Worthless Read online

  “Yum.” Amy tried to reach for her donut, but he snapped the lid close.

  “Dinner first. Might that be a Cuban chicken chop chop for me?”

  She smiled, almost shyly. “It’s your favorite, right?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, suddenly, intensely aware of the fact that they each knew the other well enough to know his or her favorite foods. And of the fact that he knew that in the other takeout box was teriyaki chicken chop chop, Amy’s favorite.

  “We’ve lived together long enough to know what we order at the local restaurants,” Amy said, interpreting his silence incorrectly. He wasn’t unhappy that Amy knew his favorite dish at Chicken Empire. Quite the opposite.

  Was this what his sister had with Ian, or what his parents had had with each other? Did they, too, know exactly what to bring their partner, and did they do it to show their caring? If so, he was in his first adult relationship.

  He reached for his chicken dinner. “Dinner then dessert.”

  Amy pouted, making him want to kiss her lips. “You’re no fun.”

  “I think my problem was that I was way too much fun for too long.”

  She gave his forearm a gentle squeeze, but didn’t comment. Following him to the table with her own box of dinner, she changed the subject by asking, “How was work today?”

  With anyone else, he would’ve given the one-word answer of “fine.” But she knew exactly where he’d been working, and one word wasn’t going to cut it. Not only that, but he wanted to tell her exactly how hard it had been raking, clipping, and weeding the very same hedges in which he’d played hide-and-seek as a kid. “Shitty,” he finally answered.

  She choked slightly on her mouthful of yellow rice. “That good, huh?”

  “I’d thought the owners would be gone skiing or traveling for Christmas, but no, they were home and were in our faces all day asking us to help with things that aren’t in our job scope. I didn’t even have time to have a pity party that I was at my old home.”

  “What did they make you do?”

  “Christmas lights for one,” he said. “Sure, Joe’ll take on lights jobs all the time, but it’s a separate fee and separate schedule. This woman wanted us to trim trees that had lights in them, and we had to unwind every damn tree first. And then she said she wanted the lights up until New Year’s, so we had to rehang them all.”

  She made a face. “That sucks. What did Joe say?”

  “Joe’s on vacation this week. He trusted me to manage the job.” He felt the pride at being trusted to do any job come out in his tone, and forked another mouthful of chicken and rice to cover. “I didn’t want Joe to get a call on vacation telling him his crew refused to do the job. I’ll tell him what happened after, and he’ll figure out a way to even us out.” His boss, Joe, was amazing at shit like that and had his employees’ backs. This was Danny’s first ever job he’d held for more than a month, but he suspected not all bosses were as cool as Joe.

  “Sorry work was a pain,” Amy said, and he knew it wasn’t lip service. She meant it.

  “It happens.” He concentrated on keeping all the rice on his fork, so he wouldn’t watch Amy’s mouth as she ate and fixate on how she’d taste with teriyaki chicken on her tongue. “How was your day?”

  “A lot like yours,” she said.

  “You had to hang Christmas lights too?” he joked.

  “No. I meant it was frustrating.”

  “What happened?” It was amazing how he legitimately wanted to not only hear about her frustrations but also make them go away for her. And, oh shit, there was a grain of rice that had fallen off her fork onto her ample cleavage. It was resting there tormenting him, daring him to reach over the table and remove it with his mouth. Did she know? Was she leaving it there on purpose?

  “Well, I’d worked the store before, after holidays, back when it was my mother’s store, but somehow I never counted how many people come in with no receipts, tags off, wanting to return or exchange clothes. Some of the clothes weren’t even from my store.”

  “People are assholes,” he said, staring at the boob rice.

  “They can be,” she agreed, “but not most people and not usually. Yo, eyes up here.”

  He felt his cheeks heat. “Sorry. You have rice—” He reached across the table to pluck the rice off her breast but stopped before actually touching her. Just because he’d been naked and deep inside her yesterday didn’t mean he had permission to touch her today.

