Bare Knuckle: Vegas Top Guns, Book 5 (5 page)

He hadn’t brought it up until Trish. The whole thing struck him as too
Phantom of the Opera
—the scarred guy hiding behind a camera, perving after a glittering showgirl.

They kept talking while Trish finished the fries. She’d been in Vegas five years, him two. She was taking a few college courses, while he’d graduated from Michigan State. The conversation was first rate, which only added to the thoughts of photographs. She was witty and coy—too coy at times. Hiding, like he did. Time to see if they could change that. The camera revealed everything. When he ducked behind the lens, he was revealing more of himself than he did to his closest friends. He was revealing what struck all the way down to his primitive core.

Who would ever know his fantasies other than a select few lovers? That was an exclusive club he wanted Trish to be part of.

“So,” she said, appearing nervous for the first time during their conversation. “Where to next?”

“Hotel or my place?”

“Your place.”

“Why?”

“Because if I’m walking a boxing ring in a bikini and you’re taking punches as a hobby, I’m assuming money might be an issue on both sides.”

“Maybe I like boxing,” he said dryly.

She tilted her head. Her gaze roamed over his face with intensity enough to make him want to bellow. Or walk out.

Answer already.

“No.” She shook her head as if emerging from a trance. “You’d have gloated more. And your lack of an entourage is appalling.”

Eric couldn’t hold back a laugh. “They keep calling in sick.”

The ride to his loft apartment on the edge of Vegas’s industrial outskirts was almost relaxed. She hadn’t fled and he hadn’t made an ass of himself—a tendency he’d been working on since a few rehab nurses had dressed him down like drill sergeants.

He flipped on the kitchen lights and stood aside, letting her enter as she wanted. He liked having half a complex to himself and a cheap-ass mortgage, but a few women had complained. Trish either had a surprising lack of care for her safety, or she trusted him. Considering her savvy, he was betting on the second.

Not that he understood what in his mangled face said
trust me
. He didn’t used to be a poster-child example of how to be a decent human being. Doing right by Carey was the best he could say for himself, and that was as much penance as caring. Even flying—he’d fucked up and he’d made a couple enemies along the way. Since the crash, though…

He couldn’t shake the memory of the ground rising up to meet him. Of gravity pulling him down. Of flames everywhere. The plane had been a dying animal wrapped around him, plummeting, groaning its last.

Only afterward had he realized how shallow, how
lonely
, his life had become. He’d gotten by on his attitude, looks and body. Few found incentive to stay when he was a surly-as-fuck cuss. And he hadn’t realized how much he loved his job. He’d almost lost it all. He had a lot of ground to make up, and that wasn’t limited to the physical training he continued, determined to shake free from the last of his injuries.

He tossed his keys in their bowl. Trish looked around the loft, silently assessing.

She stopped in the middle of the open area that blended kitchen into dining into living room. “Sort of stark, isn’t it?”

“By choice.”

“It wasn’t criticism, believe me. One of my classes is set design. I think it’s habit now, assessing a space and seeing how I’d interpret it or recreate it.”

“See? Not a Barbie.”

She flipped her hair and affected a wide-eyed, eerily blank expression. “Oh no?”

“Quit. That’s spooky.”

“I know.” She laughed her way out of the pose. “But you wouldn’t believe how many guys prefer it that way.”

“Idiots,” he muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure, sugar.” Her expression said she was letting him off the hook.

The thing was, he used to be one of those idiots. Except for a few of the women he’d photographed where the relationship had remained platonic, he didn’t have the best track record for valuing substance over style. Maybe Trish was an excellent introduction to the radical, smack-upside-the-head concept that he didn’t need to compromise.

Good to know for when he was ready for a long-term relationship. Until his flight rotation was back up to one hundred percent, and until Carey was clean and sober, Eric didn’t have the energy to devote to what women needed.

