NINETEEN
SOL STARTED SHRIEKING. Again. The artist was filling in Sol’s new tattoo, and according to Sol, he was “surely being stung by a thousand condor-sized bees.” Alex wasn’t buying it and neither was anyone else in the shop, but it was Sol’s bachelor party so telling him to stop being a wimp wasn’t very nice.
At least he’d picked a good design. It was an elegant fleur-de-lis, appropriate for Sol’s zip code of choice, with the impending wedding date centered beneath it in script, “just in case Darren’s right.” He didn’t want to curse his union by putting Arianna or Kitten on his body. He’d done all right through the outlining of the piece, but the moment Milly had begun scouring the same patch of flesh to shade it, he writhed like a worm on hot pavement.
Vaughan smirked at him from an adjacent chair. He was getting the purple on one of his bicep roses touched up. “Graceful, Sol. Really graceful. You’re taking to this like a fish takes to water.”
Sol flinched as Milly wiped down his skin. “That’s me. A man of grace. Milly, you beast. Your tender mercies would put Genghis Khan to shame.”
Milly, who was as tall as Alex and nearly as wide, with biceps to rival his, grinned. Her various facial piercings glimmered in the harsh overhead lighting. Her fluorescent-yellow hair was spiked high, the tips brushed purple, and her tattoos flashed rainbow. They were everywhere, too: on her cheeks, her neck, her fingers. Even on her palms.
A beast, maybe, but a friendly, colorful beast.
She does great work and makes great coffee.
Alex sipped from his paper cup, doing his best to ignore his brother’s pained moans.
“Weren’t you under Maddy’s paddle for years?” Darren asked, his cowboy boots kicked up on a footrest, a bag of Cheetos balanced on his stomach. He sucked orange cheese from his fingertips. “I’ve seen her special closets. Some of that shit had to hurt more than the needle.”
“Aha-ha-hah! Yes, but keep in mind, everything’s more bearable with a boner, Darren.” Sol winced. “And I am about at flaccid as you can get right now.”
“How about we don’t talk about that, ever again?” Alex asked. “That’d be great.” He glanced outside at the benches across the street, where four men sat talking. Cylan, Richard, and Spencer were keeping Michael far away from the tattoo shop. Come to find out, being drunk as a skunk around expensive, pointy equipment was frowned upon, so half of their crew had accepted baby-sitting duty while Sol got his forever souvenir.
“It’ll be quick and simple,” he’d announced after consulting with Milly. “An hour, tops, she says.”
You’d never know how quick and simple it was by the sounds he was making.
It’s like a dog caught in a blender.
“Oh, hey, that reminds me. I got a joke.” Darren sat up in his seat, offering his bag of Cheetos to Nash, who promptly sniffed the snacks, made an “ick” face, and rolled the top of the bag down to keep them fresh. “What do you call an endowed puppet?”
Alex gave him the side-eye. “Really? We’re doing this?”
“Well strung! Get it? Eh?” Darren beamed.
Alex rolled his eyes. Sol giggled, then yelped. Vaughan snickered and fixed his sleeve after his artist finished with him. Nash went back to examining the tattoo magazines laid out on the end tables next to the black leather couch.
“The word ‘tattoo’ is from the Polynesian word tatau. I’ve read up on it quite a lot recently,” Nash announced as Alex paced by. Nash’s fingers were sliding over some tribal tattoos on a model’s back appreciatively. “It’s a fascinating study.”
“Thinking of getting some ink, Nash?” Vaughan asked.
“Hmm? Oh no. I saw Moana and I really liked it. I’ve been reading up on Polynesian culture since.”
Vaughan looked confused. Alex just smirked.
Of course you have, big brother. You dear, sweet nerd.
A few minutes later, though it felt like an eternity thanks to Sol’s whining, Milly pulled back from Sol’s back to assess her work. Alex went to her side to look. Tattoos weren’t his thing, but in the vast scheme of the universe, this tattoo had a certain style he could appreciate, and Sol was clearly happy with the result.
Either that or he was really happy it was over.
Milly held up a mirror so he could examine it.
“Oh, that looks marvelous,” Sol said, preening at the design. “Elegant, understated. Like me.”
Yes, you’re understated, Sol. That’s the first word that comes to mind when I think of you.
“It’s classy, DuMont. I like it.” Milly gave the tattoo a thick smear of ointment and covered it with a bandage before giving Sol a list of instructions Alex wasn’t completely sure Sol was listening to. They were out of the shop a few minutes later, Alex checking to make sure no man was left behind.
“Checking on your ducklings?” Darren asked before hauling himself into the limo.
“Something like that,” Alex said, sliding in beside him on the seat. As soon as the limo rolled down the street, he checked his phone and saw Theresa’s text. He immediately asked if she was having a good time.
Come to my room when you get back. You need to meet Murphy, she messaged.
He had no idea who Murphy was, but Theresa’s lovely face was far preferable to any other he’d spent time with that night, so he gladly agreed, smiling all the way to The Seaside.
It was almost one by the time Alex led a staggering, grinning Michael Kell through the front doors of the hotel. Michael slurred in his ear that he was parked out back and absolutely fine to drive himself home, but there was no way in hell Alex was letting him get behind the wheel of a car. Whether or not the surly bastard wanted to, he was getting a room and sobering up and hopefully not drunkenly urinating on their walls in the interim. Dora eyed them from the check-in desk, a bottle of water in her hand. She wasn’t working, that much was obvious, dressed in jeans and a tight red shirt as she was, but she was hanging out with the on-the-clock girl, Lexi, whom Alex had not officially met but already liked quite a bit by her warm, greeting smile.
