When she’d finished her story, the clerk’s eyes had gone from stormy to a total cyclone of rage. The muscles along his jaws looked like he could chew bullets, and Jill noticed his fists clenching and unclenching at his side. ‘Sounds like the bastard deserved what he got and then some,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.’
‘Well, I did. And now I’m unemployed.’ When she started to order another shot, he laid his hand on hers.
‘Don’t do that.’ He held her gaze, and the feeling wasn’t unlike looking over the cliffs into a raging sea. ‘Since you can’t afford to pay for the boots, I see no other option but to have you work off your debt, and you can’t work off your debt if you’re drunk.’
She blinked. ‘But I don’t know anything about selling shoes.’
Ignoring the fair-sized crowd of early lunchers and the press of loiterers at the bar, the clerk tilted her chin with the curve of a finger and brushed a tease of a kiss against her lips. Even though it was barely there, no part of her anatomy missed the flick of his tongue. When he pulled away, still holding her gaze, they were both breathing noticeably harder. She was suddenly aware of just how trimly the T-shirt with the electric-blue Kinky Boots logo fitted across his chest. ‘Though it wouldn’t be that hard to train you to work in the shop, what I had in mind is something that I hope you don’t need any training for.’
‘Oh. Oh!’ There was something delightful, refreshing, regenerating in the fact that he wanted her still, even in the naked light of day, even with her miserable confession of unemployment. She responded by kissing him back, by answering his tongue with a flick of her own, by brazenly resting a hand high on his thigh. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I don’t get out much.’
‘I like women who don’t get out much. That means they’re focused on things that matter to them, and I like that a lot.’
‘Vivie calls that clueless,’ she said breathlessly.
‘I’m not Vivie, am I?’ This time the kiss included an embrace that jostled the drinkers at the bar next to them and nearly pulled her off her feet. He placed a warm hand against her bare skin, beneath the jacket and under the edge of her blouse. This time there was more than just a flick of the tongue, much more. And Jesus, did the man ever know what to do with his tongue!
Still ploughing her mouth like he expected to find hidden treasure, he fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a tenner and slapped it down on the bar. Then he pulled away for breath. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here.’
They were only a few blocks from Kinky Boots, but it seemed too far. He barely had her out of the door before he crushed her to his chest and ravaged her mouth again, this time running both hands up under the back of her blouse, then down to cup her bottom and haul her up onto her toes until she could feel the rake of his growing hard-on against her pubic bone. He pulled away gasping, grabbed her hand and dragged her at a breakneck pace down Shoreditch High Street toward Kinky Boots. ‘We’d better hurry,’ he said. ‘This time I don’t intend to come in my pants, and I certainly don’t intend for you to.’
Jesus, the man was talking dirty to her right out in the middle of the busy street. ‘You’re taking me back to the shop?’ She balked. ‘We’re going to do it in a shoe store? On Saturday afternoon?’
He pulled her close and gave her another hard, quick kiss. ‘Shop’s closed. I’m taking you to my place.’
They rushed and pushed their way through the Saturday-afternoon shoppers and strollers. She was just barely able to contain the urge to elbow and stiff-arm people out of their way to clear a path when, at last, he led her through a maze of alleys to the back of a building. He unlocked the door and practically thrust her inside with his lips and tongue. One hand slammed the door behind them while the other shimmied the jacket off her shoulders onto the kitchen floor and made quick work of the buttons of her blouse before nimbly dispatching the hooks of her bra. That done, he gave a desperate kneading squeeze to each breast and a hard suckling kiss to each nipple, making her wet her knickers with delight before he returned his attention to her mouth.
‘I dreamed about you last night,’ he said, shoving her skirt up over her hips. ‘I was trying to find you so we could finish what we started.’
‘Me too. I dreamed about you.’ She fumbled with his jeans, in an inelegant effort to free his cock, but he pushed her hand away impatiently. She watched in fascinated arousal as he unbuttoned and unzipped with one hand and, glory hallelujah, if the man wasn’t commando! The swell of him spilled anxiously into his hand, ridged and weighty against the press of his balls and the pillow of dark russet curls beneath.
He rested one hand on his erection, almost like he needed to control it, almost like he were afraid it might get away from him. The other hand slipped aside the crotch of her panties. She thrust her hips forward and gave a little jerk of a gasp, banging her head against the wall at the startling pleasure of him parting the swell of her with two fingers. Then she yielded to his probing.
‘Careful,’ he said. ‘I don’t fuck the unconscious.’ Then he let out a low whistle. ‘Jesus, woman, you’re so slick and soft. Once I’m inside you, I may never want to come out.’
‘Once you’re inside me I may never let you out.’ She reached for his cock. ‘Do it. I need you to do it. Now.’
Cupping his hands beneath her bottom, he lifted her as though she were weightless then pressed her back into the wall so she could shift her hips to open for his cock, so she could have the leverage to bear down and thrust back once he was inside her.
The power of his first thrust left her breathless. The girth of him felt as though it was forcibly spreading her hipbones apart. And when she was certain he’d rammed himself all the way up until he could touch the beating of her heart, he gave a soft grunt and held himself there, deep and tight, while she gripped and suckled and slicked herself down there, down between her thighs, in the painful pleasure of being so full, in the delicious effort to accommodate.
Then slowly, very slowly he began to withdraw, with her body grasping desperately as though it were making an effort to hold him there. All the way, he withdrew all the way, and they both cried out as though something had been ripped from them. Her throat ached from a growl that was barely human, and her body felt fevered and raw and so sensitive that she feared even a touch would abrade skin and bone. And yet she longed for so much more than just a touch. She could smell his animal-dark heat mixing with her own wet summer scent, making her wild with the want of him. Then he slid two fingers inside her and circled her clit with his thumb, never touching the rest of her, only circling, so close that she held her breath anticipating his conquest. All the while his dark seawater gaze was fixed on her face.
‘I love that you’re so wet,’ he said nipping her throat just below her ear. ‘I love that you’re so ready for me.’
He held her there suspended, her legs still wrapped around him, her back still pressed tightly to the wall. The tip of his erection was almost but not quite touching her pout. It jostled and bounced while his fingers circled and probed and dipped until her clit felt like a small, hard mountain raised up by the circumnavigations of his thumb.
Just when she was certain she could no longer stand the heat, the sheer delicious friction of it, he thrust back into her. Hard! Fire shot up her spine and the buzzing returned to her ears, that same buzzing she’d had when she’d confronted her boss. She felt everything, every single pore of the clerk’s skin where it touched hers, every hair follicle, every undulation of muscle, every sweep of breath. As the thrusting grew to a frenzy, he
