After The Break

by Andrea Joan

  “You approve?”

  Sky’s leaning back on the Lotus as if she is just aching to be my prey, waiting for me to push her onto the hood and bury myself balls deep inside of her, marking this flawless vehicle with the imprint of her even more perfect ass. I scrub my hand over my face just to try and get that image out of my head. “I most definitely approve,” I assure her. “I can’t believe you have a Fastback, and in perfect condition like this. Shit, my dad is going to fucking love you.”

  She pushes off the Lotus and saunters over to the hook on the wall holding the keys and snatches them. “Mustang it is, then. It’s my favorite too. I saw Steve McQueen in Bullitt when I was fifteen and I thought he was just so damn sexy. The way he handled that car gave me chills.” She must really mean that because a slight shiver runs through her body. “So when I turned sixteen, I bought one. I bought the Exige last year. I was feeling a bit dangerous and daring when I bought her. Here.” Sky tosses the keys to me and I catch them with ease as she makes her way over to the Mustang. Daring and dangerous for me usually ends in blood and pain. Apparently for her it ends in buying cars worth more than a hundred grand. I like her way better.

  “I’m a Bullitt fan too, only not for the same weird reasons that you are.” I walk over and open the passenger side door to let her in.

  Grabbing the top of the open door, she narrows her eyes at me. “Oh yeah, and why were you into the movie?”

  “For the fucking car, baby.”

  “And how is that less weird than why I was into the movie?”

  “You were underage and clearly had an unhealthy obsession with an older man, who’s dead by the way. It’s fucking weird.”

  “First off, I was not obsessed, and every girl has lusted over an older man at some point in her life. Second off—”

  “Second of all, you mean.”

  “Yes, ass. Second of all, it’s a lot less weird to obsess over a person than an inanimate object. Like, say, a car.” Sky taps the top of my nose with her index finger before sliding herself gracefully into the seat.

  I shake my head as I shut the door then walk around the front of the car to the driver’s side. There’s a difference between obsession and appreciation; I am not obsessed.

  Sky pushes a button and the garage door starts to lift up just as I open my door and get in. I ache so bad to get this car started that the key is in the ignition before my ass even hits the seat. The first thing I hear is the treble of the exhaust roaring to life. I don’t shut my door yet; I just sit back in my seat and tap at the gas pedal so I can listen to the engine wake up.

  “You know the ’67-’68 Mustangs were the first Mustangs to incorporate the V-8 into their mechanical design,” I tell her, gripping the steering wheel as I take it all in: the smell of the leather, the sound of the engine, and the way it vibrates the entire interior of the car just from its power.

  I could die here happily.

  The sound of Sky’s coughing grabs my attention. She’s staring at me, hands covering her mouth, obviously stifling laughter.

  “What?” I ask her. Shit, she’s making me feel self-conscious all of a sudden. I think that’s what this feeling is anyway. Her hands move away from her face and she is sporting a full-blown smile. “What’s up, Sky? Why are you looking at me like that?” I almost check my face in the rearview mirror to see if something’s on it.

  “Nothing. It’s just, you’ve had a smile attached to your face for,” she pauses, making a point to look at her left wrist as if she is checking the time; she isn’t even wearing a damn watch, “over twenty seconds now. You look like a little boy who just got his favorite Autobot for Christmas.”

  Shit. She’s right. My face almost hurts from it.

  “Sky, you know how it turns me on when you talk Transformers to me.”

  “Liam O’ Connor, was that a joke you just made? Would you like me to give you and the car some alone time before we head out for breakfast?”

  That idea actually doesn’t sound too bad, but when I see her dress hike up slightly on her thigh as she fakes an attempt to get out of her car, I pull my shit together.

  “Maybe later. Right now I just need to get some food, so tell me where I should go.”

  Sky recites the directions to some restaurant called The Regal—which apparently is her go-to place because they serve fresh made macarons daily, and I shut my car door and shift into drive.

