Where She Belongs (The Forever Collection Book 1) (5 page)

Her flavor sears into my soul, marking me as I mark her. My fingers settle on the back of her neck, feeling the warmth grow as I let out a low groan and pull back from her sweet taste, staring down to see her reaction.

“Was that part of the interview?” Her matter of fact question has me reeling.

“No. You’re already hired. That was something else.”

The look of shock, the thrill in her face is almost more than I can take. There is an ache in my balls that I’ve never felt before. They want to empty into her until the whole world knows whom she belongs to.

“Great! So what time do I need to be here and what time will I get off work? I need to check the bus schedule.”

It’s hard to believe a girl like her takes the bus, but before I can decide what my next move is, there’s a knock on the door.

“Go away,” I grunt, as I drop my hands from her.

My eyes are still pinned on May as her fingers come up to dance on her still open lips and her eyes drag toward the door. She scoots one foot slightly forward and back, tapping it, and I swear her eyes are glowing.

“It’s Cindy.” A voice cuts through the solid steel door.

Fuck.

Cindy is one of the managers here. She’s also sort of the den mother who takes care of a lot of the girls when they are having problems. She came up through one of my first clubs. Before I took her in she was addicted to crack, turning tricks just to get the cash. I took her off the street and now she is in charge of nearly forty girls, and she keeps the wheels turning around here.

“Come in,” I grumble, pissed off that someone is bothering me in my office without calling first and interrupting this . . .
this
what? I shake my head. This defining fucking moment in the lives of me and my May.

My May? I’m fucking gone over this little thing and I don’t even know her last name.

I hear the soft beeps of the code lock. Cindy has her own entry code, but she knows never to come in without knocking. Like I said, I don’t like people coming to my office, so I’m surprised as fuck that she’s knocking my door down right now. It must be important though, so I pause and look up when she comes in.

“Excuse me, May. This will only take a moment. Why don’t you have a seat?” I point to one of the plush, cream-velvet chairs in front of my new desk. She lets out this little peep of agreement as she turns and tosses her jacket over the back of one of the chairs. It looks smooth until she misses and it crumples to the floor with a little
psfffft
sound. She leaves it there, sits down in the other chair, and points her toes together, settling her hands in her lap, and I swear she’s humming Rick James’ “Super Freak”.

May

W
ow. I keep saying that word over and over.

But wow.

Wow.

Wow.

This place is
not
what I expected. At all.

But I can’t even concentrate on the place. Or the job.

This guy.
Man
.

He’s a man. I mean, yeah, obviously I’ve been around
men
before. But this guy . . . he’s a
man
.

He’s a tower looming over me, with dark, close-cropped hair and eyes that make me think of blue raspberry lollipops. Except, they have power. When he looks at me there is a twinge in my belly. Something that tells me things I didn’t know about myself. Things I think he knows about me already. But how could that be?

Something inside me is saying that love may be something more, something bigger than I’d ever thought before.

Wow. I’m thinking about
love
?

I don’t know what it feels like to be in love. I’m engaged. And I suppose I just figured love was something that grew between two people after they’d been together a long time. Like Mom and Dad.

Mom told me once that when her family told her she was getting married, she hadn’t even met my father. It was all arranged; that’s just how it’s been done in my family for generations. She also said it took a while, but they grew to love each other. And I know that’s true because we saw it–me and Leah–we were lucky enough to experience that love between them in the short time we had with them.

Deep down I’d hoped that would occur between me and Victor too. That I would develop some sort of pleasant feelings for him. At least something.

Over time.

The only feeling I’ve managed so far is a morbid curiosity. And a little bit of petulance too, since whenever we are in the room together, the only thing he does is look down at his phone and grunt occasionally when Simon asks him a question. He isn’t off-putting in his looks. He’s lean, usually dressed in a dark silk suit or a pair of those men’s jeans with rhinestones on the back pockets. That seems odd to me; they look like some whacko bedazzler went nuts on his behind.

But, something is happening here with this Decker person.

Man.

He’s a complete stranger, but when he kissed me, it felt so dang good. I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. It felt right and I want him to do it more. But that woman knocked on the door and stopped all that. And now I’m just wondering how I can get it back again—how I can convince him to kiss me again.

I know that’s wrong. I need this job. And I am not entirely sure if maybe he just kisses all the girls that work here, like it’s some sort of package deal.

That thought makes my heart crush and shatter. And that is so weird. Why would I be jealous of a man I don’t even know?

There is a problem with my panties too. I’ve never had
that
reaction to anyone before. I’ve never been touched like that, nor even kissed, and I hope like heck there isn’t something wrong with me. Anything I know about sex I’ve learned from Leah, and that’s not much because she doesn’t know very much either.

She said Mom had one talk with her, but then there was the accident, and since then it was all just speculation really. And a few books that had naughty bits in them. She said when Mom talked to her, it was mostly about “that time” of the month and the practicalities of how babies are made.

I’ll admit, I’ve slipped my fingers into myself a few times. There’s this wanting, but I could never satisfy it. Leah said there are orgasms. Something that I guess feels really, really good, but I’m not sure I’ve had one because when I’ve played with myself it felt nice, but it wasn’t like
mind blowing
or anything. Maybe my expectations are off, since both Leah and I have no experience.

But right now, when he kissed me, something definitely felt mind blowing . . . and the dampness that’s growing between my legs, soaking my panties and making them stick to me, seems to be directly related to Decker and that kiss.

And the other thing. He’s older than me. A lot. And I
like
it.

A lot.

