by Stasia Black
A lightening spike hits at the base of my spine and shoots down through my legs and up my shaft and—
“Fuck!” I slam the wall of the shower as my cum shoots in ropey spurts onto the tile.
I slump with my arms braced against the wall as the shower spray pounds the back of my head. Breathing hard, I turn my face up into the blasting water. It pounds my eyes behind my eyelids. I stay there just standing in the spray.
Fuck. That was… Just a fantasy of Scarlet made me come harder than I have during all the actual sex I’ve had in the past year. Shit. Maybe longer than a year.
I shake my head free of water, much like a dog would. A dog. Yep. That’s a pretty accurate description. Scarlet gets beaten up by a bunch of thugs, and what do I do? Take her in out of the kindness of my heart?
Yeah. No. One look at her bare back and what were probably my true underlying motives all along become quickly apparent. Well. I smirk sardonically at myself as I grab a bar of soap and do a quick wash. Guess an old dog can’t learn new tricks after all.
Within five minutes I’m washed up and out of the shower drying off. Another five sees me dressed and heading to the living room. Tonight I’m staying home again instead of going to the restaurant or to the club. I haven’t wanted Scarlet to wake up in a strange place with nobody around. A note saying make yourself at home after all she’s been through just seemed like a dick move.
It’s Friday, though, and I’ll be hard-pressed not to go to Chandelier tonight. Premiere San Francisco clubs don’t just run themselves. I do have a pretty good manager, but I usually make an appearance. I either stay out on the floor for a couple hours, ensuring everything goes smoothly and that VIP’s are being taken care of, or I’m doing business to further the Benson empire. I always prefer to wheel and deal in a relaxed setting with drinks flowing and gorgeous waitresses aplenty.
And I’m rarely without business. Stagnating is the kiss of death in this town. If you aren’t always on the move, trying to acquire more, be more, then you’ll be left in the dust by the next up and comer.
I’m currently looking into a deal to get into hotels. Or rather, a single hotel, but it’s a big one. A historical San Francisco landmark, The Sutler. I’ve conquered my corner of San Francisco’s nightlife. It’s time to move into the daylight hours. I want to own the buildings where people live and work.
I heard a rumor that Miguel Marsden might be at Chandelier to party. I really ought to be there in order to put a bug in his ear about my bid for The Sutler. I’m still looking for the last couple of investors and he’s been known to have deep pockets—
“Margarine? Seriously?”
My footsteps stutter and I look up in surprise to see Scarlet standing in my kitchen. She’s dressed in one of my button up shirts with a pair of my boxers as shorts. Her hair falls in cascades of fluffy white all the way to her waist.
Just like I pictured it.
The brief tug in my shorts reminds me of the rest of my mental imaginings.
My fist gathered in that hair.
Her on her knees.
Her ass out, fingers buried knuckles deep in her own cunt.
“Hi,” I choke out, moving so that I can stand behind the large island in the center of the kitchen.
There. The lower half of my body is effectively covered by the counter while I get myself under control.
“Because I can believe it’s not butter.” Her blue eyes flash up at mine as she points to the label on the margarine. I’ve gotten used to looking at her face while she sleeps. I can even somewhat handle looking at the bruises without wanting to go to my gym and punch the shit out of my heavy bag for what those bastards did to her. But Christ, I’d forgotten just how blue her eyes really were. Or I told myself I was remembering it wrong and they couldn’t have really been that blue. But they fucking are.
“Seriously,” she says again, startling me out of my reverie over her eyes. Shit, here I was again, probably staring like a creeper. At least she went on talking like I wasn’t being a socially awkward fuckwad.
“I thought I heard those soup kitchen ladies saying you were a famous chef who started a bunch of restaurants.” She gestures at my top-of-the-line refrigerator. “So why are there only condiments, including pretend butter, in your fridge?” She opens the door for emphasis.
“There aren’t even any boxes of leftovers,” she goes on, sounding astonished.
