Page 15 of Keep Me

I stomp over to him and cross my arms, hating how he makes me feel like a petulant child. But if he’s going to treat me like one, I may as well act like one. “Outside.” I throw my arm toward the door.

He stands, and there’s something about seeing him rise back to his full height while he cracks his knuckles that has me taking a step back. His head hangs forward, and I can see he’s clenching his jaw as he steps toward me. My stomach fills with foreboding, like I’ve woken a sleeping monster. I know I’ve been pushing his limits all day.

He lifts his chin and levels me with a dark stare, the gray in his eyes feeling black like coal. “I’m not a dog, Cortez.”

I stand my ground as he tries to leer over me. “Could have fooled me. Following me around like a lost puppy.”

His nostrils flare, and my heart races. I don’t like to be made to feel small. Especially in my own home. “Now be a good boy and do your business outside. Vete.” I narrow my eyes so he knows I mean it exactly as it sounds.

“I can’t keep you safe from out there,” he says through gritted teeth, and I can sense the tension rolling off him. I wonder how far I can push him until he snaps.

“Then you must not be very good at your job.” I sneer as he rolls his shoulders back and steps closer so our chests are almost touching. The air feels thicker, my skin hotter.

“You think I wouldn’t be able to get in here if there was a guard outside?” Another step forward, and I’m forced to take one back so he doesn’t bump into me. Giving up ground makes heat creep up my cheeks.

“You think you’d be safe in here, all alone?” There’s an edge to his voice that sends shivers down my spine. He walks me back until I hit the butcher-block island, shoulders curling over me as if to prove how much bigger he is. “You think I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to you?”

There’s a heavy threat in his words, but his tone is almost emotionless. The exact opposite of mine when I growl, “I’d like to see you fucking try.”

All the wind is knocked from my lungs as he spins me around with lithe speed and bends me over the island. My heart accelerates, pounding against the wood, and blood whooshes in my ears. “Get the fuck off me!”

“Get me off yourself.” His voice is like tumbling stones, hard and gravelly. “Come on, Cortez. Fight me off.”

I struggle uselessly in his iron grip. Breathing becomes harder when he shoves my head down and his fingers wrap around the side of my face to cover my mouth. “Go ahead and yell for your guards outside. Scream for help.” He leans down and whispers with mock assurance, “Surely, someone will hear you.”

Any attempt at sound is muffled by his heavy hand, and panic bubbles up in my chest. Especially when he tugs my pants halfway down my ass. The feeling of air on my cheeks is like a shock of electricity through my body, demanding I fight harder. I flail and kick as I hear him undo his belt, the sound of clanking metal making my stomach roil.

He leans over me, and even the lightest pressure of his weight against my back is suffocating. His voice is like sandpaper as he rasps in my ear, “I could take you right now. Any way I wanted, and there’s nothing you could do to stop me.” Hot tears prick my eyes, and I hate him the most for that. “And after I’ve taken everything from you, I would set a fire so hot and so efficient that it would make that car bomb look like a Boy Scout bonfire. You’d be nothing but a pile of ashes by the time your precious security outside even noticed anything was wrong.”

He further drives his point home by grinding against me. The cold metal of his belt is sickening against my bare skin. He releases his hold over my mouth and stands up straight, but keeps a domineering palm between my shoulder blades. “You can hate me, treat me like a dog, tell me to be a good boy, but where you go, I go. And when shit hits the fan, you’ll be glad I'm in here and not out there.”

He gently pulls my pants back up, his hands hesitating on my hips, almost in apology, before he pushes off me. His abrupt absence is like the floor falling out from beneath me. I stand on shaky legs, my blood still thrumming. By the time I’m upright and turn around, he’s sitting back on the couch, ankle crossed over his leg and some magazine off my coffee table fanned out in front of him.

He’s the picture of cool and collected while I’m stewing with toxic heat and unabated rage. I demand my lungs to take deep and slow breaths as I glare at the sight of him and promise myself to make his life hell.

I lock myself in my bedroom, roiling in anger and humiliation.1 I’m livid that he was right. I couldn’t fight him off. I couldn’t have stopped him from going further. I couldn’t even fucking call for help. He proved his point and then some. And that’s what's crawling under my skin and making me feel like a live wire. That he was right.

He was right in his assertion, but he was wrong as hell in the way he went about it. He laid his fucking hands on me, and I won’t let that go unpunished. He may be hired to do a job—for an obscene amount of money, I might add—but he will do it without treating me like a cheap doll he can throw around.

If he’s going to be living under my roof, he’s going to respect me or deal with the consequences. I may not be able to beat him in a physical fight, but I am one petty motherfucker, and he’s about to find that out.

When I fling my door open, I instantly hear weird, labored breathing and grunting. I swear to god if this asshole is jacking off on my couch I will—

Roan’s profile is red-faced and sweaty, lowering himself down to the carpet in the living room in a push-up. Sweat drips down between his shoulder blades, cascading down the vaulted ceilings of a gothic cathedral tattoo covering his entire back. The artwork itself is stunning, creating the perspective as if you are standing in the cathedral yourself. Depictions of angel statues weep at the bottom of the piece, and at the center of the altar where a crucifix should be is the backside of a topless woman in thigh-high garter lingerie with her hands bound behind her in thick rope.

A low heat simmers in my stomach as I watch his honed muscles flex and work, decorated in so much ink I could spend hours inspecting it all. But at the same time, I remember how those same muscles held me down while his mocking voice rang in my ear. Come on, Cortez. Fight me off.

“You're not going near my furniture dripping with sweat like that.” His head snaps up at my voice.

He lifts off the floor into a squat, resting his elbows on his knees. His chest puffs in and out with heavy breaths as he looks up at me like I’m the gum on the bottom of his shoe. “I was going to shower.”

The idea of him making himself at home in my place like that irks me almost as much as what he did earlier. “The building has a dog park on the ground level. There’s a dog bath too.”

He rolls his lips together, and his nostrils flare as he stands. His hands ball into fists, and I hold back a smirk, knowing I’m nearing his limit. His defined abs contract on each deep breath, and I have a feeling it’s not from exertion but an attempt to calm himself down from whatever edge I’ve pushed him to.

If I can get him to hit me, my father will fire him on the spot. I’ll take the pain if it gets him the fuck out of my life.

He doesn’t say anything, just picks up his duffel and brushes past me toward the bathroom. “Still with the dog jokes? Thought you’d be smart enough to come up with something new.” His jaw ticks, and he looks down his nose at me, his eyes narrowing on my lips. “Try running away while I’m showering, and I’ll find you before nightfall.”

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