After Hours (12 page)

But he said, “No, my neighbor’s. Well, my neighbor’s ex’s, until he took off. I feed
her when my neighbor’s out of town. Take her for walks, sometimes.” With a final,
spirited scratching, he stood up straight, wiping his slobbery fingers on his jeans.

“So this is your place?” I pointed to the little blue house.

“This is it. C’mon in and I’ll give you the tour.” He took my bag and opened the front
gate of his wrought-iron fence for me.

I followed him up the steps, noting the freshly painted trim around his windows and
the shiny brass numbers nailed to his door. It wasn’t a palace, but his house seemed
the most cared for on the block. The only one on the mend, as opposed to slowly going
to seed with the rest of the city.

He led me inside and his front room matched the house’s exterior—simple and relatively
tidy, with absolutely no frills. I envied his space, his cheerful bay window and the
sliding glass doors looking out on his little backyard.

If this were my home, I’d have replaced his beige sectional and oversized recliner
with something more stylish, tossed in a few potted plants, and maybe added a nice
decorative screen to his fireplace. Jack could come visit and play for hours in the
backyard, see what a lawn was supposed to look like. His kiddie pool had been ruined
ten minutes after we’d inflated and filled it, shredded by a sneaky piece of broken
bottle when Amber had tried to drag it into the shade. You could have refilled it
twice over with Jack’s tears.

“It’s nice,” I told Kelly, tailing him around a breakfast bar and into his small,
open kitchen. He set my bag on the counter.

“It does the job. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Beer? Wine?”

Normally I’d have been a temperate gal and proclaimed it too early to drink, but my
nerves told me to make an exception. “I’ll have a beer, thanks.” Kelly’s home, Kelly’s
beverage of choice.

He grabbed two bottles from the fridge and shut the door with his hip, twisting off
each cap and handing mine over. We clinked and drank.

He showed me the would-be guest room next, which he’d turned into a minimalist home
gym, with a weight bench and barbells and a treadmill. It was pretty stark, one step
up from what I imagine you’d find in the shadiest corner of the penitentiary exercise
yard. Which seemed fitting, considering Kelly possessed the physique of a violent
convict serving a very long sentence, meditating on visions of vengeance as he worked
through his thousand daily chin-ups.

Next he pointed out the bathroom, then we reached the end of the short tour—his bedroom.
There were no surprises, not of the pink satin heart-shaped pillow variety, nor the
fuck-swing and bondage props variety. Just a queen-sized bed, made up with a black-and-gray-striped
comforter. No shackles or straps to speak of. I released a held breath. Wooden blinds
on the windows, and simple red curtains. Hardwood floors bare save for a red throw
rug that matched the drapes, walnut dresser and side tables and a chest, and little
else. I eyed the chest, wondering if it was full of winter’s wool clothes or crazy
sexcessories.

“It looks very normal,” I said.

“The invite was strictly B.Y.O. gimp mask, if that’s what you mean.”

I laughed.

“I’m not much for theatrics.”

“No, only directing.”

“More like dictating.”

“So,” I said, looking around the room. “When does my domestic slavery begin?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Looking forward to it, then?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I’m looking forward to finding out what I’ve gotten myself into.”

Kelly led me back through the living room and out the sliding doors, and he dragged
two patio chairs together on the slate tiles, facing the backyard. Struck by a thought,
he gave me his beer to hold, and trotted across the grass, whistling.

A flurry of barks answered him, and Kelly leaned over his neighbor’s fence a moment,
then straightened with the dog hugged to his chest like a sixty-pound baby. He let
her free, and grabbed an old tennis ball from a corner of the yard. He tossed it for
the dog, and it was neatly returned just as Kelly took his seat and accepted his beer.
Another toss, the dog shooting off in hot pursuit, tongue fairly flapping in the wind
with bliss. Clearly, this was the highlight of her life.

“So,” I said. “What’s the agenda?”

“We hang out. You get comfortable. We mess around a bit, then you tell me when you’re
ready for the good stuff.”

“The good stuff?”

He smiled, whipping the ball again. His eyes looked pale green this afternoon, the
color of corroded copper. “Trust me.”

“I must, if I came this far.”

We chatted for a little while, about what we’d done that morning, about the repairs
he’d made to the house since he’d moved in four years earlier and found the attic
full of squirrels and two decades’ worth of moldy
Hustler
issues stacked behind the boiler. Kelly told me he wished he had a dog of his own,
or could take Sadie off his neighbor’s hands, but the twelve-hour shifts would make
a neglectful owner of him.

