by Ann Collins
Kara took another deep breath. She was steadier now. “You get this a lot? Women who faint in your arms at the sight of their busted-up car?”
“The men are even worse,” he said, giving her a bland smile.
Thoughts of the storage room came flooding back, and she took a small step away from him. “So what now?”
“Well, there’s no working on this car – it’s totaled. You will have to get in touch with your insurance company, and I will sign off on everything, of course. It won’t be a hassle. Then they will issue a check within a matter of weeks, and you will be able to shop for something new. I assume you have full coverage, of course?”
Kara nodded.
“Okay then…we’ll just need to go over some paperwork, and you’re good to go.”
“How much do I owe you for the tow?”
He waved away the question. “The insurance company will pick up the tab.”
“Okay…thank you.”
“So that’s it. Let’s go inside.”
“Wait.”
Kara stood there in the sunlight beside her totaled car, looking at the man who had just ravaged her very willing body in the tiny room hidden way from the rest of the world. She felt as though there had to be something to say at this point, something that was meaningful enough to not make light of the situation, but not serious enough to make him think that this would happen again. But even as he stood there patiently, looking at her and waiting for what she might have to say, her mind was too clouded with the avalanche of emotion and memories to say anything at all. It was as though any sanity was crowded out when this man was in the vicinity.
In the end, she decided to go with blunt honesty. “I don’t know what to say.”
Anders shook his head. “I’m not sure there is anything to say.”
“I wonder if…”
“Look, your secret is safe with me, okay? I’m not going to tell anyone about what happened today, or this past weekend. Your perfect life will remain perfectly intact.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“I’m sure you didn’t. But I recognize how things are. And I don’t need the trouble either.”
“Just…just stop, okay?” She put her hands on her forehead and massaged her temples with her fingertips. She was already developing a headache, and it wasn’t yet the afternoon. And the more she tried not to think about the wetness between her thighs, the more of him seemed to ooze out of her, as if constantly reminding her of just how far she had fallen from grace.
“I never do this kind of thing,” she said softly. “I just don’t. And now that I have, well…I don’t know what happened there in that little room. I just know that I felt like someone else, but more like myself than I have in a very long time. I know that makes no sense at all.”
“It makes perfect sense,” he said, and she looked up at him with surprise.
“It does?”
He shrugged. “You’re discovering something new. It’s a new side of who you are, maybe. And it feels like you are finding out something entirely out of character, but the truth is, this was inside you all along. You are just now letting it out.”
“But…” She threw up her hand. “I’m acting like a randy teenager who gives no thought to consequences and doesn’t give a damn who she hurts.”
“Have you ever been a randy teenager?”
She contemplated that. “Hardly.”
“Have you ever been reckless?”
She snorted in wry amusement. “No.”
“And you haven’t really hurt anyone, have you?”
“Yet.”
“You haven’t,” he insisted. “So…you’re just enjoying yourself. It happens, Kara. People do this every day.”
She blushed as more thoughts crossed her mind, thoughts that she wanted to damp down, because what did it matter? But she found herself speaking anyway, even as her better judgment said it was time to keep her mouth shut.
“Do you do this every day?”
He eyed her with a new regard, as though they had stepped into dangerous territory together and he wasn’t sure how to handle it. “Are you asking if I have one night stands and weekend flings with women I just met?”
She swallowed hard. Might as well go for the rest of it, since she had opened that door. “Or quickie fucks in the storage room.”
He paused before he answered. “The storage room was a first.”
The silence swelled between them. She realized that he hadn’t answered her question, and of course, that meant that the answer was yes. She looked back at her car, just to give her a place to rest her eyes that wasn’t anywhere near his direction. She could feel the heat rising in her face.
“I understand why you asked,” he said.
“Do you?”
“You want to know just how cheap you should feel.”
The flush now filled her whole body, turning her hot all over, then cold as ice. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You know nothing about me.”
She waited for something from him, but nothing came. When she finally wiped her eyes and looked back at Anders, he was studying her with no expression whatsoever on his face.
“You know nothing about me,” she repeated, trying to convince herself that it was true.
Finally he nodded and looked toward the building. “Let’s go take care of that paperwork.”
***
Kara pulled up to the stoplight. The unfamiliar feel of her father’s BMW didn’t help ease the tension that had taken up residence in her shoulder and temples. Her head was pounding, despite the four ibuprofen she had popped from the first aid kit in the trunk. Her father was always one to be prepared, even if the emergency was just a headache.
That made her think of Anders. Always prepared. But not today – there was no condom that magically appeared from his pocket today. Instead she had insisted that he let go inside her, and he definitely seemed the kind of man to honor a woman’s request.
