Asa (Marked Men #6) (14 page)

He had on tailored black pants with sharp black wing tips instead of boots and a dark gray button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms. His blond hair was artfully arranged in a mess and his face was clean-shaven, making his smirk as I openly ogled him even more endearing. He looked sophisticated and dangerous in an entirely different way than he normally did. He was such a chameleon, slipped so easily from one type of guy into another. It made an apprehensive shiver dance up and down my spine.

“You look nice.” My voice sounded breathy to my own ears.

“I have my moments, but you”—his eyes skimmed me up and down and landed back on my face with a warm glow—“are perfect. Are you ready to go?”

I nodded numbly and let him guide me out of the apartment. I was thankful that neither Nash nor Saint popped out of the apartment across the hall since I couldn’t form words at the moment. He even smelled different tonight, more expensive and exotic than he normally did. It almost felt like I was going out with a stranger and I wasn’t sure if that thrilled me or terrified me. We hadn’t even reached his car yet and my head was already spinning.

He stopped in front of a beat-up old Nova. The car had obviously seen better days, but the interior was clean and it had a sexy rumble when he started it. I was actively trying not to fidget or twitch, but there was something about all that smoothness and elegance that was wafting off of him that made me feel very unsure of myself and, for once, unsure of him.

“Do I get to know where we’re going yet? I wasn’t sure what to wear since you were being so secretive.”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and the edges of his mouth quirked up. “You could go anywhere dressed in garbage bags and wearing a traffic cone on your head and still look better than anyone else in the room. I don’t want to tell you where we’re going until we get there. Less chance you’ll tell me you don’t want to go that way.”

Well, that didn’t do anything for my nerves at all. “If I’m going with you, I want to go.”

He turned his head to fully look at me and his teeth flashed white in the darkness of the night surrounding us. “We’ll see.”

I didn’t say anything else and neither did he, which made the vibrating tension coiling all around me seem even more tenuous. He drove us out of the heart of downtown, then took us to a tract of warehouses and industrial complexes off of Santa Fe that didn’t seem to have any kind of place for a date. He parked in front of a corrugated building that I was surprised to see was all lit up and had several cars parked in front of it. I opened my mouth to ask where in the hell we were and what was going on, but he slipped out of the car and came around to open my door before I could. That simple act of chivalry was almost enough to make him seem like regular old Asa again, but when he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me to his chest as he dropped a hard, possessive kiss on my mouth, there was something in it that hadn’t been there before. I felt like he was testing me.

“What is this place?” He closed my hand inside of his own and led me to a door that was around the side of the building and well out of sight of any passersby.

He pulled it open and guided me into a gigantic warehouse space that was full of light, music, and people. It was like a carnival trapped inside the metal walls of a warehouse. I turned to look at him with huge eyes while he just stared down at me and asked, “Would it surprise you if I told you I come from a long line of moonshiners and bootleggers? My mom’s dad ran a still way up in the backcountry when she was little and got locked up for it before she had me.”

A guy that looked like he had dropped out of the 1920s exchanged some kind of greeting with Asa and shook his hand as he passed him some folded-up bills. I continued to shoot him questioning looks as he guided me through the bodies milling about.

“Asa, seriously, what is this place?”

He found a table off to the far side of the floor that was draped in heavy, tacky red velvet and faced a stage that at the moment was dark and slightly ominous looking. He pulled out a chair for me and waited while I decided if I was going to sit down or bolt for the door. Nothing in these walls seemed permanent. It was like some kind of Technicolor fantasy come to life and every hackle I had was raised up and telling me nothing about this was on the up-and-up.

“It’s a pop-up speakeasy. The guy that runs them is from out west and they only come this way once a year. I thought it would be fun.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him. “Is any of it legal?” I knew something was going on with him. He felt more on edge tonight, more intense than he had been since I started chasing him around. He was testing me and I was about to fail, because even as much as I wanted him, I wasn’t about to corrupt my own morals to be with him.

A young woman dressed like an old-fashioned cigarette girl stopped by and smiled at us both. She was adorable and I felt like I had been dropped onto an old gangster-movie set. Lord only knew Asa could play the part of Bugsy Siegel with hardly any effort.

