Gearhead

by Evelyn Glass

  “Is this a progress report?” I asked, standing by the door, arms crossed. “Are you bringing me in here to tell me how I can improve?”

  “I’m bringing you in here to give you money, so why don’t you be quiet for five minutes and listen to me.”

  I paused. Jasper wasn’t usually so blunt. Like most men, he typically let his actions do the talking. If possible, my face turned an even deeper shade of red. “You’re giving me money?”

  “More specifically, I’m giving the ‘Big Sibs’ money.”

  Nothing made any sense. The same guy who had ordered the deaths of countless men and forced me to strip in this very office – the memory of which sent nervous goosebumps up my arms – was going to donate to charity?

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because you told Kayla I donated money to the mentorship program, and now I will.” He pulled out a checkbook. “Plus, it will help solidify our relationship. I care about the things you care about. That sort of thing. Who should I make the check out to?”

  I didn’t want his money, especially when I had no way of knowing how he’d acquired it, but then I saw the faces of the kids in the ‘Big Sibs’ program. The way their faces lit up when their mentors arrived. The way they celebrated receiving a new sweater and a box of unbroken crayons for their school supplies. The money, regardless of where it came from, would do a lot of good, and I couldn’t turn that down.

  “Nobody uses actual checks anymore,” I said, moving forward and lowering into the chair across from his desk. I’d been standing on my feet for a few hours, and it was nice to have a break. “But you can make it out to ‘The Big Sibs of Harris County’.”

  Jasper signed his name in small, sharp letters, and slid the check across the table towards me. “Would you like to go to dinner with me tonight?”

  My hand was hovering over the check when he spoke, and I paused, unsure. Was the money a bribe? That wouldn’t make any sense considering he was already blackmailing me. Why would he need to bribe me if he could just threaten my life again?

  He must have noticed my hesitation. “The check isn’t a trick. I’m just making good on my promise,” he said.

  Reluctantly, I grabbed the check, folded it in half once, and slid it into my back pocket.

  “I’m busy,” I said.

  This was true. Kayla had been begging me for days to do something with her, so we were going to stay in and watch an endless amount of trashy television. The evening would probably turn into a massive question and answer session, in which she asked non-stop questions about Jasper, and I did my best not to answer them. Honesty, I was sort of dreading the entire evening, but it was the perfect excuse to stand Jasper up.

  “Sorry, I suppose there has been a misunderstanding,” he said.

  “How so?”

  We felt so stiff and formal with one another, and it was hard to imagine we were the same people who, only the night before, had been naked on the white tile of his kitchen. Now it seemed as if it was hard for us to be in the same room at all.

  “You’re going to dinner with me.” His tone left no room for disagreement, but that didn’t stop me.

  “I’m busy,” I repeated, standing up and turning towards the exit. “I have plans.”

  Suddenly, Jasper was there in front of me, blocking the only way out. He slid his hand to my waist, then down until his fingers dipped beneath the waistline of my freshly laundered work jeans. He ran his fingers along the fabric, and then along my skin, moving slowly towards the button. In one expert move, he unfasted the button and pushed his hand deeper into my jeans, the zipper opening to allow him. His fingers grazed over me.

  “Break them,” he instructed.

  I shook my head and swallowed hard. “I can’t.”

  He pushed aside the silk material of my panties and twirled a finger over my most sensitive area. I moaned and hated myself for it. “Yes, you can,” he said.

  My head moved slowly from side to side. Was I disagreeing with him? I couldn’t tell anymore. I was entirely too focused on what his finger would do next. Jasper trailed his finger downward, and then pushed it inside of me. I reached out and wrapped a hand around his arm, steadying myself while he probed in and out of me.

  “Come with me,” he said, though I had a feeling he was actually saying something else.

  Still, remarkably, I managed to resist him. “No,” I said, the single word the only thing I could manage to get out.

  He added a second finger, moving in and out of me faster, and then massaged my rosebud with the pad of his thumb. I felt my legs going wobbly, and my entire weight was being held up by Jasper’s chest.

  “Come with me,” he said again, whispering the words into my ear.

  Words were entirely beyond me now. The only thing I could focus on was the clenching in my abdomen, the warmth threatening to burst at any moment. Jasper kissed the skin of my temple and left his lips pressed there, his breath warm on my skin.

  “Come,” he said.

  This time, I listened.

  I buried my face in his chest and moaned, somehow having the sense to try and disguise the noise from my coworkers who were no more than fifteen feet away. His fingers pulled out and then plunged back into place, curling inside of me while his thumb circled me, sending shocks of pleasure through my body.

