Page 70 of Handful

“I could take care of that for you.” I nodded at the bar, where her thighs had been. “Right here. Right now. Fewin’s not back for an hour.”

She wrinkled her nose. “In a strip club.”

“You’ve got somewhere better in mind? Yours is ten minutes. Mine’s twenty.” I let that sit. “Or I go full Fewin — throw you over my shoulder, drive you to the clubhouse, tie you to my bed and fuck you senseless, have you back at Velvet before your shift. He swears by it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” I said. “If you asked. That’s the point.”

Her breath wasn’t steady. I wasn’t in much better shape.

“You’re playing dirty,” she said. It came out rough.

“I’m playing to win. There’s a difference and you taught me it. There’s more, which I need you to hear because I’ve stood here making this sound like it’s all about getting you into bed, and it’s not — that’s the easy part to want.”

I wasn’t playing anymore, and I wanted her to know it.

“I miss you calling me out when I say something stupid, and I say plenty stupid. I miss your voice. I miss the way you walk into a room and it lights up around you. I miss you on the back of my bike with your arms around me, trusting me to get you home. I miss showing up at the end of your shift just to know you got to your car safe. I miss opening my eyes in the morning and finding you there.”

She’d gone still but her eyes stayed on mine.

“But here’s the part that matters, so listen. I’m not going to lay a finger on you. Not today, not until you tell me to. In words. No maybe about it. I’m going to keep my hands to myself and you’re going to go back to Velvet. Tonight, while you’re falling asleep, you’re going to think about everything I just said and it’s going to get you all hot and bothered, which is exactly what I wanted and I’m not sorry.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No.” I picked my clipboard back up off the bar like a man who hadn’t just said any of that. “It’s not. I’m done being fair.” I headed for the back, because if I stood there one more second I was going to break my own rule. “I’m right here, Austen. Every day. Whenever you’re ready. You just say the word.”

I made it to the hallway before I heard her say, low, almost to herself, “Bastard.”

I grinned the whole way to the office.

She left at four like always. I watched her go from the office window — out across the lot to her car, where she sat for a minute before she started it, the way she does when something’s gotten to her.

I’d promised to keep my hands to myself, and I’d keep it. But I hadn’t promised to make it easy. Weeks of standing in a room being decent to her. She knew where I stood now.

Her car finally pulled out. I went back to the books with a hard-on.

Worth it.

Chapter 22

❧

— Austen —

He hadn’t brought it up again. That was the thing that undid me in the end. Not the speech. Not the shower confession, not the part where he’d pointed at the front of his own jeans in the middle of the afternoon and told me his dick belonged to me. It was that the next day he was exactly the man he’d been before he said any of it. Professional. Considerate. Absolutely maddening. He’d set the place on fire on Tuesday and then just let it burn, quietly, in the corner of every room I was in, and gone back to being decent at me.

The truth was, I’d driven to Velvet on Tuesday with my thighs pressed together. And when I’d gone to bed that night, I’d lain there imagining him throwing me over his shoulder and making good on Fewin’s suggestion. The man had ruined me. Not in a bad way. No man had ever set me on fire like Handful did. Even fully clothed, from the other side of a bar, with his hands exactly where I could see them, he turned me on.

He’d told me whenever I was ready, I just had to say the word.

I was losing. I’d known it for a week. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to hold the ground.

I’d talked myself into it and out of it six times in three days while he’d been the perfect gentleman.

Fewin was off getting the glycol lines flushed before the club opened for the weekend, leaving me working through the stock while Handful sat at the end of the bar with his sleeves shoved up.

“Every road name has a story.” I lined up the bitters. “Is that club business, or am I allowed to ask?”