by Aria Ford
“You, up,” Griffin says to me, “You okay? Get up.”
I nod, but I don’t quite make it. He shoves Simpson away and reaches down. I shy away from him and pull myself up by leaning on the wall. I hold my ruined shirt together, wonder if I should go back and look for the buttons. He takes my arm, leads me to the table. Oh God. I have to face these people who hired the caterers. The brother who wasn’t in on any of this. I shut my eyes and just let Griffin propel me forward.
“Randy, I think your brother would like to tell you something. But first, I want to. He was attempting to rape a member of the catering waitstaff. Isn’t that right, Simpson? When I heard the whimper and went to see what was going on, he had this young woman pinned against the wall, ripping her clothes off. Before you say it wasn’t what it looked like, he had his dick out.”
“Christ, Simpson!” Randy said, getting to his feet, “Is she okay? Are you okay, young lady? I’m sure you’re terrified. I’m so sorry for what my brother did to you. Do you need medical attention? We can have an ambulance here in minutes.”
I shook my head mutely. The last thing I wanted was to be examined.
“Please,” I said, backing away. Griffin held my arm.
“Simpson, empty your wallet. You’re going to give whatever you have to this young woman to replace the clothing you shredded in your disgusting display of violence. Randy, you’re going to leave a very big tip after you sign this contract. You will also swear to me on your brother’s worthless life that you will make sure he never goes near this girl again. If he does, I will kill him. Do I make myself clear?”
Randy nods, scrawls his name on a legal document, and passes the pen to his brother, who has dumped a lot of folded money on the table and is cowering in a chair. I don’t even want to look at him. He’s disgusting to me. If Griffin would let go of my arm, I could leave, damn him. He saved me, and I’m damning him internally right now because I want to hide. I want to be by myself somewhere away from all these people looking at me. Heather has come out to see what the commotion is, but I wave her away. She goes back to the kitchen. I don’t want her seeing me like this. Every person who knows just makes this worse.
“I know that this in no way makes up for the pain and indignity you’ve suffered at my brother’s hands,” Randy says to me, taking money from his own wallet. I shake my head, stumble backward.
“I don’t want it!” I say, and run.
I’m out the back door in the quiet of the alley when I realize I’ve left my purse in the kitchen. I can’t even get a bus home without it. I slink back to the kitchen and snag my purse, swatting Heather’s hands away as she tries to detain me and ask questions.
“I’m sick,” I say because it’s all I can think of.
I’m crying again, if I ever stopped.
In the alley I dig blindly through my purse for a safety pin. I have to get my blouse fastened together. It’s ruined, but I can’t go home on the bus like this, like the walk of shame or worse. I keep dragging air into my lungs in big icy gulps. It’s not even that cold outside, but my insides feel hollowed out, and I’m still weak and shaky. If I had a safety pin, if I had some strong coffee with lots of sugar I think I’d be okay. As for now, I just lean back against the brick wall and let myself sag for a minute. I don’t have a safety pin, but I have privacy, room to breathe before I pull myself together.
CHAPTER FOUR
Griffin
She’s gone out the back. The blond waitress, the one Simpson was hurting in the hallway.
The truth is, I wanted to kill him. My instinct when I saw him set upon her like that, his hand on her throat, his other hand digging at her clothes like a crazed animal—my instinct was to drag him off her and kill him. Just to keep hitting him, pounding him until he was nothing but a spatter across a crime scene.
I can’t believe I held it together and managed to leave him standing. Not that he deserved it, but I don’t need a homicide on my already blotted conscience. I could so easily have killed him, and I wanted to. It shakes me to the bone to admit that.
But for now I’m going to find her, put her in a car, and get her home safely. It’s the least I can do. I don’t say a word to anyone. I just stalk out the back way to the alley. She’s there. I feel the breath I’d been holding release. Was I worried? I think I was.
The girl is drooping against the wall, phone in her hand, head tipped back like she’s trying to catch her breath.
“There you are,” I say.
