Bass-Ackwards Read online

But he sure as shit didn’t want anyone else saying the kinds of things to her he wanted to say. Not if he could make her moan like that again.

  Bill got in the Ram and fired it up, checking the clock on the dash. He still had plenty of time to get ga—

  “Fuck!”

  The driver’s side door hung open while he cursed his way back into the house to get his wallet. On the outside of the cheap, brown leather, his own warning from two years ago in fading permanent marker reminded him, ‘If you buy cigarettes i will fucking kill you’. He stuffed the thing into his pants.

  You gotta calm down.

  ✪

  Another day, another skirt, another opportunity for a nervous breakdown at the Haul Ash.

  They closed earlier on Sundays, so there was only one shift. Bill’s truck was already there when Christina pulled onto the lot. Jonah didn’t appear to be there yet, but she was ten minutes early.

  Purse on her shoulder and lunch in hand, she went for the door. Bill approached from the other side, keys jangling. She had her own set—they all did, in case someone needed to open or close the shop alone—but waited for him to twist open the lock. The door was never open to customers until the very minute indicated by the Business Hours sign hanging on the back side of the glass.

  “Morning,” he said holding open the door. It came almost a grumble, compressed into a single syllable.

  “Morning.”

  They made no eye contact. She heard the lock again behind her, to stay that way for an entire eight and a half more minutes until the official day started.

  Time clock. Purse under the counter. Lunch in the fridge. Asshole Boss sensors on high alert.

  When she came back into the front, Jonah’s Civic was rolling up, and Bill was sliding the stool away from the counter with a boot.

  “I’m gonna go get the shop opened up,” he said. “I left your paycheck under the keyboard.”

  He gave her his back and unlocked the front door for the day, just in time for Jonah to come shuffling into the building. “ ‘S ‘ere coffee?” the younger man said through a yawn.

  “No,” said Christina, fighting off the contagion. She lost and blamed him around a yawn of her own. “Dnocka-off.”

  He hit the time clock and then the door to the back half, the call of caffeine guiding his steps. Bill was already outside.

  The envelope holding her paycheck was a terrifying white rectangle under the front counter keyboard.

  Bill usually handed them out every other Friday, but she’d been off that day. She could’ve just driven down here and picked it up, but Christina was not going force herself to look at him on her day off. Not now, anyway.

  She flipped the envelope over in her hand and jammed her pinky under the corner of the sealed flap, tearing the paper with it in a crude pass. By the time she pulled out the perforated check and stub inside, her pulse was racing.

  It was not her normal paycheck.

  Christina looked up, eyes darting around as though just holding the thing would be enough to start trouble if she got caught.

  She checked the amount again.

  Fuck me.

  There it was. Her hourly rate inflated, just as much as he’d said. The black text tried to swim around on the white background of the stub, and she blinked, settling the numbers again. She mouthed the word ‘what’ as she squinted at the record.

  He’d made the raise retroactive to the beginning of the pay period, even though their ‘agreement’ had begun more than halfway through it. She snorted, tucking the check into her purse with a shake of her head.

  Part of her had never really believed he was going to do it. That part of her had spent the last few days cursing the rest of her for letting Asshole Bill start taking advantage of his side before she’d caught even a fleeting glance of hers. What would she have done if he’d just decided to screw her over? In more than one way at a time?

  But he hadn’t. He was good for his word. So far.

  Don’t you dare give him credit. He gets zero points. If this shit makes you a whore, then he’s the kind of guy who treats women like whores. He’s the one who made the offer in the first place.

  It didn’t matter, though. Christina could put whatever name she wanted on it. She could decide he was a bad guy or he wasn’t. Or that she was this or that thing for agreeing to it.

  What mattered was, she had the money. She could start making phone calls tomorrow. Getting some help. Her eyes closed and she sighed. Intangible weight tumbled from her shoulders.

  Gravel crunched outside and she looked up again to see a white Suburban rolling in off the highway. The top sheet of paper in the outbox told her they were probably here for the twelve footer.

  Time to get to work.

  ✪

  Sundays at the Haul Ash were either a ghost town or a madhouse. That day turned out to be the latter. Trucks and dollies came and went from the lot. Customers wanted more boxes than they ended up having in stock. The guys got overloaded in the shop. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. At least the credit card system was working again.

  And at least Bill was leaving her alone.

  Whether it was the nonstop parade of things to do or her boss was back to pretending everything was normal, Christina didn’t see him except in passing for the bulk of her shift.

  Not that it helped. Every time he needed something behind the counter, she was jumpy as a cat. He only spoke to her in short sentences, not one word more than he had to, but every one of them might as well have been, ‘Put your knee up on the sink’, for the way her gut reacted.

  It was too busy, right? He wasn’t going to just drag her back to the bathroom again, not with customers coming and going like this.

  Right?

  In a moment of relative calm, she’d slipped into the back half to wolf down her lunch. Even fifteen minutes with her face in her book had to count as some kind of escape.

  By the time she returned to the counter, the lull appeared to be holding. The front office was empty and Jonah had the printer opened up like a cadaver. He was pulling tiny shreds of accordioned paper out from between rollers and making a face.

