Someone to Watch Over Me

by Anne Berkeley

  I’m living my life, with my head held high

  I’m floating up here, on cloud number nine

  I’m stronger now; don’t want you no more Mm mm

  I’ll never be, what I was before

  I’m not coming back; you’re no good for me

  I know what it’s like, to be finally free

  Ok, perhaps the song wasn’t seductive, but my singing was. I lured them right in, had them cheering me on, propelling me forward with a fiery passion. Brassy, bluesy and a little rough around the edges, I bared my soul through my song. I put as much spit and shout into it to bring down the house with the percussion of their hands as they clapped to the assumed beat.

  I’d say I accomplished my goal. Ha! Carter Strickland owed me a band!

  I hadn’t felt that liberated since the first time I took the stage. I felt like I’d taken something back. That I’d gained some piece of me lost three years ago.

  I felt on top of the world.

  Behind me, the girls walked on stage, lining up in three progressive rows. Four stood directly at my back, five behind them, and six at the row in the back. I ditched the last of my gratitude as the distinguished bass line of the next song began, and gave them my full attention.

  “Sorry girls.” Unfortunately, they would pay the price of this performance. The men always got grabby after doing this number. I felt like I was throwing them to the sharks.

  Mia shrugged and winked at me. “Jake Whalen can grab my ass all he wants.”

  Laughing, I turned to face the audience and lifted the microphone once again. “Are you ready boots?”

  ♫♪♫♪

  Thirty sweltering minutes later, I walked offstage to find Tate waiting for me with a fresh towel and a bottle of water. I wanted to kiss and hug him for it, and I did exactly that.

  Somehow, we ended up in one of the storage rooms with my legs around his waist. Kissing like our lives depended on it, we bumped and ground against one another, knocking into various pieces of furniture as Tate worked his way deeper into the small room, feeling blindly for a path along the floor.

  Our tongues wrestled for dominance over one another’s mouths. Neither of us was winning the fight. It was an equal war of give and take. Several times, we knocked teeth, scraping enamel against enamel in our frenzy of oral assaults. Only once Tate was happy with our level of seclusion did he break the kiss.

  Dropping me to my feet, he spun me around so that my back pressed firmly to his front. His hands roamed over my body, traveling from my breasts to my hips, while he buried his face against the back of my neck, following my spine with the edge of his teeth.

  “You were fuckin’ hot out there.” Paying our whereabouts no mind, he unbuttoned the top of my shorts, while licking the salt from my neck. “I want you, Coop. Now. Christ, I want to fuck you so hard that you’ll barely walk when I’m done.”

  Well, that much was fairly obvious. I could feel his erection through his jeans. “It’ll have to be quick. We’re in a storage room.” Granted nobody used it, but it was still a public establishment. The last thing I needed was someone walking in on us.

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” Undoing his pants, he ripped open the black plastic wrapper, pulled the condom free and dropped the wrapper to the ground. “It’ll only take a minute. I lose all control when I’m with you.”

  “You’re like a magician,” I observed, looking over my shoulder. “Do you keep those things behind your ears or something?” They were like coins. He seemed to pull them out of thin air.

  Tate grinned as he rolled the condom on. With his other hand, he guided me down until I stood bent at the waist, leaning over an old podium resting on its side. My shorts had fallen to my ankles, leaving me in my thong, which he pushed to the side. “You can call me Houdini. Now you see it.” He slipped into me in one quick thrust. “Now you don’t.”

  My breath came out choked, hoarse after my routine on stage.

  Gently, his hand closed over my shoulder, pulling me back and toward him. At the same time, he rocked his hips, sinking further into me. The feeling wasn’t disagreeable. The fingers of his other hand skimmed down the cleft of my ass. “I’m going to have this one day.”

  Was he serious? Anal? “I’ve…um…never done that before.”

  “Never?”

  “None…whatsoever.”

  “Fuck. I need to have it.”

  “Tate.” He couldn’t be serious. Warning signals were going off in my head. “Wait...” We were in a storage room. This so wasn’t happening.

