Page 6 of After Hours

Then that face at the window, making him come ten times harder than expected.

But it washer.

It was really her.

He had to admit that she’d surprised him. And he wasn’t easily surprised, especially around here. He’d learned the hard way how to read people, but he hadn’t seen his kind of twisted in her. It had never occurred to him that she might be exactly what he shouldn’t be looking for.

Now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Zachary had clocked her not long after she’d moved into the shittiest boat in the marina, a floating piece of shit bathtub that somehow hadn’t sunk yet. His apartment looked over the small marina, tucked up on the water below him, with the same view of Coast Guard Island and Alameda beyond. He knew most of the people who lived there by sight, though this wasn’t any Mister Rogers type of shit. This was the kind of place where neighbors made sure never to do more than nod in passing, a quiet indication that they knew who was supposed to be here and who was a problem.

There were prettier marinas in other places in the broader Bay Area. Marinas with shopping, high-end restaurants, even art studios and other office spaces to rent for various small fortunes. This one had none of those amenities. This was a place folks could pay very little, relatively, for waterfront property in one of the most beautiful—and expensive—places in the world.

He had always admired the people who made it work. The boats down below were more houseboats than pleasure boats, usually built out on trawlers or small craft frames. Their owners tailored their vessels to their own wishes and fitted them out tothe best of their abilities. The same way Zachary had done with this building, now that he thought about it.

Though his home was less likely to sink in the next big storm.

The inevitable earthquake, on the other hand, wouldn’t play favorites. But that was part of the fun of living in California.

He was pretty sure he’d seen her move in some months back, standing right where he was now. And he was one hundred percent sure that whenever he’d seen her first, he’d ordered himself to look away, fast.

Because Zachary had a problem where broken creatures were concerned. A soft spot, of sorts, but he knew better than to indulge it. He’d learned that lesson too often and too well.

That said, he also knew the exact moment she’d laid eyes on him.

He’d watched her nearly miss a step, out there on that palm-lined walk toward the old port building. He’d seen her soft eyes widen. He’d thought she was too skinny for her body, and that it was the kind of skinny that came from fear and tribulation, not from any kind of vanity or fashion addiction.

A broken bird, he’d thought, fluttering around a part of Oakland that everyone claimed was up and coming… though he hadn’t seen too much of that optimism materialize just yet. Not outside the new, fancy housing developments, anyway.

He knew better than to pay any attention to yet one more lost soul in a city that ate souls, spit them out, and crushed their remains into dust—and that was on a good day.

And especially not one who came in a package like hers.

All that dark hair he itched to dig his hands into from day one. Those sad amber eyes. That sulky mouth that would lookspectacularwrapped around his cock. The skinny body he could visualize healthy and curvy the way it should be, and wouldn’t that be a pretty little toy for a man like him to mess up in all his favorite dirty ways?—

But Zachary didn’t fucking need any more kryptonite.

He’d seen her earlier tonight, looking like a ghost in the park, so unnaturally still in a swirl of the usual punk ass skateboarders. And then he’d looked up in the middle of a scene to find her there, watching him come.

There was no pretending he wasn’t hard again now, remembering.

Or that she hadn’t come with him, because he knew what dirty need and wanton hunger looked like on a woman’s face.

That it had been all overherface was going to sit heavy on him for some time.

He knew that, too.

He braced his hands on the big window, glowering down at the boats that rocked gently on the water in the marina far below. It had been a nice night but now the fog had come in, blocking the view of San Francisco in the distance, and he figured he’d have to be dead before he got over looking at the prettiest city in the world. He’d been born and raised on the other side of the city, in hills that smelled of eucalyptus and moss. Sometimes he thought he must dream that he was back there, because he’d wake with that crisp, clean scent in his nose like he was a kid again.

But he wasn’t.

Truth was, he hadn’t had the opportunity to be much of a kid then, but memory was a messy thing when it wanted to be. He knew the kind of tricks it liked to play.

He only went over to the Marin County town he’d grown up in—back when there were still pockets of working class folks set in with all the millionaires and trust fund types—to do his duty these days. There was nothing for him there but bad memories. His mother couldn’t get over what he’d done on her behalf and he wasn’t a man who entertained the same argument twice or apologized more than once.

Besides. He wasn’t sorry.

He told himself that he was not going to mess up his whole fucking life again, this time because he wanted to get his hands all over a woman who might as well havetroublebranded on her forehead.

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