  “Stupid thing jam again?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “you get down to the last couple pieces of paper and it wants to suck ‘em all in at once.” He pulled out a last wrinkled sheet. “There.”

  Christina hefted a new ream of paper out from under the counter and started peeling open the wrapping.

  “So, uh, Dodd,” Jonah said, slamming plastic hatches back into place, “what’s with all the dresses?”

  “What?” She handed him about a third of the stack of paper, and he slid it into the lower tray.

  “You been wearin’ nothin’ but dresses for like a week,” he said. “It’s weird.”

  Her eyes fell to the skirt she had on today: mostly orange with white and blue flowers all over it. It came to just above her knees. Her face, on the other hand, was hot and mostly red. She could feel it.

  “What? I can’t look like a girl if I want?”

  “I guess.” He shrugged, unconvinced.

  “I’m not out there slinging wrenches like you and Travis. I don’t have to wear pants all the time.”

  Could you sound any more defensive? Jeez.

  “Yeah, okay, shit,” he said, scooting the printer back in place. “Wear whatever you want, I’m just askin’. You usually wear jeans.” And without waiting for a response, added, “I’m gonna get some water.”

  He escaped into the back half and Christina grimaced.

  The other guys were bound to notice. She did wear jeans almost all the time. One of them would have said something sooner or later. She needed to get her reactions under control.

  Sunday afternoon offered one more avenue for her to ignore her problems: it was time to put together purchase orders to send out on Monday. The task was routine and tedious; just what she needed.

  They didn’t have much to restock other than some of the boxes, but she went through the
motions anyway. Pulling the inventory reports. Checking to see if they could order enough stuff to get the free shipping some of their suppliers offered. Once she had the whole two pos ready, all she needed was an approval from—

  The door to the back bumped open.

  —from Bill.

  He joined her behind the counter, and she couldn’t even look at him.

  That’s your boss, Christina, and you know what his dick feels like.

  There was a metallic clinking as she heard him return a set of keys to the board full of hooks on the back wall. She sat frozen on the stool, facing the computer, willing him to go somewhere, anywhere, else.

  Anywhere turned out to be two inches from her back.

  He didn’t touch her, but it didn’t matter. The narrow buffer of air between them warmed in an instant.

  “You stay after we lock up.”

  The words were quiet. From more than a couple steps away, no one else would have heard them.

  And he stood there. For maybe ten more seconds. It felt like two hours, and why? Did he expect some sort of acknowledgment? Was he just trying to make a statement? That he was the one with the power here?

  Yeah, I got it. Asshole.

  The door bumped closed again and he was gone. She let out the breath she’d been holding. The clock on the computer told her she had twenty more minutes.

  He wanted her there after closing. This wasn’t spontaneous; her boss had a plan.

  Great.

  Her normal end-of-day tasks came and went in a disjointed blur. She fumbled the roll of paper for the credit card machine onto the floor. The bag ripped when she was trying to empty the little wastebasket they kept under the counter. She kept putting in the wrong password for the scheduling software.

  When Jonah hit the time clock, she almost followed him. Habits meant safety, and by God, did she need some now. Bill coming in the front door just then and flipping the sign to ‘closed’ yanked her back to grim reality.

  “See you guys,” Jonah said. He was through the door, heading for his car.

  The lock to the front clacked shut. Bill turned to face her.

  … after we lock up.

  Christina swallowed.

  Why did he always look at her like that? Like he wanted to say something but made himself clamp down instead. Those eyes of his were dark with she-didn’t-know-what and his fists clenched and released.

  He stepped in her direction. Past her. Opened the door to the back and held it.

  “Come on.”

  Fuck. You don’t have to. Just leave. Don’t come back.

  That paycheck sat in her purse, though.

  Fuck!

  Christina stood. Followed.

  He didn’t stop once they entered the back half, though. The second door swung open to birdsong and highway noise.

  “Outside.” His head jerked toward the exit.

  Her mouth came open, but he was serious. She suppressed a whine and went.

  It was close enough to summer now that daylight still had its say at six o’clock. Shadows hung purple, but the western walls of buildings and trees would be warm and gold a while longer.

  Her boss led her around to the back of the main office. A concrete pad extended maybe a yard from the foundation and ran the length of the building. The ac unit sat out there, along with some discarded truck parts that leaned against the back wall. An axle, a front bumper. Something round with a jumble of wires sticking out of it.

  There was also a pair of green plastic chairs.

  Presumably they were for employees who smoked, but she hadn’t seen anyone use them aside from Bill, and that had only been right when she’d started working there. He’d either quit, or just didn’t do it at work anymore.

  His clothes don’t smell like smoke.

  Christina made and quickly concealed a face at having been close enough to him to know a thing like that, now.

  He took one of the chairs and sat, his back almost up against the building. Her legs halted her a couple yards away, refusing to go any further without a command. The man wanted an hour a week? Fine. But she wasn’t going to go jumping to it.

  He was untucking his shirt. His hands worked open the top button of his pants. When they dropped to his thighs, he looked over at her. Expectant.