  “Got it,” she said, nicely not mentioning the fact that he’d nearly grabbed her breast without permission at the dinner table.

  “You’re a good person,” he said, the words falling abruptly from his lips.

  She frowned. “What makes you say that?”

  “You don’t want to be a good person?”

  “I do, but what made you say that suddenly?”

  He played with his fork in his food. “You still have faith in people. How?”

  She stared at him, and the taken-aback look on her face made him regret saying a damn thing. “You don’t have faith in people? All people? Or the majority?” she asked.

  “All,” he said. “Why should I?” He sounded like a bitter asshole, but he only spoke his own truth.

  “Because the world is not out to get you. What about your sister? Or Ian? Or me?”

  The last words were spoken so quietly, he wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly.

  “Your sister,” Amy continued, “nearly threw away the love of her life all to support you and your dumb ass, dangerous decisions. And Ian paid off your dealers.”

  “To protect my sister,” he countered.

  “So?” Her cheeks were pink and some of the hair in her bun had fallen loose and curled around her cheeks. “Do his motivations matter? What matters is that they were there for you despite all signs telling them you were a sucker bet. If that doesn’t prove that you should have faith in people, then I don’t know why you should bother keeping on going on this planet.” She gesticulated with her white plastic fork.

  “Maybe,” he said, “but how do you explain the fact that little assholes like the one who killed my parents are likely getting out on parole next month?”

  Amy looked across the table at him, wide-eyed. “He is?”

  He nodded. “He was only seventeen when he drove the car into them, taking two lives and fucking up a hell of a lot more. Knowing he’s going to be free and on the streets of Miami…” He shook his head slowly. “I want to kill the bastard.” His tone told Amy he was dead fucking serious.

  “Well, don’t expect me to visit you in prison if you do kill the fucker,” Amy said pertly, startling a laugh out of him. “He may be getting out of prison, but you put yourself in a kind of prison the last few years. Don’t knowingly put yourself back in.”

  He stared at her for a second before rising to get the box of donuts and bring it to the table. He opened it toward her and watched as she took her chocolate. He held his cinnamon sugar, but didn’t take a bite. “Are you sure you own a clothing store and aren’t really a secret therapist?”

  She froze with her teeth sunk into the donut. “Huh?” she asked from the back of her throat.

  “Because you’re better than any of the drug counselors I met in therapy. You don’t bullshit me, and you cut to the truth.”

  She swallowed and smiled. “Maybe I am a therapist. You should see what it’s like when women try on bathing suits in my store.”

  “What happens?” he asked around his bite of donut.

  “First off, I never truly realized how insecure women are about their bodies. And I’m not talking about the plus-sized women. Women who have bodies for which I’d kill, refuse to come out of the dressing room because their thighs are too wide, or their breasts too saggy, and eight hundred other excuses. I have to talk them off the ledge and remind them their bodies are banging, and then I talk them into bathing suits that make them feel sexy.”

  He heard what she’d said about other women but was mor
e curious about what she’d said about her own body. “Why would you kill for another woman’s body? Don’t you like your own?”

  She gave him a scathing look. “Don’t be an asshole. I’m fat, Danny. Like don’t comfortably fit in a movie theater seat fat.”

  He licked the cinnamon sugar off his fingers carefully, knowing his next words were highly important. If he said the wrong thing, he’d anger her. The truth was, when he looked at Amy, he did see that her body was large, but it didn’t matter one way or the other, because she shined through, and she was so bright, it was all he could see. “It’s your body, you get to make the decisions about it. If you want to lose weight, go for it, but for the record, I think you’re gorgeous. I like you.”

  “You think I haven’t spent most of my life on a diet? Or blaming my mother because of the way she fed me as a child? She let me get this way.”

  He started to protest it was likely genetics and wasn’t fair to blame her mom for anything other than passing on her DNA, but Amy was on a roll.

  “And don’t bullshit me about liking my body and thinking I’m sexy. I saw the women you dated. Put two of them together, and I still outweigh them.” She’d risen and was practically shouting at him.

