by Lili Valente
No matter how often his partner insisted his decision to transfer Delilah to the new Miami location along with them was purely good business, Blake suspected Rafe had a thing for Dee and would cut off a finger or two to get into her holy vajayjay. Too bad Delilah couldn’t see through Rafe’s macho bullshit to the solid man inside. She actually seemed to have a thing for Blake and had asked him for drinks on more than one occasion, but he’d always declined.
Blake didn’t mix business with pleasure. And even if he did, he didn’t feel anything but friendship for the magenta-haired manager. He’d never felt anything but friendship, or lust, for any woman but one, and it was past time he did whatever it took to get her out of his system. He was twenty-six years old, for God’s sake. It was time to get the hell over his high school love and that wasn’t going to happen while they shared the same ink. He’d tried everything he could think of to stop thinking about Erin and their matching tattoos—hell, he’d even gone to see a therapist a few times—but nothing helped.
Something had to be done. Now. He was on the fast track to having everything he’d ever wanted and he wasn’t going to waste another eight years of his life fixated on the one who got away.
“Speaking of the power of the pussy, I think it’s time for me to head back to the hotel,” Rafe said. “See if I can snag a starlet or two at the bar.”
The two men got out of the car, slamming the doors behind them.
Rafe glanced up at him in the dim light of the parking lot’s street lamp. “You sure you won’t come back with me?”
Blake shook his head. “Nope. See you in a few days.”
“Or a few minutes, if she turns you down.” Rafe paused at the door to his BMW roadster. “You know what, I think I’ll come in. See what she—”
“No. I’m doing this alone,” Blake insisted. “I don’t want to be recognized.”
Rafe laughed. “Are you kidding me? You’re Giant Blake Roberts. People are going to recognize you. With or without me.”
“You think people at a bar like this watch Brava?” Blake asked, happier than ever that their reality show hadn’t been on one of the major networks. A certain degree of celebrity he could contend with, but being recognized everywhere he went would have driven him insane. “Besides, I’m undercover.” He pulled his hat lower on his face and tugged down the arms of his black sweater, concealing his full-sleeve tattoos.
Without them, he was a fairly average-looking guy with short brown hair, dark brown eyes, and unremarkable features. Not ugly by any means, but his wasn’t the face that had kept female viewers glued to the screen for three seasons of Vegas Ink. Rafe was the pretty boy. If anyone were going to be recognized, it would be him. Blake doubted even Erin would be able to guess his own identity, at least not right away. He’d shot up three more inches and gained about eighty pounds of pure muscle since the last time she’d seen him.
Unless, of course, she watched the show.
Blake hadn’t allowed himself to think much about that, to imagine she might be sufficiently interested to follow his life. Thinking like that was a great way to let this situation get out of hand. He wasn’t here to reconnect with her; he was here to right a wrong and move on with his life. End of story.
“I’ll have my cell if you need me,” Blake said, a grim smile on his face as he shoved his wallet in his pocket.
“I’ll be in Miami by tomorrow afternoon. I won’t need anything.” Rafe slid into his roadster and slammed the door. But it was only a second before he rolled down the window. “Call me if you come to your senses and want to be on the flight tomorrow morning, man. Okay?”
Blake nodded, but it was too late to come to his senses. He was committed to this plan and to a life without memories of Erin haunting him and the sooner he got what he’d come for and put this behind him, the better.
CHAPTER TWO
Blake
Blake waited until Rafe’s car was out of sight before walking around to the front entrance to The Elbow Room. There was no longer a doorman on duty at this hour and the crowd inside had thinned considerably since ten o’clock.
As Blake strode across the worn plank floors, the bartender, with her long black hair pulled back in a braid, announced last call. But the clutch of men surrounding the bar looked far from ready to call it a night.
Why would they¸ when Erin was holding court on top of the bar and growing increasingly daring with her dancing?
Her shirt was hiked up high enough to reveal the bottom of her bra and her thumbs tugged her skirt lower as her hips swiveled, revealing her hip bones and the pale skin below. State regulations expressly forbid the bartenders from stripping, but Blake expected clothes to start coming off any second. An expectation obviously shared by the men surrounding her like a pack of dogs.
His hands tightened into fists, his body itching to defend Erin the way he had when they were kids. Back then, she’d been an innocent fourteen-year-old kid attracting the wrong kind of attention from the senior boys at school. They’d known she was a foster kid and had no one to look out for her. She’d been cornered behind the gym within three days of transferring to Carson City High. By the time Blake came around the corner of the building, her three attackers had stripped her down to her bra and panties and were pinning her to the gum-pocked concrete.
Blake had earned himself two weeks of detention for beating the shit out of the football players who had decided it would be fun to pass around the new girl, but it had been worth it. No one had messed with his foster sister again. He wouldn’t even allow himself to touch her until she turned sixteen, though she’d made her interest clear long before then.
“Kiss me, Blake,” she whispered, tilting her head back to look up at him as they watched the sun sink behind the horizon outside of Carson City. “I want you to be my first kiss.”