“No. I don’t—I don’t want money. I don’t want to be paraded around as exhibit A. Here’s the poor waitress that Nice Lapels roughed up in the hall.” She sort of chokes it out, and I wonder for a second what she’s talking about and whose lapels. She must mean Simpson.
“Did it—you’re hurt, aren’t you?” I can feel the rage that’s been seething in me start to course to the surface.
She shakes her head. Then she starts pulling on her shirt trying to hold it closed. It makes my chest hurt. I go to her without even thinking. I can’t help myself. I take her arm. She looks at me, but she’s not scared. She lets me hold her. She just folds into my arms, fits up against my chest and lays her head there. I feel her relax against me, and she’s shaking a little. I can’t believe she’s letting me do this, letting me hold her, envelope her. She’s small. I have to lean down a little so I can put my chin right on top of her head. When I feel how little she is, I see red again, because Simpson went after her and didn’t have any trouble holding her down so he could hurt her.
I never want to let anyone hurt her again.
I don’t actually know this person. I try and tell myself it’s because I have a little sister, because I don’t want anybody treating Gina that way so I’m comforting this stranger and making sure she’s safe. But I’m just lying to myself. This feels nothing like my baby sister. I feel kind of shitty that I’m turned on right now. That holding this frightened woman against my chest feels so right that the heat of desire rolls through me. I want to protect her just as much as I want to make her mine.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, “no one’s going to hurt you.”
I need her to know that, to know I’m not like him, like that sewer rat who put his hands all over her. It makes me sick. I’m also glad it’s not my brother who did such a thing. I swear I’d stick him in some kind of rehab until he was seventy. Lock him up where he couldn’t hurt anyone. Then I’d tell everyone he was dead, because I was ashamed of what a piece of shit he was. I’m getting angry again just thinking about him. Just feeling how vulnerable she is, how vulnerable it must be to be a woman walking around knowing that anytime you’re working or eating or shopping, this could just happen. Some man may decide to grab you and use you like an object. You’d think since I have a sister I would’ve thought of this, but it’s not the kind of thing I think about, I guess until I saw the live show right up close. This is probably not even the first time someone’s done this to her, I think with a cold wash of horror.
I want to punish Simpson. I want to strike at him in some way he’ll understand in his reptile brain.
“You should take the money,” I tell her.
“No,” she says. She’s not sobbing anymore, she’s just talking into my shirt. I can feel the heat of her breath, warm and damp through the Armani.
“Why the hell not? There’s no way he can ever make it okay, what he did, but you should take anything from him that you can, make it cost him something,” I insist.
“It’s too humiliating!” she cries out, pulling back from me.
I see the wretchedness in her face, and my throat feels tight. I’ve been making it worse, hurting her more by trying to pay her off. It hits me all at once. I reach for her hand.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that. I wasn’t thinking about how it would make you feel. I wasn’t thinking at all.”
It occurs to me how strange that sounds. I’ve apologized maybe twice in my life before today. I don’t regret my actions, o
r if I do, I don’t mention it. I’m also sorry that I dragged a traumatized woman out to display before her attacker’s brother and tried to give her money. It sounds debasing when I think about it now. I touch her face softly, just my thumb tracing along her cheek. Her eyes are shining with tears and she’s worrying her lip with her teeth. I see that her bottom lip is split.
I curse then, bolt away from her and jerk open the door. I’m going to hurt him now. He’s bitten her, torn the soft flesh of her lip with his teeth like an animal. I want his blood on my hands, want to hear him beg for his life. My vision has gone almost black with rage. I can feel the metal door under my hand as I throw it back. Then I feel small hands in my arm, at my elbow, dragging me back.
“Please, don’t. Don’t leave me,” she says.
I look at her, at her pleading face, cheeks red from crying. I turn back to her, forgetting Simpson. Forgetting everything but her voice telling me not to leave her. As if I could leave her now. Her hands are on my arm and, though I’m much stronger, it feels like she’s holding me back, like I can’t move away from her, all due to her wanting me to stay.
“I wish I’d never let that man touch you,” I say. “You didn’t deserve that.”