  He also stood and braced his palms on the table, full of emotion. Anger, he realized. It was anger he felt, and it was good to feel the sharp daggers after months and years of numbness. “What women have you seen me date? The girls in high school? They were teenagers, Amy. I haven’t been on a real date since I was twenty. Don’t tell me what my type is. Right now my only type is you.”

  She froze, also leaning on the table, angled toward him, mouth open slightly. “You have cinnamon sugar on your lips,” she said almost angrily.

  “Then come lick it off,” he challenged.

  And then he was on her, pulling her up against his body that still stank from a long day out in the sun. His hands cupped her ass and he ground his erection against her. Her breasts, which he’d admired all throughout dinner, pushed against his chest, making him shake with desire. He discovered that teriyaki chicken on Amy’s tongue was fucking delicious.

  “Shower,” Amy gasped out. “You stink.”

  Instead of breaking the mood, he laughed—and when had he ever laughed during sex—tossed his T-shirt off, and worked on getting her naked as he walked backward to his room, pulling her along with him. “Shower with me.”

  “We’re not going to both fit,” Amy said when they reached his bathroom. “You’re not little and neither am I.”

  She might’ve had a point, but he needed to shower and he needed to be naked with her. There was no deciding between the two. “Come on, it’ll be fun. We’ll have to get very, very close. Don’t be a coward.”

  “Fine,” she muttered. “But if I fall and break a bone, you’re doing all household chores for the next month.”

  “Deal. I won’t let you fall,” he promised. “I’ll catch you.”

  “Like you can hold my weight,” she said, but since she was stripping and climbing over the tub ledge with him, it didn’t seem important to continue arguing.

  Amy had never showered with a man before. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d never been naked with the lights on with a man before. Yet here she was, totally nude squished against Danny’s taller muscled body with hot water streaming down on them.

  If she’d known they’d be getting naked again, she would’ve shaved her legs this morning. She’d worn long leggings and a tunic to work so it hadn’t seemed necessary to groom. Especially since she’d had no intentions of getting intimate with Danny. All her reasons for keeping her distance were still on the table, but who could resist a man who brought her favorite flavor of donut and told her he wanted her at any weight. Irresistible, right?

  “Soap me up?” he asked and bent to reach the soap, stopping on the way to plant his mouth on her breasts. His erection jutted between their bodies, branding her stomach. She couldn’t see said erection thanks to the lack of room in the shower forcing their bodies together, but there was no missing the feeling of the hard cock between them.

  “Danny,” she half squealed, half moaned and held his wet head between her hands as he paid careful attention to each nipple.

  He grabbed the soap at the ledge and stood. “Delicious.”

  No man had ever called her delicious before and tasted her as if she were better than the donuts they’d recently eaten. She leaned up to find his lips in a kiss hot enough to make the water steam. Their tongues dueled for long lazy minutes, and the soap lay forgotten in his hand.

  Finally he pulled back and placed the white bar in her hand. She was dazed but managed to hold onto the soap as she caught her breath.

  “Wash me,” he whispered.

  She met his eyes, then looked away. She could get lost in his eyes, lost in him if she allowed it. This had to be about sex and only sex. Only he was staring down at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  “Turn around,” she said, slapping the bar of soap on his pectoral muscles.

  He gave her a look that told her he understood she was trying to put metaphorical distance between them, but followed orders.

  Unable to help herself, she placed a line of tiny kisses on his back and then got busy soaping. He had some truly unfortunate tattoos scattered on his body, some of which looked as if he’d done them himself. None had color; they were blue-black ink with random words and images that were hard to make out. She’d have to bring him to her artist and help him get them fixed. “Your ink sucks,” she said.

  He turned, every inch of their skin touching as he made the rotation. “I know,” he said. “It’s what happens when you have no money and go to unethical people willing to permanently mark a person who’s out of their mind.”

