Beauty and the Barbarian

by Nikki Winter

  A squeak sounded off this time as Ashleigh pushed his seat back as far as it would go, and pulled her from her own. He moved her across the console to straddle him. Mackenzie slapped her hands against his chest. “Wait, wait, wait!”

  “Quiet,” he growled, bucking up to slide his sweats and underwear down his hips. The titanium pipe imitating a cock bounced up between her legs, nudging at her opening. “I told you that skirt was a fucking beacon for inappropriate touching.” Grasping her waist, he lifted her and brought her down on his erection. He repeated the action, garnering a steady rhythm that made the rental shake on its luxury wheels. The tunneling of his length, stretching her far better than her own fingers ever could, made Mackenzie forget any protests she may have had as she creamed all over every vein and ridge.

  Enjoying herself far more than she should have been, she placed her palms to the roof and simply decided to let the barbarian have his way.

  Fifteen

  “You’re wearing ‘fuck me’ pumps.”

  Mackenzie’s head jerked up at the abrupt announcement and she chanced a glance over her shoulder to her doorway. Nala stood there…leering. Oh God, she really hated the leering.

  “You make me want to file a formal complaint with H.R. when you stare like that. Please stop.”

  Dancing fully into the office with a disturbing shimmy that Mackenzie didn’t ever want to witness again, her friend closed the door behind herself. “Someone got their biscuit buttered again,” she sang.

  “Someone is going to find themselves unemployed and hooking for designer shoes,” Mackenzie sang back. She did not want to venture down this road. Ashleigh, the crafty ass, had indeed left her pantiless and the last thing she needed was a reminder of it.

  Nala stopped and placed a hand to her chest with an affronted look. “I assure you, madam, I have better options than hooking laid out for me.”

  “Name one.”

  “Naked housecleaning on a webcam, naked car washing on webcam, naked pet—”

  “Stop!” Mackenzie shouted, and then lowered the volume of her voice. “Stop.” She waved her hands. “I only asked for one, Nala. I only asked for one. I don’t need those visuals.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time that was said to me…” the other woman mumbled.

  “You’d be filthy rich?” she questioned, turning to lean against her desk.

  “Well sure. I’d definitely be filthy.”

  Reaching up, Mackenzie rubbed her eyes with her palms. “Are you in here for some other reason aside from the torment of my soul, Satan?”

  “I want to know how many times the barbarian hero hit you with his war hammer and I want to ask if you know anything about the incredibly arrogant, teat attached asshole you now have me working with?”

  Mackenzie blinked. “The first part of that question I won’t even dignify with a response. The second part, however, warrants concern. Especially if you called whomever you’re working with an incredibly arrogant, teat attached asshole to their face. Is it going to cost me money to fix? Am I going to wind up unemployed and hooking for designer shoes?”

  Nala raised a finger and began to answer.

  “If you mention naked webcam anything, I’m going to throw a stapler,” Mackenzie calmly informed her. “And this time, I will not miss.”

  That finger went down and her friend seemed to deflate. “The CEO of Kiss and Tell,” she finally retorted. “That is who I’m talking about.”

  Mackenzie frowned. “Mrs. Alexandre? The kind, albeit raunchy, older lady in her early eighties with a thing for the candy dicks they sell?”

  What the hell kind of problem could Nala possibly have with her? Mackenzie, herself, had met Scarlett Alexandre and the woman was actually hilarious. Bawdy and a shameless flirt—with men and woman alike—but hilarious. She was also very astute and insanely business minded. Mackenzie hadn’t been entirely convinced that releasing her corsets with an international adult store was the right decision, but after actually speaking with Scarlett—who had started her company in the late seventies—she’d been sold.

  Nala was shaking her head before Mackenzie had even finished her query. “No, no, no. You don’t understand, the current CEO.”

  “Mrs. Alexandre is the current CEO.”

