by Marata Eros
There’s a scuffle, then Kendra says, “Hey!”
I open my good eye.
The door is ripped open, and Puck is there with a wet rag.
It cannot get worse. “Just go, Puck. I think I’m unredeemable. I’m beat-up, still kinda drunk, and just puked. My embarrassment is now complete.”
He silently hands me the rag and backs away.
I close my eye and remain on the floor. I snap my eye back open when I hear the next comment.
“Nice,” the other guy says, looking me over.
Kendra points toward the door. “Get out, or I call the cops.”
He leans way down so their noses are almost touching. “I am the cops, sweet thing.”
“Oh, please, ya thug!” Her disbelief hurts my eardrums.
He whips out a badge, and I die a little more, if that’s possible.
Social worker on hiatus gets drunk and beaten up then pukes in front of the law.
Perfect.
I couldn’t have orchestrated this all-day scenario if I’d tried.
Kendra stomps her foot. “I don’t care if you’re a cop. You’ve got to be the worst human being ever. Now. Get. Out.”
Perry grips the wood lining the threshold, and his fingers tighten on it, his muscular arm flexing. “You know what?”
“I don’t care what.” Kendra crosses her skinny arms.
His slanted brows shoot up in surprise. I get the feeling Perry doesn’t get told no much. “Telling you anyway.”
Kendra grunts. “No surprise there.”
“Perry,” Puck calls out from the front door. At least someone is listening.
“You’d be cute if you weren’t such a bitch.”
“Oh well, let me stop the world from spinning so I can be cute for you. Like that matters at all.”
Perry snorts, his lips twitching at the corners. “God, you’re a feisty thing.”
“Are you okay?” She snaps her fingers in front of his face three times in rapid succession. “Wake up. My friend is a mess, and you’re hanging around, telling me I’m a cute bitch.”
His brow screws into a mild frown. “Not exactly like that.”
“What?” Kendra shrieks then walks toward the door. “Exactly like. I’m calling the real police in five seconds if you two jerks don’t leave now.”
I crawl from the bathroom and sort of toss myself into the hall, watching the drama.
Puck has eyes only for me, and I have time to wonder what he was going to tell me before Perry showed up.
Guess I’ll never know.
I roll onto my back and stare at the popcorn ceiling in Kendra’s hall as the door slams, rattling inside the frame.
Carefully, I take the wet rag to my mouth and wipe it. With careful, methodical diligence, I grip the wood threshold of the door and pull myself to standing. When everything has stopped revolving, I go to the sink, and bending over, I rinse my mouth. Grabbing my spare toothbrush I brush my teeth, twice.
I spit out the yuck and find Kendra’s worried light-brown eyes threaded with bloodshot. “What the fuck was all that?”
The current state of my life, apparently. “I have no idea. I mean,” I hang on to the sink for dear life, my knuckles bleeding to white.
“Come on, let’s go have a slumber party.”
“Okay,” I say, my voice shaky. Following Kendra, I move into her single bedroom, and on the nightstand I see two aspirin and a large glass of water.
“Thank God it’s Friday, or I wouldn’t be up to this level of doctoring.” She gives a wan smile as I crash nearly face first in the bed.
“Get undressed,” Kendra says.
I just lie there. Fuck clothing and the Clydesdale it rode in on.
Kendra huffs at me, because apparently, I said that part aloud, then she begins to tug off all my stuff to the panties.
I sit up like a zombie, unhooking my bra, and fling it away. The strap hooks on to the bifold doorknob, swaying back and forth.
Nice. I could never do that sober. I fling myself backward, landing on soft pillows. “Can we talk tomorrow?”
Kendra crosses her arms. “Fine, but you’re going to make sense of all this. Especially that big jerk who claims he’s a cop.”
She saunters off, and I hear water running somewhere and a vague comment that sounds suspiciously like, “Cop, my ass.”
I smile as I drift. My last wakeful thought is What was Puck going to say?
