Three Days in Town, and the Barista Already Knew My Order novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Closing Time

After the sign is flipped she sets her terms at the counter, and he does exactly what she tells him, mouth first and then standing, apron off.

At ten past three the shades were down and the sign on the door said CLOSED.

The lock turned before I could knock.

Etienne stood in the doorway with his sleeves pushed up and flour to the elbows, and he looked at me and did not blink.

"Come in," he said.

I went in.

He locked the door behind me and turned the bolt, and the sound of it was very loud in the empty café.

The woodstove was down to coals.

The stools were upside down on the counter, and the whole place smelled of yeast and hot iron.

"Your grandmother," I said.

"At the Grange till six," he said. "Cutting pies for tomorrow."

"Who else knows I'm here?"

"Nobody," he said.

"Good. That's my first rule."

He folded his arms across his chest and waited, with the dimple just starting.

"Rule one," I said. "This is after closing only. Three o'clock and later. Nobody in this building finds out, and nobody in this town."

"Okay."

"Rule two. I lead. You don't start anything."

He didn't answer that one right away.

I watched his throat move.

"Okay," he said, and his voice had dropped.

"Rule three," I said. "I'm not promising you anything past the thaw. In the spring I decide if I'm staying."

"Okay."

"You haven't argued with a single one."

"Was I supposed to?" He tilted his head. "Maura. I don't think I've ever been told the rules before."

It was the first time he had said my name.

I felt it all the way down my back.

"Take your apron off," I said.

He didn't ask why.

He reached behind himself, pulled the knot, and drew the strap over his head.

He held it for a second.

Then he dropped it on the counter, and he looked relieved.

"Come here."

He came around the end of the counter, and I put both my hands flat on his chest.

His shirt was damp from the ovens and under it he was hard and hot and he was breathing fast.

I took a handful of his shirt and pulled his head down to mine.

I kissed him.

His mouth was soft and tasted of coffee, and for one second he held perfectly still, because I had told him not to start anything.

Then I bit his lower lip and he groaned into my mouth, low and rough.

His hands came up and stopped in the air beside my waist, shaking.

"Touch me," I said against his mouth. "I'm giving you permission."

His hands landed on my hips and gripped hard.

I walked him backward through the swinging door into the flour room, kissing him the whole way.

The back room was cool and dim.

There were fifty-pound sacks stacked on pallets and a long steel prep table scattered with dough scrapers.

A window high up with a square of afternoon light across the floor.

I stopped at the table and put my back against it.

"Lift me."

He picked me up by the waist, easy, and set me on the edge of the steel.

It was cold through my slacks and I gasped, and he grinned.

"Don't," I said. "Don't look pleased with yourself."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"A little," he said.

I got my fingers into his hair, which was soft and full of flour, and a small cloud of it rose between us.

"Unbutton my pants."

His hands found the button and fumbled.

I watched the burn scar on his wrist move as he worked at it.

"Slower than you think you can go," I told him.

He slowed down.

He drew the zipper down one tooth at a time, looking at my face the whole while.

When it was open, his knuckles brushed my stomach and I lost the end of my sentence.

"Lift," he said, and I did, and he pulled my slacks and my underwear down together over my shoes and dropped them on a flour sack.

I sat on the cold steel with my legs open and my blouse still buttoned.

Nobody had looked at me that plainly in two years.

He looked at me with nothing else on his mind, and I let him.

He put one hand on each of my knees.

"What do I do?" he asked.

"On your knees."

He sank down onto the tile, and his face was level with my thighs.

I took a fistful of his hair.

"You're going to use your mouth," I said. "I'll tell you where."

"Yes."

"Start at the inside of my knee."

He kissed it.

He kissed up the inside of my thigh, slowly, with his mouth open and his breath hot.

I let my head fall back against the shelf behind me.

"Higher."

He went higher.

His tongue touched me in one long flat stroke from the bottom to the top.

I made a noise I had never made in front of anyone.

"There," I said. "Again."

He did it again.

"Slower. Don't be so polite about it."

He groaned against me, and the sound went through me from the inside.

