Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire

by Aleatha Romig

  Laz ignored Nathan’s hand and dropped his smile. “No. Why is he always the ladies’ first pick?

  “Where is he? Is he in New York?”

  “You’re wounding my pride, babe.” He spread out his arms. “What do you say? A date with Laz Bromwell? Since you’re married, I’ll do you both.” He shrugged. “I’m magnanimous like that.”

  The body pressed against her back turned to stone, pushing her to the side and out of view if the door opened.

  She patted Nathan’s hand where it clenched on her arm. “I think we’ll pass on the date.”

  Laz hung his head, shuffled to the door and poked his head into the dining room. “Shut down, folks. This bet is going to hurt like a motherfucker.”

  They responded in a roar of boos that rallied into “Pick me. Pick me.”

  Nathan grabbed her hand and moved them deeper into the kitchen, weaving around cook stations, his eyes probing the hallways and doors.

  Laz ran behind and skidded into her path, stopping her. “Just my luck I find the most beautiful woman on the fucking planet, and she’s taken.” He brushed a strand of hair from her face.

  The bold gesture made a slow curl through her stomach. She was such a glutton for tender touches. “What did the bet cost you?”

  His face flushed. “A tattoo.”

  A thrill kicked through her. “Any tattoo?”

  Nathan’s hand pulled her elbow. “We need to go. Now.”

  Laz laughed, and it had a nervous hitch to it. “The tat has to be a ruler.”

  “Like a king?”

  “Like a standard unit of measurement.”

  Weird. “Where?”

  He looked pointedly at his groin and back to her. “Know a good tattoo artist?”

  Nathan squeezed her hand. “Absolutely not.” He stopped a passing server. “Which door leads to the access road out back?”

  Charlee snorted. “A ruler on your dick?”

  Laz lifted his shoulders. “Marked off in inches. Or feet.” He grinned. “My friends are sick, I know. Change your mind about that date?”

  She needed money, but more than that, she needed to see Jay. “I’d consider doing the tattoo for the right price.”

  “Maylynn.” Nathan’s warning tone.

  “No shit? You do tattoos?” He pushed his hands through his hair and the spikes bounced back. “Five grand.”

  A Hell Yes tried to jump out of her gaping mouth. She caught it with a snap of her jaw. Think first. Then leap.

  He misread her expression. “Fine. Ten grand. I’d pay that just to stare at you for an hour with my cock in your hand.” He flashed a spread of white teeth. “I’ll double it to twenty grand if you’ll do it with your shirt off.”

  Nathan put his mouth next to her ear. “I don’t like this. They’re fucking media darlings.”

  “Twenty grand. Shirt on. In a private, secure area. No media.”

  He threw his fist up. “Done. How do I reach you?”

  She waved over a hovering waitress and borrowed a pen and a napkin. “Here’s my address.” Nathan’s office address.

  He stuffed it in his jean pocket and blew her a kiss as he walked backward toward the doors to the dining room.

  She snapped herself out of the surrealism of meeting Laz Bromwell and realized she’d never hear from him again. He didn’t have to pay for a tattoo. He’d have busty artists lining up to do it for free. And stroke him off while they did it. “Laz?”

  He put his hand on the door and raised his brows. “A parting kiss?”

  Since she hadn’t been able to find on photo of Jay without his shirt, she had to ask. “What did Jay end up doing with his tattoo? The one on his back?”

  A strange expression fell over his face, and he stared at her as if he were staring through her.

  Nathan blew out a loud exhale. “Fuck.”

  Fists banged on one of the doors behind them. A clamor of voices shouted on the other side.

  Nathan jerked his head toward Laz, his face red. “Paparazzi?”

  Laz lifted a shoulder. “Probably.”

  Shit. If their only way out was through a barrage of snapping pictures, Roy’s facial recognition software would find her.

  A kitchen rag landed on her chest, and she caught it. Nathan grabbed another one and pushed her toward the banging door. “Keep your face covered with that. Head down and away from the cameras.”

  She unfolded it and draped it over her nose and mouth as they swerved around a steel counter.

