Mason
Holy shit! That was close. For a second there, while she tossed out insults like arrows, I thought I’d lost her. I thought she’d never calm down enough to let me explain.
The crap she says about herself makes me sick to my stomach. That a woman this beautiful could have such little respect for her body is astounding. I take her belittling herself as a personal insult. I almost grin at the challenge she’s set before me, to prove to her that she’s so much more than the “easy stripper.” Her body and the honor of pleasuring it should be a prize to be won, not a tool to be passed around as she claimed the other night. My competitive nature digs in, hell bent on proving her wrong.
I take purposeful steps back to my table, making sure to stay at her side rather than drag her behind me.
As we get closer, she stops. “Oh . . .”
Ta-da! Now she understands.
I encourage her to walk with me with a gentle tug on her arm and tuck her to my side as we step up to the table.
“You’re back.” Eve’s smiling between Trix and me, her hand interweaved with Cameron’s.
“We are.” I squeeze the tense girl at my side. “I’d like you guys to meet Trix. Trix, this is Cameron Kyle, my boss, and Eve, his girlfriend.”
I can almost feel the heat of her blush against my skin as she burrows deeper into me. “Hi, nice to meet you guys.”
Cameron’s glare moves between us, and his jaw gets soft. “You too.”
“Girl, I hate to be annoying, but seriously where did you get those shoes? They’re hot!” Eve hops off her stool and studies Trix’s shoes. “Cameron, do you see these things?”
Cam grins, and Trix pulls away from me enough so that she can lift her foot up for Eve to study it. They go back and forth, some shit about websites and mall stores that I mostly ignore. When I turn away from the convo, I find my boss staring at me.
“What?”
His shoulders bounce with silent laughter. “Nothing, man.”
“Shut up.” I fight my own smile, knowing exactly what the guy’s thinking.
I’ve moved on from Eve and am now chest deep into feeling for another woman, who’ll probably destroy me.
As I look down at Trix, all decked out and showing off her best assets, my blood roars. Either this girl has worked some kind of voodoo witchery on my ass, or she’s the most alluring woman on the face of the planet. On paper, I wouldn’t give a woman like Trix a second glance. Even as the thought moves through my thick fucking skull, shame weighs heavy in my gut. She’s a stripper, loose with her morals and her body, but that’s not who I see when I’m with her. It’s the woman inside, beneath the skin-tight clothes, colored hair, and makeup, and damn if even covered in all that she isn’t stunning.
“If you guys don’t mind, I’m gonna skip out.” I give Cam a chin lift and fist bump Eve. “Thanks for the movie.” They regard me in a knowing way that makes me want to flip them both off.
The girls say good-bye, and we find Angel to let her know I’m taking Trix home. They share a quick hug before I pull Trix from the room, eager to hear her apology.
I’m barely out of The Blackout parking lot when she huffs. I wait knowing that she’s most likely working up the strength it takes for a strong woman like Trix to swallow her pride.
“Mason . . .”
Here it comes. I pivot and lift one eyebrow.
She turns toward me, angling her sexy little body in that short skirt and off-the-shoulder top. “You’re such a dick!”
Laughter bursts from my lips, and if I weren’t driving, I’d double over with the force of it. “I’m a dick? What did I do?”
Her sweet lips are pulled wide in a playful grin that reminds me of that picture she showed me of when she was a teenager. “You let me believe you were on a date, for like, minutes.” She shakes her head slowly, eyes tight, but still smiling. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted to see me jealous.”
Jealous. Is that what she was? I never really thought past the fact that she was just pissed at seeing me with another girl, not because of her feelings for me, but because she felt betrayed in some way.
“Is that . . .?” I clear my throat. “You were jealous?”
I keep my eyes to the road, but catch her expression fall as she turns to face forward. “Well, yeah, I think I was.”
My heart slams in my chest, and I grip the steering wheel to keep from pulling her over to straddle my lap.
