Work Me Up

by Julie Kriss

  He let me. He didn’t say a word. I could see in the dark that his cheeks were flushed, and I could hear his harsh breathing. In silence I pushed open his jeans, pushed down his boxer briefs, and took out his cock.

  Did I remember what it looked like? Yes. I remembered everything. The feel of his cock, its heat and weight in my hand. The smooth, hot skin. I curled my hand around it and stroked it, and Ryan made a strangled sound in his throat. I stroked it again and he let his head fall back, his eyes closed. It was the pose of a man taking absolute pleasure. And I was giving it to him.

  We hadn’t done this five years ago. He’d pleasured me, and then we’d fucked. In the one night we had together I hadn’t had the chance to pleasure him, to watch as I made him feel what I felt. To watch him lose control. Now was my chance, and I was greedy for it. I wanted to see that more than anything.

  There was come at the tip of his cock, and I used it to lubricate my hand as I stroked him. He sucked in a deep breath as I ran my tightened fingers down to the base, then back up to the tip again. “Like that,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Jesus, Kate.”

  It had been a long time for him. He’d told me as much, and I had been working with him—practically living with him—for months now. The things I’d thought after our interview had turned out to be nothing. He didn’t go on dates. There were no women coming out of his bedroom in the morning. He used to be a player, but the appearance of his son had made him change his priorities, at least for a while. I knew that the truth right now was that there were no women at all.

  No women except me.

  In this moment, I was the only woman. The one who was giving him intense pleasure. The one who was making him forget everything and let go. I was the only woman to see Ryan as he was right now, hot and hard and close to orgasm.

  “Fucking hell,” he said as I stroked him. It looked impossibly erotic, Ryan in the near-dark, his head thrown back, his jeans undone and his cock heavy in my hand. I could feel my own arousal as I stroked him, the throb between my legs where my underwear was already wet against my skin. All I had to do was pull my leggings and panties down and he could be inside me in seconds, bare and hard, taking me. I felt an ache deep in my belly—I wanted that. But right in this minute I wanted to watch him come.

  He tilted his head back down and opened his eyes. Then, as I kept stroking, he reached under my tank top, up my back, and unhooked my bra. My breath caught painfully as I realized what he was doing. Still stroking him, I let my weight fall back against the washing machine as Ryan pushed my shirt up roughly from my waist, taking my unhooked bra with it and exposing my breasts.

  He leaned in toward me and I felt his cock jerk in my hand. I stared down at us in fascination and put the tip against my belly, and we both watched him come, his cock jerking against my skin, the come spurting out over my belly and my breasts, streaking and dripping. It lasted a long moment, and then we both paused, panting as if we’d run a race.

  He reached out a long, perfect arm and braced himself against the machine. We were both still staring at my breasts and my belly, coated in him. I’d never done anything like that before. It was the hottest sight I’d ever seen.

  With his free hand Ryan reached behind me into the laundry piled on top of the machine. He grabbed a T-shirt and swabbed me off, getting every drop off my skin. He tossed the shirt behind me again and pulled my clothes down. Then, still caging me against the machine, he leaned in and kissed me.

  I thought it would be a hard kiss, possessive and dirty. Instead it was hot and almost gentle, deep and strangely affectionate. He kissed me like he wanted to memorize me, like part of him thought he’d never see me again.

  When he finished, my knees were weak, and it wasn’t just from the sex. I wanted to live in that kiss. I wanted him to do it again.

  I stared up at him, my body shaking, my lips sore. “What are we doing?” I asked him, my throat dry.

  He looked just as shaken as I was. “It’s complicated,” he said, and then he turned and left me alone in the dark.

  Fifteen

  Ryan

  * * *

  The last customer of the day had left, and I locked the door behind her. I walked into the front office of Riggs Auto Two and picked up my T-shirt, pulling it on over my head. I was shrugging on my hoodie when my phone rang.

  It was Luke. “What’s up?” I said when I answered.

  “Come to the house after work,” Luke said. “Emily and I want to talk to everyone.”

  “What about?”

  “Show up and find out.”

