Unrestrained, page 12
She pulled his hand away. “I knew it, your story is nothing more than bad porn.”
“Wait, I haven’t finished yet. One day something terrible happened to the prince.”
“Oh, no, let me guess, something awful happened to his amazing banana fingers.”
“That’s right,” he said solemnly. “He was attacked by crazed monkeys who bit all his fingers off.”
“I hate monkeys.”
“Believe me, so did Prince Banana-Fingers. And he became crazed with grief at the loss of his banana fingers as all the fine ladies stopped visiting.”
“Those fickle, banana-loving bitches.”
“Yes, they were fickle.” He smiled. “But then one day, he had a visitor.”
“Really?” She steered him by the arm away from a spotty teen employee who’d edged closer to eavesdrop.
“Yes. Her name was Princess Tomato-Breasts.”
If she’d had a mouthful of drink she would have sprayed it everywhere. “Princess Tomato-Breasts?”
“Yes, many were jealous of her ravishing beauty.” He paused, unbelievably, to eye her breasts. “Yet despite her beauty, the princess had a terrible secret.”
“No.”
“Yes. Years ago, an evil witch, jealous of her beauty and kindness, sent devil-snails to attack the princess in her sleep, and her lovely tomatoes were left covered in devil-snail scars which she was deeply ashamed of.”
“Hey!” She narrowed her eyes. This story was far too close for comfort.
“The princess visited the prince because she understood his pain and wanted to help him.”
“Beautiful and nurturing despite her ruined tomatoes, that’s nice.” She poked her tongue out at him.
“Indeed. Before long, they fell in love and got married and then a miracle occurred.”
“Let me guess, they made little tomatoes and bananas. Or were they some kind of freaky mix? Banamoes? Tomanas?”
“That happened, too, but that wasn’t the miracle. The miracle was that their love for each other was so great that it healed them both. Slowly, the prince’s banana fingers grew back and one night, the princess’s chest flowered and she grew a new, perfect pair of tomatoes.”
“Wow. So the princess then had two pairs of breasts?”
He smiled. “Yes, but don’t worry, the prince was also blessed with two extra banana fingers on each hand, so he was able to cope with four breasts.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s really touching. Pardon the pun.”
“I know. Don’t you feel uplifted?”
Surprisingly, she did, but mostly by how ridiculous his story was. “I guess so. I suppose you want me to cough up. You’re quite the hustler, aren’t you?”
He nodded, lips folded firmly closed, eyes full of laughter.
As they lined up at the check-out he was still so pleased with himself he softly hummed a tune, the tune only dying when she took the change from the cashier for their groceries and passed him the five-dollar note. A strange smile hovered on his lips as he pocketed it.
“What are you going to spend it on?” she asked as they exited.
“A movie, perhaps.”
She blinked against the strong sunlight. “But you don’t own a television or a DVD player.”
“We could watch it on your laptop, or go to an actual cinema. I think those still exist. But we’d need to check the times. Hold on, I’ll grab a newspaper.” He handed her the shopping bags and ducked back inside the automatic doors.
She found a steel courtesy seat and perched on it, resting the bags beside her as she watched shoppers wheel their trolleys to their cars. Princess Tomato-Breasts, indeed. She smiled. What a silly story. Her smile tightened as she spotted two lanky teenage boys, sporting black jeans and even blacker T-shirts despite the fierce sun, headed her way. Their glances hit her, sharp as glass shards. She knew they were going to give her shit as soon as she saw them.
They nudged each other once they saw they had her attention.
“Daughter of Frankenstein.”
“No, daughter of Scarface, Scarneck.”
A duet of sniggers. There were times she wished she were deaf, there really were. She hunched her shoulders, looked away and stared into the distance while repeating like a mantra that they were not a real threat, not physically, anyway. Just a reminder that simply knowing she could hold both in a rear naked choke until they passed out didn’t comfort her as much as it should.