“I . . . I needed—” The blonde girl is stuttering. She keeps looking over at me with a bit of curiosity. “A signature.” Her look makes me shift in my chair, and pull my arms around myself. I suppose she’s wondering what a girl like me would have to offer a place like this . . .

She looks like Leah. Ready for the runway, a body straight out of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, only with a splash of hard knocks thrown in. Her hair is a bit more Dolly Parton than Leah would go for, and her make-up is a coat or two past the natural look, but she’s clearly beautiful. Suddenly I’m trying to tug the hem of my skirt lower and wondering what the hell I was thinking coming here.

“A signature on what?” Decker clips the words like they taste bad, and I watch as he runs a hand over his head, back and forth. I can see each indent and movement of his arm muscles under his skin.

The tingle between my legs turns to a throb. I’m sure a man that looks like that has his choice of any of these girls every night of the week. I sneak a full on glance at him from my place in the chair, impressed by the way his shoulders fill out the back of his jacket. Physically speaking, he’s a mountain up top, wide and immovable, but lower down he’s built like a runner.

Cindy’s voice is shrill and I involuntarily roll my eyes when he looks over at me again, then Decker looks at me, runs his tongue over his teeth and shakes his head.

“This . . .” He thrusts the stack of papers looking back at her “ . . . can wait until tomorrow. You know better than to knock on my door for this.” I like that he’s being straightforward without being rude, but you can tell from the sheepish look on Cindy’s face, she did know better.

Maybe she’s his squeeze. Like his regular girl and she is checking out the new kid. Maybe, this is like his own private harem and she’s the lead concubine.

That thought twists a knot inside me. My chest tightens thinking of Deck with all these other girls. A man like him surely keeps busy. He’s older, sure. The smallest bit of silver-grey hair decorates his temples, and it surprises me that I’m finding him so attractive. But even looking at that, he makes me feel light-headed and giddy.

“I’m sorry.” Cindy’s reply is measured. Polite, but with an edge, like a fox keeping its distance while the farmer is watching. “I just saw you come back down here and figured I could get it wrapped up tonight. I have to get payroll in early tomorrow and figured I could get this off my to-do list.” She clutches the papers to her chest and crosses her arms over them, darting her eyes toward me again.

“Here.” Decker says, holding his hand out for the stack of papers. Cindy holds them out along with a pen and he scratches his name on the top paper. “Tell anyone else if they knock on that door, there’d better be blood or cops involved.” Deck steps forward and opens the door. He doesn’t have to say anything else. She takes the cue and sashays her perfect size zero butt out with a defeated sigh.

I think about how stupid I must look compared to all the other girls here. It was quiet out in the bar, but I stood there long enough to see that I am not necessarily the ‘type’ they’re looking for. And some of the confidence I’d had while I strutted around in my bedroom to ’Super Freak’ is leaking out and settling around my feet in a defeated puddle.

“I’m sorry about that. No one usually comes in here. It’s sort of off limits. Unless you are in trouble.” Deck comes around to lean against the front of his massive, dark-wood desk. Everything in here is at annoying right angles to everything else and it’s so clean you could perform surgery.

“It’s okay.” I scan the room and find it cold. Unwelcoming. There are no soft touches anywhere, but my body is a furnace and I let out a stupid, nervous laugh at absolutely nothing. “Do you kiss all your employees? Even the guys?” The words just run out of my mouth like a locomotive. I’ve always had a problem with the usual order of things. I know you’re supposed to do the thinking first and the talking second, but it’s all just one process for me. And it’s managed to get me locked in the bathroom plenty of times over the years.

Simon, my guardian, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. His punishment of choice when I was growing up was to send me to my room, so that I’d be out of his sight. But when it got so I didn’t mind that, he took to putting me in my bathroom, locking me in there for hours on end.

Decker’s stern face explodes, lighting up with the kind of smile that I just don’t remember seeing before. Not on a man. Not in real life. Maybe in an ad in the newspaper, a kind of grin that looks so genuine and seems so infectious that it’s difficult to keep the smile off of my own face. But right now my body is reacting in its own way. Something throbs inside me, some organ I didn’t know I had before, somewhere in a deep part of me that might not have even existed before I met him.

“No. I don’t kiss them all.” His smile dims a bit but his blue-raspberry colored eyes sparkle with a life that has me feeling drugged. “In fact, I’ve never kissed any of them before.” He stands and steps in front of me, his knees only inches from mine, and I draw in a breath that sounds more like a death rattle. Suddenly I hate how awkward I am, convinced that he will quickly realize that he’s making a mistake.

“Well, you should,” I blurt out, then desperately search for something less inane. “Because you are good at it.” I almost die right there. I just can’t seem to stop myself, and being around Deck is making it worse. “I wouldn’t mind if you did it again.”

I think it, and I speak it. It’s a curse.

His hand comes down and picks one of mine from my lap like a forbidden fruit. His touch is warm and reassuring, but it sends a pulse of energy up my arm and down into where my heart is about to explode all over these white walls, and for a second I imagine it looking like a blood spattered crime scene. My panties take another hit from the gush that is coming out of me.

He’s pulling me up and without another word I’m on my feet. The heat from his body washes over mine; I can feel him looking at me from above. I’m sure he must have done this a thousand times because there is a confidence rolling off of him that has me utterly helpless in his force field.

“Then I will. Because, May, you deserve to have everything you want. And if I can give it to you, all the better.”

With that he drops my hand. It falls limp, while his moves to pinch my chin, forcing me to look up at him. His eyes are like frozen fire, ice blue but burning into me, and something inside me clenches with such desire I nearly lose my balance. His mouth comes down to cover mine and my head falls back, letting him consume my lips with his.