“Brad, you’re a fucking genius, even though I’ll never tell you as much,” I say as I give an invisible toast to the man, who’s gone over to the resort today to handle some paperwork with Brianna and to take a look at their spa facilities. He told me yesterday to just do a little seduction routine, give Evan a cookie trail to follow. But of course, I amped it up just a bit. I can’t help it. If I see something I want, I go after it.
It was so good. So fucking good. Even better than the cookies, and when sex is better than chocolate . . . I’ve been smiling all afternoon, remembering with a buzz of excitement just how powerful I felt as he fucked my mouth.
I know some women don’t like that, but I’ve always found it to be the biggest rush to drive a guy so crazy that they lose control. In that moment, even though I’m the one on my knees getting face fucked, I’m also the one with the power to drive him to that brink.
And the kiss afterward? Holy hell, it took all I had to walk away with just a pull on the fishing line, just enough to tease. I dropped him a text afterward, so now it’s his turn to chase. My fingers are crossed that he takes the bait like a champ. I left what happens next in his hands when I told him I was ready to ride whenever he was.
I’m sure my customers were wondering what was up today, but they didn’t say anything as I practically floated through the last two appointments of the afternoon along with a walk-in cut.
Now, I’m virtually dancing by myself as I clean up the salon, almost ready for closing time for the day.
Behind me, I hear the door chimes as someone enters. I turn with a big smile. “Welcome to the Triple B Salon—”
My greeting is cut short, and my smile falters when I see it’s Jaxson, but I try to keep a friendly face on. “Hello, Jaxson.”
He smiles, coming inside, grinning ear to ear. “Hey, McKayla! I came by to see how everything’s going, but that smile says it all. Business must be booming, I take it?”
I’m cool but trying to be professional. “Yeah, it’s going great, Jaxson. Just checking in?”
I’m hoping he says yes, that he’s here in some city council role and not his usual. An invitation to a council meeting. Keys to the city. Hell, I’m late on paying the sewer bill . . . I just want him out of the salon ASAP. Why does he keep coming in at closing? I wish I could just bluntly tell him to get out. Maybe if I start humming that song about closing time, he’d get the message . . . you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.
No fucking dice. He runs a hand through his hair, standing tall as he walks over, shrugging off his suit jacket. “Thought I’d take you up on that offer of a haircut . . . if you have time?”
It crosses my mind to tell him no, that I don’t have time to do it today and we’re just too close to closing time to give him the attention he deserves. The honest truth is, I just don’t want to. But I glance around the empty salon, knowing that it’s all clean and I’m done for the day, and recognize that it’ll be awkward if I say no. He’s got power in this town, at least the kind that can make life difficult for me.
Giving in to the inevitable, I relent, gesturing to the chair closest to me. “Sure. I’ve got just enough time before the end of the day. Come on back and I’ll wash everything out before I cut it.”
I turn to lead the way to the salon chair, and giving him my back makes me feel vulnerable somehow. I pick up the pace to the hair washing station just a little faster than normal. I try to dismiss it and get myself under control. I’m not sure if it’s that I’m a bit jaded from years of living in LA with its associated craziness or having a gross fucking prank pulled on me. But Jaxson hasn’t done anything that could have me feeling this way.
I turn around the shampoo chair, and he lowers into it, his eyes quickly dipping to my cleavage but immediately coming back to meet mine as he sits. I turn him back around and lean him back, spreading the cape that I use for men’s cuts over his upper body.
I move behind him to the bowl, out of his sightline as I take the sprayer, adjusting the water temperature before I start to get his hair wet. “How’s that?”
“Perfect,” he says, his voice a little raspy, and I quickly wrap up wetting him down before reaching over and grabbing the organic coconut oil-based shampoo we use and massaging it into his scalp. The squelching noise of the suds is the only sound as I lightly massage his hair and scalp like I always do, just trying to get through all the shit he’s got in his hair. Spray, gel, wax . . . I’m not sure, could be plaster. But Jaxson’s the sort of guy who makes sure that at work, his hair is fucking sculpted.