“Hey,” one of them addressed her. “Did your neck—”
“Go fuck yourself.” She refused to look at either of them directly, to give them that much significance. But she kept them in her peripheral vision and held onto her anger tight to prevent other unwanted emotions from bubbling up. Like shame. Focused on that task, she flinched in surprise when a large shadow bloomed in front of the teens. Stein, his face dark with intent.
She hadn’t heard the automatic doors open, hadn’t heard his approach.
“Hey!” The teen’s yelp was cut off as he was hoisted high by scruff and jeans. His trainers dangled in the air, treading for ground that was no longer there, while a discarded newspaper fluttered timid pages at Stein’s enormous boots. Of all the many details to notice, the one that she got caught on was the way the tips of Stein’s ears had turned deep red, like a crossing signal. He certainly looked like he’d been crossed.
The pale silver eyes she loved so much were now pitiless, a grim sea promising desolation, his gaze a thousand shatteringly times colder than when she’d first met him and had been afraid. She was afraid now, too, not of what he might do but of what the consequences for him might be.
“Don’t.” A vocabulary of thousands of words at her disposal and yet that’s all she could find to say, one ineffectual contraction.
His eyes locked with hers in a silent shout of anger and pain.
“It won’t change anything.” She poured reason over him like a cold bucket of water. “They’ll still be assholes, I’ll still be scarred, and you won’t have undone anything.”
For six long heartbeats the searing pain in his gaze intensified until she thought it might crystallize and shatter, and then he broke eye contact. He lowered his head, nostrils flaring, and exhaled a long hiss of breath that somehow stole all her own air with it. The other teen watched, mouth slack, as Stein shook his friend, much as a pit bull might worry a stuffed toy.
“Kleine Pisskopf, verpiss dich doch.”
Savage words hissed in an even more savage tone, and it was a measure of Stein’s anger that he’d slipped entirely into German, not noticing the bewildered incomprehension of the teens.
The automatic doors behind Stein opened with a whoosh, and a mother holding hands with a blond toddler stepped out, her eyes squinting against the sun as she kept watch of each bunny-slippered step her son made. Eyes widening, she froze as she spotted Stein holding the teen aloft. After an endless pause, her wide, horrified eyes went to Holly. Several blinks later, she grabbed the toddler by the arm and disappeared back inside the doors, her slim body vibrating panic.
Stein watched her go, then his gaze met Holly’s and a shuddering breath slid from him. With a rumble of disgust, he dropped the teen like a piece of trash and turned to her. “Los.” Let’s go. Big hands scooping up the shopping bags, he gave her a fierce glance, as if considering scooping her up, too. He herded her before him, through the car park, in the direction of the house. Caught before him, she felt mothered by a giant angry penguin, his normally long stride truncated to a waddle as he shepherded her like a chick, shielding her with his big, broody body.
And, god help her, she liked him so much right then. How couldn’t she? How could her heart not warm for a man who gifted her with slightly pervy stories about fruit one moment, and protected her from nasty teenagers the next? Who controlled himself even when he wanted to rip someone to pieces on her behalf? Dragging her feet deliberately so that his large body bumped into hers, she wished he were the non-kinky, monogamous, boyfriend sort of guy. But that wasn’t him, and just as he didn’t expect her quirks and scars to change, she couldn’t expect him to change. But she wished...
As they rounded the corner of the supermarket building to take the shortcut to Stein’s house, a large hand took hers. “You torture yourself enough over your scars, I won’t let anybody else do it.”
Her throat constricted. “And I won’t let you get yourself in trouble by roughing up every idiot that comes my way. The world is awash with idiots and you already have a full-time job.”
“Then I’ll make it my hobby.”
Mister Tough-Guy.
He halted.
She looked up. Between the gate to the park and the fringe of the supermarket lot, a beefy, gray-haired security guard stood bent over, peering into a car, a frown on his face as he stared at the yapping terrier inside. Thank god he hadn’t been around to see Stein shaking the teen. The security guard straightened, looked their way and did a double-take at the sight of Stein. His wary gaze shifted from Stein to her, and then back to Stein, a fold between his brows deepening. “Everything okay here?”
