I finished recounting the naked yoga tale with LeVan while we waited for Mac to show up. Both of us had been early—purposefully so—going over the kinks in a new card trick I planned to do. Of course, calling it a card trick was kind of like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. Still, it involved cards.

LeVan, although he kept most of his focus on his mentalist act, was excellent at this part, laying out the steps, helping with the setup…being a distraction.

“So…let me get this straight,” the other man said, one elbow braced on his knee as he studied me. “You walk in on this girl doing yoga and she’s buck-ass naked.”

“Naked as a jaybird,” I confirmed. I managed not to scowl, although it was hard. Just thinking about the blonde with the cotton-candy hair was enough to irritate me, although I didn’t know why. It didn’t help that I still got a hard-on thinking about that tight ass and those perfect breasts—and she wasn’t just Angel’s cousin, but they were also close friends. That made her off limits.

“One question.” LeVan’s brows shot up as he grinned at me. “How flexible is she?”

That irritated me even more and there was no reason for it. Still… “Aren’t you engaged?” I asked, reaching out and shoving him.

“Hey, not like I’m going to do anything. Still…I’m curious. Maybe I can talk Thea into trying some naked yoga…with me.” The grin he gave me then was lighter and brighter than I’d seen from him in a while.

“What’s this about naked yoga?” Mac came striding up behind us, quieter than he should be for a man so big.

I almost managed to get the word nothing out before LeVan opened his smart-ass mouth. Almost.

“Apparently Angel’s cousin likes to do naked yoga.”

Mac’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline, then his gaze cut to me. “When did you meet Emmy?”

Emmy. The name suited her, I decided. “I don’t think you could say we…met.” I ran my tongue along the inside of my teeth. “I went by your suite to grab the plans for your new illusion, wanted to check it out and see if we could bridge a new idea of mine into yours…and I knew you weren’t there so I let myself in.” I don’t know why I felt defensive, but I did. “I’ve done it a hundred times. You haven’t ever had a naked chick doing yoga in the living room before.”

Mac reached up to rub at his jaw, nodding slowly. “True, but I haven’t ever had two women living with me before either. You might want to think about knocking whether I’m there or not.”

“Think about knocking,” I said levelly. “That’s all you got?” Then something he said hit me sideways. “What do you mean, two women living with you? She’s living with you?”

“Yeah.” Mac shrugged. “She’s going to be the baby’s nanny and Angel wanted Bump to be around her from the beginning. Angel’s already interviewed for a couple of jobs—she won’t be going back to work until the baby’s a year old, give or take, but she worked pretty hard to be a teacher. She doesn’t want to give it up.”

I waved a hand. “That ain’t what I mean—this…Emmy. You don’t even know her and she’s living with you?”

That didn’t sound like the Mac I knew at all.

“She’s Angel’s cousin,” he said again.

“I heard that part. That doesn’t mean shit to me.”

Mac pointed a finger at me. “Leave it alone, Sly. She’s Angel’s family—that makes her mine, too.”

I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut, turning away from him. Sometimes I still felt like I’d fallen down a rabbit hole when it came to him. “So… when do we officially meet Miss Naked Yoga?” I asked sarcastically.

“Tonight.” The answer came from LeVan, cheerful and easy. He glanced over at me before looking at Mac. “We are still on, right?”

“Tonight…wait, I thought…” I stopped. “Naked Yoga is coming to dinner, isn’t she?”

LeVan and Thea were in the midst of planning their wedding, slated to take place in two months. They’d wanted it sooner, but privately, LeVan had confessed to me that neither he nor Thea wanted to risk planning it with Bump’s due date so close and they wanted the new parents to have a little bit of time to settle before the actual wedding.

LeVan had said he’d be happy with a quickie in front of the nearest Elvis impersonator, but Thea had her heart set on a big wedding, so that’s what they were doing. He wouldn’t deny her anything.

“She’s got a name,” Mac said dryly. “It’s Emmy. Try to use it. And yes, she’s going to be at the dinner. Angel asked Thea if she could come. She’s new in town and she’s going to be part of the family.”

Mac said it matter-of-factly, in a way he wouldn’t have even just months ago—family. The word made me uncomfortable. Family was the hell I’d left behind when I was still just a kid, or at least, in my mind it was. But logically, I knew that wasn’t right. Family was what Mac, LeVan, and I had made—and somehow, the two women they both loved were becoming part of it. Or they already were. I felt more and more like an outsider looking in.

It pissed me off.

“Well, ain’t that just dandy,” I snapped, shoving upright and carrying the oversize sketchpad I used for ideas back to the side of the stage. “You two are just going and changing everything. I sure as hell hope it’s worth it.”

