Romancing Austin

by Riley Bancroft, Evelyn Berry, Cara Carnes, Jax Garren, Irene Preston, Rebecca Royce, Chandra Ryan

  Her wide expressive eyes landed on me and didn’t move. My dick throbbed. While Betsy walked around in fuck-me heels, Shasta wore goddess sandals. My gaze chased the wraparounds from her ankles to below her knees and I swallowed. Mile long legs meant to wrap around a man and hold him hostage flowed into lush hips snuggled into a skirt flirting with indecency. I’d offer my left nut as sacrifice to flip the front flap of the leather skirt up and lick the treasures hidden beneath.

  My current obsession shifted enough to draw my gaze upward, noting the gauzy red lace across her mid drift. The thin material stretched, hugging squeezable mounds larger than I remembered. The sexy material posing as a top ended a couple inches too soon, leaving a generous amount of cleavage meant for a man to hunker down and worship for a century. Maybe two.

  Jesus, I need to get laid.

  Eye fucking Shas proved time changed nothing. Her full pouty lips painted in red darkened the thoughts from earlier. The cinnamon gaze locked on him reflected the agony burning what bits of his soul still existed.

  “Give us a minute.”

  “Dude, seriously? Where should we go?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “Hooters!” Dodger shouted.

  “Seriously?” Betsy turned her ire on him. Her short red hair swished, her face contorted in revulsion. “Of all the places you could eat, you want Hooters?”

  “Chica, it ain’t safe to diss the wings,” he warned.

  “She’s a foodie,” Shasta replied.

  Betsy shook a finger at Dodger, then Chaz and Ace. “If I see even one grope—with hands or eyes—of boobage or ass, we’re out of there.”

  “So I can lick?” Ace taunted. “I’m a tonguing god. I can give references…or a test drive if you’d prefer.”

  The slap reverberated through the room. I winced and pointed toward the door. “Head out before I help her find an axe.”

  She whirled, her blue eyes firing daggers my direction. “Et tu?”

  “Pick your battles, pixie. Cut him some slack. The tour left us edgy and my man over there’s got a short leash as it is.” I forced my gaze on Betsy, but my words were for Shas. “We aren’t here to stir up the past. We’re here to rest and fix shit we fucked up.”

  “Fine.” She opened the backpack she’d been carrying and pulled out a small purse. Shouldering it and setting the backpack down, she tip-tapped her way toward the door, turning halfway there when she realized she didn’t have shadows. “Let’s get our grub on, pervs.”

  “You’re leaving?” Shasta’s shock echoed mine.

  Two things held true in White Bluffs. Football reigned king on Friday nights and the Pinky Sisters were a packaged set. Where one went, you found the other. Never separated, impossible to forget.

  “You’re leaving?”

  I swiped my hands through my hair and forced myself to remain still. Betsy jetted to her sidekick and tugged her into an embrace. Hushed whispers ran between them a moment before she severed the embrace and headed through the door, her fingers swiping her cheeks.

  Shasta took several steps backward when I approached. “This isn’t a good idea. I should go.”

  “Don’t run. Give me a moment, please.”

  “You had your moment on stage. I’ve given you enough, Caleb. There’s nothing left for you to take.”

  2

  Shasta

  “Give him a chance, dammit. I want my rock princess back.”

  “She’s gone, Bets. I need to move on, let the past go.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve ghosted through life since he left. Give. Him. A. Chance.” She pulled away. “Pinky Sisters don’t chicken out.”

  Ugh. She’d penned the moniker in recess during Mrs. Ward’s class. I should’ve nixed it then. Too late now. Our conversation before she turn coated her way out of the makeshift room banged around in my head, but my treacherous body honed in on the man prowling toward me as though I was filet mignon and he hadn’t eaten in a century.

  My nipples hardened, my pulse quickened and my tattered heart pounded, as though sensing the man who’d walked away with pieces of it had returned for more. I surged backward, a defense mechanism activated by too many tequila-induced nights of what-if scenarios.

  “This isn’t a good idea. I should go.”

  “Don’t run. Give me a moment, please.” Desperation crossed his face. He reached for me, but drew his hand back and looked upward. “She didn’t tell you, did she?”