  Behind me, Tate laughed quietly. “Not now, Coop. I come prepared, but not for that. I just…fuck…relax for me. I need to touch you there. Just a little bit.” When I relaxed, he slipped the tip of his finger into me, moving methodically deeper until I began rocking against him, matching his tempo. With his other hand, he kneaded my ass, alternately pinching and then smoothing his palm over my flesh. My response was an unintelligible moan, though it couldn’t have been mistaken for anything but pleasure. “There. That’s good. Oh Jesus.”

  Again, his hips began to thrust. He moved in slow, systematic strokes. Withdrawing, and plunging in, sinking deeper. His finger worked in tandem. My God, I hadn’t thought I would enjoy it like this. I experienced a heady rush from the forbidden pleasure. I felt dirty and naughty, but at the same time, aroused. I found myself greedy for more, wanting to push myself to the limit.

  “That feels good now, doesn’t it? You like that? Tell me what you want, babe. Tell me you want more and I’ll give it to you.”

  I was never one for dirty talk, but if I could’ve spoken intelligibly at that moment, I would’ve spouted off some amazingly vulgar demands. As it stood, I moaned aloud and thrust my ass vigorously against his hand, grinding myself against him with little to no modesty.

  Apparently, he read my body language well. Not so gently, he withdrew almost completely and then slammed forward. I cried out from the sudden incursion, meeting his thrust with my own. All bumps and bruises from my fall were temporarily forgotten.

  Behind me, Tate groaned hoarsely, his fingers digging into my hips. “Holy fuck! My God, Coop, what the fuck are you doing to me?”

  Him? What was he doing to me? Turning me into a fiend, that’s what.

  “This isn’t fucking normal.” Buried deeply inside me, he arched his neck and closed his eyes. “Even when I’m inside you, it’s not enough. I want to be closer to you. I want to be a part of you. I want to lose myself in you until I don’t know where I stop and you begin.”

  Turning my head, I let my hair drape over my face, hiding the shock in my eyes. No reason to get all freaked out, I told myself. He was just spouting off random words and senseless declarations in the heat of the moment. I blamed sex. It turned men into nattering fools.

  “Don’t hide from me.” Reaching up, Tate brushed my hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “I want to look at you. I want to know that you’re as lost as I am.”

  I curled my fingers around the edge of the podium as he began to move. This time, he started out slow and gentle, holding himself back. He withdrew and eased himself in again, pivoting his hips at the end of each thrust, as if he couldn’t burry himself deep enough. When this proved unsatisfying, he increased his pace, his hips and testicles slapping against my flesh.

  “Stay with me, babe. That’s my girl.”

  That deviant finger fell still, holding me back. I found the frustration it caused, lent me some added strength, and Christ if I didn’t need it. His stamina was immeasurable. I had a strong notion that he was being honest with his assertion. I might never walk right again.

  Close to peak, I could feel Tate’s cock stiffen further. He rumbled under his breath with each thrust. His pace grew fierce. Demanding. Merciless. Expletives poured from his lips with no rhyme or reason, though ‘fuck’ seemed to be a favorite. I thought it was ironically fitting.

  With the same vocal gusto, he urged me on, demanding I come with him. I didn�
�t think I had much choice in the matter. He’d been leading me to this point, teasing me, holding me back.

  Adding that finger back into the mix, he overwhelmed my senses. I imploded in a burst of spasms, my knees quaking below me. Tate followed, impelled by my release. His thrust hard and deep, his body locking up, lost in his own physical release. I could feel his heart racing.

  Drawing out the last of my orgasm, Tate eased himself from me, using the last of my racking shudders to temper his withdraw. Slowly, he guided me up, straightening my back until we touched from head to toe. His tenderness was welcoming, and a soothing descent from our frenzied climax. Resting my head against his chest, I settled into his embrace.

  “My God, Coop.” Dipping his head, he nibbled a kiss at the corner of my mouth. I turned toward him, meeting his lips. “I think I die a little each time I make love to you.”

  Laughing against one another, I could feel the heat rolling off our bodies. We were damp with perspiration. Where our bare skin met, we clung together. My mouth had gone bone dry.

