Rescue the Barista Read online

  * * *

  Fuck, I could fall in love with this woman.

  * * *

  There’s a sound outside. A little bell, jingling.

  * * *

  “Come,” she says, turning quickly. I nearly did, too.

  I follow her back out into the coffee shop. She stands behind the counter, smiling. Ready to take an order from a couple of construction workers. Their eyes are feasting on her, and I want to bash the brains out of them both. I have a range of options.

  * * *

  I could shoot both the motherfuckers, right here and now. That would make horrible stains on Jamie’s nice floor. I could beat the living shit out of them. That would still make an awful mess, too, though. Furniture could break.

  * * *

  Or, I can exercise some restraint. That has never been one of my specialist subjects. Still, as they tell her what they want, and she pulls things together for them—fruit juice, pastries, and chai—and she asks them if they want to have it in or take-out, I’m watching her beautiful ass. Full, round, and wonderful in those soft pants.

  * * *

  Keeping my eyes on the construction workers, I slide my hand down the back of those soft pants. She doesn’t show any reaction. I feel the hot, beautiful, round flesh of her ass. Slip my finger down through the crack. Slide along between her thigh. Feel how wet she is at the top. She’s dripping, slick, hot, eager. And ready. I press along the insides of her wings. Push at the base of her hot little bean. She clenches and trembles.

  * * *

  And her face is giving away nothing.

  * * *

  She doesn’t miss a beat. She uses long tongs to bag their pastries and she pours hot water into a paper cup, onto a bag of Chai, and sets a little bottle of juice on the counter.

  * * *

  All the time, her little pussy is tight, gripping and squeezing. Pulling on my fingers.

  * * *

  The men chat with her, passing the time of day. Trying to get her attention. But they see me. One look in my face and they know not to push it.

  * * *

  They’d have to be looking hard to notice her making any response to the press of my hand. All that I can detect is the way her eyes shine and her pupils widen.

  * * *

  That and the vibrating grip inside her wet pussy as she tugs on my hand. Her thighs and her butt clench. Thick, hot wetness slips over my hand and down her thighs. She is hot. And so wet, it merely makes me want to groan, but I keep a straight face and look the other way.

  * * *

  My finger slips in and out between her too-swollen petals. Inside the thin strip of her thong, my fingers press up, stroking her and rubbing her. Her voice slips just once as she says, “If you’d like sugar for your chai, it’s on the counter there, with stirrers and napkins.”

  * * *

  As I’m stroking up and down the front of her opening, her thighs clench and tremble when my thumb finds the base of her clit. Her pulses zing and her ass clenches. Tight. Hard. Trembles a little. I grip her hard then.

  * * *

  As she takes payment from the second guy, she makes a slow blink that really gets me going. My balls ache like they’re filling up with hot concrete. This is a show I would not miss for anything.

  * * *

  She thanks them as they leave. As the door closes behind them, she lets out a long, deep groan. Presses her ass into my hand. Grinds on my finger.

  * * *

  She is gushing, and clenching hot. Her fingers stretch and her head cranes back. She lets out another long gasp. After one long, slow breath, she turns and kisses me. Hard. Hungry.

  * * *

  Then she swings her arm wide to slap my face. Much harder than last time.

  * * *

  Panting, she almost growls, ”I think you’d better leave.”

  * * *

  I’m kind of astonished. “You sure that’s what you think, honey lips?”

  * * *

  “Leave. Now. Please.”

  * * *

  Disaster. I really think I am falling in love.

  As the door to the little coffee shop swishes closed behind me and the too-cute little bell tinkles, I’m fighting the urge to smell my fingers. To taste them and lick them. Flat-tongued, wide, rude, and raw. I want to taste her so fucking bad. I want nothing more than to sit in the car and just soak up the scent of her. And the taste.

  * * *

  And I could do that, but I know after a little while, I’d break into her shop. Or just go in through the plate glass window. Pick her up, bang out through the back door. Carry her out and back into that little kitchen. Spread her open on that table.

  * * *

  Split her wide on the thick trunk of my cock. Hammer her until she screams and cries. Slam her, pound her like a machine. Bang her until she runs like a faucet, then pump my seed upstream into her until there’s so much it dribbles out of her swollen wings.

  * * *

  She wants it. I fucking know that she does. I want it, too. That’s where I envy the regular guys. One and done. Bam. Next.

  * * *

  But a knot in my gut tells me that with her I could be lighting a fuse and I don’t know where it would end up leading. Something tells me it could take my life off in directions that I’m just not ready for.

