by Maggie Wells
Will stood, cupping a solicitous hand under her elbow to steady her. “What? What do you want?”
Him. She needed him. Though why she would or how she could was beyond her at the moment. She’d walked through that door not an hour before, not knowing there might be a fallen angel on the other side. A man who claimed he liked the way she looked in a pink marshmallow coat and furry hat. He didn’t know the first thing about her beyond her name. And he wanted her. Just her. And, good gravy, she wanted him, too.
“You,” she whispered. “I want you.”
Without giving herself a chance to second-guess herself, she grabbed his hand and pulled him off his stool as she started toward the back of the bar. The hall to the restrooms was narrow and dark, the walls covered in cheap fake paneling and the plastic on the overhead light so yellowed with age it glowed amber.
“Betty.”
He was still working on the second syllable when she turned and fell back against the rough wall. There, she learned her second lesson about Will Tarrant. Once he stated his intentions, he didn’t waste time gearing up for the follow-through.
His mouth was on hers before she could draw air. His lips were warm and startlingly soft. The force of the kiss pinned her to the wall. He slipped one hand around to the small of her back and drew her close. The second her hips met his, she parted her lips and the kiss exploded. The back of her head hit the wall. He cradled it in his big, broad palm and soothed the ache with a tempting, taunting swirl of his tongue.
She arched into the kiss, responding to each thrust and parry with every ounce of desire she’d ever tempered or tamped down. This kiss was hot and hungry and earthy. An animal mating call so pure and unabashed she had no choice but to answer in kind.
Will moved a hand under her coat and found the hem of her sweater. His thumb traced the outline of her ribs as his tongue wound around hers. A moan rose in her throat, but it had no chance of escaping. She slid her fingers into his rumpled hair and hung on, wondering how she’d made it halfway through life without being kissed like this.
He cupped her breast, the rough pad of his thumb snagging on the slick satiny fabric as he teased her nipple. Betty bowed into the caress, marveling at her body’s response to this man. Her breasts had never been particularly sensitive. Her nipples were broad and flat, and usually took an embarrassing amount of stimulation to harden, but not now. Not here in this grungy old bar with this mysterious man. Every cell in her body seemed to be reaching for him, aching for him. Attuned only to him. This stranger with his gypsy eyes and talk of Fate.
Will relinquished his claim on her mouth in favor of ravishing her neck and throat. She arched her neck and rolled her head, offering herself up to him like some kind of pagan sacrifice. And damn if his rock-hard thigh didn’t feel good pressed against her. She rubbed against him, shameless and hot. He obliged by sliding his hand down her stomach and plunging into the waistband of her pants.
Teeth scraped her jaw as he raked his fingers through the flattened curls covering her pussy. Betty panted and squirmed, one fragment of her mind desperately trying to recall the last time she’d had a bikini wax, while another attempted to pinpoint exactly which pair of panties she’d pulled on that morning. His lips closed over the pulse in her throat and his velvety tongue wiped away any semblance of rational thought.
“I’ll give you what you want.”
Good Lord, he all but crooned the words into her skin.
“What you need.”
Betty nearly leaped straight out of her skin when his middle finger burst through the undergrowth in the been-too-damn-long jungle and staked its claim on the swollen flesh of her clit. He circled the sensitive bud with feather-light caresses, then slid that wonderfully wicked digit deeper, parting her folds and gathering moisture from her very core before returning to the pleasure point.
His breathing came rough and ragged. He pressed his rather impressive erection against her hip and thrust meaningfully. “I’m going to get you off here and now because I don’t think either of us can wait, but, Betty, when I get you home….”
She choked on a cry when he stroked her harder, faster. “Yes, please.”
“I knew the minute I saw you,” he whispered, thrusting his finger deep into her. “I knew. I just couldn’t get to you.”