  “I need water.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Tate panned the room around us. “Don’t move.” Stepping away, he tugged his pants over his hips then reached for the water bottle and the towel that we had dropped on the floor during our trek through the storage room. Uncapping the water, he poured a small amount onto the towel and then passed me the bottle. To my consternation, he began wiping the remnants of our activities from my backside.

  “I don’t think I could if I wanted to,” I said, flinching when he followed the cleft of my ass all the way to my thighs. At this point, nothing was sacred anymore, but modesty was a trait hard to overcome.

  “I’m sorry. I was too rough with you.”

  “No, I was kidding, but you really don’t need to do that.”

  “Least I could do.” Finished with his ministrations, Tate snapped my thong back in place and tugged my shorts up for me. “I don’t know if I should feel satisfied or guilty. I feel like a brute for being so rough when you’re all bruised up like this.”

  “I think you should feel like a god.” Turning, I molded myself to him, locking my mouth against his in a lascivious kiss. “I have no willpower when your hands are on me. I don’t think I could say no if I wanted to.”

  Raising one brow, Tate smiled crookedly. “A god?”

  Behind us, the door shuddered and flew open. “—employees only,” Evan clipped, clearly involved in some sort of altercation. “If you don’t leave now, I’ll have to forcibly remove you from the premises.”

  “Here we go,” Tate muttered. He stepped in front of me while I buttoned up my shorts. His back was to the door, but he kept an eye over his shoulder, in case the unexpected intruder made it past Evan.

  “One of your many fans?”

  Tate snorted. “No. I think this one’s yours.”

  My heart stuttered in my chest. My first thought was Grant, but I heard another voice, which was much too high to be his.

  “Cooper!”

  “Sir, this is your last warning,” Evan clipped.

  “I told you, man—I just need to talk to her! She knows me!”

  I did know him. I mean, not personally, but I knew his voice. He was one of our regulars. He never missed a show. There was no mistaking his trademark, “Cooooperrrr!”

  “Hey, that’s Ken.”

  “Ken?”

  “It’s a nickname we gave him. Well, Mia did, because of his pick up lines. He’s got three of them, like Sweet Talking Ken.”

  I leaned to peek around Tate’s side, but he placed a hand on my shoulder and pushed me behind him, obscuring me from view. “Don’t. Any kind of acknowledgement will only encourage him. Nutcases like this don’t know the difference between a courteous hello and a blatant fuck off. They’re delusional.”

  “COOOOPERRRRR!”

  I heard the sharp snap of linen and the thud of fists against flesh. Someone huffed and wheezed as the other knocked the breath out of him.

  “Jesus Christ. Are they fighting?” Anxiously, I shifted my weight, listening to the ensuing scuffle. Tate’s grip on my shoulder tightened as if I were going to jump in the fray.

  “He’s down. Evan’s got him.”

  “Guy’s drunk,” Taylor said. “What do you want to do with him?”

  “Call the cops,” Tate answered. “Let them deal with him. Drunk or not, that fucking fruitcake should be in jail. He’s going to hurt someone; if not Coop, then one of the other girls.”

  Taylor nodded. “Give us five minutes to get him gone. I’ll come back when everything’s clear.”

  “Maybe we should just go,” I suggested. The Loft had its share of drunks, but rarely did things escalate to the need for physical force. Usually Marshall’s presence alone was a sufficient deterrent. And while Billy might like the income generated from Carter’s PR, he might not appreciate the trouble it attracted. The last thing he wanted was a lawsuit for assault or using excessive force.

  “Should I have Derek pull the car around?” Taylor asked.

  “Yeah, and let Carter know we’re gonna bounce.”

  The door closed with a click, muffling the ruckus outside. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and looked up at Tate, who was scowling down at me.

  “Do you see what I mean about the job and the hours? That fuckin’ idiot out there—you might think he’s harmless, but he obviously wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

  “That’s why we have Marshall and the rest of the bouncers.”

  “Marshall and the other bouncers are here to manage the six hundred customers. They’re crowd management. They’re not your personal protection. Obviously, they’re understaffed, because that fucker shouldn’t even have been backstage.”

  “So what do you suggest I do, Tate?” I threw my hands up in exasperation.

  “Quit. I’ll pay you whatever you’ll lose.”

  “Sure. Ok.” God, was he insane?

