All I can think about is Wyatt and those clear aqua eyes staring down at me as he impales me with his hot flesh and makes me his for the very first time. An entire litany of things I’d like to do to him twist through my mind. It’s pretty clear I’m long over the bonehead next to me and onto the boner awaiting me. See? Simply remove the nuisance of love from the equation and an adventure of sexual proportions is born. Wyatt has become my new favorite obsession. He clouds my thoughts from eyelids open until I fall asleep snuggling up with my favorite vibrator (who coincidentally happens to be named Wyatt).
Will waves his hand over my face. “Forecast calls for rain. This is all summer shit. Try to throw some seasonal stuff in, coats and crap. Maybe try working with vinyl,” he says as he collects his things and heads out the door.
Forecast calls for rain. A heavy sigh expels from me.
Wyatt comes to mind again.
Things are about to get very, very wet.
That’s for sure.
* * *
The next few days roll by in a dizzying blur. At work, Wyatt and I examine Will’s app which he promptly sent me right after class that day. Wyatt is unreasonably impressed with my ex’s technological talents which irritates me to no end, but he assures me utilizing Will’s mad tech skills to make money will only benefit Baya and me in the end. I suppose it’s true, once the semester is over William Adeline Richie will be nothing more than a bad stain on my memory, but Rags to Riches will live on. Note to self: Drop the next damn class that Will decides to crash. Also: Look into online classes.
On Friday, I don my new creation—a pieced suede coat that Annie helped me slice and dice just the day before. She actually assisted in designing this beauty. I was going for a straight edge at the opening, and she convinced me that oversized shearling lapels would be the way to go. Paired with my over-the-knee dark rum leather boots, it looks as if I’ve just stepped off a runway in Milan.
I head into Wyatt’s office with a cheery, “Good morning!”
Wyatt stands like the gentleman he is. His exaggerated good looks are like meeting up with a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour, jarring and intensely possessive. His dark hair is wavy and thick, and my fingers beg to run through it. His lips are made for kissing. My own lips can attest to that. We haven’t touched first base since that night at the bar, Valentine’s of all nights, but my mouth has been watering for him ever since. It took more strength than I have in me not to penetrate him with my tongue. There were so many other things my body begged to do with his that night, and had I started I wouldn’t have been able to stop. Annie’s brothers would have had to chase me out of there with a hose. My body aches just looking at Wyatt like this, broad shoulders, chest of steel, that knowing grin—because, let’s face it, he knows he’s a god. That, in and of itself, is what keeps his bed fueled with eager women. And tomorrow night, it’ll be fueled with the most eager version of me.
“Morning.” I clear my throat, holding up two cups of fresh brewed Joe. “I dragged it all the way from Hallowed Grounds. Hope you don’t mind, but they make the best mocha lattes in my opinion.”
“I trust your opinion.” Wyatt’s fingers brush against my hand as he takes his cup, and a live current travels up my arm.
His gaze hooks onto mine, and we’re caught in this wild erotic exchange that leaves both our chests heaving. My stomach melts in a puddle of quivers. If simply brushing against him elicits such a viral response, the probability of me combusting into flames tomorrow night is as good as done. Not that a few flames here and there are about to stop me. I’ll bring a fire extinguisher if I have to—hell, I’ll wear fire retardant. Very little is going to stop me from landing horizontal, and vertical, and any other position he demands I contort myself into.
He steps forward, close enough to where I can feel the heat emanating off his body, and my face turns into a flame.
Wyatt reaches up and gently rubs my cheek.
“You have an eyelash.” He touches his thumb to my lips, and a spasm rails through me all the way down to that tender part of me that craves him most. “Make a wish.”
My breathing picks up as our eyes bear into one another, wide and filled with a lust-driven inferno.
I blow a slow breath over his thumb, and, like a reflex, my lips touch over it with a hard, pressing kiss.
An approving dimple recedes in his cheek, so I go for it. My mouth covers his digit, and I begin on a suck-fest that feels as if it spans hours, although, in reality, it’s more like thirty seconds.