“Can I get you anything to drink?”

Asa opened his mouth to answer for us but I interrupted with a curt, “I dunno, do you even have a license to sell liquor?” I swore that if I had my badge I would’ve taken it out and waved it in her face. I was furious that Asa thought he could bring me to an illegal club and that I would just follow along blindly.

She continued to grin at me like I wasn’t being rude at all and nodded her head. “Of course we do. We have these events all over the country, and getting shut down would mean most of us don’t get a paycheck.”

I felt a hot flush work into my face as Asa ordered us a couple of old-fashioneds, and took the seat he had pulled out for me. His gold eyes burned up at me, hot and bright, and all I could do was stare down at him.

“You did it again.” My voice was quiet and with the noise of everyone filling up the big, cavernous space, I was surprised he could make out my words. “You set me up again, Asa. You wanted me to think this was all illegal, you wanted me to think that you were trying to get me to do something wrong, and you wanted me to get mad just like you knew I would. Why? Why are you playing these games with me still?” And he had ruined all the excitement and enjoyment I had been harboring about us being out on an actual date.

“It isn’t a game, Red.” His accent was all honeyed tones and southern appeal. “You jumped to conclusions and they were the wrong ones.”

I literally wanted to stamp my foot in frustration. “Because I asked you a hundred times and you wouldn’t say anything. You wanted me to jump to the wrong conclusion. You led me there.”

He sighed and reached out for me. He caught me around the waist and forcibly hauled me to him until I was standing between his spread legs. I kept my arms crossed even though my fingers itched to thread through the waves of blond hair that were so close. He gazed up at me, and for the first time there was regret in his eyes that didn’t seem like it was killing him.

“I thought it would be fun. A little off the beaten path, and something that fit your peculiar sense of fun. I didn’t mean to turn it into some kind of challenge. I didn’t mean for you to think I was setting you up. I’ve had a few off days this last week and I think I was just trying to see if you were going to automatically assume the worst about my motivations.” His unspoken words at the end of the sentence were there. I had done exactly what he expected me to do, but I refused to take all of the blame.

“I told you if you were there, I would want to be there as well. I wasn’t lying, but I’m not going to compromise my own sense of right and wrong for you, Asa. If you had just explained what all this was, I would’ve been all over it. I would’ve been more excited than I already was to spend an evening out with you; you wanted me to fail this test.” God, he was always so damn slippery and convoluted. I was never going to get ahold of him tightly enough to keep him.

He leaned forward and I had to move my arms when his forehead landed to rest against my middle. I gave up the fight and curled my fingers through the supersoft hair that dusted the back of his head.

“You’re absolutely right.” I wish those words thrilled me; instead they made me really sad.

I sighed and looked up as the chipper server swung by with our cocktails. She gave me a saucy look when she noticed the way Asa was curled into me and I wanted to tell her it was hardly as romantic or sweet as it looked.

“Have a seat, the show is about to start.” She sauntered off and Asa pulled his head up as his hands curled almost desperately around my waist.

“Will you believe me if I tell you I’m sorry?”

I couldn’t answer that because I didn’t know, and he was so sorry for so many things I wasn’t sure I could handle being one more of them. So instead I stayed silent as he pulled me around him and settled me into the seat next to him. I picked up the fancy drink and instead of sipping on it, savoring the quality ingredients and old-school craftsmanship that went into cocktails back in the day, I slammed the entire thing down, gasping as the bourbon burned.

“What kind of show?” I gurgled the words out as Asa leaned over to place a kiss on my bare shoulder. The tension was gone, but now the air between us was filled with something heavier and denser.

“Burlesque. And yes, they have a cabaret license.” He nudged a drink toward me and I picked it up gratefully. I was back to not being sure if I wanted to hurt him physically because of how quick he was to toy with my emotions, or if I wanted to drag him to the nearest flat surface and climb all over him because I wanted to show him that no matter what he did, I wanted him. “Actually Salem knows one of the dancers from when she lived in L.A. She was the one that told me they were coming through town.”

Salem had led an interesting life before coming to Denver, and I couldn’t say it surprised me that she knew someone that was a burlesque dancer.