  I shrugged. “Fine, but I have to tell Kate I’ll be late. Anything else?”

  “Jace and I have run the numbers,” Luke said. “Riggs Auto Two is making good money so far.”

  This should have made me feel good—I’d only been in business for three weeks—but instead I felt nothing. Probably because the reason I’d made money was because I had to strip my shirt off for most of the day. It wasn’t because of my auto repair skills. I was good, just as good as my brothers, but I tended to get the easy work—busted taillights, flat tires, fluid top-ups. Mindless stuff, because everyone assumed I was good-looking and brainless.

  What would happen if I just fixed cars with my shirt on? Would the business make as much money? Because after that hot, mind-blowing session in the laundry room with Kate five days ago, taking my shirt off for strange women bothered me more than it should have.

  If your body is what you have, you should respect it.

  “So the place is making money,” I said to Luke as I pulled on a baseball cap. “So what?”

  “We agreed that if the business is there, we’d hire you an assistant.”

  “Yeah?” This, I was interested in. It was tiring me out, working six days a week, doing everything. “You’re going to find one?”

  “We already hired him,” Luke said.

  “What the fuck—that was fast. Is he good?”

  Luke’s voice was weirdly cautious. “He’s good. And he’s available to start right away.”

  I heard the loud blatt of a motor on the street outside the shop—someone who needed a new muffler. “Luke, what are you talking about?”

  “Listen, Ryan. He knows what he’s doing and I think he’s trustworthy. He swears he’s going to do a good job. He probably means it.”

  Now there were alarm bells going off in my head. The blatt of the motor was closer now, pulling into the parking lot. I had a feeling of impending doom, hearing that motor. But no. Luke and Jace wouldn’t do this to me. “He probably means it? Don’t say it, Luke. Just don’t.”

  “It’ll be fine, I swear,” Luke said.

  “Oh, Jesus. What did you do?”

  But he didn’t have to tell me. I already knew. The loud motor in the parking lot cut out, and a car door slammed. A voice shouted, “Riggs!”

  I hung up on Luke and dropped the phone on the desk. I walked to the door and opened it. “Oh, shit,” I said.

  It was my brother Dex.

  The Riggs brothers had never gotten along, but Dex and I hated each other. Neither of us could explain why. Maybe it was that, because of Dad’s impregnating two different women, we were only four months apart. Maybe it was because we were competitive, and while Dex was stronger and meaner, I was better-looking and athletic. Maybe it was because Dex Riggs was a straight-up, all-out crazy asshole.

  Everyone knew Dex was crazy. He always had been. He’d become a cop, which had surprised everyone, and then he’d flunked out somehow, which made more sense. No one really knew why Dex wasn’t a cop anymore—whether he quit or was fired. Dex wasn’t talking, and to be honest I didn’t care. Detroit had barely been big enough for him and me to avoid each other, but we’d managed it for years. Now that I was back in Westlake, the best thing about Dex was that he was still in Detroit, miles away.

  Except now he was in the parking lot of Riggs Auto Two, standing in front of a godawful wreck of a car—a ten-year-old Mustang, dark blue with a crazy-as
s white racing stripe on the hood, two dented doors, and silver rims that were coated in mud. Dex himself didn’t look much better than the car did: he wore a red-and-blue plaid shirt buttoned over a stretched white T-shirt, and his jeans had honest to God rips in them, not the fashionable kind. His motorcycle boots were older than the car. His dark hair was mussed, again not the fashionable way—in the not-washed-in-days way. He had a scruff of beard on his jaw and his eyes were bloodshot.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

  “Greetings, little brother,” Dex said like a vision from my worst nightmare. “I’m joining the rodeo.”

  “How?” I barked. “I thought you had a job in Detroit.”

  “Nope.” Dex fired a single shot from a finger-gun at me. “No job and no apartment, as it turns out. I’m broke as shit. You’ve inspired me. I’ve come back to Westlake to stay.”

  “To fix cars? No fucking way.”

  Dex pointed at the sign above my head. “That’s my name, too, and you’re outvoted. So here I am.”

