“The lost and found?” He was a dark shape, lit at the edges from the phone, and he descended on me, taking my mouth with his, my body with his arms. Pushing me against a metal table that tipped, then stopped when it hit the wall. He lifted my leg around his waist. Soft met hard, grinding through too much clothing. The fabric between us should have caught fire. Should have rubbed away in the friction. Thin, weak, yet impenetrable, we had to move away to get closer.
He unbuckled, unbuttoned. I reached into the dark to get his throbbing, thick cock in both my hands. Around the back, under my skirt, he yanked on my underwear and tore the lace to shreds.
“Sorry about that,” he growled.
“I’m not.”
He pushed me hard against the table, and I angled to meet him. When he thrust inside me, I grunted like an animal, and again with the second thrust until he was buried inside me. I was flooded. My blood, my skin, my mind, flooded with pleasure and the need for more of it. Beating ourselves against each other impossibly fast, brutally hard, I wanted him to crawl inside me, stretch out, vault through the air with him, higher and higher.
Grabbing the leather strap of his holster and a fistful of shirt, I came with him at the top of the arc, feeling that moment when you’re as high as you’re going to go but you haven’t started falling yet. The moment between up and down, between movement and potential, where power and pleasure joined.
CHAPTER 68
EMILY
After a long workout or a series of demanding performances, my body was sure to ache when I woke up. That was how I knew my muscles were breaking down and rebuilding. Because the pain made me stronger, it had an edge of joy. Everything functioned. I was all right. Rewards for hard work were being granted.
I woke in the Bellagio twisted in sheets, hugging a pillow that smelled like the fifth of July, with an aching tenderness between my legs. It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. I smiled with every shot of pain.
“Good morning,” Carter whispered. I opened my eyes. He was freshly showered, tie draped over his shoulders, pants zipped, not buttoned, with the ends of his belt dangling from the front loops.
“Morning.”
“I was going to try for a fourth.” He adjusted his cuffs. “But I thought you might need a break.”
I got up on my elbow.
“Carter?”
He sat on the edge of the bed. “Yes?”
“About last night?”
“What about last night?” He slid the sheet off my naked body.
“It was incredible.”
The tilt of the bed shifted as Carter draped himself over me and nuzzled my neck. He was getting hard again.
“More to come.” He kissed my cheek. “You ready for tonight?”
“Actually, yeah. I’m kind of excited. And nervous.”
“Phin calls that nervocited.”
“I like it.”
“I want all of you, my tiny dancer.” His lips pressed against the place where my neck met my shoulders. “I cannot wait to have you.”
CHAPTER 69
CARTER
The sun was just setting behind the MGM, and the crowd was getting restless. It was a small venue compared with the rest of the tour, but a few thousand people on the Las Vegas Strip were hard to miss. Half the women wore Sexy Bitch shirts. The men had matching shirts that said I’m with a Sexy Bitch.
I stuck by Emily while she prepped the dancers, then did ID cross-checks for Carlos and eyeballed the line forming outside the auditorium.
—Dad?—
I smiled when I saw the text. Part of me had been afraid he was going to stay mad and never call me “Dad” again. I would have accepted his decision, but I’d hoped otherwise.
—Yes?—
—I like your tie—
Instinctively, I patted down my blue tie. It was nondescript. Not worth liking or even mentioning.
—Which tie?—
A segment of the crowd had started chanting, “Sex-y Bitch! Sex-y Bitch!”
—The one you’re wearing. It’s a nice blue— Phin was in Los Angeles, four hours away. Had he hacked into my phone? The security cameras at the MGM? The Nikon around the neck of a tourist?
—What the
“Dad!”
His voice came from the real world, almost lost in the noise of the crowd. I whipped around until I saw arms waving out of time with the chanting.
My first thought, seeing him in the line, pressed up against the sawhorses, was that he was not old enough to be hearing the phrase sexy bitch, much less chanting it. My mother was right behind him, and she should damn well know better.
My second thought spilled out loud enough to be heard across the plaza.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too,” Mom said when I got to the line. She laid her hand on the shoulder of the girl standing next to her. “Carter, Phin’s dad, this is Summer.”
Summer was Phin’s age, with a spray of pimples on her chin and lavender eye shadow. She smiled, elbowed Phin, then shook my hand. A man my age stood behind her. He thrust out his hand.
“Mr. Kincaid. I’m John. Summer’s father.”
“Carter.” We shook.
“Your son has quite the head on him.”
I shot Phin a glance. Was he still my son to the outside world? The kid shrugged as if life was life for the time being.
“What did he do?” I asked with suspicion.
“Fixed my wife’s track pad. I thought we were going to have to toss the whole laptop. But no. I don’t even know what he did.”
“Me neither. Phin? Can we talk?”
“Can I get back in the line when we’re done?”
Trick question. Son of a bitch, this kid made me appreciate his mother’s intelligence more and more every day. If I said he could get back in the line, I was as good as saying he could stay where he didn’t belong. If I said no, I was going to embarrass him in front of Summer. This kid was just getting smarter and smarter.
“Just come.” I pointed to the pavement on my side of the sawhorse. He ducked under it, and I pulled him out of earshot.
“Before you get mad . . .”
“Too late.”
“She had tickets. What was I supposed to do?”
“Call and ask.”
“You would have said no.”
He was damn right about that.
“You have no business being here. You’re not ready.”
“But I knew you’d be here. I wasn’t trying to get away with it.”
“I can’t watch you and watch the client at the same time.”
“Grandma’s here. And John.”
“For the love of generations of tradition, call him Mr. . . . whatever. Show some respect.”
“Fine, fine.”
Behind him, the line started moving.
“Is this the girl with the mouthy friends?” I asked.
“Yes, but it was all stupid and messed up. It wasn’t what I thought. And when the thing about Mom happened . . .” He shrugged, swung his arms, craned his neck as if emotions and words were too big to get through his mouth. “She called me, and she was so nice. She invited me to get my mind off it.”
He told me he’d stay home. That was a big part of his argument when he told me to come to Vegas. But hearing how this girl had stepped up for him like a true friend, and seeing him acting like a normal kid after crying in my arms for hours softened my initial reaction. I was still going to give him a hard time, because he should have asked first, but once I was done giving him hell, he was going to the Sexy Bitch preshow.
“Please, Dad,” Phin continued. “Please let me stay. We’ll be home by morning to feed the cat, I promise. I’ll be good. I’ll take out the garbage without complaining.”
“You’re supposed to do that anyway.”