by Lea Bronsen
His lover cried out. Hot semen sprayed inside his ass before Gianni collapsed on top of him, sucking in air. When his cock receded, Butcher rolled him to the side. He explored his flesh one more time. Every defined muscle and twitch of recovery within responded. Tomorrow was another day and their mountain retreat would fade in memory, but not what they shared.
"What now?" Gianni mumbled.
"Sleep and recovery." He licked his partner's ear. "I intend to fuck you hard in the morning, stitches be damned."
"Oh, talk dirty to me."
Butcher gave a weak laugh and let Gianni have that last jab before he drifted to slumber. Their world was shit, but together they could conquer anything that crossed their path.
At the edge of his vision, Rosalia stood in the corner. A red flowing dress, only one of her kind could conjure, billowed in the wind. Her fingers pressed to her ruby lips and she blew a kiss to Butcher. As she faded, he smiled at her farewell. He'd granted her last wish and redeemed more than his soul in the process.
The End.
SLICK
by
Lea Bronsen
Dedication
To my readers: Thank you infinitely for buying my books. You rock! Some of you I’m overly happy to call my friends. You're always available for a chat, and you’re funny, smart, supportive, caring—simply terrific persons. How amazing is it that we connected through my writing! I have even asked a few of you to beta read this story, and your constructive and insightful feedback has been invaluable. Slick is dedicated to all of you.
Special thanks to Jenika for the intro. You are the first erotic romance author I have read, and you are an inspiration. Having your name next to mine on a book cover is the coolest thing evah
Lea
Chapter One
“Rule number one, no flirting with the customers.”
“No, no.” Vasilj shakes his bald, moon-shaped head. “I would never, Luke.”
“Okay.” That’s what they told me on my first day in the restaurant. You can do anything you want, or almost, but don’t hit on the customers. I don’t believe the good-natured Croatian is the kind to hit on anyone. With a round, puffy face, long-lashed deer eyes, and an easy smile, he looks too nice to have sex on his mind. But you never know.
It was the first thing Patrick, the kitchen chef, said to me when he gave me a tour of the offices. Our boss must have thought I was the sex-hungry type and asked him to warn me. I don’t know why. Except from having razor sharp eyes, according to the receptionist, I’m an average-looking guy with a normal-built body I like to keep in shape.
Maybe it’s my way of looking into people’s souls. They usually avert their gazes after a few seconds, while I dig deep to see what they’re made of. It makes them uncomfortable. If I wasn’t so damn good at cooking and keeping the place clean, I would’ve had the boss’ footprint on my ass ages ago.
Or maybe it’s because I’ve done time behind bars—but it had nothing to do with sex, and nobody here is supposed to know where I was before I landed the job three years ago.
It’s my turn to take Vasilj for a tour. Every Monday, I deliver fruit baskets to offices on each of the fourteen floors. I always start my delivery at the kitchen level, the first floor, then work my way up. There are so many offices I need at least one trolley per floor. That’s a lot of elevator rides for a Monday morning, when I’m not on top of my game after a weekend of drinking and screwing yet another guy or chick I’ll never see again.
“Most people don’t even thank us.” Vasilj puffs in annoyance as he hits a number on the elevator panel and meets my gaze in a mirror on the back wall. “They think because we work for a service company, we don’t deserve respect.”
After wheeling the trolley through corridors, open plans, and private offices for an hour, we’re a bit sick of deliveries. And the day has just begun. Next, we’ll have to help our colleagues prepare the food, make sure things run smoothly during the stressful lunch hours, then clean everything from the utensils to the restaurant tables before switching off the lights long after everyone else has gone home. That’s right, we work more hours than the pretty office employees sitting on their asses all day, expecting us to serve them.
Vasilj wants respect?
I raise a brow. “Suck it up.” The tone in my voice sends a tiny rush of satisfaction through me. When you’re at the bottom of society, you savor having a little power over another person. Like my granddad’s status of kapo in Buchenwald, earning him a cigarette a day or something for keeping order among the prisoners. He loathed imprisonment, but being allowed to command his peers saved his life.
There’s always a hierarchy among workers, especially in a restaurant. Who dominates who depends on seniority and the position one is given. It can depend on your personality, too, as in my case. I may have the lowest position and arrived last before Vasilj, but I don’t let anyone step on my toes. I demand that my colleagues treat me equally, and at the slightest hint of injustice, I bark. Except not when the boss is around. If I lose my job, I’m back in the gutter, which is sure to send me back to the hole. Never-fucking-more.
Vasilj scrunches his brows in the mirror. “Why do I have to suck it up?”
He doesn’t know. I grin, the white scar on my chin stretching beneath my brown goatee. Fourteen floors takes a while to climb, and I enjoy every opportunity to give a naïve employee a lesson about the way things are run in this place. “You and I are workers, right?”
“Yeah?”
“In case you haven’t been told, this building houses employer organizations. They represent the country’s powerful companies, from industry to construction to service to infrastructure and so forth. You following me?”
“Um…yeah?”
He looks a bit lost, but I want to make sure he gets it. “So, they have lobbyists pleading their case to politicians on one hand, and they have lawyers stepping on workers’ rights on the other. You know what that means?”
