A One Woman Job

Chapter 3

3

Koen

I should have just let this girl walk away.

What the hell do I care what happens to her?

She’s a skinny mess with big, ridiculous hazel eyes, scraped knees and hair that hasn’t seen the business end of some scissors in half a decade. At least. She doesn’t want to be here, either…and yet I’ve chosen her to be the very first guest in my home. Ever.

I could have let her drown, I suppose. I’ve been responsible for dozens of lost lives, what’s one more? I’m not sure what made me hurtle myself down the stairs at a breakneck pace and tear out into the ocean to save her. Except at one point, before she started to drown, I saw an outpouring of grief and sadness on her face.

And I recognized those things.

Now I’m carrying her into the downstairs guest bathroom, which has never been used, determined to make her warm. Just so I can button up this unusual and unexpected situation and return to drinking myself to death.

When I drag the girl off my shoulder and settle her onto the marble vanity, I’m caught off guard, my hands lingering in mid-air as I back toward the tub. I was too irritated down on the beach to notice she’s quite… pretty up close. As she raises her chin stubbornly, shielding her see-through bra by crossing her arms, I amend that. No, she’s stunningly beautiful. She’s wrapped in drenched, long, dark brown hair, her skin soft and absorbing the muted bathroom light, as if it’s drawn to her. Dying to be soaked in by her.

“Suddenly you don’t seem all that concerned about me catching hypothermia,” she says, turning her head to let out a delicate sneeze.

“I didn’t say I was concerned,” I bluster. “I just don’t want you to die on my beach.”

“Dead young girls lower the property value?”

Not for the first time, I have the urge to laugh in this person’s presence. Why? “Exactly.”

“Hmm.”

“Speaking of young, how old are you? No lying. I’ll know.”

That vow seems to rattle her, but not for long. “Eighteen. Swear.”

“Hmm.”

I stare her down for long moment, but she doesn’t so much as flinch. And goddammit, the fire in this girl is beginning to make my dick hard. Unbelievable. I locked myself away to feel pain, not experience pleasure. The very act of looking at her, tracing the line of her cupid’s bow lips, is enough to constitute pleasure in itself.

Enough.

With a snarl, I go toward the bath, keeping the girl in my periphery. Just in case she’s been sent here by Etta to kill me. An angry flick of my wrist turns on the tap and the water is filling the tub in seconds, steam rising in the mostly dark bathroom.

Silence is filled by the sound of rippling water, but I find…

I wouldn’t mind hearing her voice again. Once more. She’ll be out of here as soon as I make sure she’s not going to drop dead.

“What’s your name?”

My abrupt question causes her arms to momentarily drop away from her breasts and I see them. Through her cheap bra. Creamy and tipped with rosebuds. Full. Sweet.

“Um.”

“That’s an answer that shouldn’t require a thought.”

“Meg. I’m Meg.” She huffs a breath. “Sorry, you just make me feel unnerved.”

“Good. Stay that way.”

Without missing a beat, she slides off the vanity and marches out the bathroom door. I’m embarrassed to admit my jaw hangs open for a second, before I reanimate and go after her. I only give myself a few steps to enjoy the shake of that ass in wet panties, before I wheel myself in front of the girl, blocking her from going any farther.

“Where are you going?”

“To hurl myself off the cliff, so I don’t have to spend any more time with you.”

I heave a humorless laugh up at the hallway ceiling. “This is what I get for trying to help. No good deed goes—”

“Oh God .” She sags dramatically against the wall. “Are my ears bleeding yet?”

The bravery of this one. “Get in the bath, smartass.”

She actually tries to dodge me. “No.”

“Why haven’t you asked for my name yet?”

She snaps her fingers. “Ooh. Quick, tell me so I can forget it.”

“It’s Koen. And you’re not going to forget it.” I scoop her up with a forearm under her ass, deviously satisfied when her nose bumps mine and she sucks in a breath, probably because I separate her legs and perch them on opposite hips. Something stops me from pulling her pussy flush to my stiffness, though. I think it’s something about wanting her to calm down enough to feel safe with me, which is fucking ridiculous.

