Authors: Lindy Zart
Smother
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Smother
Lindy Zart
Published 2015 by Lindy Zart
Copyright 2015 Lindy Zart
Cover by:
Interior Design and Formatting by:
Edited by:
Wendi Stitzer
Author Photography by:
Kelley C. Hanson
ISBN-13: 978–1508622703
ISBN-10: 1508622701
This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Have you ever watched an injured bird struggle to fly? It’s heartbreaking. You want to help them, but you know if you try, they’ll hurt themselves more. That’s what it’s like to watch Reese in motion. ~ Leo
L
ast night she had sex with a guy she didn’t even know. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last.
She inhaled, burning her lungs with chemicals and nicotine as she stared at the angry red tip of the cigarette. The smoke wafted up toward her face to sting her nostrils and eyes. She let it. She couldn’t remember his name or his face. All she could really remember was the smell of alcohol and sweat, the way she felt sickened by him yet continued to let him touch her—all the things she wished she could forget. She tried to burn the memory of the stranger from her skin with a hot shower, but all that did was scorch her skin.
Reese felt dirty and used—she felt like she deserved to feel that way.
Putting the stub of cigarette out on the sole of her black Converse, she climbed through the window and into the living room of the apartment. It was a small room with strikingly bare white walls, tan carpet, and a mismatched couch and recliner. She didn’t have a lot of belongings and nothing in the place really coordinated, but at least it was clean.
She got ready for work, changing from her lounge pants and tank top into a tight red shirt and dark stretchy jeans. A quick stop in the bathroom had her brown eyes lined in black and her short blond hair a styled mess around her face. Grabbing her cigarettes and keys, she locked the place up and walked across the street to the tattoo shop where she worked.
Except for the impressive tattoos covering his body, Reese’s boss was average in appearance. His voice, on the other hand, was exceptional. It was like butter with a hint of a purr in it, the masculine timbre sexy and dark. It caused shivers to break out on her skin whenever he used it, which, sadly, wasn’t that often. There were times when she zoned out listening to him talk, although the most he ever did, was when he was explaining something work-related to her.
Leo glanced up from his sketchpad as she entered the shop. “Rough night?” he asked in his deep voice.
She also had fantasies about him using his mouth and voice on her in creative ways. Not that that would ever happen between them. She more or less offered to sleep with him a few months ago and he declined by completely ignoring her. The week following that was loud—mostly from her slamming things around and snapping at everyone, including customers. She almost lost her job.
Leo’s exact words were: Quit with your attitude or get out. She got rid of her attitude.
“What can I say, I like it rough,” she said mockingly, checking the appointment book. The afternoon was full. It usually was.
Leo’s pencil went flying and he stalked from the room. Her eyes lifted as he turned a corner and disappeared. She smirked, knowing she shouldn’t continue to tease him, but it was too easy. The fact that he could fire her at any time seemed to get lost in the mix of it all. Picking on him made her feel better about him finding her undesirable, because why else would he have said no?
No one
said no.
Reese retrieved the black coal pencil from under one of the four chairs in the waiting area and carefully set it beside his partial sketch. She froze as she took the image in, an uncomfortable pinch in her chest as she gazed at the beauty created by a lone man’s hand. It was the outline of a bird, with lifelike feathers and eyes that held intelligence. It appeared on the verge of flight, strong and unafraid. She swallowed thickly and moved away.
She looked up and clashed gazes with Leo from where he stood by the doorway. He quietly watched her with eyes that always managed to see more than she wanted, his frame a structure in stone.
“It’s . . .” Reese cleared her throat and showed him her back as she walked toward the barstool she habitually perched on for the duration of her workday. “It’s amazing.” Her face heated up at her admission. Reese and compliments didn’t usually work well together. As in, she didn’t give them.
Keeping her eyes on the scrawled names of the schedule, she asked, “Who’s it for?”
“Not you,” he replied as he sat at his desk. The matter-of-fact tone grated on her in ways she couldn’t explain.
She glared at his lowered head for a good thirty seconds before she sighed and checked the phone messages. Her perfected glower was wasted when he wouldn’t look at her. That was another thing about Leo—he never looked at her for long. If Reese was a less confident woman, she would have serious self-esteem issues working with him. But she knew she was attractive to the opposite sex. There was no shortage of men that wanted her.
Reese Ward: the one forever desired but never loved.
“Saw you on the roof again. Told you not to do that.”
He also had this annoying way of speaking in half-sentences a lot of the time, like the effort to add an extra word or two was too exhausting, or beneath him. Reese went a whole day speaking that way to aggravate him back. It was a total fail. He didn’t even seem to notice.
“Were you spying on me?”
He ignored that. What a surprise.
“You know, I’m not hurting anyone by smoking on the roof. Would you prefer I smoked in the apartment?”
The history of Leo and Reese was confusing, as was anything that involved the two of them. Their acquaintance began about six months ago. She was fired from her job as a waitress at the diner two doors down from his shop. She’d mouthed off to the owner one too many times and that was the day he decided he’d had enough. Leo witnessed the whole embarrassing scene as he unlocked his front door. She was jobless, and as of the night before, she was homeless too. Reese’s life was full of overstayed welcomes.
It was all too much and she had started crying. That he saw her tears had always been a sore spot for her—people didn’t see her cry. It was a rule of hers. In that gruff, stilted way of his, he offered her a place to stay with cheap rent, and a job. She said no at first, but an hour standing in the cold rain eventually changed her mind.
“Not smoking at all would be good.”
Reese never understood why he did that for her. It was obvious he had no patience for her and that he didn’t particularly like her. Why did he help her all those months ago? Why did he continue to put up with her bullshit?
“Yeah, well, it’s not up to you.”
“Who’s first?” he asked, not even glancing her way.
“First timer. April Lange. Age nineteen. She wants a flower or some goofy shit on her foot. I told her to be here ten minutes before her appointment time to fill out paperwork.”
Reese decided to pretend to earn her money and started a pot of coffee, then moved on to straighten the stack of magazines on the end table between the chairs. Next she found an alternative rock station on the stereo, keeping the volume low so it didn’t distract Leo’s concentration. He immediately got up and changed the station to classical music. It could have been Beethoven—she wasn’t sure.
“Angry enough without music encouraging it more,” he told her.
Her first inclination was to tell him to go screw himself, but she went with, “And you’re boring enough without Bach lulling you and me both to sleep.” She was proud of herself for digging that name up. She hadn’t even known she knew of two
classical composers.
“Mozart,” he corrected.
She made a face at him, but he was focused on his drawing again and didn’t see it.
As they waited for the first client to show, Reese did minor cleaning around the white-walled waiting room, the back room he did the actual tattooing in, and then checked the bathroom for supplies and overall cleanliness. She stayed out of his office. He’d made it clear at the start of her employment that the only time she was allowed in there was if he was in the room with her. When she suggested some colorful ways to go about it, he clenched his jaw and walked away.
Most of the time she felt like she wasn’t really needed around the place. Why did he keep her on as an employee? Certainly not for her sunny disposition or their really deep, insightful conversations. Mention of a former employee had never been brought up, so she assumed there hadn’t been one. Of course, it wasn’t like he ever really told her anything.
The scent of strong black coffee took over the lemony smell that usually lingered in the tattoo shop. She poured Leo a cup and set it on the windowsill beside his desk. He nodded his thanks, zoned out in the world of inspiration. She stayed far enough back that she didn’t break his concentration, but close enough that she could watch him work. The way his hand formed what his mind told it and the quick, sure strokes of the instrument against the paper was phenomenal to see in motion. He could take a blank piece of paper and give life where there was none a mere moment before.