“No?”
“It means cockroaches like you and me are kept at the bottom of the social ladder. They’ll fight so we don’t get raises. They’ll tweak the law so we have as little vacation or sick leave as possible, and they’ll sack us for the smallest mistake.”
His look darkens.
Welcome to my world, pal.
The elevator stops, and aluminum doors slide open to a vast land of desks and busy office workers.
I lean closer to his bald head and whisper, “That’s why you shut the fuck up.”
* * * *
At lunch hour, the restaurant buzzed with low conversation and clinks of cutlery and glasses.
Roman hunched over the table. His neck and shoulders ached. A headache hovered, threatening to cripple his mind for the rest of the day. Work always piled high this time of year, but today, his secretary, Cindy, stayed at home with a sick child, so he had more on his desk than he could handle. It didn’t help that his kids had a day off from school, and since Jen, their mother, attended an important meeting, he brought them to his office. Well, it didn’t help in the sense that the kids were high and low, exploring, asking questions, taking up his time. But they were sweet and good-hearted, and he loved them more than life itself. If he had to sacrifice something for them—anything—he would not hesitate a second.
Time to go. Impatience made him sizzle. So much to do. At the end of the day, after Jen picked up the kids, he had two meetings to attend. One with representatives from a construction company, and the other with his organization’s board members.
He drew a deep, relaxing breath and looked at his kids. Usually, it took little Lily ages to finish her meal, but now she ate like a trooper. Maybe she sensed daddy carried a load of stress and she decided to be nice. As for Nick, he went to and from the kitchen twice to refill his plate with meatballs and fries. He dreamed of becoming a famous soccer player, so he ate huge servings to grow big and strong.
Roman smiled. “C’mon.” He stood from his seat and took his tray. “L
et’s go put this in the dishwasher and—”
“They have a dishwasher?” Nick asked, his clear blue eyes big. “I thought they had people to clean stuff for us.”
Roman raised a brow. “Who told you that?”
“Mom.”
He held back a groan. Jen was such a snob. How typical of her to think floor-level employees had to do the dirty jobs for others. They disagreed on a number of issues. Their ongoing divorce wasn’t solely due to her finding a new man. He had loved her fiercely for years, but nowadays, he grew tired of her. “No, it would be too much work for them. Just imagine, there are about a thousand people in this building. How would the kitchen workers be able to wash a thousand plates and…?”
Nick smiled, exposing a couple of missing front teeth. “The plates would pile aaall the way to the roof.”
“Exactly. So they have a really big dishwasher in the back of the kitchen. A monster of a dishwasher.”
“Oh,” Lily exclaimed, her baby-girl voice full of wonder. “Can we see it?”
“Sure.”
Both kids hurried up from their seats and, trays in hand, steered to the kitchen with Roman in tow.
Behind the counter, uniformed workers moved back and forth. He was usually too lost in thought to pay attention to them, but his kids’ questions had him take in the scene. At the front, two guys helped people unload their trays. One of them, big and bald with Slavic features, and the other, younger, much fitter, and with a hard, angular face, a goatee, and strikingly piercing green eyes.
Roman blinked, amused. It was strange how people could work in the same building for years—actually spending more time there than they did with their families—and never interacted, simply remained anonymous.
* * * *
Vasilj and I work our asses off in the steamy kitchen’s washing station, sharp clattering and clinking filling our ears. It’s his first time, and his stress is evident from a stream of sweat rolling down his temples. We have to act fast. A constant line of customers stops at the counter separating us from the restaurant to put their dirty dishes, glasses, and cutlery into their respective boxes. A shelf is placed at head level for the trays, barring our view of people’s faces. All we see is fluttering hands moving things around.
Though the line proceeds at snail-speed, the boxes fill quickly, making our job behind the counter hectic. When a box is full, we set it aside and replace it with an empty one. Then, since these asses don’t bother to do anything right, we rearrange the first box’s content and spray everything with hot water to remove food remains they’ve neglected to wipe into the bins. Apparently, they believe the dishwasher—or we, the assistants—will do every single thing for them, just like their mothers or wives do at home. They have no respect or understanding for the way a kitchen works. They don’t even take a second to look at us and say, “Hi,” or, “Thanks for the great job you’re doing.” Our work is what it is, but we do it well, yet they treat us like we’re part of the décor, a practical necessity. We must always be polite. That goes with the job, whereas they strictly don’t need to have manners.
Two pairs of small hands appear in front of me, carrying trays with dirty plates and glasses. That’s surprising. Employees seldom bring their children to work, unless it’s a holiday and they couldn’t find someone to care for them.
Happy to be pulled out of my monotonousness, I bend to see beneath the tray shelf.
Two kiddos look back, a boy of about seven and a sweet, blonde girl of about five, both a bit disoriented by the fuss and the noise.
“Hey, guys.” I smile, gazing from one to the other. “Helping someone at work today, are we?”
The girl nods, while the boy stares at my goatee and points to his own chin. “How did you get this scar?” he asks bluntly, like only a child can.
He doesn’t need to know the terrible history of that wound, so I tell him my usual lie: “My shaving machine and I had a disagreement.”
