“I’m not ashamed of my body.” I cranked my chin higher.
“Chiquita pero picosa.” Small but spicy.
“I’m not small.”
“No you’re not.” He groaned as if I pleased him, his lids lowering as he studied me. “You’re perfect.”
I preened from his praise, wondering what it would feel like to have his breath misting my skin. He stepped closer as if he had heard me voice my thought as a request. The graceful way he moved was a seduction in itself. One I had nearly succumbed to many times before. I swayed toward him, wanting him to touch me, wanting to put my hands on his chiseled body. A sweet ache rendered my limbs languid, unable to follow through with my desires.
“All that you’ve got going for you.” He stopped in front of me. Only inches apart, his scent washed over me. Maestro Dobel, his favorite tequila. And a fresh fragrance reminiscent of newly cut limes. He was straight up trouble in a salt rimmed glass.
“Juaquin,” I breathed. “Wait…”
“Sexy. Sassy. Smart.” His low voice and his words crumbled my reservations. He reached for me stroking the rough pad of his thumb down my smooth cheek. Heat. So much heat. I couldn’t help myself. When it came to him, I could never help myself. I wanted to experience more. I wanted to be naked with him, our bodies intertwined all the way to the fiery finish. “Miriam.” I barely registered his words as I reveled in the warmth of his caress on my skin. “I don’t even want to know how many times you’ve done that routine or how many men have seen it. But tonight was the last time. I should kill Jorge for seeing you like that. Your brother would kill both of us if he knew. And your mother…”
His criticisms hit their mark, snapping me out of my haze.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Juaquin Acenado?” My passion turned to fury. A familiar self-scorn straightened my spine. I stepped backward shaking off the cobweb aftereffects of his intoxicating spell. “I shouldn’t have come.” I had promised myself that I wouldn’t get into any more situations where I was alone with him. When would I learn? Distance was the only cure to my weakness when it came to him.
“I’m glad you did. Someone needs to talk some sense into you.”
“How dare you pass judgement on me.”
“Miriam,” he protested. “Be reasonable. Listen to me.”
“No, King. You listen to me.” He flinched. There was no way he failed to miss the sarcasm in my voice. “Stay out of my life and my business. You have no authority over me.” The title I had once upon a time given him no longer held the same meaning, though for me it remained the only thing I had offered to him that he hadn’t rejected. “You might be the king of the groupies. The king of the strippers. But you’re not the king of me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
King
Her indignant departure crackled in the air while her sultry scent lingered. Bath gel? Lotion perhaps? Sweet like a fragrant peach. All velvet and soft rounded curves. Sublime, if I could just have a taste.
Sweet sainted Mother of God. She had given it to me good. Goddess on the mountaintop good. Arousing. Tantalizing. Challenging. Standing up to me, her spine snapped straight, her beautiful eyes flashing fire. It was like a matador waving a red flag at a bull.
Just try to tame me, just try to take me, just try to transform all my glorious anger into a mutual inferno, she seemed to say. And I would have gone after her as she fled if I could have run without hobbling. My cock was harder than it had been watching her dance earlier in the evening.
A la verga… Just thinking about all of the things I’d always wanted to do to her…Ok, now I was really in complete and total agony. I raked a hand through my hair and pulled in a deep inhalation that expanded my chest and shuddered on the jagged edge of my lust on its way back out.
“She sure didn’t stay long.” Jorge strut-rolled into the room like a guy does when he has just gotten some. He passed a quick glance over me then snapped it over his shoulder as the outer door to the suite slammed shut loud enough to rattle the picture frames on the walls. “Whoa,” he said, his brows raised as he turned back to face me.
Whoa is right, I thought. On many levels. My lust. Miriam’s fury. The verbal sparring, the test of our two strong wills.
“You sure pissed her off.” He refastened the buckle on his belt. “Not your usual effect on the ladies.” He grinned. “Oh, well. It’s all good. There’s plenty more ready to take her place, eh hombre? Bitch don’t know what she’s missing, obviously.” He smoothed a hand over his shoulder length hair.
