Conor
The pounding at the door hadn’t yet stopped. Something told me it wasn’t going to.
That was fine by me. I almost always had a pounding in my head anyway. If Aurnia thought she was going to annoy me into letting her out of the storeroom, then she was mistaken. She might be stubborn, but she was no match for me.
Besides, I had this one thing on my side: I knew I was right. I knew this was what was best for her. I knew that this was her only way out of the shite life she’d been dealt. I knew her way out couldn’t be me.
So I put a door between us. That way I knew she was safe. She was under my protection. But she couldn’t get to me. If she would just stop pounding that door and fill out the goddamn application, then she’d find herself in a place where I couldn’t get to her. It was for the best. For her. For me.
She could keep pounding on the door. Tire herself out with those little fists. Throw her shoulder at the heavy wood till her skin bruised and swelled. Kick and fight till sweat beaded down her delicate neck, dripped between her slick breasts, moistened the little hollow of her Cupid’s bow…
I shook my head to drive out the image and refocused on the bills in front of me. Aurnia needed to do what she needed to do. And I, well, I needed to do the same. Dublin Ink was my future even if it was about as bright as the deck lights of the Titanic. Aurnia was not my future. Could not be my future.
The numbers, more red than black, blurred in front of my vision. I couldn’t focus. Couldn’t think. Not when my mind kept painting her inside that little storeroom. Red cheeks. Panting. Eyes fiery. Irate. Chest bouncing as she flung herself at the door again.
I rubbed at my eyes, but with them closed the image became clearer: Aurnia atop me. Her cheeks red as her hair fell over her fiery eyes. Her panting as she flung her head back, exposing that neck, those trailing beads of sweat. Her tits bouncing as she rolled her hips on my cock again. Her little fists pounding at my chest because she was close…so fucking close…so fucking close. But she couldn’t quite get there. So I grabbed her hips. Not caring that I was rough. Too rough. I rolled her over so she was beneath me and she was irate because she thought she was in control. But she was never in control. I thrust into her and she—
“That’s not accomplishing a goddamn thing,” I shouted toward the storeroom angrily.
This stopped the pounding for a second or two. Rian and Mason looked up from their work in the direction of the long, dark hallway toward the back. Time hung suspended.
The pounding resumed. I growled in frustration and tried once more to focus on the bills. These were real things. The thing with Aurnia was fantasy. It was an impossibility. It was madness.
The bills… Real money. Real debt. Real fucking life. This was what I needed to be paying attention. Not that little thief who kept on stealing and stealing and stealing from me.
A whisper between Rian and Mason caught my attention. My eyes snapped toward them. They both stopped and lowered their heads.
“What?” I grumbled.
The two eejits shook their heads.
“What?” I repeated.
“Did you look at the ideas that Aurnia came up with for the shop?” Mason asked.
That was a diversion. Whatever they’d been saying, they didn’t want to tell me. A diversion and a clumsy one at that. It was, after all, Mason. I saw through it all, but the pounding at the door was drawing me back into the tight, hot space with Aurnia so I allowed it. I used it as a diversion myself.
“I don’t have time for that,” I said, pushing farther away the stack of loose-leaf notes they’d left on my drafting desk.
“But you have time for that?” Mason asked, nodding his head toward the storeroom.
There was a grin on his lips. I noticed that Rian, who couldn’t focus to save his life, was diligently clicking numbers from invoices into a calculator. I tightened my grip on my pencil till my nail beds went bright red.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I asked. “Aurnia is working on an art school application.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Rian muttered under his breath.
“What did you say?” I said angrily.
Rian shrugged, not daring to look over at me. “I said you should take a look at those ideas. I think the kid’s got a talent for this kind of stuff.”
“She’s not a kid,” I said quickly before I could catch myself. “I mean, she’s young enough that— Shut the hell up and get back to work, alright?”
I snatched up the stack of Aurnia’s ideas just to have something to hold onto. I felt my cheeks reddening. It didn’t make it any better to know that both Mason and Rian were probably holding in laughter.
“It’s not a sex thing,” I told them irritably after a moment.
Mason held up his hands innocently, barely containing a grin. “Nobody said it was.”