Confessed
Page 4
“Something tells me you’re not running away from your dysfunctional family,” I say.
“Something tells you right.”
“So what are you running from then?” I ask. His thigh presses against my knee. I let my fingers slide up the seam of his jeans.
“Right now?” he says, running his hand up my neck. “Not a goddamned thing.”
Oh God.
The bartender coughs. I turn and look at her. She’s a tough-looking older lady with curly, long, gray hair and a too-tight Rolling Stones T-shirt cut to show off her impressive, tanned, slightly leathery cleavage. She looks from me to Vince and back again. “Hello, lovebirds.”
In the mirror behind the bottles of liquor at the back of the bar, I see Vince smile down at his chest. Just a tiny, tiny bit.
“I’d like a glass of white wine, whatever you’ve got,” I tell her. Meanwhile, as I see myself in the mirror behind the bottles, I realize that I look semi-insane. The humidity down here is not my friend. I sweep my hair off to one side and begin an English braid, but stop immediately when Vince’s fingers slide along the nape of my neck.
“Missed a piece,” he says, bringing up a stray strand of hair.
I shiver. I have always, always loved the feeling of someone touching my hair. “Thanks.”
His fingers linger on mine. I bend my head forward, and he continues to trace the curve of my neck.
The bartender is looking more amused every minute. “So what else can I getcha?” she asks.
I make a cursory inquiry about a chicken Caesar salad. This she answers with a lift of her painted eyebrow to say Do you know where you are, hon? So I switch to a cheeseburger with fries, which is what I really want anyway. I also order a glass of water with plenty of ice. Vince says, “Make it two cheeseburgers. Give me a tequila straight.”
The bartender jots our order down on a battered notepad. As I finish braiding, I elbow him and bark-whisper, “Say please.”
He gives me this look. Halfway between fuck you and fuck off. It softens after a second, but not much. I like that temper. I love that sizzle. It’s scary. And I like it.
I elbow him again and tie off my braid.
So he adds, “Fine. Nix the tequila and the wine. Get us two shots of the Four Horsemen. Please.”
The bartender shakes her head. “We don’t do that one here, hon. This is an upstanding establishment.”
I beg to differ. One of the ZZ Top impersonators is cleaning his ear with a steak knife.
Vince takes a twenty from his wallet. “What about now?” he says.
She glances side to side, then slips the twenty into her cleavage and grins at us. “That’ll be two rounds of the Apocalypse coming right on up.”
Now, I grew up in an upper-class family with a hereditary dispensation towards insidious alcoholism so I know my liquors, but I’ve never heard of such a drink. If I haven’t heard of it, it’s probably a genuinely terrible idea. “That’s a lot of Bible references for one cocktail.”
He puts his elbows on the bar. His black T-shirt stretches around his biceps. His shirt is soft, well-washed cotton, tight enough to show me the valley between his pecs. I bite my lip and slide my bra strap back up my arm.
The bartender returns with two empty glasses. They look a whole lot bigger than normal shot glasses. More like juice glasses. Over the top of them, she passes a bottle of Jim Beam, then Jack Daniels…That would be bad enough. Except then there follows Johnny Walker, and finally Jameson.
Oh hello, Apocalypse. Pleased to meet you. “This is a really bad idea,” I say, staring at the spilling-over glasses in front of me. “I mean, really bad.”
“You got a problem with bad ideas, Peaches?” he asks. His hand meets the small of my back.
Peaches. The way he says it, it’s like when he pressed his chest against my pointed finger. So cocky, so assholeish, so…
Delicious.
I take a deep breath. His eyes lock on mine, challenging me. Taking the glass between two fingers, I give him a glance and throw back the Four Horsemen. It takes me three swallows, but the way his eyes widen when I slam the glass down on the table is incredibly satisfying.
To hide the hiss and burn, I press my hand to my lips until the sting dies down. “Behold a white horse…”
His eyes widen. “Don’t tell me you’re a Bible beater.”
