by M. S. Parker
I did it again, and again, his fingers tightening into a near-painful pinch. I moaned at the sensation, then kissed him, sucking his bottom lip into my mouth before biting it. Not hard. Just enough to make him curse.
His cock pulsed inside me, giving a demanding jerk, and I tightened around him again, grinding against him as best I could. I was so close.
He moved us until I was again on my back, and he came down over me, shoving a hand into my hair, holding my head still as he pulled almost all the way out.
This time, when he drove his cock in, it was hard enough to knock a cry out of me. But the withdrawal…so…so slow. He did it again, sending white sparks shooting behind my eyelids. Again.
I climaxed on the fourth.
So did he.
Later, as we lay wrapped together in the blankets, I watched the time change on the clock and sighed.
“We’re late for work,” I said.
“I know. I texted Frederick, told him you were still under the weather, and I was going to stay here until I knew you were feeling better.” He kissed my shoulder and brushed my hair back from my face.
Closing my eyes, I snuggled deeper into the pillow. I wasn’t going to admit it, but I was definitely glad I had an out today. As much as I’d enjoyed the past hour, now that all the good stuff from my orgasm had faded, I was starting to feel the effects of yesterday’s impromptu and unwise workout.
He stroked a hand down my hip, and I reached down and caught it, twining our fingers together.
“I decided to give you that chance,” I said, and his fingers tightened on mine, but he didn’t speak yet. “You can spend the rest of our lives making it up to me. Deal?”
He kissed my shoulder again. “Deal.”
Satisfied, I slid back into sleep.
40
Dash
“Why is it taking so long?”
Astra threw herself into the chair across from me, her jean-clad legs stretched out while she started to tap her feet. Her feet that were clad in a hot-pink pair of high-tops decorated with fairies. Custom-made, she’d told me.
“I think having a baby is usually an endurance thing, not a sprint thing,” I told her, smiling into my coffee.
Kaleb had popped out a few minutes earlier, looking excited and scared…and a little green. “Piety is doing great. She wanted you to know that.”
Personally, I thought Piety had decided to give him – or herself – a breather.
Camry, Piety’s sister-in-law, had come out a couple of minutes later and added, “We’ve still got a ways to go.”
She started saying words like dilated and crowning, and I sympathized with Kaleb more and more. Astra had gotten a little green herself. I didn’t blame her. Childbirth could be a messy, somewhat traumatic experience. I’d discovered that when I’d seen a few magazines detailing water births.
Only being completely and unequivocally in love with someone could make me endure that.
Astra popped up again to pace.
“I wonder if the nurses could give us an update.”
As she came by my chair again, I snagged her hand and pulled her into my lap. She laughed and curled her arm around my neck. “Am I driving you crazy? You can go. I’ll call when it’s over.”
“No, I wouldn’t leave when you’re this nervous.” Nuzzling her neck, I breathed in the soft scent of her, then settled back into the chair. “I thought I might distract you for a minute.”
I held out the box I’d gotten out of my pocket earlier, and her eyes widened.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
“I love presents,” she said, eyes sparkling.
“I know.” I’d discovered that over the past few months. And she was so cute when she got them too.
“It’s a…key.” She held it up and turned it back and forth. “And I think it’s my key.”
“Well…” Taking it from her, I held it up between us. “It’s actually your key to my house. I was kind of thinking of exchanging it. For this one.”
I reached into the pocket of my jeans, arching my hips up and wiggling to get the actual gift out without letting go of her.
This key was bright pink.
It had sparkly things on it.
And the word home.
It looked like something Astra would like.
“You’re giving me another key?” she said slowly.
“Actually, I’m asking you to move in…to help me make my house into our house.”
Her mouth fell open.
“Well, I think I managed to stun you into speechlessness,” I said, hoping this was a good kind of shock. “Are you…”
She kissed me, her arms locking tight around my neck.
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Part of me had wanted to give her a ring. But I’d held back, not wanting to move too fast. This had felt right. A ring for our one year anniversary would work.
Or maybe Christmas.
Or the Fourth of July.
I wasn’t entirely patient when it came to her.
She kissed me again, then again, making me wish we weren’t sitting in a hospital waiting room so I could be a little more thorough.
A few seconds later, she pulled back and grinned down at me. “You’re serious, right?”
“Absolutely. When do you think your landlord will let you move?”
“Ohhh…hmmm…” She pursed her lips, then shrugged. “Whenever. He’s a laid-back kind of guy.”
Snorting, I put my hands on her thighs. Laid-back was one thing I still was not.
“So, here’s the thing…as scary as all this stuff going on with Piety is, I’ve been kind of thinking…I might want a kid. Or two.” She darted a look at me from under her lashes. “You ever thought about it?”
“Yeah.” My voice went rough. Lately, I’d been thinking about it a lot. About what it would be like to see her belly swell with our child. To know that something that was a piece of both of us was growing inside her. “I’ve been thinking one. Or two. About the same as you, it seems.”