As self-interested as Kelly was, I decided he’d be a stellar pet owner. Patient, protective,
reliable. He’d probably make just as good a father, if he went down that road. Kids
today could use more Kelly Robaks in their parental dugouts. He might not let his
daughters date until they were twenty, but they sure as shit wouldn’t come home after
curfew, tattooed, carrying the baby of some burner they’d let finger them behind the
gym in exchange for a cigarette.

“You think you ever want kids?” I asked casually, as Sadie returned the tennis ball
for the fiftieth time.

“Hell if I know. Not unless I got married, and I don’t think I’m cut out for that.”

“I bet you are. With the right woman. One who’d put up with your bossy ass and go
in for all your old-school man-of-the-house patriarchy bull.”

He laughed. “That ain’t you, I take it.”

I felt my cheeks warming. “No, that ain’t me.” What did it make me, then? Some good-time
girl, an equally antiquated notion. Still, I’d rather be Rizzo than Sandy, no question.
Rizzo found love without changing a thing about herself. Sandy had to dress like a
skank and get that horrible perm and take up smoking.

“I’m not such a monster,” Kelly said mildly. “And I don’t want some little sunshiny
housewife, vacuuming in heels, packing my lunch, starching my shirts and making cheerful
small talk. Where’s the fight in that?”

“Who, then?”

He shrugged and took a deep drink. “I dunno. If I meet her, I’ll know.”

“And you won’t take no for an answer, until you’ve shuttled her down the aisle.”

“I might never meet her, and that’s okay, too. What about you? Who’s your Mr. Right?”

It occurred to me then that Kelly and I were friends. Actual friends who were genuinely
interested in each other’s lives. A perfectly platonic scene . . . if not for the
fact that we wanted desperately to fuck each other.

“My Mr. Right . . . I only know what kinds of guys I
don’t
want, so far.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Guys like me, you said. Your sister’s type.”

“You’re not so bad. I was wrong, assuming you had anything in common with her ex aside
from totally superficial stuff.”

“He’s the one who gave you that bruise?” Kelly asked, pausing with the tennis ball
in his hand, Sadie antsy with mounting impatience for the next hunt.

“Yeah. He’s a real shithead. You . . . You’re kind of an ass, but you know it. He’s
just a big, spoiled toddler with a loud truck and a drinking problem. And absolutely
no self-awareness. No respect for anyone else’s needs or feelings. I don’t think it
registers, that other people even
have
feelings.”

“Sounds like a sociopath.”

“Just a dumb kid who never had to mature past the age of eight.”

Sadie whined.

“Even worse. Few things out there more dangerous than a bored kid who thinks he’s
a man, just ’cause he’s jacked up on testosterone. If he can’t find something to fuck,
he’ll find something to fuck
with
.”

I nodded and sipped my beer, watching as the dog finally got her wish and went rocketing
off toward the far fence after the ball.

“Where’s this man-child live?” he asked.

I shot him a glare, not so easily tricked.

“What’s his name?”

“I’m not tossing out any balls for you to chase, Kelly. Suppress your inner pit bull.”

“Tell me who he is, and I promise he won’t be bothering your sister anytime soon.”

I sighed. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple.”

“This is my nephew’s dad. He’s probably going to stay in my sister’s life, whether
I like it or not. And I don’t need him taking out his bruised ego on her, after your
threats or beatings or whatever wear off.”

“Toddlers’ll keep throwing tantrums until somebody shows them they don’t always get
their way.”

I stared out over the lawn, not really feeling like talking about Amber and Marco
anymore. “That’s funny.” I shot Kelly a little smile, ready for the flirtation to
begin, and for him to do what he promised—take me out of my head for a couple days.
“I thought you were all in favor of a guy getting his way.”

“I’m in favor of
me
getting my way. There’s a major difference.”

I shifted my chair to face Kelly more directly, pushing off my shoes so I could rest
my bare feet on his knee. He set down his beer and fiddled with my toes with his damp,
cold fingers. Better those than the dog-spitty ones. We stared at each other for a
long moment, the exchange as loaded as it was companionable and easy.

“Am I making you dinner?” I asked, curious about exactly how all-encompassing my role
as his servant might be.

He shook his head. “I’ll grill. You can make the salad, if you want. But what I’ve
got in mind for you . . . Don’t picture dusting or dishes.”

“No scrubbing your floors wearing a kerchief, then?”

“Nah. Though you’ll probably spend some time on your knees.” He smirked and took a
deep pull of his beer.

“Charming.”

