Beautifully Sinful Page 2

  What the hell was I doing?

  I knew what I was doing. I was headed toward an orgasm that would make any in recent memory seem woefully inadequate. By now, my moans came constantly and the involuntary motions of my hips made me feel like I had to be the queen slut of all time. Who else would sleep with a guy she didn’t even like and enjoy it as much as I did? The thoughts in the back of my mind got closer to the front.

  His hand suddenly left my pussy and he just yanked my panties and my pants down. They got caught up in my ankles and he jerked at them for a moment until he finally said, "Fuck!"

  For a brief moment, I thought he was going to walk away and that was horrifying! Of course, it was also humiliating because why in the world would I be so freaked out about something I didn't want to happen in the first place? Those back-of-mind thoughts took control and I was prepared to pretend the whole thing never happened.

  Whether I thought I wanted it or not, relief flooded me when he grabbed one ankle and flipped me over. I felt manhandled as he jerked me back, so I was bent over the table, my feet on the floor and loosely bound by my clothes.

  He grabbed my ass and I cried out, “Yes!” even though I felt horrible about the outcry. Then, I felt him pushing into me and all willpower disappeared along with any thoughts other than the feel of him.

  "God, you're wet," He said. "God, you're tight." He moved fast and hard, and it was almost like a total disregard for me, like I was a tool for his relief, a walking-talking sex toy he'd put back in the box when he was finished. I felt like I should be offended but instead, it turned me on and I extended my arms and grabbed hold of the edge of the tabletop. "You like this? Huh? You like my cock in your tight little—”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Just shut up and screw me.”

  That either made him mad or more excited because he slammed in harder and faster and also his hand came down in a hard spank. I yelped as the sting of that spank reverberated over me and I groaned. That seemed to encourage him and he spanked me again. This time, I cried out, "Yes! Yes!"

  The reason I cried out was that I could feel my orgasm cresting but Robert clearly thought the spanks motivated me because his hand came down again and again. I wasn't sure if I'd sit down for the rest of the day but as the climax claimed me and my body shook from its power, I didn't really give a damn. He grabbed hold of my waist and moved in a blur until finally, he thrust forward deeply, crying out as he emptied himself inside of me.

  I felt his weight on me as he leaned down and I heard him whisper, “God. So good. God.” He kissed my neck and then my earlobe and then suddenly jerked back and I felt him withdraw, leaving me feeling empty and needy. “Oh my God,” he said. “Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t think about protection. I—”

  “I don’t think we really thought about anything,” I said softly. I lifted myself up and if there was anything in my life I’d ever experienced more awkward than bending down and pulling up my panties and my pants, I couldn’t think of what it was. It helped that Robert looked just as awkward, and I looked down at his softening member and raised my eyebrows. I’d actually just been admiring but he thought I was surprised it was still out because he hurried to tuck himself into his boxers.

  When he stood dressed, he stared at me like he was shell-shocked. I felt that way, too. He cleared his throat and said, “Uh… um, maybe we could reschedule this meeting for tomorrow.”

  The relief was so profound that my knees buckled and I had to hold onto the table. "Good idea," I breathed out. I turned around and walked to the door. Part of me wanted to take pity on him and tell him I was on birth control but it seemed like a silly thing to say at the moment. I sure as hell didn't want it to be the last thing he heard before the door closed behind me.

  Chapter Three

  Three and a half hours later, my mind was a swirl. Still a swirl. From the second I left the restaurant until the moment I returned, the events of the morning filled my head. A near miss with a semi-truck at the corner of Main and Jackson didn't shock me out of it although there was an innocent jogger who got an earful from me for no other reason that being present when I almost caused an accident. A long, hot shower at home didn't take the edge off either.

  In fact, the shower made things worse because every drop of water that hit my body seemed to make my skin explode with sensation. At first, I thought it was just the after-effects of the whole morning incident, just soreness that the water exacerbated. It didn't take long, though, to realize my entire body was still alight, utterly receptive to sensation. I actually adjusted the jets and let it spray over my clit for a moment before I realized what I was doing and reluctantly pulled it away.

  After I wrapped myself in a towel, I just sat on my bed, trying to wrap my head around how I'd let all of that happen. The guy was a jerk! Up until the moment he kissed me, every single interaction with him was infuriating. Hell, even while his fingers and then the rest of him drove me to heights I’d never experienced, he was pretty damned infuriating. It sure as hell wasn’t going to happen again. It was that simple.

  But, God, those eyes!

  “Why does every guy you find attractive have to be a complete jerk?” I asked the question aloud, and I felt silly. It just wasn't true. Setting aside high school, I had two serious boyfriends. One in college, it lasted three years. Then, there was one back east, where I got my master's degree. That was it. For the four years I lived and breathed "The Mill" I had no serious relationships at all but the few short term experiences weren’t with jerks.

  Of course, none of those guys filled my mind with images and thoughts the way Robert did. None of it made any sense to me. How many times had I told him to shut up in the middle of the sex? I said it at least a couple of times and it seemed to me one time was enough to disqualify a person from further thought. I sat there on the bed until my hands started to wander and I couldn't deal with the damned contradiction. I got dressed in a hurry and rushed out in a hurry.

