by Julie Kriss
* * *
Kate was mad. I knew it when I saw her face, there in the parking lot of Riggs Auto Two. Then again, I knew she’d be mad about this. It was the reason I hadn’t told her about it.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, exactly. I was just fixing cars. But my customers were women, and they were here because I was me. And halfway through the first day I was open I knew I could make extra money if I offered to work with my shirt off. So I offered it.
And my customers paid.
There was no touching. Nothing dirty going on. I’d had a few offers, but I’d turned them down politely. I wasn’t here to date or to fuck or to do anything other than fix cars. I was just doing it half naked, that was all.
It was an equal world, right? If women had to work at Hooters, wearing a low-cut top to serve wings, then I could do oil changes shirtless for a few extra bucks.
“I’m ten o’clock,” one of the women in my parking lot said, raising her hand. She had short brown hair.
I pointed to the open bay next to me. “Drive in.” I smiled at the other woman, who had long hair. “And you?”
“Ten thirty,” she said, smiling at me. She pointed to Kate, who was looking thunderous right next to her. “I don’t know what time she is.”
“I don’t think she has an appointment,” I said. “I’ll try and fit her in later.” Then I reached up and pulled the door closed like a coward.
“See?” I heard the long-haired woman say to Kate. “It’s like a Magic Mike show.”
“Yes,” came Kate’s voice, quietly dripping with deadly venom. “I see.”
Oh, she was mad. Really mad. I didn’t see why, since we weren’t together or anything. Even though she was living in my house, all day every day. Sleeping in her bedroom, which was beneath mine. Every fucking night.
It was driving me crazy. It was bad enough before, but now I pictured her naked when I heard the shower run downstairs, or I pictured her peeling her clothes off and getting ready for bed at night. (In my fantasies she always peeled her clothes off like a strip show, revealing a lacy bra and panties. My head porn was as detailed as ever.) I could picture her wearing nothing but a T-shirt, right behind a single closed door that separated her from me.
I was getting used to the feeling of wanting Kate—it was part of my everyday life. Wake up, fix cars, don’t take pills or think about taking pills, want to lick Kate. That was my life. But I didn’t make a move. She’d just moved in with me, and I was her boss. We had a history. She was smart and I was a fuckup ex-baseball player with no prospects. If we fucked, did that mean we were in a relationship? It might, since we lived in the same house. That was a bad idea, and it would give Dylan a nervous breakdown when he’d almost had one over the move already. So, no. I wasn’t the smartest Riggs brother—that would be Jace—but even I knew this shit was complicated.
Being in Westlake was almost good. The pain in my shoulder had gone down some—I could usually kill it with Motrin. I didn’t miss Detroit, and I definitely didn’t miss baseball. Luke and Jace were actually half decent now that they were both back in town. My brother Dex was still an asshole, but I didn’t have to see him because he was still in Detroit, doing whatever the fuck ex-cops did for a living. I didn’t know, and I didn’t ask.
I’d never held down a steady job before—baseball players don’t have to. Don’t get me wrong, we work hard training and practicing, but that isn’t the same as clocking in and out every day. Answering the phone and taking credit cards. Jace worked the marketing and the books for Riggs Auto Two behind the scenes, but I was doing the rest of it myself—taking appointments, doing the work, taking payment with the computer system Jace had bought. It had only been two weeks, and I was exhausted. But Jace and Luke had given me a lecture about how Riggs Auto Two was an experiment, and if it was popular they would consider hiring me an assistant.
So I started taking my shirt off, and guess what? It was fucking popular.
And Kate was going to kill me.
We were open until four on Saturdays, and when I got home Kate and Dylan weren’t there. At the Ball Pit, a note on the kitchen table said, written in Kate’s loopy, girly handwriting. I’ll drop him at Luke’s. The Ball Pit was literally just that: one of those big ball pits that kids jump into and go batshit for. It cost six bucks and was a Westlake institution—not that my brothers and I had ever gone. The second part of the note, about dropping him at Luke’s, meant Kate was avoiding me.
