After Hours (InterMix)(68)

“Did you love her?”

He shook his head, and I believed him. “I sort of loved how she was, but she never let me get that close. I dunno what she was really like, under that armor.”

Have you ever been in love? I wanted to ask. “And why are you telling me about some hard-hearted stripper you banged fifteen years ago, when I was nice enough to get your rocks off, twice in one morning?”

“Twice so far,” Kelly corrected. “And just so you’ll know, I didn’t come after you because I think you’re weak, like I’m looking for some easy lay. It’s ’cause I like how you tense up, the second we start butting heads.” He smiled. “You’re all soft on the outside, barbed wire on the inside. Gets me hard, knowing you wouldn’t let just any guy take you to bed.”

“And here I thought you only wanted a challenge. But maybe you just need to feel special . . .?”

He smirked at me, then sat up. “That’s enough pillow talk. I need a shower.”

I watched him go, a tower of lean muscle and scar tissue camouflaging more secrets than I’d realized.





Chapter Eleven


Saturday dawned way too soon.

I woke at the brush of Kelly’s fingertips through my hair, my eyes opening to find him standing beside the bed with a towel around his waist.

“Nooo,” I moaned, turning over.

“Time for school, kid. Get your butt in the shower.”

I heard him moving and sat up so I wouldn’t miss the free show. He draped his towel over the doorknob, and I watched his back and arms flex as he dressed in his Larkhaven gray. I bit my lip, wondering if it would turn him into work Kelly, all cool and civil and alert, or if that metamorphosis didn’t happen until he passed through the institution’s gates.

Once dressed, he gathered jeans and a spare shirt to change into after our shift, then turned to me. His look said, Time’s a-wastin’. He nodded toward the door.

I complied with a sigh and swung my legs to floor. I’d been so annoyed by that leave-a-woman-half-crippled comment he’d made, yet as I hobbled to the bathroom on sore hips, if anything I felt proud of my sexual war wounds. I’d never before gotten so laid I couldn’t walk properly, and it felt smugly pleasing, like a post-workout soreness. Only times a thousand.

I was dressed by a quarter past six, and we only had time for coffee and cereal.

“I can’t believe you eat Cheerios,” I told Kelly as we sat at the counter. “It seems way too wholesome.”

“What’d you picture?”

“I dunno. Raw steaks?”

“You got a lotta weird preconceptions about me.”

As I ate, I wondered whose court the ball would be left in, once we climbed into our separate vehicles and headed to work.

I wanted to do this again. Intensely.

But if he’d targeted me because I seemed hard to get, maybe his fun was over. I hoped not. Though after that little talk we’d had in his bed, about how he had a hard-on for scrappy women, I hadn’t caught any more glimpses of forthcoming Kelly, not the man who’d told me about his fathers over breakfast the previous morning, or begged me to make him come.

We’d had sex, made lunch, had more sex, ordered Chinese food for dinner and watched The Deer Hunter, had more sex and passed out. He’d fluctuated between mean and generous and rough and desperate, but I hadn’t been privy to another glimpse of that inner Kelly. I must have short-circuited his brain with that one orgasm, f*cked the armor right off him and sent it clattering to the floor, if only for a few minutes.

In any case, it seemed eagerness was the wrong card to play, if I wanted another two-day debauchery seminar in my future. I’d go back to how we’d been, me playing the nonplussed skeptic to balance Kelly’s bullish machismo. That game was fun, after all. And I didn’t feel bad playing games with him; it wasn’t as if I were trying to land him as a boyfriend. A bit of manipulation seemed fair when the prize was as simple and equitable as nasty-good sex.

It was raining when we left his place, and Kelly followed me to my car, tenting his hoodie over me in lieu of an umbrella.

“Thanks,” I said, dropping into my driver’s seat.

Folding his jacket under his arm, he crouched at my open door. “Have a good time?”

I nodded. “Thanks for that, too.”

He smiled dryly. “I’d kiss you, but you got that raccoon look back on your face.”