  “Wait.” Laz’s voice chased them. “Maylynn, is it? That’s your name?”

  “Keep going.” Nathan shifted them around a tiered rack of pastries.

  The back of her shirt caught and pulled taut, halting her forward motion. She looked over her shoulder, around the edge of the towel, and met Laz’s green-eyed glare.

  “There’s only one person who knows about that tattoo besides Jay and myself, and her name was Charlee. Her eyes were so blue, you’d never forget them. I know this because we have three hit songs written about those damned eyes.”

  Hers widened.

  “So tell me, Maylynn, what the fuck is your real name?” His jaw was set, his tone more forceful than she thought him capable.

  Nathan grabbed his wrist and squeezed. The fingers in her shirt flexed, released.

  “His tattoo artist must have talked.” Her voice was thready, dammit.

  Laz tsked. “I’m not an idiot. You disappeared three years ago. Now you’re—” He flicked a hand over her body “—undead and running from the press faster than we do.” He leaned against a shelf of can goods and shoved his hands in his jean pockets. “Our limo is waiting at the side entrance. There won’t be paparazzi there.”

  “Stay back, stay back.” Voices shouted in the dining room, just outside the kitchen doors.

  The air in her lungs cut off. Were the fans pushing in?

  “That’s our guards.” Laz grinned. “Sounds like the party wants to move to the kitchen.”

  Nathan shuffled backward, taking her with him. “Get us out of here.”

  “Right this way.” Laz jogged toward a pantry.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‡

  Charlee couldn’t tamp down her pulse as she followed Laz through the small room crowded with food supplies and into a hallway on the other side. The silent sentry at her back was in as much danger as she was if their faces were posted on the Internet. With all those camera phones, it was probably too damned late.

  A sea of fear sloshed in her stomach and robbed the strength from her legs. She stumbled, caught the edge of a shelf.

  Laz pushed the bar on an exterior door and stopped at the black limo waiting in a narrow alley just outside.

  The cool night air stirred with the rustling of litter. Cars rumbled somewhere around the corner, and there was not one flashbulb in sight. She strained her neck left to right and discovered why.

  Tall privacy gates blocked both ends of the alley, each guarded by a man in head-to-toe black. She released her breath in a puff of steam. How many bodyguards did they have?

  A woman with a stiff posture and hair combed into a severe bun opened the passenger door for them. “Good evening, Mr. Bromwell.”

  “We’re in a hurry, Tony. To the hotel, please. You’ll have to come back for the guys and the rest of the security team.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nathan placed his hand over Charlee’s Bodyguard 380. The pistol was seated inside her waistband at the small of her back. She crawled inside the limo, the leather seat aiding her slide to the far side.

  Nodding at Tony, Nathan followed her in with Laz at his heels. He settled beside her and pressed his phone to his ear. “Need a full run on the band The Burn…Yes…The musicians, promoters, managers, producers, security detail, everyone…Yes.” His arm tightened. “I’ve got her. And Crane? We might’ve been exposed. Reassign someone to 24/7 facial searching.”

  They didn’t have the recognition software Roy’s company was de
veloping, so their effort was manual and inefficient, but they looked anyway. If they found her photo on the Internet, they’d rip it down with the hope they caught it before Roy did. Her gut clenched. What a royal fucking conundrum she’d steered them in.

  Across the aisle, Laz eyed him, his lips flattened in a harsh line. He glanced at her, and an uncomfortable tension vibrated through the cabin.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed.

  “Yes…Keep me posted.” Nathan pocketed the phone and returned Laz’s glare. “Where are we going?”

  “The Plaza Hotel.”

  Nathan swung his head, looking out the windows. “Just drop us ten or twenty blocks up the road. We’ll take the subway back.”

  The hotel would be a cluster of fan girls. Didn’t stop the too-curious-to-be-rational part of her from speaking up. “Is Jay there?”

  “Depends.” Laz leaned into his arms bent on his spread knees.

  “On?”

