After Hours: (InterMix)

by Cara McKenna

  “So,” he said. “Who gave you that shiner? What’s his name?”

  Marco lived forty miles away on the other side of Larkhaven, but I wasn’t giving Kelly a scrap to go on.

  “I’m not telling you. Bad enough I get dragged into my sister’s drama. I don’t need my coworkers joining the party.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me, irises motley neon once again. “That all I am to you? Your coworker?”

  “What would you prefer? Friends? Mentor and student?”

  “Lovers?”

  “More like dodged bullets.”

  “You can’t dodge me forever.”

  “Watch me try,” I told him, and sipped my beer.

  Amused, he shook his head. I stared at him while he drank. He really is handsome, once you get used to the scars and catch him smiling. I really would like to sleep with him.

  But bossy prick or not, Kelly was good enough a guy that my head would get all murky, if we fucked. I’d get a crush on him, no matter how passionately I swore to myself I wouldn’t. And once he pounced, brought me down, sucked the marrow from my bones and licked his fingers clean, then what? A prize won, more likely than not. A box checked. And his lost interest would hurt all the more, because I’d have seen it coming a mile off. Run, little deer. And keep on running.

  Our food arrived before long. My burger tasted like pure, meaty, cheesy decadence after a week’s worth of frozen dinners nuked in the crusty communal microwave. I caught Kelly eyeing me and wiped the mustard I felt at the edge of my mouth. He licked the same spot on his own lips, a subconscious-looking reflex.

  “Jesus, you’re sexy when you eat.”

  I had to stifle a laugh to keep from spitting out my food. I swallowed and took a drink of beer. “It’s a hell of a burger. It’s literally the most delicious thing I’ve eaten in months.”

  Kelly licked his lips again, gaze falling to my lap for the briefest moment. The gestures murmured words his lips withheld. Bet you taste just as good. Why not come home with me and spread those pretty legs and let me find out? And for a few seconds the burger turned to cardboard, all my focus lost in imagining being devoured by Kelly’s brazen mouth. That first evening we shared a drink at this bar, I’d probably have assumed he was of a douchey persuasion that didn’t reciprocate, downtown. But that night in my bedroom had taught me Kelly would be only too happy to contradict any assumptions I was tempted to make about his sexual agenda.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I warned him, the beer making me bold.

  “Look at you how?”

  “Like I’m wearing edible underwear, and there’s a place card in my panties with your name on it.”

  He leaned in closer, and God help me, I could smell him. He smelled like beer and sin and rumpled sheets, like every bad decision I’d never made, with a whiskey chaser. His eyes were steady. Cold as ice, hot and dangerous as a brush fire.

  “What?”

  “Come to my place, some weekend.” His voice was low and deadly serious.

  “What for?”

  “Sex.”

  I snorted. “Don’t be coy now, Kel. Spell it out for me.”

  “Come to my place and be mine. For a weekend.”

  “What? Like a carpet shampooer? You’ll have to put down a deposit.” I reached for my beer, but he took the glass and set it back down. “Jeez.”

  “I’m not kidding. I’m asking.”

  “Asking, or ordering?”

  “I’m inviting you. Come over. We’ll scratch whatever this itch is we’re both dealing with.”

  Itch scratched, curiosity satisfied, waning interest imminent the second he comes . . . and my soft female heart still invested, no matter how much detachment I swore to myself I’d muster.

  Was that such a high price to pay, though—a minor broken heart? In exchange for possibly mind-blowing sex? I’d never had mind-blowing sex before. I’d had good sex, romantic and tender and occasionally pretty passionate, but I knew just from looking in his eyes that it had been the minor leagues. And I hadn’t been called off the bench in ages . . .

  Still. “No, thank you. We don’t even get real weekends. We both work Saturdays.”

  “Next time we got two days off in a row, I mean.” That would be this coming Thursday and Friday. “And why not?”

  “I’m not as simple as you. I don’t want to have a one-night stand with someone I have to see twelve hours a day at work.”