“Not tonight,” he said, even though he was already so hard his jeans felt like they were cutting him in half. But they’d been passing a forty of Budweiser back and forth for the better part of an hour and Erin’s eyes were glassy. He didn’t want their first kiss to be like this—something she might not even fully remember.
Besides, she was only fifteen and so innocent, no matter how tough she tried to play it. Until she’d been placed with Phil, she’d had it relatively easy for a foster kid. She still remembered what it felt like to be loved, to be important to someone who cared about her with no strings attached.
But those memories were fading fast. He could see it in the way her shoulders curved as she slunk past the lockers of the boys who had nearly raped her. He saw it in the tears she refused to let fall after Phil slapped her for talking back one time too many.
She needed Blake to be her no strings attached person more than she needed a boyfriend. He knew that.
He also knew that once he kissed Erin it would be hard as hell to keep from doing more. He hadn’t been innocent for a long time and he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to control himself with this girl who’d won his heart without even trying. He wanted to touch every inch of her soft skin. He wanted to know what sounds she made when she came.
He wanted to get his mouth between her legs and show her all the things he’d learned how to do during months of making out behind the bleachers with the biology substitute last year.
“Then when?” she asked, leaning into him, not realizing the sweet torture she was inflicting as her breast brushed his arm. “I want to kiss you so much. I just…love you, Blake. You’re the best person I ever met.”
His heart turned over in his chest. He loved her, too, and he was grateful she’d come into his life and reminded him how good it can feel to love someone before it was too late. But he couldn’t let friendship go any further, not yet.
Not until he proved to himself that he was as good a man as Erin thought he was.
And so he’d held her at a distance for months that felt like eons of erotic torture. Blake had been two years older and hadn’t wanted to take advantage, no matter how many ni
ghts he had lain awake with a raging hard-on, fantasizing about the girl sleeping in the next room.
Apparently Erin still had the power to inspire a similar reaction in him and any other member of the penis-possessing segment of the population. Blake was going to have to watch his step. Pulling Erin away from her pack of horny and delusional admirers was likely to make tempers flare and he couldn’t afford to attract that kind of attention. He needed to get Erin out of here without anyone taking notice.
That meant he’d have to stay in the shadows and watch, bide his time until she was finished with her performance, no matter how torturous a part of him found it to see Erin bumping and grinding for a bunch of horny drunks.
Or how arousing the other part of him found it.
Damn, but she was even sexier than he remembered. The way she tossed her long hair over her shoulder, flashing those big eyes in a way that promised untold pleasure to every man in the room—it made his entire body ache.
It was going to be hellish to be trapped in a cabin with her for days without being able to touch her, kiss her, be buried deep inside the only woman who had ever—
Who ruined your life. Focus, Roberts!
His inner voice was right. He had to focus because there was no turning back now. Soon he would be leaving Pasadena with Erin by his side, either as his passenger or his captive.
At least that choice would be hers to make.
CHAPTER THREE
Erin
Five more bucks from her regular Carl, three from a thirty-something Latino guy, and two from his girlfriend. Combined with the twenty she’d lifted from the frat boy too drunk to see what he was fishing from his wallet, the money she’d made in the past ten minutes brought Erin up to an even four hundred for the night. It made it worth the anxiety she felt every time she took her turn on top of the bar.
And it was more than enough to pay for an entire hour of very expensive attorney time…if she ever got the guts to hire the woman she’d met with last week.
Erin knew Scott expected her to sign the divorce decree as it stood. He would bust a blood vessel if he learned she was considering hiring representation to fight him in court. Her soon-to-be ex-husband was that certain of his ability to scare her absolutely shitless.
Of course, he had every reason to be sure of himself. She had rarely dared to stand up to him during their three-year relationship. Back in the beginning, she’d thought he was the man of her dreams. But back then, she’d been a naive single girl in the big city and there hadn’t been so very much at stake.
But she couldn’t think about any of that now. She had to concentrate on raking it in, doing whatever it took to part the men surrounding her from the last of their cash before her shift ended.
And if that included getting a little creative, so be it. She didn’t particularly enjoy having a stranger suck a body shot out of her belly button, but what she enjoyed didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered anymore except reclaiming her life from the man who held it hostage.
“Time for a shot!” Erin forced a naughty smile onto her face as she pulled her shirt even higher, baring more of the bottom of her bra.
The little white schoolgirl top tied at the waist, combined with the shortest kilt she could find, was always a recipe for big tips. Cliché as it might be, men still went crazy for a schoolgirl uniform, especially if you were willing to lie down and let one of them suck alcohol off your stomach while wearing it.
“Pick me, Angel!” someone drunkenly called from the opposite end of the bar as she poured the cinnamon liqueur into the well of her navel.
“Not tonight, gentlemen,” she said, winking at the Latino guy’s girlfriend. “I’m in the mood for a softer touch.”
A new song came over the sound system and Erin clapped along as the blushing girl with jet black hair and warm brown eyes sidled up to the bar. The roar of the men cheering as the petite woman held back her dark curls and suckled the Goldschlager from Erin’s stomach was too loud for her to tell for certain, but the song sounded like vintage Rolling Stones. One of her favorite bands of all time.
