Bass-Ackwards Read online

  Her clit was under her fingers. On some level of awareness, there were sensations Christina knew as good, but nerves and disbelief kept the bulk of those drowned right out. The motions came by rote: massage in circles, spread wetness, press, roll, pinch, repeat.

  Aside from the rise and fall of his chest she could see from those few feet away, Bill stood stoic, arms still crossed, unresponsive to her efforts.

  Well. Not entirely unresponsive. There was no mistaking the length ridging the front of his jeans.

  She was more familiar with that length now than she’d care to admit.

  Every hole, Christina Lee.

  A small noise whined up from her throat and her eyes fluttered shut. The hiss from her boss brought them flying open again, only to find him pushing his palms down his thighs, the efforts at self-restraint clear.

  Good. She brought her toying hand up and across her body to cup and squeeze the opposite breast. When she thumbed the nipple, was he even aware of the way he mimicked the movement at his side? The way his Adam’s apple moved when she pinched the pink little tip? By the time she brought the active hand to her mouth to take in her own two fingers the same way she’d swallowed his, Bill had uncrossed his ankles and was headed her way.

  Here we go.

  Except he wasn’t. A change in stance was all he’d been after, and a passing hand adjusted his bulge. Christina’s eyes narrowed. Wet fingers slid back between her thighs. Her hips tilted as she sank one home. Paired it with its twin to churn the two in and out at at what she hoped was a seductive pace.

  Bill stared and a flush of heat spread over her chest. Arousal or irritation? Christina couldn’t tell. She took the effort back to her clit, genuine sounds of pleasure the next weapon in her arsenal as her fingers moved to entice. They moved. They moved and moved and moved.

  And Bill did not.

  The fuck?

  There had to be something she wasn’t getting. Christina had zero talent for dirty talk, but did her best to drop her voice down to somewhere that might sound smoky. She watched the lazy plunge of her fingers while she spoke.

  “Is this what you want, Bill?”

  “Yeah, it is.” His words came hoarse and Christina couldn’t help a smirk. She had him.

  “For how much longer?”

  He’d be inside her in thirty seconds.

  “Until you’re finished.”

  Her eyes snapped up to his. Movements stopped in mid-stroke. She blinked at him.

  Bill gave her a slow nod. “Finish.” The enunciation made it a command. “Show me.”

  Christina pulsed around her own knuckles. Her heart jerked in her chest. Way in over her head: that’s where she was now. When he talked to her like that, she … she wanted to grovel. Wanted to crawl and abase herself, wanted to lay her cheek to the side over folded arms on the ground and push her ass up in the air for whatever he wanted.

  It was way too much, and her wrist moved again, almost of its own will. Fingertips sought those sensitive places for a different reason. Not for a show. Not for bait.

  For Bill. Because he wanted it.

  She let out a shuddering sigh as the weight of it all settled on her shoulders.

  Fine. This is where you’re at right now. Own it.

  Her ring finger slid to join the other two, the wet mess between her legs slipping and stretching to fit. Bill’s hand had moved to cup his erection, and Christina knew what would fill her better than any fingers.

  Her teeth caught her lower lip as she fucked in and out. Eyes closed, pussy swallowing down three-fifths of her own hand, the mounts of her palm grinding at her clit in tandem. Her boss made some tortured noise, but she couldn’t look. The best view was on the backs of her eyelids where her mind kept the idea on loop: he had her pushed back on the workbench, one leg over his forearm, held open for the cock he fed up into her cunt. He took it slow, for as long as he wanted, no matter how close she came, or whined, or begged.

  The scuff of a bootstep made Christina twitch, but it was too late now. Everything was swollen, throbbing, tumbling toward release.

  Warmth brushed her dangling thigh and her mouth fell open, all defenses gone against whatever was coming next. She opened her eyes and Bill loomed, his gaze electric. That grip was in her hair again, holding her where he chose with a fist.