She smiles at me. This slow, knowing smile that looks almost indulgent. “Please,” she whispers again.
I can’t stop myself, so I wait for her to stop me. I go slow, my face slanting down to hers, my mouth brushes her swollen lips tenderly, the barest caress. I feel it, the jolt of it down the length of my body, and I feel myself stiffen in response to this first sensual touch. She moves toward me, raising up on her tiptoes, one hand to my chest. Her lips cling to mine softly. I cup her head in my palm and kiss her, lightly at first until I feel her lips part beneath mine. I slide my tongue in her mouth and the pleasure of it is a hot rush, as overwhelming in its way as penetration would be—the way she opened for me, the responsiveness, the yielding softness of her body and her lips. She gives a soft cry, her arms sliding up around my neck. She tilts her head, opens her lips to take more of me, her tongue touching mine a little shyly. I coax her, tease her until she’s giving me a passionate kiss, until she’s controlling the rhythm, the depth, and I’m her instrument. I’m flooded with need for her, awed by her resilience, her warmth.
I feel like she’s taken my soul with that kiss. I grin against her mouth and draw back, feeling uncertain for once. I want her too much. It’s not like me to be all in after one kiss, to care that much if she decides to call it a night. I need her. She’s like a fire in me now, and I can hardly see.
“Please,” she says, her beautiful, full lips wet from our kiss.
I brush back a lock of hair that has come loose. I tuck it behind her ear and press my lips to her forehead. “Anything,” I say, and I mean it.
“I—I want you. If you will. If you’re interested…I want every trace of him off me. I feel like he left fingerprints on me, and I want you to burn him off me. Put your hands where his were. Put your—”
“Are you sure?” I ask, disbelieving my good luck. I want to hold her and touch her and make her feel as precious as he made her feel worthless. I want to make her say my name while I drive her higher and higher. I want to take her until she’s too weak to stand.
She lifts her fingers to my jaw and touches me there, turns my face with the barest touch and puts her mouth to my neck. A bolt of sensation drives through me with searing heat and my palms burn with wanting to roam all of her curves. The spot where her thumb strokes my throat throbs with my racing pulse. I wrap my arms around her, take her mouth again with mine. She’s quivering, with desire and excitement now, not fear.
She takes my hands in hers and pushes them inside her shirt, over her bra. I pull back instinctively, “Not like that,” I say. I want to touch every inch of her, want to fill her with pleasure. I don’t want to grab at her the way he did. She kisses me back, and it’s like a conversation. I know what she wants just like she said it out loud. I have no idea how I understand her, but I do.
She doesn’t want to wait for the healing gentleness of my touch. She’s keyed up on fear and anger like I am, and she needs release. Needs me to burn him off her just like she said, so I pull her shirt off and place my mouth on her shoulder, her collarbone, making her shiver with a delicious sigh. I stroke the curve of her stomach and dip my fingers lower, opening her pants and letting her kick them away when they fall. My fingers are in her panties now. Unbelievably, she’s wet for me there, my fingers slipping along her cleft. I feel the want rising in my mouth. I want to do it, so I do. I drop to my knees and loop her leg over my shoulder. Drawing her panties aside, I put my mouth to her. I feel her groan of pleasure at the first stroke of my tongue. I let myself taste her, let her feel my tongue inside of her and my thumb rubbing a harsh circle just above. She comes against my mouth, her legs jerking and a little cry of shock that splits the silence in the alley.
If anyone comes out of the kitchen to take out the trash, they’ll see me on my knees. Armani in the filth of the alley, a supplicant with my face buried between her thighs. I’m a jetsetter, a rich playboy. I don’t go down on waitresses out in the street. But here I am, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be. It would take a plane crashing into the building to get me to stop now. I trail my fingers along the velvet of her thigh and get to my feet. She’s wide eyed with shock, her hands clenched at her sides. I take them and put them on my shoulders, and I kiss her again. She can taste herself on my lips, I know. She’s trying to talk, and I’m trying to stop her. Except, she’s not talking, she’s unfastening my belt, dragging my zipper down. I peel off her bra and toss it somewhere, her breasts filling my hands. I like how they’re soft and heavy, how the friction of my palms makes her nipples hard.
