Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3) (6 page)

I damn near said I’d move a fucking mountain for her, but I didn’t think she’d be too receptive to something like that from me. We’d known each other, played this little cat and mouse, for a couple months, but, in all reality, we’d not actually spoken a whole lot.

“Sure thing,” I replied, hoping like all hell that I was coming off kinda cool and nonchalant. I glanced back at Pauline as I started walking away. “Gotta go. Duty calls.”

Pauline, rather displeased with Ilsa’s timely interruption, called out after me as I followed Ilsa back to the cooler.

“I’ll catch you later, okay?”

Yeah, nah…
not if I had anything to say about it. She wouldn’t catch me at all. Now or later. Been there, done that.

“So which keg?” I asked as Ilsa and I stepped into the walk-in cooler.

Turning to look at her, it suddenly hit me that we were alone. I’d never really been this alone with her, not even when we’d been washing glasses. Even then, there’d been the cleaning crew in the room, but now… it was just her and me.

I’d actually daydreamed about this. Being this close to her made me remember how pretty her eyes were. It reinforced her slender, yet curvy build, her fine-boned features. Her breath was visible in the chilled air as she exhaled nervously. I had to swallow back a little groan when she bit her lip and shrugged, looking a little guilty.

“I… well, I kinda… made that up.”

The strangest feeling swirled around inside me at her confession, dazed and excited all at once. “You what?”

“Well, you seemed like you wanted to get away from her, but she wasn’t really taking the hint.”

I chuckled and looked down at my feet. “Yeah, she’s a bit… forward.”

“I just thought I’d give you a hand,” she said with a shy tilt to her lips.

Shit… she really did kinda like me. She had to.

I knew it!

I liked it!

Actually, I fuckin’
loved
it!

Unable to help myself, I grinned wide. “You were just trying to lure me into the cooler, weren’t you?” I teased.

“Okay, now who’s being forward?” she asked wryly, rolling her eyes.

Yet she still wore just the slightest smile.

“Sorry,” I laughed, holding up my hands. “Really, I appreciate your help. More than you know. Feel free to come to my rescue anytime.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” she replied, and quietly left the cooler.

I stood there for a minute after she left, allowing the frigid air to surround me, to chill the raging heat that suddenly burned through my veins. It occurred to me that, while I’d been watching her without
watching
her, she’d been watching me without
watching
me, too. And she just indicated she was going to keep watching me. There was a certain satisfaction that arose from her need to step in and save me.

If I had been crushing on her before, that little interlude in the cooler had shot my imagination into overdrive.

I managed to catch her eye a couple times that night as us guys played. She rounded the tables, waiting on the crowd.

She smiled brightly at me from clear across the room. Such a little gesture, but…
wow
. It felt like a massive victory.

And at one point, after I had just finished shredding a solo for one of our best songs, I looked up to see her looking almost hypnotized as she watched me play. Her eyes were hot and intense, studying my movements. She was close enough to the stage that I could see her breath catch in her chest. I felt the sweat drip down my back, a slow-moving trickle that I could almost pretend was her touch.

Holy shit!
She was turned on.

Progress!

Right about then, I managed to totally flub up, crashing down on the cymbals way early. All three of my band mates turned to look at me, but I ignored them and kept playing along as though
they
were the ones who’d made the mistake. The audience didn’t notice, or at least most of them didn’t seem to, and the ones that did didn’t seem to care.

Ilsa caught it though. She sheepishly glanced away, taking another deep breath, and turned, focusing diligently on the customers at the table behind her.

And then the next table.

And the table after that.

Avoiding eye contact. One step forward and two steps back.

Shit!

Feeling like I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, I tried to focus, to get back in the zone and play like I should have been all along. I did fairly well, mostly because Ilsa didn’t look my way again.

The problem was, I could still see
her
. It was like my eyes were drawn to her. It took conscious effort not to just sit and stare because I couldn’t seem to ignore her.

And then concern began to bud inside me when she had started limping.

About halfway through the night, she began lifting one foot when she was waiting by the bar for drinks, taking the weight off it and flexing her ankle. As she walked away, I saw her favoring that side with every step. Her brows drew together and I could see traces of pain on her face.

Before she’d get to a table, she’d wipe her expression blank and plaster on a muted smile to hide her discomfort.

Something was hurting her,
but what?
Of course, me being me, I wanted to help her. I felt the incredible urge to go pick her up and carry her off to a chair. Yeah, a bit of an overreaction, but I didn’t want to see her in pain. I wanted to figure out the issue and make it go away, even if it was minor. This did look fairly minor.

But still…

After a while, she said something to Doug, and he gave her a quick nod, gesturing towards the back door. She replied with a pained smile, and limped outside.

I needed break time. Like
right the fuck now
.

I caught Denny’s eye and nodded towards the stairs as we wrapped up the song. He gave me a total WTF look, but still went with it, letting the crowd know we’d be back in fifteen.

