by Maria Luis
Impossible.
“You’ve got something . . .” He lifted a hand and brushed her wet hair back from her face. “It looks like a caterpillar.”
Oh, God, would the humiliation never end?
“Please take it—”
He pulled back, and there, pinched between his index finger and his thumb, was her false eyelash.
It was official.
Her humiliation was complete.
Lizzie dropped her head to his wet shoulder. His clean scent had been masked with the smell of swamp, but considering that she smelled just as funky, well, it seemed a little ridiculous to issue a complaint. Instead, she asked, “Did my camera make it?”
With an arm around her waist like a band, he leaned them backward and his chin shifted across her head. “You’re lucky as all hell. It’s on the walkway, along with your backpack and everything we had in it.”
“It’s called karma. I let you have some of my coffee, and therefore my belongings were saved. Coffee unites the fallen.”
His chest expanded with a quiet chuckle, and Lizzie felt the brush of his chest against hers. No bra. She was small enough upstairs to go without one most days, and no matter the fact that they were sitting in dirty swamp water, her nipples were hard. Hard enough that if he glanced down, he’d see twin peaks poking at her shirt.
And that, officially, would be the end of her.
This is what happens when you ditched your padded bras.
A few years back, those add-two-cup sizes types of bras had been her best friend. Seriously, greatest investment ever—until an ex had mentioned that her chest was false advertisement. 34C in the streets and a 34A in the sheets.
“You good?”
Lizzie’s head snapped up at the sound of his voice. “Yup! Yup, so good. All set. I’m going to get up now. Maybe pretend that none of this happened and—”
She screeched.
Loudly.
Shrilly.
And clung to Gage’s body like a stripper on her first day on the job.
His arms locked around her back, drawing her so close to his chest she felt the tempo of his heart against her breastbone. “What? What is it?”
Her eyes slammed shut. “Something . . . slithered against my leg. It felt scaly.”
A small pause. Then, “Like a gator?”
“I don’t know.” Her throat worked with a hard, nervous swallow. “Maybe.”
With one arm still wrapped around her, Gage dove his other valiantly into the water.
Like a hero.
Her hero.
Thank God for the nation’s first responders.
“Princess?”
Another hard swallow. Her fingers dug into the muscular balls of his shoulders. “Yes?”
“I found your gator.”
Her gaze tracked from his chest to his arm to his hand, and in it . . . a stick.
A wet stick, but a stick nonetheless.
Anxious laughter climbed her throat. “I think we’re done for the day.”
That big hand of his spread, fingers clutching her soaked shirt. “Pretty sure we’ve yet to take a photo documenting today’s date. Don’t let me down.”
“Now?” she said. “You want to take that photo now when we look like something out of a Brother’s Grimm fairytale?”
Without warning, he boosted her onto the raised pathway, setting her on her rear as he straightened and stretched. “Livestream,” he announced, “we’re totally doing this as a livestream.”
Absolutely, one-hundred percent no.
She told him just that, emphatically.
“You need to live a little, Lizzie.” Shaking his hands dry, Gage dropped to his haunches and unzipped her backpack. His purple LSU hat was the only part of him that wasn’t soaked and tinged green like Apple Jack’s cereal. A hat, which he twisted to the back. And then he flashed her a brilliant smile.
Dammit, he was too good-looking to reject.
Lizzie dragged her feet onto the planks.
Squish. Squish. Squish.
“I’m pretty sure you told me to expand my experiences twenty minutes ago, before I went head over heels into the bayou . . . that you promised not to toss me into.”
He lifted her cell phone from the backpack with a little wave and an exuberant hooah, reminding her immediately of her friend Anna’s husband, Luke, who’d been a lifer in the army before a career-ending injury. “Let’s do this.”
Lizzie snagged the phone from him. “I hate you. Just so you know.”
He only grinned, a sexy smirk that warmed her in all the wrong places—or the right ones, depending on how she looked at the situation.
Then he opened his arms, inviting her against his damp chest and even damper shorts.
She wanted to say no.
She wanted to turn away before she did something crazy, like actually jump into his arms and wrap her legs around his waist.
She wanted to do all of those things.
But she didn’t.
Like a true professional, she closed the gap between them and gave a pursed, tight-lipped smile. Do not show him how off-balance you are right now. And then she swiped open the first social media app she saw, and hovered her thumb over the GO LIVE button.
What did it matter if the world saw her at her lowest? She wasn’t alone. Gage was with her, and though the world didn’t know his full name—she’d wanted to protect his privacy as much as possible—her subscribers were already in love with the tatted-up man who looked like a rugged movie star come to life.
A single, innocent kiss had proven that Lizzie’s followers wanted a bad boy they could see on the regular. A bad boy she’d promised them would never be redeemed, because it was wholly impossible.
But Gage Harvey wasn’t all that bad, and he didn’t seem like a sleaze-ball.
He’d demanded a night in her bed, and had yet to bring it up since that day at Inked on Bourbon.
This was all for show, nothing more than an illusion of redemption for them both—him as the reformed bad boy and she as the woman who had risen above feeling scorned.
You can do this.
You can do this.