He set the bottle down and handed me the mangy ball that Sadie had deposited at his
feet. I accepted it with a grossed-out face, but chucked it all the same. She shot
across the grass, and brought it back to me. I tossed it again, thinking that despite
my being the obedient one for the next couple days, Kelly was my pit bull, poised
to protect and attack, at my command. One word from me, and Marco might wake up in
the hospital with far worse than a bitten tongue.

One word from me, and Kelly would be officially in charge.

Was the promise of wild, animalistic mating keeping him docile, or riling him up?
I guessed I’d find out, whenever I found the sac to cut his tether and sic him snarling
on my body. Then those few minutes in my bed flashed across my mind, and I could just
about hear his panting in my ear, hot and hungry. Not snarling. Moaning. And not attacking—consuming.

“You eat lunch?” he asked, cold eyes on the sky.

“Yup.”

He met my gaze. “Let’s go inside, then. See if I can’t meet some of your other basic
human needs.”

I mustered a skeptical expression to cover up my real reaction—a rush of excitement
and nerves like you feel with each ratcheting
ka-chunk, ka-chunk
up the roller coaster’s highest ramp. I drained my bottle.

“Whatever you say.”

Chapter Eight

Kelly deposited Sadie back on his neighbor’s side of the fence, and tossed our empties
in a recycling bin next to the house. “So. How you feeling?”

I turned the question over in my head, waiting until we were inside to reply. “Pretty
relaxed.”

“Good.” He slid the door closed. “I got you something.”

I watched him stroll to the fridge then set a bottle of champagne on the breakfast
bar.

“Oh, fancy.”

“Seemed like an auspicious occasion.”

“What? My finally giving in?”

He answered with an affirmative smirk, then ripped away the foil and twisted the wire
guard loose. From a cupboard he procured a pair of wine glasses, and eased the cork
free with a pop. Bubbles surged and dissolved as he poured, and we clinked glasses.

“To what?” I asked.

“To us, fucking all weekend.”

“Okay.”

We sipped, and since I knew nothing about champagne, I was free to tell myself that
this was good stuff. Kelly put the bottle in a big mixing bowl and cracked two ice
trays’ contents around it. He held out his hand to usher me toward the lounging area.

“Feel like a movie?” he asked.

“Like a porn movie?”

A fresh smirk. “Like a movie. Whatever kind you want. Just something to watch while
we mess around.”

“How very high school,” I teased, but in truth the idea excited me. I’d come here
expecting some crazy role-playing weekend, and I’d been horny enough to be down for
that. But I liked this more. It’d make the transition to the harsher stuff easier,
surely.

“What are my choices?”
While I still get any.

A nice TV was mounted above the fireplace, across from the couch, and Kelly pointed
to the DVDs that lined the mantel.

I set my glass on the coffee table and went to inspect the spines. He must have bought
most of them in a video store closeout, judging from the rental stickers and price
tags slapped all over their scraped-up cases.

“You don’t want to choose?” I asked him, still perusing. “Thought it was all about
your way, this visit.”

“It will be. When you give me the word you’re ready.”

“Fine, then.” For no reason whatsoever aside from wanting to be decisive, I picked
The Rock
, featuring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage running around Alcatraz; an action flick
I could vaguely remember seeing in the dollar theater, ages ago. I handed it to Kelly
and he cued it up while I made a pit stop.

By the time I got back, he’d shut the front door and the blinds, and drawn a curtain
across the patio doors, closing us in a facsimile of a Saturday night, despite it
being three thirty on a Thursday afternoon.

We sat close on the couch, Kelly lounging at an angle at one end, half facing me with
his arm draped along the back. I was suddenly sixteen, in the den with my first boyfriend,
scared and hopeful that second base might be reached before the credits rolled.

This was Kelly Robak, though. A mere look from him felt more obscene than second.
What exactly does sixth base involve?
I wondered. How sore would I be after all the extra innings he surely had planned?

I felt high, just sitting near him. I scooted a little closer so our thighs touched,
his huge and warm and hard against my slender one. He adjusted, too, edging nearer
so his arm was resting just behind my shoulders, my body pleasantly cocooned against
his side. He’d intimidated me so much that first week. The memory had become theoretical,
he felt so reassuring now. I’d found his body ridiculous before, but goddamn, it was
wonderful when it was on your side. Thick arm, broad chest, strong thigh, all mine
until Saturday dawned.

The champagne was making me eager. I finished my glass long before Kelly did his,
and he poured me a second. I set it on the table after a sip, and as I settled back
against his side, my hands got ideas. Gaze on the screen—where I had absolutely no
clue what was going on in the movie—I turned and rubbed Kelly’s chest. Just to feel
how hard it was. He kneaded my shoulder in reply, shifted his legs.

