Because of Kian (6 page)

Fuck. She regretted it.

I knew she would. It was way too soon.

I stood
also, disposing of the condom and tucking my dick back into my pants. Turning around, I saw her by the door, slipping her toes into her flip-flops and grabbing her bag.

“Bry
nn, wait,” I tried again.

“Kian, it’s not really—”
she started again as she reached to pull open the door.

“Dammit Brynn!”
I growled, stepping towards her and pushing the door shut with a loud slam, causing her to flinch and shy away. For a second afterwards, I saw fear on her face. Pure, genuine fear. Shell-shock from the confrontations she’d been a party to before. And I’d caused it. “God… no…”

She just stood there and trembled. Her breath caught.

“I’ve gotta go,” she said shakily.

And then she
slipped out the door and was gone.

• Addicted to Love ~ Florence + the Machine
  
• Turn My Head ~ Live
  
• Shadow of the Day ~
  Linkin Park
  

Brynn

It was a good month or so before I saw Kian again. I was restless and frustrated. I was lying to my shrink during my weekly visits.

Yep, my self-defense
lessons are going great.

Well,
they had been until I fucked my teacher on the floor of the gym. Then I just hadn't gone back. I didn't call. I didn't text or write or leave a message or send a carrier pigeon. I just stayed away.

God, this shouldn't have happened.

His quietly beleaguered words were like a repeating reel through my mortified brain. Every time I started to come out of my rejected funk, that phrase echoed loud and clear.

That intense passion I
’d felt, that thrill that had shot me through the stratosphere, was apparently all one-sided. The elements of pain – his fingers tangling and pulling my hair, the bruising grip on my ass, the harsh pinch of my nipples – my God, just thinking about it made me hot all over again. I’d felt closer to him than I had to anyone in a long time. Maybe ever.

And
he had regretted touching me.

Nice
.

Thoroughly
humiliated, I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Sage, who was about the only person I saw outside of work. She could tell something was up, but didn’t press it. She mentioned a time or two that Kian was acting a bit off kilter at Hyper, too. Growly. Pissy. Apparently he about clocked Jeff the other night for suggesting that he get laid. Kian shoved Jeff up against a wall in a second and growled something about that was what started the whole thing. Sage couldn’t understand it.

But I knew.
He was upset over what happened with me. Because he didn’t want me, but he was too good of a guy to just be a dickhead and tell me that.

On the brighter side, my OCD personality had me cleaning every second I was home. I couldn't sit still. I didn't want to deal with how I felt.
About anything. But mostly about Kian. On top of that, I had an extra hour a day that was suddenly free since I quit getting my lessons. So I cleaned. Everything. I scrubbed walls and windows. I pulled out my stove and refrigerator to clean behind them. I even alphabetized my canned goods and sorted all my clothes by color.

And every night when my body was finally exhausted, I'd dose myself up on melatonin and valerian
tablets to help my mind shut down and dreamlessly sleep. The best part of the day was letting all those thoughts just fade away.

And then, out of the fucking blue, there he was again.
Standing at my station in the salon. Those crystal-blue eyes catching my gaze. That deep heady voice. His very presence ripped my breath from my chest as I remembered his strong hands gripping my hips when he came.

Fucking fuck.
Dammit to hell.
He was going to make me deal with this shit after all.

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey,” I replied. There was a breadth of silence that spread out between us. A painfully stifling quiet that had me shaking with nerves.

“Do you have time to give me a cut?” he finally asked.

I released a shaky breath and narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you sure you trust me with a pair of scissors?”

His responding chuckle soothed my frazzled psyche, in spite of the fact that he was the
reason it had frazzled to begin with. “I think I can take you.”

Oh shit.

Damn.

I’d said that exact same thing to him in the gym.
But,
oh my God
, it sounded so much sexier the way he said it. And the confidence that oozed out of him had my knickers in a twist.

Fuck.

Shit.

It
really was
not
fair. I took a deep breath.
If he could take this, so could I.

“Have a seat,” I mumbled as I pulled a clean cape from the cabinet.
This was going to kill me.

I swung the cape around the front of him, fastening it around his neck and smoothing it over his shoulders. That was my first mistake.
The smoothing. Once I started, it almost hurt to stop, as though my fingers were scorched and his shoulders soothed the burn. His hair was pulled back in a band and I actually stared at it for a moment, willing it to just come out all on its own. My skill with telekinesis apparently hadn’t evolved overnight, however. That little fucking band sat there, waiting for my fingers to pull it free.

For a moment, all
I could think was how good it had felt to tangle my hands in his hair, to use it to pull him tightly against me as his lips and hands lit my body on fire.

I took a deep breath and began to pull
at the annoying little hairband, glancing in the mirror before me at our reflection. The deep ocean-blue of his eyes captured my gaze momentarily as I fought to control my breathing. My heart was pounding and every hair on my body felt like it stood on end with the potent electric current surrounding us.