  A headache was crawling up the back of my skull. This was different pain than the shoulder pain; this was definitely more Dex-related. This was the last thing I fucking needed. I was going to kill Luke and Jace.

  While I fumed, Dex leaned his ass against the Mustang and took a joint from his pocket. He lit it and watched me. His pose was casual and unperturbed, but anyone who underestimated Dex lived to regret it. His dark eyes were fixed on me and they didn’t miss a thing.

  “Do you even remember how to fix cars?” I asked him.

  “Of course I do,” he said like this was obvious. Which it probably was. “I hear you have a good racket going on here, brother, doing the work half naked for extra.”

  “No,” I said. It was a snap decision, but I made it right then and there—no more shirtless work. I would never assume that Dex wouldn’t fix cars with his shirt off. In fact, Dex would fix cars with his pants off, smiling at the women as he swung his dick. “I’ve stopped that. I don’t do it anymore.”

  His eyebrows went up, but I held firm. I was kissing a hundred bucks a day goodbye, and I was very fucking happy about it. I didn’t want to do the shirtless thing anymore. I was done.

  “Okay,” Dex said, “shirts on, then. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Don’t smoke weed while we’re working. It will lose us customers.”

  He held out the joint. “Want some?”

  “Jesus, no.”

  “Come on. You’re not a big-time athlete anymore. No random drug tests. You can take anything you want.”

  He didn’t know it, but that hit too close to the mark. I was off the pills, and I was staying off. I didn’t drink, either—I got out of the habit when Dylan showed up and I never got in it again. “No thanks.”

  “Square as ever,” Dex said, shaking his head and putting the joint between his lips again. “It’s like you’re not even one of us. Oh wait, you kind of aren’t.”

  This was standard Dex shit—trying to get under my skin any way he could. He didn’t care about our different mothers and never had, but he’d poke at that if it bothered me. It was why I hated him. I pointed to the sign behind me, just like he had. “That’s my name too, dipshit,” I said to him. “Show up at nine o’clock tomorrow, or vote or no vote, you’re fucking fired.”

  Sixteen

  Kate

  * * *

  Emily phoned me as I was hanging out with Dylan, eating Spaghetti-Os. “Hey,” she said, “it’s Emily. Remember me?”

  Of course I remembered Emily. “Um, yes.”

  “Are you with Dylan? Can you bring him to the house?”

  “I suppose so,” I said, watching the kid clean his bowl like I hadn’t fed him a snack an hour ago. “What’s up?”

  “Family meeting,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  “Emily, I’m…” It sounded stupid coming from my mouth. “I’m not family.”

  “Yes, you are,” she said. “I want you there. And I want Dylan there. This affects him, too.”

  Of course. Dylan actually was family. This wasn’t about me. “All right, we’re coming,” I told her.

  Half an hour later we had walked the few blocks down the street to the original Riggs house. It was big and old, and it had been practically falling down until recently, when first Luke and then Jace had started working to fix it up. The front porch had new floorboards, replacing the old rotting ones, and the yard had been cleared of the bushes of weeds. Behind the house was a guest house, which had been empty since Jace moved out to live with Tara. There was a car in front of it now—a blue one with a white racing stripe and a bunch of dents. I’d never seen that car before.

  Dylan ran ahead of me into the house, bounding up the steps. He’d been shy his first few times here, but it hadn’t taken him long to treat the house like his own and get comfortable around his aunts and uncles. Now he opened the door and we saw a crowd of family: Luke, Emily, Jace, Tara, Ryan. There were also two people I didn’t recognize: a woman with honey-blond hair and a man who was so obviously the fourth Riggs brother I didn’t have to guess. I knew that the fourth brother’s name was Dex, he was an ex-cop, and every time his name was mentioned Ryan looked like he’d swallowed a rotten egg. I gathered they didn’t get along.

  Dylan beelined to his dad, and I turned to find Emily taking my arm. “You’re here!” she said, pulling me toward the woman I didn’t know. “Lauren, this is Kate, Ryan’s nanny. Kate, this is my sister, Lauren.”