She shifted in the seat and felt again the wetness between her legs. Why hadn’t she cleaned up? She could have gone into the bathroom while Anders took care of the paperwork and studiously ignored her. Now that she was away from him and could think a little more clearly, she thought that maybe she was out to punish herself. Maybe that’s why she still had the evidence of Anders between her thighs, and maybe that was even why she had fucked him in that little room. This time it was in broad daylight, and she definitely was not a damsel in distress, grateful to some complete stranger.
No, this time she had acted like a total slut.
The light turned green and Kara hit the gas a little too hard. The fine engine reacted smoothly, forgiving her for the rough treatment. She wondered if Scott would be as forgiving, and she immediately knew the answer. He was a man who wanted everything to be a certain way, just like she always had, and that was part of the reason they fit so well.
Everything about their life was predictable, even the future: She knew that he was waiting for the right time to propose, probably at a quiet dinner in a very expensive restaurant, and likely right after he had asked for her father’s permission. The wedding would be about a year later, so as to avoid the questions of whether she was pregnant when at the time of proposal, and then they would be married at the country club with all the traditional trimmings and 400 of their closest friends and family.
Then they would settle down, and she would continue to work at the bank for a while, until they got pregnant with the first of two perfect children. She would then cut back on the work for a while until she quit altogether to raise those kids, shuffling them to soccer and karate and band practices, becoming the kind of mom who never forgot the juice boxes or the extra pair of socks. In the meantime Scott would work his way up the ladder to some lofty position, and together they would run Harlan Savings and Trust when her father decided it was time to age gracefully in a Florida mansion, where they would visit twice a year.
It was all scheduled and expected and perfect. This was how
her life was supposed to go.
So why did she have such a craving for all the things that were wrong for her?
She had had sex with exactly two men before the events of the weekend. Scott was one, of course, and the other was her high school boyfriend, with whom it had happened twice. Both times they were terrified that she might get pregnant, even though they had used condoms and he had pulled out, anyway. With Scott she was on the pill and there was no fear, but there was also no passion, no thrill, and certainly nothing kinky.
Scott would never be the kind of man to fuck a woman senseless against the wall in a greasy little shop, while there were people waiting just outside the door.
Kara slowed to a sedate pace when the speed limit sign changed, and now she was cruising through the nicer neighborhoods on the way to her own. The BMW hummed its reliable hum. The road was smooth and sure beneath the tires. The lawns were perfectly manicured and the trees swayed just so in the breeze.
For the first time in her life, Kara felt entirely out of place.
Chapter Seven
Anders didn’t want to go in the bank again, didn’t want to have to act nice with that creep. How did it end up that folk like that ended up with the money and the power? But he had to go in – he had bills to pay and needed to move some money around to try and keep everything above the waterline. With a bit of luck, he wouldn’t even see that little snake.
He walked up to the teller’s window, pausing to glance over in the direction where he’d seen Kara, before turning to deal with the lady behind the glass. As he stood there, he heard the tack tack tack of smart shoes approaching.
“Mr. Wallace.”
He turned to see Scott standing there, a thin man with a thin smile.
“Quick word.” Scott gave a charming smile to the teller, by way of apology. She smiled back.
Anders stepped away from the window and towards Scott. Maybe this guy actually had some good news. Maybe he’d reconsidered the loan. Hell, he even felt kind of sorry for the guy.
“I just want you to know,” said Scott in a low voice, “that I know what you’re up to.”
Huh…?
“I saw the way you behaved with Kara; the way you looked at her. Whatever you think there is between you and her, let me tell you…there’s nothing.”
Anders felt his knuckles go white and his biceps grow inside his leather jacket. This was fighting talk. But he had to play this one carefully. This wasn’t like back on his side of the tracks, the rules were different here.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He’d played enough poker in his time that keeping a game face was not a problem.
“If you keep sniffing round my property,” whispered Scott, “like some scabby dog in a yard, I’ll have you put down. You’ll go from scrabbling around in the oil to scrabbling around in the dirt.”
There was no doubting what this meant. He’d call the debt in, close down his business. Anders stood, teeth gritted, staring at him. What did you say to that? The answer, he decided, was nothing. If that dyke burst, there would be no holding him back.
They shared a final mutual glare, then Scott turned and walked away.
“You have a good day now, Mr. Wallace,” he called back, smiling once more at the teller.
Deceitful little shit.
Anders stormed out of the bank with his anger barely in check. He climbed into his truck, turned the key and listened with satisfaction as the engine immediately purred like a well-loved cat. He coaxed it into gear and drove out of the parking lot at a sedate pace, determined not to betray any emotion. But the moment he was on the open road, he planted the gas pedal with a vengeance and made that engine roar.
Who the fuck did that guy think he was?
He should have pinned him up against the wall of the bank and told him straight – “I screwed your girlfriend, and she loved it so much she came back for more. What do you think about that?”