“So, how much do you want taken off?” I asked in a quavering voice.

“Quite a bit. Really short in back and on the sides, a little longer on top. How does that sound?”

I nodded and set to work,
using clippers around his neckline before I turned the chair and tipped him back against the sink. As I reclined the chair, he looked up at me. I instantly felt an intense desire, almost a compulsion, to stroke my fingertips along his jaw. To straddle him and rip off my clothes again.

But that
hadn’t really worked out so well for me last time.

And, even though it was late in the day and there wasn’t anyone else in the salon, there were big windows along the front. Probably would cause a little angst in the long run if I decided to nail someone in my chair.

So, as professionally as I could with my quivering heart and my shaking limbs and my incredibly amplified need, I began to shampoo him.

I shouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I did. But it was an excuse to touch him, and I soaked up every bit of it as I massaged the suds into his scalp.
His eyes closed as though he relished the pressure of my fingertips, and I instantly wanted to curl up on his lap, wrapped in his strong arms.

I moved on to the cut, and he watched me in the mirror. I didn’t talk. I
couldn’t
talk. My whole body was a massive tangle of want and rejection and remembrance. I tried so hard to step outside myself, to just get through the cut. I counted each snip of my scissors. Then each breath I took. Anything mundane and repetitive. Anything to keep my mind occupied and off of the intoxicating man in my chair. But his masculine, spicy scent surrounded me. His eyes followed me. His breathing echoed in my ears.

By the time I reached the front, trimming along the edges and checking the
cut lines, I could barely hold the comb. I had a gazillion little jagged cuts along my fingers from the scissors and my lungs ached from trying to calm my breathing.

Shit.

I really had to mellow out.

Kian

This was maybe not my best idea. At the time, it seemed like the ideal way to get her attention, to get her in a place where she couldn’t just run out again.

But as her fingers slid through my hair to line up the cuts,
every touch went straight to my dick. It was an incredibly sweet torture to have her so close again. I couldn’t speak. It was everything I could do to sit there with my hands clenched at my sides pretending to be unaffected.

As she made the last few snips, she ran the comb through my hair and stepped back to allow me a look.
Looked great, although I honestly didn’t really care much one way or the other. I just wanted to be near her.

“Looks good, baby,” I said.

“Thanks,” Brynn said softly, combing her fingertips through the hair that fell loosely over my forehead. “Your hair is a lot darker when it’s short. It must bleach out quite a bit in the sun.”

Fuck. I never wanted her to stop doing that.

Ever.

“Yeah, it does.”

“So,” she mumbled nervously, “that’s twenty bucks.”

“Worth that and more,”
I smiled back.

With a fortifying breath, s
he turned and busied herself, putting her things away for cleaning, before she came back to me with a soft brush that she used to smooth any last bits of hair on my neck. I watched our reflection in the mirror while she removed the cape and smoothed her hands along the base of my head, along my neck and shoulders, as though she couldn’t bear to stop touching me.

“
You know,” I said quietly, “I didn’t regret
that
it happened.” Her eyes rose to meet mine in the mirror, a flash of pain registered and made me feel like complete shit. “It wasn’t that at all. Seriously. I regretted
when
it happened.”

Her
hand dropped and she turned away to grab a broom, studiously avoiding me as she swept up the hair from the floor around the chair.

“That doesn’t make any sense,”
she murmured in a defeated breath. “Or maybe it does, I don’t know. At any rate, you regretted it.”

“Brynn, you’re coming off some serious shit. Fuck, that’s how we met. I can’t help but feel like you need a little time to heal before we start down that path.” I
watched her for a minute, torn by her silence, and then stood. Stopping by the reception desk, I placed some cash on the counter to cover the cut and tip before I headed towards the exit. I stopped at the door and turned to look back at her. Her back was to me, but she was completely still. “That’s what I was trying to say, rather badly, that night in the gym. And I’m sorry it came out the way it did. But, honestly, my mind was fucking blown by what had just happened.”

She stood unmoving, soaking in my words.
I gave her another minute to respond. After a painful silence, she still didn’t turn around, so I headed out to my bike.

Brynn

Wait
, my heart cried out. But my mouth remained closed up and wouldn’t let the word out.

I was so confused
.

All I’d thought about was him
since that day in the gym.
Kian
. The blue of the sky reminded me of his eyes. I swore I could hear his voice in the wind, gently teasing or patiently coaching. I found myself mindlessly driving towards his gym after work, my body seeking him out against my cognitive will.

Beating myself over the head for acting like a
complete slut.

I
plopped down in my chair and twirled around, scrolling through my contacts until I found Sage.

“Hello?” she answered with a chuckle.

“Sage? It’s Brynn,” I said quietly.

There was a catch in her breath before I heard her murmur something, then the sound of a softly closing door.

“Brynn? Are you okay? You sound sort of… weird.”