On Every Street (12 page)

“I won’t be much longer,” I told him.

“Can I help?” he asked sincerely. He looked especially dashing tonight: black suit, skinny tie, white shirt. Sometimes I wondered what he did during my shifts—where he went, who he talked to. But I didn’t dare ask. I was afraid to ask. To ask would be to pop the sex-filled bubble I’d been living, and I’d been a virgin for too long to give that up.

“No, just sit there and look pretty.”

As I worked, quickly wiping down the counters like I was on fast forward, I kept glancing at his beautiful eyes. They watched me as they always watched me
—attentive and involved. And horny as hell.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I admonished him, trying to de-smudge the eyeliner that had gathered under my eyes.

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like you want a good taste.”

He grinned, satisfied and secure. He gave me a short nod. “You know me so well already.”

That wasn’t quite true but I smiled back anyway.

“Can you wipe down the counter?” he asked, getting out of his seat. “I think you missed a spot.”

I gave him an odd look but did as I was told.

“No, do it with your ass.”

I snorted.
“With my ass.”

He patted the counter with a few smacks of his palm. “Up, up.”

Curious, I threw the towel in the sink and hopped up on the counter. I wrapped my legs around him while my eyes darted over to the door.

“I locked it as I came in,” he said, reaching up and pulling my shirt over my head. “You really should lock it as you work
. I don’t want any criminals coming in and feeling you up.”

My breath caught in my throat but he didn’t notice. His eyes blazed into mine as if he wasn’t a criminal himself. And as he took off my bra and pulled off my jeans and thong, I wondered just what kind of person I’
d become. I was ignoring what he was and focusing on what he was to me. I was drowning again.
And
I was naked, sitting on the bar where I served drinks to customers.

I reached forward for his tie but he pulled back, wagging his finger back and forth.

“Nuh uh. You have been serving all day. Now it’s time for me to serve you.”

He made me lie down on my back, the counter still wet from the wipe
down and sticking to my spine. He came behind the bar and I heard the rattle of ice cubes in a glass.

I turned my head to look at him, feeling like I was in a fucked up version of a doctor’
s examination. “Feeling thirsty?”

“Only for you, my sweet.”
He put an ice cube in his mouth and rolled it around with his tongue. He came up to me, dipping his fingers into the ice and sliding them over my hipbones until I shivered. He gently spread my legs, then got up on the bar with me, kneeling between them. He popped another ice cube in his mouth then proceeded to go down on me.

I flinched from his icy lips
on my warm ones. The sensation was new but not unpleasurable, and just as I was getting used to the contrast in temperature, I felt him press the ice cube into me using only his tongue.

I gasped, gripping the edge of the counter while the ice started to melt away, constricted by my muscles and tempered by my inner heat.

“I could drink you all day,” he murmured into me, his hands stroking the sides of my thighs, his trimmed nails raking downward. But despite his threat, he got me off in seconds flat and I hoped my cries wouldn’t attract the attention of any passerby outside.

Afterward, I tried to return the favor but he just smiled and handed me my clothes.

“Why are you so good to me?” I asked him, surprised to hear the sincerity in my voice.

He cocked his head, studying me for a moment, before he placed his hands behind my head and brought my face to his so only our noses were touching. Up this close, I could count the number of golden flecks in his green eyes
—twelve in the left and ten in the right—the color variation made his eyes take on that unusual hue. His eyelashes were dark as night and unbearably long and pretty, something else that was really quite unfair.

“Why am I good to you?” he repeated, his lips brushing against mine as he spoke. “Because I can see you are broken. And I want nothing more than to put you back together.”

I was drowning again. In his words. In his promises that he never said but I knew he kept.

“I’d like that,” I told him, ignoring that pinch in my heart, the one that told me that he could never put the real me back together. He could never fix Ellie Watt because he had no idea who she was.

My lips found his and I kissed him like he was the blood that pumped in my heart. We lost each other then found each other over and over again, tumbling in the depths.

Until a loud knock at the door rattled it on its hinges and broke us apart with a start.

“Shit,” I swore, jumping off the counter and slipping on my clothes as fast as I could. “I bet it’s Steve. You shouldn’t be here.”

He knitted his brows together.
“Why not? I’m your boyfriend.”

My brain stopped on that very phrase
—boyfriend—for one brief and happy moment before it went back to fretting that I only had my pants done up.

I slipped on my bra, twisting
it around me. “You are my boyfriend. But I don’t think I’m supposed to have people here with me after hours.” For reasons that included the thing we just did on the counter.

The pounding continued. Javier took a step toward the door, determination righting his posture. “If it’s Steve, why isn’t he using his key?”

“Javier, please,” I told him as I pulled down my shirt and tried to make myself look presentable. “Go wait in the back and don’t come out till I tell you to.”

He didn’t move
; his eyes were locked on the door. I wished I could see out the nearby window but there was an entrance blocking my view. I gave him a little push. “Go.”

He did so reluctantly
, and I waited until he was out of sight, hiding in the hallway where the washrooms were, until I approached the door.

“Steve?” I asked. My hand went for the handle which
was jumping with each knock. “Julie?”

I eyed the chain lock and decided to err on the side of caution and slide it across. Better safe than sorry. Then I opened the door.

There was an explosion of sound, of splintering wood and breaking metal. The door came off its hinges and hit me right in the face, slamming me into the ground. Before I could figure out what had happened, that someone had kicked the door open breaking the chain and the hinges, I was being hauled to my feet by the big brute whom I’d gotten kicked out. Tom had come back and his fingers were digging into my arms as he shook me.

