All To Myself Page 8

  “I thought you were supposed to work with me tonight.”

  “So did I, but Dad caught me as I was getting ready and wanted me to go with him to the realtor today. Last night, he suggested I buy the adjoining property so no one else can build on it. I told him I’d think about it, but he had to have his way.”

  “Sounds familiar,” she mumbled.

  His explanation was perfectly reasonable, but she still wasn’t ready to let it go. She felt stupid for it. She’d always rolled her eyes at friends who acted as though they needed to know where their boyfriends were at all times, and yet she was still smarting.

  “Am I forgiven? And can I have your number now?”

  She glanced at the big glass window where her friends were doing a terrible job of pretending they weren’t trying to read lips. “You’re not going to turn into some weirdo who calls and texts me all hours, are you?”

  “I’ve already spent the last few days stalking you at the bar. I think I’m over it.”

  A smile tugged the corners of her mouth. “Well, not too over it, I hope.”

  Once she gave him her number and he keyed it into his phone, Rory tugged at his sleeve. “Do you want to come in for a drink with us?”

  He hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t. No one can ever relax when their boss’s son is there.”

  “I’m not having any trouble in that department. Come on.”

  “No, you have your fun. Do you have a ride home?”

  Disappointment jabbed her with a poke in the ribs. “You don’t want to spend the night with me?”

  “Of course I do, but I don’t want to be that guy who drags you away from your friends.”

  “Then come inside with me while I get my purse. Say hello. You’re going to be spending the rest of the summer crossing paths with all these people.” She took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, then led him back into the bar.

  It took another fifteen minutes to make an exit. Once Rory made her introduction with a “You all know Noah. This is …” she momentarily lost him to the men of the group, all of whom wanted to talk about his car. Fiona offered to lock her bike near Garden View on the way home. It was late by the time they reached his cottage, far too late for Rory to be up when she had to work in the morning.

  She was far too thrilled to be rid of that acid feeling of rejection in her stomach to even think of sleep. Once the door was locked and all the lights but the bedside lamp was out, once they stripped one another of their clothes and came together hard and unrelenting, letting the rush of blood destroy the brief sense of wrongness between them.

  When it was over, Rory lay spent with her head resting on Noah’s shoulder as he stroked along her damp back.

  “Do you need to get up?” she asked sleepily as he jostled her from behind.

  “I should be able to reach.”

  “Reach--” She popped up and turned just in time to see him produce his toy from the drawer.

  She was grateful it wasn’t like some of the vibrators she’d seen online that were made to resemble a real cock, complete with veins and balls. She wouldn’t have been able to stand it more than a few seconds without dissolving into hysterics.

  Noah’s vibrator was much more, for lack of a better term, aesthetically pleasing: lime green with a smooth shaft and a white base. She was sure the common name for it was a ‘rabbit,’ but it looked more alien to her.

  “Turn over for me,” he said as he sat up, and grinned at her dubious expression. “Go on. On your knees.”

  Rory wasn’t convinced this would be anything but awkward. Flipped onto her stomach with her ass up felt more like she was about to get probed than pleasured.

  “Just … no sticking that where it doesn’t belong, okay?”

  His laughter shook the bed. “Don’t worry. I won’t go all porn star on you.”

  “Well, you can go a little porn star,” she teased, and wiggled her ass.

  A subtle buzz announced the vibrator’s activation, and barely a second later the tapered end rested against her pussy.

  “Oh,” she said in a puff of air as her whole lower half quaked.

  She had to admit she’d never thought much of toys and hadn’t mourned too much when her cheap vibe had just disintegrated in her hands. Maybe it was because it was in Noah’s hands, but this vibe certainly lived up to the hype. It wasn’t even touching her clit, but that little pearl of nerves lit up as the pulse ran through her.

  “I can see you getting wetter already,” Noah said, and chuckled as he crooked the tip of his finger into her. “You may regret letting me do this to you when I fuck you until dawn.”

  “I won’t regret anything,” she murmured, and turned her face into the bedding as the intensity blossomed between her legs.

  She wanted to know how many other women he had done this to, and at the same time she didn’t even want to think that there had ever been other women before her. She wanted to scrub her own past clean until there was only Noah.

  “Are you ready for more?” he asked, and took her low moan for the assent it was meant to be.

  She missed the loss of his fingers as he penetrated her with the vibe, but all thoughts were washed away as the dual pleasure of the shaft on the inside and the tiny nub on the outside hit her. She pushed up onto her elbows and pushed back against him.

  “This isn’t going to work.”

  “No, no, it’s working fine,” she said in a puff as he withdrew.

  “No, it isn’t. I can’t see what it’s doing to you. On your back again.”

  She rolled over and parted her legs for him as he knelt. The arousal on his face was so intense it almost hurt her to look at it. His cock wasn’t ready for her. He still had a way to go before his body matched the fierce need on his face.

  “I won’t stop this time,” he assured her, and leaned down to kiss her belly before he slipped the vibe back in.

  “Oh Jesus … Jesus that’s …”

  She couldn’t make sense of anything as he gave her the full effect of the vibe. He didn’t thrust it into her. Instead he plugged her with the toy and let the oscillation of shafts both large and small take her where he wanted her.