  Stony faced, he wiggled a pair of fingers. “Two nights.”

  I sighed, and this time, he let me sip my beer.

  He leaned on the bar, arm flexed, head resting on his hand. “I know you feel this, too.”

  “If everyone acted on every impulse they had, we’d all be obese and syphilitic and a hundred grand in debt from the home-shopping channel.”

  “When’s the last time you spent a whole weekend just fucking?”

  I laughed. “Never. Who does that?”

  “We could.”

  “That sounds very . . . abrasive.”

  “Sex doesn’t have to be some chore you do on Saturday nights after your husband rubs your feet. Come over, and let me show you a good time. Lemme have my way with you, like in your bed the other night. Was that really so bad?”

  My traitorous lady-parts gave an eager squeeze, and for a split second, I felt my gaze turn glassy and unfocused as I remembered the mean, rough thrust of Kelly’s thick cock between my thighs. He caught me.

  “See?”

  I wasn’t sold yet, but I was curious. “Have your way with me, you said?”

  He nodded. “Just let me be my bossy, demanding self, and I swear you won’t regret a second of it.”

  “Bossy how, exactly?” He’d been that way when we’d messed around and I couldn’t say I hadn’t enjoyed it . . . but he meant something else, I could tell. Something more. “Like, rough me up?”

  “No, not really. I like it rough, but not any more than a woman wants. I just like doing what I want, when I want. Without permission, in the moment.”

  I frowned at “without permission” and it wasn’t lost on him.

  “Nothing you’re not up for, or into. I just like issuing orders and having them followed, and taking what I want.”

  “How would you know I was up for it, if you just took whatever, the second you felt like it?”

  “By talking to you beforehand, like this. And picking a signal or a safe word, so you can pull the plug. It’s the illusion of control I want, not actually forcing anyone to do something they’re not into.”

  “Jesus Christ. The last thing I need is to go home with a guy who’s got safe words. Can’t sex just be simple?”

  “What’s not simple about a single word? Free insurance policy that’ll save you a year of therapy bills, on the off chance I take things someplace you’re not up for. I’ll even let you pick it,” he added, bobbing his eyebrows.

  “I’m not interested in sex that comes with a danger of psychological trauma, thanks. I already get that thrill from the ward.”

  “I’m a decent guy. You said it yourself.”

  “I believe you’re a trustworthy enough man.” I trusted him with my safety, after all, twelve hours a day. “But I seriously don’t see what’s in it for me.” I pictured his body, sprawled across my covers. Liar.

  He smiled at that. “You think that when I say I like getting whatever I want, that a woman’s pleasure isn’t one of those things?”

  His answer gave me pause, and Kelly’s grin deepened. That smile, rare as a rainbow. It softened his hard features and faded his scars, made my heart feel swollen in my chest. Damn him.

  “Didn’t I make you feel good, that night in your room?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “You did.” Twice. But I resented the hard sell, having a
man trying to talk me into something as personal as sex.

  Kelly’s gaze shifted past my shoulder as he thought. “Think of it like this.” His eyes swiveled back to mine. “When I say I want to possess a woman for a day, maybe a whole weekend, it’s like I’m inviting her to a dinner party. I’m making exactly the food I want, serving the drinks I like, planning everything. But she’s the guest. Just because I’m in charge doesn’t mean I won’t serve her a damn good meal.”

  I shook my head.

  “What else would you do with your time off? Babysit?”

  “Probably.”

  “Think about it. An entire two days without being asked to make a single decision.”

  I gave him a dry look. “Two entire days taking orders for someone else’s enjoyment.”

  It was Kelly’s turn to sigh. “Okay,” he said, holding up in his hands in surrender. “I’m not going to bully you into it—”

  “No, I’m sure you’d save the bullying for once I was at your place, ready for my glamorous weekend as your sex slave.”

  “Jesus, you need to get laid.”

