The Mob Gave Me a Week to Leave, So I Took Over Dorchester novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Counter

In Marek's second-floor kitchen Kathleen kisses him, he lifts her onto the counter with one hand and takes her with his mouth, and he stops there and says the door at the bottom of the stairs is open any night she wants it shut.

I kissed him before the kettle boiled.

I put the ledgers down on his kitchen table, turned around, and took hold of his shirt with both fists.

He had to bend a long way down.

For one breath he did nothing at all, and his mouth stayed shut and warm against mine.

His hands hung at his sides.

"Mrs. Cullinane," he said into my lips.

"Kathleen."

"Kathleen." His voice had gone low and rough. "You bury him tomorrow morning. You should be asleep."

"I've been asleep for five years," I said. "Kiss me."

He made a sound in his chest, and then he did.

It was slow, and it was careful, and it was the first kiss anyone had given me in years that did not want something back.

I opened my mouth and he followed me in.

He tasted of coffee and cold air.

The stove clicked behind us and the flame under the kettle went on and hissed.

I walked him back one step and he came with me, because he could have stopped me with a finger and he did not.

His hands were still down at his sides.

I took his wrist and lifted his hand to my waist.

His palm spread over my ribs, and the tips of his fingers met his thumb on the far side.

I had never felt so small and so safe in the same moment.

"Don't grab me," I said. "Anything else."

"I won't grab you."

"Then put your hands on me."

He slid the other hand to my hip.

He held me there, not squeezing, and let me lean into him.

I could feel all of him through his shirt, wide and hot and hard.

"Tell me if I'm slow," he said.

"You're slow."

He huffed out a laugh against my hair.

"Good," he said.

I started on his buttons.

He let me, and he stood very still while I opened his flannel shirt and pushed it back off his shoulders.

His chest was wide, with black hair across it, and his skin was warm.

I put my mouth on the center of it and kissed him there, and I felt his heart slam under my lips.

"Kathleen," he said, hoarse.

"I like you," I said.

"I noticed," he said.

"No. I mean I like you. Be quiet."

I kissed my way across his chest to the flat of his nipple and bit it gently.

His whole body jerked, and his hands finally closed on my hips.

He bent his knees, set one forearm under my backside and lifted me off the floor.

He did it with one arm, and it cost him nothing.

I made a noise I had never made in my life.

He set me down on the counter beside the stove, and my black wake dress rode up my thighs.

I wrapped my legs around his hips and pulled his mouth back to mine.

He kissed my jaw, my throat, the hollow under my ear.

His beard was rough on the skin and his mouth was soft.

He kept clear of the left side of my face.

He had noticed, and he had not said a word about it.

My eyes stung at that, so I shut them and put my hands in his hair.

"Zipper," I said.

He reached behind my neck and drew it down one slow inch at a time.

Cold air hit my back, and then his breath, and then his mouth, working along my spine as he went.

He pushed the dress off my shoulders and let it fall to my waist.

I was not wearing much underneath, because I had not planned on anyone seeing it.

He looked at me for a long moment.

I let him.

"Mała," he said, very quietly.

"What's that?"

"Little one," he said.

"Don't," I said.

"Okay."

"No." I took his face in my hands. "Say it again."

He said it again, against my breast, and then his mouth closed over my nipple and I stopped talking.

He licked it, slowly, over and over, until it went hard and tight.

He took the other in his hand, and his thumb moved across it in the same long strokes.

I arched into him and gripped the edge of the counter.

"Marek," I said.

"I hear you."

"Lower."

He went down on his knees on the kitchen floor.

It was a long way down, and it took him a while, and I watched every inch of it.

He pushed my dress up around my waist and hooked two fingers in my underwear.

I lifted my hips, and he drew them down my legs and set them on the floor.

His hands came to my knees.

They were so wide that each one held a whole thigh, and he opened me with no force at all.

"Look at you," he said.

My face went hot.

"Don't look at me like that," I said.

"I'm going to look at you like that for a long time."

Then he put his mouth on me.

He started with one long flat stroke of his tongue, from the bottom to the top.

I cried out and my head hit the cabinet behind me.

He did it again, slower.

My hands found his hair and held on.

He stayed on the same slow rhythm, up and over my clit and back down, until I was shaking.

When I tried to rock against him, he put one hand flat on my stomach and held me still.

His palm covered everything from my hip bone to my ribs.

"Let me," he said.