He fidgets a little. “That feels great. I like the way the shampoo smells too.”
It’s nothing I haven’t heard before when shampooing, but a little awkward from a guy who’s asked me out at least twice already. Still, I try to be cool. “We’ve gotten some good feedback from people who have bought it for home. I love it myself. It’s good on all types of hair.”
“I bet,” Jaxson says as I start to rinse out the bubbles. “So how’re you liking town?”
“It’s definitely different from LA, but I’m finding that this place has a lot of charm,” I admit, not saying that the thing I find most charming is probably under the hood of a car across the street.
“Business going well?” Jaxson asks as I towel his hair dry and sit him up.
“I’m meeting a lot of folks around town,” I reply, relaxing at his casual tone. It’s just normal small talk and it starts to feel more comfortable, less strained. “We’ve got a good start, not quite there yet . . . but I’m feeling good about things.”
“That’s great,” Jaxson says. It sounds like he’s genuinely happy about our good start, and I mentally chastise myself for being so harsh on him. Yeah, so he asked me out a few times, but at least one was poor timing and the drink thing was probably an overreaction on my part. This is Small Town, USA, not Hollyweird.
Besides, when I think about it, Jaxson’s definitely done less chasing than I’ve been doing with Evan. I can’t really fault him for a swing and a miss when the only thing he’s really done wrong is be a nice guy who might be a little awkward in asking me out. He can’t help that I’m just not into nice guys, and that can throw a lot of guys off. At least he had the guts to try.
Squeezing out the last of the dampness with a hand towel that I wrap around his neck, I guide him over to my salon chair, fixing the long cape over him and adjusting it to include the towel.
Satisfied with his setup, I pick up my shears and comb, looking at him in mirror. “All right, just a trim or something more? What are we doing today?”
Jaxson looks me in the eye in the mirror, giving me a smile. “That feels like a loaded question. Look . . .” He turns from the mirror and meets my eyes face to face. “Just wanted to make sure there’s no awkwardness between us. You’re a great woman and I wanted to welcome you to town. No harm, no foul. I hope we can be friends at least.”
I scan his face and realize that despite my misgivings, he’s right. He hasn’t tried to do anything more than offer a friendly face in a new town, and goodness knows I can relate to pursuing someone who interests you a bit. I doubt Jaxson’s put on hot pants and drawn anyone into a blowjob recently, though.
I decide . . . yeah, he’ll get one more chance. “I’d like that. You can never have too many friends. Brad and I are pretty much it for each other right now. He’s my brother from another mother, so we’ve always depended on friends to round out our group. But we’re both pretty damn hard to take in big doses, and when we’re together, it takes a special kind of person to put up with both of us at once.” I laugh because it’s the God’s honest truth.
Jaxson laughs along with me. “Well, I’ll have to keep that in mind. I’ll just need to be on my A-game for you two.”
The tension from before has faded, and I finish Jaxson’s haircut as we talk. He makes me laugh with stories of the cast of characters in this part of town, which seems to attract some of the more off the wall folks.
&n
bsp; I roll at his impersonation of Earl who runs the agricultural supply store even though I haven’t met him yet, talk about the new sporting goods store that’s hoping to take advantage of the uptick in tourists heading out toward the resort, and I blush a bit when he asks if I’ve had the cookies from Mindy’s Place. “The city council’s made a cookie run from time to time for our meetings.”
“No way!”
Jaxson laughs. “Yeah, shh. It’s an interesting place. I still can’t get past the fact it used to be a Chinese restaurant, but they are damn good cookies.”
Interesting. Yep, those cookies sure can lead to some interesting experiences. “Most delicious cookies I’ve ever had,” I say without elaborating. “When I have free time, I might check out the rest of their menu, even if they are on the other end of town.”
It would be great to have someone like Jaxson to grease the skids with some of the other places around town, someone who knows the good old boys and is willing to put in a good word with the right people. But more than that, it’s just a happier feeling at my core as we settle into our new home town.