Maybe I don’t want to know.
Chapter 8
Puck
“Stalker doesn’t even begin to cover this, Puck! What were you even thinking?”
Perry is pacing back and forth in my living room, wearing a path into the floors I just refinished myself.
He suddenly whirls. “Did you lose your mind because one of the mouth breather ʻbrothersʼ gave you the go to pull some crazy bullshit with this girl?”
I set my beer bottle down hard on one of two colonnade shelves that divide the rooms, feeling my brows drop. “Don’t dis the bros.”
Our eyes clash.
Perry scrubs his face with his hand. “Listen. I’m not trying to disrespect you or them. But you’ve changed, Puck. You used to be straight. As in having your head screwed on straight. Now you’re what? Following a beat-up social worker around to her friend’s house?” His dark brows rearrange themselves high on his forehead, clearly waiting for a rebuttal.
I stare him down defiantly. “Yeah.”
“Ya know,” Perry begins slowly, his dark eyes steady on my face, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were wanting to go.” His hands fist.
Kinda do. “Maybe.”
Perry barks a laugh of disbelief.
Then I take a swallow of beer, fortifying myself for a roundhouse of confession. “Maybe I just finally feel something besides the numbing nothing of my fucking life, Perry. Consider that?”
“What the fuck?” he says quietly.
“I’m seeing a shrink.”
“I know—fuck—Candi and I strong-armed you into that.” He takes a pull from his own beer, and I concentrate on his torn label. He peels them out of habit. “Is it helping?” His voice is quiet and intense.
“Yeah.”
“Is this fucking weirdness related? This obsession with Temp?”
I jerk my head back. Obsession? “I guess so.” I meet his eyes then quickly look away from the knowledge. The compassion.
Perry knows what went down. He knows I’m less than a man. But he’s loyal as fuck, so he stays friends with me.
I owe him so much, and we have an ass ton of history. “Trying for something I don’t deserve—that’s real. Feels so wrong that I don’t know how to go after it, Perry,” I admit. “So I fucked it all up from the start.”
I tell him how things went down. The tale takes nearly a half hour. In the middle of my recounting, Perry sits down. “It’s not unsalvageable,” he finally says after a couple of minutes of digesting my dismissal and subsequent rejection of Temp.
“You guys have that basic chemistry.” He shrugs. “I mean we’re guys; we want the pussy.”
I give him a look.
“Okay.” He raises a palm. “We’re not still in high school, but I will say women have the goods to keep us chasing them.”
“True.” Tipping my head back, I polish off my beer then meet his eyes. “But I can have—hell—have had all the women I could ever want. Hot ones, in all sizes and shapes. At the end of the day, I want a chance at something more. I want to wake up next to a woman who knows me, Perry. A chick who gives a shit about what makes me tick.”
“I’m not there, Puck, but I get you think Temp is the one.”
I nod. “I did. Don’t know about now.”
He snorts. “Not gonna lie. Don’t think much about her looks.”
“You didn’t see her five weeks ago.” I close my eyes momentarily and speak without opening them, soaking in the memory of that first time we met. “The sun made her black hair glint with blue highlights, T
emp’s creamy skin doesn’t have a freckle on it, and her eyes are the color of the Caribbean. And that body...” I shudder and open my eyes to meet Perry’s shocked expression, jaw slackened.
“You’re the guy that they coined the term ʻlovesickʼ about.”
“Yeah. When she’s not beat-up and puking, Temp’s just flat gorgeous.”
“But there’s more.”
I nod. “Pretty sure.” I shrug. “Thought I’d explore things.”
“And I thought I’d knock sense into ya.”
My middle finger shoots up.
“Back at ya, pussy-whipped.”
We grin, our earlier tension vanished.
Perry says, “Listen, I’m fucking done. It’s two a.m., and I’m going to crash on your couch here.”
“Just invite yourself.”