  A battle of who-has-the-fiercest-glare launched between the men. She snapped her fingers in front of Laz. “On?”

  He didn’t unlock the stare down. “On if this guy is FBI or DEA or any of the other acronyms that would cause a rash in my ass.”

  Nathan blew out his cheeks and tapped his fingers on his knees.

  “Also depends on how much more damage you plan on doing to my best friend.”

  “Let us out.” Nathan thumped a fist on the divider behind the driver.

  “I want to know what the fuck is going on.” Laz scowled at her. “You’re dead. Then you’re not dead. Do you have any idea what you did to him?”

  Was she responsible for Jay’s damage? By leaving an unfinished tattoo on him? Had she made his pain worse by giving him a design he didn’t want? She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, but a wanting need to fix it pulled at her heart.

  She clasped Nathan’s chin and made him look at her. “He just saved our asses from a media nightmare. A nightmare I led us into.”

  His jaw hardened beneath her fingers.

  “That’s right. I picked the restaurant knowing I might run into them. I will see this through.”

  “No. No fucking way.” He shoved her hand away, twisting in the seat and eyes flicking over the surrounding buildings and streets.

  She sucked in a breath. “You’re smothering me, Nathan. I didn’t ask you to be here. In fact, I’ve begged you to back off.”

  His gaze swung to hers, and they shared a moment of unspoken communication. She knew he walked a razor’s edge between controlling her and protecting her. His obligation revolved around repaying his self-imposed debt to his brother, and in the process, he imprisoned himself as much as her.

  Three years earlier, she’d put up with a paranoid life on the run. What did that get her? A dead boyfriend and two months in Roy’s penthouse. No more overbearing men.

  She dug deep to not buckle under Nathan’s confining eyes and filled hers with a silent command. Stop controlling.

  He closed the pregnant gap between them and patted her cheek. “Fine, but next time you’ll warn me before you parade us into the public eye.”

  She nodded and turned to Laz, swaying toward him as if her nearness would convey the prudence of her words. “I think you’ve already worked out that I met Jay in St. Louis three years ago when I gave him his first tattoo.”

  Laz leaned back and let out a long resolved breath. Then he jerked his chin at Nathan. “And him?”

  “Nathan owns a private investigation firm, but he spends most of his time keeping us under the radar.”

  The flicker of passing lights illuminated Laz’s sudden stiffness. “Private Investigation? Are you the asshole who—”

  “Yes.” Nathan scooted closer, crowding her.

  She tensed against him, preparing herself. “What is he talking about?”

  An explosion of fists pummeled the driver’s seatback. Then Laz turned and pointed one of those fists at Nathan. “That bastard told Jay you were dead. Jay went to St. Louis more hopeful than he’d been in his life, only to find out you were fucking murdered.”

  “Be careful, Mr. Bromwell.” Nathan’s voice was low, deadly. “The man who was murdered meant the world to us.”

  His face paled. “The boyfriend?”

  “And Nathan’s brother.” She squeezed Nathan’s hand as her words, and the guilt that came with them, pulsed in her chest.

  “Shit.” Laz pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then lowered them and looked at her. “They didn’t catch him, did they? The murderer? That’s who you’re hiding from?”

  Her jaw was clenched so tightly, she had to focus to unlock it. “It’s more complicated than that, but yeah.” She shifted to face Nathan. “When did you talk to Jay?”

  Nathan’s gaze was elsewhere, searching the passing streets. “I was at the tower when I got the call.”

  So he was deep undercover within Roy’s ranks. “And you took the call?”

  “Crane said Jay Mayard knew your name. I was afraid…” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, shifted his attention to her. “When one of our detectives discovered there was never a body for Sarah Teves, he dug in and connected your real name with Roy. He was hushed. At least, that’s what Roy thinks. The detective is in the witness protection program now.”

  Her nod was taut with guilt. Roy would’ve put a hit on anyone looking for her.

  Laz’s chest rose and fell, watching their exchange.

  Regret over Jay’s involvement simmered through her. “Laz, if Jay was asking questions and using my real name, he would’ve become a target. Nathan shut that down the best way possible and saved his life.”

