by Riley Ashby
When Ellery called me on Thursday night to ask me to go see Harold, she texted me to say she was already on her way. I waited for her at my apartment, and we went over together to get him cleaned up and in bed. No overspending this time, just a drunk guy who talked a little too much shit and then couldn’t hold his own.
But when we were done, she went back home and left me alone.
I couldn’t quite figure that out.
“I’m taking you on a date,” I muttered as I passed her in the gym the next day. She had been working with the bag. She froze mid-kick, stumbling a little so I had to catch her. She fluttered her eyes up at me for a moment before pushing away.
“What are you talking about?” She walked to her water bottle set along the wall, squirting some in her face before drinking.
“Jesus, woman, are you trying to make me come in front of everyone?”
She grinned and licked her lips. So she was in a good mood today.
“That’s it. You’re coming with me.”
“You gonna drag me out of here?”
“I’ll carry you out if you don’t follow me.” I turned on my heel and stalked toward the door. A moment later, I heard her stuff her things into her bag and follow me out. She got into my car without a word while I drove.
“You gave me a hell of a pair of blue balls last night.”
“I didn’t even tease you.”
“That’s the point.” I pulled into a parking place and turned off the car. “Get naked in the back seat.”
She looked around. We were in an empty parking lot, in the shade under a tree, but still out in the open. “You sure this is a good idea?”
“Nope. Do it anyway.”
I held my breath while she thought. I had a feeling that how she reacted to me at this moment would make the difference as to whether we moved forward or not. Forward to her coming home with me more often, holding my hand in public on occasion. Admitting to her friends that she was seeing me.
With a deep sigh and one last look around, she climbed into the back seat and took off her clothes.
Fuuuuuuck.
I couldn’t undress fast enough before I was climbing on top of her, one of her legs hooking behind my hips and her hand diving between us to guide me inside. She let me hold her tight while I rocked, and the thrill of being in public, in daylight, had me off in a matter of minutes. She didn’t complain, just bit my lip while I released. Still inside her, I touched her clit and rubbed her to her own orgasm. Feeling her come on my half-hard dick had me almost ready to go again, but I figured we had pressed our luck enough for one day. Still, I held on to her for a little longer, the smell of our sweat and the leather of the seat filling my head and making me dizzy. Traffic flew by only yards away.
I sat up and kissed her softly. “Good?”
“You take me to the nicest places.” She covered her face with her hands as if embarrassed for me to see her laugh.
We dressed and climbed back to the front, whooping in the afternoon sun as we drove back to the gym.
“That was a fun date,” she said, one hand trailing out the window as if she could touch the breeze.
“That wasn’t the date. You distracted me with your water bottle shenanigans. The date will be something else.”
She pulled the band from her hair and re-tied her ponytail, pulling her hair straight against her scalp so there were no bumps. “Who says I’ll agree to go with you?”
“Well, you let me drag you out of the gym to get laid in the back seat of a car in the middle of the day, so I’ve got a pretty good feeling.”
Finally, she didn’t hide her laugher.
I took a longer route back to the gym, enjoying my time with her too much. To see her let her guard down like this was a rare treasure. It was a Thursday afternoon, and I felt lighter and more optimistic than I had for a while. When I reached across the console to grab her hand, she didn’t pull away. Our fingers twined together as the sun passed over us, and for a few minutes, I felt like I owned the world.
I backed off the gas as we approached the gym the moment I saw the flashing red and blue lights. We clearly had missed something big. Part of me rankled that we hadn’t been around to see it go down, but a larger part was glad to have gotten Tori out of there. Not that I could let her know that; she’d probably take my head off. She’d have preferred to be here for whatever it was, in the middle of the fray.
There was something special about trying to take care of someone who didn’t need to be taken care of. I didn’t have any doubts about her competency in a fight or her experience with a variety of weapons. There was a reason Vail had been abducted on the one night Tori hadn’t been around to protect her. And she tried to run down a car barefoot when Josie was taken. But if anything, her independence just meant I got a bigger rush when she allowed me to hold her a little closer than she normally would. It was a privilege for her to allow me to protect her, even if she never admitted she was letting me.
Coach was talking to two officers in the parking lot and pointed at us as we pulled in. I squeezed her hand one final time before releasing it.
“Stay here,” I said as I put the car in park.
“Don’t insult me.”
She walked next to me as we approached the officers. I tried to step in front a little, but she matched me step for step. The cops were focused on her.
“Are you Victoria Ryder?”
“That’s correct.” She looked a lot like she had when we first met—arms crossed at her chest with a wide stance so she appeared to take up more space. She was small, but she knew how to present herself.
“It looks like your car has been stolen. One of the other patrons saw it happen and called us.”
All the color drained from her face. That wasn’t really her car; it was given to her by Ellery. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
The officers were unfazed by her language. “Afraid not. We’ll need to have you answer a few questions. Would you like to step inside?”
She followed them to provide her information, but I was forced to wait across the room. Thankfully, she’d brought everything inside the gym or put it in my car, but she was still stuck wearing her workout clothes and stranded in the city. When she’d finished providing all her info, she walked back over to me. Her face was drained.