  “Should only take us ten minutes to get there,” she tells me as I’m pulling out of her driveway. There seems to be no photographers outside her gate which fucking elates me. Maybe today won’t be as chaotically distressing as yesterday.

  “Sounds good. So, you bought this car when you were sixteen? Must have made you quite the popular girl in school.” Fuck, my brother had a used ’69 Z28 Camaro with a bent bumper and chipped paint when we were in high school and he was constantly getting laid because of it. And now I’m hoping the same doesn’t go for girls in school because I really don’t want to picture the line of guys ready to fuck Skylar, even without this car.

  “Well, it might have if I had gone to high school.”

  “You didn’t go to high school?”

  “Nope.” She pops the P and shrugs her shoulders, looking a little uncomfortable, picking at the bandage on her hand, reminding me that I should probably check her wound again when we get back. “Carl thought it would be better if I just used tutors. That way I would be available to work more. So I basically was homeschooled, well, more like trailer-schooled. The tutors would come to my trailer on and off during whatever free time or breaks I had. So when I wasn’t working, I was in school all by myself. I begged him a few times to let me take some classes in a private school, to cut back on work so I had time, but he would just get angry and accuse me of being lazy.”

  The hatred that I have for Carl is beginning to fester; it’s a poison that’s starting to contaminate and pollute my insides, and eventually I won’t be able to stop it from spreading. I know what it’s like to miss out on some of the fun my friends were having due to my training schedule, but I still got to go to school. My dad made sure I was able to maintain some sort of social life so that I had a semblance of normality. My happiest memories were from school; I had no problem making friends back then, and I had Ali and my brother who was only two years older than me.

  For all the hard work I put in, my dad made sure I was paid back with love and affection, and he cut me a motherfucking break. And he never degraded me. The thought that Carl has done worse to her has been fucking eating at me since yesterday; she didn’t want to talk about it then but now seems like the perfect time to bring it up.

  “Does Carl do that a lot?” I refuse to call him her dad because from what I’ve seen and heard of him so far, he doesn’t deserve the title.

  “Do what?”

  “Get angry and fucking belittle you. I know you know this shit isn’t right, Skylar. You know that, don’t you? The way he was yesterday…” My hands are choking the steering wheel at this point, aching to wrap around his throat as I remember the whole scene. “Has he done anything worse than what I’ve already seen?”

  “Why are we talking about this right now?”

  “Because it needs to be fucking talked about and you didn’t want to talk about it yesterday, so I didn’t pressure you, but you’re crazy if you think I’m going to let that shit go.”

  “Don’t call me crazy.” Her face snaps toward mine, the blue eyes I had admired before now burning a hole through me.

  “Don’t take it so literally.” In retrospect, the crazy comment may have been a dick move given what she told me about her mom, but I don’t really do retrospect. “Listen, Carl looked like he would have hit you if I hadn’t been fucking standing there. Actually, he looked like he didn’t give a shit if I was standing there or not, which I have to tell you, Sky, is really fucking disconcerting.”

  “He wouldn’t,” she mumbles so quietly that I am less than convinced.

  “What’s t
hat? Speak up, Skylar.”

  “Liam, I appreciate your concern but this is family business, not your business.”

  Luckily we’ve stopped at a red light because I want to look at her when I say what I’m about to. “Fucking. Bullshit.” My brusque tone causes her to look right at me in shock. She’s probably not used to people that work for her talking to her this way, but I don’t really fucking care because she needs to listen. “I thought we cleared this up yesterday, but since you seem to have forgotten, let me remind you. You hired me to protect you, so until you fire me I don’t give a flying fuck if it’s your father, a fan, or your goddamn priest. If they are a threat to you, I need to know.”