“Hell no.” I wipe my lips and gasp, “Johnny Cash.”
He whistles slowly, closes his eyes and shakes his head. He puts his shot glass in mine and slides them away. “You might be too good to be true.”
I trail my fingers down his arm as I slide off my stool. I walk over to the jukebox on the other side of the bar. I put in two quarters and pick out, “The Man Comes Around.”’
Then I sit back down. He’s got his fingers on my stool, and he leaves them there, right under my ass. I adjust my body and ease the back of my thigh into his hand. “You know he got these lyrics from a dream?”
Vince signals to the bartender for another round. “No way.”
I watch the Four Horsemen pour down over our glasses. “Yep. Dreamt he was talking to the Queen of England in Buckingham Palace, and she said, ‘John. The whirlwind is in the thorn trees.’”
Vince tilts his head back, showing me that veined, muscular neck. He lifts his glass and faces me. “To Johnny Fucking Cash…”
I clink his glass and get ready to drink.
But then he adds, “… And the woman who’s fucking awesome enough to quote him.”
He keeps his eyes on mine as he throws the shot back. I do the very same thing. And this time, I get it down in one.
I study the bar in front of me. It’s plastic resin with tiny GI Joe figures embedded between the plastic and the wood. I prop my face in my hand. I look down at one GI Joe who’s running from left to right, and slide my finger over the top of him. Then I let my eyes move back to Vince. I’m pretty sure he’s been staring at me the whole time. There’s heat in those eyes, and it hangs around in the air.
With my elbow inching along, I move closer to him. “This is amazing,” I say, pressing on the Escher fish, and then the Escher birds, and back down again. His muscles don’t give way at all. Like solid stone.
He nods. “You got any ink on you?”
I shake my head. “I’m a good girl. No tattoos.”
The look he gives me says, Not that good. He runs his tongue over his teeth. “Not a piercing somewhere you don’t tell Mom about, maybe?” His eyes move down to my nipples, and I feel them tighten.
“Nope.”
He brings his hand up my neck to the side of my face and takes my earlobe between two fingers. I can’t even remember what earrings I’m wearing—I can barely think with him so close—but I feel one of them rotate in my piercing. His fingertip touches that place just behind my ear, and I shudder. “I think I like you the way you are.”
I swallow hard as he lets my face go. My eyes fall to GI Joe and then along his legs.
Even his boots are sexy. Dark brown, square-toed work boots. Steel toe probably. For some reason I think to myself, I’ll bet he’s used those as an offensive weapon.
“Really, I’m sorry about your truck,” I say, raising my eyes again.
He places his hand over mine, and my palm disappears under his. “I told you not to worry about it. So don’t fucking worry about it. Got it?”
God. The way he talks. Those orders he gives. Yes. Please. Thank you. “Yeah.”
“Good girl.”
Whump. I blow a breath out of my mouth, and it catches my hair on the way. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”
He nods. “I’ve been through a shitload worse.”
That voice. That grit. I feel a flicker in my clit. I’d like that voice to boss me around. I’d like that voice to tell me what to do.
My history with guys has ranged from tragic to hilarious, but none of them was man enough to give me what I need. They were all either rich boys from Greenwich—where, barring the occasion
al murder, the worst thing anybody ever gets up to is drinking too much on the weekends—or Yalies, who are all fundamentally good guys. Too good. Boringly respectable and always in boat shoes. None of them tattooed. None of them oozing Bad News but secretly funny, and none of them capable in their wildest dreams of giving me a look like that. Like he wants me so much, he’s going to make me apologize for it.
I look back down at his lap. The tent in his jeans is enormous. “You’re hard.”
He laces his fingers over mine and squeeze. “And why do you think that is, Peaches?”
Before the food even arrives, we have a little pyramid of shot glasses lined up in front of us on the nubby black bar mat. I find myself leaning into him as we talk. He’s stone cold but also, somehow, deeply flirtatious. Those eyes, they’re sneaky. That body is a magnet.
