CHAPTER FOUR
Griffin
She’s gone out the back. The blond waitress, the one Simpson was hurting in the hallway.
The truth is, I wanted to kill him. My instinct when I saw him set upon her like that, his hand on her throat, his other hand digging at her clothes like a crazed animal—my instinct was to drag him off her and kill him. Just to keep hitting him, pounding him until he was nothing but a spatter across a crime scene.
I can’t believe I held it together and managed to leave him standing. Not that he deserved it, but I don’t need a homicide on my already blotted conscience. I could so easily have killed him, and I wanted to. It shakes me to the bone to admit that.
But for now I’m going to find her, put her in a car, and get her home safely. It’s the least I can do. I don’t say a word to anyone. I just stalk out the back way to the alley. She’s there. I feel the breath I’d been holding release. Was I worried? I think I was.
The girl is drooping against the wall, phone in her hand, head tipped back like she’s trying to catch her breath.
“There you are,” I say.
“No. I don’t—I don’t want money. I don’t want to be paraded around as exhibit A. Here’s the poor waitress that Nice Lapels roughed up in the hall.” She sort of chokes it out, and I wonder for a second what she’s talking about and whose lapels. She must mean Simpson.
“Did it—you’re hurt, aren’t you?” I can feel the rage that’s been seething in me start to course to the surface.
She shakes her head. Then she starts pulling on her shirt trying to hold it closed. It makes my chest hurt. I go to her without even thinking. I can’t help myself. I take her arm. She looks at me, but she’s not scared. She lets me hold her. She just folds into my arms, fits up against my chest and lays her head there. I feel her relax against me, and she’s shaking a little. I can’t believe she’s letting me do this, letting me hold her, envelope her. She’s small. I have to lean down a little so I can put my chin right on top of her head. When I feel how little she is, I see red again, because Simpson went after her and didn’t have any trouble holding her down so he could hurt her.
I never want to let anyone hurt her again.
I don’t actually know this person. I try and tell myself it’s because I have a little sister, because I don’t want anybody treating Gina that way so I’m comforting this stranger and making sure she’s safe. But I’m just lying to myself. This feels nothing like my baby sister. I feel kind of shitty that I’m turned on right now. That holding this frightened woman against my chest feels so right that the heat of desire rolls through me. I want to protect her just as much as I want to make her mine.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, “no one’s going to hurt you.”
I need her to know that, to know I’m not like him, like that sewer rat who put his hands all over her. It makes me sick. I’m also glad it’s not my brother who did such a thing. I swear I’d stick him in some kind of rehab until he was seventy. Lock him up where he couldn’t hurt anyone. Then I’d tell everyone he was dead, because I was ashamed of what a piece of shit he was. I’m getting angry again just thinking about him. Just feeling how vulnerable she is, how vulnerable it must be to be a woman walking around knowing that anytime you’re working or eating or shopping, this could just happen. Some man may decide to grab you and use you like an object. You’d think since I have a sister I would’ve thought of this, but it’s not the kind of thing I think about, I guess until I saw the live show right up close. This is probably not even the first time someone’s done this to her, I think with a cold wash of horror.
I want to punish Simpson. I want to strike at him in some way he’ll understand in his reptile brain.
“You should take the money,” I tell her.
“No,” she says. She’s not sobbing anymore, she’s just talking into my shirt. I can feel the heat of her breath, warm and damp through the Armani.
“Why the hell not? There’s no way he can ever make it okay, what he did, but you should take anything from him that you can, make it cost him something,” I insist.
“It’s too humiliating!” she cries out, pulling back from me.
I see the wretchedness in her face, and my throat feels tight. I’ve been making it worse, hurting her more by trying to pay her off. It hits me all at once. I reach for her hand.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that. I wasn’t thinking about how it would make you feel. I wasn’t thinking at all.”
It occurs to me how strange that sounds. I’ve apologized maybe twice in my life before today. I don’t regret my actions, or if I do, I don’t mention it. I’m also sorry that I dragged a traumatized woman out to display before her attacker’s brother and tried to give her money. It sounds debasing when I think about it now. I touch her face softly, just my thumb tracing along her cheek. Her eyes are shining with tears and she’s worrying her lip with her teeth. I see that her bottom lip is split.
I curse then, bolt away from her and jerk open the door. I’m going to hurt him now. He’s bitten her, torn the soft flesh of her lip with his teeth like an animal. I want his blood on my hands, want to hear him beg for his life. My vision has gone almost black with rage. I can feel the metal door under my hand as I throw it back. Then I feel small hands in my arm, at my elbow, dragging me back.
“Please, don’t. Don’t leave me,” she says.
I look at her, at her pleading face, cheeks red from crying. I turn back to her, forgetting Simpson. Forgetting everything but her voice telling me not to leave her. As if I could leave her now. Her hands are on my arm and, though I’m much stronger, it feels like she’s holding me back, like I can’t move away from her, all due to her wanting me to stay.
“I wish I’d never let that man touch you,” I say. “You didn’t deserve that.”
She smiles at me. This slow, knowing smile that looks almost indulgent. “Please,” she whispers again.