  It was all unstoppable now. Need took over and the fingers stuffing her hole rose to ravage her clit. Speed and slick friction, an eye-crossing contrast, catalyzed to break her world. She choked on nothing, unable to look away, and Bill was the last, volatile element.

  “Christina.” Knuckles ground at the base of her skull. “Come for me.”

  Her jaw snapped shut. A high-pitched noise rose to a squeal in the back of her throat.

  One.

  Here we go.

  Two.

  Oh god, oh fuck.

  Three, and Bill was inches from her face, somehow sucking it all out of her with dark eyes alone. Her pussy gaped in orgasm, milking at nothing while her clit screamed its release. Fingers twitched, jerking everything along, rolling whimpers pathetic even as her eyes opened wider to let in all the consequences.

  The rushing of blood subsided in her ears, and now there was silence in the shop. Silence and breathing. Hers. His. Neither steady. If Christina hadn’t known better, she’d say Bill was as dumbstruck as she was.

  He let go her hair, trailing his touch down her neck as he went. She held down a shiver and wanted to smack herself for it. Her foot slid off the stool and the hem of her dress dropped over a knee. A tumble of wrists and elbows had her bra and top back in place. More or less.

  Her boss wasn’t smiling, but something hard had abandoned the set of his jaw. He took a step back, making room for her to ease down off the bench and onto her feet. Red fabric fell the rest of the way to her ankles. Between her legs, a warm buzz, and her ears, the white noise of confusion.

  Bill was no place to look for answers. His face might have had questions written on it, himself, if she could even see that well in the last of the light. He stepped close. Reached down and took her hand.

  Wadded a pair of panties into it.

  She was too stupid just then to react, so he closed her fingers around the cloth. Let go her curled fist a few long seconds later.

  “Your shift’s been over for at least half an hour, Dodd.” His words were quiet, the slightest affect in delivery, as though he spoke in a code. “Oughta go home. Enjoy your day off tomorrow.”

  It would have taken her too long to know what to say, anyway. By the time she’d swallowed to wet her throat again, he’d already brushed her arm with his on the way back out of the shop. Unless she wanted to stand here in the dark, there was nothing else she could do.

  Christina pulled on her underwear, closed the shop door behind her, and rode on one newly-inflated tire all the way back to her trailer, all on the wings of a single, obliterating thought.

  What the fuck. Did I just do.

  ✪

  Christina’s Bronco wasn’t done crunching out of the lot before Bill ground his teeth and spurt cum over his knuckles and into the bathroom sink. His other hand braced his weight against the wall, and the last of his breath hissed under tight control from a clenched jaw.

  It was about the only thing he had under control, at that point.

  Bill let his heartbeat simmer and took advantage of paper towels and running water to clean up, to tuck everything back in his pants. As far as Jonah knew from the front counter, his boss was just back there taking a piss and washing his hands.

  It had taken every ounce of his discipline out in the shop. The fact that he’d confined himself to a friendly hand on the outside of his jeans was a minor miracle. Forget what he’d asked her to do. As soon as she’d started to follow through, he was done. Everything inside him screaming, Just take it! You see her face! She wants what you want!

  But, oh, the self-restraint had been worth it.

  Something shuddered in his chest as Bill splashed a
final round of water on his face and dragged the wet hand through his hair. The sounds she’d made. Come for me. Ri-goddamn-diculous, to say something like that, but the widening of her eyes, the savagery of her hand …

  Hell, even those times she’d said his name when he was touching her. Bill didn’t even particularly like his name, but when it came from her mouth, an exclamation of want, it was almost more than he could handle.

  Christina Lee Dodd was a fucking drug, and they did not make rehab for addictions like this.

  What the fuck have you started, Marshall? How do you think this is gonna end?

  He’d want more and more, that was for sure. And what else could he have, without some serious disruption to his business? Jonah and Travis couldn’t find out. He could just hear it now: ‘Christina only got that holiday off because she’s banging Bill.’

  He frowned as he closed the door to the bathroom behind him and stood, restless, in the back half.

