by Maisey Yates
“Yeah,” he said, not even bothering to ask why she’d questioned this.
They both knew.
“I don’t really want to put you out,” she said. Except that was a lie, because she kind of did want to put him out. She didn’t want to sleep on the couch in his office after having transformative sex on the bar. The gentlemanly thing for him to do was to take the couch. And in return, the ladylike thing for her to do was to protest, at least once. Her mother would be so proud.
No, actually her mother wouldn’t be proud about any of this.
“You’re not putting me out. It’s almost the butt crack of dawn and I’m drunk and... It’s not like I’m going to have any problems sleeping.”
His words hung strangely in the air between them. Of course he wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping, he had just been given the world’s best sleeping pill. But then, so had she.
Suddenly, she felt incredibly exhausted. Everything in her life felt like it had been turned over onto its side and rummaged through. She was so tired of feeling like everything was being rummaged through.
“Okay. If you say so.” She really wasn’t going to argue too much, because she didn’t want to. Because she just wanted to go to sleep. And she didn’t care if that meant sleeping in Ace’s love nest. Anyway, she was one of his conquests, so she supposed she belonged in that little above-the-bar bedroom.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said, making his way toward her, his expression strangely blank.
“You don’t have to,” she said, but her protest was halfhearted, and he didn’t listen anyway. She didn’t mind.
They walked quietly to the back of the bar. There was a door there, one she’d never really stopped and looked at before. It opened up to a flight of stairs and he led the way to the top, where there was another door. “Here we are,” he said, making no move to enter.
“Great,” she said, swallowing hard. “That’s...great.”
Except it wasn’t really that great. She was going to have to sleep in her shorts. She didn’t have a toothbrush. And everything felt weird and wrong.
She almost wanted to ask him to stay with her, but he hadn’t mentioned that and she didn’t want to be the one to bring it up. It would be needy and clingy. She felt a little needy and clingy but she would be damned if she showed him that. She didn’t have a whole lot of pride left after tonight’s incident. She would cling to what she did have.
“Good night, then,” he said, nodding once and turning away from her, starting back down the stairs.
“Yeah,” she said.
She realized it was more like good morning, but she wasn’t sure she had that kind of salutation in her. She wasn’t sure she had much of anything left in her.
She walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her, staring at the neatly made bed. Then she crossed the space and flopped down on top of it. She didn’t care why it was here, she didn’t care what he typically used it for. All she cared about was going to sleep and forgetting that the past hour had ever happened.
Difficult to do when her skin still burned with his touch and her body still burned from the memory of her release.
Difficult to do when the past few hours had been some of the best and hottest of her life.
If only she could erase the terrible feeling that came after. But she couldn’t.
Dammit.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS MIDMORNING by the time she got back to Colton’s house, and she was hoping that he hadn’t noticed she hadn’t come home last night. Maybe he would just think she had left for work before him.
Except, when she pulled in the driveway, his truck was there.
She cursed.
As owner of the construction company, he often did work at home unless he had to be out on a job site, so it wasn’t too unusual for him to be around at odd hours of the day. But she had lived in hope.
Her new hope would have to be that he hadn’t looked out the window yet to discover her truck wasn’t there, and never had been.
She walked up the steps to the front porch and crept into the house, through the entry and past the living room. Sadly, he was there, sitting on the couch, his arms draped across the back.
“Just getting in?” he asked.
“Would you believe I got up early and went and had breakfast and am now coming back from breakfast?”
“I might have if you hadn’t asked me if I would believe it or not.”
“Well, that’s inconvenient,” she said.
“Sneaking in usually is.”
“You speak from experience?”
“Yeah. I mean, not in recent years, but still. I recommend climbing in and out of your bedroom window if you really want to escape detection.”
“I’ll remember that next time.” Not that there would be a next time. She started to edge out of the room.
“Care to share with the class?” he asked.
“I’m wandering into your house at the wrong side of a.m., wearing the same clothes I was wearing last night. Undoubtedly, my makeup has slid several inches down my face and my hair may—in fact—contain a live ferret. I am the very embodiment of the walk of shame, Colton. I don’t think you want me to share with the class.”
He frowned. “I don’t want you to be going all wild just because you’re rebelling against stupid mistakes Dad made. Don’t go making your own.”
She frowned. “I’m not sixteen. That’s ridiculous. I’m not going off the rails.”
“This looks...derailed, a little.”
She met his gaze and arched a brow. “Did you honestly think that I was a virgin or something?”
He put his hands up. “Honest to God, Sierra, in my mind you’re still about thirteen. So in my mind you remain pretty untouched. Let’s not have a discussion that would disillusion me on that score.”
