Brutally Beautiful (16 page)

“Lainey! Lainey?” Fran’s voice called from the hallway. 

Neither of us moved.

The pressure of his hand gripped at my neck tighter and a slow devilish smile appeared on his lips. 

“Lainey?” Fran’s voice continued to call.

Kade shifted and pressed his body against mine, thudding my back against the door of the office, clicking it closed.  The hand tangled in my hair tightened more and his other slipped softly along the side of my waist, under the hem of my shirt and skidded hot fingertips along the surface of my skin.  Leaning his face into the curve of my neck, he inhaled deeply, and I was instantly gasping for breath from his closeness.  “I think someone wants you,” he whispered, chuckling softly against my skin.

“Yes, I hear him,” I whispered back, not caring at all.

“I wasn’t talking about Fran.”  He growled, pressing his warm lips against my neck. 
Oh, hell, it just got hot in here
.

Reluctantly stepping away, his hands released me, his eyes so intense, stared down into mine.  “I don’t know how to start this, I’ve never done
this
…,” he whispered.

“Kade, I think you just did.”

His eyes stayed fixed on mine as he smiled.  Fran’s voice was closer now, just on the other side of the door and Kade moved past me to open it.  His hand brushed over my hip, along the curve of my waist to the front of my belly, and lingered just below my navel.  I thudded my head against the wall as the strongest surge of lust exploded through my entire being.  My soul wanted a piece of that man.

“Lainey? Are you okay?” Fran’s voice shattered through our bubble, interrupting our moment.  He walked through the door purposefully, looked at Kade and narrowed his eyes, then turned to glare at me. “Dylan is closing early tonight, everybody seems to have left. I’ll drive you home now,” he said, chancing another glance towards Kade.  “To make sure you get home safe.”

Kade’s eyes never left mine.  “Go,” he said,  “I’ll see you tomorrow night with my pitchfork and horns.”

“Goodnight, Kade,” I said as I slipped out of the room, leaving him alone.  I went back to the trailer that night with a very buzzed Bree, but I wore a smile plastered to my face.  I was glad to soothe someone again,
to heal someone again
.

****

As I applied the tiniest bit of mascara to my lashes and the thinnest layer of gloss over my lips, I relayed all the facts I’d discovered about Kade’s past to Bree.  “That’s the worst thing I’ve every heard, Lainey.  Lord, no wonder he’s such a hard guy to get along with.  Did you tell him anything about what you’ve been through?”

“No, Kade doesn’t know that I know, so there’s no need to tell him about my past.  And I won’t, so please don’t say anything to Dylan in your pillow talk.”

“Girl.  My pillow talk
will not
have you in it, not to worry,” she said kissing me on my temple and winking at me as she looked into my reflection in the mirror we were sharing.  She slathered on a thick layer of dark shiny lipstick and puckered her lips, blowing a kiss into the air, and then leaned all the way against the surface of the mirror.  “How is it possible that it’s the dead of winter and I have more freckles on my face?  Skin cancer?  Look at them.  Do they look abnormal? ”

Scanning her beautiful skin, I counted five very normal freckles across the bridge of her perfect nose.  “Stop.  You still only have five freckles.  Your freckles
are
freckles, and you’re beautiful.” 

“And you,” she said turning to face me, “are actually putting make-up on your face.  I know damn well it’s not for Fran.  What gives?”

I stared at her blankly. 

“Holy crap,
you like Kade
.” 

  “No.  Yes.  No.”

“You can’t fix him, Sam,” she whispered.  “He’s not broken and bleeding. It’s something inside his mind, babe.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to fix him…”

Bree sucked in her cheeks.  “Really?  You’re standing in front of a mirror putting
lip-gloss on
and I can see in your head,
I can see it
…”

The slamming of the trailer door and hooting alerted us to Dylan and Fran’s arrival.  Grabbing our coats, we followed their voices and found them lounging on one of the couches in a deep conversation about the healthy effects of drinking red wine as opposed to beer.  Fran was going off on one of his tangents, stopped, looked me up and down, smiled and said, “You look nice tonight,” and continued his rant. 

Nice
.  Isn’t
that
the adjective every woman wants to hear?

Fran’s rant took us all the way through the drive into town to a huge bar called
Shenanigans
, where a decent sized crowd sat drinking and listening to people horribly singing Karaoke.  I pointed Dylan to the empty booth closest to the exit. “Let’s sit back here.”