At first she didn’t understand, was puzzled by the question. Why wouldn’t they be okay? Then she realized. He thought she was in danger. Why? Because Stein, so big-ass and scary looking, had swallowed her mitt in his enormous one, and no doubt still had an extremely pissy expression on his face, the sort that might make it easy for a security guard to mistake him for a minotaur hauling his virgin sacrifice off to a quiet place to eat.
“I’m fine,” she muttered, glancing at Stein. His lips looked hemmed, tightly stitched together into a pale thin line. He’d just been indirectly asked if he was planning a spot of domestic abuse. He was not having a good day. Even as she admired the control he exerted to keep walking, to keep his mouth firmly shut, to not utterly lose his shit, she wondered what it cost him, and wondered if that sort of control might make a man want to play with the boundaries of losing it and not losing it, and having others at his mercy—restrained—instead of the other way around.
Chapter Ten
As she unlocked the door to her apartment, the scene in the supermarket car park still ran through her mind. It puzzled her. Stein had lost his shit with the teenagers and while that should have made her feel unsafe, knowing that he could be physically violent, it hadn’t. Instead she’d felt protected. But at the same time worried, worried for him, worried about what might happen to him if he went around roughing up every asshole who looked at her the wrong way. That would be a screaming, high-speed luge ride to disaster. Because one day, some police officer, or even just a car park security guard or an overly concerned citizen, might overreact—if observing that Stein’s size and strength were scary as fuck could be called an overreaction.
As she stepped into the lounge, the flashing red light on her answering machine leapt out at her, an out of place, unwanted intrusion. Unless it was Stein?
She pressed the ‘play’ button.
“You stupid bitch. I know you’re fucking my boyfriend.”
Holly froze as a cold tide of anxiety swelled in her chest, filling her heart to bursting point. Goosebumps pricked her skin. Luisa. How in hell had the creepy bitch got hold of her phone number?
The message played on without her hearing it and she had to play it again. Luisa’s voice carried a heavy Spanish accent but she spoke slowly and clearly. Very clearly.
“If he’s fucking you, it’s so he can get back at me. I hope you didn’t feel special in any way. Just so you know, he’ll fuck anything with a hole, especially if he can tie it up. Ask any of the women who replied to his online ad. Oh, yes, there were several, I’m just one of them. Must be hard for him to set up a date, wondering whether he’ll have time to wipe his dick clean from the previous date. Sorry to ruin your day—Holly.”
Click.
Her heart contracted painfully. Stein hadn’t lied to her. He’d told her about the online ads, the hook ups. But Luisa was right, she was one of many. And though she kept telling herself that it didn’t bother her, it didn’t exactly sit comfortably with her either.
Give it time, she told herself. Don’t panic.
She deleted the message and went to sit on her couch to untangle her thoughts and feelings. Stein fascinated her, both sexually and intellectually, that much she knew. She wasn’t into his kink, just him and his body, and his disconcerting directness all wrapped up with his quiet sense of humor. But Luisa sounded, oh, well, just a little bit fucking crazy. Was there the slightest chance Stein’s creepy, unbalanced ex might come after her? Yeah, there was probably a real good chance.
Shit.
This was the price she paid for reconnecting with the messy lives of others.
She grabbed her phone, punched the redial button. With each repeat of the ring tone her anger grew. The sound of Stein’s answering machine message pissed her off even further. “Stein, Holly here. Your stalky ex-girlfriend Luisa left a nice message on my home answering machine. I’m hoping she draws the line at severed horse heads in my bed. Ciao.”
She hung up and stood looking at the phone. Should she leave it off the hook so neither Luisa nor Stein could call back? Or, better yet, toss the thing in the bin so no one could ever call her again?
Hell, yeah, she liked that idea. With gleeful hands she yanked the cord out of the socket along with the phone cable and carried the phone and its cradle to the kitchen bin. She lifted the lid, let the phone drop from a good height, and smiled at the hollow thud as it hit the bottom. Damn that felt good, even if she knew she’d probably retrieve it later. Fucking phone. Fucking people. They could all go to hell.