  The sensation veered this way and that, up and down, centering her pleasure in a tight little ball, then sent it rocketing through her whole body. There were times when she didn’t think she could handle it and begged him to stop, but he didn’t. He merely brought the intensity down a notch and let her recover.

  She asked one last time, but he ignored her. Instead he placed his hand on her abdomen and added the movement of his thumb above her clit to the sweet agony he was putting her through.

  Rory grasped the bedding around her and writhed with pleasure so consuming she could have wept from it.

  “This is why I want the lights on whenever I fuck you,” he murmured, words wafting around her head like smoke. “You look so gorgeous when you come. That’s what gets me hard--thinking about the way you bite your lip and try to hold it in when I’m getting you off.”

  “Soon,” she managed to say in a gurgle. Closer than soon.

  She writhed against the quickening, braced herself against the surge that was coming, and lost her breath as the ecstasy made her delirious.

  “Oh God, Noah, stop--stop!” she begged him with more urgency in her voice that ever and placed her hand on his wrist. The vibration ended immediately, and she felt its absence so much it was as though it had taken all of her sense with it.

  “You are a lucky girl,” he said with a titter and laid down next to her.

  “And you are conceited … but totally right.”

  For a moment more she put everything she had into breathing in and out and chase away that burning in her chest. The quivers running through her sex took longer to dissipate, and in the aftermath she found herself as eager to go again as he clearly was.

  “Lucky, lucky girl,” he murmured once she wrapped his dick and took him inside. “Jesus Christ, you’re still throbbing.”
<
br />   “Lucky boy.”

  Chapter Six

  “I don’t know why you’re even bothering with this,” Rory said as Noah came behind the bar.

  He puffed out his chest and framed his fingers and thumbs over the logo on his breast. “I aspire to be one of The White Tip’s finest.”

  “You aspire to be an ass.” She swatted him with the bar towel. “I thought your father put the whole grunt work thing off the table now that he has his finger in your cottage plan.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, until he flung this shirt at me and told me not to do my James Bond impression if someone orders a martini.” He threw his arms out. “Make me a bartender. I’m yours.”

  “It’s a slow night, just a few sunburned golfers tonight.” She passed him a bottle of window cleaner and a roll of paper towel. “Start by wiping the fingerprints off the bar, then you can unload the dishwasher.”

  Within fifteen minutes he was clearly bored. Even being in her company didn’t seem to capture his attention, especially when she was busy with a sudden slew of room service orders. At one point she had to confiscate his phone when she caught him texting, only to laugh at him when she discovered he was watering the crops on a virtual farm.

  “All right, you’re going to make whatever she’s bringing us,” Rory told him as Fiona headed towards them.

  Fiona wore a grim look on her face and swore under her breath after she laid out her drink order. “Old bastard keeps rubbing my arse. I’d better get one hell of a tip.”

  Noah looked over her head with a scowl. “Which one?”

  “Yellow shirt. He was in here all week with his wife and kids.”

  Noah looked to Rory. “Do we put them out?”

  “Not yet,” Fiona answered. “Right now he can just say he only brushed up against me. If he gets grabby hands, then we call security.”

  “Noah, stop steaming and pay attention,” Rory nudged him and picked up the drink order. “Having to put up with a few horny bastards comes with the territory, but we can be sneaky. This is where we start counting how many rounds they order. By the looks of it they’ve already had a few. Fiona is the judge right now. When she says they’ve had enough, they’ve had enough. If they put up a fight with her, that’s when we go over. If they don’t like hearing it from us, then we call Gord.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he calls your father, and he has the last word. Right now--three Red Cliffs, a Molson, and a blueberry ale. First two come from the tap, the other a bottle with a glass.”

  Over the next hour, Rory started to see something familiar in Noah. Once or twice she’d seen his father in the lobby, lingering while the front desk clerks found themselves on the receiving end of an increasingly hot tirade. If the situation was quickly diffused, Vincent Hyland would simply disappear. If not, he would materialize at the guest’s side and act quickly to find a resolution.

  Noah did every little thing Rory asked, but his attention remained partly focused on the group of men. He frothed when he saw the same man discreetly caress the backs of Fiona’s thighs.

  She just shook her head. “The complaint has to be from Fiona.”

  He was itching to act, to clean up the dining room, but she stressed with every directive that she was his boss at that moment. It wasn’t until Fiona came back with tears in her eyes that Rory conceded.

  “That’s never happened to me before,” she said with a quiet sob.

  Noah was around the bar in an instant. “What?”

  “Noah, get back over on this side of the bar and call security,” Rory warned him.

  Save for a sharp look, he ignored her and slipped his hand around Fiona’s shoulder. “What happened?”

  “Offered me a hundred dollars apiece to go to a cottage with them.”

  “Noah, don’t--Noah!”

  Rory didn’t waste a second once Noah was on the move. She went right to the phone and jabbed the extension for security.

  Gord arrived just as three out of the five members of the party were getting on their feet to challenge Noah. The other two were clearly trying to talk their way out of being caught doing something despicable. Shouts and threats rose up, and when the man in the yellow shirt shoved Gord, he found himself on the floor with his arm braced across his back. The rest of the party quickly backed off.