She might actually be enjoying herself right now if she were just getting a little wild on a Friday night, instead of playing the tart for a crowd. It had been so long since she’d been able to just go dancing, to hit a club or a bar for fun with some girlfriends. Not that dancing at The Elbow Room was torture. She’d never been shy about her body, and her time as a lingerie model for Damned Naughty Lingerie had made her even less so.
Still, she wished she didn’t have to be on display every night. At least not right now, when she still felt so vulnerable.
Screw it. Suck it up and give the customers what they want.
As soon as the girl’s lips left her stomach, Erin hopped back to her feet and finished out the song with her usual flair. She swiveled her hips and bent over far enough to give the patrons a glimpse of her white cotton panties with the lace trim, fueling enough naughty into her moves to keep the men panting, but keeping it clean enough that the crowd didn’t get out of hand.
It was an art—walking that fine line—but one she’d perfected in the past month.
She worked her way up and down the length of the bar one last time, collecting another twenty bucks before the closing bell sounded. Moments later, “Happy Trails to You,” the bar’s signature closing song, began to play and Erin stopped dancing, drawing sounds of protest from several of the drunker patrons.
“See you tomorrow, gentlemen,” she said with a grin and a flutter of her fingers.
Always leave them wanting more.
“Hey, Angel, can you clean up the well?” Cassandra shouted from where she was loading the last batch of glasses into the dishwasher behind the bar. “I’ve got everything else ready to close.”
“Sure thing,” Erin said, already feeling the familiar exhaustion that washed over her at the end of the night, once the adrenaline rush was over.
She pulled her shirt down and was preparing to hop down from her perch when a large hand closed gently around her ankle. Her first instinct when customers tried to take looking at the goods to the next level was usually a slap on the wrist and then a kick somewhere more painful if they didn’t wise up fast.
But for some reason, the feel of this hand was different, intriguing.
Electric…
Then she heard the voice that went with the hand and dry panties were a thing of the past. “Nice tattoo. What I can see of it.”
Damn. A voice like that, so deep it practically had its own reverb, was almost enough to make her forget she’d sworn off men for the next ten years. Or twenty, depending on the day and how much time she’d had to think about Scott.
“Thanks. It made me famous,” she said, smiling down into the shadowed face of one of the biggest men she’d ever seen in real life.
He was six and a half feet tall, at least, and the way his arms and chest stretched out his sweater left no doubt he was strong enough to snap her in half without breaking a sweat. The very thought of something like that should have been enough to cool her rapidly heating blood, but it wasn’t. She was a hopeless case when it came to big, strong, domineering men.
Even after three years with a Dominant man who had made her life a living hell and taken away everything that meant something to her, a part of Erin still fantasized about finding someone man enough to take control of her the way a real Dominant would. The way she’d seen some of the men at the clubs treat their subs. With respect and even love. Like their submissives were precious things to be treasured, protected, and valued, not lower life forms as interchangeable as sheets of Kleenex.
“I think you’ve got a few other things going for you other than a tattoo,” the man said, his thumb caressing the inside of her ankle, sending a sizzle of awareness racing up her leg.
God, she’d never been so glad she’d chosen heels instead of her fuck-me boots.
Though those could have been good, too. She could already see herself pulling this
man into her tiny studio in South Pasadena and taking off everything but her boots. Then she’d turn around, lean over the bed, and show him how wet she was, how ready to take whatever he was packing in those black jeans. He wouldn’t say a word, or maybe he’d just tell her to spread her legs a little wider. Then he’d be behind her, large hands gripping her hips, thick cock spearing inside where she was—
“You want to go somewhere?” the man asked. “Talk?”
“We’ve got to close up,” Erin said, the tremor in her voice betraying where her thoughts had been headed. “But I know a diner not too far from here. We could get a coffee.”
“I’d love a coffee. My car is in the back lot,” her mystery man said, reaching a hand up to help her off the bar. “I could give you a ride.”
Oh, dear, she just bet he could give her a ride.
She hadn’t even seen his face, but he practically radiated sex. Controlling, demanding, completely-dominating-the-woman-he-was-fucking sex. The kind she’d been craving for nearly two years during her Scott-imposed celibacy. Two years without even the comfort of another warm, human body, let alone the fucking she craved.
A good fucking—not lovemaking, not even gentle sex—that’s what she wanted. What she needed. Erin was a carnal person, always had been. She needed it rough, hot, and primal, and it was past time for her to scratch that itch.
Tomorrow she would be back here, working another double shift. But tonight was for her. Or even better yet, for him. There was nothing she enjoyed as much as bringing a big man like this to his knees with pure, unbridled lust.
Erin smiled, wishing she had the guts to skip coffee and head straight back to her apartment with a total stranger, but even two years of celibacy hadn’t made her that daring.
Of course, she could at least clue this guy in on what she was hoping they would get around to doing after coffee…
Ignoring the hand he held out, she leapt straight into the big guy’s arms, looping her hands around his neck and her long legs around his thick waist, bringing her panties into intimate contact with his even thicker cock.