For half a thought, he contemplated offering her a glass of wine. But no, he’d said one round in the bar, and he meant it. The drink would’ve been a delay tactic before confronting the topic of his bedroom and all the psychobabble that would go with it. Aside from trying to be a better person, Eric had tried to be more honest with himself—as direct as his habit when speaking to others. It didn’t always work. In this case, though, he was able to call himself on his bullshit.

Trish had wandered away, around the right bend that concealed the second half of the loft space. Make or break time. He followed.

The loft had been an old warehouse, with reinforced beams and brick walls. Eric had painted them white. The only artwork was his own stuff. In the more public half, he’d hung shots of his hometown. Detroit’s beauty was morbidly blunt, but it was there if a guy knew where to look.

The private half of the loft held his photography equipment on one side and what passed as his bedroom on the other. The bare bed without headboard or footboard worked for him. The walls were adorned with his best photographs—or more like, the photographs that spoke to him. He’d taken more carefully framed, more artfully constructed shots, but these were the ones he liked to study because of the women he’d immortalized in moments of purity.

Trish stood in front of one. He’d had a great symbiotic relationship with Dolores. He liked to watch and she didn’t want to be touched. He’d never asked why, only took pictures of her astonishing body. His favorite shot of her was the one he’d had enlarged to life size. He’d been behind her as she’d lifted her hand over her head, looking over her shoulder toward the camera.

He stood next to Trish as she contemplated the picture. “I think it’s her mouth. She has a sad mouth.”

“Technically she’s smiling.” He worried about Dolores sometimes. She’d left his life as casually as she’d entered it, like a train passing by. Only she’d left a few indelible reminders behind. He hoped her memories held up as well.

“Was she a sad girl?”

“Sometimes. Do you recognize it?”

Her shoulders straightened, which accentuated her breasts. A female dodge and weave. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t kid a kidder. Do you recognize her sadness?”

She flashed the same plastic smile she’d aimed at the guys outside her dressing room door. “Pretty girls are never sad.”

“Screw that.”

“It’s what the world wants to believe. Boyfriend dumped you? At least you’ll get another. Crashed a car? Someone will buy you one. Lost a job? Who wouldn’t wanna hire a girl as gosh-darn pretty as you?” She stepped closer to the black-and-white print, examining Dolores’s curved neck. “Sometimes the opportunities never come.” Then she whirled toward him and flashed another of those practiced smiles. “So, who looks better?”

He laughed. “Not answering that.”

“C’mon. Me or her? Who’s got the better body?”

“Nope.”

A fierce light snapped on in her pale eyes. “Maybe you need a more accurate frame of reference. You need to compare like to like.”

“Compare what to what?”

She glanced back up at Dolores. “You know… She’s naked and I’m not.”

“You could change that.”

Her moment’s hesitation was what Eric needed. She wanted to play, but this wasn’t her usual MO. Being admired—that was probably the way of things, as surely as people stared at his face. Being the sexual aggressor, however, wasn’t a Barbie’s role. She was waiting for his cues. He’d make sure that didn’t keep happening. With a unique, dramatic surge of excitement, he wouldn’t be satisfied unless she also got what she wanted from the night.

“Fine,” she said. “Challenge accepted.”

Grasping the bottom hem of her shirt, she whipped it off so fast that white-blonde hair swirled around her jaw. No bra. She ditched her heels and shoved her jeans down along with a tiny scrap of red panties.

Lord, she was priceless.

Long, elegant legs led up to the thrust of her hips. A narrow line of honey-blonde hair accented pouting pussy lips. The flat plane of her stomach arced above model-standard hipbones. Her breasts were perfectly shaped. Then she turned and lifted her arms over to adopt Dolores’s pose.

“Now you
have
to tell me.” Her voice wasn’t as steady as her gaze. “It’s a rule.”

Even if it hadn’t been true, he’d have picked her over Dolores. He’d always had a type, and Trish was it. Slender, elegant and so typically
Playboy
all-American it was almost embarrassing.