  Once Gord ordered the other men to their rooms and cottages and led the yellow shirt away, Noah returned to the bar, red-faced and scowling.

  “That’s not how it should have been handled,” Rory hissed at him. They were alone. Rory had sent Fiona to the washroom to clean herself up before Mr. Hyland’s inevitable arrival.

  “Oh yeah, how is it done?”

  “We stay away from the table and call security. We cover our asses and the hotel’s and let your father sort it out. We don’t go running over there to make threats.”

  “I didn’t make a threat,” he barked at her. “I told them if they didn’t apologize to Fiona they could find somewhere else to stay.”

  “That’s very valiant of you, but that wasn’t your call to make,” she snapped back at him. “No, stay on that side. You’re done behind the bar.”

  Noah climbed into a stool and simmered as she passed him a glass of water. They didn’t say anything as they waited. Within fifteen minutes, Noah’s father walked in with his street clothes on.

  “I ought to break your neck,” he growled at Noah, who seemed to shrink a little before Rory’s eyes. “That girl was the one you’ve been running around with?”

  God, that sounds so tawdry.

  “I have to be screwing her to want to do the right thing?” Noah fired back.

  Rory would have given anything to take off on her break at that moment, but with Fiona gone that would leave only Tom holding down the fort. Even if she could have pulled him off the floor to cover for her, she wouldn’t have wanted him privy to this conversation between father and son. She moved as far as she could away from them without actually leaving the bar, and hoped desperately Mr. Hyland would outright tell her to get lost.

  “If that guy had shoved you and not Gordon, would you have shoved him back?”

  “I would have taken it outside.”

  “And the hotel would be in the news tomorrow for a brawl, for Christ’s sake. You and that hot-head of yours, Noah.” He sighed, and Rory heard a creak as he took a stool. “I put them out. You should have seen that sad prick. After he’d got done blustering he begged me not to tell his wife. You know what they said to her?”

  “They offered her money.”

  “They didn’t just offer her money. They got pretty specific about what they expected her to do for the money. Christ, some people. You know how to get beer out of the tap?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then go back there and get us a couple. We’ll go out on the patio for a bit.”

  Rory didn’t make eye contact with Noah as he came behind the bar. She kept her back turned, unloading dishes as he poured out two pints.

  Fiona returned just before closing, eyes still red but her mood buoyant. “He made the guy apologize to me.”

  “Noah?”

  “No, Mr. Hyland. Told them he’d call the police about an assault if he didn’t. I feel kind of bad for the other guys. They actually looked embarrassed when the guy said what he said, but fuck them.” She spotted the two Hylands out on the patio. “Mr. Hyland thought I was you. He thought I was the one Noah’s been carrying on with.”

  “I know.” Rory rubbed her eyes with a groan. “I’m glad I won’t be here when Francie hears about this.”

  “Oooh, that’s another part of it. When Mr. Hyland was questioning me, he wanted to know why I let it go on for so long. When I told him it’s because Francie says it’s part out our jobs to flirt--”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did. First he heard of it. Said something about this place not being the Playboy Mansion.” Fiona grinned from ear to ear. “I kind of want to see her head explode.”


  “The silver lining is that she won’t talk to me for a month because I was here. She’ll probably think it was me who talked to Hyland.”

  “I hope you’re going to make it up to Noah for yelling at him.” Fiona wiggled her eyebrows. “If he was mine, my panties would be so soaked from that he-man display. If you don’t want to thank him, I could …”

  “In your dreams,” Rory said on the heels of a giggle. “I have a feeling he won’t be allowed back in the bar for a while.”

  “He looked miserable anyway. Probably thought he was going to be able to feel you up while you made margaritas and you made him work.”

  They dropped their conversation as Noah and his father returned to the dining room. Noah shot her a quick look as he walked into the lobby, and Mr. Hyland sidled up next to Fiona.

  “I thought I told you to go home.”

  “I have to pick up my brother after midnight. I’ll stay and help Rory and Tom close down.”

  Rory spoke up. “Just go. You can wait for your brother at the restaurant.”

  After some convincing, Fiona took off, but Mr. Hyland lingered. He resumed the seat he had vacated and folded his hands in front of him. “Another Red Cliff, please.”

  “Can I bring it to you on the patio, sir?”

  “No, here is fine.”

  Rory’s nerves were shot, but she was all smiles as she poured her boss a drink.

  He turned the glass around so that the logo faced him, and Rory bit the tip of her tongue to keep from smiling as she thought of how Noah did the exact same thing: always the label or logo facing him.

  “He doesn’t listen to me, either.” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “Noah. Fiona said you tried to keep him from going over to the table. He takes after my brother. You might as well have been talking to a wall.” He took a sip. “I’ve been trying to figure out which one of you he’s been seeing for almost two weeks now. When he insisted on working the bar tonight, I figured it was one of the waitresses.”

  “Oh, that little liar,” she exclaimed before she could stop herself, then clapped her hand over her face. “He said you were the one who told him he had to do this.”