Better than Dora’s Medusa stare.
“You look like shit,” Dora said.
Alex looked down at himself, frowning at the wrinkles riddling his shirt and slacks.
“I suppose I do,” he admitted. “It was a chaotic night.”
Dora motioned to the drunk at his side.
“Him, not you. God, you DuMonts can be thick. Let’s go, Kell. You need to sleep it off before you get any uglier.”
Michael grinned as Dora slid her arm around his waist and guided him toward the glass elevator. She glanced back at Alex, blowing a sheaf of yellow hair out of her face. “Thanks for your help, DuMont. I worry about him when he’s out of eye shot. He can be an ass.”
“I can?” Michael asked.
“Yeah, baby, but it’s okay. I like you anyway.” She softened the remark with a kiss to Michael’s forehead.
Alex found a smile watching them climb into the elevator. They were together, apparently, and happy. Hell, Sol was happy despite whining about how badly his shoulder hurt the whole ride back, so maybe it hadn’t been a bust after all.
And now I get to see Theresa.
Things could be a lot worse.
He climbed the stairs two at a time to get to her floor, winded by the time he approached her room. He paused to right himself before knocking—smoothing his shirt and pants. Running his palm over his head to flatten his hair. He rapped his knuckles on her door . . .
. . . And was promptly met by a thud, a torrent of giggles, and a warbled, “Second!”
Is she drunk?
Another thud. A buzzing sound. A muttered curse. There was fumbling with the lock, some snickering, and then a pale face peeked out at him, brown eyes blinking slowly.
“’Lo,” she said.
“Have you been drinking?”
“Are you going to pick a fight about it if I have?” Theresa pulled the door wide. She stood before him in all her pantsless glory, her T-shirt barely long enough to brush her thighs. Her hair was tangled, and her lipstick—a red with a hint of brown—had just begun to bleed outside the lines of her lips.
She was adorable. An utter catastrophe, but adorable.
He smiled at her. “So you had a good time.”
“Course I did. C’mon in. You gotta meet Murphy.” She reached for his hand and yanked him over the threshold, surprisingly strong considering how much she wavered on her feet. The door slammed closed behind him. He followed her through a hotel suite with clothes strewn everywhere—on the floor, on a lamp, rolled into a ball on the corner chair. She shoved him to the foot of her bed, badgering him until he sat down.
“Gotta see this,” she tossed at him. “Is spectacular.”
An interesting phenomenon played out when Theresa was drunk, in that she got more Scottish. There was a touch of lilt to her words that was both odd and endearing, and he grinned as she reached into a tote bag, pulling out a pink paper gift bag with black tissue paper.
“Maddy made us name them,” she said.
“Name what?” And then she produced a red vibrator with her name scrawled across the side in silver script. It was a sizable cock, longer than him but not as thick, and she snickered as she turned it on and promptly buzzed it under his chin. He jumped, rearing back, and she followed him down, collapsing on top of him, her weight sending both of them sprawling on top of her covers.
“It’s strong,” she murmured as she changed tactics and jabbed it into his armpit.
“You witch. Stop that.” He snagged her wrist and she wriggled around on top of him. Her hair fanned out over his face and he inhaled, smelling flowers right before she tossed it away so she could beam down at him, all Cheshire cat toothy.
“Theresa,” he warned.
“Alex,” she mimicked.
“I don’t think that’s supposed to go in armpits.”
“Murphy insists otherwise.”
“Murphy is wrong.”
He swooped in to capture her lips, appreciative of how her body melted into his. She dropped Murphy onto the bed and settled herself more firmly on top of him, her knees outside his thighs, her breasts flattened against his chest. Her tongue flicked out to tease him, there for a second and then gone. His hands found her ass beneath her short T-shirt, smoothing over the cotton hugging the supple flesh as he bit her bottom lip and then sucked on it. She groaned, giggled again, and he opened her up, tasting her. He expected the sour of a long night of beer, but no, she was minty and sweet, and he delved deep, claiming her for his own. She responded by sliding her fingers into his hair and mussing it up as she whimpered.
Beside them, Murphy buzzed.
He reached for it, grinning wickedly against her lips as he brought it around behind her body, trailing it over her ass cheek. She squirmed and dropped her face into his neck.
“Never used one,” she admitted. She was quiet—shy—which he found endearing, and he dropped a gentle kiss to her shoulder.
Alex wouldn’t say as much because it was impolite to mention your ex-girlfriend when you were in a gropefest with a new lover, but he had. Lyn had a few “buzzy friends,” as she called them, and there were things she liked to do with them that brought her tremendous satisfaction.
Things that, when he helped with them, brought him tremendous satisfaction.
“I can show you,” he murmured, running the toy down the cleft of her ass and lower, between her thighs and over the thin, taut fabric of her underwear. She gasped and shuddered on top of him, so he nipped her ear, rotating the vibrator and pushing it against her clit, grinding the buzzing tip between her legs and raking it back and forth.
“I want you to,” she said breathlessly.
“You’re sure? You’ve been drinking—”
She grabbed his cheeks and looked him in the eye, a beautiful smile spreading across her face. “I’m sober enough to know what you’re offering, love. And I’m accepting. So show me? Please?”