Wyatt gives a visceral groan as if somehow the fact I’m deep-throating his thumb had translated to a more poignant part of his body that is far more eager to experience my suck and pull maneuver. I lash my tongue around him, hot and wet, as I command another achingly loud groan from his throat.
If his thumb were able to ejaculate, I think I’d be forced with the decision whether or not to swallow right about now.
“Whoa.” He pulls out slowly and holds his hands up as if this were a sexual stickup. “If this goes on any longer, we’re going to have one hard situation on our hands.” He turns just enough and jostles his package as if begging that 747 in his pants not to take flight.
I clear my throat. “Got it.”
“Um”—he swallows hard, still straining to hold it together—“what were we discussing again?”
“Opinions.” I give a little shrug. “Something to do with coffee.”
“Right.” He closes his eyes a moment, catching his bearings. “There is something else I’d like your opinion on. But I need your honest gut. You don’t need to be nice about it. It’s a business decision.”
Business decision—that would be me. I bite down on a private smile.
“Expanding the parameters of the contract so soon? Let me guess. You’d like to include an exhaustive clause on the benefits of outdoor calisthenics—in the nude. Don’t worry, cowboy. I’ve been eyeing that barn of yours for quite sometime now.”
“The barn is a given.” He snatches his keys off the desk and holds the door open for me. “Although, a roll in the hay is a little less comfortable than you’d imagine.”
“I’m up for roughing it for the sake of research.”
“Is that what you’re doing with me? Is this strictly research?” He’s teasing, but that doesn’t stop my heart from lodging in my throat.
“God, no.” I’m quick to head his way. New golden rule: Leave all subjects of my future memoir in the proverbial dark. Subject Number Two need not know what additional purpose I might have planned for his bedroom skills. “I meant experimentation,” I say as we get on the elevator. The door closes with a quiet whoosh and Wyatt and I are suddenly confined in a cushioned silence. “This feels slightly uncomfortable,” I say without reason. When I’m nervous the verbal diarrhea spews without my permission. “I can’t help feeling a bit predatory around you, Professor James.” I mock curtsey. God, he’s going to think I’m insane. I’m not insane, am I?
“You can relax around me, Marley. I want you to.” Wyatt’s eyes glaze over as he runs his finger from my temple to my chin. “It’s important you’re very relaxed for the things I’m about to do to you tomorrow night.”
A tiny squeak emits from my throat as the elevator door opens. The cool air washes the heat from my body, albeit temporarily. Wyatt leads me to his car, a different model than I’ve seen before. Of course, it is. He probably has an entire collection of these in his twenty-car garage. The Golden Oaks ranch is huge and sprawling with all kinds of nonsensical buildings dotting it as far as the eye can see. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if somewhere out yonder there was a building used exclusively for his special brand of perversion. And I’m loving the perverse nature of this very erotic beast.
“Where to?” I ask as we zoom out of the lot. The metropolitan buildings soon give way to the Jepson business district, but Wyatt hops onto I 97, the road that circles the back end of Hollow Brook, straight to the valley—straight to Walleye.
I
sink in my seat a little as the familiar terrain takes over. Expansive dirt lots slip by, elongating with their nonstop tower of tires, trashcans spill in the street like some never-ending junkyard.
“It’s sort of a surprise. It’s not too far out. Just past the northern part of Hollow Brook. Sort of a dicey neighborhood, but I promise to protect you.” He gives a devious wink my way.
Dicey neighborhood is putting it mildly. We didn’t have a week where we weren’t locking all the windows and doors due to a robbery suspect running loose in the neighborhood—and on occasion the robbery suspect in question was my father. It was police sirens and search helicopters all the time. Jemma managed to move to a slightly improved track of homes, but Mom still lives in the old house across from the liquor store. Our neighborhood was a lot more hood and a lot less neighbor, but it was our little, dicey corner of the world, the one I’ve come to affectionately call Thug Central.
