Winter Howl (Sanctuary) Read online

  Marie checked Renee’s expression. When Marie did not find any indication that Renee was there against her will, she took a step back. “All right,” she said. “When you’re ready to pay, just come to the bar. But I’m going to be watching you.” She glanced pointedly at Grant. “Just in case.”

  Grant leant back, hooding his eyes in shadow but unable to hide a certain amount of smugness. “You do that.”

  Marie reluctantly left them in order to tend to some other patrons.

  Renee bit into a fry in annoyance. “Now everyone in town is going to think I’m in an abusive relationship. Thanks very much.”

  Grant began to eat his own meal. “What difference does it make? You’ll know better.”

  Renee was not so sure about that. She’d told Britt that the relationship was not going to be permanent, and that was true. The question was when it was going to stop being such a thrill ride, when the other shoe would drop. And if that shoe was going to end up a kick in the face. The silver knife was secured to her hip, and she was sure that Grant had felt it while he was feeling her. But she did not know whether she would actually use it. She had never been tested like this, and she did not know when she would eventually be tested properly. When, not if.

  And what does that say about your state of mind, if you’re still here in this bar with him rather than calling the police on his ass? He probably has a record. You don’t know. You don’t do background checks. You don’t know exactly what kind of man you’ve let into your bed.

  The only thing that Renee could think in response to that was that she had let in a man whom she needed. At least for now.

  They mostly ate in silence, although Grant sometimes hummed with the music if he heard a harder-edged, old rock song that he liked. Sometimes his fingers tapped on the inside her thigh. He never let go of her. Not many people could see the legs she had been so nervous about showing, but it was as though he was telling anyone who happened to bend over just to look at them that those legs were his, not theirs. And Renee did not particularly mind. It reminded her that he was there. Much as her hand on Britt’s malamute fur grounded her, his warm hand on her thigh kept her fairly calm in spite of the crowd, and Renee thought that Grant knew it.

  “That boy is still looking at you,” Grant said. “The lug isn’t any threat, but the boy, the scruffy one, wants you more than he thinks he does. Oh, the envy in him is absolutely delicious. I can smell it even in the midst of all this.”

  He put down his food, wiped his fingers on the paper napkin, then held up his tumbler of whisky.

  “Time to start, love,” he said.

  Renee paused, considering whether it was a good idea, especially since he was the one who would be driving. She could always insist on driving herself if it came down to it. She suspected, though, that it was not easy for him to get drunk either.

  She raised her glass.

  “Here’s to rubbing it in their faces,” Grant said. “To the smell of sweet success and the promise of a long night ahead of us. And no reason to stay quiet.”

  Renee leant backwards a little as the intensity that naturally came to Grant intensified even more. If his eyes could be said to smoulder, she could almost swear they were glowing lantern-hot. She tilted her head back and downed the entire glass. The bottom of the glass hit the table with a sharp knock. Grant quirked his lips, then slung back his own drink.

  Renee closed her eyes against the burn of the spirits at the back of her throat. She was used to beer, and it had been a while since she had taken something stronger. But it had more flavour and more heat to it in her stomach. She thought the next one would go down more easily now that she knew what to expect. She felt the alcohol in her head for a moment before it cleared. It would definitely be easier the next time.

  She had once finished an entire bottle of good vodka, courtesy of her couriers, without slurring her words—what few words she had spoken. Britt and Jake had shared two bottles with Ki and Malcolm—Max never drank—and all of them had ended up fairly zonked by the end of the night. It did not make much sense, since Ki was the only one who weighed less than Renee, but she supposed some people just had a tolerance. There were people who could smoke for years, then stop cold turkey because they wanted to. Britt said it was a gift. Renee had replied that a gift wouldn’t let her get hangovers in the morning, no matter how much she drank water after drinking alcohol. Britt, who was often fuzzy-mouthed and headachy herself, did not have much to say to that.

  “Think you can drink me under the table?” Grant asked in unhidden amusement.

  “No,” Renee said. “I think we’ll both be sitting up and lucid when this bottle is finished.”

  “Tell you the truth,” Grant whispered, “I think I’d like that. It’ll make everything else so much better. Have you ever done anything impulsive while stone-cold sober?”

  Renee stared at him.

  “Besides me.”

  “No.”

  “Well, this…” He poured more whisky into their tumblers. “This is the perfect way to allow yourself to give in to your impulses. You can tell everyone you were drunk.”

  Renee did not think that was advisable, since getting her drunk—even fake drunk—was not a way to endear him to the few in the crowd who actually cared about her wellbeing or who were vindictive enough to get Grant arrested.

  It must have shown on her face. “You can tell everyone you were drunk, and you liked it and would absolutely do it again,” Grant amended.

  Renee swirled the amber liquid in her glass and watched the dim light move through it before swallowing it all down.

  “How much could I get away with?” Renee asked, staring now into her empty glass.

  “A lap dance and sex in the bathroom,” Grant answered without hesitation.

  Renee blinked. “Are you serious?”