So I got Dylan from Luke’s down the street, and we did our thing. Kate didn’t come home until nearly ten, when I heard her door open and close. Dylan was asleep. I gave Kate ten minutes and then I went downstairs and knocked on the door that separated her from me.
“Kate,” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“Kate,” I said again.
Finally, she growled: “Go away.”
“You know I have a key somewhere,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go find it.”
The door was flung open and Kate stood there. She was wearing leggings and a tank top long enough to pull down over her hips. Her hair was down in dark red curls around her shoulders. She was wearing her glasses. She was curvy and pissed off and hot as fuck.
“You’re wearing a shirt,” she said. “Congratulations.”
It was supposed to be mean, but somehow it wasn’t. Her voice was a little choked and had no bite to it. She sounded like someone who had been handed a mean sentence and told to say it.
I was wearing a shirt. An old gray one with a faded Redwings logo and a stretched-out neck. I’d thrown it on without thinking after my last customer of the day left, but now I wanted to rip it off again.
“Where were you tonight?” I asked her.
“Out,” she said.
“Out where?”
“I was on a date.”
Like hell. “With who?”
She looked at me for a second, her eyes dark-lashed and gorgeous behind her glasses. Then she sighed and stepped away from the door, walking into her apartment. Letting me in.
I stepped in and closed the door behind me. Looked around. She had made it nice in here. It was a basement, sure, but the house was a backsplit and she had her own entrance with windows around it. She had a small sofa covered in pillows and blankets and a TV. There was a square dining table with a laptop and a stack of books on it. There was a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter and an empty glass, like I’d interrupted her pouring herself a drink. Next to the sink was a mug that had writing on it: Give me coffee or give me death.
I had never been in Kate’s space before, her home. She’d spent months now in my space, but I’d never been in hers. Seen her things tossed around, smelled her smell everywhere. In fact, I’d never spent much time in any woman’s space. For all the women I’d screwed, I hadn’t looked around their apartments much. I’d never had a girlfriend. I’d gone from my all-male home to a bunch of bachelor pads to my house with Dylan, where we played video games and forgot to separate our whites.
“You’ve made it nice in here,” I said.
She shrugged and walked toward her wine again.
She didn’t offer me any, so I made a beeline for the dining room table, picking up one of the books and looking at it. “Principles of Teaching,” I said, reading the title aloud. “This is a textbook.”
“I know,” Kate said, pouring herself a glass.
I looked at the receipt, which was sitting on the table. It was from an hour ago. “So you went on a date and bought textbooks?”
She leaned against the counter, holding her glass, and dropped her gaze to her feet. “Okay, so I didn’t go on a date. I signed up for a course and I bought textbooks.”
She actually seemed embarrassed about that. Embarrassed. “That is fucking awesome,” I said.
She looked up at me quickly, like she thought maybe I was making fun of her. “Ryan, it’s nerdy.”
“Kate, I’ve never taken a course in my life. You want to be a teacher?”
&nb
sp; She looked uncertain, and then her shoulders relaxed a little. “I think I want to be a tutor,” she said. “I like helping Dylan with his homework, and a few times he had his friend Ben over for help too. I think… I think I could be good at it.”
Shit. She could be good at it. She could be good at anything she set her mind to. “You would be great,” I said.
“It won’t interfere with my schedule with Dylan. The course, I mean. I’m taking the lectures and the exams online. I’ll have to go in a few times, but…”
“We’ll make it work,” I said. “Why did you tell me you were on a date?”
She put her wine glass down on the counter, banging it a little hard. “I could have been on a date.”
Something had her wound up tight, and I had a feeling it was the sight of me half-naked at work this morning. I held my hands out from my sides the way I had at the garage. It was the pose I always used when I was on the mound and a batter gave me shit: I’m right here, come at me. “Okay, go for it,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Give me shit. You know you want to.”