  Ten thousand worries exploded and started fluttering around in her head. Why not just snag one and blurt?

  “I don’t think that chair’s gonna hold both of us, Bill.”

  It might have been giddy imagination, but she could almost believe she saw the corner of his mouth turn up in a smile.

  “It doesn’t need to hold both of us.”

  She started to cock her head, but then her stomach dropped.

  No.

  His gaze swept her from top to bottom, and he settled back into the chair, knees sprawled wide.

  “Go on.”

  “Seriously?” she said. “Out here?” There was nothing behind the Haul Ash but a creek bed some twenty yards off. Trees. Brush. Probably no one would see, but …

  No no no.

  Brown eyes made a deliberate move to his lap and then back to meet hers again. The expression on his face never changed. He just waited, the asshole, for her to come do it. Because he knew she would.

  The walk to the chair was no more than a few short steps, but somehow Christina crammed each and every one of the five stages of grief into the journey.

  No. No! You can’t do this. Not with him, I don’t care what the check looks like.

  He watched her come, features neutral.

  Fuck. Fuck you, Bill Marshall!

  A breeze blew at her skirt, flattening it against her thighs as she walked.

  Maybe if I offer him something else? Sex again? Anal? Maybe we go back inside?

  She stopped just in front of him.

  I hate this. Fucking kill me now.

  Came down on one knee. Then the other.

  But you have to. Just do it.

  There it was. That bulge, just staring her down. He’d only undone the top button on what she could now see was a button fly. She’d heard a zipper behind her the last time. Had he worn this pair of jeans instead today, just to make her work for it?

  Pig.

  Her hands rose to the next button, but the shift in position made her wince.

  “Bill”—she dared to look at him, her brows collecting in the center of her face—“this concrete …”

  He grunted and unbuttoned his work shirt, starting at the neck. Shrugged out of the sleeves and wadded up the dark blue fabric. Handed it to her.

  You are not getting out of this.

  She stuffed the material under her knees, scant padding that dulled only the worst of the abrading grit.

  He still wore his undershirt, but it had a closer fit. Right away, Christina had to run from observations that Asshole Bill was in a lot better shape than his loose work shirts usually gave him credit for. Solid arms and chest stretched white cotton and she needed to be looking somewhere else.

  Her fingers went back to working buttons loose. One, two, three more, without any help from her boss, of course. She could’ve gone without doing the last one, but this was what stalling for time looked like.

  His erection was obvious by the time she laid open the halves of his fly, bobbing a crude hello from under plaid boxers. Would it have been more weird or less if he wasn’t already hard?

  One less thing for you to do.

  “Take it out.”

  She jumped a little at the words and felt her face heat. How long had she been staring?

  “I know what to do, Bill,” she snapped.

  “Yeah?” He sank even further into the chair, the partially unwrapped threat of his groin sliding closer still. “Show me.”

  Now it went from the tops of her ears straight down to her chest. There was no way she wasn’t bright red. Bending over and getting fucked was one thing. She could close her eyes. Or look at a table. A wall. It was passive. A thing she just had to endure.r />
  A blow job—especially one where he was sitting—meant she had to perform. She had to choose over and over again to continue eating dick.

  And he’s gonna to watch you do it.

  Her pussy throbbed and she nearly jumped up and ran out of there.

  Instead she lifted the waistband of his boxers and pulled it down past her boss’s cock. She let the elastic fit below his balls, which lifted the whole package up to her as a single, vulgar present. He stood up straight, cut and by no means insubstantial. Dark hair made a fine trail from his base on up to what little she could see of his stomach. She felt his thighs flex under her palms.

  Come on. It’s just another dick.

  As her right hand dared to volunteer, though, and wrap around his girth, Christina knew damn well it wasn’t.

  He hissed at that first touch, even though he’d been inside her already, and the sound made her heart leap. Facing his reactions this way was not going to help.

  An experimental stroke or two, a few tugs to test weight and give were all she had left to buy her time. She reached down and moved the shirt under her knees forward so she could shuffle closer to the unavoidable. Christina steadied him in her grip and laid her tongue to the base of his cock. Refusing to look anywhere else, she rasped him from root to tip, and it was begun.

  When she took the head in her mouth and got back a groan that held to the very last threads of control, she saw the fork in the road.

  The easy way, the way she wanted to go, was mechanical. Just bob her head and count sheep or something until he shot his load, and then go home. In theory.

  But how long would that take? And would he be done with her once he came? Had the hour-a-week clock reset because it was Sunday?

  The hard way, the one that curled her lip and made her question her identity, afforded at least one advantage: time. If she sucked his dick like a pro, he couldn’t last. The odds of ending this sooner stacked up in her favor.

  Christina made a fist around the shaft and fed him into her mouth. He shuddered.

  The hard way, then.

  She gave it to him deep. She gave it to him eager. She let him hear her little noises and feel the hum of her throat down his length.

  Her thumb and forefinger made a tight circle against his pubic bone, pulling the skin taut and pointing him at the sky. Her tongue worked like she was cleaning him up for auction, and her left hand joined to tease a handful of his sack.