Asher (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 6)

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Asher (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 6) Page 9

by Hope Hitchens


  I didn’t know who my cock was hard for anymore, the girl in my room, or the one who’d just walked out of my kitchen. Yeah, I flirted because it was fun, and she’d hit me with everything I hit her with, but I didn’t like tension.

  No amount of reps at the gym would work out that knot she tied my balls into. I wanted to fuck her and not even in a fun way anymore. It was fucked up. I shouldn’t have been feeling that way about her because it was wrong. The way we’d met and everything that had happened since, and the stuff I knew about her past, it was just wrong. Only one real way to work out sexual tension, right? I rolled a condom on and went back to my room.

  “About fucking time,” Brianna said, yanking me onto the bed. She rolled onto her back and leaned up to pull me between her legs. I held one of her legs down to the bed and put the other over my shoulder. She did yoga. Looking down at her wet, pink pussy, lips open and glistening I realized I was wondering how Jenny was getting to the shop alone.

  Would she get an Uber? There was a bus system in LA, allegedly, but I didn’t know anyone personally who used it. I felt her run the head of my cock up and down over her entrance before positioning my head against her opening and pushing her hips forward. Right. We were fucking.

  I slid into her, making her moan. She felt pretty good on my cock, but so did most things, if you thought about it. I was getting distracted. She got louder the faster I went. I mostly wanted it to be over. I’d come in cocked and ready to shoot, but now that I was inside her, I was just thinking about how Jenny had turned me down and how this time it had felt like a rejection. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest offer, but it still sucked.

  Fuck, what if she’d said yes, and I walked in to find her and Brenda making out? I was already hard, so I couldn’t get harder thinking about it. I already knew what she looked like naked. Had she ever done anything with another girl? I’d fuck Billie from behind while she ate Jenny out so I could watch her when she came.

  I fucked her harder, putting both her legs up on my shoulders, pushing down so she was almost bent in half. She let out this little yelp like I’d hit her spot. She was flexible and sexy as hell, but I couldn’t stay with her. I was thinking about Jenny’s hard nipples, sucking and biting them as I fucked her. We wouldn’t need Bella for that part. I’d want her all to myself; to know that every time she shuddered, or screamed, or begged, it would be because of me.

  “Ash… I’m coming,” she moaned beneath me. I jackhammered into her to speed the shit up. Once she came, I could go to the bathroom and jerk off thinking about fucking Jenny. Her pussy clenched, and she screamed, shaking underneath me. I kept fucking her till she went limp then hopped off the bed.

  I kept the condom on stroking my cock till I came thinking about Jenny, naked in my bed instead of Betty.

  Vicky, a sword swallower who had had all her work done by me, was my one thirty, the one Jenny had told me not to be late for. I made it to the shop with half an hour to spare to get set up. When I got there, Mal and Jenny were talking at her desk. Jenny in her chair and Mal on the desk. They were drinking something out of tall takeaway cups. They were laughing about something. Mal looked like she was telling Jenny a story.

  I watched her face—Jenny’s, not Mal’s. I wasn’t listening. I didn’t really care what they were talking about, I just wanted to watch, like a dirty old man with a seventeen-year-old stepdaughter. I mean, it sort of felt that way.

  She wasn’t as young as she looked; I had seen her date of birth on her resume. Twenty-four. Almost twenty-five. Her birthday was in October. I wasn’t a sixty-year-old geezer who wanted to fuck a tight little twenty-year-old, but I was going to guess I wasn’t the kind of guy who got to fuck her.

  I hated those guys. They were probably like her, went to college, probably spent their time volunteering at the hospice, voted, and had retirement plans. Had their shit together. Didn’t get into bar fights. The more I thought about it, the more pissed off it made me.

  I didn’t like whoever had been fucking her because they weren’t me. Trying to resent Jenny didn’t make me want her any less. It just made me feel like an asshole for doing it and then made me feel she was too good for me, anyway.