  “I don’t think you’re a whore.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I want you,” he murmured, sliding closer to her in the round booth, “to let go. I want you to know the freedom of simply…not…caring. If those boys think I’m the luckiest bastard in town and wonder why they never tried to hit that before, it’s a bonus.”

  He moved closer, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her so that her leg was flush with his. The knife was between them—not sharp in its small sheath, but just a reminder. He bit the flesh beneath her earlobe hard, once, twice. As though he wanted to give her his own kind of reminder.

  She turned her face to catch his mouth with her own. She gripped his hair—it was not quite as easy to hold as Britt’s, she thought, as she struggled to control the angle of his mouth. Without the knife actually pressing into his skin, he was much harder to control at all. Every movement he made was as though he were three times larger, faster, stronger than her, enough to overwhelm her. She could taste the whisky on his tongue, and she fought for some kind of purchase. At every effort, he pushed her down, held her under the water until she was gasping into his mouth. She felt naked, as if he was above her and readying her just with his tongue in her mouth and arm around her waist.

  Renee yanked on the hair at the back of his head. His teeth clicked as his head snapped back. He did not look annoyed at her at all for it.

  She tucked her knees under her, mindless of the possibility that the wrong angle might leave her ass under her skirt exposed. Then she swung one leg over his hips until she straddled him. Right there in the bar with the Rolling Stones playing in the background. Where she was fully aware people were watching. A little necking was nothing, but the stretch of leg and the show she was giving them now… That didn’t happen very often, and it certainly did not happen with Renee.

  It was not really a lap dance. Her hips did move, and so did his. It might have even been to the beat. They were not quite frotting. The sway of her ass, his hand moving over the back of her thigh, they were too orchestrated. She reached back to pour herself more whisky and threw her head back to offer him the line of her throa
t to taste as she drank the burn down.

  He sat there watching her. His body language was not that different from a john getting his twenty-five dollars worth, but his expression was. He was not flaunting his find before the crowd, winking collaboratively at the competition—if that was indeed what they were. Grant was not just captivated. He was hypnotised, oblivious to anything around him. That booth was their world, and that was perhaps the only reason why Marie didn’t tell them to take the show outside. Theirs was a show for themselves.

  Renee was drinking the air, a drop of sweat sliding down the side of her face. Grant caught it with a flick of his tongue, and the sudden jolt of what had previously been a slow, warm rise of arousal caught her by surprise. His lips were an inch away from hers, as though he wanted to kiss her again but would not let himself.

  He untangled her from him reluctantly and deposited her next to him again. He poured them both another drink as her flush became more embarrassment than sex. She could not look anywhere but at his hands on the bottle. They shook—only slightly. She might have imagined it.

  He held the glass out to her, then poured one for himself. She was half-finished with it by the time he poured the last bit of whisky into his tumbler.

  “As soon as you finish that,” he murmured, “go to the bathroom. Stay there five minutes.”

  She shivered and drank the rest, but as she slid out of the booth, she stopped. The bathrooms were at the back of the bar. That meant that she would have to walk past booths and a few tables to reach them. That meant that she would have to walk past people, past Josh and Marcus and their companions. After what she had just done. And she would then have to walk past them again after doing what they were going to do. It was enough to freeze her feet to the floor.

  “You don’t have to fear them,” he whispered in her ear.

  “It’s not exactly rational, Grant,” she shot back. Her teeth were clenched. It was as though every muscle in her body was stretched tight, too tightly to move her bones. She felt as if she were a violin string stretched almost to the snapping point.

  “I’ll be watching you. If anyone dares come near you, I’ll be there to stop them. You don’t have to fear them.”

  He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, burying his face in her hair and inhaling.

  “Just imagine the reward,” he said.

  With one firm hand on her shoulder and the other on her hip, he pushed her standing, then gave her a slap on the ass to get her moving. Her foot had to push forward so that she could keep her balance. Then she took another step, and another. She could feel Grant’s eyes on her, tracing her calves, her thighs, the black fabric over her ass, up the curve of her spine. She felt the click of her heels more than she heard them. Her ears roared with the sound of rushing water that muffled everything around her. She barely noticed as she passed by one booth, two, three, past Josh. If he did anything when she passed, she did not see it.

  Before she even knew it, she was at the women’s bathroom door. She sighed with relief as she pushed it open. There was no one in the bathroom, and when she closed the door again, she saw that the door did lock. But she did not lock it yet. The rushing in her ears began to subside.

  She walked to the sink and peered into the mirror. It was neither a rule nor a principle, but she did not look into mirrors very often. It wasn’t important to her, the same way as dressing sexily was not important—when she rarely went out and when all she did during the day was either sit at the computer or get dirty, there was never any reason to care what she looked like. And honestly, what she saw usually did not impress her. She was almost indifferent to her appearance. She would notice when her posture was hunched over. She was self-conscious about her inability to make eye contact. But she did not know whether she was pretty or not. She was so used to her reflection that she never thought she was qualified to give that opinion. As far as a reflection went, it was not a horrible pairing. She could live with it.

  It was strange, then, to look in the mirror and see herself as others saw her. Maybe it was because she had actually been concerned about her appearance when she’d got dressed that morning. Maybe her reflection was so unlike its usual self that she gave it a second look.

