“I’ll go right now,” I added in a breathless rush. Warned? Pleaded?
I didn’t even know.
The handsome villain—the absolutely monstrous bastard—lifted his chin toward the tray that wasn’t even mine. “You’re busy. Plus, we rode in together.” And then he gave me his back as he sent AliceandChuck home before taking a leisurely stroll through the room and into the back, likely to make sure the kitchen was broken down and everything was done.
Alice didn’t jump to reset her station like normal. Instead, she refilled her water and leaned against the counter. “Girl, I have to admit something. When I heard you were Rhys’s girlfriend…” She paused to shake her head.
The tiny break was enough to send a million scenarios through my head. That she thought it was weird. She didn’t buy it. It wasunbelievable.
But it was none of that. “I worried it was going to be drama city. Like, he’d give you preferential treatment, or that you’d just be standing around, doing nothing but getting in the way. Nope. He is harder on you than anyone else.”
I wish he was harder on me right now.
Oh my God, I’m delirious with lust. EvenIknow that was a bad joke.
“Anyway,” she said, blissfully unaware that I had one and a half functioning brain cells left. “I was beginning to think he secretly hated you.”
Funny, I’m beginning to think the same thing myself.
“He clearly doesn’t, though. Not with the way he looks at you, though.Hot.”She fanned herself. “So hot. That said, I can go tell him that I’ll stay. You seem like you could use a break.”
It wasn’t a break, it was a breakdown I was nearing, but she didn’t need to know that. “I’m good. Honestly.”
“If you’re sure.”
I delivered the refills to her table and slowly started restocking and getting things ready for close. My hope was that Rhys would go to his office—which I prayed was out of range—to do his business side of things so we could leave as soon as he locked the front door.
I should’ve known that wouldn’t happen.
It wasn’t a two-bartender crowd, but once Alice and Chuck clocked out, he returned to the front to chat and laugh and hang out like I wasn’t about to perish.
I kept my back to him in case meeting his gaze would remind him that he held the control.
Of the device.
Of me.
I bent to grab the box of straws, and when I stood, heat hit my back. Tattooed arms went to either side of me, caging me in against the vacant end of the bar. Lips skimmed my jaw up to my ear, and his voice was a low whisper when he asked, “What did you think you’d be doing if I let you leave?”
“You know exactly what.”
“So you didn’t learn your lesson?” I could hear the smile in his voice. “That’s okay, hellcat. Happy to teach it again during your shift tomorrow.”
If all this was a teaching moment, I understood. I got it. I’d learned whatever it was he wanted me to learn. He just had to tell me what that was.
“What lesson?” I asked.
Rhys wrapped an arm around my waist, settling his hand just below my breast as he shifted closer until his hardness pressed against my back. “That no one… not even you…” His other hand dropped to right above my waistband with his fingers stretched down. “Touches this pretty little pussy. This isminenow. Your orgasms aremine. If you need something, you come tome. Understood?”
I nodded in a frantic rush.
He removed his hand from my core to tilt my face up and kiss me. It was quick, but it still wasn’t something he ever really did at work. He followed it up with a dimpled grin, and God, that did it for me almost as much as the vibrator did. It was just that sexy.
“I’ll be in the office,” he said as he released me.
It took me a long second after he left to remember I was supposed to be working and not dreamily thinking about his smile.
I started with the older biker at the opposite end that he’d been talking to. I got the feeling he was a regular since everyone knew him. “Another one, Tom?”