  The other woman walked forward until she was standing in front of Mackenzie. She then placed her hands on Mackenzie’s shoulders, stared deeply into her eyes…and proceeded to shake the living shit out of her. “She passed the company down to her grandson two days ago! I met him yesterday, and I hate him! I hate him so much that I may just murder him in the face the next time I see him! Do you understand what I’m saying, Mac? He’s driven me to lofty compulsions of death and dismemberment!”

  Done with being rattled around like a child’s toy, Mackenzie placed her hands on top of Nala’s and stopped her. Gazing down into her friend’s wild, disturbed eyes, she said, “I’m going to help you. I’m going to help you right now.”

  Nala seemed to be waiting on bated breath.

  Mackenzie looked from side to side, angled down a bit, grinned and told her, “Fuck him.”

  That’s when the shaking starting again.

  “You’re staying in Mac’s home? Does Mac know you’re there?”

  Ashleigh scowled down at his phone and brought it back to his ear. “Yes, yes she does.”

  “And you still have both of your eyes along with your hands and feet?”

  His sister’s tentative question made him sigh as he stopped in front of his rental. Ashleigh fished for his car keys in the midst of juggling grocery bags and a very special box from the jeweler’s. “Why, exactly, would I not have my eyes, hands and feet, Brax?”

  He could hear Braxton draw in a sharp breath from the other end before she retorted, “Well I saw this episode of Snapped once—”

  “Stop,” Ashleigh interrupted before she could continue. “I don’t want to hear anything else concerning that. We will not be discussing dismemberment or wives barbeque grilling cheating spouses. Or wives who had their lovers shoot their spouses in the back of the head. Or wives who decided to have their spouses take a two-by-four to the back of their lover’s head.”

  With his keys finally in his hand, he hit the fob and his rental opened. He was fairly certain he’d seen a camera flash just a few, short minutes ago and knew it wouldn’t be long before others came to investigate. So far, he’d managed to keep the bothersome interactions with overzealous fans and photographers to a minimum through the miracle of online ordering and delivery. However, today he needed actual human communication to keep himself from hovering around Mackenzie’s office despite her commands not to.

  “Someone’s Mr. No Fun,” Braxton grumbled.

  “And someone’s Mrs. Obsessive Personality Disorder.”

  There was a pause. “Now we’re just going to hurt each other, Ash? Is that what we’re going to do?”

  He snorted as he took off from the downtown shopping center that he’d puttered around for the last few hours, signing autographs and taking the occasional—appropriate—picture. “I’ve seen you make professors with years of tenure under their belts and the respect of actual political figures break down into snot bubbles with far less words, Brax.”

  She sniffed. “This is true. I am good at making others cry. It’s something about the sniveling and that delightful tremble around their lips that just does it for me.”

  Ashleigh grunted, refusing to respond to that. Now he was fairly certain of where Arista’s “Their tears. My water,” philosophy had come from.

  “How much longer are you going to be in Charlotte?”

  “I’m really not sure,” he answered. “My contract isn’t up with Atlanta for at least another year, but I don’t like the thought of being separated from Mac and Arista for that long.”

  Braxton hummed. “I really should visit more often. I’m beginning to miss those two.”

  “How much longer before your next vacation?” Ashleigh questioned, na
vigating towards Dilworth where Mackenzie’s neighborhood resided.

  “I don’t know. My roster is pretty full at the moment and I have new inquiries everyday about adding on to my clientele. I probably won’t be able to break away until holiday season.”

  “I’d fuss about the fact that you work too much but you take so many goddamn vacations that I’m not particularly sure it would be accurate as a complaint.”

  “Jealous?” Braxton teased.

  “Yes, yes I am. And I’m not afraid to admit this.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” she softly admonished. “You’ve got something solid again, something stable. You’ve found your way back to Mackenzie.”

  An involuntary smile crept its way across his mouth. “This is true. The sex has also gotten better. We’re like teenagers again. All the thrusting and touching and heavy breathing!” he cheerfully informed her, just to be irritating.