  Chapter 3

  Jamie

  His shrug, and the arrogant, loping stride as he saunters out makes me steam with anger.

  * * *

  I have to lean on the counter on my elbows. My knees will hardly support me. I wish I’d brought a change of underwear. Come to that, I wish I’d brought a change of pants. God, his fingers.

  * * *

  Brute.

  * * *

  So later, when Summer calls and asks, “What’s new?” and I tell her, “Oh, nothing,” she knows right away that something’s up. It takes her zero guesses, she’s on it like a shot.

  * * *

  “Jamie! Oh my God!” I can’t say anything. “I’m right, aren’t I!” she gasps. “You didn’t… did you? Jamie.”

  * * *

  “NO!” Then, “Of course not!”

  * * *

  “Jamie?”

  * * *

  “No.”

  * * *

  “Truthfully?”

  * * *

  “Nearly.”

  * * *

  “JAMIE!”

  Chapter 4

  Angelo

  My dirty little secret —okay, it’s not so little. It could wind up getting me killed if it got out.

  * * *

  In this game, you have to be a baller. If you don’t persuade every single motherfucker that you’re a total, three times a night, raging bull fuck-pump baller, you will have guys trying to knock you off your spot every fucking day. Non fucking stop. I just don't want the motherfucking grief.

  * * *

  So, I have dancers in the clubs, I have girls coming from out of town. I take girls, in twos and threes usually, back to my apartment. Or to a hotel suite.

  * * *

  We have a little fun. Play some cards, drink a little. Dance. Whatever. But I make it crystal clear from the get-go. No sex. No romance, no smoochie-coochie, no nothing. But the job is, what I’m paying them for, when they get outside, they have to talk it up.

  * * *

  The thing is, all the broads go away with the idea that I’m gay and I’m covering. And they’re down with that. They’re sympathetic. All of them. That’s cool. I would be, too. In this life, nobody in the families, in this business, is ever gonna come out as gay. It would be the last thing they ever did.

  * * *

  So, all the girls believe that they’re keeping my deadly secret.

  * * *

  We all get along fine. I pay them nicely, they tell outrageous stories about me. Everybody’s happy.

  * * *

  Fact is, I know for sure that I can’t handle intimacy. Not unless it’s with the right person. And I
know I’ve never met the right person. Simple as that. It’s gotten old now. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the idea that it will just never happen. That’s okay.

  * * *

  I never missed what I never had.

  * * *

  Not until now. Not until her.

  * * *

  Now I know that everything is going to change. Whether I want it to or not.

  * * *

  And that’s definitely a ‘not.’ Tell the truth, it fucking scares me to death.

  One thing I’ve seen, it happens to all of the bosses. Sooner or later. Family they care about, wives and daughters, even mistresses, whatever. It makes them vulnerable.

  * * *

  I know it’s a good thing. I get it’s what everybody wants. Love. The girl to make all your dreams come true. It’s what I want, too. Of course it is.

  * * *

  But there are risks. Prices you have to pay. It makes a man weak, I’ve seen it happen. Every time. I can’t afford that. While I’m in the life, I can’t afford to take that chance.

  * * *

  Guy finds a woman, falls in love, all his instincts switch focus. His mind is on something else. He’s no longer watching the angles, shaving the margins, looking hard in the eyes of the guys in his crew. Tuning in to talk and gossip on the street, feeling for changes in the air, in the wind, movements on the ground.

  * * *

  Those things, those little signs, this is where your instinct comes from. Instinct is not a magical power. It’s science. It’s all the things your body notices that are too small for your mind to explain. But your body tells your brain, your brain reacts. If you’re smart, you let those reactions lead you. They’re never wrong.

  * * *

  Get dazzled by love, and a guy tunes out, stops being attuned to the street sounds, the talk. He’s high on a cloud but he has no idea.

  * * *

  He’s a dead man walking.

  Chapter 5

  Angelo

  The Cherry Crush bar is about one-third full. Truckers, businessmen, guys of no fixed profession. The usual midweek crowd. For a slow Tuesday it’s not too bad of a night. They’re all polite, respectful to the dancers, and very good tippers.

  * * *

  They all know that otherwise they’d get pitched out the back door, in a not very ceremonial style.