  Remarkably, as angry as I was at myself and as determined as I was to keep myself from falling into the same trap again. The very first thought that crossed my mind when I stepped back into The Mill was that Robert looked damned good standing next to the bar with a clipboard in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other hand. I also felt a burst of jealousy because Sharr looked at him like she might look at a piece of candy.

  “Be strong,” I whispered to myself. I felt foolish for needing strength. I just couldn’t comprehend why I spent four years as an undergraduate and two years getting a master’s degree just so I could moon over an entitled asshole like some stupid horny teenager. I didn’t need to be strong. I needed to feel nothing about him at all other than the simple reality that he was the enemy if I were going to delay the destruction of everything that made The Mill worthwhile.

  Still, I couldn’t really go on the attack right away. Hi there, Robert. Great orgasm yesterday. Thanks for that. Now get your ass out of this restaurant and let us run it the way we always have.

  Fortunately for me, he made dealing with that awkwardness pretty damned easy. The moment he saw me, he waved me over like I was some kind of dog. “Why do we stock so many premium brands? Do we really need four different kinds of top-shelf vodka? This is a restaurant and not a bar.”

  I resisted the urge to tell him it wasn’t a brothel either. “Alcohol is twenty-two percent of our revenue and—”

  “Alcohol is twenty-one and a half percent of our revenue,” He corrected.

  "Well, holy shit," I said. "I guess that half a percent makes all the difference. Sharr, we're going to need to get rid of all this. While we're at it, why do we have six beers on tap? Make it one. That'll save us keg space, too. Also, why the hell do we have all these different kinds of glasses? We should use the same glasses we use for water. It's only twenty-one and a half percent of our business. In fact, Sharr, let's stock airline bottles from now on. That's it. Shot bottles of vodka and some local brand of beer."

  “What the hell is this?”
Robert asked.

  "You're right," I said and lifted my hands in mock surrender. "That's right. Not the local brand. Craft brews are way too expensive. We'll do some national pisswater and charge triple the price!” I turned around and walked away in triumph and probably would have felt victorious if a waitress stepping out of the kitchen didn’t almost knock me on my ass. I hoped Robert didn’t see that and then cussed myself for hoping anything at all.

  In the kitchen, Dante and Julio, the prep cooks, were busy and they both smiled at me. I liked the two of them. I was pretty sure they were a couple but I was sure they did their jobs well, and they never let any of their personal stuff interfere. I smiled back and stood there for a while and when Dante asked me if I needed help with anything, I got a little flustered and hurried to the office.

  I tried to chalk it up to being stressed about the sale but I knew I was flustered because when Dante asked if I needed help, I realized the only reason I stood there was that I expected Robert to follow. I tried a few deep breathing exercises I used back in college when exams made me crazy. Breathe in for five seconds, hold it for seven and breathe out for nine. I did it three or four times but whatever biochemical thing was supposed to happen with my body didn't. I still felt flustered.

  I considered staying in the office for the rest of the shift. The restaurant ran just as well when I wasn’t there as it did when I was. I imagined I could be gone for about a week before things would slip at all and maybe for a month. The place ran like a well-oiled machine.

  Used to run.

  The thought hit me like a slap on the face. Everything about The Mill was changing now and however; it used to run was irrelevant to how things worked now and how they would end up working in the future. Used to run also meant I had to go back out on the floor. If I were going to salvage whatever I could from this place, I couldn’t hide.

  But how the hell was I supposed to go back out there after a perfect exit like that?

  I went through a number of possibilities but no luck. The best possible situation would involve someone out there calling me with a request of one type or another but there weren’t even customers yet. I thought about risking a text to Sharr. Then, she could call me from the phone at the bar and give me a reason to come outside that had nothing to do with Robert. I pulled my cell phone out of my purse but then put it back in. What the hell was going on? Was I some kind of high school girl playing stupid games?

  I stood up — no more of this crap. I took a deep breath. I wasn't some high school girl trying to work out how to bat my eyes the right way so I'd get asked to the prom. I let the breath out slowly. "You got this, Hilly," I said to myself and then swung the office door open and stepped out.

  The thud of the door startled me and my cheeks grew hot and, I imagined, turned bright red when I heard Robert’s curse. The door slowly swung back into place and he stood next to it, glaring.

  “Jesus, Fletcher!” He cried. “Door!”

  “Sorry!” I said. My humiliation was more potent than the anger. Restaurant 101. When people carried trays loaded with plates and glasses, you just didn’t open doors without warning. Sometimes, the staff shouted, "Open," but most of the time, it was "Door!"

  Damn it. I was completely wrong — no two ways about it.

  “Is it your goal in life to make life hard for me?”

  “Just fighting the good fight,” I spat out. “I suppose if the whole point of your life is to take beautiful things and destroy them, I'm earning a hell of a lot of Karma, making it hard for you." God, I had my chest puffed out and I was staring at him like a belligerent child. I was probably lucky there wasn't a mirror in sight because chances were if I'd seen myself, I would have shriveled up into a ball of trembling humiliation.