“I’ve never seen a burlesque show before.” The lights in the warehouse dipped down, and a soft glow from the stage seemed to be the only light as the Killers started to pump through an unseen sound system. It was an oddly perfect modern musical choice for a place that tried hard to create a Prohibition Era vibe.

Asa’s hand slid across the back of my neck under the heavy fall of my hair, and I felt his lips at my ear. It was so dark I could only feel him, not see him, and that was erotic and stimulating as hell. He made my breath catch when he whispered in my ear, “I really am sorry.”

I watched as a leggy blonde obviously trying to channel Ingrid Bergman in
Casablanca
slithered onto the stage.

“I know you are. I just wish you didn’t have to be.” And that pretty much summed up how I felt about all the things he was sorry for in his life. I was glad it was so dark because suddenly I felt moisture, hot and pressing in my eyes. It was a date I would never forget and I didn’t mean that in any kind of good way.

If she had merely been mad at me, annoyed that I purposely played her into thinking that we were doing something wrong, doing something illegal, I could have simply kept kissing her neck and rubbing her arm and I knew she would’ve forgiven me and let it drop. But she was hurt, disappointed that I had ruined our evening out together, and had done it on purpose. I wish I could say I hadn’t known what would happen when I took her, with no explanation, to the middle of nowhere to a place that looked like it should be in a movie or a comic book, but I had. Somehow all of the what-I-had-done and the what-I-would-inevitably-do had converged, and it seemed like a good idea to see how far she was really willing to go for me. I wouldn’t really ask her to do anything wrong—hell, I had spent a solid month trying to keep her from doing regrettable things—but the way she was under my skin, the way she somehow shined light into my darkest places, made me want to challenge her.

She was sitting stiffly next to me, her arms crossed over her chest while she held herself ramrod straight to avoid leaning into the arm I had thrown across the back of her chair. Her eyes were locked on the stage as half-naked girl after half-naked girl shimmied and shook her stuff. If I hadn’t been such an asshole she would probably have enjoyed herself. As it was, her pretty mouth was in a tight, flat line and there was a delicate flutter in her cheek as her teeth clenched. It made it clear to me that we should probably go and I should probably leave her alone—like I had known from the very start. This was what it was going to be like when I finally did end up doing something that was unforgivable. Only then, hearts would be involved and it would feel a thousand times worse.

I moved my fingers so they could brush against her long fall of hair. In the almost dark of the warehouse it looked darker, with none of the pretty red tones in it, but it still felt like silk. I had said I was sorry and I meant it. If she didn’t want to forgive me, I would never blame her for it.

Suddenly her head turned and her dark brown eyes locked on mine. They gleamed in the ambient light and I hated myself just a little bit more when I realized that the reason they were sparkling was the light catching the moisture trapped in their depths. I was supposed to be past the point in my life where I made beautiful, strong women cry over me, and the urge to get on my knees and beg her to forgive me, to plead with her to understand that I tried, I really did, almost overwhelmed me.

Suddenly she moved her chair closer to mine so that we were sitting hip pressed to hip. I curled my arm around her shoulders as she burrowed her face into the curve of my neck. Her lips hit right below my ear as she whispered softly, “Is it always going to be like this with you? Never knowing if this is all real or if it’s all a game because you are a broken bastard?”

My fingers flexed against her bare shoulder as one of her hands flattened against my stomach, making the muscles there tense at her touch.

“I don’t know.” I might not be able to give her an answer that she liked but I could be honest with her. I never wanted to lie to her—or anyone, for that matter. “You are the only woman I’ve ever spent time with without having a hidden agenda. Most of my life all my time was spent trying to convince people I was on the level, a good guy. I lied about who I was and what I was about with every single breath I took. With you, I seem to be doing the opposite and trying to prove to you every chance I get how awful I can be. I keep giving you the worst and you keep taking it.”

She sighed into the hollow she was snuggled into and a tremor raced down my spine when the wet tip of her tongue started to trace along the vein that throbbed right there.

“Why can’t you just be here with me, right now? Why do you have to try and prove anything, how good or how bad you are? I’m well aware of how things in the past worked with you and I am very aware of what might happen if we keep this up, Asa. What I don’t know, what I want to experience, is this moment with you. This exact second in time where it’s just you and me together and what has happened and what could happen doesn’t exist. Why can’t we do that? Just for a little bit.”

