Bare Knuckle: Vegas Top Guns, Book 5 (9 page)

Eric was doing chin-ups. One after the other after the other. He was covered in sweat, wearing only a tight-as-sin pair of black boxer briefs. During their decadent evening, she hadn’t been privileged with such a blatant view of his back. Muscles bunched across his upper back, his shoulders, his thick arms. Then he lowered his body in a controlled move. Everything lengthened, including his scar. It was as if a pale snake had coiled around his back, nestling where she knew it ended, out of sight around his ribs.

She was going to offer a greeting, something light to belie how he turned her on. Because
poof
, she was wet and tingling with want. She’d never been with a man who took such precise care of himself. A masterpiece of macho.

Then she saw his laptop. It sat open on a nearby table. From where he worked out, Eric had a perfect view of the screen. On that screen was a slideshow of Trish. Only a second separated each transition. Naked, pouting, sweaty, straining and finally screaming. All the phases of their night.

Eric kept working. Harder now. Grunting with each fierce pull.

She swallowed and found her voice. Because she wanted in on a piece of that fabulous, rigid body before he worked out all the tension.

“So, stud…how’d they turn out?”

Chapter Eight

A shot of energy sang along Eric’s shoulders and down his back. He held himself upright in the chin-up for three more counts, finishing out the movement. Then down. His toes hit the floor. He’d done enough that he was huffing. Sweat had popped up along his skin. He hadn’t been able to help it. The drive of Trish’s pictures…

It had either been a fast, difficult mini-workout or jacking it while she was in the shower.

The pictures had hit him that fiercely.

Maybe he should have shut them off, but no one in his right mind would’ve chosen
not
to look at her. The way she’d practically come apart over the course of the night. Let down her shields. Sweaty and dirty, laughing and free.

He’d loved every minute.

Grabbing a towel, he turned while he wiped away some of the sweat.

Whoa.
He hadn’t expected that.

Short hair barely brushed the tops of her ears in a color that more closely matched the honey between her legs. He should’ve known better, that the platinum had been a wig. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so appreciative to see a woman with natural breasts. Now even her modest makeup was long gone, and she stood before him wearing her vulnerability like a second robe. She lifted her shoulders in a tense, halfhearted shrug, as if waiting for him to pass judgment.

He palmed the back of her skull. Her hair was baby fine and super soft. “Nice,” he said quietly, then pulled her near enough to take her mouth. She tasted like mint, not coffee.

She splayed a hand across his pecs. “You certainly do know how to say good morning.”

“The pictures…” He traced the arch of her eyebrow with one thumb, harboring the compulsion to memorize the shape of her face. “Perfect.”

Her smile sharpened. “Told you I’d end up on your wall.”

“Yeah,” he said with a quiet laugh. “Probably.”

She sauntered to the side table where his laptop rested. Hands in the pockets of his robe, she watched the slideshow. “Man, look at that. Look at
me
. I’ve never…” She tilted her head as her breathing hitched a bit faster. “That is crazy hot. Oh! That one. Go back.”

He angled around her hip to get to the trackpad. “This?”

In the picture, he was behind her, fucking her. His arms were wrapped underneath her breasts. While Eric buried his face against her neck, she looked right at the lens. Her eyes appeared sleepy yet crackling with energy.

She made an inarticulate moan. “Christ, yes. Lord, look at your arms.”

“What?” He could barely see them beyond the plump rise of her tits.

She folded both hands around his upper arm. “This. Your body is flat-out sick.” Petting, she slid over the caps of his shoulders, down his forearms and along the veins that stood out there. “How much work do you put in yourself?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “I could ask the same of you.”

“Skinny doesn’t mean in shape. I couldn’t do a chin-up to save my life.”

Devious. There was no other word to describe the feeling that took over. He felt absolutely devious.

After gripping her ribs, he picked her up and spun their bodies. She squealed as he lifted her toward the chin-up bar. She grabbed it as if by reflex. The dark blue robe came open, displaying a creamy expanse of skin that remained slightly pink from the shower.

“Don’t you dare let me go,” she said on another squealing laugh. “So help me God, if you do…”

“You’ll what?” He pushed away the robe with his nose and nuzzled the inside curve of her breast. Those two pert nipples were irresistible. He sucked one tip into his mouth, then nibbled and licked.

Her legs curled around his waist. “This doesn’t much seem like any chin-up I’ve ever heard of.”

He smiled against her skin. “If you went to a gym, no man would ever leave.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a compliment.” Her legs tightened at his waist as she released one hand. She steadied herself with a hand at the back of his head, sending tingles down his skin—until she smoothed around to the edge of the scars on his face. “You can’t let me go, though. Promise me.”

Offering silent encouragement, he grabbed her hand and lifted it toward the bar. He liked when she extended her lithe body, with her breasts rising to his mouth.

He also liked her
not
touching his scars.

He slipped his hand under her thigh and hitched her knee over his elbow. She was wide open for him—a tempting bit of wiry determination. Her pussy was already wet.

Teasing done. They were both ready.

He kissed her. Took her mouth. Stroked his tongue along hers, harder, more urgently, as their lips pushed and slid.

She threw her head back, inviting him to graze his teeth over her skin. He palmed her ass and positioned her wet cleft over his cock. “You still think I’m going to drop you, showgirl?”

“No. God, no.” Her body lengthened in a lithe arc. “But you’ll have to put me down to find a condom.”

“Wanna bet?”

Eric reached up to release her grip from the metal bar. After looping her wrists around the back of his neck, he grabbed her hips and ass. The walk to the kitchen island wasn’t a strain. He loved having his body back, knowing he could be this strong and assured.