After a minute’s idle caressing, I looked up at him, fingers dawdling along his tee
shirt collar. For a long moment he just stared back, then very slowly, he leaned in
and kissed me.

He kept his mouth closed, and we didn’t dissolve into a melee of groping as I’d expected.
Not for a lack of chemistry, either. His advances were measured. A gentle tangling
of his fingers in my hair, a steady deepening of the kiss. His tongue brushed mine,
drawing blood to heat my cheeks and tingle between my thighs, and I heard something
explode on-screen.

I felt delicate far too often lately, and the way Kelly treated me, all gruff and
pushy, made me feel like he thought I could take it. Like I was unbreakable, even
if I didn’t feel that way all the time.

This man on the couch, kissing me, was warm and sensual, and nearly tender.

But he wasn’t the man I’d come here to fuck.

I broke our mouths apart. “I think I’m ready. For you to take over, I mean.”

“Gimme a safe word, just in case.”

I stared blankly in the direction of the kitchen. “Spatula?”

“That’ll work. And if for some reason you can’t talk—”

I imagined my mouth too stuffed full of Kelly’s cock to articulate my needs.

“—just do something three times. Poke me or snap your fingers, or knock on something,
or use your teeth, whatever. Three times. Real clear.”

“Sure.”

“You got any triggers I should know about? Any fears?” he asked.

“Centipedes.”

“I don’t think that’ll come up.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Ready?”

I nodded.

“Finish your champagne.”

Just the way he said it, I knew it was game on.

Behind narrowed lids his eyes were ice, and they followed my every motion as I leaned
forward for my glass, and emptied it in two swallows. He took it from my hand and
set it roughly on the table. When his fingers returned to my hair, they clutched tighter,
and his lips didn’t kiss—they claimed. He angled his face and consumed me, my pleasure
spiking alongside a taste of fear.

This was the man who’d half forced his way into my bed, who’d half dictated and half
intuited my boundaries, and half ignored them once they were established. As we kissed
his hands cradled my jaw, stroked my neck and shoulder. I could feel him examining
me, like some new purchase he was admiring, some shiny new toy. We pulled away after
a few minutes, my lips already tender.

“C’mere,” Kelly muttered, and leaned back into the cushions, patting his thighs to
say I should sit on his lap.

I felt heavy and clumsy as I took the order, worried my hair was in his face, that
he wasn’t comfortable. Then he jerked my legs wider so my calves dangled beside his,
tugged me closer by the waist until I felt his belt buckle, a hard bite against my
spine. Cool air kissed my inner thighs, my skirt creeping up toward my hips. I swallowed,
woozy, self-consciousness lost in a cloud of lust.

Beneath me he shifted, erection insistent at my butt. “Feel that?”

I managed to murmur a shallow, “Yeah.”

His palms slid to my breasts, cupping gruffly. My civilized host was gone, the change
so stark I imagined a bunch of sheep’s clothing must be lying in a heap beside the
couch. Every iteration of Kelly was gone, save for the one who’d forced my orgasms
that night in my bed. The scary one. The one whose crass promises had kept me up nights
and lured me here.

Low, dark words warmed my cheek. “You been making me suffer for a while now.”

“Sorry,” I murmured.

His mouth went to my ear, so close I felt his lips move as he whispered, “Hush. You
only speak when I ask you a question.”

The statement dunked me in ice water then encased me in steam—sensory whiplash. I
couldn’t draw a real breath, couldn’t clear my head. His thumbs brushed the sides
of my breasts, palms cupping more roughly. I felt spread open and helpless, pressed
to his strong, ready body but unable to see him.

“Watch the movie,” Kelly ordered.

Yes. Right. The movie.

I stared at the screen, taking nothing in aside from the abstract strobing of colors,
the sounds of words I couldn’t make sense of. A few layers of fabric and a belt separated
me from Kelly’s cock. My sex contracted at the thought, a greedy fist begging to clasp
him. I’d never wanted a man this way before. So explicitly. So viscerally. If my usual
fantasies were fully scripted romantic dramas, what I wanted from Kelly was base and
pornographic, the clapping of flesh against flesh; ugly, thrilling moans and grunts;
cuss words. Spit and sweat and scraping nails. I wanted his hands on my hips, fingers
digging too hard into my skin.

Kelly’s attention left my breasts, wandering down my belly, palms gliding up my arms
and leaving my skin tight with goose bumps.