  “I can introduce you to my girl,” she said and shivered as his fingertip traced the outline of her flame-colored Georgia O’Keefe-inspired hibiscus tattoo.

  “Your work is gorgeous,” he said, “but I need to keep my body as is. It’s a reminder. Plus I can’t afford work like yours yet.” He bent again to breathe kisses on the side of her neck and she looped her arms over his shoulders to maintain her balance. “I got you,” he murmured against her skin, his hands bracing her hips.

  He knelt and placed kisses over every inch of skin in a line from her clavicle to breast to belly to below. “Wash my hair?”

  Silently she reached for the shampoo and poured a circle in her hand. She rubbed it into his scalp, overwhelmed by the intimacy of the moment. “You need more sunscreen,” she observed, seeing the back of his neck was tanner than the rest of him with an overlay of red from today.

  “Forgot my bandana,” he said. “Usually I keep it wet and tied over my neck to keep me cool. Gonna sting like a bitch later.”

  “I can rub some aloe into it,” she said.

  “Appreciated.” That was the last word he was able to speak for a while because he leaned forward and his tongue and fingers parted her lips.

  “Danny.” Her fingers tightened in his hair. This kind of activity was for a dark bedroom where her soft inner thighs weren’t about to suffocate her lover.

  He looked up. “Do you want me to stop?”

  She started to say yes, but looked at his face and saw nothing in his expression that said he didn’t like what was happening. A glance at his arousal jutting out told her he really liked what was going on. “No, keep going.” Seriously, she’d be a moron to say no to a gorgeous man willing to go down on her.

  Oh. She reached for the tiny soap dish ledge, gripping tightly as Danny unleashed a level of pleasure on her she’d never achieved. His tongue speared her, unerringly finding her pleasure points, and then he slowed and laved her slowly, drawing out her pleasure. She was achingly aroused.

  “More,” she gasped out, fearful he’d stop, leaving her needy.

  He pulled back long enough to grin up at her. “I’ll take care of you, baby. Promise. Put your foot here.” He tapped his shoulder.<
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  Her eyes widened. Was he serious? Then she dared to trust him and raised her foot and balanced it on his shoulder feeling his muscle tense under her arch. When did he get so strong? And then she didn’t—couldn’t—think about anything except what was happening between her legs.

  His tongue was magic. Back in the day when he was king of their high school, she’d overheard a teacher say that Danny Ross had a golden tongue. The teacher was on the money and that teacher (hopefully) hadn’t even known how golden Danny’s tongue truly was.

  Moans and little squeals escaped her without any regard to how desperate she sounded. Between his mouth and his fingers, he took her to a place she’d never dreamed.

  A gentle lick.

  A hard, fast, penetrating one.

  And his finger. Dear God, his one digit worked gently but deeply inside her, building up a tempo that threatened to undo her. The pleasure overwhelmed her and she closed her eyes, concentrating on the orgasm that was seconds away.

  She screamed her pleasure into the rush of water that streamed over them, washing away the sins of flesh taking place in the shower. Danny held her steady letting her ride out the orgasm until he helped her lower her foot back to earth.

  The water still poured over them as she caught her breath, or tried to. She hadn’t fully recovered before Danny was pulling her down to kneel beside him in the tub. Her gaze didn’t meet his. His torso was a swath of hard angles and muscles, while in this position hers was rolls and pouches.

  “Stay here,” he ordered. Like she could move when her legs were Jell-O and she was too curious to see what came next. Danny carefully and quickly hopped out of the tub to grab a condom that was in a bathroom drawer.

  She watched the water hit the white porcelain bottom of the tub, while he rolled the condom on his erection as easily as he’d rolled the ancient push mower over their lawn last week.

  “Not sure this is going to work,” she said, eyes still on the tub. “It’s not like a movie where you can hold me up and do me against the wall.

  “Probably not,” Danny said, agreeably, which she appreciated. She didn’t want macho bullshit. “I’m going to fuck you from behind.”