I felt like an asshole a second later and I didn’t need to see the understanding in either of their gazes to know I was being an asshole either.

But the bottom line was…I was becoming the outsider.

There was nothing else really to say about it either.

* * *

The highlight of my night was seeing the way Naked Yoga’s—excuse me, Emmy’s—mouth tightened in dismay when she saw me at Thea and LeVan’s. I wasn’t overly pleasured when we ended up seated next to each other, but Nick sat across from us and he was always entertaining.

He seemed half in love with Emmy, though, and that was annoying.

“You’ve got pretty hair,” he said in that artless way he had, smiling with the innocence of a kid. He was only a few years younger than the rest of us, but a part of him would be forever childlike.

There was a brief lull in the conversation as everybody waited to see how Emmy would react—everybody except Angel, of course. She was still talking to Mac about an incident between her and her cousin when they were kids. It involved glue, glitter, and a lot of paper from what I could tell, but I was more aware of Emmy and Nick than any childhood reminiscing.

“Thank you,” Emmy said, grinning at him. “Some people hate it, but who cares what they think?”

“I don’t,” Nick said solemnly. “It’s like cotton-candy hair.”

Emmy laughed. “I like that. Makes me sound all yummy.”

Immediately, my gut clenched because I’d taken one look at her and thought she’d be delicious.

“I love cotton candy,” Nick said fervently.

Emmy rolled her eyes. “Well, who doesn’t?”

The two of them launched into a discussion of the best fair foods and I found out she’d been living in Branson, Missouri for the past five years. She sang in a show there and worked a few other jobs—or she had until she’d quit.

She chatted on easily but I noticed she didn’t answer many direct questions and occasionally, something dark would flicker through her blue-green eyes. Then she’d blink and it would be gone.

It was enough to make me curious.

What was it that made a girl with cotton-candy hair and eyes like the sea look so grim?

* * *

After the show that night, I met Mac and LeVan in our private lounge.

We didn’t always meet up anymore, a fact that bothered me, but if they hadn’t been here, I already had plans for how I’d burn off the excess energy that always built inside me during a show, energy that coursed through me long after my performances were over.

I was going to hit one of my clubs, find a cute blonde, and fuck her silly—preferably one that would let me tie her up or bend her over my knee first. The dark, wild edge in me was burning hot and vibrant and the only thing that would bring it under control again was something equally hot and vibrant—and dark and wild.

I thought maybe I’d find it with Mac—the look in his eyes had me spoiling for a fight and a good, old-fashioned knock down drag out was almost as good as sex when it came to drowning out the demons inside of me.

But he had a better grip on his temper than I did on mine, a fact I well knew, and the moment I sat down, I could tell he wasn’t going to be goaded into a fight.

“She’s off-limits, Sly.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, confused at first.

“I saw the way you were looking at Emmy. I realize you’re probably all intrigued by the naked yoga thing, but she’s off-limits.”

Pissed off, I snapped, “You think I don’t know that?” Under the anger, there was a layer of hurt.

I wouldn’t admit that.

Not ever.

I didn’t show weakness to anyone. Even my two best friends.

“Then why were you looking at her like you wanted to eat her up?” Mac demanded.

“I was looking at her like I wanted one of your umpteen bodyguards to get her the fuck out of here,” I corrected him. Or I could bend her over and spank her sexy little ass for annoying the fuck out of me, I thought, but kept that part to myself.

At that, LeVan glanced at me, a playful smile threatening to rise on his face. “That isn’t the reaction I just saw on your usually wry, mean as fuck, grumpy ass face. You were lit!”

“Whatever. It had to be you that paid that much attention to my ugly mug, didn’t it? Don’t you ever take a break from reading people and just turn it off?”

“Not with people like you, and definitely not when you unscrew that face for someone.”

Serves me fucking right for being early.” I grabbed the bottle one of them had already opened and splashed some bourbon into my glass. I wasn’t a big fan of bourbon. Irish whiskey or scotch were my preferred poisons. But anything would do right about now. Tossing back the alcohol like it was weak moonshine, I shuddered a bit, then finished off the glass and poured myself another.

“What kind of friend do you think I am? I wouldn’t dare lay on the charm with Mac’s girlfriend’s cousin. I’m not that slimy, or desperate,” I pointed out.

I looked over at Mac and saw something flicker in his eyes. I realized I let out more than I should’ve. Rising, I grabbed my glass and gulped the entire pour in one swallow. My eyes burned, but I needed to get the fuck out of there. I’d just go find my blonde a little earlier than planned. “I’m out of here. Heading to a club tonight.”

Normally, they knew what was up if I headed to the club. Not that they knew all of it, but if I was getting too close to a ledge, I had to burn off steam. They got that, Mac especially.

