by Crowe, Liz
He rested against the desk letting her observe just how much their moment had affected him, not making any attempt to disguise the bulge under his zipper. She gulped, and forced herself to look at his face. The attitude of supreme asshole made her catch another breath, this one full of fury.
“Never mind.” She turned, hoping to get as far away as possible. She would not be played, not by this guy. This was her fucking company, and he was, technically, her fucking employee. She already had a man—an amazing, gentle man with a lovely structured life.
She had a date with Garrett that night, as a matter of fact, and she had every intention of going to bed with him, finally, ending all the heavy petting and valiant efforts at stopping he’d made for her sake. After she told him the truth, so he wouldn’t think he was at fault for her squeamishness about sex.
Eli gripped her bicep, yanked her back, his arms crushing her against his wide chest. His rough face rubbed against her skin when he covered her lips with his, as her arms snaked up to wrap around his neck. She had to go up on tiptoe to reach him properly. He swept into her mouth, probing, tasting, making her dizzy. She waited for the panic to surface, but it didn’t; even as he shoved her up against the wall just outside the office in the darkened hall, as the last of Mozart’s Requiem swirled around them. The music ramped up her need, sent the scared little girl inside her to the corner, and brought out something she’d forgotten she possessed.
She put a shaking hand over his zipper, reveling in what must lie beneath, as he tore his lips from hers, placed both hands on either side of her head against the wall, and stared at her so hard she believed he could read her every thought. Unable to resist, she pulled up the sleeve of the soft grey T-shirt so she could see it all, the entire beautiful art work. The intricate vine she’d only seen the end of curled around his massive shoulder, held deep green hop flowers, intertwined with…she stared hard…music notes. Smiling, she passed a finger over them, and then tugged his shirt up so she could take it all in. She surprised herself by pressing her lips to a bit of vine that graced his left pec. He groaned and threaded fingers in her hair, tugging enough to bring tears to her eyes and yet more moisture between her thighs.
“Stop,” he whispered, his voice raspy and low. “Lori. I mean it.” She ignored him, lifted the cotton fabric higher leaving him exposed from the waist up, so she could follow the incredible thing down his torso, trailing it with a fingertip. The strains of the Moonlight Sonata curled around them again. Eli groaned, cupped her breast through her blouse, ran a finger over a nipple making her shudder with an exquisite bite of pleasure.
She couldn’t stop. “Turn around. Let me see it all.” He did. “My God.” She stared at his back, one side covered with the most beautiful rendition of a hop vine she’d seen in any medium, much less on the flesh of a man. She traced the ink along his shoulder blade and down his spine, loving the way his skin pebbled at her touch.
He turned back around so fast she yelped; kissed her so hard and deep she nearly came right then and there, the sensation unfamiliar and somewhat scary. Holding both her hands against the wall over her head, he licked her lower lip, pressed his firm body against hers. Her usual, expected reaction to being so manhandled did not emerge. In fact, her hips moved, thrust towards him in a primal dance. He grinned and then dropped her hands and stepped away, yanking his shirt back down.
She swallowed hard. He put a hand on his zipper and cupped it, staring at her. She sensed a simmering fury just under his surface.
“When you’re ready for a man, Lori, let me know.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” She tried not to stomp her foot.
“Go on and have your fun with the suit. That’s your life. Not mine. You two make a few more of yourselves, pop out a few little Hunters. I don’t need this. Messing with the boss…” A look passed over his face that made her flush. He did want her. She stepped close again, needing his lips on hers so badly her face burned. He gripped her wrists and held her back. “No. I’ve been down this road, and I’m not going again. Do you hear me?” He shoved her out the way and shouldered past her.
“Eli,” Lori kept her voice low, knowing he’d hear her. He stopped and turned. The look in his eyes flickered between agony and anger. “I want….”
He held up a large hand, stopping her. “You have no idea what you want. Don’t pretend like you do, and don’t try and tell me. Let’s go, we have a full day’s work.” He stomped away, leaving her alone with her frustration and the bright nugget of need lodged in her gut, like a popcorn kernel in her teeth. He stalked to the docking station and shut off the piano music, blaring instead a Nine Inch Nails song through the brewery, already yelling at the brew boys.
