by Kendra Mase
“You always say that when you talk about your family.”
“Most of the time, I mean it. Now, we are focusing on you, however uncomfortable that makes you feel. We are going to get these pictures, and everyone is going to literally buy the clothes off your body. Yeah?”
She nodded once.
“Relax, Kit.” Jack smiled at her, a soft, different sort of smile than she’d seen before. Pulling down his camera, he motioned with his hands toward his chest as he breathed.
Kit followed the motion.
“Good girl. It’s good to breathe.”
“Who knew I was suffering all these years.”
“Happy to be of service.”
Eyelashes hovering over her cheeks, Katherine giggled.
The lights at the top of his camera flashed.
“I still wasn’t ready,” Kit pouted as her legs swayed over the side of the lounge.
He snapped another photo.
“Now that is just cruel.”
“As the truth often is.” Jack paused, giving her a second as he looked her up and down. She could be a lingerie model if she wanted to. A small smile graced her lips and he took another photo. Now they were getting somewhere. “Better.”
“Thanks.”
He pointed at her to switch the pose. Awkwardly, she turned to her other side, exposing more of where the belt attached to her sheer nude stockings. “Kick up your foot right—there. Don’t move.”
He focused the camera and started to take the photos again. He was used to live candid photos, but this was different. He glanced at the screen again. Good.
“The shop and now the website; it means a lot to you,” Jack mused.
Kit blinked. “It didn’t at first.”
“When I first came to the shop, all I knew was that I liked to sew. I was decent at it and I knew what my aunt did. I guess I admired her since the first time she ever came to visit me and my father after my mom left when I was young. She was… exotic.”
Jack smiled.
“But she and everything back then and even right before I came here, all felt so distant. Even when I was here, I felt like I had walked into another person’s life until one day.”
“What happened?” Jack asked, continuing to work as she talked. She barely noticed the fixed light flashing at different angles. Jack barely took a look down at the screen before taking another picture.
“I was working on a more complicated set Emilie entrusted me with. It took hours and I took my time trying to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes. Emilie was closing up, and that is when I realized. I didn’t want to go upstairs. I didn’t want to sleep yet. I wanted to stay there in that workroom forever.”
“So, you’re going to.”
“It looks like it,” Katherine said softly. “Or at least I am trying to for now.”
“What do you mean, for now? Do you have other plans?” Jack teased.
They both knew she didn’t. Whenever they’d had a spare second over the past few weeks working at DuCain with the never-ending list Queen put together and Kit was insistent on following, she was talking about Ashton and the shop. Somewhere in the past few months, she’d settled in.
She knew it too, as she held back a devilish smile.
“What about you?” she asked. “Have any plans? You know, besides going to see your family?”
“I can’t just show up there, Kit.”
“Why not?”
For a lot of reasons. Most of his good ones just weren’t presenting themselves.
“You have none.”
“I do.”
“Sure.” She grinned.
“Go, change and put on another. I think we got a few good ones.”
Popping up from the settee, she skirted past Jack with a scrunch of her nose. “You have no good reasons.”
Without thinking, Jack turned around and slapped her on the ass. She yelped. Turning back to him, her mouth opened in shock.
“Go.”
This time she didn’t tease, moving back to the other room to switch out. This time, she had a baby pink number with a matching robe. The next was a deep midnight blue silk, simple and fitted.
Taking the camera off the tripod, he looped the strap around his neck. He preferred to shoot this way, up close and personal. Maybe he could get some shots with her more off guard.
That—right there. He took two more pictures; her eyes met his through the screen.
“Don’t look at me like that.” He shut his eyes.
“Like what?”
“Like I hung the stars or something.” He smirked, and his honey eyes sparkled when they peeked at her. “Remember now, I’m just Queen’s sidekick with a good camera. At your service—”
Kit cut him off with a roll of her eyes. Leaning forward, he knew exactly what she was thinking. The two of them were so close. Yet, she didn’t move.
He took another photo, barely looking at where it was aimed. “What?”
“You must be kidding,” was all she said. “Jack, to those people at DuCain, the way they looked at you—”
“The way you looked at me.”
She didn’t deny that. It would only cause stuttering, she was sure. “You are basically king.”
“I’ll take that from you, but nah. I think Reed had that title once in the very beginning of their reign and she never gave it to anyone else.”
“Fine then,” she conceded. “Jack. Farmer. Sidekick. Photographer—”
“And one of DuCain’s own kinky therapists, at your service.”
Kit laughed as she looked down at her thighs, becoming less stiff as Jack continued his movements, coming closer to her. “You know, that is how I always felt, at least maybe a little at first when you looked at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“When you smirked at me.”
Something in his chest stuttered.
She smiled as if daring to show him, baring her teeth.
He did the same with his own lips, spreading them wide and curling his lip in tease.
They were so close she knew that he could hear her whisper.
“Like that,” Kit breathed. “Would you hurt me?”