He stepped behind her and tucked his chin alongside her head. She was frenzy made flesh, as enticing as a siren’s call. He curved his hands around her slim waist then spread his fingers across her stomach. Lean muscle offered resistance to his testing flex. She wasn’t going to break.

“You are. And better than that, you’re here.”

“Unfairly coloring your judgment.”

“You gonna complain, showgirl?”

“Not if you don’t.”

He swept his hands up to cover her breasts and snagged perky nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. She curled her arms back until her elbow hooked around his neck. Eric liked being fully clothed while she was bare-ass naked. She was a waking man’s wet dream.

“It’d be so easy to blame my choices tonight on you being wicked.” Twisting around to face him, she brushed up against his chest. “But it’s not just you.”

“Then show me what you want.”

“Show you. Show you,” she said again, smiling. “That’s what
you
want.”

He rubbed his lips over hers, breathing her anticipation. “Again I’ll ask. You gonna complain?”

Hands on his shoulders, she nudged him until his knees hit his bed. She didn’t push him down. Instead, she wove around to use his shoulder as a support as she stood on the mattress. He turned to watch. She trailed fingertips through his hair, sending a wash of sensation down his neck and back. The scar tissue over his spine prickled.

“We
are
going to go a few rounds, aren’t we?” The deeper timbre of her voice was almost as exciting as the touches she traced over his skin.

“If I have anything to say.”

“And you’re going to photograph me?”

“That’s up to you.” The centers of his palms burned. He wanted to grab one of his cameras and capture how she looked down at him. He could jack off to her mix of self-aware power and gentle vulnerability for months.

Her smile turned slinky. “You better make me look gorgeous, or I’ll take it out on you.”

He placed a single kiss on her thigh. “There’s no
making
. You’re gorgeous.”

“For a man of few words, you say the right ones.” She spread her knees slightly. “One problem though. I can’t stop thinking about your cock. Is that unbearably slutty of me?”

He licked up her lightly tanned skin. He wasn’t a soft guy, so he didn’t know the right words. Silk? Satin? Then he locked his knees against the mattress and hunched down. He slicked his tongue between her nearly bare pussy lips. She was sweetly spicy.

She held the back of his head and tipped her face toward the ceiling. “Oh God. Probably not as slutty as letting you go down on me this fast.”

“I can stop.” He slid out of reach of her arms. Then he stripped his own clothes while she watched—while she ate him up with her eyes. Was that what it was like to be on the other end of the focus?

“Fuck that,” she said with a laugh. “Get back here.”

That easily, he was at her feet. “What else?”

“Anything. We’re here. We’re doing this.”

He grasped the backs of her slender legs, above her knees, and stroked up until his thumbs met across her wet pussy. He watched her from under his lashes as he spread her open, then ducked his head for another salty taste. “Are you sure?”

Her whole body shuddered, knees dipping. “I’m an idiot. Total idiot. But what the hell. Yes.”

Eric pushed two blunt fingers up her sheath while rubbing his thumb over her clit. He curled his fingers forward in a come-hither motion. She bent for what seemed like an eternity, drawing out the moment as she eased over him. Her arms looped around his shoulders. He turned their bodies so that he sat on the bed and she straddled his lap. Her knees found purchase in the dark blue sheets.

He slid on a condom in no time. She was too close to perfect. That she would let him take pictures…
Damn.

Later, though. He was too roughly aroused. They had all night. This was only the beginning. For them, sex was not the main course. Maybe she was a lot like him.

He palmed her slim hips and urged her up enough so that her soaking-wet pussy grazed his cock. Then he pulled her down. Hot. Wet. Consuming. He eased back until he lay flat on the bed, supporting her with his hands around her ribs. He stroked the underside of her breasts. She straddled his body with the grace of a goddess, but the dirty, playful glint in her eyes said she was a dark goddess. A witch on the hunt.