  * * *

  Me and the guys, Vito, Nico, and H, are in the dark corner at the far end, around our usual couple of tables. Vito has ordered his third jumbo rum and coke. His routine is predictable. You could set your watch by him. In about ten minutes he’ll order out for a pizza. An eighteen inch monster, with all the toppings. When it arrives it will take up half the table.

  * * *

  And Vito will eat all of it. All apart from the little buttons of pepperoni and strings of melted cheese that wind up joining the pattern on his garish shirt. Leave aside how it signals to the customers to get food out and not order from the kitchen.

  * * *

  Vito really is the guy that gets wise guys a bad name. He has as much class as a used rubber.

  * * *

  Bobby, the new dancer, shimmies over and tries to sit on my lap. Long and lean, she’s wearing heels, glitter and a thong. Plus some blue feathers. She’ll do well for herself here.

  * * *

  Vito tells her, “You’ll get nowhere with Angelo.” Which is true. The girl’s just trying to be friendly and show herself as accommodating. Especially to the boss. Being as it’s her first night.

  * * *

  Still, I’m even more impatient than usual. I never get cozy with the girls. Not with any girls, and I’m especially not interested today.

  * * *

  I’m getting more and more of a sense that Vito has a plan to muscle me out of my territory. The head of the family and that slob from across the tracks thinks he can take it away from me. I have to stay sharp, though. Keep watching for how he might try.

  * * *

  At the bar later, I tell Nic, “You know what, I honestly think I wouldn’t mind handing the crew over. There are times I feel like I’ve had enough of the life. Maybe it’s time to get out. Do some straight business.” Nic’s a good listener. And I would trust him with my life.

  * * *

  I tell him, “But there is no fucking way I would leave Vito to take charge of any of the family’s business or anything that I’ve built. Anything that fell into his greasy paws, it would be a train-wreck in no time. Fucker has all the class of a used rubber.”

  * * *

  Nic nearly spits his beer. I think he’s relieved to hear me say it, all the same.

  * * *

  I buy a few drinks on the way out of the Cherry Crush. Turn in early.

  * * *

  Vito is the only fly in my otherwise perfect little bowl of cherries. Vito is Benji’s son, and Benji was my dad’s lifetime partner. People in the life say someone’s ‘a friend of ours,’ then Benji is exactly the kind of guy they’re thinking of. Anything anyone needed, Benji would see you right. Good people from way back.

  * * *

  How he got a son like Vito, who the fuck knows. Still, Benji is gone, my dad is gone. I run the family, and Vito comes part and parcel with the business I inherited. He could have stayed with his own family but his uncle Julius was smart. Shoved the asshole out of the nest when he had the chance and he dodged that particular bullet.

  * * *

  By the time I’m home, my mind has turned over to what my apartment is lacking. Which is the wet lips and beautiful curves of a certain bouncy coffee bar owner.

  * * *

  Damnit. How am I going to get to sleep now?

  Chapter 6

  Angelo

  So, next day, I swing by Jamie’s Rise and Grind.

  * * *

  Just to see how she’s doing.

  * * *

  Ten, maybe a dozen people are sitting around, drinking coffee, eating cakes and pastries. A few MILF types, soccer moms, some of them have got little strollers with babies in. Some toddlers, too. A few tech warriors hunch over laptops.

  * * *

  I get to the counter, Jamie says, “Good morning,” and smiles. “What can I get you today?”

  * * *

  Like that. Businesslike. Like nothing happened. Okay, that’s how you want to play it.

  * * *

  “Double espresso?”

  * * *

  “Of course –“

  * * *

  “Only, can you make sure all of it gets in the cup?”

  * * *

  Her eyelids beat down, once. Watching her hold her mask of professionalism is a treat. When I walk up, see her behind the cakes, in front of the steaming coffee machine, I’m rock hard immediately. Remembering the taste of her lips. And the swollen, wet quivers in her other lips. The full, round flesh of her ass. In those soft pants.

  * * *

  She puts the espresso into a small china demitasse, puts it neatly onto a saucer, puts the saucer on the side. Tells me with her professional smile that I have loyalty points, so this one’s on the house.

  * * *

  I so want to wipe that professional smile off her pretty professional face. Bend her back over a bench, or fold her forward over the back of a chair. Damn. My fucking mind is racing with all the possibilities. I know my judgement is all taking a back seat. Riding this one out. The ways I’m thinking about her leave no room to be thinking about anything else.

  * * *

  It takes me a moment to remember what I had planned to say. That’s not like me. I down the espresso right at the counter. I have to admit, fucking great espresso.