“I hate leftovers,” I murmur. I go forward, the situation in my pants effectively taken care of by this conversation. I remove the margarine from her hands and put it back in the refrigerator. “Are you hungry? I can get some food here within ten minutes.”
She puts her hands on her hips. “I was going to cook as a thank you. In spite of the fact that I was all intimidated since you own, what are they called,” she snaps her fingers, “Benny’s or Bennigan’s…”
“Benson’s,” I interrupt. “Benson’s House. We’ve got three original locations in the Bay Area.”
“That’s the one.” She points a finger at me like I’ve hit a bullseye. “So, Kennedy Benson, famous restaurateur of the Benson’s House, with not one, not two, but three original locations in the Bay Area…” she winks, and I have more than a passing feeling that she’s making fun of me although I can’t entirely be sure because no one has cared or dared to do so in…I can’t remember how long. “Have you been robbed?” Her hands go back to her hips, one eyebrow arched.
“What?” I have no idea what she’s talking about. I look around me but yeah, all my stuff is still all in place. Designer couches that were expensive as fuck but aren’t really that comfortable to sit in. Flat screen that takes up one wall and is so big, it looks like it’s a goddamned projector screen. Top of the line stereo system. Why would she think—?
“Have you been robbed?” she asks again. At what is no doubt my continued confused-as-fuck look, she clarifies. “As in, did thieves somehow sneak into your penthouse apartment and take all of your food? Because there’s obviously none in the fridge.”
“Or in here.” She opens the cupboard beside the fridge. “Or here.” She opens the next one and it, too, is empty.
“At least you had coffee, thank God. Speaking of,” she turns to look at the coffeemaker in the corner and a wide, white-toothed smile breaks across her face. “It’s ready.”
I follow her glance to my fancy coffee maker sitting in the corner of my pristine counter. I’m surprised I didn’t notice it right when I came in the room. It smells great.
“Let’s drink a cup that we’ll obviously be taking black since there’s no cream or sugar to speak of,” she narrows her eyes in my direction with her eyebrow up again, “while you tell me all about these food-snatching burglars.”
I run a hand through my hair and feel the back of my neck heating up. I don’t have a lot of women over and when I do, they’re never around the next morning to check out my kitchen stock. Or lack thereof.
I turn away from Scarlet and open one of the cupboards that actually is full. Sure, it’s just coffee mugs and plates, but still. It counts.
“Like you said, I’m a famous restauranteur. I’ve spent half my adult life cooking for a living.” I compose my features, pasting on a breezy smile before I turn back to Scarlet and hand her a thick, white coffee mug—the kind you used to get at diners. “I got tired of it.” I shrug “So now I have other people do it for me.”
Scarlet scoffs. “You’re telling me you have other people cook every meal for you?”
I grab the coffee carafe and pour some of the French roast into each of our mugs.
“So, you have like, a personal chef? Or how does it work?” she presses.
I feel my neck tense and consciously try to relax it. Fuck. Maybe bringing her back here was a bad idea.
“I order in,” I say, careful to keep my voice easy and light.
“You order in,” she repeats like she’s trying to wrap her head around it. “Every meal? What about when you want to snack in the middle o
f the night?”
I lift and drop my shoulders again. “What’s the point of being a rich, self-serving son of a bitch if you can’t waste money on frivolous shit?”
Scarlet sips her coffee, blue eyes observing me cannily over the top of her mug. For several long moments, she just stands there, drinking coffee and looking at me. Obviously, the bloom is off the rose and she’s beginning to get a clearer picture of what an asshat I am.
She drinks another long sip of coffee, tilting the cup up and emptying it even though it’s got to still be really hot. She briefly closes her eyes and breathes out a contented little sigh. “God, there’s nothing like starting the day off with a good cup of coffee.”
Damn it, does she have any idea what her breathy sighs do to a man? I’m about to have to go stand behind the counter again.
Then she opens her eyes and a small flush comes into her cheeks. Shit. I hope she can’t read my thoughts. I try to make my face completely blank.