“Miriam’s not a bitch,” I returned tersely, reluctant to give too much away regarding my feelings for her. “And I wouldn’t describe the situation as good.”
“You worried about her brother?”
There was that, though I didn’t think she would say anything to him. Where she was and what she was doing, I seriously doubted were things she wanted him to know. And what Bryan thought or didn’t think about me and his sister no longer loomed over my head like the oppressive cloud it had once been. Maybe because he was hundreds of miles away in Seattle. Maybe because I had just seen her naked. Maybe because she was showing that body night after night to guys who didn’t have a fucking clue to her real worth. Probably it was all those things combined. Plus the fact that this thing with us had been brewing for a long time. Whatever the reason, things weren’t ending the way she thought they had tonight.
They were only just beginning.
• • •
Miriam
Oh, that infuriating man! Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. He makes me so fuckin’ mad! I slammed the front door and stomped into the living room. My gaze immediately snagged on Mike. His eyes widened when he took in all my indignant-post-Juaquin-Acenado fury. But he wasn’t sprawled out on our big comfy couch eating leftover Chinese out of the carton the way he usually would be after a late night at the club. And he wasn’t alone. Frank MacKenzie, my boyfriend, was with him.
“Hey, baby.” Frank stood. Six feet of lean, mean, home building machine. I’m the owner of my own commercial construction company, but not opposed to taking off my shirt and breaking a sweat with my employees once in a while. That was actually how we had first met. Kind of difficult to ignore a shirtless sexy man in a hard hat, his jeans sliding low on his hips while he had been tearing up the sidewalk right outside my front door. Especially when he had stopped jackhammering the moment he had seen me, coming over to apologize for the noise and the inconvenience of his work crew blocking the way to my car.
“Frank,” I acknowledged, swallowing and feeling off kilter as he crossed the space that separated us, pulled me into him and kissed my dry, surprise-parted lips. “I wasn’t expecting you.” I glanced over at my bestie. He read my nonverbal query.
He shook his head ever so slightly. No, he hadn’t told Frank where I had really been.
“How was the movie, babe?”
“Oh,” I let out a relieved breath. A pretty clever cover story. Frank didn’t really like movies, especially action ones with cops and crime in them. He complained that they were unrealistic. Like he would know. So I could probably brazen this out without having to go into a long winded recap of the plot of a movie I hadn’t really seen. He wouldn’t care to hear it anyway. “It was good.”
“Great.” He captured my hand and squeezed it. “I’m not gonna ask you the details. It’s late, and I already stayed past late waiting for you to show.”
He had emphasized the part about waiting. I heard a definite trace of chastisement in his tone. It had probably been awkward for him making small talk with Mike. He and my roommate shared a polite necessities type of dynamic. I wasn’t exactly sure why they didn’t get along better. Mike usually put most people at ease within a few moments of meeting them. But not Frank. I got the feeling that it was mainly that my bestie didn’t think my boyfriend was right for me and that Frank sensed his disapproval.
“I’m sorry. If you had called or texted I might have left early.”
“No worries.�
� He cut me off and released my hand to rub his military length brown hair. “I just got back into town and wanted to surprise you. But we’ll make up for it later. Mike told me you’re working for Vincenzo all day.”
I bobbed my head. Weariness from the audition, the quick turnaround, and my confrontation with Juaquin suddenly weighted my frame. Had all that happened in a single day? Plus Frank’s words reminded me that I had an early start, on a long twelve hour day in all likelihood entertaining an exuberant eleven year old while her father worked late as usual.
“Tell Jasmine I’ll take her to Dave & Buster’s like I promised,” he said.
“You better deliver on that soon.” Jasmine had been bugging me nearly every day about the three of us returning to the family friendly arcade.
“I will. I make good on all my promises.” He gave me a long look that I couldn’t decipher. “Can I swing by and take you out for dinner and dancing after you’re done with work?”