Natalie waved to us from the bar and skipped over with a round of beer in her arms and winked, “First round is on me!  And I ordered chips and dip; it’s so delicious here. 
So good
.”

Fran attacked poor Natalie with
another enthralling
conversation, explaining what the rest of us had heard him drone on about for the entire car ride there, how healthier a glass of red wine is for your body.  Dylan laughed and shook his head as Natalie sat listening closely to everything Fran hit her with. 

After another round, I was bored out of my mind listening to Fran and Natalie telling me what I needed to do to live a healthier lifestyle, and Bree looked about ready to stick a fork in one of their eyes.  In one large gulp, I drained my beer in front of the both of them and slammed my bottle down against the table hard.  When the chips and dip arrived, it just got worse.  As soon as Fran tasted the chips and dip, he would not shut up about it.  Would.  Not.  Shut.  Up.  Maybe it was just me.  Maybe I was losing my patience and easily irritated.  I looked at Dylan and Bree who both wore the same expression as I did.  No, it was all Fran.

“Lainey, you have to try this sauce,” he moaned, through a mouth full of chips.

It’s dip, not sauce
.  I took a chip because I was starving, but I didn’t feel like dipping into a huge bucket of dip where everybody was double dipping their saliva.  Ugh.

“Lainey, just dip it in the sauce.  This sauce is delicious. You have to try it. Dip it in the sauce.  Just dip it in the sauce,” he pushed.

What the hell kind of sauce fetish owns this moron? 
“Jesus, Mary, and Jerome…I don’t want to just dip it in the sauce,” I said calmly.  I wanted to slam my fist into the stupid bowl of chips to shut him up, but instead, I sat cool and composed, plotting how I was going to get him and Natalie together, so he would leave me the hell alone.  I grabbed Dylan’s beer and downed the rest of his as he sat back
beerless
, and laughed at me.

When I looked up, my heart nearly surged out of my chest.  Kade had arrived and was walking his way over from the door.  While it was true that, everyone seemed to turn to look at him with some sort of fear, I just looked at him with awe, knowing how strong he must be to go against his comfort zone,
and
he was drop dead gorgeous.  Dressed casually in a worn pair of jeans and a beaten to hell leather jacket, he looked the part of a dangerous, reckless, and completely out of control man.  It made my cheeks flush, and it made my insides heat, knowing that he came here because I asked him to.

“Hey,” I said, sliding over in the booth to make room for him.

“Hey,” he mumbled back, smoky grey eyes blazing at me through thick dark lashes.  Leaning in slowly towards me, he tentatively brushed his hand against my forearm.  Bringing his face closer to mine, he whispered, “Stunning.”

Holding steady eye contact with him, my breath faltered, and what felt like a goddamn inferno surged through my body, slapping me in between my legs with such a forceful heat that I suddenly believed in self-combustion.

“Okay, ladies and gents.  This next round is on me. What is everyone having?” Fran shouted out across the table.  “Kade, my man.  You have to try the sauce, it’s outstanding.”

Everyone
ordered a beer, but Fran came back five minutes later with a beer for everyone and a glass of red wine for me, and a glass of red for him. 

“Please tell me you did not just get me a wine on purpose,” I said.

Fran winked at me from across the table, “It’s a wonderful year.  Have a sip.”

“Oh, my God, I’m about to lose it,” I muttered, and before I could say anything else, Fran interrupted me with more of his
tactful
conversation skills.

“So, Kade.  It must be very gratifying to be such an accomplished and famous writer.  You must have a plethora of women adoring you and throwing themselves at you.  I bet you chew them up and spit them out, eh?”  Fran asked, clearly trying to alert me to his presumptions about Kade’s promiscuity. I knew, because he smirked at me after his pointed asinine question. 

“Not if they taste good,” Kade deadpanned, and then he slid his beer over to me, grabbed my glass of wine, and took a sip.  “Most of them don’t taste very well, mind you, but, once in a while…Once in a while, you find someone that you taste and it changes the way the rest of them do, and no one seems as sweet or delicious.”  His eyes locked on mine.

Fran was speechless, for once.  And Kade?  Kade was sitting next to me, stealing the air from my lungs with his closeness and his words, and I just burst out laughing.  You know, one of those nervous, psychotic sounding laughs that end with a snort.  Bree fell into a fit of giggles next, followed by some chuckles from Dylan and Kade. 