I wanted to tell her I couldn’t do it. I was holding on so tightly to every single thing I had done to keep myself weighted down in order to prevent those same devious deeds from happening again. I was forever stuck between the past and the future. The present drifted by me, which had been fine until she blazed into my life all tragic and resilient, full of a defiant fire. I wanted to take her to the dark places and let her light them up. I couldn’t tell her any of that, though. I wasn’t ever going to be a burden she had to bear. Instead I was going to ask her if she wanted to go. I could take her back to her place, take her to bed, and not worry about the past, present, or future. I never got the words out because between one pretty naked girl on the stage and the next, Royal had her small hand inside the top of my pants and behind my belt much like it had been the first night I kissed her.

I sucked in a breath, which gave her more room to maneuver, and she tilted her head back to look at me with lingering sadness and mischief in her coffee-colored eyes. “There are amazing things happening right here in the moment with us, Asa. It would be a real bummer for you to miss any of them because you can’t let go of the past and because you’re too busy trying to sabotage the future.”

Unlike the last time she had her hands down my pants, it wasn’t cold and we weren’t alone outside. No, this time we were surrounded by people, even though it was dark and the velvet covering the table obscured what she was doing. If anyone bothered to stop and take a closer look, there’d be no mistaking the delicate up-and-down glide of her hand under the fabric of my pants or the way my breath was rushing in and out, making my chest rise and fall rapidly.

“Royal?” It was part question, part plea. Her palm glanced over the tip of my dick as it went from interested to rock hard with the sweep of her fingers. I felt my balls tighten up and I shifted in my seat as she continued the little butterfly-light caresses and brushed her lips lightly across the side of my neck.

“Some games can be fun, Asa, but when one person has to lose before we even start playing, there’s no point.”

Her fingers curled around my thickening shaft as I went still as stone when the cocktail waitress suddenly appeared next to the table. I gulped and fully expected Royal to stop what she was doing but she didn’t, and she didn’t bother to look up as I strangled out that we were fine and just needed the bill. The girl gave me a look full of knowing and, if I wasn’t mistaken, approval before she walked off. I curled my fingers at the back of Royal’s head until they were hopelessly tangled in her hair, and lifted her head off of my shoulder enough that I could kiss her. Her hand dipped even lower in my pants and I groaned against her tongue.

“You need to stop.” I rasped the words out because I really didn’t want to say them. We were in a public place, and while she might have a wild side, I doubted she would let me throw her on the cocktail table and fuck her like everything inside me was screaming to do.

She sank her teeth into my bottom lip hard enough, and when she coupled that with her soft hand squeezing the base of my dick, I was ready to come on the spot. “You need to stop, too.”

Her message was clear. She was all for games as long as they were fun and sexy, but she wasn’t going to be a pawn, and if I wanted to enjoy her while I had her, I better get my shit together real quick. She withdrew her hand, skating up under the hem of my shirt and letting her fingers run over the ridges of my abs. The scrape of her nails across my skin had me ready to go off like a rocket, so I threw enough money on the table to cover our bill and probably the table next to ours and dragged her out of the warehouse like it was on fire.

She laughed and it did something to the inside of my chest. I had put tears in her eyes first, but somehow she was amazing enough to understand the stuff I did better than I did myself, and now she was laughing about the disaster of it all. It was like the sun coming through the clouds on a stormy day. She was everything bright the darkness tried to swallow and I wanted inside of her so bad that I couldn’t see straight.

I pushed her up against the side of the battered car and closed my mouth over hers. I tunneled my fingers through the hair at her temples and kissed her with every bit of urgency I had. The funny thing was, I had to let go of some of the other stuff I was always holding on to in order to get the message across to her, and with the press of her mouth against mine, the brush of her tongue across my own, I couldn’t explain it but I suddenly felt lighter.

“I want to take you home and take you to bed.” I sounded rough. There was no smoothness in my typically practiced twang. I sounded impatient and needy, two things I don’t think I had ever been before this girl.