I can’t stop myself, so I wait for her to stop me. I go slow, my face slanting down to hers, my mouth brushes her swollen lips tenderly, the barest caress. I feel it, the jolt of it down the length of my body, and I feel myself stiffen in response to this first sensual touch. She moves toward me, raising up on her tiptoes, one hand to my chest. Her lips cling to mine softly. I cup her head in my palm and kiss her, lightly at first until I feel her lips part beneath mine. I slide my tongue in her mouth and the pleasure of it is a hot rush, as overwhelming in its way as penetration would be—the way she opened for me, the responsiveness, the yielding softness of her body and her lips. She gives a soft cry, her arms sliding up around my neck. She tilts her head, opens her lips to take more of me, her tongue touching mine a little shyly. I coax her, tease her until she’s giving me a passionate kiss, until she’s controlling the rhythm, the depth, and I’m her instrument. I’m flooded with need for her, awed by her resilience, her warmth.
I feel like she’s taken my soul with that kiss. I grin against her mouth and draw back, feeling uncertain for once. I want her too much. It’s not like me to be all in after one kiss, to care that much if she decides to call it a night. I need her. She’s like a fire in me now, and I can hardly see.
“Please,” she says, her beautiful, full lips wet from our kiss.
I brush back a lock of hair that has come loose. I tuck it behind her ear and press my lips to her forehead. “Anything,” I say, and I mean it.
“I—I want you. If you will. If you’re interested…I want every trace of him off me. I feel like he left fingerprints on me, and I want you to burn him off me. Put your hands where his were. Put your—”
“Are you sure?” I ask, disbelieving my good luck. I want to hold her and touch her and make her feel as precious as he made her feel worthless. I want to make her say my name while I drive her higher and higher. I want to take her until she’s too weak to stand.
She lifts her fingers to my jaw and touches me there, turns my face with the barest touch and puts her mouth to my neck. A bolt of sensation drives through me with searing heat and my palms burn with wanting to roam all of her curves. The spot where her thumb strokes my throat throbs with my racing pulse. I wrap my arms around her, take her mouth again with mine. She’s quivering, with desire and excitement now, not fear.
She takes my hands in hers and pushes them inside her shirt, over her bra. I pull back instinctively, “Not like that,” I say. I want to touch every inch of her, want to fill her with pleasure. I don’t want to grab at her the way he did. She kisses me back, and it’s like a conversation. I know what she wants just like she said it out loud. I have no idea how I understand her, but I do.
She doesn’t want to wait for the healing gentleness of my touch. She’s keyed up on fear and anger like I am, and she needs release. Needs me to burn him off her just like she said, so I pull her shirt off and place my mouth on her shoulder, her collarbone, making her shiver with a delicious sigh. I stroke the curve of her stomach and dip my fingers lower, opening her pants and letting her kick them away when they fall. My fingers are in her panties now. Unbelievably, she’s wet for me there, my fingers slipping along her cleft. I feel the want rising in my mouth. I want to do it, so I do. I drop to my knees and loop her leg over my shoulder. Drawing her panties aside, I put my mouth to her. I feel her groan of pleasure at the first stroke of my tongue. I let myself taste her, let her feel my tongue inside of her and my thumb rubbing a harsh circle just above. She comes against my mouth, her legs jerking and a little cry of shock that splits the silence in the alley.
If anyone comes out of the kitchen to take out the trash, they’ll see me on my knees. Armani in the filth of the alley, a supplicant with my face buried between her thighs. I’m a jetsetter, a rich playboy. I don’t go down on waitresses out in the street. But here I am, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be. It would take a plane crashing into the building to get me to stop now. I trail my fingers along the velvet of her thigh and get to my feet. She’s wide eyed with shock, her hands clenched at her sides. I take them and put them on my shoulders, and I kiss her again. She can taste herself on my lips, I know. She’s trying to talk, and I’m trying to stop her. Except, she’s not talking, she’s unfastening my belt, dragging my zipper down. I peel off her bra and toss it somewhere, her breasts filling my hands. I like how they’re soft and heavy, how the friction of my palms makes her nipples hard.
In seconds, I have her up against the wall. Her thighs in my hands, her legs parted around my hips, her back flush against the bricks. I see the haze of lust in her eyes, the way she reaches for my mouth again and again until I’m dizzy from kissing her instead of breathing. I’m buried inside her, so sweet and so wet. My blood is pounding in my ears and nothing matters but these tight thrusts, the earth tilting off its axis as I come hard and fast inside her, those silken hot thighs around me. I want to roar with it.
She’s kissing me. I’m not letting her down off the wall, still balls deep inside her, her passage still milking me. I run my hand down her sensitive body as she squirms. I reach between us and rub at that spot above our joining that makes her thrash and squeal. I’m relentless, making her come even when she’s drooping against the wall and whimpering. Her hands beat at my shoulders as it goes on and on, her voice mewing that it’s too much, she can’t take it. Tears course down her cheeks by the time I’m done with her.
Except I’m not done with her. We both know it. I may never be done with her. This girl whose name I don’t even know. This girl whose taste is in my mouth, whose imprint is on my body now as sure as if she’d branded me. Everywhere she touches, she claims. I don’t know if it’s her innocence that’s got me undone, or if it’s the fact I rescued her. She feels like mine, like she belongs to me.
I set her back on her feet and take her in my arms and hold her. I kiss the top of her head and hold her close for a minute, not quite wanting to let her go.