“You’re quiet. What’s on your mind?” Wyatt asks as we edge dangerously close to the Chicken Fried Filet where my mother was just promoted to shift supervisor. An uneasy feeling pulses through me until I realize we’re headed in the entirely opposite direction.
“Just taking in the scenery.” A quick breath escapes me. “You were right, it’s a little rough around the edges here.” I’m speaking from experience.
He pulls in front of a small warehouse with an oversized garage door rolled open, and I spot dozens of sewing stations set up inside with about a hundred women busily serging their hearts out. “Wow,” I marvel. “It’s like they’re in training for the Olympic hem-offs. Is this the place?” I spike up in my seat suddenly excited to be here.
“This is it. Take a look at the work these ladies do, and, if you like what you see, we’ll set up a contract—short-term at first.”
We head inside and meet up with a tall redheaded woman named Dasha who runs the facility. Her first order of business is to inform us she’s from Russia. She pounds her chest with pride before asking us to excuse the potential language barrier.
“I beat anybody’s prices.” She rolls just about everything in that last word until it comes out sounding like prizes and it instantly endears me to her. She’s actually taller than tall, squatty features with a turned up nose. Her hair is cut to her ears and dyed a shocking bright crimson. “Ve have output of tousand grams a veek, depend on level of difficulty.” I take it grams is code for garments, either that or we’ve landed ourselves in an accidental drug deal. “I have tree shits of girls.”
Shits equals shifts—or at least I’m hoping.
“Dis is round da clock operation. Ve no joke here.”
Okay, so they don’t have a sense of humor, but are they hiding a bunch of ten-year-olds in the back? More realistic than the drug deal, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve unwittingly hit up the local sweatshop. Who are we kidding? Judging from the long, tired faces—those matching vacant looks in their eyes, I think we might just have stumbled upon the inspiration for The Walking Dead. I’m guessing they’re not big on breaks around here either. Good God, why do I get the sudden feeling these women run all three shifts?
“Ve take payment upfront.” She slaps one hand over the other as if we owed her a stack of cold, hard cash, right here and now. “Ve burn vun too many times da odder vay.”
And there’s that.
I guess it’s fine since most likely my first hunch was right, and this place doubles as a front for drug trafficking. I bet if we stormed the back we’d find a redline to the Russian drug cartel.
Wyatt must sense my unease because he wraps his arm around my waist, touching his head to mine a moment. A breath gets caught in my throat, and the caustic woman—the quasi-sweatshop all dematerialize for a moment. The sentiment is so sweet, my knees liquefy.
Wyatt looks to her. “You mind if we talk alone for a moment?”
“Not at all. I be inside. Let me know.” Red Dawn turns her attention to me. “I send you home vid media kit und samples. If you unhappy—I vork dees girls to da bone ’til dey get it right. Ve no vant customers unhappy.”
And there you have it.
“Dis is business”—she continues—“and ve do vhatever necessary to make client happy,” she says it like a threat before ducking back inside.
“I don’t have the money,” I whisper. Or the conscience to work anyone to the bone, but I leave that out for now. “I can talk to Baya, but we’ve already spent our budget at the thrift store.”
Wyatt pulls me in tight and tucks his forehead to mine. “This is where a business loan comes in.”
“Nice thought, but I don’t think I could get a loan officer to lend me her pen.”
“You won’t need her pen”—he pulls me in closer—“or her loan. You’ll have mine.”
“What?”
“I’m always open for an investment opportunity, and you’ve presented one. It’s a match made in profit heaven.”
I bite down hard on my lip to keep from bursting out in tears of joy. It’s one thing to have Wyatt’s support and another to have him put his money on the line.
“No one has ever been so kind, so considerate to me before.” I swallow down the fist in my throat. “No one has ever believed in me the way you do, Wyatt.”
“Yeah, well.” He traces my shearling lapel with the back of his hand, a forlorn sadness taking over his features. “You’re pretty incredible—smart, beautiful, and you happen to have an eye for a fashion trend that might just be the next big thing. What’s not to love?” He gives a full blooming grin, and my entire body seizes at the sight of this gorgeous man.