  The air choked with his harsh laughter. “I assure you, you did not save him. He’s been in a three-year walking coma.”

  “Why? He didn’t know me.” Her voice sounded as uneasy as the conversation.

  “I don’t know.” Laz bent toward her. “Whatever you gave him made him look at things differently, made him want to get better. He wanted to explore it…the tattoo, you, I don’t know. But your death meant he would be forever incomplete…unfinished.”

  She cleared her throat. “What’s his story? How did he get the scars?”

  His eyebrows slammed together. “Scars?”

  Just cover it. One big sheet of black.

  Oh God. Jay had really wanted to keep his back covered, even from his friends. “Yeah.”

  A wretched kind of silence fell between them. She tried to ride it out, but after an idle debate with her heart-shaped conscience, she couldn’t convince herself to walk away. “I want to talk to him.”

  Nathan sighed, and Laz swung out an arm and pounded on the divider. “Come on, Tony. Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

  The smile he directed at her danced at the corners of his mouth, betraying his nervousness. “When we get there, try to see the man beneath the surface. Whatever you saw in him three years ago, look for that, okay?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You did. The proof is permanently inked on his back, and he cherishes it more than life itself.”

  Chapter Twenty

  ‡

  The limo stopped in a private underground garage a few feet from the hotel’s service elevator. The ride to the top floor pulsated with impatience. Laz tapped the toe of his boot against the steel walls, sputtering Charlee’s heart more than it already was. Nathan clenched his fingers along with the Musak jingle trumpeting from a hidden speaker.

  What would she say to Jay? The notion that he cherished his tattoo sung through her veins. Maybe he’d ask her to finish it.

  The bell dinged, and they jerked in unison. The doors opened to an austere landing lined with more doors. She welcomed the stark privacy, but it surprised her. “Do you always take the sneaky way?”

  Laz swiped his card key on a solid-looking door. “Jay prefers to be removed from the view and presence of strangers, and he hires the best security professionals in the business to ensure he gets that.”

  “He chose t
he wrong damned lifestyle then.” Nathan held the door for her with a smirk on his face.

  They walked through another service door, and…oh, wow. The entry engulfed them in another world. Marble pillars, gold-leafed mirrors and red velvet settees adorned the space. A heady reminder of how famous Jay was. Would he give a shit about a nobody like her? What if she’d misinterpreted his songs and she’d built up some ridiculous fantasy about him in her head? Her heart pounded and her hands trembled.

  Laz led them down a hall. “Jay didn’t choose this life. It chose him. And to answer your question, Charlee…” He looked at her over his shoulder. “When our security personnel suggest we use the service elevator, we use the damned service elevator.”

  Good to know. The lackluster elevator seemed like a small concession as she passed a junior suite, a grand elevator foyer, another long foyer, a second bedroom. The scale and quantity of the rooms floored her. “This is all part of your suite?”

  An oval foyer opened to a powder room, a study, and a gym. He stopped them in the center. “For thirty thousand dollars a night, we should have our own fucking pool.” He smiled with a tinge of red in his cheeks. “And you’ve only seen the entrance.”

  She’d lived with one of the richest men in the world and never experienced extravagance on this level. None of it was visible from her cell. She’d been nothing more than a pet. No, not even that. Rich people pampered their pets. She stared at her Doc Martens in a harrowing moment of clarity, and fuck her, but it stung.

  Nathan scanned something on his phone and returned it to his pocket. “Charlee?” He narrowed his eyes.

  Damn him and his awareness. “Just having a little awed moment. Sheltered girl, you know?” She pointed at herself.

  His eyes narrowed. Yeah, sheltered was a nice way to put it.

  Laz moved to the double doors. “We took the security team out with us tonight, which means Jay’s been in there without a chaperone for a few hours. Mind waiting here for a minute?”

  What, was he twelve? She rubbed a sweaty palm on her jeans. “We’ll wait.”

  When the doors snicked behind him, she leaned against the wall and tried to still her racing heart.