Downtown Devil: Book 2 in series (Sins in the City)

by Cara McKenna

  That smile became a grin, of the shit-eating variety. “You could if you wanted. Anytime.”

  “I told you how this was going to work when I said you could stay.”

  “And you actually believed a word of that?” Mica leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. “About you and me under one roof for an entire summer, not picking up where we left off? And here I figured that was some sort of foreplay.”

  He ignored that bait. “Just tell me this—are you only using Clare?”

  “Of course I am.”

  That simmering anger reached a boil, but Mica went on. “Same as she’s using me—for sex. That’s how casual shit works, and you’d know that if you were capable of it. Two people use each other, and it doesn’t have to mean they don’t also like each other.”

  “She does like you. For real, not just for the sex.”

  “She tell you that?”

  “As a matter of fact, yeah. She basically did.”

  “And you like her,” Mica said. Not a question.

  Vaughn didn’t reply. His face felt hot.

  “So she likes me, and you like her. Feels like there’s a missing link in this chain.”

  “If all this was just some play to get to me—to fuck with the one rule I laid down when I said you could stay here—it’s not okay. And not because it’s a fucked-up thing to do to me. Because of Clare. She’s too nice a girl to get messed around like that.”

  “So tell her.”

  That drew him up short. He could, he supposed. But tell her what, exactly? Mica was only using you to get to me. It’s only about the sex with him, so if you’ve got feelings, you’d be smart to walk away now. And where would that get them all, precisely? She’d deny having serious feelings for Mica, he bet, and he’d only sound like a crazy dick. Plus . . . Well, plus, he’d never see her again. Never touch her, taste her. She didn’t care for him, but there was no denying that what he felt was real. He wanted her worse than he’d wanted a girl in a few years now, and he couldn’t say the sex on offer was without its twisted appeal.

  What the fuck is wrong with me anyway? What dude stayed hot for a woman he’d seen fucking his best friend, with his own eyes? In his own bed?

  I barely know her anyway. Maybe it didn’t feel like it, when they talked, but he couldn’t use that as an excuse to ignore reality.

  “You know,” Mica said, “if you want a turn with her alone, just say the word. I’ll invite her over, get held up . . .”

  “Excuse me?”

  He shot Vaughn a cocky look. “She’s had us in every other combination already, right?”

  “That’s so fucking out of line.”

  “Why? It’s true.”

  “Put your fucking eyebrow down, you asshole. Your tone’s shitty and you know it.”

  “Hey, man, sorry. I was just making a fucking joke.”

  “Don’t say shit like that about a woman in front of me. Not about a woman you’ve slept with, for fuck’s sake. What’s wrong with you, man?” The question had a long answer, one that Vaughn knew well and didn’t need spelled out.

  “Just a joke,” Mica repeated, holding his hands up in irritable surrender. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not the one you owe an apology to, you know. She’s a nice girl and she likes you. A lot.”

  “I never told her it was anything more than sex.”

  “Doesn’t matter. People hook up, they get intimate, there’s feelings, man. If you weren’t a borderline sociopath you’d get that. You’d care. You know what—fucking forget it. Go to work.” Vaughn turned away, drinking his coffee, done with this conversation.

  That was all the dismissal Mica needed. He patted his pockets, checking for a wallet or phone, and clapped Vaughn on the shoulder as he headed for the door. “Show her a good time for me.”

  “Whatever.”

  As the door clicked shut at his back, Vaughn couldn’t help but think, Watch me. He would show her a good time. Show her that at least one man in this apartment knew how to treat the woman he was sleeping with. Even as he dreaded the inevitable questions she’d have for him when she woke up, he’d face them with a smile and fix her a cup of coffee exactly how she liked it. He’d let his behavior tell her how he felt toward her—grateful, humbled . . . fond.

  Because Vaughn could admit it—beyond the physical attraction, he liked her. Liked her a lot. It was as deep a crush as he’d had in the past few years, though, man, if it hadn’t evolved all ass-backward.