She ran a hand through the curls of her hair, exasperated. “Ryan, I do not want to give you shit,” she said, and in the next breath she said, “Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what? Working shirtless?”
“And taking money for it!” she cried. She picked up her wine glass to hide how upset she was, then put it down again. “Those women were just ogling you. Didn’t you mind?”
“I made a hundred extra bucks today,” I said. “Cash. That adds up.”
“You’re not answering the question.”
“Do I mind?” I had to think it over, because the answer was that deep down, in some buried part of me, I did mind. “Would I rather fix cars with my shirt on? Yes,” I told her. “But not if it costs me a hundred bucks a day. I’m not a baseball player anymore. I need money.”
“So you’re willing to get naked for it.”
“I wasn’t naked. And women do it all the time.” I shrugged. “My body is what I have. I’ve spent thousands of hours making it look this good. It makes me money. It always has.”
“Then you should respect it,” she said.
That hit a mark. Because my body and I had been on the outs lately. It had failed me pretty spectacularly, in fact. And the idea of respecting it—of respecting myself—what the fuck was that? No one had respected me since the day I was born. I didn’t even know what that looked like.
“You think I let any of those women touch me?” I asked Kate.
She crossed her arms. “That’s none of my business.”
“Oh my God, you do,” I said. “You think I’m in Riggs Auto Two, fucking women for money.”
Fourteen
Kate
* * *
I stared at him. “I do not think that,” I said. “I do not.”
He was standing there, so fucking gorgeous, all golden muscle and chiseled jaw, his dark eyes ablaze with anger. I was so hot between my legs it was embarrassing—I’d been hot since he walked through the door. And I kept picturing him standing there at Riggs Auto, and the woman saying It’s like a Magic Mike show. Like he belonged to anyone who had twenty bucks.
Like he didn’t belong to me. Because he didn’t belong to me.
I’d felt, five years ago, like he was mine. I’d felt that way when he’d kissed me six weeks ago. But that was stupid, because he wasn’t. He made every woman feel that way—every woman he’d ever had, every woman who showed up at Riggs Auto. Dylan’s mother. His crowds of female baseball fans. Everyone.
“Tell me the truth,” Ryan said. “You actually think I’d do it, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. It was true. I didn’t think that low of him—I just thought he should think higher of himself. “Now you tell me the truth. Have you had offers from any of those women?”
He actually rolled his eyes, as if this were inconsequential. “Jesus, Kate.”
“You have, then.”
“A few women have said they’re open to it, yeah. The answer is no.”
And that was it. The part that hurt so much. Because the answer was no now, but someday it might not be. Someday, maybe someday soon, Ryan would find someone. And she wouldn’t be me.
“Shit,” I said through clenched teeth, my jaw aching. “I really need to get a date.”
“What does that mean?” he said as I brushed past him, heading for the dirty laundry basket in the corner.
“Nothing,” I said, picking up the laundry basket and pushing open the door that led down the corridor to the laundry room. “Go back upstairs, Ryan. Go away.”
But he followed me down the corridor, into the laundry room, which was dark. I was in such a hurry to get away from him that I didn’t stop to turn on the light. I could see the washing machine from the light of the hallway, and I headed toward it, thumping my basket onto it.
“I’m not leaving,” Ryan said. “What the fuck does that mean, you need to get a date?”
I dumped my clothes out, started sorting them in the dark. “It means that I told myself I’d go to a bar tonight and see if there are any single men in Westlake. Because I need to meet one. I pictured myself being all cool and collected about it, but I chickened out. I didn’t go at all. Instead I went to the community college and signed up for a class. Because I’m lame and apparently I’m going to be single forever.”
A big, strong hand came over mine, stopping me from sorting. And then Ryan’s hard body was against my back, pinning me gently to the washing machine. He leaned down in the dark and scraped his teeth lightly along the sensitive skin of my neck.