  As I finished, the last waves crashing ashore, Jasper pulled his fingers out of me, moved my panties back into place, and buttoned my jeans. “I’ll see you tonight.” He walked to his office door and held it open, ushering me back into reality while the last muscle contractions were still residing.

  I moved through the rest of my shift in a daze. It was a busier lunch rush than normal, but I barely noticed. I kept stealing glances at Jasper’s office, wondering if he was still inside and what his finger was doing now.

  “Sorry, what did you say you wanted?” I asked a man in a red trucker hat who had already repeated his order twice.

  “A. Cheese. Burger.” He annunciated the words as though I may have recently suffered a blow to the head.

  I wrote down the order, only half certain I’d gotten it right, and submitted it to the kitchen. Kayla sidled up to me as I moved towards the bar to grab the man his drink, though I could no longer remember what it was he’d asked for.

  “You need to pull yourself together, girl,” she whispered. “Everyone is starting to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About what?” she mocked, making her voice several octaves higher than hers or mine. “About you and Jasper, obviously. Everyone knows you went in there for an afternoon delight earlier, and now you can’t seem to wipe that moony look off of your face and get back to work. It’s annoying.”

  “That is not what happened,” I said, mouth open in fake shock. Kayla raised an eyebrow at me. “Fine, that is what happened, but it’s not why I went into his office.”

  “Why did you?”.

  “He asked me to go to dinner with him tonight.”

  Kayla opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it, her lips mashing together in a straight line.

  “I told him I couldn’t go, but—”

  “But then his dick persuaded you otherwise,” Kayla said, holding a hand up to stop me. “I get it. Fine. If I had a rich boyfriend who looked like that, I’d ditch me too.”

  “It isn’t like that, Kayla,” I said, wishing more than anything I could explain everything to her.

  She frowned. “Yeah, it is, but it’s okay.”

  She went back to her tables and didn’t talk to me again until our shift was over.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jasper

  After my encounter with Marin in my office, I couldn’t stop thinking about her all day. What had happened to my cold turkey idea? Just seeing her standing in my office, jeans slung low across her hips, blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail, I’d wanted her. Badly. Every ounce of sense and self-restraint had left me.

  And now we were going out for the second nigh
t in a row. That didn’t happen. Even with women I’d actually dated in the past, we never saw each other more than a few nights a week.

  “Where are we going?” she asked from the passenger seat.

  Instead of sending her another dress, I’d told her to wear something of her own. Something formal. And she had delivered. The dress was a scarlet red, slit deeply in the front, exposing a good deal of cleavage. When she’d opened her front door, I had just barely resisted the urge to reach out and brush my fingers across her smooth ivory skin. Her hair was curled and pinned up on one side, emphasizing the cut of her cheekbone. Looking at her, I couldn’t remember why I’d thought I’d ever seen a woman more beautiful.

  I cast another look at her, the long curl of her lashes, the soft point of her small nose. “A friend of mine has a restaurant downtown, and tonight is the grand opening.”

  “A friend of yours?”

  I could tell what she was thinking: A biker friend of yours?

  “His name is Jeremy Bryant. We went to college together,” I clarified. “He was my roommate my freshman year.”

  She nodded, clearly relieved, and turned to look out the window.

  “There will be a lot of press there tonight, so we might be photographed together again.”

  She nodded again, and I couldn’t tell if she was really listening to me.

  “There will also be some members of the Jackals there, so we could be caught in the middle of a biker brawl,” I lied.

  This time Marin didn’t even nod. She sat as still as stone in the passenger seat. We hadn’t expressly mentioned that she had to talk to me in private – only pretend to date me in public – but that didn’t matter. I needed her to acknowledge me.

  “Afterward we’ll go back to my place, and fuck again.” I felt myself harden beneath the material of my suit pants and hated that she had that kind of effect on me.

  Marin sighed. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to say please?”

  I couldn’t help it; I smiled. “That wasn’t a refusal. Does that mean you agree?”

  She looked at me, her face illuminated by the yellow street lights. “We’ll see how dinner goes.”

  “I guess we will,” I said, silently accepting her challenge.

  ***

  The restaurant was at maximum capacity, every table and booth filled, a constant din of noise drowning out the conversation of the tables only a few feet away. Marin and I had to lean across the table to hear one another, but I didn’t mind. A lot of women were like mediocre artwork –fine from far away, but a total mess once you got close. Marin, however, was an underappreciated masterpiece.

  It wasn’t until we were less than a foot apart, the soft lighting giving her skin a golden hue, that I noticed the light smattering of freckles across her cheeks and the specks of green in her irises. The closer I got, the more beautiful she became.

  “There are a lot of people here,” she said. “Do you think we’ll even be noticed?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, looking away from her only long enough to swirl some seafood pasta around my fork.