“Sorry to be the bearer of disillusionment. I need to go stand under hot water for about an hour,” she said, wearily beginning to climb the stairs that led up to her bedroom.
“Are you okay?”
She turned and shot him a deadly look. “If you don’t want details, then don’t question me. Or I will start relaying details that will scorch your ears.”
“Okay,” he said, his expression one of horror. “I’m not questioning you. But I do need to make sure I don’t have to kick any ass. So just tell me that no one hurt you in any way.”
She thought back to last night, to Ace, and how damn hot it had all been. “No one hurt me. No ass needs to be kicked. I was complicit in the debauchery.”
She sighed heavily and continued on her way up the stairs. She walked down the hall, making her way into her room and pawing through her things to try and find an outfit that would make her feel slightly more human.
Something cute and soft, and not crumpled from the night before. From being worn during a long shift, then being carelessly discarded on the floor. Something that maybe didn’t smell like beer and french fry grease.
She found a flowing top, a pair of black leggings and fresh underwear. She carted everything into the bathroom with her, turning on the water and stripping off her old, stale clothes. She shimmied around outside the shower, trying to keep warm until the water got to a semi-reasonable temperature. Then she stepped inside, lowering her head as the water heated up, pouring down over her skin.
Last night had happened. There was no point in regretting it. She squeezed some soap onto a loofah and began to drag it across her skin, ignoring the fact that the faint scrape of the material reminded her a bit of the way Ace’s beard had felt.
The thought made her whole body feel like it was melting.
No. She was not going to obsess. There was nothing between them. Nothing but some strange pent-up sexual aggression that was tied up in a whole lot of weird, negat
ive feelings. So she wasn’t going to waste any time thinking about him. She wasn’t going to worry about what any of it meant, because it didn’t mean anything. She wasn’t going to act like it was the end of the world. It wasn’t. So, they’d had sex. Adults had sex.
Sure, in her experience casual sex wasn’t really a thing, but it was for a lot of people. Clearly it was for Ace.
She didn’t think this was a habit she was going to get into, but she wasn’t going to waste a whole bunch of time beating herself up about it.
She gritted her teeth as she continued to clean her skin, wishing that she could replace the memories of his touch with the scratch of the sponge. Wishing that she could wash it all away. Not because she felt dirty. But because everything felt too significant. Too large.
She thought of the way he had touched her, teased her, thought about how it had felt when he had finally slid inside of her.
Her internal muscles clenched tight and she squeezed her eyes shut, ashamed that just the thought of it brought her so close to climax again.
He was great at what he did, she couldn’t deny that. There was a reason that women lined up to experience a little bit of what he brought to the table, that was for sure.
Her mind went completely blank as she thought about that moment again. That first moment when he had slid inside of her.
Her stomach sank at the memory. Something gnawing at the back of her brain. But she couldn’t quite think of what it might be. It was all fuzzy. She had been just tipsy enough that a lot of details seemed to blur together.
Some things were sharp, brilliantly so.
The way his hands had felt on her skin, the rough feel of his fingertips. The heat of his kiss.
The fact that she’d ended up begging him, just like he’d said she would.
Her own voice echoed in her mind. That soft, needy word. Please.
She’d never been desperate like that before. Had never begged a man to make love with her.
It made her whole face hot.
That wasn’t it though. She felt like there was something else. Something she wanted to remember. But she was just sleep deprived enough this morning that things weren’t becoming any clearer. And the more time passed, the more it almost seemed like a dream she’d had, rather than anything real that had happened.
A really, really good dream.
She shut the water off ferociously and got out of the shower, dragging the towel over her skin. She wasn’t being gentle with herself. But she didn’t care. She didn’t deserve gentle. She was kind of an idiot. And she really, really wanted to punish herself sufficiently enough so that she wouldn’t go allowing the memories of pleasure to confuse her. To trick her into thinking this was something she should do again. Because she absolutely should not. Not. Not at all.
She dressed quickly, then grabbed her purse from where she had discarded it on the floor, digging for her phone. She pulled up the work schedule that Ace had sent to her earlier. And she swore. She was on an early shift today. Restocking the bar and doing other before-opening projects. Which meant she had to go back in to work in about an hour. Life was cruel. Her boss was cruel.
She thought of last night again and shivered. He was cruel, but also very talented.
No. She was not allowed to think that way. She was not allowed to think of any of this that way. She was not allowed to get lost in the memories of how good it had felt. That was shallow, it was counter to what she was attempting to do with her life, and it was the path to madness and all of that.
One of the things that made her so angry about her father’s decisions, about everything that had happened with the affair, with Jack, was the way he had completely tried to erase the consequences of what he’d done. In Sierra’s mind, if you screwed up you had to own it. Well, last night she had screwed up, there were no two ways about it. But it was a new day. She had a job to do. She had a shift to get to. And she was determined to see it through.
