by Maria Luis
Black eyes blinked at his own words being thrown back at him, his nostrils flaring, and Lizzie did everything in her power not to gloat when she released him, pushed him away, and then dropped to her knees.
“Just so you know, I love to hear a man beg.”
At the first touch of her lips to his cock, his hands fell to her shoulders.
At the second touch, he wrapped one hand in her long brown hair and tugged, hard, encouraging her to take him deeper within her mouth.
At the third, when she took him in nearly to the base, his knees visibly trembled and his fist in her hair shook with want, and the words that escaped him were ripped from deep within him.
“Get on the sofa, princess. On your hands and knees, just like you’ve always wanted.”
One last pass of her tongue along the underside of his shaft, and then she was moving back, doing as he said, positioning her hands on the armrest of the couch, and her knees spread for him. There was the telltale sound of foil crinkling, and then he stepped up behind her, his left knee sinking into the couch cushions, his right foot planted on the ground.
“Your sweater,” he muttered. “Take it off.”
He didn’t need to say so twice. Off it went, mussing her hair up further, landing somewhere on the floor out of her periphery.
His big hand came around, cupping her small breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers as he aligned himself with her entrance.
She sucked in a deep breath.
He thrust inside her body.
She whimpered his name.
He groaned hers like a prayer. “You’re so fucking tight,” he said, voice low, “so tight and hot and, Jesus, you feel amazing.”
Better than all the others?
She bit back the question, shoving it down deep where it could stay a secret. “Don’t stop,” she told him instead, “don’t ever stop.”
Tell me I mean more than just one night.
Her hands curled into fists against the armrest, head dropped low. The way he moved his hips . . . It felt so good, so, so good. His corded forearm circled her stomach while the other pressed into the cushion beside her knee. She stared at that hand: long fingers that brought her so much pleasure. Cuts marred the skin, old scars that were a dusty white against his otherwise tan skin. Black ink stopped short of his wrist, and the words there sent her brain spinning: when death knocks, there are no survivors.
But then he changed his angle, hips pistoning against her backside, and all thoughts of death and life and survival scattered like confetti in the wind.
“Gage,” she cried out, “oh my God, oh right there, please.”
In that dirty voice of his, he demanded, “Are you going to come for me, Lizzie?”
Yes. The word never left her lips, but it didn’t matter. With his chest against her back, his clean scent in her nose, Lizzie came with a cry and a shudder that left her gasping for air. He followed her over the edge, arm tightening around her belly, his breath hot and heavy against her neck, heart pounding against her shoulder blades.
“I . . .”
At her failed attempt to speak, Gage shifted behind her and said, “Yes to whatever you were about to say.”
Unexpected laughter climbed her throat. “What if I wanted a new camera?”
“Done. By the way, your tattoo? Man who did it, did a great job. He deserves high praise.” His lips stamped a seal of a promise on her back. “Next request.”
Will you come back to my place tonight? Shaking her head, Lizzie steadied her breath. “Reverse cowgirl for the next round. Always wanted to try it.”
“Fuck yeah” escaped him on a masculine sigh.
Did that mean there’d be a next time?
“Gage?”
Another kiss to her back, a little farther up her shoulder than the last. “Yeah, princess?”
“I can’t help but wonder . . . while we were getting hot and heavy, did the couch remind you of Carli Simpson’s nipples?”
Silence.
More silence.
And then, “My eyes are now burning with the memory.”
“Mine too. I didn’t want to suffer alone.”
“Evil,” he rumbled, “but fuck me if you don’t taste just like heaven.”
Chapter Twenty-One
In New Orleans, Bourbon Street was king.
Well, for tourists anyway.
It was only four in the afternoon, mid-week no less, and the street was packed as Lizzie wound her way through the throngs of people. Party-goers danced on the balconies, hurling down multi-colored beads as they fisted beer bottles. The French Quarter’s lone hot dog stand had set up shop directly outside of Bourbon’s most popular karaoke bar. Heavy rap floated out of the clubs, swallowing the sounds of the steamboats sailing down the mighty Mississippi River, as well as the notes of one street musician’s throaty trombone.