Fran looked around at the people who seemed to be staring at us, and his cheeks reddened, “Lainey, try to control yourself.  People are looking over here.”

“Oh, my God, Francis, stop.”  I downed the rest of my beer.  “That beer was delicious, Kade, thank you.  I think I want a cup of coffee now,” I laughed.

“Lainey, we’re at a bar, stop with the coffee.  You’ve probably had more than enough caffeine today. I’ll get you another glass of wine.  No more caffeine; I watch your hands tremble enough.  And you don’t even like beer.  It’s like you don’t know what’s good for you.”

“Francis,” I threatened,  “if you don’t stop this inappropriate compulsion with my eating and drinking habits, I believe I might cause you great bodily harm with some form of male testicular torture,” I said, laughing hard.

He scoffed.  A little snort followed by a smirk and that nasty crinkle of his nose, which was always plastered on his face.  “Are you
premenstrual
right now?” he asked in a low whisper, as if it were an appropriate question.  “An over-emotional female prone to exaggeration does not suit your personality type.  This sort of change in your personality is what I’ve been trying to explain to you. It’s from too much caffeine.”

“That is the most arrogant, condescending, male chauvinistic and patronizing
mansplaining
bullshit I have ever heard,” I said.

Kade slammed his fists down on the table and his presence seemed to expand and crowd into my small space on the booth.  Before he could say anything, I brushed the back my hand over his arm, just as he had done to me a few moments before to let him know I could handle the situation. He visibly relaxed and leaned back into the cushions of the bench we occupied.  It kind of made me feel
beautiful
.

Next to Fran, Bree covered her face with her hands and Dylan’s expression looked shocked.  I stood up, flattened my shirt down and wiped my clammy hands on my pants.  I gave Fran a measured stare, leaned over the table, and asked sweetly, “Do you think yourself as a man that’s well endowed, Francis?”

He squirmed in his seat, and gave me a slight nod.

“Let me ask you then,” I leaned in closer and licked my lips, trying to act as seductively as I could.  “Can your penis reach your rectum?”

Slowly, a flirtatious smile emerged on his face; he nodded and leaned his head closer to mine.

“Then go fuck yourself,” I said evenly. Climbing behind Kade in the booth, I jumped off the seat, made my way to the bar, ordered another beer and a shot of whiskey, and stared down at my trembling fingers. 

An icy cold beer and whiskey shot slid in front of me almost instantly.

“I’m taking you out of here,” Kade’s voice rumbled in my ear, fanning warm breath against my neck.

Gulping back my shot, I turned my head and looked up into his eyes, our faces so close, our lips mere inches apart.  Slowly, his eyes trailed down to my mouth and he shifted his body to face me, “Come on, I’m in the mood for coffee.”  His dark features softened, his body slackened and relaxed against the edge of the bar as if he really felt comfortable next to me. 

Drawing in a deep breath, I slid my gaze over to our table and heaviness settled over my chest when I locked eyes with Fran, then back to Kade.  I had never dealt with any of this nonsense before. I’d never had two men at the same time vie for my attention (if that’s what it was), but I did know what it was like to be with someone who tried to control you, and that, I didn’t need.  So, without any trepidation or fear, I followed Kade Grayson out of the bar with a wildly beating heart. 

After I climbed into Kade’s truck, I texted Bree to tell her I left.  Shivering from the cold air, my teeth started to chatter and Kade looked at me questioningly.  “You didn’t go back to the table for your coat, and I didn’t think to bring it to you when I asked you for coffee,” he stated, the mist of his warm breath dissipating into the cold air of the front cab of his truck.

“Wasn’t in my escape plan, no.”

A slow sexy smile transformed on his lips as he unzipped his leather jacket and quickly yanked his arms from their sleeves and passed it to me.

Slipping the coat over my shoulders, I was hit with the intoxicating smell of Kade, a mixture of spices, man and thick, rich worn leather.  Twisting the key in the ignition, his truck rumbled to life.  The cold leather seats beneath me vibrated, as a Metallica song blasted deafeningly from his speakers with James Hetfield’s deep raspy voice singing
Whiskey in the Jar
.  Pure, raw nostalgia surged through my veins, teenage angst, and memories flooded my mind.