My body went still. My breath. My heart in my chest. My blood. Everything stopped.
“Don’t do that,” Ryan said in my ear.
His other hand came down and now I was caged, my hips against the machine, his hips pressing into my ass, his chest—hot as coal through our clothes—flush against my back.
He leaned down again, and this time his lips pressed my skin before his teeth nipped me. “You lecturing me about respecting myself, Kate? Do not go to a fucking bar to pick up a stranger. Do. Not.”
I inhaled a shaky breath, felt it go out of me in a sigh.
His hands left mine and moved to my stomach, his palms flat on me, and he slid them up, up. My nerve endings sparked to life all over my body. Because this was what I wanted—his hands on me, touching me, bold and demanding. I wanted that so badly.
Without apology he cupped my breasts through my bra and my shirt, his hands sliding over them like he owned them. He let their weight fall in his palms, traced his fingertips over my nipples. My brain whited out. I couldn’t think. A moan escaped my throat.
“You think I put my hands on a bunch of strange women at my shop?” he growled. My entire body was sensitized now, and I could feel him pressing against my ass, his power and control as he gently held me where I was. “There is only one woman I want to put my hands on. Only one woman for months, and she’s been driving me crazy since the day she came to my fucking door.”
“Ryan,” I gasped.
His hands squeezed my breasts again, his touch warm and firm. How did he know exactly what I wanted? How did he know? I was nothing but a knot of sensations, incapable of doing anything except want him.
“I shouldn’t touch you,” he said, and his hands moved down my body to the waist of my leggings. “We both know it. But I’m going to this once, because you want it so fucking badly, and so do I.”
“Yes,” I said. It had been five years since I’d felt Ryan’s fingers on me. I was aching for him to do it.
He pushed a hand under my leggings, under my panties, and slid his fingers over me. We both groaned. He dropped his forehead to the side of my neck.
“Jesus, Kate,” he said. “You’re so fucking wet for me. You’re soaked. Are you always this soaked when I’m around?”
Yes. It was an affliction, how hot I was for him. Here in the dark, with
his hand so dirty between my legs, I could admit it. I was always turned on when he was near, and nothing made it stop. Not logic or morality or who I thought I was supposed to be.
He started to rub me, his fingers expert on my pussy, sliding inside me and out again. I clenched on him, my body’s reflex, and when he felt it he pushed into me harder, sending a spike of pure pleasure up my body. I gasped and he put his free arm over my stomach, lightly bracing me as his incredible fingers rubbed me higher and higher.
“So fucking hot,” he said against my neck. “I can smell you.”
“Don’t stop,” I begged him. I moved my hips, trying to get more, more. I was trapped between the washing machine and his hard body, his arm holding me up, but I could rotate my hips just a little bit. I did it, and I heard him hiss in a breath.
“Say it,” he said.
“Make me come,” I said immediately, the words spilling out of me. “Please.”
He slowed his fingers. This was different than the last time we were together. Five years ago had been beautiful, everything a woman could wish for in a night of pleasure with a gorgeous man. This was darker, needier, both of us chasing pleasure, stealing it in this dark room in secret. It felt dirtier and more free at the same time.
“Say it again,” Ryan said, his fingers torturing me slowly. His voice was ragged.
“Make me come, Ryan,” I begged him. “Please. Please.”
“You want it?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Say you want it.”
“I want it,” I whispered.
Finally, the pad of his finger slipped over my clit, right in the spot I needed. And again. And again.
The orgasm came over me in ripples, up and out, to the top of my head, down to my feet. For a long moment I could barely breathe. If he hadn’t been holding me, if I hadn’t been braced against the washing machine, I would have fallen.
I came down quickly, but I wasn’t done. Far from it. He had barely pulled his hand out of my leggings when I spun around in his embrace, facing him. I pulled him down to me and kissed him, deep and hard. Then I reached down and unbuttoned his jeans.
