Strip You Bare

by Maisey Yates

  “What?”

  “You asked about my business. I’m a real estate mogul.”

  She snorted out a laugh.

  “What?” he asked.

  “That’s a pretty vanilla job,” she said. “I’m not sure what I think about it.”

  “Am I vanilla, Sarah?”

  She wiggled against him. “I don’t have anything to compare you to, do I?”

  Damn, he shouldn’t enjoy that as much as he did. “Damn straight.”

  “How did you . . . get into real estate?”

  “Kind of a boring story that starts in finance. I BS’d my way into a lending company, from there I got a little insider knowledge, and some connections. Loan shit was lax back then, and I took advantage. I was big into taking risks because I didn’t have anything to lose. I started with a small place and went from there. Now I own two high-rise hotels in downtown San Francisco, one in New York, one in London. And I’m expanding all the time.” He cleared his throat. “I live in one.”

  “A hotel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I . . .” He didn’t know why he had started answering the question. But then, why not? It was dark. They were already talking. “I remember going through the Quarter at night, and the hotels were all lit up. Marble and chandeliers and all manner of shit we didn’t have in the place I lived in. I was just out late, selling drugs. I knew I would never be allowed in places like that. I knew I couldn’t afford one night. Or even a step into the lobby. But I always wanted to.”

  “You earned the money to stay where you wanted,” she said, her tone muted.

  “Yeah,” he said. “And now I live in a hotel.”

  She moved closer to him, delicate fingers trailing down his arm. “My grandfather pays for everything out of the family money. I don’t take any responsibility for my life. I’m just . . . I’ve always been what they wanted me to be. I was engaged to Charlie because my mom loved him. My grandfather approved. Breaking up with him was the first truly rebellious thing I’ve ever done. And then there’s you.” She buried her face in his shoulder, laughing against his skin. He didn’t think anyone had ever done that before. “Though now that I know you’re like . . . a millionaire biker entrepreneur I think you might be a little less rebellious.”

  He gripped her face, forcing her to look at him. “You want to test how dangerous I am?”

  “No. You might report me to my supervisor.” Her shoulders started to shake, laughter.

  He slid his hands down her back, smacked her ass. “Watch it.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “That doesn’t scare me. I like it too much.”

  He softened his hold, stroking her cheek. “The sad thing is I probably should scare you a little more than I do.”

  “You’ve never given me any reason to be afraid of you.”

  “Hopefully I won’t. Hopefully I’ll just go back to San Francisco without ever needing to.” She took a deep breath like she was about to speak, then let it out again, remaining silent. “That’s my world now. It’s what I am. This . . . this isn’t me anymore. I left for a reason. Being poor is shit, Sarah, and I never missed it. Never once missed this.”

  “I’ve always had money. It’s hard for me to imagine the lack of it.”

  “Yeah, you don’t realize how much you need something until you don’t have it. You’d be surprised how hard it drives people.”

  “What did you think it would . . . get you? I mean, were you looking for security? Happiness?”

  “Whatever I wasn’t allowed to have before. That’s what I wanted.” Which brought to mind one more thing he suddenly wanted to tell her, for no reason at all he could think of. “They call me Prince. The Deacons. Your road name is important in the club. And I was Prince because I liked nice things. That probably shatters some illusions for you too.”

  “Okay, so everyone has a name that says something about them?” He didn’t know why it made his chest ache a little bit. Having her ask about him. Having her ask about the club.

  “Yes. There’s Cash. Because he did the money stuff. Blue,” he said, feeling strange talking about her cousin now, “because his blood is blue.”

  “He’s from a rich family?”

  Micah’s throat tightened. “Yeah. And Ajax.”

  “Why Ajax?”

  “Because he’ll clean the floor with any motherfucker dumb enough to mess with him. He’s the meanest one, and a giant pain in my ass. And they were all my brothers. When I left my family, they were my family.”

  “Why did you leave? Money was that much more important than your family?”

  His chest tightened. “We were forced to leave,” he said, the words raw. “About the time Katrina hit. Some dark shit went down and we were up to our necks in it. Priest wanted to go legit, but there were some loose ends that needed to be tied up. Turned out those loose ends didn’t want to be tied up.” He paused. “We killed somebody.”

  “Micah . . .”

  Now he’d shocked her. Now he’d scared her. She would probably go screaming into the night, and he couldn’t blame her. “It was a fight. Guy got hit too hard.”

  “It sounds like an accident.”

  “I think you’re confused, Sarah. We weren’t sent away because we killed somebody, we were sent away because we killed the wrong somebody. That wasn’t the first time we offed a guy. It’s a rough life. And like I told you before, it is like being in the middle of a war zone.”

  “I have a hard time believing that you would . . .”

  “Because you’re a nice girl. But you’re still just a girl.”

  Any moment now she would throw him out of her bed, out of her room, out of her life. But she surprised him. Instead of pulling away, she leaned in, taking his lip between her teeth and biting hard. “I’m not just a girl, you prick. I’m a woman, and I’m strong enough to take you. Strong enough to deal with you. If you think you’re going to scare me off now . . .”