  “Bets operates with her own sometimes questionable agenda.” I forced a smile and allowed my inner hussy a slow visual molestation of the man who’d starred in my every fantasy.

  The spiked hair from the stage had been washed and left to hang in wild disarray. My fingers itched to run through the thick mass, but I avoided his eyes. No way was I prepared for the assault of the gray depths I sensed watching me.

  Dragon tattoos trailed down both shoulders and melded into one another along his upper chest. One red, one blue. My mouth dried as I tracked the twin dragons tangling over his heart, their necks nuzzling one another. Tear drops tumbled from the blue one’s grey eyes. My belly fluttered as I counted the blood red droplets.

  Seven.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Why are they bloody?”

  Silence greeted my question as my visual inspection continued, halting on the last drop above his naval. He closed the distance between us, but I didn’t have it in me to retreat. The dragons undid my resolve to avoid the past. A part of me wanted to slam the vault shut on the entire evening, this conversation, and quadruple lock it. If I commissioned NASA to shoot it to Mars or somewhere far, far outside my reach, maybe my heart wouldn’t pound in my chest—willing an answer I had no business wanting, much less hearing.

  Warm fingers fanned out on my cheek. His thumb settled beneath my chin and pulled upward until my gaze collided with the warm, gray ocean tinged with blue. A thousand worlds existed within the flecks and the masochist in me needed to know how many of them still revolved around me.

  Did any?

  His full lips drew closer, but I put my hand where the two dragons melded. “Why are they bloody?”

  “I’m thinking you aren’t ready for my answer yet. Hearing it’d probably make you turn tail and run so fast it’d give me whiplash.” He licked his lips. My pulse flailed, my mouth desert dry. He held my neck as his lips fluttered across mine. Hot breath swept across my skin.

  Arousal flared, a living breathing entity with a mind of its own. A growl rose from my gut as I seized hold of his shoulders and deepened the contact. Soap and shampoo wafted in my nostrils as my open eyes locked with Caleb’s. The eroticism flaring from the open-eyed kiss singed me clear to my toes.

  Wrapping my arms around him, I melted into his embrace. Tingles burst along my neck, behind my ear, chasing the hot, impassioned glide of Caleb’s mouth along my skin. Warm hands brushed from mid-thigh, trekking upward until they burrowed beneath my skirt and cupped my ass.

  “Holy shit, babe. You came to my gig wearing the hottest skirt around commando?” He growled in my ear as he fused our bodies together. A hardness settled against my lower stomach, my knees buckled. “You wear this shit often?”

  No answer calmed the turbulent storm swelling between us. A part of me wanted the gale-force attraction, but I wasn’t ready for the grown-up version of Caleb. I’d barely handled the kiddie-pool version years ago thanks in part to my ever-constant floaties—Bets and Penny. Penny pulse checked my BFF’s natural impulsiveness, but we’d lost her cautious ways a couple months after Twisted Delirium made tracks out of White Bluffs.

  Even the most cautious had their breaking point and Penny’s had been a shit-hot Harley rumbling between her legs with a ferocity matched by the man riding it. Last I heard they’d hooked up with an MC outside of Houston and she was entrenched in the lifestyle as his old lady.

  Caleb tugged my hair until I yelped in shock. Heat slithered through me, a warm shot of tequila on a cold night. Damn the man for re
membering how hot I got when he did the tuggy thingy. Over the years I’d tried to recreate said tuggy thingy with a couple of other guys, but they lacked...

  The Bad Ass Factor Five, aka BAFF.

  Only Bets got the gist of BAFF. It was our thing and I doubted Caleb wanted to know he was the President and sole member of the Bad Ass Factor Five club as far as I was concerned. Bets had inducted quite a few over the years, but I’d shut my membership list down the second the founding entrant abandoned my ass in White Bluffs seven years earlier.

  “You aren’t listening to me, babe.”

  “I’ll listen if you answer. Why are they bloody?”

  The smirk on his face erupted into a panty-melting grin capable of getting all woman-kind horizontal in two point one seconds. “Tell you what. You come hang out with me at this thing I’ve gotta make an appearance at, and then I’ll answer your question.”