She didn’t bother trying to make sense of his words. Couldn’t have even if she had the slightest notion to try. It felt too good, this dark, illicit coupling. This tawdry back hall groping went against everything her mother had ever taught her. Each rule she’d learned and lived. Just about every single Sunday school lesson they drilled into well-bred young women from the moment they first began to blossom.
And now a total stranger was drilling her with delicious, decadent strokes, and she was reveling in every moment of it. Hell, she’d been wearing Donald’s ring before she considered letting him get this far. She didn’t even know what Will Tarrant did in the great outdoors to earn him his year-round tan, and frankly, she couldn’t care less.
The only thing she wanted from him was this. Now.
She wouldn’t hold back, didn’t give a second thought to the insistent hard-on imprinting itself on her hip, and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about his satisfaction. Or lack thereof. She came on a gasp, the orgasm taking her hard as a punch to the gut. Shameless. That was the word that echoed through her mind as she clamped her thighs together, holding him exactly where she needed him. Her head rolled against the wall as she rode each successive wave.
A flush of triumph warmed her cheeks. He murmured her name, peppering her with soft, urgent kisses, but she kept her eyes shut tight. The last thing she wanted was to let reality sneak in and steal this moment from her. She’d lost enough already. She didn’t want to feel bad about taking a little of her own back.
“My place is about three blocks from here.” Will’s voice was deep and rough with desire. He slipped his hand out of her pants and made a half-hearted attempt at straightening her clothes. “As soon as I can walk, we’re getting out of here.”
She squinted in time to catch a glimpse of the beatific smile he wore as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. Squeezing her eyes shut again, she tried to figure out exactly how that would work. Were they just going walk out into that barroom as if nothing had happened? Would they all know? The hockey fans? Marty at the bar? Will kissed the tender spot below her ear, and she shivered.
“Beautiful Betty.” Caging her with his arms, he nuzzled and kissed his way along her cheek until he nipped her lips once more. She opened for him because, really, how was she going to resist?
“Will Tarrant!”
The shrill shout sliced through the barroom hubbub and Will shot to attention, his back ramrod straight. A chorus of catcalls and cackles rang out, a few mimicking the woman’s bid for attention, but Will’s groan seemed to roll up from his toes.
“What? Who?” she whispered frantically, visions of a jealous wife brandishing a cast iron skillet springing to mind.
He shifted slightly, shielding her with his body as he pressed his forehead to hers, matching her ragged breath for ragged breath. “Yes, Sister Laurent?”
Betty gasped and ducked her head, desperate to hide her shame from this woman who’d dedicated her life to God, but too curious to resist sneaking a peek around the side of his arm.
A tiny woman dressed in a virulent pink polyester pantsuit transferred her tri-pronged cane and a battered vinyl carrier bag from one hand to the other as a flannel-clad patron helped her out of her coat. She wore a short black veil and horn-rimmed glasses so thick Betty was surprised she could see anything. But the grim set of her mouth said she’d seen everything.
“Get your paws off that poor woman and get me a drink. I’ll be at my table.”
“Yes, Sister,” Will replied, his eyes fixed on a point just over Betty’s head.
Sister Laurent thumped her cane, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea. “And don’t you try t
o eat my pretzels,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll know, you know.”
“Oh, I know.”
Despite her flaming cheeks, Betty couldn’t help but smile at his disgruntled tone. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. When those bristly black lashes lifted, he was focused solely on her once more.
“If that isn’t the anti-Viagra, I don’t know what is.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Not exactly, but she claims to have a hotline to the big guy.” They sidled toward the doorway to the barroom just in time to see Marty place a glass of wine and a wooden salad bowl filled with pretzel sticks on the bar. Will heaved a sigh that he seemed to dredge from his toes. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
Betty watched with avid interest as he snatched the glass and bowl from the bar and delivered them to the tiny woman seated under the Heineken sign. He answered whatever scolding she doled out with a rakish smile and bent to press a swift kiss to her wrinkled cheek. The gesture was so natural, so heartfelt, that it jolted Betty from her endorphin-induced stupor.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered again, this time pressing her hand to her kiss-swollen lips as if she might deny what had just happened.