  “Not trying to scare you off. It’s the truth. If it scares you? Fine. Good. It should. But that isn’t why I’m telling you, and I’m not making it up for that purpose. It’s part of who I am. It’s part of what I’ve done. And when we got sent away, I decided to start over. I didn’t want to be that man anymore.”

  She slid her hand down, pressing her palm to his chest. “You aren’t.”

  “You can really say that? With the way I’ve treated you? I locked you in here and forced you over the vanity.”

  “We both know you didn’t force me. I like it like that. Don’t use that against me now. Don’t make me feel like what I want is wrong. You’re the first person I was ever myself with, don’t take that from me because this little sharing session has made you uncomfortable.”

  His stomach twisted. “Why do you trust me?” He knew she did. She shouldn’t.

  “Maybe because I don’t know what a biker is? Maybe because I didn’t meet Micah the businessman. Maybe because I just met you. And I don’t know any of the details about your life, and you didn’t know any of the details about mine. I just know you. Not any of that other stuff that you seem hell-bent on defining yourself by. And you know me. Is that a good enough reason?”

  No. Because he knew more about her and her family than she realized. Because it wasn’t true on his end, never could be. The Delacroix were a familiar entity to him thanks to Leon, and Leon was one of the many secrets he was keeping from her. But he wouldn’t say that. Couldn’t say it now. Didn’t want to.

  “If you want to keep sleeping with me, I’m not going to complain.”

  “It’s more than that,” she said, her tone muted.

  He gritted his teeth against the cracking feeling in his chest, the ache that pressed against the wall that surrounded his heart.

  “It shouldn’t be.”

  “Maybe. But I’m pretty tired of doing everything I should do. So for now I’m just going to do what I want. And right now, Prince, you are what I want.”

  Th
e crack widened. Usually he hated that name. Hated to hear it on anyone’s lips, hated to be reminded. But after what had just passed between them, after what he just confessed, that name was absolution on her lips. Was an acceptance he’d never experienced anywhere else. He wanted to tell her more. To confess all. To talk about what it had been like to be a lonely kid living with a mother who liked cocaine more than she liked her own child. But he didn’t. Instead, he brought his lips down on hers, kissing her again. That eased the pain. Touching her always did.

  Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it just made him burn all over, maybe it just drowned out the sensation in his chest with a more physical ache.

  Either way, he was glad she had let him stay.

  Chapter 12

  Planning a Christmas party was considerably more difficult when you had sex on the brain. Sarah was rapidly becoming obsessed. She hadn’t imagined that she could be one of those women who would lose her head completely over a man, but Micah had proven that she absolutely was, and absolutely had. She slept with him at the mansion every night. After that last encounter at her house they decided it was most convenient. And by “decided it was most convenient” she meant the next morning they’d gone to the mansion and torn each other’s clothes off there, then smoothly stepped into planning and coordinating mode. And they had been there ever since.

  There was nothing domestic about Micah, nothing domestic about sharing a home with him.

  But it did make her want things. Impossible things. She was Sarah Delacroix. She was not going to publicly come out to society with a biker boyfriend who had a criminal record, and who had recently confessed to her that he’d killed people.

  That should bother her more than it did. Or rather, it should bother her in a different way. It did bother her. It made her hurt for him. She imagined that wasn’t the usual response to that kind of revelation. But she knew the man he was now, and revelations about his past didn’t discount that. Rather, they served to fill in the holes in the picture forming in her mind about him. He was smart, clearly, as he had worked his way up in a business environment. Savvy in some ways. But he was also rough, savage. A product of his environment, one that was rougher than she had ever imagined it could be.

  He’d been right about New Orleans. There were things beneath the surface that she’d never imagined. Whole cultures she’d been completely unaware of. He was a part of one of those cultures, and she was fascinated by it. Held captive completely by that fascination.

  Though, that could just be the sex.

  The sex that she was terribly distracted by, the sex she could not afford to be so distracted by today.

  The Christmas party was tonight, and she had endless amounts of preparation to do, so she needed to be doing preparation and not standing around mooning about Micah.

  But not mooning was difficult, because she was sex addled. Which she could honestly say was a first.

  What she should be thinking about was the fact that she was going to have a biker prowling around her Christmas party. Micah hadn’t exactly stated his intentions for tonight, but she had no delusions that he would be suddenly fading into the woodwork when he’d declined to do so thus far. Micah wasn’t opposed to making a scene. He didn’t set out to make scenes, but he was a man who operated entirely by his own rules. He didn’t much care about propriety, which was just one reason she found it so fascinating, so dangerous, so attractive.

  Attractive, but potentially problematic when it came to her Christmas party.

  It struck her again just how incompatible they were. They shouldn’t work at all. Not in the bedroom or anywhere else. Unfortunately, they worked very well in the bedroom. And when she thought of every man she’d been exposed to growing up in her particular social class, and compared them to him, she felt certain he had ruined her for suitable men.

  He was as unsuitable as they came, but she couldn’t imagine ever wanting anything less. Less than the rough, all-consuming passion she’d found with him. Less than this complete and total freedom she’d found in his arms. Micah took her as she was. There were no expectations.