  She silently assesses me for a few seconds, her eyes softening the way they do whenever it seems like she’s receiving a compliment for the first time. “Well, Carl, won’t be much of anything to me anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I plan on firing him. I’ve actually been planning on it for a few months. I was just waiting until I got back to do it. I also wasn’t a hundred percent on the idea, but after yesterday…well he sealed his fate.”

  I know men like Carl, and there is no way his anger just died out the moment they left her house. He took it out on her in some way. I fucking know it. “Did anything else happen yesterday that I should know about?”

  “No. Unless you count that really naughty dream I had about you last night.”

  “Nice try, sweetheart, but I’m not that easily distracted.” But my dick is, so I really hope she doesn’t start going into details. Or maybe I do. Fuck. I wonder just how naughty we are talking here.

  She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and makes it a point to slowly check me out from head to toe, her gaze becoming more heated the second I shift gears. I know that look. That is the same look I give a chick when I’m wondering what she looks like completely naked and coming on my dick. Now she really has me wondering where the hell I can pull this car over in the middle of a busy L.A. street so I can fuck her. That is, until she starts to break out into laughter.

  “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

  “It was just so easy.”

  “Oh, you are so going to pay for that.” I want to be more pissed, but hearing her laughter is a next-level endorphin shooting through my veins, like I’ve got an IV line open just for her and every smile is one big push.

  “Maybe later, slugger, but right now just make a left into that parking lot,” she says, pointing over to a small pink stucco building, almost tucked away, two much larger more industrial buildings on either side of it dwarfing it in size. The Regal’s lit up vintage sign reminds me of those old diners I’ve seen in fifties movies, the ones where James Dean would be leaning over a pool table.

  By the look of the parking lot, the place isn’t that full, which is kind of surprising. Old diners like this tend to have a packed house in Seattle. But my guess is this is why Sky chooses this spot to eat. It’s somewhat secluded and absent of any large crowds, and more importantly, there doesn’t seem to be any paparazzi in sight.

  I’m out of the car and already to the passenger side door before she barely has her seatbelt off, probably because she spent an extra twenty seconds checking her reflection in the visor mirror primping and fixing her hair. I don’t know why girls feel the need to do that shit, it’s not like we drove through a tornado. Sky looks just as beautiful as she did ten fucking minutes ago.

  I whip open her door and grab her hand to pull her out, then back her up against the door, using her body to shut it. She gasps my name, her breaths frantic as I push my hips further into hers, my arms braced tightly on the roof of the car. I bend my head so my lips are a whisper away from her ear. “You shouldn’t tease me like that unless you’re willing to deal with the consequences. And, baby”—I know the second she feels my hard cock press into her stomach because her eyes widen just a little more—“don’t think that little stunt has me forgetting about Carl, either. You don’t want to go into details right now, fine. But when you’re ready to fire him, you better make sure you do it on the fucking phone or bring me with you. You got me?”

  Her hands grab at my waist hesitantly and I don’t know if it’s because she wants to push me away or pull me closer, but I do know she hasn’t answered the damn question. She won’t even meet my eyes, and I really don’t like being ignored.

  “Sky.” My impatience has me growling her name, and everything about being this close to her has me in some kind of fucking sensory overload—her scent and her warmth and the small whimper she lets loose as my lip grazes the skin of her neck. The next thing I know I’m biting the soft lobe of her ear and sucking it into my mouth, and I’m not even being fucking gentle about it.

  Because I want her to answer me. Obey me. Fucking submit to me. Too many times over the last few days she has tried to tempt me. Tease and torture me. Fucking top me. I know what she’s doing because I’ve been doing the same damn thing. Only with her it’s like she thinks it’s a game. For me, I fucking need the control.

  “Do You. Get. Me?”

  “Ye-yes.”

  She’s stuttering. Perfect. Stuttering I can work with.

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE eating cookies for breakfast, Sky,” I chastise while she grabs another brightly colored pastel cookie off the plate that sits directly in front of her.