  ‘Banging.’ The term would be hot, he guessed, if he was talking about some random piece of ass. Let someone else call what he and Christina were doing ‘banging’, though? He’d knock their fuckin’ teeth in.

  This here is a level of trouble you ain’t prepared to deal with.

  None of these were good signs. What was going to happen when somebody else came into the picture?

  Bill was only partway aware of his fingers curling into fists as he traveled this line of thought. Their little pay-for-play arrangement was one thing, but what would happen when some guy came along throwing his hat in the ring as an actual boyfriend? She wasn’t going to keep her boss on as some sort of side dick. Not if someone volunteered to treat her like a human being.

  And he didn’t want to be that guy. Clamoring for attention from the sidelines.

  Then what guy do you want to be?

  No. There was no answering that question. Not without the complete destruction of his fantasy world. You know, the one he shouldn’t have been building in the first place.

  The fog of Bill’s gaze came into focus on one of the chairs tucked under the folding table where his employees ate lunch. His brain, the drunken architect who’d gotten them into this mess, was already erecting new rooms at haphazard angles, blithely refusing to look back at the structures crumbling in its wake.

  There were no shitty futures, only impossible glinting moments. The things he wanted grew smaller and smaller by turns, their pressure and delicacy straining toward limits. Bill was going to grasp at them anyway, he already knew. Even when his clumsy grip would do no better than crush.

  There wasn’t going to be a lick of common sense when it came to Christina Lee. He could see every sign along the way, none of them good, while he raced past, cackling, accelerator jammed to the floor and brakes shot somewhere back where the pavement ended.

  The question was, would she go with him?

  Eggs.

  Eggs everywhere. The roll-up doors of box trucks. The front window of the office.

  And toilet paper. All along the fence line. Strewn out onto the gravel like damp party noisemakers, fully unfurled.

  Christina stood with her fists on her hips, several feet away from a similarly arrayed Bill, assessing the damage. Well. Not damage, so much as the level of pain-in-the-assery this was all going to be to clean up.

  A yellow mutt snuffled along the shady west side of the office, and her boss shook his head. “Figures. Day I decide to bring the dog to work again, and we got this.”

  Bill’s phone rang and he hauled it out of a pants pocket.

  “Yeah.”

  Christina squinted in his direction, into the morning light, then moved off toward the trucks, her focus on something odd near the base of a tire. She could hear Bill grumbling some reply to whoever was on the line before he hung up.

  “That was Dawn from the gas station,” he said, taking a few steps closer to make himself heard. “Said they got it there, too. Couple more places right here along the highway. Fuckin’ buncha teenagers out after Prom, what she thinks.”

  She bent down and cocked her head at the mottled circle on the ground. “Is this a tortilla?”

  Bill snorted from a couple paces behind her. “ ‘S what it looks like.” The tinkle of dog tags came toward them.

  “Weird.” She stood, shaking her head.

  “Well,” he said, surveying the lot, “it’s just us, and we gotta get this shit cleaned up. Eggs’ll ruin the paint on the trucks if we leave ‘em.” He sighed. It wasn’t what anyone planned to do when they showed up at work, of a morning. Daisy came to lean against his leg, tail flapping in every direction. An absentminded hand dropped to scratch the furry head. “Guess we can just leave the front door open. Phone rings, one of us’ll hear it.”

  Christina made a grim face and looked down at her bare knees. A grinning dog face materialized, wanting pets from her, too. She worried a tawny ear between fingers.

  “How far’s your house from here?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I mean, uh …” Bill scratched the back of his neck. “You want to go home and put on some pants? Probably not the best for me to have us out here gettin’ filthy while you got a skirt on.”

  Never stopped him before.

  Christina had to slap herself into gear after such a reasonable offer out of nowhere. “I … think I might have something in the truck.” She eyed the Bronco. “Let me go see.”

  The dog moved off to sniff around truck tires, tanked up on human approval for at least the next ten minutes.

