Mason
“Fuckin’ A, Mayhem! You made it!” Charlie wraps two beefy arms around me, pounding me on the back in a bro-hug.
“Charbroil, long time, brother.” I hug him back, oddly comforted by the familiarity of being around one of my old friends from back home.
Charlie and I grew up together, along with Birdman, Harrison, and Jayden. Drake and I were only a year apart in school, despite our two-year age difference, so we had all the same friends. When I went off to college on a full-ride wrestling scholarship, Drake stayed behind with these guys on the high-school-dropout plan.
“Get your ass in here, man. Drake’s been asking for you since we pulled into town.” He closes the double doors to the penthouse suite, and I’m immediately hit with the stench and smoky haze of chronic along with the rhythmic beats of Sublime.
Fuck, some things never change.
As I move through the Asian-inspired space, the cracking of pool balls and murmured curses of male voices get louder. We round the corner, and the room opens up to sky-high ceilings, glass walls, and furniture draped with the bodies of Santa Cruz’s most notorious surf gang, The Bone Breaker Brotherhood.
“Mayhem! You motherfucker!” Birdman calls the attention of the room, and I’m surrounded in hugs, back pats, shoulder punches, and fist bumps.
“Long time, brother.” Harrison rubs my head, messing up my semi-styled mop that I’d tamed for the wedding. “You clean up nice, little bitch.”
I shove him, but laugh. “Yeah, you’re looking more and more like your brother.” I slap his stomach just as his twin brother Jayden hooks Harrison around the neck. They’re identical twins, and although the joke is old and not even funny, it’s comforting to fall into our childhood ribbings.
“He wishes he looked like me.” Jayden flashes his golden-boy smile that contradicts his edgy look. With a shaved head and tattoos all over his neck, including a small cross on his cheek just below his eye, he carries the hardened look of a criminal.
We continue giving each other shit, and the few guys I’m not familiar with stand off and greet me with chin lifts.
“Well, well, well . . . our UFL all-star has decided to grace us with his presence.”
Just the sound of his voice makes my stomach clench with worry, but I shake off my unease and turn toward my little brother.
Drake struts out of a dark bedroom while pulling on a button-up shirt. He’s ripped in a way that doesn’t look natural, swollen muscles that are definitely bigger than they were the last time I saw him over a year ago. Inked across his chest and up to his shoulders are the scripted words “Bonded by blood, loyal beyond death.”
Fuckin’ A, he’s in deeper than I thought.
What started out as a harmless surf gang has escalated to levels I’m afraid to even imagine. He saunters toward me, smiling and holding his arms out.
“Look at you, bro.” I give him a back-thumping hug. “All grown up.”
He pulls back, and I study the scar that he picked up after a weekend camping with his dad when he was sixteen years old. Our mom was pissed that he didn’t get stitches, but Drake seemed more proud than I’d ever seen him. He said he’d gotten into a fight, and he wore that damn slice through his face like a badge of honor. Crazy little shit. His eyelids are heavy, eyes bloodshot, no doubt from whatever it is he was doing in the hotel bedroom.
“Brother”—he takes me in from top to bottom—“you look like a homeless Michael Bublé.”
“And you look like Tupac’s gay white twin.” My teeth grind together in frustration. My little brother is a gold tooth and a shit load of talent away from that being true.
A warm smile breaks through his tough façade, and he moves in, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “It’s been too long.”
From the looks of it, way too long. “It has.”
He guides me to the sliding glass doors that lead to a large patio complete with fire pit. I turn around to see all the other guys have stayed inside as Drake drops down on a long semi-circular couch. He props his feet up on the fire circle, knee cocked, one sole of his high-top blue Chucks on the edge.
“How’s the UFL-superstar life treating you?” He pulls a joint out of the breast pocket of his Dickies shirt and pinches it between his lips to light it.
“Good, man. I’ve got no complaints.”
“We caught your last fight on TV,” he says between drags. “Made ten grand on that fight.”
“You’re running numbers now?” How does he get himself into this shit? Honest to God, it’s like trouble chases him down; he finds it without even looking.