On any given day, Lizzie would have stayed far away from the mayhem. She liked her sanity, thank you very much, and much preferred Frenchmen Street over in the Marigny neighborhood. Specifically, she tended to stick to locations where there weren’t questionable substances pooling in miniature green ponds along the sidewalks.
But today wasn’t any given day.
Only an hour ago, she’d met with New Orleans’s most prestigious photographer under her real name for a possible collaboration project. He’d discovered her Naked You Instagram account, surfed the web for her contact information, and—like normal people who weren’t obsessed with the Holly Carter rumor—gave her a call.
In a matter of minutes, she’d gone from Lizabeth Vittoria, owner of Naked You, to Lizzie Danvers, Beauty Influencer and Creator/Founder of Naked You.
And it had felt great. Better than great.
Almost sex-with-Gage-Harvey level of great, which was pretty hard to beat because . . . well, since the night at her studio, he’d successfully managed to rock her world not once but five times.
Considering that only four days had passed since that first night in her studio, Lizzie figured that their agreement for “one night only” had been deemed null and void. There were only so many times a man’s tongue could stroke a woman’s clit before certain expectations unfolded, right?
Right.
Currently, Gage was closing in on double digits, and so Lizzie felt no hesitation at all as she stepped up to Inked on Bourbon, pushed open the glass door, and entered the tattoo parlor. A tinkling bell above her head announced her arrival, and her gaze immediately landed on the bearded version of Gage standing behind the parlor’s front desk.
Owen’s head pulled up, dark, shaggy hair falling in front of his eyes. “Lizzie,” he greeted with a casual dip of his head, “good to see you.”
Feeling a little surprised that he remembered her, she approached the bar. “Do you memorize all your client’s names?”
“Only the ones who sleep with my brother.”
Did that hyena-like laugh echoing in the parlor belong to her? Hands flexing nervously as she set them on the marble countertop, she tried to play it off. Hair toss. Wide grin. Fluttering eye lashes. “Does that happen frequently?” she asked, hating the way his dark eyes turned pitying. Crap. “On second thought, let’s pretend I didn’t ask that question.”
“But you still want to know the answer, don’t you?”
Yes. No. Scrounging around for the perfect response, she averted her gaze and sought inspiration from the artwork on the walls. “How’re you doing today, Owen?”
Real smooth, girl, real smooth.
At Owen’s huffed laugh, Lizzie wished she could slither back out the front door and pretend none of this had happened.
“I’m doing all right,” he drawled. “Thanks for pretending you care enough to ask.”
Right now.
This was the moment the floors parted and Lizzie could forget all about trying to chat up Owen Harvey for insider information on his brother.
“Can we start over?” She tapped her nails on the marble, then thought about doing
the same with her forehead. End the misery. Let the gators in the swamps feast on her humiliated remains. She stuck out her hand again. “Hi, I’m Lizzie and I like long walks on the beach, tequila sunrises, and any kind of popcorn.”
Owen didn’t quite smile, but his dark eyes glittered with humor in that familiar Harvey way she now recognized. Accepting her hand shake, he said, “Hello, I’m Owen and I prefer my whiskey straight, my tattoos black, and I’m glad you’re just as kind as my twin said you were.”
Dammit.
She’d been doing so well in not asking about Gage, and there Owen went ruining her progress. So close, she’d been so close to pretending that her eyes weren’t watching the entrance to the back of the parlor, just to see if he might pop out with an uncharacteristic ta-da!! and a set of jazz hands.
Spotting the wry grin on Owen’s face, Lizzie let out a beleaguered sigh. “You’re totally playing with me right now, aren’t you?”