At my side, Vasilj chuckles. He doesn’t know the truth. No one here does.
“Does it hurt?” the boy asks.
“Nope.” I shake my head like a goofy cartoon superhero. I may dislike the adult workers in this building, but I’ll always be nice to their kids. “Here, I’ll help you. You put your plate in this box”—I point to the one containing dirty plates—“and then…”
“I know.” He hurries to place his plate, cutlery, and glass in their respective boxes, before dropping his balled napkin into the bin.
“Of course you do.” I laugh from his eagerness. “You’re a smart boy.”
He looks up to me with a gaze full of pride and expectation.
I reach him a fist over the space between us.
He smiles, flashing a row of teeth with a hole in the front, and fist-bumps me like a street champ.
It’s the little girl’s turn. She’s so small she needs help, so I take the items from her tray and put them in the right boxes. When I’m done, I slide a gentle finger along her cheek. “Thanks for your help. You’re amazing.”
She giggles and squirms from my touch, looking at me as if I were Santa himself.
Warmth fills me. This kind of interaction is so rare at work—or any place at all—it not only pulls me out of my haze of boredom, it gives me something nice to live for and replay again and again for days.
I’ve spent twelve years in jail, so you can’t exactly blame me for savoring a little humanity. Before that, when I was too small to remember, my mother died of a drug overdose. She didn’t know who my father was. My granddad, who had survived extermination in WWII, swore he would keep me off the street. I still ended up behind bars at the age of fifteen.
The little girl asks, “Where’s the monster?”
“The monster? Is there a monster in here?” I turn to sweep the busy kitchen behind me. Patrick, the chef, stands in the back eyeing us. We’re taking too long. I ignore him.
“The dishwasher.” Grinning, the boy points to the gigantic brushed-aluminum machine alongside a wall.
“Ah, that one. Well, it’s not a bad monster. But it did swallow my colleague’s hair once.”
As the kids stare wide-eyed at Vasilj, he runs a hand over his bare scalp and laughs.
I send him a wink. It’s important to use humor in our kind of dirty work.
“Move on, now,” a tall man next to the kids tells them, voice low and soft. “We don’t want to stop the line.” Their father?
They obey, throwing Vasilj and me a last look of wonder before leaving the station and turning a corner.
The guy may be a loving dad when he addresses his kids, but when he turns to unload his tray, he takes in everything and everyone around him simultaneously with sharp, black eyes that gleam of shrewdness. Startling.
I don’t remember seeing him before, but then most of the office renters are anonymous to us kitchen workers. They come and go, usually looking down to avoid any interaction. As for us, we’re too busy doing our tasks efficiently to stop and see our customers. At the end of the day, several hundred people, maybe a thousand, have visited the restaurant, and I don’t remember a single face.
He sure stands out. A short, neatly trimmed beard and mustache frame aristocratic sun-licked features that match his black gelled hair. To strengthen the impression of elegance and high social standing, his custom-tailored clothes seem to be made of some expensive fabric a thug like me would never know. His hands look so neat and fine they must be manicured, one of them wearing a large dual metal wedding ring. All of this combined, he exudes wealth and power, and with the black pirate eyes of a slick business fucker, he’s the kind to have a suite on the top floor, the kind to profit on others less fortunate, the kind to despise low-paid workers like Vasilj and me.
Such arrogance. I swear on my mother’s grave, he needs to be put in his place, and though I’m not a beast, I’d like to see him visit prison for a few days. I know a pedophile or two who would have a field day with him, teach him a little respect.
Better yet
, I could fuck this slick shithead myself right here on his turf, at the top of our power tower. And when I say fuck, I mean bend him over his million-dollar mahogany desk and slide my thick, hard cock into his million-dollar anus for the whole city at our feet to see.
Chapter Two
Most workers have gone home. Both the ones sitting on their asses in a pretty office all day, and those spending that day working their asses off in the kitchen. The only people left in the building are the lowest of the low who don’t have a life, like me, and the ones at the very top, too busy screwing the world to want to have a life.
One task left for me: wipe the tables clean. I don’t mind working late, don’t have anything better to do anyway, other than chain-smoking in my tiny, stinking room on the other side of town and watching TV ’til I fall asleep.
I wet a cloth and go into the low-lit restaurant. In a corner, three suits sit around a table, discussing. Nothing out of the ordinary, except one is the guy who brought his kids to lunch earlier, the one I’ve thought of as Slick since. He’s lit my curiosity. Who is he, and what fucked-up business does he do for a living?
Moving between tables, I wipe dirty surface after another, and eavesdrop.
“Who cares about the renters,” one of the strangers says, leaning back and crossing his arms over his monogramed shirt so his opulent belly protrudes underneath.
The second suit nods. “You took the words out of my mouth. They’re all drunk or drugged.” He fidgets a fat leg over the other, revealing dark brown leather shoes that look handmade. “Get ’em out, that’s what I say.”
“No.” Slick gives a small shake of his head. “I’m not asking the City to kick these families out. They don’t have the resources to find new homes. You know it as well as I do.”
Pretending not to listen, I move closer and clean tables like a robot.