No one is safe with me.

“What are you doing, Koen?” she asks as we enter the bathroom, our progressing bodies moving the steam in a swirling pattern.

“Getting you in the bath the only way I know you’ll stay put.”

“How?”

“Stop talking, baby.”

I climb into the full bathtub and sit, hissing through my teeth when she slips down into my lap, her wet tits crashing into my chest. Her softness pressing down on my shaft. Oh fuck, then it happens. She moans and I moan back, as if my vocal cords can’t help but respond in kind, my cock turning even more steely between her thighs, due to the perfection of her weight and shape. The harmony of our vocal reactions.

She’s alarmed, though, her cheeks splashing immediately with pink, her hands pushing against my chest in an attempt to sit up.

This girl is a virgin.

Jesus Christ.

“Relax,” I demand.

“How?” she breathes, looking up at me.

“I wouldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do.”

“What, like take a bath? Enter your home in the first place?”

“Okay, from this point on, I won’t make you do anything against your will.”

For good reason, she’s giving me a skeptical head tilt. “Say something nice. One thing. And I’ll believe you. It doesn’t even have to be about me.”

“Something nice? ” This girl is surprising. I’ve never been surprised. Not ever. “Why?” I ask, fighting the urge to hold my breath, lest I don’t hear her answer.

“So I can lie to myself later. So I can say, ‘but he seemed so nice,’ when the police ask why I trusted you.”

I hide the danger that statement rouses inside me. “You’re not planning to call the police on me, are you, Meg?”

Despite my efforts to appear trustworthy, she’s smart, this one. She detects the danger inside of me. “No,” she whispers, slowly making a crisscross over her heart.

Weirdly, I believe her.

Or maybe I just want to. Badly.

Why?

“Something nice?” I ask.

She nods.

Has it been so long since I spoke kind words out loud? Must be ages, because my throat feels scrubbed raw when I say, “I’ve always claimed to have the best judgment, but now I’m not so sure. I don’t know how it took me a full five minutes to realize you were…”

“What?” Meg asks, after too much time has passed.

I swallow hard. “To realize you’re so beautiful. To realize you’re…”

I just keep nodding, because I don’t know how to finish that sentence. In the glow of the dim bathroom, her face dewy with steam, I’m fucking overcome. She’s a goddess.

A confused one. She looks incredulous.

“Didn’t you know you’re beautiful?” I manage, out of my depth.

“No,” she hedges. “Well, some of my customers ask me out.”

The danger inside of me is fully flexed now. “What fucking customers?”

“The ones I drive in my Uber.”

“You drive an Uber?”

I don’t know what’s happening inside of me. It’s like a terrible/wonderful swelling of responsibility and irritation and possessiveness. It’s something I have no experience controlling or feeling and it’s running roughshod through my system, setting my usual cool calculation on fire. I’m inundated by the need to know everything about this girl. Perhaps so I can solve why she’s having such a…a huge effect on me. “Why were you upset out there in the water?”

Her incredible eyes shoot to mine, vulnerable, incredible. “I don’t know,” she says, so quiet I can barely hear her. “I think because I’m so tired. In so many ways, you know?”

“Yes,” I rasp, my chest deteriorating. “Rest on me, Meg. I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear it on whatever you believe in.”

“I only believe in myself.”

Shaken to my very core, I realize that somehow, quite unexpectedly, I’ve just found my kindred spirit. In the form of a waifish girl, at least a decade younger than me. Our souls feel the same age, however. Our souls feel…like they’ve just had a reunion. “I understand that more than you know.”

Her throat works with a swallow, her eyes beginning to grow drowsy. And then the most incredible thing happens. This remarkable young girl who has no reason to trust me, who should not trust me, lays her head on my shoulder and falls fast asleep.

I’m rocked all the way to my soul.

Carefully, I band an arm diagonally across her back, securing her to my body, and it feels so fulfilling, my eyes roll to the back of my head and I begin whispering vows.

To protect Meg.

To pleasure Meg.

To keep Meg forever.

Meg.

Meg.

Meg.

Meg.