Jack paused, smirk faltering at the question, but he didn’t run or move from where he was frozen in front of her. “Would you want me to?”
He waited for her to answer, but the nerves and intrigue that coursed through him told him all the words she wished she only dared to say, she knew, clear as day.
She tore her eyes from his. Turning over to look at him over her one shoulder, she did not answer.
“Look at me.”
Jack reached up, gently brushing a carefully placed piece of hair away from where it laid across her temple.
The sweetness of the gesture alone made her turn back.
“Would that make you happy?” Jack asked. His eyes studied only her face as he sat back on the sheet. His heart stopped pounding from nerves with her all of a sudden. “You want to play? Like we almost did that one day?”
“You did say...” Kit swallowed before forcing herself to say the ridiculous words. “I’m surprisingly good at playing games.”
A sharp grin began to spread, ear to ear. “Only we wouldn’t be playing just any kind of game then, Kitten.”
With wide eyes, she seemed suddenly very aware of that.
But she didn’t stop. She taunted him, mimicked him with that grin he once didn’t believe could put a spell on anyone.
He had to revoke that statement.
Jack snapped another picture of her expression.
But maybe it put one right on him.
His chin jerked up. “Fine. Go put on another one. We do have more to shoot, don’t we?”
She froze and stared at him.
“Do I have to repeat myself? Or did you decide you aren’t up to what you started after all?”
Kit stood, eyes on him, before casting them down. “No. You don’t have to repeat yourself.”
Jack’s eyes bur
ned through her. What were they doing?
It felt like breathing. “Good. Go.”
Pressing to her toes, she stood in front of Jack and turned on her heel.
She did as she was told.
She gathered each set together and changed into them with an ease the creator should have. The last of the pieces were simple, easy to make a dozen or more of in a sitting, but still, there was something special about them the moment they were put on. Clipping garters to stockings and adjusting straps an inch up or down, and suddenly, she was transformed in front of Jack’s eyes.
Sit, stand, kneel—laugh.
He ordered the simple expressions one after another and Katherine laughed for Jack and he laughed with her right afterward.
Photo after photo he took until he saw that she didn’t realize when he was taking them, when he let the camera fall to the side to adjust the lights or help her into another layer. At the end, he laced her up in a corset just like the one she’d once thought he had no idea how to fit. With a jerk at the end, he pulled the ribbons tight and smirked at the tiny gasp she made.
“Turn around.”
She did, feeling the final photo taken against her back.
Then his hand slid around her waist, turning her around to him again.
“They are all beautiful, Kitten,” Jack whispered.
“Thank you.”
“No.” Jack shook his head, grinning again. He couldn’t stop himself anymore. Whether or not the world would see her in these pieces, he did first, and she had to know. “You’re beautiful. When will you even begin to understand that?”
Licking her lips, Katherine stared up at him.
When did they get here?
When weren’t they? Katherine’s heart pounded in her chest. Warm breath touched his lips, she was so close. Staring at the dark pink painted on her plush lips, Jack wordlessly lifted his eyes from her mouth to her nose to finally her warm eyes. He took a moment to study each in case he startled her.
He was pretty sure she had begun to scare him a while ago.
Weeks—No. Months ago.
All he had to do now was lean forward and…
His thumb swept the lilac lines under her eyes. Hers widening at the touch.
“Kitten?” Jack forced himself not to move. He couldn’t do this. Not unless—it was her choice. She decided. “Truth or dare?”
Her breath caught, unsure of what to say.
Dare.
Dare.
Jack cocked his head to the side, watching her struggle, panning out each situation in that stuffed-up head of hers. So many emotions bent his ribs and stung his lips, sent feeling down his stomach so low—
Katherine’s lips hung there, parted.
Say dare, he nearly begged her, but instead, she said nothing.
Fine.
“Come home with me?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
She thought he was going to kiss her.
Dare. It was such a simple word. Such a simple stupid word, yet for some reason, she could not work it past the back of her tongue.
Dare.
How hard was that? How hard was it for her brain to give her a little leeway and let her live life? All of a sudden, out of everything in the world, Jack Carver, the man of her summer infatuation, was about to kiss her and all she could think was, oh my god, Jack is about to kiss her and they had such a good few weeks together and what if this ruined everything?
Her kissing him clearly didn’t, but him kissing her—she wasn’t sure she could ever look at him again.
She was already having trouble thinking about him when she went back to pack her bag for when he was set to pick her up the next day. She was too nervous already to ask what the weather would be like or how farm-like his farm really was, so she had about twenty outfits stuffed in a duffel bag like some sort of anxiety-induced magic trick.
She couldn’t kiss Jack and now she was going home with him to meet his family.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath the way Jack showed her how to, deep and slow as she focused on what she was doing now in the shop. One step at a time, she started her latest corset again, most of it already constructed from the other day.
She didn’t need Emilie to tell her that it was time.