  Exasperated, I slid my nearly cleaned plate toward the taps and stood, but Kelly grabbed my wrist and tugged me back to sitting with a jolt. I shot him a glare. You did not just do that.

  “Listen. I like you. And I want you. I’m inviting you to come over so we can explore the thing that’s between us. I know you feel it, same as me. I’m offering you a chance to shut your brain off for a weekend, so we can spoil each other’s bodies rotten. Let me boss you around and I promise you’ll find out I give twice as good as I get. I’m not gonna try to fuck your ass or dress you up like a hooker—”

  “Be still my heart. Kelly Robak, you charmer, you.”

  “There’s four things a real man has to be able to do for a woman.”

  “Exactly how many man-lists do you have?”

  He let my wrist go and ticked the items off on his fingers. “Fix her car. Grill her a steak. Kick the ass of any guy who makes her cry. And fuck her so hard she wakes up half-crippled.”

  “Oh my God.” For a moment I just blinked at the gall of him. “You’re . . . You are ridiculous. Goodnight, Kelly.” I got up, heading for the exit. I realized my mistake a millisecond before he called me on it.

  “Said I can fix your car, not teleport it from two towns over.”

  I swiveled. “I’m sure a real man can call a woman a cab, can’t he?”

  Kelly stood. “This city’s got exactly one cab, and that’s its driver.” He pointed to a supremely drunk man slumped beside the video poker machine.

  I sighed. “Fine. Take me home, then.”

  “As you command.”

  I exited ahead of him, waiting on the sidewalk until he’d paid the tab and emerged from the bar.

  He rounded the truck and stood by my door, but didn’t open it. His gaze said, Come here, and for no good reason, I did. He circled me, fairly pinning my body to the passenger door with his, staring down from a mile above me. No passerby would have any doubt we were more than colleagues, but all at once, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything aside from his nearness and size and heat, my annoyance forgotten and excitement primed, but my face set in a willful mask of weary apathy.

  “I thought about you when I got home that night,” he said, too gruff to be called a whisper, but too soft to be overheard. His breath warmed my skin and stirred my hair. “I stroked myself, tight and slow, with a palmful of lube, and thought about how good you’ll feel.”

  My breath froze as my heart raced. I felt something I never had before—a wateriness in my legs as all of my physical consciousness drew tight in my belly, leaving my extremities to wobble and submit. I was weak in the knees. I’d always thought that was just an expression.

  “I’ve put myself to sleep every night since the first time I took you here, thinking about you. About us.”

  Ditto.

  “Come home with me,” he murmured.

  I felt my blasé façade falling to pieces. “No.”

  Gently, slowly, he took my hand and slid it between us, cupping my palm around the length of his cock, hard as sin behind his fly. A dozen people could have seen, and still I didn’t care. I kept my hand limp—not that it mattered. He was in charge. He rubbed my palm up and down, making me measure him. If any other man on earth had done this, I’d have named it sexual assault and called the cops the second I broke away. But this was Kelly. And this was his fucked-up, patented approach to seduction. And pathetic as it was, it was totally working.

  “Not tonight,” I amended.

  “Soon.”

  “I don’t know.”

  His hand went still, clamping mine tight to his erection. “You want this, same as me. You feel all this.”

  All this, meaning his cock? No. All this as in, this force between our bodies, lust like ropes hugging us tighter, tighter the longer I resisted him.

  “So what if I do?”

  “What’s the harm in us hooking up? We’re both single adults. Why waste this?”

  Why waste this?

  Fuck. It was a bull’s-eye shot, an arrow sticking dead center, thrumming from the impact. It was an ace tossed out to trump my entire hand—my good sense and self-respect and professional standards all bested by three little syllables.

  All I could manage to say was, “Not tonight.”

  Kelly stepped back and guided me to the side with a big, warm palm on my waist, then unlocked and opened my door without ever taking his gaze off my face. I held his eye contact the entire time, though I doubt I took a single breath. I got settled, relieved to be off my shaky legs. Kelly slammed the door, then stooped, making a cranking motion.