Will threw his head back and laughed at something the old nun said. The dull glow from the neon sign outlined his profile but left most of him in the dark. In that moment, he looked every inch the pirate. And she’d allowed herself to be plundered. And if she waited one moment longer, he’d come back to claim her as his booty.
Panic clawed at her throat as she eyed the distance to the front door. Darting a glance over her shoulder, she spotted the rectangular casing of an unlit exit sign. Just beyond it was a door painted the same dull brown as the walls, bearing a red sticker that warned that an alarm would sound if anyone dared use the emergency exit. A fresh burst of laughter from the small crowd gathering around the nun’s table pushed her deeper into the shadows.
“Hey, Betty?” Will called, his voice cutting through the hum of the bar like a river of whiskey. It grew louder, closer. She blinked and suddenly he loomed in the doorway, backlit by neon and glowing like Lucifer himself. “Betty, c’mere a sec. I want you to meet someone.”
She stared at him in stunned disbelief. He wanted to introduce her to a nun. After what they’d just been doing.
When he looked back over his shoulder and waved to one of the patrons, she chose the lesser of two evils. The crash bar squeaked and groaned when she hit it, and the stiff March wind slapped a little sense into her. Thankfully, the only alarm she heard was the sound of Will Tarrant calling after her as she fled down the alley.
Chapter 5
Will had done a lot of dirty jobs in his life, but this was the worst. He’d spent one sweltering summer riding the back of a city garbage truck, worked a six-month stint clearing highway debris, and for one brief, starving winter, served as a bouncer at one of the south side’s seedier strip clubs. But none of those jobs made his skin crawl as much as sitting at Greg’s sleek glass and steel desk staring at a blinking cursor.
Huffing with frustration, he lifted the flimsy keyboard and peered at the scrap of paper taped to the bottom. The alpha-numeric password was exactly the kind of nerd wordplay his business partner loved. Using his index fingers, he grimaced as he typed ‘Gre6IzGre8’ into the space once more. Will was more inclined to think anyone who thought the number eight was any sort of stand in for actual letters deserved the biggest wedgie in the world. As he hunted and pecked his way around the keyboard, he made a mental note to extract a little retribution the moment Greg returned from his honeymoon.
Their long-time office manager had retired at the first of the year, and somehow not one of the candidates they’d had since had made the temp-to-perm thing permanent. They’d come close with one, but her husband had ended up being transferred to Dallas. Turned out the next was better at updating her social media accounts than she was at any type of actual office work. The one Greg chose before he left quit on Monday. Will had gone three rounds with her over some permit paperwork she claimed to have completed but clearly didn’t. She’d left in a huff, muttering about how the job hadn’t been challenging enough to hold her interest and saying she made more money as a barista.
Given what they were paying the agency, he sincerely doubted the last part. If it was true, he might have to consider a career change himself.
He’d had two more in since then. The first had a hard time spelling Stark. While Will made a copy of the form on which Greg had been renamed ‘Spark’ and planned to use the new moniker regularly, the forms they submitted to various city and county agencies required a little more professionalism. The temp sent over yesterday spent thirty-two minutes chattering away about her upcoming bunion surgery while searching for the computer’s power button. He’d sent her on her way with a cup of coffee and a signed time sheet for the four hour minimum.
The error message flashed on the screen one more time. The clock ticked another minute closer to his nine AM appointment. The temp agency promised they were sending a new candidate over today, but apparently their idea of ‘first thing in the morning’ and his were not exactly compatible. Probably like him and the snooty little southern belle, Betty. Combustible, yes. Compatible, no.