I guided his head with my hand and he followed it.

He found my clit with the tip of his tongue and circled it, and when I pulled his hair he circled it harder.

"Good," I said. "Good, Etienne. Don't stop. Right there."

He didn't stop.

He put his hands on the backs of my thighs and held them open, and he was making wet, hungry sounds.

I could feel the heat gathering low and tight in my belly.

My heels hooked behind his shoulders.

My blouse was stuck to my back.

I said his name, and then I said it again, louder, and then I could not say anything at all.

It broke over me in long hard pulses.

My thighs clamped around his head and my hand locked in his hair.

I cried out so loudly that it came back off the walls of the empty room.

He kept his mouth on me through all of it, slow and steady, until I pushed his forehead away because I couldn't stand any more.

I sat there shaking on the steel table, with my pulse in my fingertips.

He looked up at me from the floor.

His chin was wet and there was flour on his cheek.

"Was that right?" he asked.

I laughed, a cracked, helpless laugh.

"That," I said, "was very right. Get up here."

He stood, and I grabbed his belt and pulled him between my knees.

I undid it and pushed his jeans down, and he was thick and hard and flushed, and I wrapped my hand around him.

He made a rough, startled sound.

"Maura."

"You don't talk right now."

I stroked him once, slowly, base to tip, and watched his eyes close.

"Tell me you want it."

"I want it," he said.

"Tell me how much."

"More than anything I've ever wanted in this town," he said, his voice breaking. "Please."

I had not planned on please.

It undid something in me that I hadn't known was tied.

I hooked my legs around his waist and pulled him in, and I guided the head of his cock to me and held it there.

"Look at me."

He looked.

I let him push inside.

He went in slowly, because I pulled him by the hip to make him, and I felt every inch of it, thick and stretching.

When he was all the way in he stopped, trembling, with his forehead on my collarbone.

"God," he said. "God, you're tight."

"Don't stop. Move."

He moved.

He drew back and thrust in, and the table rocked and the dough scrapers rattled.

I dug my heels into the backs of his thighs.

"Harder."

He fucked me harder.

He had a baker's arms and a runner's hips.

He drove into me standing at the edge of the steel with his hands bruising my waist.

Every thrust hit deep.

I had my fingers in his hair, and my other hand under his shirt, flat against the small of his back, feeling the muscle jump.

"Tell me," I said, panting. "Tell me what it's like."

"Like I'm going to die," he said, "like I can't last, Maura, you feel so good, I can't."

"You can. I haven't said you can't."

He groaned and slowed, shaking all over, and I tightened my legs around him.

"That's it. Slow. Like that."

I rocked against him.

I got a hand between us and found my own clit, and he saw it and made a strangled noise.

"Watch me," I said.

He watched my fingers.

He watched my face.

I came again, harder this time, with his cock buried deep and his name in my mouth.

My body clenched around him in long waves that went on and on.

"Oh," he gasped. "Oh God, Maura, I can feel you."

"Now," I said. "Come for me. Now."

He pushed into me once more, hard, and his whole body locked.

He came with a ragged shout, pulsing inside me, his face pressed into my neck.

His hips jerked against mine until he had nothing left.

We stayed like that, holding on, with the steel cooling under me and his breath loud in my ear.

Neither of us moved for a long time.

"Nobody has ever," he started, and stopped.

"Ever what?"

"Told me what to do. And then," he said, and gave up, and laughed into my shoulder.

"Good," I said. "Good, then."

I held the back of his head with one hand.

I had gone two years with nothing.

A man in Worcester had made me small for three years.

This boy with flour in his hair had just fallen apart for me because I said he could.

I wasn't about to give that back.

When we were dressed he walked me to the back door.

He pushed a cup into my hand.

It was a fresh one, still warm, with the sleeve already marked.

I read it standing in the alley with the sun going low behind the church.

"Friday. That stove on Lamphere Hill never drew right. My uncle cut wood for the last tenant. I'll bring some."

I read it a second time.

I knew exactly what I should say, which was that this was not what we had agreed.

I looked up at him, and he was waiting for me to say it.

I didn't say it.

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