“I don’t give a shit.” I stand chest-to-chest with Jeremy, or as close as I can with Kenzie slung over my shoulder. “I’m taking McKenzie home, and you’re going back to your apartment to jerk off.”
Jeremy glowers. I brush past him before he can run his mouth, continuing toward the crosswalk. Kenzie kicks her feet.
“You can put me down n-now,” she slurs.
“Not happening.” I don’t trust her not to stumble into traffic in her condition. Kenzie wriggles, raining weak punches down on my back as I step into the crosswalk.
Halfway through the intersection, she starts to slip from my hold.
“Knock it off, little girl.” Without thinking, I bring my hand up firmly against her ass.
She goes still.
Mine is the only vehicle in the Pope and Parkes parking lot. Carefully, I set McKenzie down on the pavement, keeping a grip on her elbow as she sways in place. I expect to be met with wild, drunken fury, but she appears almost chastened, wringing her hands and refusing to meet my gaze.
“How much did you have to drink?” I ask.
She shrugs. Adrenaline makes my hands twitch as I take in her current state. I shouldn’t have spanked her, I know that. I just don’t understand how she can be so Goddamned reckless with the thing I hold most precious in this world.
I take a deep breath to calm myself, then open the passenger door of my truck.
“Get in,” I tell her.
She shakes her head like a child refusing to leave the playground.
I exhale a groan. This girl’s fucking lucky she’s not my kid, ‘cos if she was, she’d be in a world of trouble.
But maybe that’s the problem.
It’s like she said right before she started drinking: I’d rather go where I’m wanted than accept one more person’s charity.
She thinks I’m trying to parent her, and why wouldn’t she? All this time, I’ve been giving Kenzie the space I thought she needed to heal. But by keeping my distance, I've given the impression that I don't want to be close to her, when that's exactly where I’m dying to be. Close enough to lick the sweat from the hollow of her throat. Tight enough to taste her moans as I spread her wide. I want to bury myself so deep inside her that I feel her heartbeat when I tell her she’s the only girl I’ve ever loved, and there’ll never be another girl for me.
Though, I wouldn’t mind if she called me Daddy...
“You think that little prick’s the only one who wants you, Kenzie?” I stalk toward her, casting a shadow over her face. If telling her the truth gets her into my truck and back to my house where I can take care of her, well, maybe it’s time I showed her that I’m not trying to be her father.
She gasps as I cup her ass with both hands and lift her, pinning her between my body and the side of my truck.
“Just to be clear, little girl, I’m notinvitingyou to my bed out of some sense of duty. I’mdraggingyou there because that’s how badly I want to get inside you.”
She inhales, pressing her breasts against me. There’s no way she doesn’t feel me getting hard between her legs.
“You want me?” she whispers, and the disbelief in her tone rasps across my senses. I suck air through my teeth as she grinds experimentally on my dick.
“I’ve wanted you for two years, baby.”
She wets her lips, and that brief cameo of her tongue is too sweet to resist.
I slant my lips over hers and demand that they open for me. She tastes like lime and fire, but beneath the burn, I discern her unique flavor, sweet and heady. Her fingernails scrape the back of my neck, and for a second, I forget where we are, what we’re doing here, and why it’s a bad idea to let her grind on my cock until she comes undone less than twenty paces from our place of work. But this isn’t how I want her to remember our first kiss, if she’s in any shape to remember at all come morning.
Amassing every drop of control I have left in me, I let her shoes touch the pavement, leaving us both panting.
“Get in the truck, Kenzie.”
She climbs inside without complaint like the good girl I knew she could be.