“That surprises you.”
Am I that obvious? “Um, yeah, a little. I didn’t realize you’d . . .” Had the same feelings for me as I had for you. How do I say what I want to say without freaking her out?
She doesn’t press for more, and dead air thickens between us before she angles toward me again. “Do you always play third wheel on other people’s dates? I gotta say it’s kinda sad.” Her teasing tone, having apparently moved on from the heavier conversation, catches me off guard.
“It’s sad that I went to a movie with my boss and his girlfriend and then dropped by The Blackout to catch another friend of mine’s band play?” I make a quick turn into a gas station and pull up to the mini-mart.
“Not when you say it like that, it’s not,” she mumbles and turns to watch out the window. “What are we doing?”
“How do you like your coffee?” I study her stunned expression and smile.
“It’s eleven o’clock at night.”
I lift my eyebrows, waiting.
“Cream and sugar, please.” Her eyebrows pinch together, and she pulls on her lower lip. “Oh, unless they have those flavored creamers, in which case, I’ll take a few of those. Vanilla, if they have it.”
There she goes being cute.
“Done.” I grab the keys and hop from my truck. “Be right back.” After the door shuts, I hit lock on the key fob and chuckle when her confused eyes come to mine. “Stay put.”
She rolls her eyes, and I turn to head in to the mini-mart, wondering why I feel so drawn to her. The need to protect her is overwhelming. The desire to be close to her is uncontrollable. And the urge to know her, really know her, is irresistible.
Trix
Coffee. What in the hell does he have planned?
I assumed, after my embarrassing display at the club, he was going to drop me at home and try to forget the evening’s foot-in-mouth events. At least, that was what I planned to do. Instead, I’m sitting in his truck, feeling like a high-school girl on a date with the quarterback.
I watch as he moves to the gas station market, long strides from his powerful legs that carry his gorgeously sculpted body through the door. I lose the visual as he gets lost within the market aisles and take the moment to pull down the visor and check my face.
Ugh. Yep, I look like a stripper. I grab a small packet of tissues from my clutch, swipe at my cheeks, and dab my eyes. There’s something about being around Mason that makes me want to strip everything away. I want him to see more than the sex and temptation. I want him to see, well, me. Maybe it’s because he’s so down to earth, so real, that I want to meet him on the same level. A whisper of guilt tightens my chest, but I push it back, telling myself I have nothing to be embarrassed about.
I take my clothes off for a living, and a damn good living at that. I’ve done what I had to do to get the things I’ve needed, and there’s zero shame in my plight. And yet, when Mason looks at me, he makes me want to be better. He reminds me what it felt like to be unguarded, to live in my skin without playing a role.
“Stupid.” Finished removing a good fifty percent of my makeup, I pull my hair over one shoulder and throw it in a quick braid. The car alarm tweets and the door locks flip up. With a final check in the mirror and unable to do a thing about the tight one-shoulder shirt and mini skirt I’m wearing, I flip the mirror closed.
The driver’s side door swings open, and Mason folds into the truck with a bag around his arm and two cups of coffee balancing in one hand.
“Here, let me help.” I grab both cups and deposit them into the cup holders.
“Thanks.” He turns and drops the bag into the backseat, and my eyes go immediately to his stubbled jawline. The dark shadow contrasts with the blond shaggy hair that meets it just in front of his ear. He must feel me staring, because he tenses and turns his liquid blue eyes to mine. His eyebrows pinch as his gaze glides from my hair to my eyes, my lips, and my neck. “Wow!”
“What?” The single word question falls from my lips on an exhale.
His hand reaches for my braid, wrapping it around his fingers and giving it a gentle but firm tug before he cups my jaw. He stares at my lips, and I self-consciously dart out my tongue to moisten them. His eyes flare, and he runs his thumb roughly along my lower lip, sucking his bottom one while watching the path of his finger. “You’re so pretty.”