“Where are you from?” he asks. It feels like he’s saying, Take that dress off right now.
“Upstate New York,” I say.
“Yeah? With Connecticut plates?”
I don’t answer that, just smile up at him and shift my weight against his shoulder. I feel him press right back into me.
“You’re gonna have to get your story straight, Helen.”
“I know, I know,” I say, and spin my glass.
I ask him where he’s from. He says, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Which is just so outrageously sexy. Who knew stonewalling would be so hot?
Our food arrives, the plates spilling over with fries. At the very moment I pull the onion from my burger, he does the same thing. Our eyes meet.
Johnny Cash and no onions? Let’s run away together.
But the cheeseburger looks so good and I’m so hungry, it momentarily distracts me completely. I devour the quarter pound of beef, pickles, tomatoes, mustard, sesame roll. It’s just delicious. I don’t know if it’s because I’m exhausted or if it’s because it’s actually that good, but I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything better in my entire life.
When I come up for air, feeling a whole lot more like myself than I did five minutes earlier, he’s gaping at me, with his burger in his hands. “You ever been in prison?”
I wipe my mouth and shake my head slowly. I feel like this is a trick question.
“Because you eat like a convict. I’ve never seen a woman put away food like that.” He takes a big bite of his burger and studies me with his eyebrows pushed together. He chews a while and then swallows. Unlike me, he seems averse to talking with his mouth full. “That was fucking amazing. You could be on one of those eating shows on TV.”
I shove him. “I was starving!” He grips my hand to his chest and doesn’t let me pull it away for a second.
“In Japan, you know? Like the world record eating shit? Ten hot dogs in a minute?”
“I’m not that bad!”
“All I saw was a hamburger-shaped blur.” He lets my hand go.
There’s just a handful of fries left on my plate. I dip them in the little remaining smudge of ketchup and then try to eat them, aiming to eat them as slowly and flirtatiously as fries have ever been eaten. This fails miserably, and I poke myself in my cheek. My whole face is super numb, and I touch my cheeks as I chew. I say, “That drink should be illegal.”
“It is illegal.” His eyes move over my face, then he swipes his thumb over my lower lip. “Ketchup.”
I place my fingers in the place where his were and drag my lip down slightly.
He’s looking at my mouth, and I see the muscle in his jaw flutter. I reach up and swipe my thumb over his lip now.
He grabs a napkin and wipes his face. “Better?”
“There wasn’t anything there,” I smile. “I just wanted to touch your face.”
His whole chest heaves with a deep breath. He hunkers down over his burger. Gruffly, and in the general direction of his fries, he says, “We’ve got a problem.”
“Do we?’
“Yeah. I had this whole plan for today. Until you ran me off the road.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Fuck sorry. There’s a new plan.” He glances over at me, hard and heavy. “I want to make some bad fucking decisions with you, Helen.”
My God. I’ve flirted with a lot of guys, but flirting with this one feels like plotting a conspiracy. And I like it. “You do?”
“I fucking do.”
In the silence between us, a pulsing begins between my legs. A thrumming through my stomach. Just the right kind of wrong. Nothing to lose, and look at that face.
“What year were you born?” he asks suddenly.
It came out of nowhere. It wasn’t the question I was expecting. I freeze with my thumbnail between my teeth, thinking I had to have misheard him. “The what?”
He turns to me and swallows. “What year were you born?”
“1994,” I say.
He shakes his head at the floor. “Fuck.”
“Come on. I’m not that young.”
He turns to me. The look he gives me, it makes me feel utterly tiny. “You’re barely fucking legal.”’
I fling my hands in the air. The ways his eyes shine at me, my toes are already curling. “I can vote! I can drink! Can’t get much more legal than that.”
He grits his teeth at his onion, glancing at me sideways. “1994. Christ. I remember 1994. Really well. Too well.”
That sounds awfully sinister. Awfully intriguing. “Why? What difference does it make?” I ask. The fry I’m holding flops in half sadly between my fingers.