I was down the stairs and out the door before he was done talking.

She sat on the bench out behind the Copperline where employees went for their smoke breaks. There was a large tin can about halfway full of sand and scattered with stale cigarette butts.

She wasn’t smoking, but had one of her shoes off and was rubbing the foot she’d been favoring.

“Hey, Ils,” I said as I stepped outside.

When I spoke, she glanced up at me. “Hi, Cody.”

Looking back down at her foot, she pressed her thumb along the arch. She sorta groaned without much sound, more that her body tensed and released. I sat on the other end of the bench and grabbed her running shoe from its spot between us. They weren’t bad quality, but they appeared very worn. On the verge of falling apart. They couldn’t have been comfortable at that point. As much as she was on her feet during a shift, she really needed something better.

“These shoes look like they've seen better days. You should have something a little better for your line of work.”

“They’ll do for now,” she murmured, and her eyes closed as she pressed again.

“Here,” I said, pushing my beanie hat back off my forehead, “give me your foot.”

She jolted back into awareness, staring at me wide-eyed. “What?”

“I’ll rub it for you.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s fine.”

“Really,” I argued. “I've been told that I've got magic hands.”

She smiled and choked back a little laugh. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Seriously,” I grinned, watching as her subtle amusement with my antics seemed to grow. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“You don’t want to rub my foot,” she said, narrowing her brows in skepticism. “It’s all sweaty and stinky and gross.”

“Sweaty isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some of my favorite pastimes involve getting quite sweaty.”

I saw a flash of heat cross over her expression, and she looked away, back down at her foot. “That doesn’t surprise me,” she said in a low voice.

“Why do you say that?”

“I seem to recall Doug warning you guys off me. I understand he goes through a lot of waitresses because you Mofos are always
bangin
’ them.”

I shrugged. “Justin, maybe. Denny and Drew are all committed and shit, but Justin’s always on the prowl and seriously seems to be lacking in scruples. I’m not near as bad as he is, though.”

“You’re not?” she asked, cocking a beautifully shaped eyebrow.

“Well, I’m not a fuckin’ saint, but I’m nothing like Justin. He uses sex as entertainment, always looking for some way to top the last experience he’d had. Me…?” I shrugged, “Not so much.”

“All the same, I’ll pass.” She lowered her foot to the ground and reached for her shoe, but I pulled it back.

Tipping her head to the side, she gave me a look of disapproval. The slight upturn of her lips, though, spoke volumes.

“Give me my shoe, Cody,” she said with mock seriousness.

“C’mon, when’s the last time someone gave you a good foot rub?”

“Well, never,” she answered, “because it’s gross.”

“I won’t take your sock off.”

“Jeez, I’d hope not,” she laughed. “That would be even more nasty.”

“Come on,” I said, patting my thigh. “Put it right here.”

“Cody,” she began.

“Ilsa,” I interrupted.

She pursed her lips at me, and I grinned back at her in response. She fought the returning smile, but her eyes sparkled with our little back and forth.

“Cody,” she repeated.

“Ilsa,” I repeated back.

“Cody, give me my shoe.”

“Ilsa, give me your foot.”

She was beyond adorable when she got all stubborn.

I
defined
stubborn, though. I tried another tactic.

“I owe you. You got me out of the clutches of a very persistent barstool bunny this afternoon, and you’re always running for us, making sure we’ve got cold drinks. I really think it’s the least I can do.”

“You’re not going to give me my shoe back, are you?”

I shook my head with a wide smile. “Nope.”

I could
feel
her wanting to give in, and it simply elated me when, with a heavy sigh, she lifted her foot and set it on my leg.

I realized all too quickly that I hadn’t really thought this through when my hands took hold of her dainty little foot. I wrapped my fingers across the top and pressed along the arch with my thumbs. Ilsa let out the most delightful little moan.

A moan that went straight to my dick.

I looked sharply over at her and, even in the pale shadows behind the bar, I could see a flush rise in her cheeks. That had totally caught her off guard, too, and for a second we both froze. I dropped my attention back to her foot and started to rub again. She didn’t make any more sounds other than a slight catch in her breathing from time to time. She couldn’t seem to help the blissful expressions from crossing her face, though.

Not that she didn’t try. That much was obvious. She managed to keep it pretty well in check if she knew I was looking at her, as though my attention made it harder for her to relax.

But as I looked back to her foot, watching her covertly out of the corner of my eye, a look that bordered on orgasmic took over her face. Her eyes drifted closed and her lips parted. A long, slow breath rose in her chest, and her head fell back ever so slightly. Goosebumps rose on her forearms.

Oh, sweet Jesus.

I kept my face angled down, directed at my hands as they circled the ball and squeezed her heel. A little more pressure, and her eyebrows drew together. Her hips squirmed a little.

My mouth went dry.

She was totally pulling sex faces.