You can do—
And then it all went to hell, because the moment she gathered courage and tapped GO LIVE on her phone, Gage rasped, “Princess, is it just me or are your nipples hard?”
Yeah.
Today officially needed an END button.
Chapter Nine
“Another butterfly tattoo up front.”
It was déjà vu all over again.
Gage pushed away his lunch and stared up at his twin. Twenty years ago, they’d been each other’s mirror image: same dark hair cropped close to their skulls; same jeans and T-shirt combo that might as well have had “hand me down” scrawled on the tags. Their faces were clean-shaven, and even their father’d had a problem distinguishing them.
Then Ben Harvey had died on the job, and Owen went on a bender.
He’d racked up two arrests within three months, thanks to a bad habit of brawling at a local motorcycle club. No one had bailed Owen out. Own your shit, was the lifelong motto their father had instilled in his two sons. Owen had fucked up, and that was on him.
For years, Gage and Owen had stayed on the straight and narrow. For years, they’d focused on the future—the two of them working side by side for the NOPD, just like their dad, and the two generations before Ben.
Protecting the city was in their blood.
Nowadays, it was just in Gage’s.
At least Owen had ditched the bad attitude a few years ago. Now the bastard was just moody as hell and constantly on Gage’s case about working for Inked on a full-time basis.
“I’m not taking this one,” he muttered. “Last time I was in, I reached my butterfly quota.”
“From what I’ve seen online, that one worked out in your favor.”
Owen was talking about Lizzie. Lizzie, who Gage couldn’t shove from his thoughts no matter how hard he tried. Their trip to
the Barataria Preserve four days ago had been a shit-show. At the same time, it’d been the sort of day Gage couldn’t remember having with anyone else.
Ridiculous.
Funny.
Erotic.
He hadn’t meant to land them in the bayou, but he’d felt no guilt whatsoever once she fell into his lap, squirming and wet and straddling the line of ticked-off and amused.
“Are you dating her?”
Gage thrust a hand through his hair, hating that age-old question. “Nah, it’s not like that.”
Owen folded his arms across his chest, looking like a New Orleanian lumberjack: ripped jeans; flannelled shirt, despite the fact that it was balls-swelteringly hot outside; a beard that could rival one of those Hemsworth brothers’. “What’s it like then?”
“Jesus. Do you see me digging around and asking you about what’s-her-name?”
Black eyes cooled. “We’re not talking about Savannah, dude. She’s not up for discussion.”
Gage clasped his hands behind his neck. “Exactly. You don’t want to talk about Savannah. I don’t want to talk about Lizzie, especially when there’s nothing to discuss. I’m helping her out with something.”
The moody vibe left Owen’s expression and was replaced with something worse: concern. “When she came in the other day, I couldn’t help but think she reminded me of—”
“Don’t.”
The word was ripped from Gage’s heart—or whatever was left of it. He wasn’t going to . . . He shook his head, trying to dislodge the memories. No matter that fourteen years had passed, the wound still burned whenever he thought of it. Her. The lowest moment in his life when the person who’d pledged to have his back for the rest of their lives but had walked away instead.
Just like that.
Gage stared down at his hands, curling and unfurling his fists so that he could do something more than just wonder for how many more years he’d think of her and feel gutted. Love had fled the scene early on, because a person didn’t get fucked over like Gage had and still cling to ridiculous hopes.
But the cut of the blade? The realization that you couldn’t count on anyone but yourself, not even your own flesh and blood? Yeah, he’d learned that lesson real quick.
He was fortunate that the guys in his unit were all good men who came to work ready to put their lives on the line.
That sort of behavior limited the chance for betrayal.
Everyone wanted to go home. Everyone wanted to return to their families.
Even if all Gage had nowadays was Owen, and he and Owen hadn’t been tight—not like they used to be—since the time of their father’s passing.
One pregnancy.
Two sons.
Two separate life courses.
Gage was pretty sure that there was a shitty country song out there with that exact verse.
Hell, it was telling that he’d rather tat up a twenty-something with a butterfly than remain a prisoner to his own thoughts.
Casting one glance at his half-eaten lunch, Gage drew in a deep breath and stood. He was doing this, working himself to exhaustion, for his brother. His best friend, whatever that meant nowadays.
Owen clapped a hand to Gage’s shoulder, halting his trajectory to the door. “C’mon, man, don’t close up on me like that.”
Pot meet kettle. Gage shrugged off his brother’s hand. “I’m not holding anything back. Lizzie and I aren’t anything. Like I said, I’m helping her out with something. That’s it.” Black clashed with black as their gazes met. “Don’t bring up Michelle again. That shit belongs exactly where I left it—in the past.”
His twin gave a small shake of his head. “I’m worried about you, Gage. If you’re not out in the field, you’re here. And if you’re not here, then you’re—”
Yeah, he didn’t need for Owen to finish that sentence. He knew exactly where he spent his extra time, and Owen was wrong. They’d been over this before, more times than he could count. “I’m doing good,” he said in a low voice, “I’m doing what I can to make a difference.”