  “Ms. Delacroix?” One of the staff she hired to help facilitate the party addressed her, knocking her straight out of her internal monologue. “Where would you like the buffet table?”

  Sarah blinked. “On the far end of the ballroom. Opposite the tree. I don’t want anyone lining up in front of it and hiding all the decorations.”

  “Of course.” The man nodded briskly and continued on toward the ballroom.

  Sarah turned on her heel and followed him, pausing at the entryway to the room. For some reason things looked fussy. A bit tortured. Possibly due to the fact that she was trying to picture Micah in the midst of it and couldn’t. He was too authentic, too raw. He would make everything around him look overdone. She imagined she looked that way standing next to him too. She patted her meticulously sprayed hair.

  She had stripped away her outer layer to be with him. But only in the bedroom. Nowhere else. Out here she was still bound to expectations. Still trapped behind that wall, in that world. She couldn’t quite bring herself to walk away.

  After all, her grandfather was all she had left. This was all she knew. If she let it all fall away completely . . . she was afraid there would be nothing left.

  “Looks great.”

  Sarah turned toward the sound of Micah’s voice and her jaw nearly hit the floor. She had seen him in a suit before. That first day he’d been in her house. Open collar, dark slacks, watched him roll his sleeves up and reveal the ink on his forearms. But she had never seen him like this.

  He was wearing a black tie, black jacket, all perfectly tailored to his physique. His tattoos were covered, his hair combed back off his forehead. He looked . . . He looked like he fit in. And it made her mad at him, for just a moment. Because she didn’t fit into his world, and could never hope to, looking like she did. Somehow he managed to fit everywhere. And she just felt . . . isolated.

  Right now, with the decorations in the ballroom looking overwrought, and her hair feeling far too styled, she felt like she didn’t belong anywhere.

  “Does it?” she asked, knowing she was telegraphing her irritation.

  “Yes. You’ve done a great job.”

  “Nice to know that my delegating skills are still intact, anyway. It isn’t like I personally did any of this.”

  “You coordinated.”

  “Sure. But how much does that mean?”

  “Well, if Christmas parties were illegal, it would be enough to get you arrested. You would be an accessory to excessive boughs of holly.”

  “Second-degree tidings of comfort and joy?” she asked, quirking a brow.

  “Almost certainly,” he said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

  “You’re going to have to stop this,” she said.

  “Stop what?” he asked, his lips curving upward into a smile.

  “Stop being charming. You aren’t supposed to be charming. You’re the asshole who laid siege to my house and won’t leave me alone.”

  He closed the space between them, wrapping his arm around her waist, resting his palm possessively on her stomach and bending to kiss the side of her neck. “You like it when I don’t leave you alone.”

  She wiggled out of his hold. “Yes. I sort of do. But, you can’t do that here.”

  “Why? You think people will recognize me?”

  She hadn’t really thought of that, but she supposed it was a possibility. “Maybe.”

  Suddenly, the amiable expression on his face melted away, revealing the granite beneath. He reached out, gripping her chin and holding her steady. “Let’s get one thing straight, Sarah. I’m not your pet. You can’t let me out when you want to play with me and then put me back in the cage when you’re done. I don’t exist to help you fulfill your bad-boy fantasy. If you want to do that with me? Fine. But don’t think for one second you’re in charge of what I do, who I talk to, or how I touch you in public. If you want me, you h
ave me on my terms.”

  He released his hold on her and stepped away, leaving her breathless. Angry. Guilty. “I’ve never treated you like a pet,” she said, her tone icy.

  “You just did. But I imagine you won’t make that mistake again.”

  She put her hand on her hip and arched her brow, his tone butting up against that stubborn little creature inside her that didn’t like being pushed against a wall. Metaphorically. Physically, she quite liked it. But in both cases, she felt compelled to fight back in some way. “I may make the same mistake again. You don’t own my actions. The same way that I don’t own yours. This is my world. You haven’t exactly brought me down to meet your biker buddies. So don’t stand there acting like I’m the only one keeping a separation. What am I? Your little rich bitch? A virgin you taught to take cock. Is that what you think of me?”

  “You want to come into my world, little girl?” His eyes darkened, and she had a feeling she had pushed him too far.

  A feeling that excited her more than it should.

  She lifted her chin, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. “You don’t think I can handle it? I can handle you.”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” he said, his tone like iron. “You might fucking regret that.”

  He wrapped his arm around her waist and shifted her toward the back of the room. The doorway to the room was just out of view.

  “Micah,” she said. “Anyone could come in.”

  “That’s right,” he said, his voice hard, rough. “And then they would know, wouldn’t they? They would know what you really are.”

  Her stomach tightened, her whole body seized with desire. For him. For this. To be pushed harder, further. For him to take her here, amidst all the Christmas decorations. In this place that represented her trying to fit back into this life.

  Doing things she knew meant she didn’t.

  She wanted to be changed. Fully and completely. Not just pretending to be the pristine creature she was expected to be. Not being anything but Sarah. Forget the Delacroix.

  You’re so close to this. To the party. To honoring your grandfather, your mother’s memory.