not allow for my subs to get out of control, to abuse themselves like that, and I’d threatened to spank the shit out of her if I had the chance. Which brought up a whole different issue altogether.