“Dabbling here and there.” He offers me the joint, but I just stare at it until he shrugs with a “Suit yourself” and continues to puff on it.
I scan the horizon, the Vegas lights practically blinding even from this height. When I first moved here, I thought they were downright mystical. Now they just hurt my damn eyes.
I swing my gaze back to him. “What brings you to Vegas, D?”
He picks something off the tip of his tongue, tilts his head and studies me. “You know what.”
Fuck. I’d hoped it wasn’t what I thought. I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “How deep are you in with him?”
A small, but confident grin curves his lips. “I’m his son.” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Drake—”
“Save it, Mase, really. I mean”—he holds his arms out and motions around—“look at this, all this. I’m living a life you only see in movies, man.”
“Yeah, the ones where your character gets gunned down in the end.”
“In a flame of glory.”
“Or in the trunk of a car and a shallow grave.” I shake my head and feel the beginning of a headache throbbing in my temples. Whatever buzz I was riding when I left Blake’s wedding is now non-existent.
“You don’t need to worry about me.” He stubs out his joint on the edge of the fire pit. “My dad didn’t float my ass through high school with new cars and shit or pay my way to a Big Ten school like yours did, but I’m doing alright now.”
No, his dad didn’t do the things for him that mine did for me. I’d always felt like shit having the nicer things and tried to share as much as I could, but the fact of the matter is, my dad was a successful plastic surgeon married to my mom. Until Drake’s dad came to town and caught her eye. My dad didn’t realize Drake wasn’t his until after he was born and it was obvious he looked nothing like him.
A simple DNA test told my dad everything he needed to know. I swear to this day, after my parents got divorced, he set me up financially just to torture my mom. Drake would always be her reminder of what she’d given up for a quick fling with a bad boy.
“You two done making out?” Harrison saunters on to the patio, clearly high or drunk as hell. “We’ve got plans for the night that start, like, now.”
“What happens in Vegas . . .” Drake lifts an eyebrow before standing up to head in.
I do the same and fight the urge to yawn as exhaustion sweeps over me.
Once back inside the suite, I let my gaze slide through the room, taking in all the booze, drugs, and money that are cast around like part of the décor. Confirmation that my little brother has been pulled deeper and deeper into the world his immoral leader had created.
Jayden has his nose practically buried in a mound of white power while Birdman sorts through small square tabs, bagging them in Ziplocs the size of a quarter.
Drake’s dad had a horrible reputation in our town. He was accused of everything from robbery to assault with a deadly weapon, but none of it ever seemed to stick. Our mom tried to get Drake’s dad to be part of his life, but he wasn’t interested until shortly before my brother’s seventeenth birthday when his Dad had lured him into his world of corruption and God knows what else.
I school my expression so they can’t see the look of disgust, disappointment, and worry that I’m feeling. The sound of a doorbell rings through the room.
Harrison jumps up from the couch. “I think the entertainment just got here.” His eyes light and he rushes to the door.
“Looks like Pops hooked us up with this sick-ass suite and female companionship for the night.” Drake leans in, blowing pot smoke in my face. Another joint? Fuckin’ hell. I hold my breath, knowing that if a drug test picks up even a trace of that shit, Cameron will kick my ass, rip up my contract, and sprinkle it over my bloodied body.
He lifts one eyebrow and grins through his higher-than-Sputnik expression. “And you wonder why I’m in this business.” With a shrug, he slouches deeper into the couch as if his point has been proven.
“Helllllo, boys . . .” The soft female voice purrs, and when I turn, I’m met with a pair of violet eyes.
No fuckin’ way. “We meet again.”
Her bright eyes turn feral. “You.”
“Looks like I made an impression.”
Trix
That arrogant son of a prick!
After the way he treated me in the lobby, he has the nerve to try to be charming? That slanted smile and glare, a wicked combo of primal masculinity, won’t work with me, buster. Nope. He wants to exercise his magnetism; he’s barking up the wrong dancer.
All that blond hair, tan skin, and impressive build, he thinks he can push girls around and we’re just going to fall to our knees reaching for his zipper. Ha! Not likely. No way. I’m a damn professional; restraining myself against the pull of attraction is my job.