“Gimme my glass.”

I leaned forward to grab it from the coffee table and he took it, handing it back
after a pause, a bit emptier. I replaced it and Kelly settled me against him, his
touch feeling lazier than before. He rested his cheek against mine, as though we really
were still watching the movie. As if this were some typical date, except he just happened
to be molesting me and I wasn’t allowed to speak.

He slid his hands down my thighs, chest flexing against my back, and when he drew
them up, my skirt rose, dragged to my hips. The pads of his fingers were dry and warm,
hard with calluses but not rough. They traced the lightest circles over the softest
skin I possessed, faint lines blazing with sensation up and down my innermost thighs.

Do this forever,
I wanted to beg.

I shut my eyes, hypnotized by his fascinating caresses between my legs, the hardness
of his cock and buckle at my lower back. Hypnotized by the way he threatened to use
me, even as he spoiled me. Ugly scars, pretty eyes; the calm breakwater forcing order
on the ward’s chaos. The contradiction that was Kelly.

“Eyes open.”

Obediently, I pretended to watch the movie, focused on nothing but the tingling touch
of his fingers; the heat of his deep, rhythmic breaths; the rise and fall of his chest
against my back. He drew his lips along my jugular, moaned just below my ear. I held
my breath. I felt the scrape of his teeth, the slick, firm drag of his tongue along
my throat, just as the teasing of his fingers turned gruff, a whisper deepening to
a growl.

“I’m gonna make you so wet.”

The words alone were realizing his promise.

He fanned his fingers, thumbs tracing the uppermost creases of my thighs and the hems
of my panties.

“I’m gonna make you want me so bad it’ll hurt,” Kelly whispered. “Make you want me
so much, you’ll come the second my cock sinks inside you.”

I gulped a breath, head hazy, body tight and aching. He hadn’t even glanced my clit
yet and I was closing in. A hot and restless desire, an angry, neglected presence
that demanded attention. I needed to fidget, but surely he’d only tell me to be still.
Touch me,
I wanted to say. But it’d only earn me another shushing and a longer wait.

“You want me already. Don’t you?” His thumbs stroked the outer edges of my lips through
my underwear, lighting up nerves I hadn’t known I had, striking me mute.

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, the sound a thick, physical thing, lodged in my throat.

“I know you do. But you have to be patient.”

One hand snaked up my body to cup my breast, and the other spread across my mound,
warming my skin and taunting my clit with its proximity. But no contact.

“You’ll get my cock when I’m good and ready. And I can wait all afternoon.” Kelly
half chuckled, half sighed, a distinctly sinister noise, then amended, “I can wait
all weekend. And so can you, since you don’t get a say.”

With that, he took his hand from my mons and wrapped his arm around my waist, resting
his cheek against mine. If not for the palm cupping my breast and the hard cock at
my back, it would have been quite the sweet little scene.

I stared at the TV, trying to make sense of the movie, of eerie green spheres and
Sean Connery’s eyebrows. What weird fetishes was I burning onto the sex processor
of my brain? Would I be haunted by the sensation of a phantom hard-on pressed along
my tailbone every time I caught a glimpse of Nicholas Cage from now on?

His palm moved across my breast, a slow caress that parted my lips and shut my eyes.
The touch was echoed on the other side, back and forth until my nipples were stiff
and aching. He teased them with both hands, plucking, then gentle pinching between
his thumbs and forefingers. With a heavy breath he lowered his mouth to my ear, not
speaking, not kissing, just letting his lower lip draw a faint line from my lobe and
up along the curve then back again.

Bite me,
I thought.
Say something filthy. Threaten me. Touch my fucking clit, for the love of
God
.
But he just kept taunting, speaking in nothing more than warm, steady exhalations.

I never would have expected him to be this way. So soft, and subtle. Sensual. Words
that didn’t describe any of his earlier advances.

Who are you?

Why lead me here, with gruff Kelly’s crass invitations? Why not let gentle Kelly seduce
me first, follow the usual order of things?

So I’d know what I was signing up for, perhaps, when rough Kelly returned. Or maybe
this was how a mouse felt—brought down by force, then toyed with until the time came
for feasting.

“Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

I swallowed. “About what’ll happen. How it’ll be.”

“How do you think it’ll be?”

“Rough.”

A smug sound hummed in my ear, not quite a laugh. “You wet for me yet?”

I nodded.

“Tell me.”

“Yes. I am.” I sounded terrified, my breathing shallow.

“You don’t sound too sure. Maybe I better find out for myself.”