  Not half as backward as how me and Mica wound up where we did.

  The two summers they’d spent together at Urban Exchange, Vaughn had hated the guy. Mica had been a skinny, broody kid, with eyes that looked like they’d seen more than any fifteen-year-old should. He still had those eyes, but they’d changed. Those dark rings were gone, probably the work of good nutrition, and there was rarely hate in them these days. Just the tiniest flash now and then, probably invisible to anybody except Vaughn. Back when they’d done UE, the kid had been brimming with anger. Everything had been like a threat to him. Everyone around him a potential enemy. He’d also been a little mastermind when it came to figuring out a person’s weaknesses, a person’s triggers, pinpointing their softest, rawest spots, and then making it his mission to jam a finger right there until they snapped.

  He’d gotten Vaughn to snap, halfway through their second summer. He’d kept himself so cool for so long, but Mica had overheard him telling another boy about his dog, Roxy. She was a Shepherd, a retired security dog his family had adopted when Vaughn had been eight. Some of his best and final memories of his mom had been of walking Roxy—long, prideful walks around the neighborhood, feeling full of himself that such a good-looking, well-behaved dog was theirs. Every night they’d walked her, rain or shine or snow, even through his mom’s diagnosis, even through chemo. When Roxy had died, at the ripe old age of sixteen, it had been like losing his mom all over again. He’d told a friend so, at UE. He’d cried. Mica had overheard, and when he used that bait to goad Vaughn into a fight the next morning, he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

  Vaughn hadn’t been a kid who fought—not much, anyhow. His folks had raised him to turn the other cheek, though he’d been in the odd scrap. What Mica had unleashed in him hadn’t been a scrap, though—it had been rage like he’d never felt before. Fuck with his dog, fuck with his mom. Mica had been scrappier than him, but Vaughn had been bigger. He’d always been big, one of the tallest in his class, one of the first to start getting muscles. He’d have fucked Mica up pretty bad if the fight had gone on longer than the twenty seconds it had, and he’d nearly gotten booted out of the program. He could remember now, thirteen years later, the smell of Tyler Goodman’s Jeep. He’d been the senior counselor who pried the boys apart, and he’d made Vaughn sit in his passenger seat for nearly two hours after, wanting to know what on earth that fight had been about.

  You’ve got the most level head in this whole group, Tyler had said, sounding worse than angry—sounding disappointed. What happened, man?

  When he calmed down some, Vaughn had told him. And he’d told him also that Mica was a colossal dick and ought to be kicked out of UE for all the shit he stirred up.

  It’s like you guys don’t even see it, he’d told Tyler. Every fucking day, he’s starting something with somebody. Why’s that okay? Why’s he even get to be here?

  Your dog, Tyler had said. Tell me about her.

  Confused, he had. Told him she’d been the best dog, well trained, never barked unless something serious was happening, was protective of him and his mom without ever snapping at anybody who didn’t provoke her.

  See, you’re Roxy, Tyler had said. You were raised right. Maybe poor, maybe in a rough neighborhood, but your parents, they trained you right. You know those bad dogs every neighborhood’s got—they snap at everything, bark at everyone?

  Sure.
<
br />   Mica’s like those dogs, V. Nobody trained him. He’s been loose in the streets since he was a puppy, right? And the street taught him he better snap first, better bark real loud, if he wants to be left alone. That’s how a man gets when he grows up without any kind of security, any kind of discipline. We’re all here—all you guys, and us counselors, too—because our folks couldn’t afford vacations, didn’t have the means to get us out into nature like this. We’re all alike that way. But what’s not the same for each of us is what the rest of our realities looked like. You, you had two loving parents, and you’ve still got your dad. Some of these other guys, they don’t have what you do. It made you real angry, Mica teasing you about missing your dog. Why? Because it felt like he was teasing you about missin’ your mama, right?

  He’d nodded, cheeks heating.

  You know what makes other kids real angry, sometimes? Seeing their peers enjoying the things they don’t got.

