When her shoulders sag, she gives in. “I think it’s the battery. I can have a mechanic come out to jump it, so it’s not stuck in your driveway, I promise. I’m sorry.”
Everything in me tenses as I think about her buried in her coat against the wind as she walked for over forty-five minutes in the cold, because she didn’t want to tell me that her car wouldn’t start.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“It’s fine,” she replies with a forced smile.
“Charlotte.” I take her by the arm, reminding myself to be more gentle than my instincts insist I be. My inner Dom wants to punish her for lying. I’d like to shake her, squeeze her until it hurts, perhaps even put her over my knee—
No. She’s only twenty-one, and she has an asshole for a father who never taught her how to jump-start her own car.
I loosen my grip on her arm, but keep her close. “Don’t do that again. If your car won’t start, I want you to tell me and then you can take my car, understand?”
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, and the disappointment in her expression pains me.
I don’t bother telling her she didn’t do anything worthy of apologizing. Instead, I warm her tiny, cold hands in my large, warm ones. She shivers again as I bring them to my mouth, blowing hot air against her skin.
She avoids my eyes, and I realize I’m getting too intimate again. After her reaction to one kiss last week, I have to be more careful. That kiss was a mistake, but I found myself getting carried away with her. It’s too easy to be around her and to feel so comfortable, but if I let myself go there, I’ll regret it. She’s beautiful, and if she was anyone else, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take her to my bedroom to make her feel sublime. But she’s not just anyone. She’s literally been with my son, and I’ll do more damage than good if I cross that line. It’s just wrong.
“Let’s eat,” I say, dropping her hands and guiding her to the dining room.
Normally, I eat at my desk while I work, and she eats alone in here, but today, I feel the need to keep her company.
“After work today I can help you jump your car.”
“You really don’t have to,” she argues, setting her sandwich down.
“It’s easy, Charlotte. Really, it’s not necessary to call a mechanic.”
She still looks uneasy as she picks at her sandwich, chewing more on her bottom lip than her food. And it occurs to me that she’s not comfortable having someone else do things for her.
“Your feet must be hurting.”
After taking a bite of her pastrami sandwich, she glances down at her heels.
“Believe it or not, I’m getting used to them. They’re actually pretty comfortable.”
I look down at her feet again, and they look red and swollen in her black stilettos. Pushing the rest of my sandwich aside, I turn toward her.
“Give me your feet.”
“What?” she stammers around a mouthful of food, wiping the napkin across her lips.
“You walked three miles in those to get me lunch. It’s the least I can do.” Pushing my chair out, I tap my lap. Is this too sexual? I’m not even sure. It’s just a foot rub, and I need to do something. I’m still so torn between wanting to punish her for lying and nurturing her for going through that for me. Considering I want to do a lot more than massage her feet, I think this is pretty tame.
“Seriously?” she asks before wrapping her sandwich in the deli paper.
“Seriously.”
With a nervous swallow, she watches my face as she lifts her right foot up to me. I delicately remove each of her black heels and wince at the painful-looking state of her pinched toes. She has sheer black stockings on her feet, so I pat her foot and say, “Take these off.”
Her breath hitches. Pulling her skirt up a couple inches, she unclasps the top of her thigh-highs from the garter, and I say a silent fuck me in my head. I don’t know what I was expecting but that was not it. I wish I could look away as she unclasps the other side, but those little straps hidden under her clothes are sexy as sin, and I’m only a man, after all.
My cock is growing hard in my pants, and what started as an innocent foot rub to help ease her pain and my conscience, has turned into a sensual peep show and what will be a rough case of blue balls for me later.
I help her roll the pantyhose down her legs and drape them over the back of her chair. She’s quiet, biting her lip and watching my face as I begin rubbing her poor battered feet.