In seconds, I have her up against the wall. Her thighs in my hands, her legs parted around my hips, her back flush against the bricks. I see the haze of lust in her eyes, the way she reaches for my mouth again and again until I’m dizzy from kissing her instead of breathing. I’m buried inside her, so sweet and so wet. My blood is pounding in my ears and nothing matters but these tight thrusts, the earth tilting off its axis as I come hard and fast inside her, those silken hot thighs around me. I want to roar with it.
She’s kissing me. I’m not letting her down off the wall, still balls deep inside her, her passage still milking me. I run my hand down her sensitive body as she squirms. I reach between us and rub at that spot above our joining that makes her thrash and squeal. I’m relentless, making her come even when she’s drooping against the wall and whimpering. Her hands beat at my shoulders as it goes on and on, her voice mewing that it’s too much, she can’t take it. Tears course down her cheeks by the time I’m done with her.
Except I’m not done with her. We both know it. I may never be done with her. This girl whose name I don’t even know. This girl whose taste is in my mouth, whose imprint is on my body now as sure as if she’d branded me. Everywhere she touches, she claims. I don’t know if it’s her innocence that’s got me undone, or if it’s the fact I rescued her. She feels like mine, like she belongs to me.
I set her back on her feet and take her in my arms and hold her. I kiss the top of her head and hold her close for a minute, not quite wanting to let her go.
CHAPTER FIVE
Caleigh
I just screwed some guy in an alley.
Actually, I just screwed some rich, powerful guy in an alley, which makes it weirder and, if possible, worse.
The fact that it was amazing is not even the point. The point is I don’t go around having sex in public places or with strangers or…pretty much anywhere with anyone ever since college. I haven’t been with anyone since I dropped out two years ago. So, when all those feelings came to the surface, when he took me in his arms and held me, but before that, when he just looked at me, and I nearly dumped his salad on him—he could have me anytime he wanted me. Any way he wanted me.
That was never even in question.
So, when h
e saved me, when he came after me, it was going to happen. There was never a moment I thought it wouldn’t happen. Him and me. I didn’t think it would be up against a wall necessarily, but I knew it would be somewhere, that it would be tonight. Because there was something between us, attraction or lust or some kind of link, because he rescued me—it didn’t matter what I called it. It was there like chains binding me to him. Like the pull of the moon or the tug low in my belly that I already felt again, the need to be filled by him, by all of him.
I was torn between shameless lust and complete embarrassment. I stooped and picked up my pants and put them on. I looked for my bra in the alley and found it by a dumpster. I pick up the scrap of white lace and its cheap underwire that always jabs me. I turn my back to him and put it on, then retrieve my shredded black blouse and shrug it over me, holding it together in the front. Now, suddenly, I guess I’m modest. Not so modest when I was screaming my head off up against that wall with my legs wrapped around Griffin. A man whose last name I don’t even know. I mean, I could Google it. There can’t be that many super rich hot guys named Griffin in town. But I think whipping my phone out to try and figure out who he is would be even tackier than finding by bra by a dumpster if that’s possible.
He looks perfect. He doesn’t look like the back-alley walk of shame. He looks like a damn cologne ad on the back of Vogue. That devilish dark handsomeness, the looking-for-trouble grin, the dark suit that costs more than my entire net worth. I go up to him and raise up on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. I want to thank him since he saved the day in more ways than one. He rescued me from being raped by Simpson. He kissed me when I was at my lowest point, when I stood in this alley wishing I could just die because there was nothing to hope for. I’ve lost the catering job that was my only meager hope to save money for college. I’ve been treated like garbage by an entitled creep. I’ve run away, and I’ve got nothing good to run to. And he came out that door to find me. Like I was worth looking for, worth saving. So instead of thinking this was probably the second worst day of my life (losing my mom and dad and Josh still ranks higher), I feel like I’m not totally lost for the first time in a long time. Because he found me. Griffin found me.