What’s not to love? A prickle of joy runs through me, and I wish it didn’t. I wish I wasn’t so easily seduced by that word. I shake my head in an effort to break our gaze. Love isn’t anything real. It’s just another four-letter word that’s overused and poorly defined in our society.
“What’s not to love?” I hold out my hands exuberated by the prospect. “I’ll do it!” I jump, and Wyatt catches me in his arms spinning me right there under the canopy of snow-covered pines, in a white glistening wonderland that sparkles under the sun.
If I had to guess, this is exactly what falling in love feels like.
But it’s just a guess.
* * *
“One more stop,” Wyatt says, peeling away from the sweatshop we’ve just employed to do our first big run of designer up-cycled clothing. Baya and I will come by Monday with our fabric and designs to help the girls get an idea of what we’re looking for. I feel exhilarated, and thankful because, for one, no matter what he says, I don’t think I could have done half of this without Wyatt’s good business sense.
“Anywhere anytime. I’m game.” I run my tongue over my lips as I watch him grip the wheel with his big, strong hands—the exact same strong hands that will be gripping me in less than twenty-four hours. “And that goes for tomorrow, too.” Especially tomorrow. God, it’s like we’re going to have our own twisted little honeymoon—at his place, of course, to be continued in various locales of our choosing, naked calisthenics aside.
“So tell me, Marley, apart from scouting for bedmates, what makes you tick. Any specific interests I should be made aware of?”
“I like to hike.” It’s true. Growing up in a fort of fences, rabid dogs and far more rabid people, hitting the trails was my favorite escape. “I know it’s not the girliest thing in the world, but there’s something about being one with nature that makes my heart sing.”
“Really?” His head ticks back as if he were genuinely stunned by this. “I love to hike, too.” His hand rounds over the wheel as we make a left, and now it’s me who’s stunned. Wyatt has inadvertently driven into the heart of downtown Walleye. Any minute now I expect to see someone I know walking down the street. “Maybe next week we can take our work outside. There are some trails on the south-facing side that aren’t socked in snow. We can do a day trip. The views are stunning up there.”
“I’d like that.” Right now. I would very much l
ike that right this very minute. Wyatt pulls in an all too familiar shopping center and slides into the first parking spot available. The sign on the establishment before us reads Chicken Fried Filet with the picture of a fat ornery bird voluntarily jumping into a bucket.
“You have got to try this place,” Wyatt gushes. “Sevilla used to pick up a bucket for me every Saturday. I still get those late night cravings if you know what I mean.”
Oh, I know what he means. I used to get them myself, only, in my case, it wasn’t my housekeeper playing delivery boy—it was my mother.
He gets out, and I hesitate to follow. I could make up an excuse—tell him that I need to write a paper, that I’m dying of menstrual cramps, that I have a severe allergy to poultry or, I could woman up and stomach the entire situation. What are the odds that my mother is working a shift right now anyway? She doesn’t usually start until four, and it’s still early afternoon. What the hell. I hop out and join him.
“Everything okay?” He presses his hand in the small of my back as he holds the door open for me.
“I’m with you—everything is great.” No lie there. Wyatt has been the bright spot of my day ever since we’ve met.
The familiar thick scent of deep-fried goodness hits me, and just as I’m about to take in a lungful, a familiar, abnormally tall bleached blonde gets my attention from behind the counter.
“Cat Alice,” I whisper mostly to myself.
“The one from the bar?”
“The one and only.”
Cat Alice lets out an exasperated breath as we head over. Her eyes slit to mine in a moment of both embarrassment and surprise.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she smirks. “Oh, wait, you didn’t come to see me, did you? Debbie!” She shouts to the back, and I freeze.
My mother is here? Gah! This just gets worse.
Mom comes out from the back with her wiry hair poking out in every direction. She has it in a bun, but it’s too wild to tame and likes to make its escape on a regular basis, giving her the appeal of a psychotic bag lady. She’s lost a tooth on either side of her canines which also adds a special touch of homeless, but my mother is kind and tenderhearted, even if she does have a slight addiction to reefer.