But again, I’d showed too much and he was already on his feet, moving toward me. “Hey, Sly…look…”

“Nah, man. We’re good. I’m gone.”

He reached out to catch my arm.

I backed away, one hand coming up to stay him. “You don’t want to be putting your hands on me tonight, man. Not a good time for it.”

Our gazes locked, held. Mac’s mouth tightened, but he was the first to look away.

In that brief moment, I ducked out of the door and got the hell out of Casino Torrid.

What I was looking for couldn’t be found here.

Briefly, my mind flicked to the girl with the candy-colored hair a few dozen floors up.

And I wanted to punch myself.

Annoying, I reminded myself. She was just an annoying nuisance.

* * *

My normal den of sin held little appeal. The club I had chosen to go to usually had no lack of fleshly delights and under normal circumstances, I welcomed them one and all.

Logically, I should’ve been clawing tooth and tail to make it over here almost the second I woke up after that last nightmare. One often led to another and the best way to drown them out was to be too tired for them and only two things could offer that kind of exhaustion—one was fighting, and Mac hadn’t been up for that.

The other was fucking.

But the woman who was all but wrapped around me wasn’t doing much more than raising the most cursory of interest. Sure, my dick was hard. She was practically naked, wearing a black leather bra for a top and a skirt that was little more than two pieces of fabric that covered her front and back over, held up with a thin string of fabric.

All I had to do to be inside her was pull that piece of material aside and I could slide into sweet, wet oblivion.

The club owners wouldn’t even care if I went at her out here on the dance floor, provided I found a dark corner.

I’d done it more than once and the fact that other people had watched had only added to the edge for me.

I needed that edge to drown out the loud, screaming voices of the demons inside me.

Word of my sexual appetites had long since spread and the beauty in front of me had no doubt heard because the moment she felt my erection, her eyes widened, then her lips curved. A second later, she slid her hand between us.

But I caught her wrist and spun her around so that her back was to my front. I held her pinned against me now, both wrists trapped. “I decide if any of that’s going to happen, sugar,” I murmured against her ear.

She pressed her ass against me. “I sure hope you decide yes, Sly.”

I bit her on the neck. “Be quiet.”

She didn’t say anything else and we swayed to the music. Closing my eyes, I let my mind drift.

I don’t know how it happened, but the cute blonde in my arms suddenly morphed into another blonde in my mind—one with cotton-candy hair and a smart mouth.

She wouldn’t have acquiesced at either comment. I could see the sneer on her lips even now.

I wanted to kiss it off even though it was only in my mind.

Fuck!

“Yes…please…”

The raspy voice from the woman I held jerked my mind back to reality and I realized I’d been rocking my hips against her ass, while one hand palmed her breast.

“Shit,” I mouthed.

I let her go and she turned around, lifting her arms to curl around my neck, all but plastering herself to me before kissing me.

She tasted like cigarettes and beer.

The beer, I didn’t mind.

But I hadn’t smelled the cigarettes on her earlier—I hated anything that reminded me of tobacco. It was another thing that triggered memories. Pulling my mouth from hers, I kissed her neck instead and found her trembling. Well, hell.

“Please, Sly…”

I wasn’t going to find some dark corner and fuck her.

I just didn’t want her.

I wanted someone, but a nameless fuck wasn’t it. That pissed me off and it wasn’t a good idea for me—or the nameless, pretty woman who was shaking against me—to have sex when I was hanging off the edge like this.

But I didn’t have to leave her on any sort of edge either.

I slid a hand between us, between the high slits in the fabric of the thing she called a skirt and found the heat of her. She was completely bare—not really my preference but it didn’t matter at this point. She was already slick, wet, the folds of her pussy swollen and waiting for cock.

I found the nub of her clit and worked it.

She arched against me, her spine bending back like I’d zapped her with a stun gun. Her lips parted in an O, but no sound came out. If people looked our way, I didn’t pay them any attention.

Neither did she, but she wasn’t in much shape to notice anything but the fact that I’d just thrust a finger inside her. It didn’t take much to learn the rhythm of her body. With one arm braced around her waist, I finger-fucked her and played with her clit, taking her to the edge of orgasm.

If I was in a playing mood, I would’ve left her there, then taken her to the corner of the club, or maybe upstairs to one of the private booths where I’d have her return the favor. Then we’d both drive each other a little crazy.

But I wasn’t in the mood to play—at least not with her.

I sent her whimpering into a quick and dirty climax.

Once her breathing calmed and she was steady on her feet, I dropped a quick kiss on her forehead.

She gave me a dreamy smile.

Mine was probably more along the lines of cursory, but I tried.

“Be safe in here,” I told her.

Then I pulled back and got lost in the twisting mass of bodies.