"I'm trying."

"Stop trying."

He closed his lips around my clit and sucked, gently, and my whole body went tight.

I came with my fist in his hair, shouting his name across the kitchen.

It went through me in long waves, and he kept his mouth on me through every one.

When it ended I was laughing, and then I was crying, and I could not tell which one I had started with.

He stood up at once.

He gathered me against his chest and held very still, with one big hand on the back of my head.

He did not say anything.

I cried into his shirt for a while.

He smelled of diesel and soap and the cold.

"Nobody has touched me without it hurting," I said, when I could.

"I know."

"You don't."

"I know some of it." He kissed the top of my head. "I'm not going to hurt you, mała."

I wiped my face on his sleeve and looked up.

His eyes were dark and wet, and he did not look away.

I took his face in my hands, carefully, on both sides.

"Again," I said.

He gave a short, helpless laugh.

"Kathleen."

"Again. Use your fingers this time. I want to watch you do it."

He lowered me back onto the counter and kneeled again.

He licked once along my slit, and then his middle finger pushed into me, thick and slow.

I was so wet that it went in all the way to the knuckle.

I said something that was not a word.

He curled the finger and found the place inside me that made my toes curl against his shoulders.

"There?" he said.

"Yes. There. Don't stop."

He added a second finger, and the stretch of it made me gasp.

His mouth went back to my clit, and he worked both together, in and out and round and round.

I watched his dark head move between my thighs.

I watched his shoulders flex and his big hand moving at my center.

"You're so wet," he said against me. "You taste like salt and sugar. I could stay here all night."

"Then stay."

"I will."

The pressure built and built, and it was too much.

"Marek, I'm going to come again," I said.

"Come on my hand."

I did.

I came with a shout and my thighs clamped around his head, and he rode it out with me, his fingers moving, his tongue steady.

When I went limp, he eased out and kissed the inside of each knee.

I lay back on his kitchen counter with my dress around my waist, wrecked and happy.

The kettle was screaming.

He reached over and switched off the burner without standing up.

Then he got to his feet, and I saw the front of his jeans.

He was hard.

It strained against the zipper, long and thick, and my mouth went dry.

I slid off the counter, took him by the belt and walked him backward to a kitchen chair.

He sat.

I climbed into his lap in my wrecked dress, a knee on either side of his thighs, bare and shaking.

"Kathleen," he said. "Not like this."

"Like what? I'm not crying."

"You were," he said.

"I'm done," I said.

I pushed my hips down against his thigh, and he swore.

I was slick, and he was hard under the denim, and I rubbed against the thick muscle of his leg in slow circles.

His hands came up and held my waist.

He did not stop me.

"That's it," he said, low. "Take what you want. Use my leg."

"Marek."

"Let me watch you."

I ground down harder, head back, my breasts bouncing in front of his face, and he put his mouth on one and sucked.

The friction was rough and perfect.

His hand slid down my back and spread over my bare backside, and he drew me forward along his thigh.

The seam of his jeans dragged straight over my clit.

I gasped into his hair.

"There," he said. "Feel that? You're soaking my leg."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. I'm going to wear it all day tomorrow."

My face went hot, and the heat of it ran straight down between my legs.

I rocked faster.

His other hand came up and cupped the back of my head, and he kissed me deep.

His tongue slid against mine in the same slow rhythm as my hips.

"Come for me again," he said into my mouth. "I want to feel you do it on my lap."

"Say my name."

"Kathleen. Kathleen. Come on."

I came a third time, fast and quiet, shaking against his thigh with my hands braced on his shoulders.

He held me while it passed, and then he pressed his face to my neck and breathed.

I felt how hard he was against my hip.

I reached down and cupped him through his jeans, and he caught my wrist, gently, and lifted my hand to his mouth.

He kissed my knuckles.

"Not tonight," he said.

"I want to."

"I know." His thumb moved across my fingers. "You bury him in the morning, and I'm not going to be the thing you did instead of crying. When I take you to bed, it's going to be because you chose it with your eyes open."

"My eyes are open."

"Tomorrow night," he said. "If you still want it."

I looked at him, big and flushed and holding himself back with both hands.

"I'll want it," I said.

"Then you'll tell me. The third floor has two locks and you keep both keys. I sleep on this floor. Nobody climbs those stairs unless you say."

"And if I come down?"

His eyes went dark again.

"Then I'll be here," Marek said.

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