  His sister was silent for a beat. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’ve suddenly gone deaf due to me shoving a butcher knife into my own eardrum!”

  Ashleigh barked out a laugh that stopped as he approached Mackenzie’s driveway. A late model SUV was parked behind her own, newer sedan. He scanned the vehicle and then found his gaze narrowing on a figure comfortably seated on her porch.

  “Brax?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll call you back later, all right?”

  “Something wrong?”

  Ashleigh parked and turned off the engine, his stare still focused on the man invading his territory. “Everything is fine,” he responded calmly. “I just forgot about a bit of trash that Mackenzie needs disposed of. I’m fairly tempted to burn it, but there are probably a number of laws against that very thing.”

  “’Kay,” Braxton said obliviously. “I have a few errands to run anyway. And I need to call your brother and inform him that all attempts to mate with my friend will be met with enraged assaults on his person.”

  That pulled a reluctant grin out of him. “I’ve warned him and yet…”

  “He’ll ignore violence for anything with a warm, wet hole. That’s how he ended up with a stalker.”

  Ashleigh agreed, they exchanged their good-byes and ended the call. Afterwards, he just sat there with his hands gripping the steering wheel. Candid had been his and Mackenzie’s choice of words the night before. She’d reluctantly told him exactly what had made her consider murder in the first, and he’d listened to every word, mentally cataloguing each phrase. It was so that he could estimate how hard to press his foot into Michael Frost’s spinal cord when he snapped it. The fucker had the audacity to not only accuse him of using Arista as an excuse to find his way back into Mackenzie’s bed, but he’d also called her materialistic and easily manipulated in so many words. Now he was sitting on her porch with a dozen roses in his hand.

  What rankled Ashleigh the most wasn’t the gall or the arrogance, but the fact that roses weren’t even Mackenzie’s favorite flower. It was a generic apology, and Ashleigh hated generic apologies. He’d heard entirely too many of them in his life.

  With a hard exhale, he exited the rental, grabbed his bags from the boot and headed up the cobblestone path.

  Michael eyed him warily as Ashleigh came to a stop in front of the man, twirling his keys casually about one finger. “Can I help you?”

  Standing from the rocking chair he’d commandeered, Michael brushed imaginary lint from his slacks and straightened his shoulders. “I’ve come to see Mackenzie.”

  Ashleigh stared. “She’s not here.”

  “I managed to deduce that when no one answered the door.” Michael nodded at Ashleigh’s rental. “I take it you drove her to work?”

  Again, Ashleigh simply stared. “She’s not here.”

  “She won’t answer or return my calls. I’ve tried several times to tell her that I was coming home earlier than expected so that we could talk.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here and I don’t care but—”

  Ashleigh finally dropped the bags and made the space between the two of them very miniscule. “Perhaps you’re currently experiencing a delayed reaction, but allow me to repeat myself so that the message is very clear this time,” he said lowly. “Mackenzie. Is. Not. Here. Mackenzie does not want to talk to you. Mackenzie is uninterested in anything—and I do mean anything—that involves the sight of your face. So, get the fuck off of her porch, get the fuck into your car, and go the fuck home.”

  When Michael said nothing, Ashleigh moved back to his bags, picked them up and headed for the door. He had the key turning when he heard, “I know what you’re doing. Getting inside of her head and convincing her that you want her when all you really want is to have reliable, dependable Mackenzie at your beck and call. What’s the matter, Thyne? Did the groupies get tiring? What happens when you get bored of her again? Are you going to toss her aside like a broken toy?”

  Ashleigh turned the knob fully and opened the door. He settled his bags on the floor of the foyer and faced Michael. “Allow me to tell you where you failed, you miserable, little man,” he stated tonelessly as he stepped forward. “You attempted to erase me; to bleach out all of the time and joy and love she and I have had over the years, completely invalidating any chance of creating your own. You spent hours, days and weeks toiling away in this theoretical competition that you spawned. Swinging your dick left and right, pissing all over everything with the assumption that if you marked enough spots, if you just lifted your leg enough times, you could drown out the scent of your own insecurity.”