He runs his hand through his thick black hair. “When I was your age, music was sexy. Seriously fuck-worthy.” He brings his lips right close to my ear. “Not like this shit playing now.” And then he pulls away. He slides his stool back from the bar and gets up. I watch him walk over to the jukebox. Even the way he stands is incredibly aggressive, masculine, and sexy. Can a stance be dripping with testosterone? Apparently.
He turns and catches me staring. The jukebox goes silent, and there’s just that one second of anticipation in the air. He hitches up his belt and gives me this predatory stare. I resist the urge to place my forehead on the bar. Mercy.
But then it happens.
Bongo drums.
Electric guitar strum.
Synthesizer.
Phil Collins.
He walks back towards me and sits down, dead freaking serious, not a glimmer of fun in his eyes. Unfortunately, deep, deep down, I feel a laugh coming up. One of those incredibly painful church-and-funeral laughs. Phil Collins?
A little honking laugh does shoot out of my nose. I can’t help it. I’m only human.
He looks wounded. “This is classic music, Peaches.”
I move my hand to his forearm and grip it. I mean it to be apologetic, but the way he feels under my hand…it gets sexy in a hurry. “I thought you were going to go for something a little more…” I look him up and down, “broody.”
He’s dead serious. Phil Collins is obviously not a joke. “This is the sexiest song in the entire fucking world,” he says. Not for one second, not even to blink, does he look away from my eyes. And then he puts his hand to my waist, gripping me tight.
He nestles his chin in close to my ear and draws my body closer, between his parted legs. With his tongue just sweeping against my earlobe, he growls, “I can feel it… in the air tonight.”
My neck slides back for him. I feel the seam of his T-shirt under my fingers. Oh, Lord.
“I've waited for this moment…” He runs his finger up my arm. I breathe him in. “…all my life.”
Oh Lord.
Eye to eye now, he brings his fingers up my neck and knots them in my hair. I feel goose bumps down my spine. He draws my head to his. The feel of his stubble is harsh and gritty against my skin, almost scraping me. The hand on my waist slides me over my bar stool. I let my legs press hard and hot against his.
His tongue makes its way up the curve of my neck.
Oh. Lord.
Oh.
Lord.
As the drums come in, his other hand comes up and takes my cheek in his palm. I feel my body heave slowly towards him, like a surrender. I can’t help myself, and groan, “Oh, Lord.” Out loud.
The pressure of his head changes against mine, and he leans in like I’m making him weak. He nudges me with his nose again, like he did on the ground earlier. So close I can almost taste him. But not close enough.
I press my cheek to his and whisper, “Kiss me.”
I feel the smile more than I see it.
Both hands come to my face, and he pulls me in. He decides the depth of the kiss and moves his tongue all the way into my mouth.
Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.
Phil Collins hits us with the drums, announcing the obvious: This is a guy who knows what he wants and is going to take it. Who knows what he’s doing and is going to show me what he wants too. He tips my face in his hands, kissing me deeper, sweeping my tongue aside with his. I feel my grip weaken, and one of my legs slides off the stool. He wraps his huge arm around me. But then he pulls my lips from his, and I open my eyes a second later. “Why do I want you so bad, huh? Helen?” He drags his tongue along the edge of my ear.
“I don’t know,” I moan. “But I can feel it.”
He nods. “In the fucking air tonight.”
I inch my hand toward his hard-on.
He kisses me again, starting out way more tenderly than he left off. He fits his fingers between my ribs and grips me hard. I am outrageously wet and can feel the slippery wave between my thighs as I move my legs to bring him closer. I feel my wetness outside my panties even, in a cold smear on my thighs.
My fingers find their way to the back of his head to the base of his neck. I feel the muscles rippling even there. Solid columns of tension.
“I want to hear you scream,” he whispers. Phil Collins starts to fade out.
“I want you to make me scream,” I say.
“Jesus Christ.”
I let my lips just brush his ear. “Should we get out of here?”