Chapter Four
“Lori? Hey, earth to Brockton,” Garrett waved a hand in front of her eyes. She startled, spilling her wine. He stood, watching her stare at the deep purple stain slowly dripping to the floor. Without a word, he went into the kitchen and brought back a damp towel. She looked up at him, her eyes red rimmed, unhappy, her wild curly hair escaping the attempt to tame it while haloing her face in a way he loved. He knelt down by her side and pressed the cloth to her forehead ignoring the urge to clean up the mess.
A tear dropped onto her lap. Unsure what had gone wrong with their perfectly pleasant date, he put a hand on her knee. The heat of her skin blazed through the dress’ silky fabric. His chest tightened. If only he could fix it, whatever it was that made her so sad, yet so amazing at the same time. He sensed he’d be beating his head against the Lori brick wall, but at the same time that tough girl façade brought out a weird rush of protectiveness, possessiveness even. Two sensations that made him more than a little uncomfortable.
He stood, not knowing what to say, his body yearning for more, but his brain warning him to hold back. He didn’t know her story, but he had heard enough intimated around the brewery to make him antsy in the last few weeks since it had become obvious they were dating. She gripped his hands, held him in place. He tried to arrange his face into something pleasant and supportive.
She looked at him, her gaze flat, and took a deep breath. “I was raped.”
The words scraped across his nerves like sandpaper. He tensed. His hands formed into fists beneath hers, but she pressed down, making them flatten against her legs.
“Not a stranger, not in a dark alley. Nothing I could have prevented, really, by being smart or strong.” Garrett marshaled all his strength not to stand up and put his fist through the wall. He sat, not trusting his voice, letting her continue. She took another breath and gripped his hands. He stayed still, not breaking their eye contact.
“His name,” she gulped. Garrett fidgeted, unsure if he could take much more but realized she had just started. She stared him down. “No, I need to say it. You have to know this about me, Garrett. I mean, so…” He put one of her palms to his lips, trying to convey support without words. “Thad. He was…he used to work in the brewery, about three years ago.” Her voice gained strength as Garrett felt all of his leave him in a huge whoosh. “We went out twice. I liked him well enough, but he was too cocky, really full of himself. I used to tease him about it.” She clenched her eyes shut.
Garrett couldn’t stand it another minute. He yanked his hands out from under hers, stood, and paced the room.
Lori stopped. “I can’t talk if you’re going to do that.” She kept her voice low, calm. He could tell it took effort.
“Sorry.” He pulled a chair in front of her and sat, took her hands again. Her ice-cold skin made him want to wrap her in his arms while simultaneously murdering the bastard who’d hurt her. “Go on.”
“I told him I wasn’t really interested in him anymore after a third date, but he kept texting, catching me on Facebook, being all nice. I told myself I’d go one more time, and be firm about it. I never in a million years thought….” Her voice broke.
“Lori, I sincerely hope this guy is nowhere around here because, if he is, I will find him and
kill him, right now.” He heard his own voice, tight with a fury the likes of which he’d never experienced.
She shook her head, as if to dispel an image, sending curly tendrils of dark brown hair tumbling around her face. “I have to tell you all of it. Otherwise, I can’t, I mean…shit.” She looked down. Garrett reached over and tucked a lock behind her ear, ran his thumb over the crease in her forehead she got when she worried about something. She went on. “So, we, ah, went to a concert. He kept drinking. I got annoyed, but we were with friends, so I stayed calm. I drove his car back to my house. He kept grabbing at me, but I wasn’t the slightest bit worried, I mean, this is the twenty-first century, right? Men don’t just take what they want from a woman. At least, that’s what I thought…,” she trailed off. “Anyway, he said he needed a drink of water before he left, needed to call a cab. So, I let him come inside.”
Garrett flinched. “In here? In your house?” She frowned at him. “I’m not blaming you, Lori. I’m just…I can’t even explain how furious I am at….” He had to stop and look down to get control of himself.