  Mal noticed me and said hi. Jenny just looked at me and gave me a weak smile, before saying she had been doing something in the storeroom before Mal had shown up and she wanted to go keep doing whatever it was. She left silently for the back.

  She didn’t just leave because she was mad at what she’d seen in the kitchen. She wasn’t. She couldn’t be because then I’d have to apologize, and I didn’t know what the fuck to say. I didn’t get stressed out over women. If I wanted to fuck them, we would fuck and then I’d stop wanting to fuck them. Jenny was making me unsure of things I’d been sure about my entire life. It couldn’t be normal to want somebody this bad.

  “What’s the matter with her?” I asked Mal, trying to sound like I wasn’t dying to run into the storeroom after her.

  “She’s a little shook up,” she said.

  “Why? What happened?” I asked. Please don’t let it be the thing in the kitchen, I hoped.

  “Ryan happened.”

  “What? When?”

  “Shh. She asked me not to tell you, but the way I found her when I got here? Something’s not right.” Something’s not right—understatement of the fucking year.

  “The fuck it’s not. The night she got here he tried to rape her.” Mal’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped.

  “She told me something happened, but she didn’t say it was that. Fuck. I can’t believe that son of a bitch did that.”

  “Do you know what he said to her?” I asked. Mal shook her head.

  “No, but after that, I doubt he’d have to say anything. Just showing up would have been enough.” He wanted to go, did he? I’d been distracted all morning, but I knew exactly what I felt about that. He had come to the shop when I’d told him not to. He had made me break my promise to Jenny.

  He was a dead man.

  11

  Felicity

  I hadn’t met this one, but that brought the number to six. Six different women since I’d met him. That was about a week ago. To be fair, I was counting women I’d seen him make out with and get cozy with at the shop, not just the ones he brought to the house. If I was just counting those, it was two, but I was betting there were more he didn’t bring to the apartment. I was trying to avoid Asher, but also look like I wasn’t. Being normal, acting like everything was normal in front of other people was getting easier and easier.

  For all intents and purposes, I was Jenny, their new shop manager who was in her trial period, learning the ropes and trying not to fuck up. With Asher, I didn’t know who I was.

  We were living together, and we were working together, and that was where the clear and easy to define lines ended with us. He would flirt with me, but I knew better than to think I was the only one he did that with. I’d heard and seen him do it with other women. I had heard and seen him do it with me while he was naked and erect, and another woman was waiting for him to go fuck her in his bedroom.

  It had just gotten a little… stifling. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I would try to match his flirtation, but there was no way he was there stressing about what I might think about him the way I was.

  I didn’t want him under my skin. That would just make it harder when I had to leave. Everything was so confusing and complicated. I didn’t need to get my feelings involved whether those feelings were just lust or they were something else.

  They were just lust; that was all they could afford to be.

  I had had coffee already, so I’d just go straight to the shop. I preferred to get there early and be there alone for a little while before the shop filled and stayed that way till after the sun went down. I didn’t want to walk in when everyone else was getting ready for work. I needed time to build up to it.

  I also wanted to stay on top of my work. The system had been in shambles when I’d taken over. Since it was Sund
ay, it would probably be slower, and I could do that.

  I opened up the shop but made sure the sign still said closed. The guys didn’t take walk-ins on Sunday, but in the event that someone wanted to come in to set an appointment, they’d literally just find me. I settled at my desk, powering the computer up and idly checking my phone before I went to the storeroom to make sure nothing would be running low for the next week. It would be about day eighteen or nineteen of my treatment at the ranch. After fifteen days, the midpoint for the month-long treatment program, people were allowed to have their family and friends visit.

  Would my parents come? Something told me they wouldn’t. I wouldn’t necessarily want them to, but at the same time, I doubted they’d want that. I could hear my dad saying that the time alone would be what was best for me to really recover and come back better than ever.