“Anyway.” She clears her throat and stands up straighter. “Thanks for letting me crash.” She starts combing her fingers through her long blonde hair and then separating it into three thick sections. “I feel better now, so I’ll get out of your way.”
She braids her hair with deft fingers and the blonde mass quickly becomes a tightly knotted rope under her expert hands. “I’ll take off as soon as my shirt and overalls get done in the dryer.”
All the muscles in my body go tight. “Wait, you can’t—”
Her sky-blue eyes come back to me and I return her stare, at a loss for words. I was going to say she can’t leave, but what the hell do I mean by that? That I just want her to stay…indefinitely? Some homeless chick?
But letting her go back out there, back to the streets… And never seeing her again?
“You need clothes,” I blurt.
She lifts an eyebrow and her head tilts to the side as she finishes braiding the last bit of hair and tying it off with a black elastic band she had around her wrist. “I told you my clothes are in the dryer.” She sounds amused by me.
Which suddenly pisses me off. “That’s just one pair of clothes. What do you do when they get dirty?”
She looks at me like I’m slow. “Uh…I wash them?”
“But what do you wear while you wash them?” Come on, why is she making this so hard on me? She can’t be oblivious to the fact that most other homeless people push around shopping carts full of their shit. Where’s her stuff? Even a backpack? She has nothing.
Fuck. That realization suddenly hits me like a ton of bricks.
She has nothing.
Just the ugly-ass flannel shirt on her back once it’s done in the wash.
I know what it’s like to have nothing, or almost nothing. Though it’s usually something I successfully avoid ever thinking about. Visiting that goddamned soup kitchen and this girl are stirring up a past better left dead and buried.
But still. Unlike me, a nasty scheming bastard, this girl is everything pure and good. My chest actually…feels an odd pain at thinking of her only having one pair of clothes. It’s wrong. As wrong as a little boy being starved by his own mother. In this fucked up world, some things just shouldn’t be allowed to stand.
“Where’s the rest of your stuff?” I press.
Her eyes flick up to me but then she turns back to the coffee maker and pours herself another cup. She didn’t make a full pot and there’s only enough for one last half-cup at most.
Silence. No answer.
“Scarlet,” I press. “What happened to the rest of your things?”
She huffs out a breath as she turns back around toward me, several wisps of hair that escaped her braid flying out.
“It got stolen, all right? All of it.” She lifts her shoulders and then drops them. “The night before I came to the soup kitchen. I went to sleep and when I woke up, all my crap was gone.” She looks down at her coffee. “I was lucky whoever it was only robbed me,” she mumbles into her cup before taking a long swig. This time she does grimace against the burn. She sets the cup down on the counter and lifts two fingers to the obviously still sore split on her lip.
“That’s it.” I stand up straighter. “Let’s go.” I gesture for her to follow me out of the kitchen.
She looks startled and then confused as she takes several steps toward me. “Look, just give me a few more minutes until my overalls are done and then I’ll be gone—”
I shake my head. “I’m not kicking you out. We’re going to go clothes shopping. You need more than a shirt and a pair of overalls.”
She stops in her tracks, eyes immediately growing wary. Her hands go up in a defensive gesture. “Look, I’m not a charity case.” Then she winces. “Okay, maybe I am. We did meet at a soup kitchen and all, but—”
I slice a hand through the air to cut her off. “I’m so rich I could literally use fifty dollar bills to wipe my ass and not miss the money. Don’t be stubborn. Remember how you’re doing me a solid when you let me earn my Boy Scout points? Come on. Let me earn a few more. Help me clean up my karma.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and I can see that it’s on the tip of her tongue to refuse me.
I face off with her just as stubbornly. “If you don’t let me buy you some shit, I swear I’m going to go waste a thousand bucks at the racetrack. I’ll put it all on the horse with the worst odds.” I tip my head toward her. “In your honor.”