I blink to rid the burning in the backs of my eyes. Pretty? Only my parents have ever called me pretty. Sexy, fuckable, a wet dream—those are the things I’m used to hearing. But pretty? My chest warms, and I lean into his hold, lips tingling with the urge to press against his.
He blinks and clears his throat. “We, uh, we better get going.” He removes his hand from my cheek and shifts in his seat, a painful expression on his face.
The loss of his warmth and sting of rejection burns in my gut, but the lingering arousal that his simple touch brings doesn’t seem to notice.
“So where are you taking me?” I grab my coffee, needing something for my hands to do so they don’t reach over and grip at his massive thighs.
“It’s a surprise.” He peeks over at me with a half-smile. “You don’t have a curfew, do you?”
I shake my head and smile into the lid of my coffee. “No.”
“Good.” He leans forward, his powerful arm pulling the cotton of his blue tee tight around his biceps, and adjusts the stereo. “Do you like Blink 182?”
“Yeah.” The scratchy sound comes through the speakers. “Is this Cheshire Cat?”
His eyebrows pop in surprise. “It is. I love this album.”
“Me too. It reminds me of grade school.” Back when things were easy, before life got hard.
“Did you ever see them play live?” He turns onto I-95.
“No, I didn’t. You?”
“They came through Santa Cruz and played at—”
“Shut up!” My hand moves on its own and punches him in the shoulder. I resist the urge to shake off the pain from hitting his brick of a bicep. “You’re from Santa Cruz?”
He grins, so big and so damn beautiful I feel it flutter in my chest. “Yeah.”
“I’m from San Jose.” The excitement in my voice rings through the truck cab.
“No kidding? Wow, small world.”
“Right? We used to drive out to Cowell Beach every summer growing up.”
His eyes dart to mine in surprise. “I learned to surf at Cowell. Did you guys rent a place?”
My cheeks heat, and I’m grateful he can’t see it in the dark cab. “No, we didn’t really have a lot of money, so we’d just go for the day.”
He’s completely unaffected by my confession of our being broke, but I suppose that’s because he doesn’t know all of it. Like the fact that we all didn’t even have swim suits and had to share a couple towels between the ten of us. Not that any of it mattered back then.
My fondest childhood memories were from those trips, leaving before the sun came up, piled in our van with a bag full of peanut-butter sandwiches, and leaving after the sun sank into the ocean. Our skin red, hair matted with salt water and sand, exhausted. And Lana.
I clear my throat of the lump the memory brings. “To think we could’ve been there at the same time.”
“Nah, I don’t think so.” He takes a sip of his coffee then puts it back in the cup holder. “I would’ve remembered you.”
My face feels hot, but this time for a completely different reason. How is it that his compliments turn me into a nervous, blushing mess? “Mason, I was a knock-kneed, mousy kid. I’m sure a guy like you was surrounded by beautiful beach babes. I just . . . blended in with the sand.”
“Ha! That’s funny.” He shakes his head. “That you could ever blend in is laughable.” He peers over at me for a split second before his eyes go back to the road. “Don’t forget I saw a picture of you as a teenager, and trust me . . . I would’ve noticed you. Noticed and then shown off to get your attention.”
My stomach flips over on itself, and I smile out the window into the dark. With the city behind us and the dark mountains ahead, I imagine what it would’ve been like to know Mason back then. Was he a cocky teenager, a leader-of-the-pack type who was constantly surrounded by cheerleaders? No way would he have paid attention to the shy seventeen-year-old girl with the Disney obsession.
We turn off the freeway onto a road that seems mostly desolate.
“You’re not taking me out into the middle of nowhere to have your wicked way with me, are you?” Not that I’d care if he was.
He turns to me and flashes a devastatingly handsome smile that has me catching my breath. “Maybe.”
My stomach lurches, and I slug down a few gulps of coffee. If that’s his plan, I’m going to need plenty of energy to enjoy it.