Some of the pounding in her head eased. She hadn’t noticed the pain until it backed off. She searched her kitchen drawer for headache tablets. No doubt the psychologist she’d once seen would say she was in a ‘state of arousal’. Dear Lord that man had been a dick, in fact, he’d been a whole bag of them. He’d stared at the scars on her neck like they would sprout daisies if he kept watch on them. She’d seen him on referral from her GP, and had quickly worked out how much she disliked psychologists. If that was the health profession’s idea of help, then she’d do without. She had her own ‘coping portfolio’ and it involved a six-pack of beer, a large bag of salt and vinegar crisps, a pack of double chocolate coated Tim Tam biscuits, and a season of Once Upon a Time. True, some of the plots left a little to be desired, but Captain Hook was sex on legs, and she knew she could always rely on the main character, Emma, to kick ass.
She hauled the six-pack from the fridge and dumped it on the lounge table, nabbed the crisps and the biscuits from her kitchen cupboard and dug her backside deep into her couch in preparation for some serious junk food and beer therapy.
By episode three, the Tim Tam packet was empty, a row of dead soldiers lined her table, and mellowness had claimed her.
By episode five she was downright cheery. Halfway through episode six she passed out but was woken by a pounding on her door. She lurched into a sitting position and through her semi-conscious state registered chips falling from her T-shirt to the floor. Where was she? Home. Good. More pounding on her door. The room spun as she stared at the empty beer bottles and junk food packets on her lounge room table. What a mess. Should she answer?
Hell, no.
“Holly, I know you’re in there. I can hear your television. Open up.”
Stein. She pulled a face at the door. What did he want, Herr I’m-Marinating-In-Pussy Stein?
Another assault on her door rattled the whole apartment. “Holly!”
Damn it, he was going to break her door down with his monster fists and she couldn’t afford a new door. Muttering imprecations, she fought her way out of the sofa’s clingy embrace and stomped over. Her head pounded. Motor coordination blunted by six beers, she fumbled with the security chain and deadlock and was struck by sudden empathy for drunk men who had to try to unhook a bra.
She flung the door open.
Slightly unsteady on her feet, she leaned against the doorframe as she glared up at Stein. “What?” Goddamn if she wasn’t going to need a chiropractor the way she had to keep looking up at him all the time.
He eyed her for what seemed an eternity. “You have chips in your hair.”
“Yes, salt and vinegar flabor. Flavor.” She belched as she fluffed her hair to shake them out. “‘Scuse me.”
His eyes narrowed. “And your fly is undone.”
She looked down at her jeans, at the V of yellow underwear peeking out. “Yes, that’s true. I was making myself comfortable.”
There was a pause as their eyes met and he seemed to wait, as if expecting something, then simply shook his head. “May I come in?”
“Sure.” She peeled herself off the doorframe and by the time she remembered she didn’t want to talk to him he was closing the door behind him. Shit. She narrowed her eyes at him. He looked out of place in her apartment, made the ceilings look lower and the furniture smaller. Which was fine because he wouldn’t be staying long. He glanced around the room and she briefly wondered what he took away from the minimal furniture and absence of decoration. And the table covered in beer bottles.
He looked from the bottles to her. “Are you on a bender?”
She glared at him. “Yeah, and you’re interrupting it.”
He looked momentarily taken aback before shrugging. “Too bad. I tried to call you back but your phone wasn’t working.” His gaze skipped around the room and stopped on the empty phone socket. “Did something happen here?”
She waved her hand at the empty space on the wall. “Yeah, I threw that thing in the bin. Piece of shit can stay there, too.”
He opened his mouth then shut it again. “You said Luisa left a message on your machine. Did she threaten you?”
She made a moue of distaste. “No, she’s just mad because she thinks I’m fucking you. Which I am. Even though I don’t do relationships because they all lead to trouble. Which leads me to a very important point, much as I enjoy riding you like a pony—”