A slow, beautiful smile spread across her face, and she leaned in, pressing her forehead to mine. “Then maybe the next time you give me a velvet box, there will be a ring inside it. Not in the next month or two, or even this summer…but by Christmas at least.”
Laughing, I tugged her in closer. “Christmas is my deadline, huh?”
“Yeah. That way, I’ll know for certain if I’m crazy for wanting a baby…or three.”
“Now it’s three?”
We were still kissing a few minutes later when the door burst open. It was Camry. “It’s almost…geez, guys. Look at you. How can you be kissing at a time like this? Piety is about to have a baby!” She rolled her eyes, her face shining.
“Then tell her to get on with it!” Astra tossed back. “I wanna snuggle my godchild.” As Camry left, laughing, Astra leaned back against me and put her head on my shoulder. “Then I want to go home with my man. Sound good?”
“Sounds about perfect.” I kissed the top of her head and wrapped my arms more tightly around her.
Maybe sooner would be better than later for that ring after all. I’d seen the perfect one a couple weeks ago, and it’d be easy enough to find it again. I wondered what she’d think about a proposal on just some random day of the week.
I smiled as I thought about it.
Something told me the woman in my arms would be just fine with it.
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Book Description:
“I moved to New York from Iowa to find a life that I didn't know I was looking for. I expected to have to work hard and barely make ends meet. But…I never expected to meet HIM.”
For twenty-one year-old Aleena Davison, it was a life-long dream coming true when she said goodbye to her dreary small-town life in Iowa and moved to Manhattan.
However, it didn’t take long for her dream to
turn into a nightmare. Everything from the roommate from hell to her asshole of a boss, contributed to her pain and she’d just about given up. That was…until she ran into devilish handsome, Dominic Snow.
The mysterious stranger not only tried saving her waitress job, but also made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, a new and much more lucrative job.
“Strictly professional,” he’d insisted. But could she trust herself working for the hottest man she’d ever met?
Serving HIM Vol. 1
1
Aleena
Aleena
I’d be willing to bet if you asked a number of people my age what they planned to do on their twenty-first birthday, it would involve something along the lines of copious amounts of alcohol, and maybe a strip club. I know that was pretty close to what I’d had in mind.
I certainly hadn’t counted on waiting tables during the lunchtime rush at one of New York’s priciest restaurants. And yet, that’s what I was doing.
Biting back a sigh, I shifted my weight as I wove through the sea of tables and flesh, carrying my burden of overpriced, oversized lunch entrees.
I’d come to New York City six months ago. Like so many others, I’d left my small-town life –Iowa for me– and come to the big city, but so far, nothing was turning out the way I’d hoped. Granted, it might have helped if I’d actually had some sort of plan in mind. Something other than I’m tired of not fitting in, I’m tired of not belonging.
Now, instead of not fitting in anywhere in small-town Iowa, I got to not fit in here in New York, one of the biggest cities in the world.
I’d hoped coming here would help me figure out who I was, what I wanted to do with my life. Since then, I’d figured out exactly one thing—I was a half-decent server. Nothing earth shattering. Nothing that steered me in a new direction.
I did learn one thing about myself—I preferred the city. I did miss my dad, even though I talked to him once a week. I sometimes felt guilty that I never got homesick, but there was little to miss about my old life. My mom had died when I was eight and my grandmother a few years ago. Now, other than my dad, there was nobody else left I really cared about.
“Here you go!” I smiled at the group of people gathered at table 216 and passed out the plates. Not a single one of them looked up, or spoke.
One of these days, I might get used to people totally ignoring me. Back home, people said thank you when you gave them something or at least offered a smile of appreciation.
Here? People acted like they did you a favor by letting you serve them.
That’s just one of the differences between the Midwest and the East Coast. Just one.
As they dug into their meals, I gathered up empties and stacked them on my tray. I was checking out the tables when I heard my name.
“Aleena!”
One of the other servers nudged me and I looked up to see my best friend, Molly, give me a quick wave from back near the kitchen. I grinned at her and gave a head bob in return, the best I could do with both of my hands full.
Molly Walters was three years older than me. With bright red hair, freckles and a wide, open smile, she’d been asked more than once if she was still in high school. The fact that she was tiny, the very definition of petite, didn’t help any. She’d been working here for two years and had been the one to show me the ropes when I’d gotten hired. She wasn’t just the closest person to me in the city. She was the closest friend I had, period.
She glanced around and then pointed at something she held.
I widened my eyes at the cupcake she held in one hand.
It was gone in the next instant, but I’d gotten a good look. It was one of those little ones with icing piled up so high on the top that it was almost bigger than the cake itself. Best of all, there was a candle right in the middle.
A blast of pleasure swam through me, almost obliterating this shit ass of a day. My feet were killing me. I’d been working for well over five hours and I didn’t foresee a break in my near future. I wasn’t even going to think about the three separate patrons who’d decided it was perfectly acceptable to cuss me out.