  When I looked back up, her brows were pulled together. “Will we even be noticed by the press? If not, then the whole evening will be kind of a waste.”

  Right. We weren’t on a date. I had my reputation and business to worry about, and Marin was only here to satisfy her end of the deal.

  “Maybe not,” I said, my words clipped. “There are a lot of important people here.”

  “Yeah,” Marin said, looking around the room, a little star struck. “Is your life always this glamorous?”

  Glamorous? No one who knew me ever would have described my life as glamorous. Though, Marin had only seen the businessman side of Jasper Black. Just as I didn’t know her, she didn’t really know me at all. Suddenly, I wanted to leave. I pushed my chair out and extended my hand to her.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, looking around. We’d only made it halfway through our entrees.

  “You’re right, this is a waste if the press won’t see. Let’s leave.”

  “But, we just…” She didn’t seem to know what to say, and I hadn’t budged, so she finally grasped my hand and let me lead her out.

  ***

  Motorcycles were lined up outside the long, one-story building, and I could see flashing lights shining out around the edges of the blackout curtains.

  Marin hadn’t said anything on the drive, but suddenly she was sitting up, head swiveling to take in our surroundings. “Where are we?”

  “A Hellions party,” I said as I drove into the overgrown parking lot and parked in the back corner.

  I’d bought the building as a potential Jasper’s Grill location, but then it hadn’t really panned out, and Bear and Tats had turned it into a party spot. Luckily, it sat far enough outside the city in an industrial district that no one paid it any attention.

  She shook her head and lowered down in the seat. “I’m not going in there.”

  “Feel free to stay out here if you’d like, but the club operates under the principal of finder’s keeper’s, and I won’t be able to claim you if you’re out here.”

  This wasn’t exactly true, but Marin didn’t need to know that.

  Her face was the picture of indecision, and then she looked down at her clothes. “I’m not dressed for this.”

  She was right. In a room of leather and denim and ripped stockings, her gown would stick out like a sore thumb. I bit my lower lip, assessing her. Then, I reached across the console and ripped her gold necklace off.

  “Hey,” she said, clutching at her now bare neck.

  “Relax, it isn’t even real gold,” I said, pointing out a place where the gold paint had chipped away.

  “It was still pretty,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.

  I ignored her and reached for the clip holding her hair back.

  She stopped my hand in mid-air. “I’ll do it; otherwise, you’ll probably rip my hair out.” She opened the clip and gingerly slid her curls out.

  “That’s a little better,” I said, but it was clear she still looked much too polished. I reached out and tousled her curls, giving her messy waves. Then, I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a napkin. “Wipe your lipstick off.”

  She rolled her eyes but did as I asked. When she finished, her lips were swollen and pink, much as they had been after she’d sucked me off the night before.

  I felt myself growing excited at the memory, so I quickly pushed it aside. “You’re ready.”

  She nodded, but I noticed the tremble in her hand as she reached for the door handle. Marin was about to see exactly how glamorous my life was.

  A wall of smoke greeted us at the door, and Marin repressed a cough. I was used to it. I’d smoked for ten years, starting at fifteen, but I’d given it up a few years before. Still, I liked the smell of it, and I inhaled deeply.

  “Jasper!” Voices all around the room shouted out to me.

  I wasn’t a usual visitor to the parties – only because they happened so frequently that I couldn’t possibly make it to all of them. Though the restaurants started out as a way to make money so I could blow it on booze and drugs and bikes, they had taken off over the last few years. I found myself wanting them to do well and expand, and that took a great deal of time.

  I waved to everyone and grabbed Marin’s hand, pulling her along behind me as we moved through the building. The inside had been gutted before I’d bought it, and I hadn’t done anything since then. Heavy curtains hung along some of the unfinished walls, blocking off private rooms along the back wall, but otherwise, it was a large open space with concrete floors.

  Marin stuck close to me, and I felt the heat rolling off of her. I tried to see the party through her eyes. The men in their kuttes, covered in tattoos that wrapped around their necks and stretched down their arms. The women were rail thin and constantly windblown, wearing only enough to cover their most private areas.

  Some of the club girls didn
’t even have on that much, opting to remain topless – since they’d end up that way anyway. Music blasted from speakers in the front corner of the room, and couples in various stages of undress pressed their bodies together in ways that loosely resembled dancing.

  “Do you want a drink?” I asked, gesturing to the keg in the center of the room.

  Marin shook her head and wrapped her hand around my forearm. I did my best to ignore the warmth that spread down my arm.

  Just then, someone shoved me from behind. I lurched forward, taking Marin with me. I caught myself with my hands, but Marin’s knee cracked against the concrete floor, and she yelped.