“I could use a ride.”
“Back home?”
“I don’t want to see Ellery right now. I’ll call him on the way to your apartment.” I grinned a little. She gave me a deprecating look. “What?”
“You didn’t ask to come over.” She jerked away from my hand as I reached out to tuck a loose strand of her ponytail back, looking around to see if anyone noticed.
“Well, I knew you’d take me.” One eyebrow arched. “Am I right?”
“You’re right.” I cuffed her chin lightly before she could stop me and walked out of the gym. Her footsteps hustled to catch up with me once she recovered herself.
She glared at me as I opened her car door. “This doesn’t mean anything, you know.”
“Whatever you say, darling.” I smiled to myself, picturing her in my clothes again once I got her clean in the shower. Maybe I could convince her to stay the night. But for now, I tried to focus on the present and that she was coming back with me because she knew I would take care of her.
She called Ellery on the drive home to explain about the car and that she would be coming back that evening or the next morning. Her tone told him she didn’t want any more questions, but I knew they’d be coming. He’d want to know why she was away from the gym when her car was stolen, not that she could have prevented it from being taken even if she’d been there. We were going to have to figure out eventually how this was going to work if she was coming to stay with me more and more often. None of us wanted his family to be at risk because she wasn’t around to protect them.
At least, I hoped she would keep coming over.
We took an innocent shower, and I was too happy to pu
t her back in my clothes once we dried off. I knocked out a few more push-ups on the bedroom floor while she struggled with the drawstring on a pair of sweatpants that looked like bell-bottom jeans on her smaller frame. I bear-crawled across the floor and grabbed her ankles.
She grunted a little as she struggled to stay upright with me trying to bring her to the floor. “I had no idea you were so…”
“Goofy?”
“Immature.”
I made a face at her and rose to my knees, tackling her to the ground and pulling her into a headlock easily. But she got her hand between her neck and my elbow, scooting her hips back until she flipped me over. Damn, she was half my weight, but apparently all of that was muscle in her legs and butt.
“I let you do that,” I said as I twisted underneath her, rising to my feet with her arms around my neck. She hooked her legs around her waist and tried to pull me backward, but I was ready this time and held my ground.
“I…can…beat…you.” She grunted and started twisting side to side, trying to throw me off balance.
“This isn’t exactly a sanctioned move, you know.”
“I’m improvising!”
We finally fell to the bed as she twisted her body enough to ruin my equilibrium. I turned to the side so I didn’t crush her with my weight. She released me enough that I could roll over and look at her.
“That’s what you get for calling me immature.”
“I won!”
“Because I let you.” I grabbed one arm and twisted it behind her back. She gasped and pushed her breasts against me.
“Now you’re teasing me.”
I let her go and kissed her. “Let’s get some food.”
I had pre-made meals of chicken and broccoli ready for the next week; Tori dumped a bunch of cheese and salt on one and devoured it in front of the TV, scanning through the channels while I ate with more measured bites.
“Don’t you get hungry?” She frowned a little at her empty Tupperware.
“All the fucking time,” I admitted. “You can have another one.”
“Thank God,” she muttered as she ran back to the kitchen. I allowed myself one bite of cheese-covered chicken when she came back, justifying the extra fat due to our activity in the back of the car earlier. I leaned back against one side of the couch and extended my legs onto her lap. She began to rub my feet absently. I stared at her slightly agape for a few seconds before she tore her eyes away from the television. She blushed.
“What?”
“Um, you’re rubbing my feet.”
“You need it. You were on the speed rope for forever today. I can feel here …” She prodded a little to the side of the joint of my big toe, in the middle of my foot. “Your lungs are stressed out. We need to work on your fourth chakra.”
I groaned a little and let my head fall back. “I’m not buying into that New Age stuff.”
“Well, it won’t hurt you. If you want to beat Alonso one day, you should take every advantage you can.”
I picked my head back up. “What makes you think I want to beat Alonso?”
She shrugged and moved to my other foot. “Why wouldn’t you? You’re a natural competitor. Other people don’t see it because they haven’t …” She trailed off. I laughed.
“Haven’t seen me go apeshit on a couple of low-level mobsters?”
“Basically, yes. Alonso’s better than you but not by much. You’ll catch up to him.” She wiggled my toes. “What else did you do today?”
“Um, speedbag.”
“Shoulders, then.” She started poking around below my little toe. “Fifth chakra. That one’s fun. Lots of back bends.”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “How did you get into all this?”
I expected some story about an after-school program or maybe a phase in high school that turned into a deeper interest, but her face closed off. Her fingers paused on my foot, then moved back to my left.
“There was a time in my life I wasn’t doing so great mentally. I couldn’t go to a doctor, so I looked into psychic healing instead. It got me through until I could get my hands on some professional treatment.”
This was new information. I weighed whether to see if she would open up a little more. Seconds ticked by, but she didn’t say any more.
“Why couldn’t you go to the doctor?”