But really, what is he doing here? What are the chances?
Shake it off, Trix. It’s all about the job.
It actually hurts. The glare I’m aiming at this damn man is making my head ache and my eye twitch. I’m not at all surprised that he’s pinning me with a similar scowl that only manages to piss me off more.
Handsome men think they can win women over on looks alone. All good-looking guys are just that—good to look at. Then they open their mouths, and I’m reminded that God seemed to give up on making real men about twenty-two years ago. Instead, he’s created stuck-up, self-serving, prima donnas who wouldn’t know how to take care of a woman if their wieners depended on it.
I pinch closed my eyes, immediately feeling guilty for my blasphemous rant. Sorry, God. You know I don’t mean that.
I shift my eyes from the icy-blue stare of this Abercrombie-model-looking jerk and settle on Angel. She’s already plopped down on the lap of a big guy with a strong roman nose and a goofy smile.
It takes all of five seconds to do a quick assessment of the type of men we’re dealing with. They’re rough, but not scary. Sure they’ve got the tattoos, one even has a scar, but everything else about them softens all that. Tan skin seems to make all their eyes appear light, and even the brown eyes look tawny in comparison. Sun-bleached blond and brown hair adds sweetness to their wannabe hard looks.
“We’ve been hired to keep you guys company tonight,” Angel says, addressing the room. “This is Vegas, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have rules. You boys keep it respectful, and we won’t have to get Santos over there to feed you your own blood. Sound good?”
Santos is a huge Mexican-American, who I’m pretty sure spends more time in the gym than anywhere else in the world. He’s been a bouncer at Zeus’s Playground since before I started working there and thinks of all the girls as his little sisters. I’ve seen him break fingers, arms, and noses. The dude doesn’t mess around.
“You girls got names?” A shorter guy, probably not much older than I am, asks, and I do a double-take. He looks exactly like the guy leaning against the pool table only his light brown hair is longer than the shaved-headed, tattooed version. Twins.
I avoid broken-phone guy’s eyes and move to the pool table twin to lean next to him. “I’m Trix. This is Angel.”
“You girls gonna stand around and talk all night or get naked?” The second biggest guy in the room looks a lot like the rest save for the scar and the fire of irritation in his eyes. I zero in and size him up.
He’s dressed nicer than the others, although not as nice as the guy I ran into downstairs, but the way the room quiets when he talks says a lot.
He must be the head dickhead ’round here.
I move to him slowly, making sure he tracks every roll of my hips, until I’m standing between his feet. “You tell us, big guy. What do you want?”
His expression turns from annoyed to hungry, and his hand darts out to my thigh. “Depends. What’re you offering?” He rubs from my knee up under my dress to almost my hip.
This guy has balls. “Dancing.” I still his hand before he’s able to continue his course that’s leading to my bare ass. “That’s it.”
“Oh, come on.” He licks his lower lip, and I have to give him credit. He’s handsome in a dangerous kind of way. “For the right price, I bet you’ll change your mind.”
A low rumble catches my attention, and I turn to find cell-phone guy shooting daggers at the guy’s hand as it caresses my leg.
I gasp as the hand clenches my flesh. “What do you say, Trix? You feel like getting fucked—”
“Drake.” Cell-phone guy growls in warning, and for a second, I want to tell them both to fuck off, until I see the barely concealed rage in his eyes.
“We’re here to party, Mason.” Drake says his name, and it drips with contempt and sarcasm as they stare off. “I’ll make sure she spreads the love.”
Something is off between these two.
“Boys, boys . . . No sex. Just dancing.” I swivel out of Drake’s hold and over to the stereo. “Relax.” I turn up whatever they’re listening to, well aware that men respond better when they’re able to listen to their own tunes, and Angel and I can move to anything.
I take a deep breath and push back the part of me that hates what I do. I tell myself that my body is my superpower. My sexuality works like kryptonite, weakening men and making them pliable. I remind myself why this is necessary, and with every article of clothing I remove, the power surges from within.
For me, nakedness doesn’t equal vulnerability. It’s strength in its purest form, used by women since the beginning of time, and I’d be an idiot not to take advantage of it.