Page 40 of The Opposite Effect

The fewer witnesses to my pussy-whipping, the better.

After running his hand over his scruffy beard, Hunter shifts on his feet to face me. “I’ve got a new system I’ve just designed that will be ideal for a place like this. Motion sensors, burglar alarm, sirens, voice command, but it will cost you a pretty penny. I’mhappy to give you wholesale prices, but the equipment itself is expensive.”

“I don’t care how much it costs.” I shrug. “All I care about is when can you get it done?”

Hunter smiles a broad grin. “How free is your tattooing chair this month?”

“As free as you need it to be.”

His smile widens. “Then I’ll have this wrapped up before the sun goes down.”

The heaviness that’s been sitting on my chest for the past hour lessens. “That will be great. Call out if you need any help.”

Hunter nods before making his way to his van parked out front to gather some equipment while I head to Clara.

The smell of damp, moldy carpet filters into my nose when I prop my shoulder against the wall of the main bedroom. Since she is sorting through boxes of shoes, she doesn’t notice my presence straightaway.

I stay quiet, relishing seeing a side to her I rarely get to see—her outside the walls of Inked.

There’s no doubt Clara is a girly type of girl. If the cute dresses, high-altitude shoes, and glossy hair aren’t enough of an indication, her fascination with color coordinating her shoes is a surefire sign.

I give myself a few more minutes to quietly absorb her before pushing off the wall and stepping deeper into the room. “Not enough room in your closet?” I ask when I notice she has several boxes of shoes and garment bags sprawled across her queen-size bed. Because her apartment is so small, the movers were in and out in under thirty minutes.

She screws her nose up. “Not exactly.” I follow her gaze to the half-empty closet. “I was considering giving them to the women’s shelter three blocks down from Inked.”

My lips purse, not only shocked by her generosity but also wondering if couture dresses would be suitable for homeless women. It seems pretty pointless. I’ve worked in the soup kitchen numerous times over the past three years. From what I’ve seen, the women and children who live there only want food in their bellies and warm clothing. They don’t need designer dresses worth thousands of dollars.

“But I’ve decided to sell them instead,” Clara continues, lifting her wintry-blue eyes to me. “Half the money I make from the sale will be donated to the shelter. The other half will be put toward the security systemyou’regetting installed inmyapartment.”

I balk, faking innocence.

She doesn’t buy my woeful attempt at candor. Not in the slightest.

“You heard that?” I gesture my head to the living room of her apartment.

“Yeah,” she replies with a nod. “Just like I knew you were stalking me for the past ten minutes.”

I give her a cocky wink. “So that’s why you kept bending over to reach the shoes in the furthest corner.”

A hearty chuckle scuttles through my lips when she picks up one of the shoes off her bed and pegs it at my head. You can laugh. You haven’t seen the size of the heels she wears. They could kill a man.

After picking up the stiletto that airport security would class as a lethal weapon, I step closer to Clara. I’m shocked when she doesn’t cite an objection to me having a security system installed. My surprise only lasts as long as it takes for me to see the width of her pupils. Although she’s putting on a brave front, she’s just as petrified as I am about her staying here.

Nothing typically scares me, but the idea of her being hurt scares the shit out of me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

My brisk pace into the break room slows when my eyes are inundated with a set of curves I have no chance of ignoring. Clara has one arm braced against the refrigerator while the other is propped on her hip. The top half of her body is hidden as she seeks something in the sparsely filled refrigerator. The figure-hugging fire-engine red dress she’s wearing displays every perfect curve the clients at Inked won’t stop raving about—inches of luscious, soft skin, a mouthwatering ass, and a pair of legs that go on for miles. And let’s not get me started on the regions of her body I can’t see.

The inviting image of a bent-over Clara has a particular area of my body springing to life.

Sensing a presence in the compact lunchroom, Clara tilts her torso out of the refrigerator. The hardness of my cock turns fatal when my eyes zoom in on her painted red lips wrapped around the end of a whole carrot. Illicit thoughts slam into me on more appropriate things her plump lips could wrap around.

Just like the intense bout of flirting we’d been undertakingthe two weeks prior to her move, nothing has changed. If anything, our playfulness is venturing into new territory since a few hours of our time together have been spent outside of Inked’s walls.

Clara will never admit her new surroundings daunt her, but the fact she has invited me to her place for a late supper each night this week is all the sign I need to know she hates being alone in her dingy, cramped apartment even more than I hate her living there.

Don’t take my admission the wrong way. Our flirting has never crossed the path it did in my office three weeks ago, but we’ve been cutting it close. Although I’d love nothing more than to sample her lips again, I’ll never make the first move. I have a massive ego and confidence in the bucketloads, but in the back of my mind, I know a woman like Clara is way out of my league.Hell, she’s way out of my universe.But by waiting for her to make the first move, I know she isn’t being coerced into doing something—or someone—she doesn’t want to do.

---