  “These are not just cookies, they are macarons. There’s a difference. And why not? People eat donuts for breakfast and that’s just cake with a different costume. Plus I probably wouldn’t be eating as many cookies if someone didn’t eat half of my breakfast.”

  I shrug my shoulders and smile at her. “I was still hungry.”

  Pointing at me almost accusatorily she says, “You should have ordered something other than the Jogger’s Breakfast then.”

  “Well, I was too fucking hungry to pay attention to the menu. I’m a runner. The title of the breakfast implied it would be something a runner would eat. Like eggs, bacon, steak, some fucking carbs. Not egg whites and fruity yogurt. If I ate that and tried running five miles I would pass the fuck out before I hit mile three.”

  This is how the last three hours have been. Small talk and joking around with one another. I hadn’t even realized how long we had been here until a half hour ago when I noticed they changed out the breakfast menus for the lunch ones, and the crowd on the outside patio where we are sitting started to grow. I can’t remember the last time I ever lost track of time. The previous three years have been nothing but suffering the minutes, the hours, the days as they were constantly plagued with the debris of everything I’d lost. There has never been any reprieve, not even during sleep when the nightmares plague me.

  “Honestly, I never order that much food for breakfast. I knew you were going to regret what you ordered, so I got the special so you would actually have something to eat,” she says, winking at me.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me to order something else if you knew?”

  “Because I figured it would be more fun to see the look on your face after they set it down in front of you.” She smiles before running her tongue around the edge of the cookie, trying to catch the crumbs in her mouth.

  Jesus. I can tell she’s completely unaware of what she’s doing because her attention seems to be solely on that cookie. It only takes her two bites to finish it and she makes sure to suck her fingers clean before she grabs for another. I reach my hand under the table and adjust my pants slightly to give my dick a little room. She actually has me squirming in my seat.

  “So, do you have any other plans for the day, sweetheart? Aside from tongue fucking those cookies right in front of me, I mean?”

  Her eyes widen slightly right before she rolls them at me. “That was hardly me tongue fucking. Trust me. I like to use a lot more tongue than that.”

  I shake my head at her, having no idea what to say to that. I really don’t want to give her a reaction; she’s trying to punish me for earlier at the c
ar, I know it.

  She finishes her last macaron and brushes her hands together. “I actually need to do some shopping today. I have a few dresses I need to get for some events I’m supposed to go to next month.”

  “Sounds like torture.” I fucking hate shopping.

  “Well, you are being paid well for the torture, so suck it up, slugger,” she says before taking a sip of her iced tea through the straw she has all but massacred with her teeth, chewing on it throughout breakfast. I can’t believe she can even suck anything through it at this point.

  And now she has me cringing at the reminder I’m even being paid to do this. The idea of it has yet to sit right with me. Before I even have a chance to shoot some kind of smartass response her way, I see her whole body tense as she looks toward the restaurant door leading to the patio, scoots down in her chair, and says, “Oh shit.”

  “What?” I quickly turn my head to see what the fuck suddenly has her on edge. I clock his ass immediately. I know who the fuck this is. Cassiel Logue. And I find it a little more than convenient that his ass happens to show up at this place at exactly the same time Sky happens to be here. He doesn’t have that stereotypical rock star look to him. His lack of ink, blond hair, and his unique singing voice has earned him the title ‘Angel of Rock’.

  His behavior is far from angelic though. I know this because I Googled the motherfucker the second I got done unpacking last night. I may have promised Sky I wouldn’t Google her, but I never said anything about Cassiel, and hearing his name fifty fucking times yesterday made me think I should probably brush up on the asshole. For work purposes. The guy is into everything: drugs, booze, women, and he has an arrest record spanning from public intoxication to petty theft to assault. He puts the version of me two years ago to shame. And for some reason, Sky was with this dick. Photographed with him stumbling out of clubs and bars, but their relationship status never seemed to be clear in any of the shit I read, and he was pictured with many other women during that same period.