by Kelli Walker
He slowly, slowly eases himself out of me, taking his time as though he doesn’t want to hurt me, and I slump back awkwardly over the seats and try to catch my breath. One leg is hanging off of the seat, and my vision is blurry around the edges. Okay, if the first time was good, then that was straight-up incredible. I feel as though I could just curl up and fall asleep right there on the back seat of the truck, but I know that I have to get myself together again before someone sees me in this state of disarray.
I pull my legs up, fasten my jeans, and manage to get myself upright once more on the seat, catching my breath. In my reflection in the mirror in front of me, I can see that my hair is a mess as if I have just woken up. I look over at Lux to see him quickly snapping off the condom, disposing of it in a trashcan meant for cigarettes, and then climbing into the front seat.
“Is that the kind of trouble you were talking about?” I ask him, and he looks over at me and nods.
“It sure was.”
“In that case,” I reply, biting my lip and smiling at him. “I think that’s the kind of trouble that I could live with.”
He grins back at me, and then slams his door behind him and puts the keys in the ignition.
“I think I need to get you home,” he tells me, and he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the road. Within moments, the soft motion of the truck starts to soothe me off to sleep, and I find my eyes drifting shut as I let the warm comfort of his presence wash through me once more.
Lux
“Lux!”
A voice draws my attention, and I look up from the accounts to see who is so interested in me.
For a split second, I have a rush of fear that it’s Gavin. Because I know that he would have a damn good reason to be mad at me right now, given everything that I am getting up to with his sister.
But, instead, I see Laura coming through the door with a smile on her face.
“We just got the confirmation for that band on Sunday night,” she explains. She looks as though she wants to punch the air, and I am glad for her. I know how hard she’s been working to try and convince that country outfit to come down here for an evening. I’m sure that we’re going to do crazy-good business the day that they actually turn up.
“Well, good for us,” I reply, and she lifts her hand for a high-five. I give it to her. I know that she’s not going to leave until she gets it. And, as I watch her walk out, I let out a little sigh of relief. Okay, so I’m going to get away with what’s happening with Vanessa a little while longer. That’s all I really care about.
I know that this is prime asshole territory, trust me. I know that I should never have gone near her, not really. I should never have hired her to work here, should never have made out with her in this office, should never have agreed to have sex with her, should never have kept having sex with her after that part of the arrangement was all done.
But how could I say no? Ever since the day that I’d driven by her bar so I could give her a lift home, and the two of us had wound up having some crazy-hot sex in my truck, things had been incredible between us. We’ve been sneaking off whenever we get the chance, spending every moment that we can with each other, kicking back and having a good time whenever we get a spare few minute. I know that she’s enjoying herself, and hell, who am I to say that she shouldn’t?
Being with Vanessa is...it’s fucking hot as hell, that’s what it is. I feel like I have an addiction to her now, as though I have started some game that I can’t walk away from because I know that every time I go back, it’s going to be even better between us. The way she touches me, the way she looks at me, the way she bites her bottom lip when I’m doing something that she really likes. I can’t get enough. I can never imagine getting enough. And I’m not sure what more it’s going to take for me to get my head around the fact that she wants me just as much as I want her.
I know that we could land in a whole heap of trouble if we get caught. If her brother finds out what we have been doing, he is going to be so pissed I’m not sure he’ll ever recover. I mean, he’s got no real right to be; his sister is an adult in her own right, and if she wants to kick back and fool around with me in her time off, then she’s more than welcome to. But I know that it won’t work that way for him. It never has. He’s always seen his sister as an extension of himself, and he doesn’t want anyone doing anything that might hurt her. And sex, affection, everything that comes with that? Yeah, the pain almost comes baked-in.
But that’s not going to stop me. In fact, the sneaking around is just making things even hotter. I know that Vanessa can feel it, too. The desire between us is more than I ever thought that I would be ready for. For so long, I’ve been focused on work, on making sure that I run this place the way my father would have wanted me to, that I had almost forgotten just how damn good it could be to give myself over to someone the way that I have with her.
But now that we have started, I know that I’m not going to forget anytime soon. We have a little schedule in place now: when she finishes work, I head down there in my truck to pick her up, and then we go down to my place and hook up before I take her home. Well, sometimes we don’t even make it back to my place, sometimes we just wind up pulling over on the side of the road and having sex just as soon as we’re out of sight of everyone else. But I don’t mind that. As long as I get to have her, as long as I get to call her mine, I don’t care.
I’m not even sure how I would describe what the hell is going on between us right now. It’s not dating, but it’s more than casual. You can’t know someone for as long as I have known her and have it mean nothing when you wind up falling into bed together. That’s never how this has worked. I know that there is a history between us, something deeper and more profound than just sex, but I’m not sure that I’m ready to come out and admit to it quite so readily. Especially not when I can’t even come out and be open about what is happening between us.