“Where’s your messiah now, huh?” he cried out, face red, spit flying. He was even drunk
er than he was that day, and I turned my head to see three men behind him, all in their early twenties and jacked up as anything. These were not his frat buddies from before—he had brought reinforcements, men meant to fuck me up.

I tried to hide my fear hoping that Javier was dialing the cops from his hiding place. As good as he was at breaking
noses, he wouldn’t stand a chance with these guys. They were out for blood…mine.

“Please let go of me,” I said
, wondering if I could plead my way out of it. He responded by putting one hand at my mouth and squeezing it together. I cried out in pain and he leaned in close. “No one refuses me,” he snarled, and I wondered if knew what dangerous ground he was playing on. Like hell I wouldn’t press charges on him for assaulting me.

Then the realization hit me in the stomach like a cold fist. I couldn’t press charges if I was dead.

I was so temped to look behind me at the bar to see if Javier was still there, but it would only give him away. Tom pushed me into another one of the guys, this one built like an MMA fighter and over six feet tall. He grabbed me by the top of my head and forced me down to my knees. With his other hand he went for his belt buckle. I’d bite his dick in two, I hoped he realized that.

“You’re going to suck it,
then you’re going to fuck it,” Tom squealed like an excited coyote. “Then you’ll do it to all of us until you learn not to fuck with me again.”

The man’s fist tightened in my hair until I was sure I was bleeding at the roots. He took out his erect penis, an ugly bea
st of a thing, bringing it toward my mouth.

Another explosion.
Liquid splattered on my face. For a second I thought perhaps he blew his load too soon, but when I opened my eyes, I saw blood and the man toppled to the ground. I screamed and scrambled to my feet, turning around in time to see Javier striding toward us, his arm stretched out in front, a gun pointed at Tom. He remained meticulously focused on him, eyes not straying, not even to catch a glimpse of the gun that one of the other men was pulling out from his pants.

Without missing a beat
or looking away, Javier turned toward the gunman and fired, his eyes cold and hard, boring into Tom. The other man was shot straight in the heart and he fell to the ground, joining the man who had been shot earlier. My eyes were torn between staring at their dead, lifeless bodies, the one man still with his dick hanging out of his pants, and at the other man who was turning around and making a run for the door. Javier shot him in the back and he went flying to the ground too.

“Javier!” I couldn’t help screaming. I had screamed his name earlier under such different circumstances. But unlike then, he acted as if he
hadn’t heard me.

He marched right up to Tom, grabbing him by the collar and pointing the gun up under his chin.

“The messiah is right here,” Javier said, his voice impossibly calm and cool. “And he’s going to kill every man who has the intention of hurting this woman.” He jerked his head in my direction. Tom glanced at me as I stood there, shaking, covered in blood, in complete shock. I wanted Tom to suffer but I didn’t want Javier to kill him.

“Javier,” I whispered, not finding the strength to go louder.

“I’d like a real apology this time,” he went on, pressing his gun further into Tom’s chin. “Then you’re free to go.”

Tom was also frozen. His mouth flapped stupidly, sweat streaming down his forehead.

“Now!” Javier screamed in his face, the veins bulging in his neck. I was fairly sure Tom was going to die from fright and be all the better for it.

But he swallowed hard and looked
at me, avoiding the intensity of Javier’s murderous gaze. “I…I’m sorry,” he said with a gasp as the gun dug in deeper.

“Louder!”
Javier screamed, rage personified.

“I’m sorry!” Tom cried out.

Javier smiled. It was akin to a lion baring its fangs. “Good boy,” he said, then pushed Tom away from him. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

Tom just stared down at his dead friends, the blood pooling around their wounds and seeping
onto the floor. He glanced up at Javier, brows drawn together, arms shaking.

“You’re just going to let me go like that?” he asked in quiet disbelief.

“Yes,” Javier said. “You’re free to go. I always keep my word. Of course, I’ll kill you before you get anywhere.”

As quick as the bullets inside, he raised the gun an
d shot Tom square in the head, a tiny hole of blood quickly spreading out from the center of the wound before he fell to the ground. I was screaming again, lost in the sound of the gun, the reality of the moment.

This was happening.
My Javier, my criminal. He was every bit as bad as I thought he was and suddenly it was real. Who I was pretending to be. Who I was dealing with.

I hadn’t noticed I was crying until Javier was pulling me toward him, holding me tight. He stroked the back of my head with his hand, the gun still in it.

“Come now, Eden,” he whispered. “I did what I had to do. They had this coming.”

I could only sob in return, burying my wet face into his suit jacket.

“I promise to kill anyone who hurts you. They would have hurt you badly. And then they would have killed you.”

I pulled away, trembling despite his arm around me. “Did you know them?”

He shook his head. “No, though one of them looks familiar to me. I don’t know from where.”

I looked down at the bodies.
My first look at dead people. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be my last. “Are we going to get in trouble?”

He brushed a wet spot, blood probably, from my cheek and peered at me
, leaning in close. “No. We aren’t. This was self-defense. And anyway, I’ll take care of this.”

I looked over at the bar.
“The video cameras. They would have seen everything. Everything.” The whole getting head on the bar counter was going to be shown to everyone. I was going to lose my job. Not to mention the whole Javier shooting people in cold blood. Self-defense or not, it didn’t look good.

“Hey, angel,” he said, tipping up my chin. “Let me take care of this. You go into the washroom to clean yourself up. I have a few calls to make.”