  Sure enough, a pair of gray track pants waited inside a grocery bag she’d thrown in the back of the Bronco a few weeks ago. She’d taken them as a change of clothes after working on her granddad’s place, but never bothered to use them once the time came. They’d work.

  “I got something,” she called, hoisting the bag as she backed out of the truck. “I’ll go change.”

  “All right,” Bill said to her back as she headed into the office.

  That weird feeling of excitement rode with her on her way to the tiny bathroom. The one where something different was happening at work and, even though it might be an inconvenience, there was still something fun about it. Like figuring out how to take credit card payments when a lightning storm took out the power for a while. Or that sort of battle-prep panic when you realize everyone other than you has called out sick. They were going to do something different today, and who knew what could happen?

  The door closed behind her, and Christina shook the track pants loose out of the bag. Laid them across the sink and started wiggling out of her skirt.

  More, everything took on new meaning since this whole situation with Bill. Before, changing clothes in the back would have been nothing to even think about. Now? There was the thought that he knew she was back here. Knew she was tugging her skirt down past her hips.

  He would’ve known that before!

  Yes, but now there was a spotlight pointed at it, wasn’t there? Asshole Bill knew things now, about what sort of business went on beneath her clothes. Knew what she looked like, what she felt like.

  Christ, you’re a train wreck.

  Christina yanked on the pants and cinched the drawstring tight. The skirt traded places, stuffed inside the plastic bag, and she barged her way back out of the office in a huff.

  It was time to get to work and stop worrying about Bill Fucking Marshall.

  When she came back outside, he was pulling one of the eggy box trucks onto the driveway in front of the shop. After throwing her unneeded skirt on the front seat of the Bronco, Christina hiked over to meet Bill as he was getting out of the cab. Daisy trotted around the lot on perpetual fly-by, attending to the important canine business of the day, whatever that was.

  “Hose won’t reach out to the fence line,” said Bill, “so I’m gonna pull the trucks they hit up this way. If you could spray ‘em down, and then we’ll see if any little pieces are left dried on there.”

  “And if they are?” Christina headed toward
the hose on the side of the shop.

  “Brake fluid. It’ll take it right off.”

  “For real?”

  He grunted some reply, heading back to the front of the lot for another truck. She shrugged and started uncoiling hose, making a face at the amount of spider webs that came snapping apart as she did.

  Just as Bill parked the second truck, the phone inside started up.

  “I’ll get it.” He waved her off, climbing out of the cab. “Just do what you’re doing.”

  Christina shrugged and started blasting away yolks. If he wanted to play office bitch in her stead, let him.

  The morning ticked away, sun rising over the office until she went from warm to hot. The novelty of outdoor work was not altogether unpleasant, not compared to navigating stacks of newspapers and what-all-else at her granddad’s.

  Then it was brake fluid time.

  “Here.” Bill covered the open mouth of the yellow bottle with a red shop rag and upended the whole mess. Then righted it and handed her the rag. “Once you get what’s left of the egg off, though, you gotta wash off the brake fluid with soap. It’ll eat the paint just as bad as the egg, you leave it sit on there.”

  “Fire with fire, eh?”

  He made some noise that was almost a laugh. “Yeah. I’ll go get some soap in a bucket for you.”

  So now Christina was massaging brake fluid into the side of a cargo box, an orange bucket of sudsy water at her feet, while Bill did something that involved a lot of clanking in the back of the shop.

  She didn’t know what he was doing because she refused to look. Nope. No way. Not back in there where the workbench was. Not where that sneaky snake had teased her out of her panties and talked her into some exhibitionist shit she’d never imagined in a thousand years.

  Finish. Show me.

  Christina muttered a curse at the circling rag as her boss moved past with a ladder balanced on his shoulder.

  “You all right?” he asked on his way by.

  “Yeah.” She bent to switch the brake fluid rag for the soapy one.

  Like hell, you are.

  His words had been rattling around in her head, violating the safety of her two days off without him even having to be there. Whose fault was it when her pulse leapt earlier? When he’d pointed out they’d be the only two working today?