  I only called my stepmother my stepmother when I wasn’t talking directly to her; she had been Mom my entire life. The woman who gave birth to me died trying to give birth to the person who would have been my younger sibling, who also died. Reportedly, my father had remarried before a year had elapsed after her death. I don’t know why they didn’t have children of their own together. Maybe he had just been lonely and couldn’t face parenting alone?

  I heard the door being pushed open in the main studio area.

  “Sorry, we aren’t open yet,” I said from the storeroom before I realized they most likely couldn’t hear me. I walked out and stopped. Ryan was walking around my desk, peering at the computer screen. He looked up seeing me, his face a mask of confusion.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Seriously? Was he just going to talk to me like we were friends or something? I resented the way my body clammed up and my panic response buzzed in my ears, telling me to run. I felt a foot tall standing there. I felt like a child. I hadn’t realized how I would react to seeing him again, and now that I was, I just wanted to put as much space between us as possible.

  “I wanted to get a jump on inventory and orders for the week,” I said, trying to sound as casual as he had talking to me. I could hear the quiver in my voice.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s my job. I work here,” I said, trying to sound confident.

  “Ash replaced me with you?” he said raising his eyebrows incredulously.

  “He didn’t tell you?” I squeaked.

  “So you’re the reason he fired me,” he said. I was shaking, and I knew he could tell.

  The door swung open behind Ryan.

  “Hey, Jenn,” Mal said cheerfully. She stopped short when Ryan turned around. Her entire demeanor swung, her smile twisting into a scowl. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she demanded.

  I felt my eyes start to water and my body feel hot. I quickly retreated into the back, heading for the storeroom. I opened the door and shut it, trying to feel comforted by the pitch darkness. I took one deep breath before I crumpled.

  I crouched down and cried, wrapping my arms around my legs. I had been feeling safe, confident. Nothing had actually happened that night, but the minute I saw him I could hardly speak. I clammed up. I was paralyzed by fear. I hated feeling that week again, upset that he had that effect on me and even more upset that I hadn’t just gotten over it. I wished I was stronger—that I wasn’t a victim.

  “Hey, are you alright?” Mal asked, coming into the storeroom and closing the door after a few minutes.

  “I’m fine,” I said automatically, rising. Fuck, she wasn’t supposed to see.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s just Ryan. He was being a dick since I replaced him.”

  “What did he say to you?” she asked. I blinked. She thought I was upset because Ryan had been mean to me. She didn’t know.

  “Asher didn’t tell you?” I asked.

  “No. He just kept saying Ryan was going to lose his job, but no reason why. He was awful at it, though. We just guessed that was it.”

  He hadn’t told them.

  “I… it was not a big deal.”

  “Crying on the storeroom floor?” she asked raising her eyebrows. “Yeah, might work on one of the guys, but not me.” I sighed, straightening up.

  “It’s just… seeing him again freaked me out,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “The night of the party? When I first got here, Asher let me crash on his couch. In the middle of the night, Ryan showed up and he…” I looked down. “He uh, came onto me, but I wasn’t into it. He kept… insisting and Asher had to throw him out.”

  “He tried to fuck you?” she asked.

  “He was drunk and belligerent, might have been blacked out. He was coming onto me, refusing to leave, so Asher made him. He’s just sore about it. I know they’re friends.”

  “Is that why Asher fired him?” she asked. I shrugged, I didn’t know about all that. I also didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. “He was bad at his job. It was just a matter of time before he got rid of him.”

  “Don’t tell him anything, okay? Asher, I mean. What just happened? Ryan coming and everything, just don’t tell him.”

  “Why? He’d want to know if Ryan came by, especially if he came and was terrorizing one of his employees.”

  “He seems sort of frazzled,” I said. Mal looked at me like she didn’t buy it. “Like sort of stressed? They must have talked already, and there’s probably some bad blood there. I’ll tell him what happened,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said warily, “You can tell me if you want to talk, okay?” she said. I nodded, grateful. “I’m going to grab a coffee, you want something?” she offered. I shrugged. “Whatever you’re having,” I said.