She paused, fingers pushed into my feet, then shoved them to the ground and suddenly stood. She walked to one side of the room, then the other. I thought of a lion I’d seen at the zoo as a child, pacing back and forth, bored and anxious within its small enclosure.
“You can open up to me whenever you want, Tori. I’m not going to push you.” I sat up all the way, my feet hitting the floor. “Unless you want me to.”
She seemed to consider the offer seriously, and that surprised me. I knew she liked to be dominated, but was she a little submissive outside of the bedroom too?
I stood and walked toward her with measured steps. We stood toe-to-toe in the fading light, and I took her chin softly in my hand. My thumb ran across her dry bottom lip. “Come sit.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the couch, sitting a few inches away to give her her space. “Why couldn’t you go to the doctor?”
Her breath came heavy and slow. She was trying to keep her heart rate down. “He wouldn’t let me.”
I didn’t ask who he was. That would come. “Why not?”
“Because they would have seen what he was doing to me.” She pulled her hand from mine and wrung her fingers in her lap. Her leg bounced nervously. “It was an old boyfriend …”
She stopped speaking and stood abruptly, walking to the corner of the room with her hands on her face before hiding from me by facing the wall. She was physically holding back her tears because she didn’t want me to see her cry so badly. Everything in me yearned to go and hold her, let her feel small, be the protector and the confidant who lived deep beneath my external drive to make everyone comfortable. She deserved that—hell, she needed it. But I knew if I touched her, she’d go running, slam the door behind her, and I’d never get her back in this apartment. She had to fight through this herself before she’d let me provide any external comfort.
I sat quietly as she composed herself. When she turned back to me, her cheeks were red, but her eyes were clear.
“I should have known better. I mean, he picked me up when I was seventeen. That should have been the first red flag. But he started out good, playing by the rules we set. Then he slowly started to ignore them. When I dropped afterward, he’d usually take off for a few hours to let me suffer before coming back to rescue me.” She huffed as she sat back on the couch next to me. “I’d sit on the floor and cry and cry, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Or thinking he was angry with me and planning to break up with me. And I’d be so grateful when he came back, I’d be willing to do anything he said.”
She took a deep, shaky breath. “Then one time I safe-worded him, and he ignored me. He kept going. Afterward, he told me how sorry he was, that I should have spoken up more. And I believed his stupid fucking gaslighting because I dropped right away and couldn’t think straight. But he did it again, and again, until I finally figured out that the safeword didn’t matter at all.”
I kept my nails short for fighting, but they were digging into my palms all the same. I thought I’d known rage before, when I got myself worked up for a fight or at Harold’s house the other week. But it was nothing compared to the pulsing mania that consumed me at that moment. If I ever saw this asshole, I’d kill him. “Tell me his name.”
She laughed without mirth. “He’s untouchable, Jamie, and I swore I’d never speak of him anyway.”
“No one’s untouchable.”
“He is.” She took a deep breath. “He hit me outside a bar one night. I was completely trashed and decided to stand up to him. He didn’t like that, obviously, so he opened up on me in front of everyone. In front of my brother, Aaron.” When she looked at me now, she didn’t try to hide t
he tears. “Aaron beat him to within an inch of his life. He—my ex—can’t walk anymore. He eats through a tube. And Aaron is in jail until he’s in his forties.”
I couldn’t speak for a long moment. I hadn’t even known she had a sibling. She refused to speak about her family … this must be why.
“I’m …”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.” She wiped her face without shame. She didn’t mind crying for her brother. It was the other asshole she refused to shed tears for. “I’ll be forever grateful to my brother. He saved me. But it makes me sick that I still want to be treated like that. That it still turns me on, even after what was done to me.”
“You know that’s not how it works. You never have to feel ashamed, not with me.”
When she looked at me, her face was so sad it broke my heart in two. “How do I know you’re not like him? I invited myself over that night because I thought you were safe. You wouldn’t wake up that part of me. But when I saw you unleash like that, I lost all control of myself. I hadn’t been that attracted to anyone since … since him.” Her cheeks glowed red now.
We sat quietly while I thought about how to answer. I had the acute sensation of being on the precipice of my future; one wrong step could send both of us in the wrong direction, and we would crash and burn like dying stars. How could we move forward with her past what it was? It wasn’t possible for us to progress if she wasn’t willing to move through what was blocking her and the shame she felt.
But then again, if that was the case, why wasn’t she leaving?
I reached my hand across the cushion separating us to touch her arm. “Come here,” I whispered.
She shook her head.
“Please.”
If she wanted safe … I could do safe.
After a moment, she shuffled over to sit a little closer. I put my fingers under her chin and tipped her face toward me. “On my lap?” Leaving it open to her.
Another long second later, and she threw her leg across to straddle me, her hands on my cheeks like she had the first night.
“I don’t care how we move forward from here,” I said, “as long as we do it together.” I ran my fingers up and down her arms, goose bumps rising along her skin. “You call the shots. I’ll always respect your rules. And if you ever need support, I won’t run out.”