Oh, yeah. My asshole of a manager had ‘accidentally’ touched my ass twice this morning.
He’d asked me out my first day on the job. He’d been subtle about it and had seemed congenial when I told him no, but I could see the displeasure in his eyes.
Ever since, he’d gone out of his way to make my life pure hell here.
Molly kept saying I should file a lawsuit against him, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.
He glared at me?
He glared at everybody.
He scowled a lot?
He wore a permanent scowl.
Every time he’d accidentally gotten too close, I could think of a dozen times when I’d legitimately accidentally bumped into somebody too. Accidents did sometimes happen.
Reporting him would cost me my job. People can talk all they want about affirmative action and equal opportunity, but if you were broke and barely scraping it by from day to day, sometimes, you were just…stuck. You had to have money to live, right?
Molly worked here with me—she’d helped me get the job. Any day with her made the day better. Thoughts of her and my birthday cupcake danced in my mind as I turned.
An older woman, walking with her friend, gesticulating wildly. “Can’t you see how things are just going south in this country?” the woman demanded of her friend. As she spoke, she flung out an arm, catching me right in the face.
Pain flooded through me, a starburst from my cheekbone. I stumbled and the pain teleported to my ankle. I had a split second to register that my cheek hurt more than my ankle, but it didn’t matter—I was going down. I was going to hit the floor and dishes were going to fly—
Then hands caught me and I stumbled into a hard body. The scent of a spicy cologne flooded my head.
Both appreciation and apprehension twined through me—appreciation for the as-yet-unseen male, and apprehension for the plates I couldn’t hope to keep balanced.
“I got you,” he said.
Yeah…you do, I thought, dazed.
For the briefest of moments, I thought he’d even catch the plates. They teetered on the brink before they crashed to the floor.
Silence descended. The odd kind that always follows such a spectacle spread throughout the restaurant. For that brief moment, I was able to just stand there. A body of solid, hard muscle held me steady. Through the thin back of my cotton dress-shirt, I felt the rise and fall of his chest. Carefully, I eased away and turned, lifting my head to gaze into a pair of the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen.
My heart gave a hard thump.
Oh…wow.
He was almost too pretty. That hard jaw saved him from it, though it was close. His mouth curled as our eyes met and hot, sweet heat spread through me. He smiled and my heart fluttered just the slightest. There were disarming grooves that framed his mouth. A few years ago, they had probably been an amazing set of dimples and now, they made for a smile that probably threw women, young and old, off-guard.
“Hello.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Chatter resumed, people no longer interested.
Dishes had been broken, but nobody was hurt or angry—life will go on, right?
Or…maybe not.
A split second later, I heard the clop-clop-clop of thick-soled shoes. Dread twisted in me and I looked up in time to see a short, stocky man striding toward me.
My boss.
The scowling ass-grabber.
Gary was in his mid-thirties, but dressed and acted ten years older. His hair was already thinning, but instead of accepting his losses and cutting it short, he left it long and combed it back, slicking it with some sort of hair grease that smelled like coconuts.
He often reminded me of a rodent—his complexion ruddy even on the best of days. Today wasn’t the best of days. He was red, so red it would have worried me if I hadn’t seen my fate danci
ng before me.
Some of the people close to us cast curious glances our ways. Nervous, I smoothed down my skirt. I hated being the center of attention.
As he drew nearer, I couldn’t decide if I’d rather have him do this here or back in his office. I never liked being alone with Gary, but I thought it might be worth it just so I didn’t have all these people staring at me, including the extremely hot man standing so close I could still smell his cologne or whatever it was he was wearing.
“Come with me.” Gary grabbed me, his fat fingers digging into the flesh of my upper arm.
Shame made my skin grow hot and I focused on the floor as we passed by the patrons. I could hear his murmured apologies. “I’m so sorry. Please excuse this inconvenience…”
This wasn’t going to end well.
The moment the door shut behind us, I twisted free.
“What the hell were you doing? Don’t you know how to carry plates?”
I guess there wasn’t a point in telling him that somebody had hit me. My cheek still stung from the blow. Swallowing, I just stared at him.
“You made a fucking mess out there!” He stabbed a finger toward the door. “What sort of incompetent idiot are you?”
I could ask you the same thing, I thought mutinously. My dad ran the best restaurant back in our hometown and one thing he’d drilled into my head—you treat your staff the way you’d want to be treated. You treat them with respect and they’ll respect you.
But Gary didn’t want my respect.
He wanted in my pants.
So I just stared at him. It only made him angrier.
He opened his mouth. Dread curdled in my gut.
Aw, no.
I needed this job.
“I don’t even know why I let Molly talk me into hiring you.”
You hired me because you wanted to get into my pants. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying it. Erring on the side of diplomacy, I said, “I’m really sorry, Gary. It won’t happen again.”