She gave him a weak smile and exhaled, kept talking despite his deep desire for her to stop. “I got his water. He looked at it, then knocked it out of my hand. Before I could say a word he, um, he backhanded me so hard I saw stars.” He watched her touch her napkin to her lips. Saw her hands visibly shaking. But he felt frozen, trapped, unable to speak or move or help her. “I’ve never been hit by another person in my life. I thought it was some kind of joke. I actually started laughing. Probably not the best thing to do.” She unfolded and refolded the napkin, shifted in her seat. “He did it again, then shoved me into the living room. I tripped over the hearth, hit my head on the bookshelf.” She pointed over towards the other side of the room, which no longer held a bookshelf. She had it the area set up as a yoga meditation space, with a skylight and big window. The whole room was filled with light, even at night; not a dark corner in sight.
Fighting down the urge to hold her, to whisper soothing things in her ear, to fix what he had no power to repair, he let her finish. But he could feel his heart pounding and a strange humming noise had begun in his brain. She brushed her hair back and sat a little straighter. “The, um, act itself didn’t take that long, I guess. I was knocked out at first from hitting my head; when I came to and he was, um, you know, on me, and, ah, well, hell, I mean it’s not like I was a virgin. I mean I could have just called it rough sex,” she gulped, “at least that part.”
Garrett stood, ran a hand down his face, tried to capture words swirling around in his brain. She sat, hands clasped together, looking small, vulnerable, and unprotected. Good Christ. He needed a drink. “Do you have any bourbon,” he ground out. She pointed to an elaborate antique-looking cabinet. He yanked open the doors, grabbed what was likely a two-hundred-dollar bottle of brown liquor and took a slug straight from the neck. He turned, and handed it to her. She did the same, twice, then wiped her lips and set it down without a shudder. His admiration for her ramped up by about a thousand.
“I can stop talking now, if you want.” She sounded so defeated he got furious all over again at the asshole who did this to her, but he had no words, so he merely shook his head. She took a long, shaky breath, looked him right in the eye and went on; shocking him even though he thought he’d just lost the capacity for it.
“So, I laid there and took it, whatever. No big deal. I thought I could be quiet, you know, and he’d just…finish and go away. But, he kept getting madder. His ah, well, he couldn’t keep it up after a while. I don’t know, he had too much to drink, maybe.” Garrett closed his eyes let her words fill his world, ripping apart all he knew about human nature. “So, he used his fingers, then his fist, then when I wouldn’t stop crying, he hit me. Broke my nose.” She touched it, as if remembering. “I tried to fight back at that point. Got pissed, scared he would kill me, figured I had nothing to lose and I was damned if I’d let him keep…keep fucking me with whatever he found, after he got tired of using his own body.” Her eyes had that flat, unaffected look again, which frightened him. But Garrett did not trust his voice, or his body at that moment so he stared at her as she continued. “But, Mr. Dickhead’s dick came back to life, which was good, I guess, or who knows what he would have done to me. He decided he needed to fuck my ass at that point though. Then he finished up where he started. After he broke a couple of my ribs and had a go at choking me.”
“Stop,” Garrett choked out, putting a hand up, literally blind with rage. “Just tell me one thing. Where is he? Where is this bastard? If he’s in jail where he belongs, I am going there and I am going to kill him.” His hands trembled, his knees shook, his whole body felt encased in a cocoon of fury.
She kept going, voice flat, as if she hadn’t heard him. “He left, finally, and I must have passed out. My friend Cathy came over. We were supposed to go to yoga that morning. She said she was gonna leave when I didn’t answer, but she sensed something was wrong. The door was unlocked, anyway, so she found me. I woke up in the hospital, broken nose, two broken ribs, rips and tears in all sort of fun places. A concussion. The works. A date rape victim—the saddest sack in the universe.”
Garrett stared at her. She passed him the bourbon bottle after taking another long hit from it. “They say I sustained enough internal damage that I might not ever have children. Can’t be one hundred percent sure, of course. And I figured since I would never, ever be with a man again, it didn’t really matter.” Her voice sounded so matter-of-fact it made him ill.