Even now, sitting in my office, I am counting down the hours until I can go and pick her up. Her family still doesn’t know where she works, and she wants to keep it that way. That’s probably smart, too, since her brother would drive down there and stake the bar out all night long just to make sure that she isn’t getting into any trouble. I know that he would see me there, too, and that’s the last thing on earth I want right now. We have a good thing going, and I don’t want anyone to get in the way of that.
I get up from the desk and head out to the bar, which is full of people since it’s Friday night; I like the sound of the chatter, the way it seems to fill the air with life, and with good humor. I like the noise. I like the comfort that it brings me. And I wish, more than anything, that I could just bring her back here so that we could pick up where we left off, and she would never have had to go work at that awful place all by herself.
But I know that allowing her to have that other job meant that her brother could work here every night. At first, Gavin had taken a little time to get used to being in a non-military job once more. I knew how extreme that shift could feel, the way it felt as though the whole world was piling down on your shoulders, and you just had to find a way to deal with it. But he soon managed to wrap his head around what working here was going to be like for him, and it got easier. Eventually, even the customers got used to the fact that there isn’t going to be another cute young thing behind the bar to serve them every evening.
A few of them have been asking after Vanessa, and I have done my best not to answer those questions. I don’t want them going over to give their cash to that other place, and the last thing I need right now is to feel as though she is more of a draw than anything else here. I know that a lot of them are really taken with her, but I want her all to myself, and nothing is going to make me change that.
I know I’m possessive. And I know that I have no right to be. But there is something about her, something about the intensity of being with her, that makes it impossible for me to feel any other way. Her skin, the smell of her hair, the way she kisses me,
knowing that she has never been with another man as long as she’s lived, and knowing that she has chosen to give all of that to me, just to me. It’s the hottest thing in the world, and I know that I’m not going to be able to change that. I’m not going to be able to get over her quite so easily.
It’s a pain in the ass having to work with her brother and keep my feelings for Vanessa under wraps. I want nothing more than to be able to talk to my best friend about what’s running through my head, but I know that he would tear me a new asshole if he found out the feelings that I had been hiding for his sister. And maybe he would be right to. After all, with everything that has happened, it’s hard to believe that I have fallen for his little sister.
“Hey, buddy,” Gavin calls to me, as he spots me standing in the doorway to the office. “Come over here, will you?”
I head over to join him behind the bar, and a few of the girls smile distractedly at me as I approach. I can tell that the dudes lining the bar right now wish that I wasn’t there – maybe they think they’d have more of a chance with my staff if there wasn’t someone like me around to get in the way.
“What’s up?” I ask Gavin, and he shrugs.
“You look like you could use a drink,” he replies, and he hands me a beer. I grin.
“You know, you’re going to get me fat, drinking all the time,” I warn him, but I take a swig. I’m not going to finish it. I want to be stone-cold sober by the time that I head out to pick up Vanessa, but I’m glad that Gavin can still at least tell when there is something on my mind.
I manage to get back to my office without drawing too much attention to myself. I close the door behind me and let out a breath that I didn’t even realize that I had been holding. Okay. Alright. I just need to get as far from this place as I can because I know that it’s not going to be long before Gavin starts to notice that I slip out of here every single evening. He’s going to start wondering why I’m not telling him where I’m going off to.
As the shift draws to a close, I make sure that everyone has it under wraps here, and I slip out to my truck to drive down and pick up Vanessa. She hasn’t asked me to make this a regular thing, but I’m not going to stop now. I want to make sure that she gets home safely every single night, and there’s no way that I’m going to stop that. Besides, if she can’t ask Gavin for help because she knows that he would blow a fuse if he found out where she was making her cash, this is the least that I can do to help, isn’t it?
At least, that’s what I tell myself as I drive down the quiet roads towards the bar where she’s working right now.
I park my truck outside, just like I have done all those other nights, and I know that she is going to roll her eyes at me and shake her head and tell me that I don’t need to do this, but that she’s going to be glad for the lift home. I hope that the guys who saw me with her before are starting to back the hell off now. Nothing gets those men spooked like knowing there’s another man on the scene—especially one with military training.
As she emerges from the bar, I can’t keep the smile off my face, and I climb out of the truck and nod in her direction; she comes over to join me and smirks as she arrives by my side.
“You know you don’t have to keep doing this, right?” she asks me, and I nod.
“I know that I don’t have to,” I agree. “But I want to. Is that alright with you?”
“Saves me having to pay for a cab home every night,” she replies carefully, and I cock an eyebrow at her.
“Oh, is that all I’m good for?” I ask her. “Saving you a few bucks?”
“Hey, if you saw the state of the house right now, you would know that it’s a huge compliment,” she replies. “Are you ready to go? It’s cold tonight, I want to get home...”