  Like what?

  Tyler had shrugged. Could be anything. The right sneakers, the girl they wish they were with, the grades they can’t seem to earn. You, you got something way more important than any of that junk. You got a family. You got a good father. You know how rare fathers are in this crew, here? Fathers who stick around, let alone raise a boy right?

  Mica was a dick to me because of my dad?

  I can’t know that for sure. But you’ve got things he doesn’t. Self-control, for one—a cool temper, most of the time. Maybe he wanted to see you lose your shit, to feel like you two are still peers, you know?

  Maybe. Vaughn had turned that around and around for the rest of the day. The counselors had kept him and Mica separated, and by the next morning, he’d cooled off. He’d taken that shit to heart, asked Mica if he wanted to partner up on that afternoon’s outing. He’d never thought of himself as any kind of privileged before. Back in Pittsburgh, he went to a majority-white high school—not a private one, but way better than the one he’d been at through junior high. He’d earned his way in on a merit scholarship, took two city buses to get there and spent his days feeling like a tourist in an alien world. It was worth it, for a decent education, but never had it ever given him reason to feel like he had any advantages. To imagine that skinny, obnoxious asshole from LA actually thought Vaughn was somebody worth feeling jealous of . . .

  And who feels jealous now? he had to think, his gaze jumping down the dark hall, the closed door beyond which the woman he liked slept. The woman he’d be entertaining this morning, even as she wished it was Mica who’d be greeting her.

  “Fucking fuck,” he muttered, and pulled the coffeepot out of the machine, needing once again to brew enough for two.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Clare floated through the next few days on a cloud of lust and hope, rocked by the occasional wash of happy guilt. When exactly did I become the sort of person who has these kinds of memories? On Wednesday night she had plans to go out with girlfriends after work, and she wondered if they’d all know something was up, just looking at her face. She still hadn’t told Bree and didn’t intend to, but she also didn’t trust her lips to stay pursed if she got too warm a buzz on. She assigned herself a three-drink maximum.

  I shouldn’t be feeling so smug, anyhow. He might never call again. Or he might call ten minutes from now, or at four a.m., or next month in the middle of her workday. There were absolutely zero guarantees with that boy.

  Still, she felt cheerfully resigned to the not-knowing as she perused potential outfits that evening. Even if Mica never called her again, she’d always have her photos of him, and her memories. And the promise and focus of the gallery show. That was what she ought to be obsessing over, after all—

  Her phone buzzed. Not the short zap of a text, but the long hum of a call.

  She looked to the screen. “I’ll be damned.” Mica. She answered with a smile, feeling flirtatious. “Why, hello.” She was dressed in unbuttoned jeans and a bra, a selection of tops laid out before her on her bed.

  “Hey,” he said, and just that tiny sound lit her bright as Christmas. “What are you up to?”

  “Waiting by the phone.” She let her singsong delivery tell him it was a silly lie, but she couldn’t help but think it was at least half-true. Pathetic, but true. Happily, though, she had plans already. If he said jump, she could say only not tonight.

  “You free?”

  “Not for long.” She paced lazily around her room. “I got some good news yesterday—my show is a go.” She’d stayed up all night Monday madly editing the final sample shot, a portrait of a university professor who Alia had hooked her up with—Shawnee and Chinese and white. “You’re officially going to be hanging on a gallery wall come August, mister.”

  “That’s cool,” Mica said.

  “Indeed. My friends are taking me out to celebrate tonight.”

  “Well, that ruins my evening.”

  Inside, she rejoiced—finally, a little taste of the upper hand.

  A moment later she mourned, however. There was no denying she missed his body, his touch, the sex . . .

  “Well, if you can’t spare the night, have you at least got a minute?”

  “Just the one?” she teased, fingering the strand of beads that hung from her vanity. “You’re feeling efficient.”

  A cocky huff of a laugh. “Fine. Make it twenty.”

  “I knew it—you’re terrible.”