He stood, pulled her up, held her close. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Lori.” She blew out a breath, as if releasing a long-held stress, put her arms around him, tilted her face up to his. He kissed her, something in him keeping his distance, terrified to be the guy that brought it all back. He broke their contact, ran a hand down her face. “I don’t know what to do…what to say. I am so…shit, I’m not handling this well and that’s not what you need.”
“Oh, I can tell. You won’t really kiss me now.” She started to disentangle herself. Something in him snapped. He scooped her up, making her yelp in surprise.
He held on tight, willing her to relax in his arms. “Oh, I’m going to kiss you, Lori. I’m also going to prove to you how a real man acts. If you’re ready.” She closed her eyes, seeming to consider his words, then put her arms around his neck.
“Yeah, Garrett. I’m ready. More than you know.” She kissed him as he walked to her bedroom, her luscious full lips parting for him. He stumbled, nearly sent them both to the floor with his clumsiness. “Ow,” he muttered when his toe connected with a piece of furniture. They both laughed as he eased her down on the silky duvet.
“Sorry, pulling my best chivalrous act here.” He cradled her face in his hands and kissed her again, prepared to use everything he had to prove she was safe, protected, cherished, and loved.
Lori laid back, let him kiss her, felt herself slowly warm from the inside out. But the panic hovered, ever on the horizon. He murmured to her as he caressed her body. She shifted, so he could slip the straps of her dress down. He traced the line of it with his lips and tongue, and she sensed her skin unfreeze a slow centimeter at a time. She bit her lip. This is fine. This is okay. This is what I want.
As if hearing her thoughts, he stopped, his breathing heavy, and brought his face up to hers. “I’m trying too hard, aren’t I?”
She nodded, propped herself up on her elbows. He cupped one breast, ran his thumb over her erect nipple, making her shiver. “Just…kiss me, Garrett,” she whispered.
He did, gentle at first, then, when she grasped his neck and clutched at his hair, he got serious about it, using his tongue, letting her taste him. She made a soft sound, and her body finally relaxed. He broke the delicious contact, pinning her with that amazing emerald green gaze. “Tell you what, how about this?” He flopped back onto the bed, grinning. “Come on up here, baby. You set the pace.” She stood, let the silky excuse for a dress slip off, stepped ou
t of her panties and tried not to feel self-conscious about her body. She’d barely looked at herself for the last couple of years, but she knew she was on the average side. Hardly a model, but able to fit a size ten most days, with full hips and breasts.
Garrett sat up and tugged off his shirt, but left his pants on. She grinned at the sight of his straining zipper, appreciated that he was trying so hard not to be threatening. Her skin flushed and her chest constricted. Had she done it? Found the one? She climbed up on the bed, shoved all panic out of her head, and kissed him. Then set the pace, as he’d requested, by tugging off his belt and yanking his pants down.
“Oh, honey, ” he groaned, as she cupped his balls, ran a hand up the warm, hard flesh of his cock utterly unafraid, and ready to take this step—more than ready. “I think I….” She looked up at him and smiled, covered his mouth with hers, reveled in his taste, smell and feel. His flesh pebbled under her hand as she parted his lips with her tongue. “Mmm,” he muttered, fisting his hands in her hair, holding her close. She broke their kiss, stared into his eyes. He ran his hands down her waist, cupped her breast, his touch still light, noncommittal. “Come up here,” he insisted. She grinned, and looked at his sex, relieved to feel no panic, no need to flee as something else took over. A different, no less urgent sort of need set her nerves alight.
She straddled him, relishing the heat between her legs. Quelling a brief moment of panic, she smiled down at him. He’d known just what to do. Let her set the pace and position, and now, if she didn’t get him inside her she thought she might explode. “Oh, Garrett, you are….” She captured his lips, plunged her tongue into his mouth, gasping as he lifted her up and off him.
“Wait,” he insisted. “Grab my wallet.” He groaned as she moved off him, opened the condom packet and slid the latex down his length. “Lori, you are so beautiful.” his deep voice set off something in her core, lit it on fire, made her match his moan with her own as she climbed up his body, licking at the hard buds of his nipples, nibbling his neck, determined to never ever forget this moment. Their breathing sounded loud in her ears, she smelled his sweat, her own desire, as if all her senses were heightened.