  Renee still didn’t know whether she was pretty, not in the way that she could tell Britt without question that she was gorgeous—some things just were the way they were, no opinion needed. But Renee thought she looked sexual, if not sexy, at that moment. Her hair was mussed but not tangled. Her lips were pink and swollen, and already she could see red marks on her neck that might bruise. Her shirt was not low cut, but she could still see the shadow between her breasts over the neckline. It was not as sexy as the shirts of some of the women on the dance floor. But her skirt was even shorter than she had thought it was, and maybe that made up for her higher neckline. She touched her cheek lightly. She had more freckles than she used to have because of all the time she spent outside, but her skin was still very pale.

  The door opened behind her, and she whirled around. There was something almost narcissistic about looking so closely at herself in the mirror when she wasn’t doing something like brushing her hair or applying makeup.

  Grant came in and slammed the door, turning the lock. Renee had wondered whether he would give them privacy or whether he would leave them at the mercy of any woman who needed to pee. It could have gone either way, but she felt a certain measure of relief that he had locked the door. Although when she thought about the alternative she felt a quiver of electricity through her fingers, a combination of fear and excitement.

  “You wanted me to leave that door unlocked,” Grant said. It was as though he could read her mind, or at least notice how turned on she was. The lighting was not very good, but Renee could see how dilated his pupils were, and she was sure that hers were just as huge.

  “And if I had?” he continued. “You would still be eager to have my hands on you like this.” He was before her in a heartbeat, lifting her onto the counter. “You would still cling to me like you are. You would still let me fuck you, hard, fast, filthy, like a slut who would sell herself for a drink and a room.”

  Her stomach roiled at the word ‘slut’, but she knew that, even as he roughly palmed her breast under her bra and yanked her underwear down her legs, he did not see her that way. Not when he had to taste her, had to drink in her shallow breaths, her little gasps. It was as if nothing had happened between the booth and here, as though she were above him again. She braced herself on the counter with one hand while she wrapped the other arm around his neck tightly.

  He had barely opened his jeans before he was inside her, the teeth of his zipper pressing into her sensitive flesh, but not enough to distract her from what he was doing. Each thrust was hard and uncontrolled, and his mouth was all teeth, finally drawing little cries from her when the force of his thrusts made him bite down hard. And Renee… She was pushing herself down onto him with one hand and pulling herself down with the other. Her panties were caught on one ankle, her shirt and bra pushed up over her breasts.

  She thought she heard the doorknob rattle, then a knock on the door, and she shook her head from side to side as she held in her orgasm, holding her bottom lip between her teeth. She slammed down just as he held her tight against him, his hips snapping in short jerks as he came. She undulated through her aftershocks to draw them out. When she was finished, she bent to the side to retrieve her panties before they hit the floor. He winced at the odd angle she was bending him, and she could not help but laugh a little when he slid out of her and stepped back so that she could pull her underwear back on. His cum began to wet the fabric almost immediately, but she resisted the compulsion to clean herself.

  Grant unlocked the bathroom door and pulled it open as he zipped up his pants. A startled woman took in Renee’s dishevelled appearance and Grant doing up his button, and she stammered a completely unnecessary apology. Renee straightened her shirt and ran her fingers through her hair. For some reason, she was not
even embarrassed. And it was not because of the whisky. Her head was still clear, although she was a little tired.

  Renee followed Grant out, and he took her hand to lead her to the dance floor. She resisted once she realised where he was taking her, but his grip was firm. He always knew where he was going and what he wanted. And he wanted her. Sometimes it hit her as simply and completely as that. It was not so easy to describe as desire, sexual or otherwise. He wanted her. Her neurosis, her voice, her eyes, her cunt, her legs, her fingernails, the crook of her elbow. He wanted her. Her skin hummed, and she didn’t know if she liked it.

  Grant pulled a quarter from his pocket and chose a song from the jukebox. Renee had never heard it before, and as the music began to pulse from the speakers, smooth and wicked, she wondered how a song like that had got onto a jukebox in the first place.

  He brought them to the dance floor—not the middle but half in shadow near a corner. He twirled her around until she was facing away from him and pulled her against him. His arm was a vice around her shoulders, and it felt almost uncomfortable until he began to move them with the odd rhythm of the song. He was not hard, but she could still feel him against her, pressing into her with every beat. Every second of the song was carnal, down-low dirty, and she found herself swaying with him, subtly moving against him until she reached one hand up behind her to pull his head down. He kissed her neck obediently. He was unusually collected, unusually slow, careful. She did not doubt that he had an angle, but she had never known him to be subtle. She hadn’t thought he had the patience to do something that wasn’t bump and grind. All she knew was that, whatever was going through his mind, she thought she could like this kind of attention. It was almost more arousing than the scene in the bathroom. What they did could never be termed making love, and this was no exception. But it wasn’t quite fucking.

  Even so, they were not just dancing. They had on all their clothes. They were in front of everyone. He was not really touching her, and she was not really touching him. But they were still having sex.