“Like a fiddle.” He shot her a wink, and in that moment, he looked so much like Gage it was terrifying. Terrifying, because there weren’t too many shared characteristics that she saw between the brothers. The sharp ridge of Owen’s nose indicated a break or two in his past, his hair was messily styled as opposed to cropped closer to his skull, and there was a somberness to this twin that Gage didn’t exhibit.
Unless she and Gage were discussing the names tattooed on his chest, of course. She still felt the sting that he’d been unwilling to open up about that, especially if they were only tattoos.
“I figured,” she said a tad dramatically, her bangles clinking against the counter. “I’ve been known to exhibit gullibility on several occasions. Mostly in front of your brother.”
“I’m sure he enjoyed every moment of it.”
Stupid heart, stop flipping over like that.
“But while we’re on the topic of Gage,” Owen continued, eyes on the computer in front of him, “he’s mentioned you a few times. Didn’t mention the sex bit, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“And I walked right into your trap, huh.”
He grinned. “Hook, line, and sinker, baby.” More typing on the computer. Then, “He stepped out a few minutes ago to make a deposit at the bank over on Royal. You’re welcome to wait for him, if you want. Shouldn’t be too much longer now.”
Casually, she asked, “Between the two of us, how desperate do you think I’ll look if I stick around?”
With a husky laugh that sounded eerily like Gage’s, Owen met her gaze. “If we lie and say you’ve only been around for five minutes or so? Not desperate at all.”
Lizzie touched her finger to her forehead and then pointed at him. “I like the way you think, Mr. Harvey, I like the way you think.”
Stepping back from the counter, Lizzie roamed the front of the tattoo parlor. She paused in front of the picture frames along a side wall, intrigued by the various designs presented within the frames. The tattoos themselves were a wide array—twisted skulls, calligraphy, portraits of celebrities.
“How did you get into tattooing?” she asked as she peered closely at a particularly interesting set of skyscrapers inked onto a man’s calves. “I’ve always wondered if people just sort of fall into the business.”
There was a momentary pause before the gritty response: “Jail.”
Her heart landed south of her feet. Crap, crap, crap. She whirled around to see Gage’s brother standing tall and stiff behind the desk. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “I didn’t mean to pry . . .”
He gave a quick shake of his head, messy, dark hair slipping in front of his eyes again. He swiped it back with one big hand. “No harm, no foul,” he said, voice low. “I’m fully aware that not everyone has the same sort of background as me. Gage doesn’t.”
Having a cop as a brother, and a police lieutenant for a stepfather, meant that Lizzie fully understood that not everything was always black and white. No story was as simple as right or wrong. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Gage doesn’t really . . . I mean, he doesn’t talk much about his past, honestly. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have asked such an insensitive question.”
Owen surprised her by offering the barest hint of a smile. It was more sardonic than good-humored, and guilt pooled in her belly like spoiled milk. “It’s human nature to want to ask questions, baby. You’re good.”
She felt her own lips turn up at his use of every New Orleanian’s nickname for someone else. Baby. It was an endearment she’d heard frequently growing up, slipping off the tongue of the mailman to the woman bagging her groceries at Winn Dixie to her elementary school teachers. She knew Owen didn’t mean it sexually, but it was nonetheless interesting to see the innate differences between the two brothers.
In Owen’s voice, she didn’t hear a hint of that West Louisiana upbringing. Hell, there wasn’t much of that Southern, All-American boy charm that Gage shelled out in spades, either. Gage was dark and sometimes, when he let his guard down, he looked haunted, as though always on the run to something. Or from something.
But Owen . . . Lizzie studied him quietly. Owen Harvey looked restrained, like a wolf tied up at a post, eager to break free but determined to show domestication by sitting and waiting his turn for a run in the wild.
She cleared her throat, turning back to the images on the wall. The photography itself wasn’t the best; the lighting was all wrong, and the exposure wasn’t handled well. “Well, it seems like you’ve come a long way from all that,” she said. “I don’t mean to overstep my boundaries, but if you ever wanted someone to take some really awesome photos of the tats y’all do here, I’d be happy to help out. It’s sort of a . . . thing that I do.”