  In fifteen minutes I was sipping a tall, overly sweet coffee flavored sugar drink talking with Mal like nothing had happened. Asher came in, and I left, needing a little time before the thought of what I had left him doing at his appointment didn’t bother me anymore.

  Asher’s apartment had a balcony, but I hadn’t wanted to bother him asking for the key. I also didn’t want to risk him hearing me on the phone. He hadn’t told me about the roof terrace, but I had learned about it on the elevator one day talking to one of his neighbors. It was night time, but it wasn’t really cold. There was a little breeze, though, which with the brightly lit city on all sides below me felt a little dreamy. I sat on one of the deckchairs and psyched myself up to make the call. I waited, listening to the rings. Each one gave me a precious few seconds to stop this nonsense immediately and pretend I had never entertained this bad an idea in the first place.

  I felt like I could trust Callie. I had to do something to feel like I still belonged to my life. My old life—the familiar one. Sometimes, it felt like everything was new, and I could make it whatever I wanted to. Other times, it felt like a lie. One I was telling everyone around me as well as myself.

  One more ring sounded and then she picked up.

  “Hello?” she said. I held my breath. She’d probably be wondering why someone from LA would be calling her.

  “Callie, don’t panic,” I said quickly, all in one breath. “Are you alone?”

  She was quiet.

  “I think you have the wrong number,” she said carefully. I didn’t know whether it was because she wasn’t alone and was trying to tell me without saying it or she really thought she had a wrong number.

  “Callie, don’t hang up. Please. I need to talk to you.” There was silence again before she finally spoke.

  “Lissa?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I sighed, relieved to finally hear someone call me my real name. “Callie it’s me.”

  “Lissa, how are you… why are you calling me from LA? What’s going on?”

  “I can explain. Are you alone? Can you talk?”

  “Vince is in the other room; he’s going to want to know why I had to leave to talk on the phone,” she said.

  “Vince?” I asked stupidly before I remembered. Vince. Her boyfriend, Vince. They had gotten together after I had mov
ed out and left her with half my rent to cover. That Vince. Guess they were still together. That was good.

  “When can we talk?”

  “When can we talk? I’m pretty sure last I heard you were in Arizona, not LA. How about telling me what the fuck is going on?” She sounded angry. My fault. I understood.

  “I know I have a lot of things to clear up, but if you can’t talk now, then we can do it later. Tell me when you can talk.”

  “Whose number is this? Yours?” she asked. I told her it was. “Alright. Tomorrow night at ten. How’s that?”

  Tomorrow night at ten was great. We hung up. There weren’t that many things I missed from my old life. It hadn’t been much of a life at all towards the end, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to face my family just yet anyway so coming to LA instead of going home hadn’t been that difficult a call to make. I did miss Callie though. She had been my best friend and roommate before Ben got sick. After I’d moved out, I cut myself off from practically everyone, and when Ben was gone, it was like I’d lost everything. I folded in on myself.

  Going back would have been like starting over somewhere new anyway. I knew they wouldn’t treat me the way they used to. I wouldn’t be Lissa anymore; they’d treat me like someone they needed to be careful around and take care of. This had been hard and scary, but I could call it mine. I could say I did it and that I was a person who could, even after what had happened.

  There was a party at the shop tonight, and I was almost certain Asher wasn’t home. I let myself in and made my way into his room to use the shower. I jumped back, surprised, seeing his bare back leaning over the bed. He turned, hearing me.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t knock; I didn’t know you were here,” I said apologetically, trying hard not to look at him. He had just come out of the shower and was naked besides the short towel around his waist.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what happened with Ryan?” he demanded suddenly. It exploded out of him like he’d been dying to ask me all day. His tone shocked me into silence. He was angry. He looked like it was coursing through him and if he touched something, it would explode.

 

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