She does that huff of breath thing that ruffles the front of her hair again and it’s so goddamn…feminine, if that makes any sense. Those wisps of hair look so fucking soft, I want to run my fingers through them. I want to run my thumbs down her temple and over her apple-rounded cheeks. I want to trace the plump curve of that bottom lip and—
“Fine.” She tosses her hands up in the air and looks to the ceiling as if completely exasperated by me. Then her arms immediately go back to cross over her chest. It doesn’t go unnoticed by me that this has the effect of propping up her breasts like juicy fruits on display.
Fuck. Not the moment to be skeeving like a goddamned pervert. I avert my eyes, hoping she didn’t catch me staring at her lovely rack.
“But only if we go to the store I pick out. Agreed?” Her forefinger comes out at me in a way far too reminiscent of Stella’s school-marm act and I quickly nod.
I try but don’t quite succeed to keep my grin in check while she ties the laces of her ratty black Converse and we head down the elevator.
She keeps glancing over at me and then shaking her head. “You aren’t awesome at gracious victory when you get your way, are you?”
“Who, me?” I adopt my most innocent expression. Which come to think of it, I probably can’t pull off very well because shit, I don’t have much experience with innocence. Lost mine a long time ago if I ever had any.
The elevator pings at the garage floor and I hold out a hand to gallantly gesture for Scarlet to lead the way. She tilts her head sideways and rolls her eyes at me but steps off the elevator.
“So where are we heading? Where has Scarlet…” I look over at her. “What’s your last name?”
She looks down briefly. “Brown. Scarlet Brown.”
“Where has Scarlet Brown always longed to go shopping? Are you a secret fashion aficionado? Want to go shop at Betsey Johnson’s original downtown store? Gucci? Or should we just hit Union Square and browse for a while?”
Yeah. I can’t believe the shit coming out of my mouth either. A few girlfriends back, I was with a chick who was way into all this crap. She dragged me around Union Square and talked my ear off about fashion designers. She even tried to get me to take her to New York Fashion Week when I was headed to the East Coast for business. That was when I cut ties. I can handle the occasional nuisance, but start demanding things of me left and right? That’s a definite sign that the clock has run down on a particular fling.
Yet the idea of walking around a bunch of shops and watching Scarlet try on clothes… The image of silks and satins and, fuck, even deni
m against her creamy skin…well damn, that sounds like time well spent. I’m still imagining all kinds of fabrics—and, all right, maybe picturing Scarlet undressing in the changing room—when her loud scoff breaks into my reverie.
“Oh God, are you thinking we’re going to have some sort of Pretty Woman moment here?”
When I glance over, I see both her eyebrows raised almost to her hairline. Something about the look on my face must further amuse her because she breaks into actual laughter. “You were, weren’t you? Mr. Big Shot breaks out his black Amex while all the fancy shop assistants drool over him?” She laughs even harder, bending over at the waist.
Then she walks past me to my Bentley where it’s parked near the elevator, patting me on the chest like one might a small dog. “Oh, you’re funny, Mr. Benson. So funny.”
“Kennedy,” I mumble, feeling the back of my neck heat while I fumble to click the button to unlock the car doors. “Call me Kennedy.”
Christ, am I blushing? This is fucking ridiculous. Her tinkling laugh echoes throughout the garage as she gets in the car and I take a second before I pull open the door. I run a hand down my face. Why am I letting this little nothing-slip-of-a-woman get under my skin like this? Every other second I’m up then I’m down. I’m used to always being in firm control of every situation I find myself in.
All right. I got this. Shit mostly back together, I get in the car.
“So where are we heading, oh fashion guru?” I give Scarlet a winning smile. Can’t let her see that she’s shaken my game. Fake it till you make it has been far more than a catch phrase for me—for too many years it was my life’s motto.
“Goodwill.”
She says it with a perfectly straight face.
“The thrift store,” she clarifies when I don’t respond. “You know, Goodwill.”
I choke a little when I realize she’s serious. As in, actually serious.
“Come on,” I say with a short laugh. “You can go anywhere you want. The sky’s the limit.”
“Well, if you really mean anywhere,” she shrugs. “This is where I want to go.”
I start shaking my head again but she cuts me off before I can even open my mouth.