  “Really?”

  “No!” I exclaimed with a frustrated laugh. “We’ve known each other less than forty-eight hours! You can’t just commandeer my life because some drunk has a crush on me!”

  Grinning back at me, Tate pulled me into his arms. Suspicion arose in the pit of my stomach. I’d seen that self-satisfied look before. “I thought I already had.”

  “I’m not taking money from you.”

  “You’re not losing much. What does he pay you, fifty bucks a night?”

  “No.”

  “It’s my fault he fired you.”

  “No, it’s not, and the answer’s still no.”

  “You could spend more time with Mini Cooper.”

  That actually gave me pause for thought. “No, Tate. No.”

  “You’re caving. I can see it.”

  “No, I’m really not.”

  Behind us, the door clicked open again. Taylor stood in the doorway, his face grim. This wasn’t going to be good. He looked as comfortable as a pig in a butcher shop. “Hey boss.”

  “What up.”

  “We’ve a situation with Miss Hale’s vehicle.”

  “My car? What happened to my car?” Breaking away from Tate’s grasp, I nearly sprinted for the door. If something happened to my car, I was going to kick ass and take initials. My car was off limits. You just didn’t mess with people’s shit.

  Taylor, fortunately, was there to stop me before I could commit a homicide. “It’s not here, ma’am. It’s just around the block where Derek parked it. Someone’s taken a key to it.”

  “Mother fucker!” An empty janitor’s bucket took the brunt of my ire when I punted it across the room. My run of good luck had just expired. No surprise there. It was bound to happen. I suppose I should be glad it was only my car, because it could’ve been much, much worse.

  “Ma’am,” said Taylor, apologetically. “I’m afraid there’s more. They left some photos on the windshield. I think they’re of your little boy.”

  “Oh God.” Anger gave way to fear. It
was much worse. “Grant.”

  Chapter 9

  I frowned as I cranked up the air in the rented Ford Fusion. The temperature had risen to a scorching ninety-nine degrees for the fifth straight day. The vents spit out a lukewarm stream of air that smelled like damp upholstery, cheap fruity deodorizer, and—despite the no smoking stickers adorning the dashboard—cigarette smoke. The vehicle had less than a thousand miles on its odometer, but looked as though it survived Hurricane Sandy or perhaps World War II.

  I wanted my Mini back.

  Fucking Grant.

  After I called Emily in a panic to make sure Levy was safe, Taylor drove Tate and me to get my things from my car, and then to the police station to file a report. They dusted the car for prints because of the restraining order and the implicit threat behind the photographs, but they said that it could take anywhere from days to weeks before we received the results. Six days had already passed and I still hadn’t heard a thing, which irked me because they had his prints on file from his arrest. I mean, how heavy could their workload be? I lived in East Podunk.

  Sliding my shades on, I shifted the car into reverse, annoyed with the geographical differences in the car’s interior. Out of habit, I reached for the wrong instruments, or rather the right instruments in the wrong places. It was going to be a long two weeks until I got my car back. Nevertheless, I’d rather have a pristine finish on my Mini than some half-assed paint job because I had rushed the shop.

  Peering over my shoulder as I backed out, I winced over the crick in my neck. If what they say is true about bad things coming in threes, then my streak of misfortune had run its course. To top off losing my job and Grant vandalizing my car, I woke up Sunday morning with back spasms that left me debilitated and unable to get out of bed. When Monday rolled around and I hadn’t improved to Tate’s satisfaction, he confiscated my phone and called me out of work.

  The rest of the week was run-of-the-mill, aside from coming home to Tate Watkins every night and the consequential interrogations from the girls at work every day. I don’t think I actually did an ounce of work throughout the week. One girl asked me about my night (wink wink) at the Krups machine one morning. Later, another snagged me at the laser printer and grilled me for the real story behind how I threw out my back. A third party concurred that I must’ve done it during some bout of sexual acrobatics. My manager, Molly, just wanted assurance that I wasn’t giving her my two-week’s notice so that I could go on the road with my rock star boyfriend. I assured her I wasn’t, not unless Tate was offering health insurance and a dental plan. In reply, someone else promptly made a quip about Tate and oral examinations.