“Sure.” I nodded. I hadn’t seen him in a week. It would be nice to go out. Plus, I loved dancing. There was a reason I had incorporated it so naturally into my routine. “I’d like that.”
“It’s settled then.” I was feeling anything but settled. Spent, more like it, after going toe to toe with an arrogant, exasperating Latino. But I tried to make my body relax and allow myself to enjoy Frank’s embrace as he pulled me into him again, his fingers curling gently around my upper arms, his lips soft against mine in a goodnight kiss.
“Soooo,” Mike said after I had seen my boyfriend out, his brows nearly disappearing beneath his artfully disarrayed hair. “You’ve had an…interesting day.”
“Um, yeah.” I snorted. “Something like that.”
“Well.” He patted the spot beside him on the couch. “Come sit beside me, take your shirt off and tell me all about it.” He reached for his massage oil decanter. “We’re skipping the ice cream and going straight to the magic fingers.” He removed the stopper. Already eager, I drew my cross body over my head, then my shirt tossing both into the easy chair opposite him. I quickly wasted no time moving to occupy the cushion he had patted only a moment before. “I know everything but what happened after you left the club,” he reminded me after I removed my bra, pulled my hair forward over one shoulder and presented my back to him. He laid his warm, oiled fingers on my shoulders and immediately flexed and pressed them into my skin. I hissed at first then sighed with bliss as the tension in my muscles uncoiled under his expert hands. “I gotta say,” he continued talking and kneading at the same time, “given the way you flew out of the door at Sexxy and barreled through the one here that a certain Latino has gotten you all riled up.”
“Uh huh.” I didn’t disagree, but I couldn’t manage any more of a coherent response. Mike’s massages were divine. He held two jobs just like I did to make ends meet and to afford his half of the duplex and the car we co-owned.
“I’ve never seen anyone get under your skin so easily. Did he come onto you?”
“No.” I shook my head remembering Juaquin’s fingers skimming my cheek. That wasn’t a come on. It was something else, something that I didn’t want to analyze too closely, something that had me as jumbled up, a myriad of emotions ping ponging around inside of me.
“You telling me he didn’t try anything?” Mike’s tone was incredulous.
Stomach dipping unpleasantly, I shook my head again.
“After seeing you dance?” He stopped massaging. I swiveled around to face him. His thickly lashed cornflower blue eyes reflected his skepticism. “That’s kind of hard to believe, MJ.”
I dropped my head, my hair curtaining forward. I would have to wash it later. The ends would be saturated in massage oil. But that was just it. My bestie had zeroed in on the heart of the matter. The something I didn’t want to analyze. I might be queen of the club. I might have a handsome, attentive boyfriend. Juaquin Acenado might have thrown me a couple of compliments that had made my maybe-I’m-not-so-over-him heart hopelessly hope for things yet again. But I needed to wake up and face a reality that hurt me more than I wanted to admit. The sexy drummer of Tempest, my first real love, a man I remained humiliatingly attracted to despite repeated rejections was never going to want me the way I wanted him. This pathetic Juliet would never get her apathetic Romeo. Draw the curtains and exit stage left.
CHAPTER FIVE
King
It had been a long night. After Miriam had stormed out of my hotel suite, I had repeatedly questioned the other Sexxy Club girls trying to get them to reveal information about her, and I had gotten nada for my efforts even though I had poured on the Latino charm, asked nicely and even offered cash. I guess these strippers stuck to their own do-not-tell code. The only thing the mamacita in the cowboy hat had let slip was the fact that the one guy in the show was friends with their Queen.
Friends, my ass, I thought watching the goodbye scene as Miriam rounded the car and took the keys to the Ford Fusion that this Mike Vox dude had been driving. Maybe the cowgirl had figured that at six foot something he could hold his own if someone went looking for him. Well, I had gone looking. I had found his massage studio, alright. But since then things weren’t exactly going according to my plan.