Emilie herself watched from afar, doing simple tasks at the register or at her desk before going back upstairs to nap after turning the sign to closed for the day. Katherine continued her work, trying not to think of anything else and almost succeeded as she hummed to whatever music she left on repeat, echoing over the cold hard surfaces. She laced up the skeleton of the corset on herself, and it fit.
She laced it back up on the mannequin and it held its shape, gently tightening just like Emilie’s always did in an hourglass. Then she got to work. Pinching her fingers, she threaded darker shades of the color she already picked for the corset into the thick fabric. She braided and swirled the design and gently tucked crystals into spaces to catch the light.
Her hands ached, but after the past week, months of failed attempts, it was done. She did it. Her corset—Avril’s corset already claimed—was finished.
Stepping back, Katherine felt pressure at the back of her eyes as she took in the final product set in a stunning emerald green. It might not have been Emilie-quality yet, but it was close.
“It’s beautiful, Kit.” A voice behind her spoke up.
Emilie stood in the darkened entryway, looking at the corset with soft eyes.
Katherine swallowed, stepping aside for her aunt to stand next to her. “It is?”
“It’s perfect.”
“You don’t mean that.”
For one thing, it might’ve been the most Emilie had said to her in the past few weeks, besides critique and reminders. Katherine bit her bottom lip as she thought about how long that really was.
“No,” Emilie said softly, bringing her red-painted fingernails to her lips. That hand then slowly found its way to Katherine’s shoulder. “I do.”
Katherine looked up at her with a hesitant smile.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a—” Emilie cut herself off with a shake of her head. “There’s no excuse. I know the shop has been up and down, and I know that you have ideas that are only looking out for the greatness of what this place could be. I’m just not… I’m not ready to see it all go yet, how it is now, you know?”
Katherine wasn’t quite sure what her aunt meant, but she nodded all the same.
“Forgive me?”
“Of course,” said Katherine. She was never the one mad at Emilie, not really.
“Look at what you’ve created.” Her aunt gave her a gentle shake. Both of them looked at the corset another time in the fluorescent light before she hit the switch, turning them both toward the stairs. It was late, much later than Katherine had thought it was for her or Emilie to be up. “I told you you’d get it.”
“Sure, you did.”
“I did! You did make some ugly attempts though.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
“So, you’ve been packing to go with Jack tomorrow?”
“After I run my rounds at Rosin to make sure they are set for the weekend.”
Emilie gave a single appreciative nod. “Have fun. Be nice to him. I can only imagine him going back home after so long must be difficult without everything else on his shoulders.”
“I figured you would be giving me the warning against him.”
She shook her head, flashing a timid smile. Her? “Where would the fun be in that?”
If Katherine could keep her eyes open, it would be a miracle. Her nerves still pulsed against her, but at the very least, were dulled at the utter exhaustion layered over her body. No wonder Emilie was feeling so tired again when they went upstairs this morning, even if she did look like she was coming back down with something again.
“Ow, watch it.”
Katherine glanced up at one of the girls she just stuck with a pin. She couldn’t remember her name.
Calla? Lisa? Something with an A at the end, she was pretty sure. “Sorry, lovely.”
She patted her hip after another moment.
“Good to go. Take it off carefully and I’ll have it altered for you.”
“Thanks, Kit.”
She gave the dancer a small smile as she stood back up, stretching her back as she went.
“Kit, I was looking for you.”
Turning over her shoulder, Katherine prepared herself when Cherry appeared, walking toward her. “What’s going on?”
Cherry waved her off. “Nothing huge. Just wanted to check in on where you were with all of Queen’s arrangements. Anything else I should know about?”
Katherine shook her head slowly. “As of now, no. The girls have already started to inform me of what they are wearing if they need anything altered in time. Two group numbers and three singles.”
Cherry nodded without correction.
“Everything else is all set and ready for New Year’s besides some minor details that will be dealt with, like setting up and getting everyone where they are supposed to be. Marketing starts next week. Oh! If someone comes by with the decorations I found in DuCain’s storage while I am gone this weekend, please sign for them and then hide them away.”
Cherry gave a dip of her head as she disappeared back to her office.
Knowing she wasn’t one for send-offs, Katherine went back to collecting her bags. She checked the final mark on her to-do list. Since this morning, she hadn’t stopped. She’d opened the shop, made deliveries and sent other orders to the post office, checked in at DuCain to make sure Evie had the details there in hand, closed the shop when Emilie looked far too pale, and still somehow made it to Rosin for last-minute dress changes and mends.
She let out a loose sigh and flung the extra duffel bag she brought to Rosin with her, knowing that she would’ve never made it back to the shop in time.
The Jeep idled along the curb of Rosin. Jack beeped the horn once when she yanked open the passenger side door.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” Katherine hauled herself in. Shutting the door took too much effort, but she managed it, luxuriating in the heat flaring the open vents.
“I got you a tea from Keys.” Jack lifted the cup in the side cup holder so she knew which was hers. “I told them to leave the bag in.”