“Yeah, sure,” I reply, and I pull off my coat and drape it around her shoulders without a second thought. She smiles up at me.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she murmurs, but she takes the jacket and tugs it a little closer on to her shoulders, as though she is glad to have it there. I know that she’s not going to take it off. I’m happy about that because I don’t want to see her wearing anything other than the clothes that I give her. Oh, or maybe that summer dress that she had on the first time she came to my house, the one she’d been wearing with nothing underneath...
“How was your shift?” I ask her, and she shrugs.
“Same as it always is. Long,” she says. She stifles a yawn and leans her head against the window of the truck. “I don’t know how people do this long-term. Do you just have to become nocturnal or something?”
“Yeah, something like that,” I reply. “I think it’s something about your natural patterns. Some people are suited to working at night, some people just aren’t.”
“Well, I don’t think I am,” she mutters. “And I think I need to find a job that lets me work reasonable hours.”
“If it means you don’t work at that damn place anymore, I’m all for it,” I respond, and she shoots me a look and rolls her eyes at me playfully.
“You know I’m not going to give up the job, right?” she murmurs to me, and I grin at her.
“Yeah, I do,” I admit. “But that’s not going to stop me trying to get you to find work somewhere a little safer.”
“Yeah, maybe I should swap with Gavin again,” she jokes. “He can have the biker bar, and I can come back to work with you.”
“You know I would do that in an instant,” I tell her, and she nods.
“Yeah, I know you would,” she agrees. “Hey, careful, don’t drive right down to my house. If they see you dropping me off, we’re going to be in trouble.”
“Shit, right,” I mutter. I almost forgot that Gavin is coming home at the same time that she is. I park at the end of the street, right around the corner, so that she can climb out of the truck and slip away into the night without being noticed.
“Thanks for the lift,” she tells me. “And the jacket.”
She goes to unwrap it from her shoulders, but I wave my hand.
“Hold on to it,” I reply. “It’s cold out there, and you have to get down the rest of the street. Just make sure that Gavin doesn’t see you wearing it, alright?”
“Alright,” she says, and she shoots me a playful glance. “So, I’ll string it up over the front door to make sure that he sees it before he goes inside?”
“Hey, careful,” I warn her, grinning. “You don’t want to get in trouble with me.”
“Why?” she demands. “You’re not my boss...”
“No, but I am your...” I reply, and I stop myself before I can go any further. What am I to her, anyway? I’m not even sure that I have the answer to that question, and it’s not a revelation that makes me particularly happy. I want to be something to her, but I know that I can’t just announce it and make it so.
“My driver,” she fills in the gap, after a long pause, and I laugh and shake my head.
“You’re getting way too used to this for my liking,” I warn her. “Watch out, I might just change my mind on all of this.”
“You might,” she agrees. “Or, you might just keep coming down there to pick me up because you know you can’t resist checking in on me every day, huh?”
Before I can reply, she darts over, plants a kiss on my cheek, and slips away. And, in the silence that follows, I watch her in the rearview mirror, still wrapped up in my jacket. I am pretty sure that she shifts her head to the side for a moment so that she can smell it, but I can’t tell for sure. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Maybe I’m just hoping that she’s actually glad to have it there. Maybe I just want to believe that she actually feels something for me, because the thought of all of this just being me...
Yeah. I can’t handle that. I don’t do unrequited anything, and I’m sure as hell not about to start on that now.
Once I see her turn down the path that leads to her house, I am satisfied that she is home safe. I turn on the engine once more and pull out of the street. I want to stay ther
e all night long, just so that I can see her come out of her house to grab the mail first thing in the morning, but I know that I am already pushing my luck by spending so much time here in the first place. If Gavin gets a look at the truck, he’s going to know that I’ve been down here, and that’s the very last thing on earth that I need right now.
I pull away and promise myself that I’m not going to let myself get attached. Not until, at least, I have some reason to think that she might be feeling the same way. I want to make sure that I don’t get involved with someone who doesn’t feel the same things that I do. And right now, Vanessa is impossible to read. And I’m not going to make a fool of myself trying to figure out what she’s trying to tell me.
Vanessa
I extend my legs off the end of the sun lounger, strategically shifting my body a little so that I know it will look the best it possibly can under the sun. I smile as I hear Lux’s voice inside the house. He just walked in and is greeting my mom and brother.
It’s so nice, hearing him actually around at our place for a change, even if I know that he’s not there for me. I can close my eyes and pretend for a little while, at least, can’t I? Even though I know that my brother was the one to invite him around, I want to pretend for a few minutes that he’s there to see me and that as soon as he gets a glimpse of me on this sun lounger, I’m going to be able to spend the afternoon with the man that I can’t get enough of.
When Gavin mentioned that he was going to invite Lux around for some beer and to catch up with the three of us, I had to pretend that I haven’t seen him in years. It’s strange to think that I’ve been hiding all of this from my mom and my brother. Normally, we’re the kind of family who tells each other everything, and I know that they would usually be really excited to find out that there was someone else around who was close to the family. But instead, I have to play it cool and pretend that I haven’t been seeing Lux every single night after work for the last few weeks.