“Fuck off,” he says, making himself comfortable on my hammered sectional couch and dragging a colorful wool afghan over himself. He yawns like he’ll suck the moon into his mouth.
“Make yourself at home,” I mutter as I walk away.
My mind is already on Temp and round two. I have to tell her what I really want.
Without Perry and Kendra in the way.
Unease coils inside my gut. Why have two people attacked her in the space of forty-eight hours? If Perry could have just fucking questioned her like a routine investigation, maybe we would know why that guy went after her.
Of course, if I’d left Temp the instant I got her safely inside Kendra’s apartment and went right back out there, I would have gotten answers.
The perp was like a cockroach. I thought I’d squished the fuck long enough to incapacitate him without worrying he would come around before I was ready for him to.
But I didn’t go back and check. Staying with Temp was more important than answers.
That was a first. I never let emotion cloud the end goal. The law. But that’s changing too.
Temp’s had too many brushes with violence in a short amount of time. I’m not a believer in coincidence.
I trudge upstairs to take a shower and jack off.
No amount of hand jobs can wipe her face from my mind. It doesn’t matter that she’s battered and one of her gorgeous eyes is nearly swollen shut or that she tossed cookies.
Nothing matters but apparently trying for a relationship, even though I told her no.
That was the biggest lie of all.
Temp
I wake up around three in the morning and can’t stand myself. The effects of the alcohol have mainly faded, and I feel grimy.
Kendra is softly snoring next to me, and I toss the covers back, swinging my legs around to the floor. My toes touch the cool fake-tile flooring.
I slop into the bathroom, my one eye raking over my dishevelment within the mirror’s image, and I laugh softly.
A vision of loveliness.
The only real injury is my eye and cheekbone combo and the small abrasion on my lip. It’s clear I bashed my face on the concrete somehow after Ritchie nailed me for extra fun.
And that latest prick whacked me right over my sore cheekbone. I study the lump of my face. Only a slit is visible from my right eye.
My face is on fire, and the thought of putting soap on it is frightening. At least I can get clean, though. I think I’ve got asphalt pebbles in my hair from this last go.
Turning away from my reflection, I move to the shower. I throw back the curtain and turn the tap to blistering.
After quickly brushing out my hair, I strip off my panties and step in so the spray hits my backside first. Mentally shoring myself up, I think, I’ll let the water run over my face last.
I wash my hair slowly then let the hot water pool inside my cupped hands and pour it over my abused face.
After I’ve washed everything twice, I turn the valve to the left and the water pipes sigh in apparent relief at being shut off.
Having survived the shower, I step out and grab the extra towel from the bar. Gingerly patting dry, I avoid the eye and decide to let it air-dry.
Rumpled, wet, and reddened from the hot water, I towel off and walk naked back to the bedroom. When I slide between the sheets again, Kendra doesn’t even stir.
With a sigh, I start to drift off again, finally able to sleep without feeling anxious about the next potential beatdown or the fact that Puck is obviously done with me after that drunken episode.
But a small part of me whispers that maybe I’m somewhat off base on that. He was over here at just the right time, in the right place. Puck saved me from even more abuse.
He’d said he wanted to come clean.
Gooseflesh rolls over me as I realize I never told him or Perry about the guy saying that he had a message.
But from who? I wonder, then I’m out, darkness swallowing me whole.
“Hey.”
Someone is shaking me, and they’re going to die. Slowly.
I was sleeping on the bad side of my face, and my pummeled skin rasps over the pillowcase as I turn. “What?” I groan loudly, blinking up at a shadowy Kendra.
“You fucking grouch, I was gonna get us coffees.”
“Oh my God, you’re divine,” I say, my shit mood immediately dissolving with the promise of coffee.
She smiles. “I knew you’d be hung.”
I am a little, but I tell her, “Not as much as I thought I’d be.”
“Must’ve barfed it all out.”
I fling a forearm over my good eye. “Yeah. That.”
“I’ll be back.” Keys jangle, then the door closes softly.
I just sit there.