“I’ll see you back at the house later tonight then?” Miriam asked smiling up at him. From my parking spot on the street, I gripped the steering wheel of my Hummer tightly. The leather wrapped metal refused to yield. I wanted to get out, walk up that driveway and take a piece out of him. He might be six foot something, but I could kick his ass.
“Yeah, if I don’t swing by and have a drink with you and Frank at The Palms first.” He glided his fingers into her hair and kissed her cheek. “Love ya, MJ.”
“I love you.” She had her hair down again today. Beautiful and bright eyed, the desert sun caressed her features the way I would if I had any right to touch her.
“Don’t worry about Juaquin saying anything.” I froze at the mention of my name. Had she been talking about me to this guy? Her boyfriend? “I bet he doesn’t want your brother to know he saw you nearly naked.”
She said something soft in reply that I couldn’t make out.
“Now you’re just being paranoid.” Mike shook his head. “You said yourself that Jorge doesn’t even really know Bryan. Also you know that Nance doesn’t allow pictures inside the club. You’re good. You stood up to him. Finally. He’s out of your life, and it’s time for you to start living it for real, girlfriend.”
“You’re right.” She nodded, popped open the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. He leaned into the open window as soon as she was settled and kissed her lips this time as if in apology for his sternly spoken words.
“You better get going.” He knocked on the window frame after she fastened her seat belt. “Drive carefully. Traffic’s a bitch around the Tropicana with all the construction. Have a good day at work. Give Jazz a kiss and tell her hey for me.” I cocked my head at the fond way he addressed her, and the kiss that had lacked anything resembling passion. As she pulled out of the driveway, he watched her. Then his gaze lifted, and he stared straight at me.
Had he known I had been watching them all along? He definitely knew who I was. He hitched a messenger bag higher on his shoulder and moved toward me.
Suddenly feeling like a stalker, I removed the keys from the Hummer, cranked open the door and got out to meet him. Sliding the key ring into the pocket of my jeans, I widened my stance a bit wondering if this might get ugly, maybe even wanting it to because of the uneven way I had felt since I had seen Miriam last night and learned that her life was far from the fairy tale I had always wanted her to have.
“Juaquin.” Mike lifted his chin saying a lot with that move. A. He confirmed he knew who I was and B. He wasn’t the least bit afraid of me, even though I outweighed him by twenty pounds of fighter’s muscle.
I returned the gesture, casually tucking my thumb into the front pocket of my jeans to let him know he didn’t intimidate me, either, although the d
ude stood a couple of inches taller than I did.
“What the fuck?” He lifted a brow. “Didn’t she tell you to get the hell out of her life?”
Eyes hard, I stared him down from beneath the frayed brim of my favorite ball cap and shrugged. I wasn’t going to volunteer information. I was here to gather it, and I had gotten a shit ton of it already. She had a protector. One I didn’t think she had slept with. But one I hadn’t quite figured out…yet.
“She knows you’re spying on her?” He took a step closer, his eyes searching mine. He was looking for clues of his own.
“Not spying on her pendejo.” I broke my silence. I didn’t like the accusation in his tone. I never did anything when it came to her that wasn’t in her best interest. I moved toward him until barely a couple of inches separated us. A car drove by on the quiet palm tree lined gravel side street. I waited for the vehicle to pass before I spoke again. “I came to see you.”
“Because…” He let that hang. Ah, good. He sounded like he was just as suspicious of me and planned to keep things careful and not tip his hand where she was concerned. And even though I didn’t like him near her, I liked that.
“Because I heard you two were close.”
“Hmm.” He studied me a long beat. I wasn’t as tensed for a fight as I had been a couple of moments earlier, but I was ready to take him down if need be. That being if I didn’t like what he said next. “You could say we are.” My hands formed fists of their own accord. Even though I knew instinctively that he hadn’t slept with her, that didn’t mean he didn’t want to. She was Miriam after all. There wasn’t a guy on the planet who could be near her and not want to go there unless…
“Ahhh.” I put together the pieces. “You’re not into women.”
The Complete Tempest World Box Set Page 166