* * *
ACE HAD FORGOTTEN he had made the dumbass move of scheduling Sierra for an early shift today. Obviously, he had created the schedule before he had screwed her brains out in the bar last night.
When she walked in wearing an outfit that covered a lot more skin than normal, looking pale and tired, damp blond hair pulled back into a bun, his entire body seized up tight. It was only the two of them in the bar right now; no one else would be coming in for another hour. He had a feeling that he had subconsciously made the decision to schedule her for this shift. Well, also, there were likely a lot of other employees who hadn’t been available to do it. Maybe. Or, his subconscious was a sick bastard who had been chomping at the bit for another chance to be alone with her. Even though he was supposed to be avoiding being alone with her.
Yeah, that sounded like his subconscious.
“Hi,” she mumbled, barely meeting his gaze as she walked over to the counter. “So, what exactly are we doing today?”
“Just figuring out what needs to be restocked up here, then going down to the basement to get it. Here’s a checklist,” he said, sliding a square piece of paper with a list of different ingredients across the bar. “See the number next to each item? That’s how many there should be. If there aren’t enough, write how many you need in the box next to it. Then you go down to the basement and find what you need.”
“I can do that,” she said, her voice muted.
He bent down, picking up a milk crate that was on the floor by his feet and setting it on the counter. “When you go down to the basement to get things, go ahead and put them in here. It will make for fewer trips.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding.
She was wearing some kind of delicate-looking top that he thought might snag easily on the edges of the milk crate. It was pretty impractical for the kind of work they were doing. And before they had slept together, he probably would have called her on that. But, it was different now. Dammit all.
It shouldn’t be. He should treat her exactly the same as he had before. But he couldn’t. Because now if he said anything to her about what she was wearing it would seem like he was being needlessly assy. Or worse, a little too interested in her appearance.
This was why you didn’t sleep with your employees.
Sierra quickly went to work, going through the fridge and making sure the various bottles of soda and beer that they didn’t serve on tap were available, rummaging through the other fridge that contained a small amount of dairy products.
And Ace did his best to concentrate on the list they had begun building last night that would start to form the menu he would offer at his brewery.
Sierra went in and out a few times, each time returning from the basement with a crateful of different things. They didn’t talk. It was better that way.
Finally, after about three trips, he sensed her getting twitchy with the silence. She was flicking her hair while she moved things around, making broad gestures as she moved empty bottles into the recycle bin and shuffled items around on the shelves.
Finally she cleared her throat.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, squatting down and rummaging through the bottom shelf. “I was just wondering what you were working on. If it was the wine list.”
“Yeah. The menu in general. I’ve been checking out what different restaurants and breweries serve in the other towns up and down the coast. I want this place to be different than anything in Copper Ridge, but I need to make sure it’s appealing.”
“Right. That makes sense,” she said.
It took a moment for him to understand what she was doing, but suddenly, it hit him. She was trying to get them back on track. Discussing the relevant things. Dealing with their work, rather than getting caught up in the sexual tension between them. Rather than dissecting and examining what had happened between them last
night.
She was a smart little thing.
“I know that I want some kind of fish and chips. Because no matter how fancy the restaurant, that’s what people want when they come to the coast. And you have to have a hamburger.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Definitely. I think that a catch of the day like you were discussing with Ryan Masters is probably also a good way to go.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That seems like it might be hard to plan for.”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. If you have a chef’s choice item where your chef is free to try to create something around a particular fish that is available in a specific season, people can have what’s fresh and what’s good. A rotating special basically.”
“Right. That makes sense.”
“And any kind of ahi tuna platter. Appetizers, rolls...”
“That’s the stuff you basically serve raw, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said, laughing. “It doesn’t sound like you’re very impressed with that.”
“I have no desire to eat my fish rare.”
“Yes, but a lot of your customers will.”
She stood up, brushing her hands over her thighs. “I think what people really want, especially when they go to a brewery that has an emphasis on small batches and local flavors, and its location, is to really accentuate the natural resources you have available. That’s what they’re looking for in their brewery experience.”
“You’re just saying this because you’re some kind of Eugene hipster.”
“Now you’re calling me a hipster? I mean, yeah, I absorbed a lot of that eating food in Eugene. You can’t deny that they’re a little more of a food city than we are.”
“Well, what isn’t?”
“Tourism is just starting to pick up here, so things aren’t really settled. We get to choose what Copper Ridge becomes, and I think that’s kind of exciting. You’re on the forefront of that.”
“Kind of ironic since I’m not exactly pro development.”