  “I’m horny.”

  “Well, me, too, so you’re in luck. And I have”—she moved the phone from her ear to consult its clock—“thirty-four minutes. Then I need to head out.”

  “Plenty of time. You home?”

  “Yeah, just getting ready. We’re going dancing.”

  “You dressed up?”

  “Halfway there. You literally caught me with my pants down,” she fibbed, and pushed her jeans to the floor. “What uncanny timing. What about you? You in your room?”

  “Just shut the door.”

  She stepped out of her shed pants and sauntered to her bed, as languidly as if he were sitting there, waiting for her. “And what are you wearing?”

  “Satin negligee.”

  She laughed.

  “Jeans,” he said. “T-shirt. Nothing too sexy.”

  “I beg to differ—you could make parachute pants and a bustier look good.” And jeans and a tee? Christ, the boy never looked better than in worn cotton. Aside from when he was naked, that was.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “On my bed.”

  “What’s your room like?”

  She glanced around at the patterns of her covers, her curtains, the silk scarves draped at the corner of her vanity mirror, the little paper lanterns lit up red and dangling across the tall double windows. “Girly,” she decided.

  “Good.”

  She laughed. “It’s the opposite of your room. I’ve got more furniture crammed in here than makes any sense. And every color in the rainbow, everywhere.”

  “What’s my room like? A prison cell?”

  “No, but you’re clearly a nomad. And do you really want to use our remaining . . .” She checked her phone. “Twenty-nine minutes to talk about décor?”

  “Not at all. Just want to picture you. I know what you look like when you touch yourself. I just needed the setting.”

  “Filthy man.”

  “Tell me you’d prefer me some other way. A gentleman, like him.” Like Vaughn, he meant. He could be so strange about not saying his best friend’s name.

  “I like you as you are. Filth and all.” She sat on her bed.

  “Good. So tell me what I’m missing out on tonight, since you’re choosing your friends over my invitation.”

  “If you bothered to invite me with more than a half hour’s notice, we wouldn’t need to theorize, you know. But since you ask . . . You tell me. Just the two of us, or is Vaughn h
ome?” Maybe he was working, on an overnight, even. She kind of hoped so. It meant she might have a regular old two-way late tonight, if she played her cards right. Funny how exotic that sounded. The bar wasn’t all that far from their place—

  “He’s out until ten,” Mica said.

  Damn, there went her short-lived hopes. She imagined she could get herself invited to another three-way, but she couldn’t say she was totally up to it. Any night with Mica was intense, but add in a third and it went beyond a hookup to something approaching a performance. An event. What she wanted was to fuck Mica, then swap whispers in the dark, be they dirty thoughts or dark secrets or sweet nothings.

  Oh well. Better this way, really. Better to stay out late with the girls, and prove to herself and Mica both that she could keep away for a night.

  “Tell me what we’d get up to,” Mica said, “if you weren’t busy breaking my heart.”

  She blushed at those words, as deeply as she might from far filthier ones. Only words, though. He could have any woman he wanted warming his sheets tonight. She told her own heart to cool it and turned matters over to her libido. “Oh, do I get a say? Here I’d thought the maestro had our encounters all mapped out ahead of time.”

  “I live only to serve you.”

  She smirked. “Uh-huh.”

  “So tell me.”

  She flopped back against the covers and studied her feet, her freshly painted toenails. These feet would look awfully good slung over Mica’s shoulders, she decided. “Your mouth, for starters.”

  “Why settle for just one mouth?”

  “Why indeed. But which of you gets me first?” Something hot stirred in her middle, to goad him like this. He wanted to hear about the three of them. And actually . . .

  “Hold up,” she said, her legs dropping back to the mattress. “Can I ask you something? Something personal?”

  “I sure hope so, considering the shit we’ve gotten up to together. Is it dirty?”

  “Very.”

  “Then shoot. I’m all ears.” And she could just picture his hand, cupped over his crotch, or perhaps already fisting his erection.