“I know. I get that, but . . .” Owen scrubbed a hand over his bearded jaw. “It doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You’re going to keep on going, aren’t you? Working here, working for the NOPD, running the—”
A knock at the door cut off Owen as Jordan, the parlor’s other tattoo artist, poked his head in. “Y’all good? I can grab the lady waiting at the front, if you want.”
Owen’s shoulders rose and then fell. “Yeah, just take her. Gage has got to be somewhere.”
With a two-fingered salute, Jordan disappeared, and the sound of his heavy boots echoing against the tiled floor faded into silence.
Leaving Gage and his twin alone.
Hell, it wasn’t supposed to be this awkward.
It hadn’t always been this awkward.
“You should have just let me take the patron,” Gage muttered, shoving his fingers into the pockets of his jeans. “I give you shit over the butterflies because I know it gets under your skin, but I would never leave you hanging. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know.” There was a long pause before Owen added, “Let’s be real, man, your butterflies are getting sloppy. Kindergarten-level shit.”
And just like that, they were good again.
On the surface, at least.
For right now, it was enough.
Chapter Ten
“Hold on, do my tits look okay?”
Too late.
Lizzie’s camera clicked-clicked as the shutter went off, capturing the woman posed in lingerie on the antique sofa. Well, the faux antique sofa. The internet was a gem for discovering good but cheap finds, and since Lizzie’s compact studio was on the first floor of the building, it made deliveries even easier.
Today’s session was another boudoir photography shoot. Carli Simpson had booked through the Naked You website, and while Lizzie preferred photography that wasn’t quite so staged and deliberate, it was a hit here in New Orleans.
Turns out women of all shapes and sizes really dug stripping down to next to nothing for the camera.
On the couch, Carli shoved a hand deep into her corset to arrange her watermelon-sized breasts. A smirk curling her mouth, she muttered, “My husband loves these things but I’m telling you, they hurt like a bitch most days.”
Lizzie hummed a noncommittal response, turning away from her client to face the large windows of her studio. The property sat in the unlikeliest of places: a converted, late nineteenth-century townhouse in the city’s Warehouse District. Her view was the towering St. Patrick’s Church, a neo-Gothic structure where Latin mass was still held weekly. She had more photos of the exterior and interior of that church on her apartment walls than she did tubes of mascara in her collection.
When she’d taken over the studio space from the previous tenant, her first order of business had been to install blinds that allowed her clients to see activity on the street, although pedestrians didn’t have the same luxury.
No one could peek inside, and that was exactly how she liked it.
“I’m ready, Miz Vittoria,” said Carli Simpson. “Got ’em just like my husband likes ’em.”
Lizzie turned to face the music—and found her sensible shoes glued to the floor at the sight.
The woman’s nipples were hoisted above the cups of the bustier, and she’d lackadaisically thrown herself over the arm of the sofa like a Kate Winslet wannabe from Titanic. Only, Carli Simpson was missing the one element to complete the image, aside from Kate’s trim form and red hair—the blue pendant.
Lucky for Mrs. Simpson, Lizzie had something similar—albeit cheaper—tucked away in her office.
You are such a softie.
Yeah, she just couldn’t help herself from going above and beyond the call of duty for her clients. Lizzie wanted to make women feel better about themselves, no matter who they were.
She held up one finger, left her camera on her equipment table, and made the quick walk to her makeshift
office where she kept the goods.
In other words, the jewelry and whatever other more expensive pieces Lizzie wasn’t willing to lay out in the main studio. She tipped open a mahogany jewelry box on her desk, running her fingers through the silver and gold chains and ornamental pieces. Some were made of plastic, others were historical artifacts she’d picked up at estate sales.
All held value to the people who had owned them, one way or another, and in Lizzie’s photography she could continue to give them life.
Where is . . .
There.
She slipped her nail under the silver, filigreed chain. With sunlight streaming in from the window, the vintage sapphire shone beautifully, like the ocean had quite literally been trapped within the gemstone. Perfect. Exactly what she needed.
Carli Simpson wanted to knock her husband’s socks off for their upcoming anniversary, and Lizzie was determined to do her part.
One sexy boudoir photoshoot coming right up.
With a pep to her step, she sang softly to herself. After the swamp debacle, and the subsequent media storm, thanks to her livestream with Gage, this appointment was the only slice of quiet Lizzie had found in days.
This was what she needed to right her teetering equilibrium.
Her camera.
Her studio.
And a pair of tits the size of her head.
“I’ve got just the thing for you, Mrs. Simpson,” she said, stepping back into the studio. “How do you feel about a little role play—”
The pendant fell from her fingers, clattering against the floor.
Her stomach dropped right along with the vintage piece.
What the . . . Why the heck was Gage Harvey standing in her studio?
His broad shoulders and tapered waist greeted her, as did the back of his dark head. With his hands burrowed deep in his black BDU’s, he stared out the window as though he desperately wished to be anywhere else but here.
She didn’t know whether to be offended or grateful.
Carli Simpson cleared her throat, and Lizzie switched her attention to the half-naked woman on her sofa. Her breasts were still out, nipples still pointing in opposite directions like they were dying of suffocation from the corset and seeking freedom from the motherland.