  Ashleigh angled forward. “Mackenzie was no more than a conquest that became a trophy for you. You managed to wrangle the one bull that no one else dared to ride because they were too afraid of the horns. What would be the baggage? What would be the damage? A kid and an ex who wasn’t as attentive as he should have been? Oh, that seemed easy, didn’t it? You thought you could charm Arista into these fanciful ideas of becoming your little showroom apprentice on photo shoots. And that you thought you could lend a listening ear to Mackenzie, gaining her trust and cementing yourself as the man she needed. But then it got a little harder, the bull bucked a little more and you felt your hands slipping on the rope. So you did what any canine does in an attempt to fend off all potential suitors or interference with his courting—you tried marking her. However, It didn’t hold because you couldn’t be happy with what was given, you had to try to make her submit. You had to try to make her forsake the father of her child. All the while knowing that to do that, she’d have to essentially deny said child any hope of a happy, normal, pleasant upbringing. It didn’t hold because she was never yours to mark from the beginning. Do you understand that, Frost? Mackenzie was never yours. And it festered inside of you with each text message, each phone conversation and Face Time call. It haunted you during holiday trips and birthday parties because you always wondered, ‘Is today going to be the day that he takes her from me?’”

  Ashleigh rolled his shoulders. “The answer to that is ‘no’.” He held the other man’s glare. “Do you know why it’s ‘no’?”

  Michael’s jaw worked.

  “Because you cannot take what already belongs to you,” Ashleigh finished. “That woman is mine from the top of her beautiful, multicolored hair to the soles of her feet. The same way that I’m hers. I don’t have to convince her of anything, because I’ve spent every waking moment since my arrival showing her that I want her. And believe me when I say, the only aspect that I could rely and depend on, was her lack of concern about you while I was doing so.”

  They stood there, the air thick with tension and sharp.

  Finally Michael raised his chin and curled his lip a bit before saying, “You tell Mackenzie that when you’ve disposed of her, finished marking her up so all the other little boys on the playground don’t want to talk to her anymore, I’ll be waiting. Although, I doubt I’ll be interested by that time seeing as how you can only reheat leftovers once
or twice before they begin to taste slightly…stale.”

  Ashleigh tucked in his lips and nodded. He looked off towards the skyline and then, without warning, he moved with a deftness that rivaled men half his age. He just wished he could’ve said the same for Michael.

  Sixteen

  “I’m simply advising that—”

  “No.”

  “But I think you should—”

  “No.”

  “Nala, if you would just—”

  “I don’t want that man’s genitalia anywhere near me unless it’s being sautéed in a red wine sauce!”

  Mackenzie tucked in her lips and peered across from where she sat in Nala’s compact car. “That’s kind of dark, dude. Even for you.”

  Her friend seemed to be hanging on to her patience by the thinnest of threads, and for some reason it gave Mackenzie immeasurable joy. How many times had Nala marched headlong into Mackenzie’s office to torment her in this very same manner? Too many to count. But today, oh on this glorious day, Mackenzie had beat her to the punch. Of course it meant getting hit in the boob one or two times when she wasn’t fast enough to duck those small hands, however, the joy was still there.

  “In a moment,” Nala informed her quietly. “I’m going to lean over the console and swing open your door before pushing you out and watching you roll.”

  “But if I become a vegetable through your sporadic act of vehicular homicide and assault, who’s going to make sure that you allow Simeon to—”

  “Finish that statement with anything remotely resembling ‘butter your biscuit’ and I am going to drive us off a cliff,” Nala interrupted.

  Mackenzie twisted her mouth and sat back for a moment, only to pop up when they reached the gates of her community. “I have a question.”

  The other woman sighed. “Yes?”

  “If I’ve already spoken to Scarlett, and Kiss and Tell has a full marketing team the way that She-Devil does, why is Mr. Alexandre involving himself with your campaign?”