  I unrolled my window. He leaned his arms along the door, and pushed the lock down with a click.

  “Not tonight,” he said. “But real soon, sweetheart.”

  Chapter Seven

  My schedule the following week was only thirty-six hours—Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Unbelievably luxurious after my initial week, forty-eight hours in Starling plus another six completing restraint training on my so-called days off.

  I dodged off-the-clock Kelly pretty effectively through our next two shifts. We saw each other in the hand-off meetings and around the ward, of course, but I ducked him during breaks and at Tuesday sign-out, dawdling in the nurses’ station with my paperwork until I knew he’d have left for the day.

  Work itself was manageable. I played checkers with Lonnie no less than five times in those two shifts, and lost every game. Not on purpose, either. It was as if those thick lenses let him peer inside my brain and anticipate my every move. And the more he proved himself superior to me, the more tolerable I became. He even sat next to me at lunch on Wednesday, when he could easily have taken another seat.

  At some point I’d made an interested noise at his mention of being a Vietnam vet and self-proclaimed historian of the war, and for better or worse, he’d started treating me like his one-woman lecture hall. It beat being a target for sexually charged pizza crusts, at any rate. And if the stories he told were true, it was actually proving a fairly interesting course. I took to calling him “Professor,” which seemed to please him monumentally, and he took to calling me “kid.” I’d have preferred “Ms. Coffey,” but it still beat “bitch agent.” Progress.

  I couldn’t be sure what was happening with Amber and Marco. She didn’t have a restraining order, but I didn’t know if that was due to a paperwork delay or her pussying out with pressing charges. But he hadn’t bothered her since the afternoon I’d earned my formerly black—now yellow—eye, and she told me he’d dropped off a check. Whether that was true or not . . . The uncertainty gave me a headache, so I decided to not think too hard about it.

  “Bullies tend to prey on weak people, people they perceive as worthles
s,” Dennis told me on Wednesday. We happened to be taking our mid-afternoon breaks at the same time, in the S3 lounge. I’d spilled the general details of what had happened at Amber’s when he asked about my eye, doing my best to make it sound like an isolated incident, not a drama that would threaten my reliability here at Larkhaven.

  “Now, if some passionate party should happen to intervene,” Dennis said, nodding to mean me, “and demonstrate in no uncertain terms that the victim is indeed worthy, worthy of defending . . .”

  “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I could never scare him off, physically. He’s huge, and strong. He must weigh as much as two of me.”

  “But by proving that you’re willing to fight that losing battle over your sister’s honor and well-being, in turn you imbue her with an added perception of worth. You’re saying she and her son are worth putting yourself in danger for. And in turn, this Marco person is more inclined to respect her. Or at least value her.” Dennis’s amateur academic side was coming out, but I didn’t mind his turning my family nonsense into a case study. It could stand to be depersonalized.

  Detach, I’d been chanting in my head, whenever the memory surfaced. Detach, detach, detach.

  “We respect what others are willing to defend,” Dennis added, and drained his coffee cup. “We value what others value, or at least covet those things. But bullies don’t like conflict. Theirs is a cowardly facsimile of power, won only through sure bets. And they’ll always go after the low-hanging fruit.”

  I nodded, but my thoughts had drifted from Marco.

  It was Kelly I pondered, Kelly whom I’d always seen as a bit of a bully. But he didn’t want an easy target. If he was after anything, it was a challenge.

  That first day I’d been at my weakest, and he hadn’t preyed on me when I was vulnerable, however possessive he’d acted at the bar. No, it was my resistance that seemed to get him salivating, like he wanted to pry me open after a good long chase. No low-hanging fruit for Kelly Robak. More a tough nut to crack, the meat surely all the more rich for the struggle.

  I really needed to quit thinking of him as a predatory animal. But it was difficult not to, when all he did was prowl and pounce and leave me writhing in poorly veiled heat.