Chapter 18
Evan
It’s late, probably close to one in the morning, and I can’t sleep. I lie in bed for a long time, tossing and turning, drifting off for a moment only to startle awake seconds later by voices I know aren’t real but still whisper to me about my sins. Even using one of the other refugees from my Army days, an old, rough blanket that stretched over quite a few beds a lot like this one, can’t help.
Giving up, I pace the floor, dropping every few laps to pump out pushups in a failed attempt to center my mind. I’m home. I’m safe. There is no threat. I play the mantra on repeat in my mind, over and over, trying to get it to sink in and feel true.
But no matter how much my brain tries to believe it, my body fights it. Outside the window, I can see the night. Out there is my enemy, and my enemy wants my blood, the voices say. I can’t see them because they always know how to blend in like mythical ninjas out of a movie. Every person could be the one who has a bomb around their waist or an AK behind their back.
My heart racing, sweat on my brow, and a coiled spring of aggression ready in my belly, I give up. I need to get out, get away. Just like always, I know what I need to do. I pull on some jeans, dirty from the floor but I don’t care, and grab a black t-shirt from the top of the clean pile.
Pulling on my boots, I tie them quickly before heading down the backstairs to the garage. The grinding of the door rollers over the sand that invariably gets in the track is loud, but my bike will be even louder. The neighbors will be pissed but there’s nothing I can do about that because I have to ride . . . now.
I thumb the ignition on my Harley before tweaking the throttle up to a growling roar, then I let it drop down to a relatively gentle purr and pull forward slowly, just getting out the door. I press the button to lower and lock the garage, ready to ride. Zipping up my jacket, I turn onto Main Street toward the mountains.
I see McKayla’s light turn on above the salon, bright in the dark sky, and the blinds move. I can’t hear her knock on the glass, but I see her wave and then she holds up one finger. I’m tempted to roll out anyway, but something makes me hang a hard right and pull into the Triple B’s parking lot and wait.
I don’t have to wait long. In what seems like a second after she waved, she’s coming out the front door of the salon, pulling on boots with her romper pajamas. She’s bare-faced, her hair wild with sleep, wearing what basically equates to a sweet onesie and combat boots.
It should be ridiculous. I should be laughing my ass off, but to me, she’s never looked more beautiful. Without a word, she climbs on the back and wraps her arms around me and we’re off like a shot. How does she do it? I wasn’t going out for her tonight. I just needed to clear my head, but there she was, ready to ride with me without a moment’s notice or even a word spoken. This time, though, I turn toward the highway, avoiding the high elevation of the mountains for her sake. It’s chilly enough. Up in the mountains, it’ll get frigid. Fun for me to see what that could do to her nipples, but not so fun what’ll it’d do to the rest of her.
We ride for what seems like hours, no destination in mind, just letting the asphalt stretch out under the wheels. The moon rides with us in the clear black velvet sky, rising to its peak before cresting and starting to descend.
As McKayla holds onto me, peace settles into my bones from her touch. She’s an easy rider, an extension of the bike and my body, just leaning and riding without fighting the flow. And it feels good to have her hands wrapped around me, her body pressed to my back, grounding me to the here and now, helping me fight back the demons’ hold on my night.
Somewhere over an hour west of town, I pull over at an all-night truck stop for gas.
As soon as I turn off the bike, she hops off. Doing a little squirmy dance, she announces, “Gotta pee, need anything inside?”
I laugh out loud, just unable to wrap my head around the fact that after hours of riding, what she says is gotta pee, need anything? This woman amazes me.
“Nope,” I say after a moment. “I’m good.”
With a smirk and a saucy little salute, she turns, strutting inside like she’s not wearing pink pajamas in the middle of the night with a biker in the sticks of God knows where.