  I narrowed my gaze. The fact I sucked at negotiation was an established truth, proven repeatedly by my previous disastrous attempts—most with Caleb. An injunction on future attempts to redeem myself had been enacted within our BFF code. Buried between a ban on any future chasing of Ace with an axe and no kamikaze shots for either of us (ever!), the fact I shouldn’t go with him was undeniable.

  But the shots of arousal trickling within my veins made me chuck my good girl out the window. Tonight I’d drag out the hussy, dust her off and take her for a raunchy spin—or two—around the block. Piss poor decision or not, I wasn’t about to walk away from whatever trouble glinted in Caleb’s gaze.

  I wanted him to see what he’d walked away from, sample what’d been the most intense passion in White Bluffs—as voted by our senior yearbook committee, who was never, never wrong. He needed to see I wasn’t undone by his departure. I’d moved on.

  More importantly, I needed to prove the latter to myself.

  “Deal, but Bets comes with. We’re a package deal.”

  “I figured as much, but make sure she isn’t carrying her Sig Sauer since Ace’ll be there.”

  He wouldn’t appreciate knowing the Sauer was mine. “Let’s make tracks. I’ve left Bets unaccompanied with your guys long enough. No telling what trouble the triple threat has gotten into.”

  “Jesus, I forgot about their nickname. They were pretty rowdy.”

  “No, really? And here I thought everyone in town had their own dispatch code.”

  “Please, they shared with Ace and Chaz’s brothers. When the police chief has five sons, he expects trouble.”

  “Uh huh. Right. I wouldn’t lay bets on anyone aside from the triple threat using the code.”

  He peppered my forehead with kisses and squeezed my waist. “What do you say we give the triple threat a run for their money tonight?”

  Everything in me ignited. My inner hussy stretched in a tiny shiver of anticipation threading through my spine as a wicked glint appeared in his gaze. The sexy glint had gotten me naked more times than I could count and added more than a few gray hairs on Father Ramirez’s head, thanks to my extra time in confessional. To say Caleb and I were responsible for more than a few prayer circles would be an understatement.

  By the time we hit our senior year it was all religions to the deck to save our savage souls. Unfortunately for the religious White Bluffs residents, their efforts threw fuel on an already raging inferno.

  But all fires burn out eventually. Ever since he ghosted I hadn’t even so much as smoked. I’d been set into a freezer—a Shasta popsicle to be pulled out, thawed and reheated for Caleb’s pleasure because no one ever made me melt the way he did.

  “What do you say, Shas? Sin to win?”

  The dastardly throw down from my formative years spiked my arousal with a hefty dose of adrenaline. These moments were why I failed in impromptu decision making.

  I wasn’t foolish enough to imagine tonight was anything more than a good time, but I needed one rowdy adventure to solidify the memories with reality. Things were never as phenomenal as people remembered.

  Translation—the Adonis-worthy Caleb I’d built up in my head had flaws. Tonight I’d find every single one, categorize, memorize and weaponize them. Then I’d move on from what we once had.

  Good decision or not, I was embracing my inner hussy and giving her free reign tonight. “Let’s jet.”

  —

  Flaw one reared its vile head two point three seconds after we stepped foot in the posh, two-story condo on the upper level of Nueces 360. We’d somehow commandeered a solo trip to the forty-third floor in the fattest elevator I’d been in. Possibilities for said ride activated my naughty juices, but Caleb shook his head, chuckled and kissed my hand.

  What the hell?

  To say I wasn’t in the best of moods when we stepped out of our sweet solo sexless ride was an understatement. Walking right into the host wasn’t expected, nor wanted if the grim expression on Caleb’s face was any indication.

  “Twisted Delirious number one player in the house!” A smiling Dexter Bryce Reed charged forward with a couple of buxom blondes in tow.

  “It’s Delirium. Twisted Delirium,” I corrected.

  “Nah, chica. I’m sure it’s Twisted Delirious. I know these things.”

  “Great to see you, man. Thanks for the invite.” Caleb laughed.

  “Right.” Confusion mottled his handsome face a moment. “I need you to do me a solid. My assistant is on some kick about quitting or some crazy shit. I don’t think she knows how good she’s got it working with me. I’m thinking she’s uptight or something. I was thinking stud Colt Douglas throws her a boner and she’d calm down and get over it, you know? What do you say?”