  “You’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?” He shook his head. “We’ve got a shift to run. You don’t want to, fine. Go the hell home and feel superior. In the meantime, I’m going to do some work.” He turned around and walked out. I really wished he’d slammed the door because it would have diminished the power of his exit, and I was still riding a little bit high on the glory of my earlier exit.

  Naturally, the rest of the shift was annoying as hell, and it was made more annoying by an irritating and recurring idea that I owed Robert an apology. How in the world that worked was beyond me. He was the one coming to a place I loved and using words like streamline, standards and objectives to turn it into an accounting report. I didn’t owe him anything at all, much less an apology.

  I still felt like I was wrong, and that was maddening.

  I groaned, got up and made my way out to take on the shift. I hated how I felt and hated more that I found myself staring at Robert throughout the shift. While I was expediting, he came in the back, carrying a tray of dishes. I probably should have been surprised he helped bus the tables but I was too busy staring at his biceps as he walked by. I helped Sharr pour some drinks and saw him helping at the host station. All I could see were his broad shoulders and his damned eyes.

  By the time I got home, I was so damned angry; I couldn't even think. The good news was my anger was properly directed at Robert by that time. Guilty? To hell with that. He was destroying The Mill and I didn’t do anything wrong at all, or at least nothing that demanded guilt. I just had to get through the damned week and when he was around, I could figure out a way to deal with the situation. Maybe I couldn't save The Mill but I could at least do something, have my own Alamo and go down in a blaze of Glory.

  Chapter Four

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I stared at Robert in shock, and it took a great deal of effort to keep myself from throwing the tray with two cups of coffee, four little tubs of creamer and five packets of sugar right at his face. I succeeded. I expended the same amount of effort fighting back the instantaneous arousal that filled me, watching his eyes flash and his—well, his everything else.

  I didn’t succeed with that.

  But anger was stronger than arousal and I said, "Who says that before he even says hello?" I set the coffee down on the table and dared him with my eyes to reach for his cup. "Is that the purpose of this meeting? Should I find an easel and a whiteboard? We can write a nice little heading. Things wrong with Hillary." I started toward the kitchen. "I think we keep one in the back office."

  “Come back here,” He said and I froze. The command in his voice was beautiful. I hated that it was beautiful but it was beautiful.

  I turned around and glared at him.

  “Are you trying to get me to fire you?” He asked.

  “You can’t fire me,” I said. “I know for a fact my employment was built into the sale contract.”

  "I can't stop paying you," He growled. "But, I can still fire you."

  “Oh!” I said in as exaggerated a way I could. “Whatever will I do if I just get paid for nothing?”

  “Do you hate this place?” He asked. “I don’t get you.”

  The statement stunned me for a moment and I stared in shock until I finally spat out, "Hate this place? This place is beautiful. And let me tell you something about firing me. Firing me is the only way you're ever going to get me to stop fighting you. I'm not just going to stand aside while you suck every drop of life from this place, suck away everything that makes The Mill special in the first place." I could see the anger in his face and I naturally had to twist the knife. "So, what is it? Prepackaged steaks shipped in from the Midwest and cooking wine in boxes really does it for you? Is tomato sauce too fancy? It’s just got to be red sauce base?”

  “You’re way out of line.” He said the words quietly, and I probably should have realized that meant a hell of a lot more than it would have if he’d been loud.

  "I'm out of line?" I felt like spitting right at his face. "At least I don't get off on taking something special and making it fit some stupid one size fits all mold. At least I don’t think the pinnacle of success in a restaurant is making sure all five hundred locations serve chicken and dumpling
s that taste exactly the same.”

  He looked like he’d been slapped, and it felt pretty strange to hear pain mixed in with the anger in his voice. “That’s not what I—”

  I walked into the office. “And let’s not forget about portion control!” I said. I realized I was almost shouting now. I was well past stopping now even though I knew I was crossing lines. “Make sure you’ve got exactly four ounces of the pureed sweet potatoes and do the garnish exactly as pictured, damn it!”

  “Listen,” He snarled as he stepped in after me and slammed the office door.

  “Door!” I said in a bitchy sing-song voice.

  “Listen!” He repeated, this time almost a scream.

  “Oh,” I said. “And don’t forget to fuck the managers! That way, if you have to fire them you at least got off!”

  “That’s not…” I stared at him, and it was like I could actually see his mind raging a war against his anger to get him under control. The battle raged and I stared transfixed as I watched. His brow furrowed and un-furrowed and those damned perfect eyes bored into me until finally he gained control and said, “That wasn’t what that was about.”

  "Then what was it about, jerk?" My voice didn't have any of the venoms I intended for it to have.

  "It… it just happened," He said. "You were there and you were beautiful and so full of…" His voice trailed off but the damage was done. I stepped forward and threw my arms around him, kissing him deeply and holding him tightly to me. It was like all traces of tension disappeared from his body as his hands moved down to the small of my back and then up, so he held the back of my head and then, he gently disengaged. "I want this," he said. "I do."