It still rankled that she’d managed to slip out of his grasp, and the fact that it bothered him as much as it did was setting off every alarm bell in his system. He should have been relieved. Yeah, she’d left him high and dry, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t his kind of woman. She was perfect. Beautiful, funny, and easy in every sense of the word. If he hadn’t been so damn certain that she was the woman Fate had chosen for him, he would have celebrated the evening as a semi-success.
A drink or two, a couple of laughs, two handfuls of warm, willing woman. So the night hadn’t ended with a mutually satisfying roll in sheets. He wasn’t against second, third, and even fourth dates. If the company was interesting and uncomplicated enough, he’d been known to lather, rinse, and repeat his way through a reasonable facsimile of a relationship until the heat ran cool. The formula had served him well in the years since he’d clocked Kathryn Ann McAllister at fourteen. He knew better than to mess with a proven winner.
Still, there’d been something about Betty. Something as unforgettable as the regrettable color of her overstuffed coat. And because he couldn’t quite figure out just what it was, that something, made him even more determined to have her.
She hadn’t come back to the bar. He knew that because he’d finally broken down and asked Marty after he sat there staring at the door two nights in a row. Seeing as how they were old friends and all, the bartender gave over with only a minimal amount of ribbing.
Of course, Marty’s teasing had been nothing compared to the tongue-lashing Sister Laurent had given Will. Dejected as he was in the wake of Betty’s abrupt departure, he’d still been canny enough to procure a second bowl of pretzels to help curb the lecture. It hadn’t kept her from muttering words like ‘brazen’ and ‘trollop’, but he’d only had to tough it out for a few minutes before she went off on a tangent about resorts on the Great Barrier Reef and priests wearing swim trunks.
“Aw, screw this,” he muttered. The keyboard skated across the polished surface of the desk. Pushed to his limits, Will flipped it over and ripped the note from its scotch tape moorings. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he glanced around the empty office then did the one thing he’d sworn he’d never do. He reached into his partner’s center desk drawer and extracted one of the countless pairs of steel-framed reading glasses Josie ordered for Greg by the gross.
He refused to buy a pair for himself. Didn’t matter if the glasses helped him see that what he thought was a lower case ‘g’ was actually a ‘q’. Who the fuck uses ‘Iz’ in their password, anyway?
Greg Stark, that’s who. The guy was a freak for the details. He loved the kind of minutiae that made Will want to weep like a little girl. That was what made him a great partner. It al
so made him a fairly decent friend. Not that Will was one for saying as much out loud. They didn’t have that kind of relationship. But whether mushy words were spoken or not, their friendship had spanned the better part of four decades, so things seemed to be working.
Satisfied that the system was booting at last, Will turned and pushed the button on the single-cup coffee maker and strolled over to look out the window. He smirked as he watched some guy in a battered Saab nose and bump his way into a too-tight parking spot and decided he’d take a cab downtown rather than drive. Thank God Greg had insisted on rebuilding the dilapidated off-alley garage. It was much easier to play the parking game with a tiny import than a half-ton pickup truck.
The thought of another week stuck in the office was enough to make him crawl the walls, but he did like the space they’d carved out. The presently deserted reception area was once the tiny living room where he and Greg ate sugar cookies while they played with little green army men for hours. This office was once their dining room, and the barely-used office he called his own was once a bedroom. And though walls had been knocked down and the ancient linoleum floors ripped out, the place still held the warmth of friendship and good memories.
Converting the duplex Greg’s grandparents left him was one of the first projects they’d worked on together. At the time, Greg was still toiling for one of the big architectural firms downtown, and Will was site manager for old Bobby Mason’s construction company. In those days, young Bobby was fresh out of his stint in rehab and just starting to stick his nose into the business. They’d spent six weeks of evenings and weekends tearing the place down and building it back up, talking smack about striking out of their own, all the jobs they’d steal from the big guys, and the money they’d have. Not that they could just strike out on their own. Greg had been married with a young son, and he’d been living a life with a new woman every week with absolutely no thought or concern for anything as predictable as a tomorrow.