“You’re insane, you know that?” She nuzzled her face against his neck as she hooked her ankles at the small of his back. “I can’t believe you’re carrying me.”

Each step pressed her wetness along his throbbing cock. He was more in danger of coming than he was of dropping her. At the island, he planted her on the countertop. She gasped when her ass made contact with the cold tile, and gasped again when he kissed her. He dove into a drawer. Thank Christ he’d happened to see a condom in there the other day.

He rolled it on with perfunctory motions. Trish leaned back on her palms, showing off her delicious body, spreading her knees wide. The gleam of her cunt was melting his mind. She stroked her fingers up the inside of her thigh then circled her entrance. “Those pictures. Picking which one goes on the wall… That’ll be a special event for you, won’t it?”

He grunted in response. He could barely get his thoughts straight.

She went on as if he’d managed to haul an appropriate response out of his lump of a brain. “Will you play with your cock, Eric? Stroke it? Go through all the pictures a hundred times? Zoom in on some part of me?” She fanned her fingers wide over his body as she leaned her mouth close. “I want to be there. I want to watch you pick.”

He slid into her too fast. Red-tipped fingernails dug into his shoulders. Chagrin rode him almost as cruelly as his arousal, but fuck she was too much. He’d never had a woman as completely into his kink. The image she’d conjured rode him. He’d scan through the pictures with his hand on his cock, while Trish draped over his back. She’d look over his shoulder, equally turned on as they cast her as his own personal porn star. That loop of voyeurism threatened to break his skull open.

Later.

Right now it was kitchen sex and getting his fucking rocks off. She stole his equilibrium and sent him spinning.

He hitched her up and pulled her closer until she was off the counter and supported by his arms. He stroked his cock in and out of that clinging sheath.

“You’re insane,” she breathed. “All that strength. Mine for now, isn’t it?”

He could only grunt and force back the orgasm that grabbed the base of his spine.

She took his mouth—a hard kiss, then a harder grind of her pelvis. Stroke and fuck and taking. But giving too. Because good Lord she gave everything she had.

He didn’t know how he held off long enough to let Trish come first. But he did. His reward was the ruthless clench of her pussy. The low moan in his ear. The shiver that raced down her back.

Eric spun and pressed her flat against the stainless-steel fridge. Sweat smeared against the cold metal and between their bodies, blending them together. Push and take and
more
, until he broke open and the pleasure stole his breath.

His thighs were shaky as he remained pressed against Trish. She lowered her legs one at a time. Their lips clung a minute more. He’d never thought of himself as a kissy kind of guy—ironic considering his call sign, Kisser—but he liked her mouth. He wanted more.

“I mean it,” she said against his wet mouth. “I want to be there.”

“You still don’t get veto.” He’d meant that one too. He kept them all.

She licked her lips. “You’re a hard man in more than one way, aren’t you?”

“Not anymore.”

She grinned—a dazzling, flashy smile that shot a bright light into his dark corners. “And classy too.”

“I try.”

“At least you certainly know how to give a girl a good morning.”

“Should I top it off with some breakfast?”

Her mouth pinched into a displeased expression. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

Eric nodded once. Weird to think he knew something of what went on in her head. “Either you don’t think I have your picks, or you don’t eat much breakfast.”

“Option the second,” she said, apparently chagrined. “It takes a different kind of work for a chick to maintain her figure. You’ve never faced a runway seamstress with a tape measure. Those bitches are fierce.”

“You need a cheeseburger.”

She laughed, full out. “Like hell. I’d have to run fifteen miles!”

He palmed her ribs and snorted. “You could pack fifty cheeseburgers in here. No one would notice the difference.”

“Liar. Sweet, but a liar.”

“What if I promised we’d work it off?”

She pushed him away and sauntered off, tying the robe shut as she went. “Maybe. I’ll consider it. But first, I’ve got a day to get on with.”

“A show later?”

“Of course. It’s Saturday. That’s hours from now, though. Mama thinks I have voice lessons. Really, I’ll head to the campus library.” At his slight frown she lifted her chin with definite pride. “Homework. So get a move on, sugar. I need a change of clothes, which means a trip home first. You’re gonna drop me off in that sweet ride of yours.”

Chapter Nine

They didn’t head straight home. Eric merely pointed his Camaro east and drove. Unlike when she’d sat on that same leather seat the night before, Trish was relaxed. She had more questions than answers, more doubts than certainties, but she tipped her head back and smiled. The late-September heat breezed across her face. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so free. Even if only for a little while, she breathed it in.

“Wish I had my camera,” he said quietly.

Trish opened her eyes to find him sneaking glances at her. “No way. You’d wrap us around a tree trunk.”

“Safety concern.”

“Absolutely.”

After having seen Eric’s rambling industrial loft, she was hesitant to show him the double-wide she shared with her mother, Laurie. He wouldn’t go inside. That was an unspoken no-no. But it wasn’t exactly the palace of a superstar in the making.

Eric didn’t seem to mind her real hair, and he had a thing about sexual authenticity, but Trish had her dreams. They did not include a man like him getting an eyeful of how she was barely scraping by. Maybe she should’ve taken a taxi. She’d been too needy, wanting a few more minutes within their dream world.

Things had been awkward with her mama lately. They’d only get worse when Trish showed up after a one-night stand and passed on the news of her show closing. And her agent dropping her.

Damn.

“This the place?” he said.

“Yup.”

“Nice.”

“Don’t.”

He put the classic Camaro into park and turned to face her. Sunlight glared through the windshield, highlighting his scar. Already it was a part of him. She took it as one feature among many, along with his beautiful lips, slate-blue eyes and biceps where they bulged from beneath his black T-shirt.