While she’s inside, I swipe my card and fill up my bike, letting the tank guzzle the high-test goodness. I know, I know, the engine runs just fine on regular . . . but I like to baby my bike. When the pump clicks off, I put the nozzle away before mounting my bike and leaning back, letting the welcome but unfamiliar sensation that McKayla seems to create sweep through me. Perched on my bike, I stare up to the stars and let the cool air filter through my lungs.
It’s hard to believe that these are the same stars, the same sky I saw as a kid when TJ and I would sleep outside in our tree house. Back then, it was all so easy. We’d spend hours pretending we were pirates, using the bright lights to navigate to our riches. We always found the riches too, considering Mom would pack a midnight snack for us every time and leave it in the treehouse before she went to bed herself. Fuck gold, fuck diamonds . . . back then, give me a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich any day.
I sigh wistfully, remembering back to the happy, innocent days before another memory creeps up. Looking up at these same stars, I recall as I stood guard in some windswept village that might have had just as many enemies inside the perimeter as outside, and night movements where we had to navigate to targets instead of treasure, although the Army pretty much considered them one and the same. Back then, the stars were a bitter comfort, a normalcy of home in a place that was far from it.
I always preferred the night for the nasty missions. It’s just a little easier on the soul to do ugly things under cover of night than in the bright lights and scrutiny of the sunshine.
I shake my head, letting the past slip away as McKayla walks out of the store. With the light surrounding her, I can see her better, and I realize that the romper is likely all she has on, her nipples peaked up beneath the thin top and not a panty line in sight below.
Is it bad that I want to order her to do a spin for me, show me a little jiggle of her unrestrained ass? Probably, but fuck it, she knows I’ve got a bad side to me. “Turn around.”
McKayla stops, her head tilting like she didn’t hear me. “You’ll have to be a little more specific. Turn around and go back inside the store? Turn around and do a fucking pirouette? Do I look a damn ballerina in this getup? Turn around . . .”
She trails off and I realize that for all her sass, she really doesn’t know what I want. If anything, it turns me on more, giving her an innocence that has my cock throbbing in my jeans. “Turn around and let me see your ass.”
McKayla’s eyes sparkle as her lips twitch in a sex-laced smirk that just makes this whole scene in front of me surreal and at the same time, arousing as hell. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
She turns around, lea
ning forward a little to stick her ass out, her head turned back, watching my every move. Shaking her hips back and forth, I can see the outline of her pussy lips against the fabric of her pajamas. She gasps in arousal as she spanks the bottom of her ass with her palm, a nice smack sounding out in the quiet parking lot.
I can’t stand it anymore. I have to satisfy my curiosity . . . and maybe something else. “Princess, you got anything on underneath that jumper?”
McKayla turns back, a fake innocent act all over her face. “Oh, this thing? What’s underneath this thin little pink romper? Well, nothing, I guess. Just me. All me.”
She drives me fucking crazy.
“Get over here,” I growl, reaching out a hand. When she’s close enough, I realize just how tiny she is without her usual sky-high heels. I grab her, picking her up and setting her down in front of me, straddling me and the bike but backward, her legs lying on top of mine. I can feel the warmth of her body through the thin cotton of her pajamas and the curve of her ass as my bike pushes it up into my palms.
She hugs me, arms on my shoulders to keep from falling, but I’ve got her. She’s not going anywhere. Knowing that a gas pump is not the place for this, I fire up my bike only long enough to pull over into the far edge of the parking lot, where the lights are low and we’ll have a bit of privacy at least.
I grab her shoulders from behind, laying her back over the gas tank and handlebars, and she looks up at me, the stars reflecting in her eyes. This might be my favorite view of the sky ever, but I don’t tell her that.
McKayla runs a hand down my chest before reaching over and tweaking my left nipple hard. “I’m not fucking you in a truck stop parking lot. I’m not a lot lizard.”
I laugh despite the pain, pulling her up to press her luscious body against me again, grinning. “How does a girl like you even know what that is?”
She smirks and kisses the tip of my nose. “I’m not one to kiss and tell, but remember . . . Prince, Vegas, teenage years?”
Dirty Talk Page 33