I start to feel hot and throw the sheet off to my waist. I need to get dressed, but I’m too lazy. Instead, I use the bathroom, brush my teeth yet again, and go back to bed.
I’ll get pajamas on when Kendra comes back. I have a pair here in a drawer.
As I slide between the cool sheets again, I think about how good my usual breve will taste, and my mouth waters.
About ten minutes later, I hear the door open and close. I frown.
Damn, that was fast.
I lie there though, curling my toes and luxuriating in how great it is to just be.
I don’t have the job to think about. Puck isn’t an issue because he doesn’t want to be. And no one is currently beating on me.
My day’s looking up.
Hearing a harsh inhale from the direction of the bedroom hall, I drop my forearm to my side.
Puck is standing in the open doorway, wearing a soft hazy-blue T-shirt and black athletic pants, holding a cardboard tray with two huge coffees stuffed in the holes.
What?
But he’s not looking at my face. His gaze is latched to my chest.
Jesus. I jerk the sheet up, and his eyes move to my face then, hilariously, to the bra hanging from the closet doorknob.
My heart is racing as the silence deepens.
He sets the cardboard container down on the dresser to the left of the bedroom door.
His expression fills with a question I haven’t been asked yet.
My face apparently gives him the answer he wanted.
Striding to the bed, he moves for me as I rise to my knees to meet him.
His eyes take me in. All of me.
Naked.
“Holy Christ.” His voice shakes.
I nod, and he wraps me in his strong arms, his T-shirt soft against my breasts.
“Be careful of my face,” I manage.
Without a word, he cups my ass. With one hand, he lifts me onto his lap, where his erection strains against the silky fabric of his pants.
We groan at the contact.
His lips are at my neck before I take my next breath, and my fingers grip his hair, yanking.
Puck plows through my resistance, eating at the flesh of my throat like a starved man before a buffet.
A smorgasbord of me.
Puck gently pulls my bottom lip down with his thumb as his mouth meets mine, tongue stabbing me deep.
I let hi
m in, our tongues twining as his free hand kneads my ass cheek. My pussy floods with moisture on the top of his cock.
“Puck,” I say breathlessly, wanting to tell him something, but wanting what he’s doing more.
“Oh, baby,” he murmurs against my mouth.
Letting go of my ass, he grabs both my wrists, eyes latching on to my face.
Seeing my pain, he loosens his hold then guides my fall to the mattress, raising my secured wrists as gently as possible behind my head.
His eyes roam my body as if it’s fine art.
“God you’re beautiful.”
My nipples pebble at his scrutiny, my face heating with nervousness and anticipation.
His Adam’s apple plows the length of his throat, and he says, “I’m going down on you now, Temp.”
Oh my God. I don’t know Puck. He just rejected me yesterday.
Then he’s between my legs and throwing them over his muscular shoulders.
I leave my hands where they are, flung behind my head.
He lifts my hips, thumbs parked in the hollows of both thighs, and I assume he’ll attack the obvious.
Instead, he begins to softly kiss my center.
I shudder under his tender wet touch.
His eyes meet my one. “You like it?”
“More,” I breathe out. Raking my fingers through his hair, I push his face at my throbbing core.
His soft chuckle tickles my slick folds, and I shiver again.
Puck’s lips wrap my clit as his finger finds my entrance, and with a slow precision, his finger enters me at the same moment he creates suction on my clit.
I still at the intrusion for a moment, then my hips begin to move to the pumping of his finger. I know I’ll go when his breath blows across me like warm wind.
The next moment, I explode, calling out, and he eats his name from my lips.
Chapter 9
Puck
Earlier
My reflection perfectly represents the late night I had. Slightly bloodshot eyes stare out from a face that’s obviously tired. I have more than a five-o’clock shadow, and it’s nine in the morning.
I’ve already grabbed a shower and thrown on whatever clean shirt was on top of the stack in my laundry basket, folded and waiting to be put away.