A career. It was a career for her—she had to stop acting as though it was some side hobby to be brushed under the rug. A mentality she’d fostered over the years, thanks to trying to keep it all quiet.
She tried again. “What I meant to say is, I don’t know if Gage told you, but I operate a photography company. We’re largely social-media based, but I do most of my work out of N’Orleans.”
“Do you?” The curiosity in his voice had her turning around to face him. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Yeah,” he said gruffly, dark eyes moving to the wall behind her, “the photos are shit; you can say it.” His laugh was short and low. “We can set up a time or what not. Anything’s got to be better than what I have up now.”
“They’re not awful . . .”
“Yeah, they are.” Another laugh. “Anyway, if you’re based locally, you should join EOCC—sorry, it’s Entrepreneurs of the Crescent City. I got roped into it a few years back, and hell if I know why I still go”—the way his dark eyes darted to the front windows hinted that yeah, maybe he knew exactly why he still went—“but without fail, the first Tuesday of every month, my ass is there and eating some of the shittiest food you’ll ever taste.”
Lizzie tucked a hand against her mouth to stifle a laugh. “Just so you know, you’re really selling it, Owen.”
His mouth tugged upward. “Trust me, you don’t want to hear me when I’m really trying to push my case.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Pathetic.”
“I’m sure you’re fine.” Why did she get the feeling that he was talking about a woman? Wanting to push, but not wanting to press her luck, Lizzie gave him a noncommittal wave of her hand, brushing aside his worries. “I’m always up for crappy food, especially in the mix of other businesses. It’s a bonding experience.”
The more she thought about this EOCC thing, the more excited she grew. It was the perfect step to gather her brand and own it, just as Gage had told her to do. The calendar spread was one thing—and she appreciated Gage trying to help her take the reins—but joining a group like EOCC?
She almost wanted to throw an arm around Owen for a hug.
Followed by a quick two-step around Inked.
For years, she’d spent her life online. Dating. Working. Interacting with other people.
But finally she was
shedding that lifestyle, and it felt damn good to know that she could be just as successful in her own city as she could as a nameless identity over the internet.
“I’m looking forward to—”
The rest of her sentence was cut off by the front door flinging open and Gage storming through like a gust of dark storm clouds. “I swear to God,” he ground out, his eyes on his twin, “my ass was pinched at least three times on the way back here.”
“The little old ladies again?” Owen said.
Gage shuddered. “You’d think that they’d be the respectable ones coming into town, but no. There they are pushin’ the damn walker along the sidewalk, and I become a casualty of walking down the damn street.”
Lizzie couldn’t hold in her laugh. It slipped out like a firecracker bursting, loud and heavy and not the least bit delicate.
Gage whipped around at the sound, and she didn’t miss the way his lips lifted in a half-smile. “Find that funny, do you now?”
“Hilarious,” she told him. “What can I say? Those little old ladies have good taste.”
“You’re damn right they do.”
“Lizzie,” Owen groaned, “don’t boost the guy’s ego anymore. It’s big enough.” He pointed a finger at his brother. “Don’t say it.”
Throwing a wink in her direction, Gage put his hands up, all innocent-like. “Say what? I wouldn’t dare dream of disputin’ that—it is big.”
Lizzie could testify to that statement. Gage Harvey certainly wasn’t lacking in the dick department; the man was perfectly proportioned all the way around. Even so, she couldn’t help but enjoy the brothers’ back and forth.
For some reason, she’d gotten the sense that perhaps they weren’t that close, and it was nice to know that wasn’t the case. For however much hell she gave Danny, she couldn’t imagine her life without him. He’d been an ally on her side since they’d been kids, and she figured Owen and Gage, being twins, were even closer.
Probably came with the territory of sharing the same womb for nine months.
“Have you been waitin’ long?” Gage asked her, driving her pulse faster with each step he took in her direction.