  “Next time, man.”

  Um, what? Next time? I tuned out the resulting back thumping conversation as my inner gasket percolated a full head of pissed. Okay, reality check. While I’d wanted to find the flaws, I hadn’t expected them to march right up and slap me aside the head the second I exited the posh elevator.

  Drink time, specifically tequila. Awesome. A bar. A huge, drink filled bar. Where the hell was Bets anyway?

  “Hey, wait a minute. Where are you going?” Caleb grabbed my arm, but I squirmed away and motored toward the brain numbing, rage killing liquor of choice for when situations went sideways. Had some douche rocker asked him to fuck a woman?

  Did he do favors of the horizontal kind often?

  Questions fired off in my brain as I slammed my hand down on the makeshift bar and glared at the sexy man behind it. “Tequila. Double.”

  He set salt beside me and a few wedges of lemon. I didn’t need either. Reunions with exes called for a naked tequila night. I slammed the double shot down and motioned for another. His eyes widened, but he complied with a smirk. Yeah, he got my need to be numb.

  “Shas, what the hell?”

  “You ask me what the hell after he…and you…arg!” I shook my head and downed my second double. “I can’t believe I thought my Caleb was still buried under all the Colt rocker crap. I guess he died in White Bluffs.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Your Caleb, huh?”

  Damn. Tequila couldn’t kill possessiveness I hadn’t realized existed. I reached for my empty shot glass, turning my back on the first oops of the night—no doubt the first of many. Tequila did a bang up job numbing me, but with a piss poor side effect—my tongue didn’t wait for permission to say what tumbled across it. No filter. Zero desire to give a fuck.

  Precisely the feeling I needed to deal with Caleb.

  “Come on, my sexy babbler. Let’s get some fresh air.”

  Ha. Nothing would bleach out the whole do-me-a-favor bullshit we’d waded through. Grudgingly tromping through the thickening crowd of SXSW revelers, I slowed Caleb’s hastened tug with all hundred thirty something pounds of myself and memorized the squish of denim adhering itself to the snug curve of his ass cheeks. The thick material snuggled against his thighs and accentuated the firm swell before disappearing along his waist.

  Damn.

  It’d once be
en my ass to grip, dig my fingers into and urge forward as he surged into me. I missed the heat of his body against mine, the way he settled against me so perfectly, as though some divine power had created us with a pre-destined plan to fuse together.

  Chemistry.

  A slow burn ran down my chest and pooled between my legs. I’d blame the tequila, but I knew better. This was all Caleb.

  Pathetic much?

  Self-anger sped my progression as we hit the balcony and he dragged us into the far upper corner. The small nook was a snug fit, but the firm press of his hardened length when he settled against my back proved he didn’t want personal space any more than I did. My hussy wanted to violate every scant millimeter.

  His hands settled on my hips as hot breath fanned my pulse. Winding my fingers with his, I took a few deep breaths and regarded the lights of Austin sprawled before us. My head spun. Whether from the four shots or the musky heat enveloping me, it didn’t matter.

  I’d lost my mind. Bring on the cute, white jacket with the shiny buckles in the back. Maybe a few months of self-hugs and padded rooms would knock sense into me. Seven years and I still reacted like he was the sun in my universe. My damned, traitorous body refused to loosen its grip on what’d once been.

  Whatever rash judgment call I’d made to land myself on the highest balcony in Austin with Caleb holding me undid every step away from the past. The decision had little to do with exorcising the demons I’d battled and everything to do with the grand what-if my inner dreamer refused to let die.

  What if he hadn’t left me? What if I’d fought to remain at his side?

  The old me didn’t fight, scrabble for what was hers. She toed the line and remained unnoticed. Uncomplicated.

  What a fucking stupid bitch.

  “You’re scrunching your nose,” he accused with a chuckle. “What are you thinking about so intensely?”

  I stilled under the implication. He remembered my tells? Answering meant going down the serious road. Tequila-filled Shasta had zero business opening the serious vault. Not when hussy Shasta was primed and ready to carouse.