“I want that, too.” Her hands were back under my shirt and running up and down my rib cage. She was breathing hard as well and she kept stroking her tongue over the dip in the center of her top lip like she was tasting me forever and ever. Her dark gaze was softer than the night sky above us, but her eyes glittered with just as many points of light. She angled her head back so that we were looking at each other and some of the heady passion thrumming between us went the way of something more serious.

“Before I go home with you, Asa, you have to do something for me.”

I hated ultimatums, but for her, at this moment, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t agree to do. “I’ll do my best. That’s all I can do, Red.”

She sighed and leaned forward so that her cheek was resting against where my heart was thundering in my chest. It was so sweet, so touching, and so unlike anything that had ever happened to me in my life that I almost pushed her away because I simply didn’t know what to do with it.

“I like you, Asa. I like you more than I think is wise for either one of us, but I can’t keep this up. I can’t keep dodging everything you keep throwing in the way of doing this thing together if you can’t tell me one thing, one simple thing, that you like about yourself as well. I get that you did bad things and were a bad man, but part of moving past that is realizing you aren’t there anymore. If you can’t do that, I can’t do this.”

She pulled back and I could see the resolve and the seriousness stamped all over her arrestingly perfect face. The gauntlet had been thrown down and she was making me decide what to do with it. I dug my fingers into her hips and tried to smile at her around the bands tightening in my chest.

“I like that you like me more than is wise. Does that count?” She didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t do anything but stare at me until I sighed and let my head fall back on my neck so that I was staring up at the night sky. “One thing?”

“Just one.” Her voice was quiet and she sounded sad, but not for herself, and I didn’t blame her. What she’d asked me to do shouldn’t be that difficult of a task to complete, but for me it felt nearly impossible.

I was quiet for a minute. I had to think. Liking or not liking myself wasn’t something I invested a lot of time thinking about. I knew what I had done, where I had been, and I knew I was never going back there. That was what I tended to focus on, not what I was doing now that I had my sister back in my life and a whole bunch of other people invested in me. I pulled her back against my chest and rubbed my chin on the crown of her head. Something inside of me fractured off and settled into a warm hot place when she didn’t hesitate to wrap her arms back around my waist to hold me in return.

“I like that even though Ayden and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, and even when she has really pissed me off, I’ve never not loved her. Even when I didn’t know how to love, when all I was doing was looking out for number one, I still loved her, and I like that I know how to do it right now. I like that I haven’t wasted the second chance I was given to be her big brother and ruined it … at least not yet.”

She made a whimpering sound where she was buried into the center of my chest and I felt her fingers curl into the base of my spine right above my ass.

“Have you ever told her that?”

I blinked a little as she pulled back and smoothed a hand over her long hair.

“No. But I’ve apologized to her more times than I can count.”

Her long lashes dipped down over her gaze as she stepped all the way out of my embrace. “When she comes to town next week, tell her that, Asa. Apologizing for what happened or what might happen is a waste of an opportunity to tell her that you like who you are for her now. That’s the moment you need to focus on with her.”

We stared at each other for a long, intense moment until she reached up and put a hand on each of my cheeks and pulled me down for a smacking kiss. “Now take me home and take me to bed.”

Thank fuck. That was something I could do without all the introspection and soul-scraping thought.

I kissed her back and put her hastily in the Nova so we could race back to her apartment on Capitol Hill. When I parked in front of the Victorian, it was a stroke to my ego that she seemed just as eager to get through the front door as I did. She threw her purse absently on the small table by the door and her keys hit the floor with a clatter as I shut the door behind us. She turned around to face me and I felt every predatory instinct I still harbored claw at me to pounce on her to make her submit and give me everything I wanted. I started to prowl toward her, and whatever she saw on my face must have startled her because she took a stumbling step back. Finally she was getting smart and running away from me. Too bad she had nowhere to go and was now trapped in a room with my raging desire and the raw, unsatisfied edge she had sharpened with her little game at the warehouse.

“I might not be able to pick out a whole lot of things that I like about myself, but I sure can pick out about a thousand things I like about you, Red.”

She kept backing up as I stalked toward her, her dark eyes wide in her face as her tongue darted out to slick across her bottom lip. “Is that so?”