Page 21 of A Wreck, You Make Me (Bad Boys of Bardstown #3)

“Who’s t-they?”

His grip on me flexes and I have to arch my back against him. But he keeps my throat in place as he whispers, “The assholes out there who watch your every move.”

“It’s… It’s for the tips. I just told you.”

His chest moves with a breath. “Yeah, about that.”

“About what?”

Another breath, this one sharp and short. Then, “First thing tomorrow, you’re going into Gerard’s office and you’re telling him you quit.”

I forget to breathe, but it’s not as if I was able to breathe freely anyway. “What?”

“Now, I’m not an unreasonable man,” he goes on. “I know how these things work. I know you’re required to give two weeks’ notice, but the thing is, I don’t think I can last that long.”

“Last that long f-for what?”

“Before beating the shit out of someone out there for putting their eyes on you.”

It’s like he’s crushing my heart with those fingers of his. Digging them into my veins, making it into a pulpy mess. And I scratch his arm as I stutter, “What… What’s happening? Why are you… You’re acting crazy, you know that, right? I don’t understand what you’re doing. I don’t?—”

He ignores me and goes on, “So I’ll give you a week, yeah?

I’m not happy about it. In fact, after the way you danced for me, stumbling on your feet, almost coming down to your knees, looking like the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, I know I’m gonna be walking on broken glass all seven days you’ll work here, but”—his chest moves again, and this time his breath seems slightly fractured—“I’ll do it.

I’ll make that compromise as long as Gerard knows you’re quitting. ”

“His name,” I begin uselessly, “is G-George.”

“George, Gerard, whatever the fuck. You aren’t going to be working for him for long.”

I clench my eyes shut for a second before replying, “I can’t quit. This is my best-paying job.”

He shakes his head slowly. “Not anymore.”

“I-I’m sorry?”

“You have a new job now,” he declares. “And this one comes with enough money to pay off all your debt and then some.”

“My d-debt?”

“You have it, don’t you,” he rasps. “In fact, you’ve got so much of it, you’re drowning in it. You’re behind on your rent. On your phone bill. You’re behind on your sister’s medical bills too.”

I stop breathing. I really do. It really feels like he’s done his job. He’s choked me out and crushed my heart and I… I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t… All I can do is blink up at him with foggy vision as I whisper, “How do you… How do you know about my debt?”

He takes his time answering, his eyes sweeping over my face. “You sleep with your window open.”

I blink. “My window.”

“If you knew the kind of assholes walking around these days, you’d lock it and you’d lock it tight so no one gets in.”

“B-but it’s really hot at night and I don’t have… an AC.”

Anger flickers through his features like he hates the fact I have to sleep without an AC. Then, “Well, it’s a good thing then I snuck in through your open window and entered your shitty fucking life like a breeze of cool air then.”

My eyes widen and my stomach bottoms out as I realize what he’s saying. “You… You were in my… You came into my house. You?—”

Something eats up my words then. Something that I feel.

His hand, on my thigh.

Super high up.

I look down to find that my skirt has ridden up and my panties are showing. White lacy ones, and his hand—the one that was on my tummy—is now on my upper thigh. Extremely close to their seam.

I get déjà vu from yesterday then. When he was touching me on my date.

Except yesterday, his hand wasn’t so high up that if he decides to inch up his fingers, it won’t take a lot for him to hit the fabric covering me.

Plus at the restaurant, his hand was under the table so I had no clue how it looked against my skin, but I do now.

The lighting is dim and reddish but even so, I can tell.

That his hand on me looks like it belongs.

His rough, chafed fingers belong on my soft, unblemished skin.

But… But he was at my house. My house, while I was sleeping. Isn’t that what he meant? I was sleeping and my window was open and he…

He gives me a squeeze then. A hard one. So hard that I have to arch.

I have to let go of his arm and reach up to his jaw.

I have to widen my legs even more and all on my own.

Like suddenly I can control my body, but only for his advantage.

Only so he gets to touch me even more. I want to tell him to wait, to stop, but he squeezes me again.

And again, I arch up, my hip undulating, my hand on his jaw moving up and gripping his rich, thick, soft hair.

“Definitely my favorite pastime. Making you dance,” he rasps, kneading my flesh even more, making me twist and twist my hips.

“But you were at my…at my house. In my r-room,” I say, knowing my voice shouldn’t be this breathy and I should be doing more to push him away.

“Yeah,” he says, without shame, without remorse. “Saw you sleeping in the moonlight. All warm and flushed. For a second I thought I was imagining it. I thought no one could ever be that.”

“Be what?”

“So fucking luminous.” Another squeeze, his thumb going up and down my skin. “So fucking soft.”

I pull at his hair as I twist my hips into his touch. “I…”

“Like a flower.”

“A rose,” I can’t help but say.

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh.” I nod, twisting and twisting. “Because they call you the Thorn.”

His chest shudders. “You know what a thorn does, don’t you?”

“Wrecks the roses?”

“Makes them bleed.”

“Yeah.”

“But then again, you already know I’m worse than a thorn,” he says, as if reminding me.

“You have teeth,” I agree.

“Yeah, my bite won’t just make you bleed, it may kill you.”

“But I?—”

“But for some reason, you don’t seem to care.”

“No.”

A puff of a breath escapes him as he rubs his jaw over my cheek. “Good. Because I thought I’d go crazy if I didn’t get to touch you again.”

“You can touch me,” I say uselessly, because he is, indeed, touching me.

But I mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever meant anything more, but I also know I shouldn’t have said it.

For many, many reasons, including the fact that he can be so cruel to me when he wants to be and he basically snuck into my room in the middle of the night.

It’s wrong. It’s a felony. But I can’t seem to care about it in the moment when his fingers are still kneading my flesh and oh my God, I think his thumb just grazed the seam of my panties.

“That a promise?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, even though I know I shouldn’t have said this either.

But I’m more concerned with his thumb. With the fact that I felt it again, moving along the fabric.

I know it’s crazy because the music is so loud and our breaths are noisy, but I think I hear the rustle of his rough thumb against the silk of my panties.

Maybe because that’s my whole world right now.

His touch and that place between my thighs.

“Good. That’s good too,” he says, his voice low. “You’re already earning your bonus.”

“What?”

“The new job I was talking about,” he rumbles, his thumb now inching away from the seam to get to the gusset, where he goes up and down, up and down. “The one that’s going to solve all your money problems.”

“Yeah?”

Up and down, up and down he goes, and I wonder if he can feel it.

That my panties are wet, that they’ve been wet for some time now and under his ministrations, I’m getting wetter.

I’m getting drenched. My panties are sticking to me now, to my pussy, to the swollen lips.

And it only gets worse when his thumb hits my clit.

My hips stutter, my smooth motions become choppy. A moan rises up in my throat and escapes in a puff of breath.

Still playing with my clit, he says, “This is what it is.”

“This?”

“Yeah. I give you a fuckton of money in exchange for a very specific kind of service.”

“What kind of service?”

“The kind where you let me make you dance on my lap.”

“Your lap?”

“Yeah, the only difference is you’ll be dancing with my dick inside you so I can fuck you to get over my twin brother’s girlfriend,” he rasps and before I can react, his thumb hits my clit again and his fingers tighten around my throat to the point where I can’t breathe and I explode into a million pieces.