—ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Iquickly learned that even in the instances that Ididneed to go to work, Reaver was always there to pick me up and drive me back home. Every shift that week was with Reaver, and I was pretty sure he had forced Rafael to manipulate our schedules to ensure we worked together every night.
Each shift, I kept waiting for the doors to open and the uniforms to make another appearance, especially since John’s death. If I was a person of interest before, I was certain I would be an official suspect soon. Every time a guest walked in, I would jump, and my heart would stop in my chest. Reaver almost always noticed and would chuckle softly, assuring me quietly that he would handle it if the cops came back. He wasn’t as much of an asshole as he had been when I first met him, but his good mood seemed to be completely conditional on whether or not I did everything he asked. It was fucked up, controlling, and somehow also super fucking hot.
It didn’t help that my demon hadn’t returned all week to finish what he had started. I spent the next five nights lying in bed waiting, hoping,prayingthat he would return and relieve the relentless need that sat low in my hips, but he never did. Every time I took a shower, the temptation to touch myself was sogreat that I found myself needing to clench my hands into fists to keep my fingers from wandering.
Reaver just added to the madness. He was constantly teasing me with little touches or featherlight breaths in my ear. He would constantly have his fingers in my hair or find ways to press up against me while we were working, though he never followed through with anything. He always left me thinking he was going to kiss me, or he would allow his hands to wander just outside the erogenous zones I was silently begging him to touch. It was like he knew exactly where the line was and was playing fucking jump rope with it. I wondered if that was why Death hadn’t taken him yet. He toed the line but never crossed it.
To make matters worse, Rafael had been in a frenzy. Our quarterly review with Eloah was fast approaching, and he had Reaver and I do a bar scrape on a slow Wednesday night. I spent hours on my hands and knees, scrubbing every surface of the bar, imagining what it would feel like if Reaver fucked me from behind the whole time.
I was disgusted with myself. Who fantasized about the man who was blackmailing them? What was happening to me? I had never exactly been mentally stable, but I felt like I was completely unraveling.
By the time Friday night rolled around, I was an absolute wreck. I did my best to cover up my emotional state with makeup and a blowout, but I didn’t think it would be enough.
Reaver arrived to pick me up, and the corner of his mouth lifted as I greeted him at the door.
“Hey, deathtrap.” He smirked, his eyes sliding down my body slowly. “You look good enough to eat.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed past him, locking the door behind me. When I turned and realized we were taking the bike, I groaned.
“The motorcycle?Again?” I asked, and he patted the seat, smirking back at me.
“I like how jumpy and needy you get after a trip on the bike.” He grinned, and I scowled back at him. I was hanging by a fucking thread, and I think he knew it. We tiptoed around the discussion, and he never outright told me that he wanted to fuck me, but it was so painfully clear that he didn’t need to.
Too bad it could never happen. I was doomed to be this needy, turned-on mess until my demon deigned to put me out of my misery.
Reaver was technically supposed to be the opener today, but I helped him with his open since I was there anyway. Shem slinked up to the bar and popped a cherry into his mouth, giving us a sideways grin as he worked the stem between his teeth, tying it into a knot.
“Hey Lil, how’s your week been?” he asked. I hadn’t seen Shem since he sat at the bar with me the night the police had come. We had just happened to have opposite schedules.
“I’ve had better,” I deadpanned, not wanting to get into it. Shem and Reaver exchanged a look.
“Someone’s grumpy.” Shem smirked at me, and Reaver’s eyes shone with mischief.
“I think she needs to get laid.”
I felt a jolt of electricity shoot right through my clit. “Fuck you both,” I snapped as I brushed past, lifting the drop hatch on my way behind the bar. Reaver’s smirk deepened.
“Gladly, if you’re offering,” he quipped, and my heart skipped a beat in my chest. He fist-bumped Shem. “You want in on this?”
Shem burst out a laugh and wiggled his eyebrows at me, popping another maraschino cherry into his mouth.
“Sure. I haven’t been practicing tying these stems into knots as a party trick.” He winked at me, though there wasn’t the same heat in his gaze that I was getting from Reaver. Shem was a flirt with everyone and always made sex jokes. Reaver, on the other hand, had been teasing me all week and seemed to only flirt with me. He had completely flipped from how he had been when we started. He hovered around me like a satellite. He was always watching me and was always close by. It felt dangerously close to an obsession, and if I wasn’t so sexually frustrated, I would probably be a little more worried about it.
Looking at the two devastatingly handsome men who leaned against the bar before me, the last thing I should be doing was imagining what it would be like to fuck them. My clit throbbed, and wetness pooled between my thighs. I rubbed my knees together and scrunched up my nose at them in frustration.
“Enough, guys. I’m not in the mood.”
Reaver raised an eyebrow. “Well, you better get in the mood, deathtrap. We have that bachelor party buyout today, and I can tell you right now that they’re going to want to see you more than they’re going to want to see me.”
Fuck.I had forgotten about that. I groaned.
Could I catch a fucking break?
Soon,the entire bar was filled with rowdy, half-drunk men. The first round was on the groom, so we were four lines deep in the first five minutes while they all rushed to use their drink tickets. The only good thing was that because it was a buyout, we didn’t need to worry about service.
I rushed back and forth, taking drink orders and whipping up cocktails while Reaver more or less followed me around and cleaned up after me with that annoying little smirk on hisface.
