Getting out of the car, I caught up to Ethan who was waiting at the mouth of the alley for me, and we headed towards the shop. I grabbed my keys out of the pockets of my jeans, but it turned out I didn’t need them. The door was already open.
I began pushing it and stepping inside, but one of Ethan’s large hands dropped down on my shoulder to stop me.
“Wait,” he said quietly. “Let me check first.”
I was about to tell him that I could take care of myself—even as I felt a little pleased that he was being protective—but then I saw him pull a gun from the waistband of his jeans. Whatever I had been planning on saying dropped into silence. Suddenly, the night seemed more real.
Ethan pushed open the door and stepped carefully inside, doing his best to be quiet on the linoleum floor I’d recently had replaced. He got two steps in before a familiar voice said, “There’s more than I thought in here. We’re gonna have to make a couple of trips.”
“Fuck, Louis,” said Ethan who had his gun leveled at the larger man as he stepped out from the back of the shop. “I could have shot you.”
Louis shrugged his big shoulders, clearly unperturbed by Ethan and his gun. I didn’t see anyone else in the shop, so I had to assume Louis had heard us and was talking to Ethan as he walked in the door. Either that or Louis was talking to the voices in his head at which point I was going to call foul. I’d work with assholes, but not crazy people.
“I got started,” Louis explained calmly. “Moving inventory is tricky business.”
Ethan shoved his gun back into his jeans, then motioned for me to come inside. Louis gave me a curious look, but didn’t look wholly surprised. “I didn’t think you would be here.”
I patted at my hair, pushing it back behind my ears. It had looked disheveled enough after my romp with Ethan that I shoved it up into a messy bun, but suddenly I wished I’d taken a shower. It was stupid to be self-conscious in front of Louis seeing as how the man had seen me naked as his boss did some very intimate things to me, but tonight was different. Ethan and I were on a different level now and what we’d done was far more private.
Or was it? I wondered suddenly. I’d promised Ethan was the only one I’d sleep with, but what about watching? Would Louis still act as our audience?
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It had been degrading in a way to have Louis watch us, but a part of me had also been incredibly turned on by it. And though Louis was an ass, he’d grown on me a little. A very little. Kind of like fungus. But cute, pet fungus.
Shaking my head a little, I said, “I’m full of surprises.”
I thought I saw the hint of a smile on Louis’s mouth, but it might have just been the dim lighting. We didn’t want all the lights on, letting everyone know we were here.
The men headed into the back and began shuffling things around. We had to do inventory as we moved everything to make sure it was all there and that we didn’t miss anything, but it was a tiny space. Definitely not big enough for Ethan, Louis, and myself.
In the end, I ended up actually inside the small space passing things to Louis who moved it while Ethan checked it against his personal list. We had a lot of stock, so it was good that there were three of us there.
We continued for a while like this, checking packages against Ethan’s list and moving them out of the storage space. When the crates were starting to become cumbersome given the small area, Louis offered to start moving them. “I’ll take what we’ve got checked out back to my car, start loading. That’ll give you some space to work.”
“Good call,” Ethan agreed.
Louis lifted a huge crate, his wall-like frame coming in handy. “I’ll bring the dolly back with me,” he informed us, then headed out of the shop towards his car with the crate in hand.
I watched him for a second, then shook my head. “He is a big bastard, isn’t he?”
Ethan took Louis’s spot, setting his clipboard aside. “Nah. He’s not a bastard. His parents were married in some Catholic church four years before having him.”
I stared at him a moment. “Seriously?”
Grinning, Ethan nodded. “Yep. He goes every Sunday, like a good Catholic.”
“Not a bastard,” I amended.
“Not a bastard,” Ethan confirmed.
I started passing Ethan what I could and he’d pause now and then to check something off his list or write something down. After a while, we found ourselves surrounded by crates with nowhere left to put them. “I thought Louis was going to bring the dolly back,” I whined.