  I’d heard about Lauren, though I’d never met her. She was Emily’s fraternal twin sister, and though they certainly looked alike when they stood side by side, they didn’t look like twins. Emily was blonde and vivacious, opinionated, while Lauren was darker, quieter, more reserved. She had a slimmer build than Emily, and she looked like she could fit in at a country club, even though she was wearing boots and a jersey dress.

  She smiled at me, and then her gaze went to my hair. “Your color is great. Where do you get it done?”

  “Lauren owns the hair salon,” Emily explained. “I run it.”

  “I got it done in Detroit,” I said, adjusting my glasses. My hair was naturally dark chestnut brown, but I liked having red added to it. I’d done it for years. “I haven’t been able to do it since I moved.”

  “Come to the shop and we’ll give you the family discount,” Lauren said.

  But I’m not family. The words wanted to come out of my mouth again, but this time I bit them back. If they wanted to give me a discount, I’d take it.

  “Lauren.” This was Dex, who had come over to us. He was good-looking—honestly, the Riggs genes were ridiculous—but he looked like the disreputable grifter who would get kicked out of Lauren’s country club.

  “Dex,” Lauren said. Her tone was cool, but there was something underneath. Like she was almost happy to see him.

  “You finally ditch Vic?”

  “We’re divorced now, yes,” Lauren said.

  “Excellent move,” Dex said. “Let him bore someone else to tears.” He looked at me. “Who are you?”

  “This is Kate, Ryan’s nanny. She takes care of Dylan,” Emily said. To me, she added, “This is Dex.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  He didn’t reply. Instead he looked at me, and something dark and mischievous sparked in his eyes. He grinned.

  “Don’t show fear, honey,” Lauren said to me.

  “Oh, man,” Dex said. “This is fantastic.”

  “What?” I said. “What did I do?”

  But I didn’t get a chance to answer, because Emily clapped her hands and walked over to Luke. “Attention, everyone!”

  We all went quiet.

  “Okay, I’ll just say it,” Emily said, hooking her arm around Luke’s. “Luke and I are getting married.”

  We all applauded. I was pleasantly surprised, but Lauren and Tara looked like they already knew. “Please,” Lauren said under her breath when she caught my eye. “The first thing I saw was the ring.”

&
nbsp; I looked again. Emily had a ring on her ring finger, a slender band with a modest flash of diamond. It looked pretty.

  “We’re going to have a wedding,” Emily said when the applause died down. “We’re doing it right here in the backyard of the house. We got a justice of the peace and everything. Thanksgiving weekend.”

  “Suits and ties required,” Luke said, looking at his brothers.

  Emily turned to Lauren, Tara, and me. “Lauren, you’re my maid of honor,” she said, as if there was no chance Lauren would say no. “And I want you guys to be my bridesmaids.”

  My jaw dropped. Bridesmaid? I barely knew Emily and Luke. I had just moved to town. I was the hired help.

  Luke turned to his brothers. “It was hard to choose,” he said in his nice, deep voice. He looked happy and relaxed, less broody than usual. “But I choose Dylan to be the ring-bearer.”

  “Yes!” Dylan said.

  “And my best man is Dex.”

  Even Dex looked surprised. I looked at Ryan and Jace, wondering if this had hurt their feelings. But Ryan was smirking, and Jace was looking into the distance, his expression carefully composed as if he was trying not to laugh. They didn’t look offended at all.

  “Oh, and no gifts,” Emily said. “We want to do a thing, but we don’t need a pile of stuff. Just show up and have fun. That’s all we had to say. We have snacks. Announcement’s over.”

  Everyone relaxed. Dex left, a disgusted look on his face. Emily took Dylan to the kitchen for yet another snack. Ryan and Jace came over to us.

  “Well, that was weird,” Tara said to Jace.

  “It was awesome,” Jace said, lightly touching his hand to Tara’s back. He was grinning.

  “I agree,” Ryan said. “It was fucking awesome.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Luke just picked your brother to be best man over you.”

  “Thank God. I don’t want to be best man, and Luke knows it.”