No, he did right. This guy could close him down, put him out of business. Anders didn’t do patience well, but he’d just have to this time. He consoled himself with that old truth – what goes around comes around.
As he pulled back into the garage and saw the wrecked Mercedes once more, his thoughts shifted to the other part of the mess, the more pleasurable part, the reason there was a mess in the first place.
It wasn’t the first time he had been with a woman who was conflicted or confused about what she was doing and why, but something about Kara set her apart. He wasn’t sure what it was, and that was what he spent many long hours trying to figure out. It was easy to zone out and think about things when he was working under the hood of a car – the work made it quite easy to turn on the cruise control, letting his hands do what they were so well-trained to do while his mind was a million miles away.
In the end he decided that it was just a combination of the mystery, the thrill of being with a woman from the right side of the tracks, and the excitement of knowing that she was finding out who she was, right there in his bed – or against his wall. Either way, she was changing and growing, and he had a front row seat.
But was this a good thing?
Even aside from the threat to his business, and the jobs of the men he employed, Anders knew how things would turn out if he pursued anything more. She would be thrilled with him for a while and all those novel things about being with the bad boy would draw her like a bee to honey. She would enjoy every second of it. But then she would start wondering if she had been too hasty, if she had made a mistake, and as the newness wore away, she would become distant. She would miss her fancy restaurants and her wealthy boyfriend and her weekends at exotic locations. She would start thinking about how things could have been if she had just stayed in her own little world, right where she belonged.
And then Anders would be the one who was hurt when she moved on, and he’d be left with nothing. Less than nothing if you included the business.
Anders had learned long ago not to let that happen. He knew himself quite well, and he didn’t need a shrink to tell him that his penchant for bed-hopping and his cadre of friends-with-benefits all stemmed from the desire to never get close to anyone. It had all started and ended with Rose, the woman who had made him see what love was like and then had dumped him for someone else. Even though he had only been nineteen at the time, that kind of pain made a deep impression. He had vowed then and there that the only women he would allow back into his life were those who occasionally shared his bed, and that was all they would ever be privy to. It had worked for almost a decade, for the most part.
He was thinking about that when he heard a familiar voice from behind the hood. “Is that a sexy mechanic under there?”
The southern drawl and sultry delivery made him grin. He tightened a screw as he answered. “Might be. Depends on what sexy vixen is asking.”
“How many sexy vixens do you have around here, anyway?”
He immediately thought of Kara and then pushed her out of his mind. “Dozens. They can’t get enough. I have to beat them away with a wrench.”
“Sounds kinky.”
“One can only hope.”
He rolled out from under the car and looked up at Dallas. She was two years younger than he was. Her hair was lavender today, a shade that made her blue eyes seem even brighter than usual. Her eyeshadow and lipstick matched the hair. Her ample breasts were pressed into a purple jacket, and she was wearing tight black pants above three-inch heels that had a scuff mark on one side.
He looked her up and down, her tongue ring flashing as she spoke. She had a delicate tattoo that ran the length of her arm, something in a foreign language. She had refused to tell him what it meant and insisted that he look it up and figure it out. He had been meaning to do just that during the year they had known each other, but he somehow hadn’t found the time to do it yet.
“Got time for a beer?” she said.
“I always have time for a beer.”
“Got time for othe
r things, too?”
Anders grinned. Dallas had been his favorite friends-with-benefits girl for a while. They fit well together in many ways, but especially in the fact that they weren’t gunning for a relationship with each other, weren’t even close to falling in love and simply wanted to have a good time until they moved on to something serious with someone else.
And the sex was hotter than a string of firecrackers on the fourth of July.
“I think I could spare the time,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag.
“Go clean up then, and away we go.”
***
Their place of choice was a little dive bar on the outskirts of town, where they were such regulars that they were on a first-name basis with everyone. That meant they got quite a few drinks on the house. Tonight Anders was nursing his second beer while Dallas was working on a pitcher of margaritas. He tried to keep up with the conversation, and tried to keep his mind on the night ahead and the fun she would surely offer, but it was tough to think of anything else but the woman who had invaded his every waking thought since he found her on the side of the road.
It didn’t take Dallas long to notice. “So who is she?” she asked, point-blank.
“Huh?”
“The woman who has your mind tonight. Who is she and why the hell haven’t you told me all about her yet?”
Anders shook his head. “Who says it’s a woman?”
Dallas’s eyes widened and she leaned across the table. “A man, then? Really? Anders, are you getting into buggery?”
He threw his head back and laughed. Dallas always had a knack for ferreting out the truth in her own unique way. “Okay, fine. You’re right. It’s a woman.”
“Do tell.” She sipped her margarita through the straw and eyed him as she waited.
“Well…she’s just in my head, you know? I don’t know what to do about her.”
“Back up. How did this all happen?”
