Cold Hard Cash: Los Angeles Bad Boys (5 page)

H
e pulls
me into the guesthouse, and once we’re inside and I lock the door, I know there’s no turning back.

And, God, I don’t want to go anywhere but forward. With him, and my life, and just everything.

He follows me into my bedroom, where my bed is unmade and my clothes litter the floor. It looks like the maid hasn’t come in yet today.

I don’t care; the sheets will just get rumpled anyway.

He’s sliding off my belt, and then his fingers run across the neckline of my dress. His hands are big and capable, and maybe it was listening to him tell me about his life, but I want to do whatever I can to make him smile. To make him laugh.

It should be a day to celebrate. My dad only signs the best talent, and that is Cash. I can see it—how soulful he is. I imagine his lyrics penetrate something deep and raw and real. I bet he’s incredible on stage.

He’s making me feel incredible right here.

“You’re fucking gorgeous, Evie,” he tells me, wrapping his large hands around my waist, making me feel small in the biggest sort of way—a way that makes my heart bloom with petals soft and full.

When he tells me I’m gorgeous, I believe him.

He unbuttons my dress, and I step out of my flats. When he reaches for the hem of my dress and lifts it over my head, I let out a small sigh, because I can’t believe I’m doing this—can’t believe how badly I
want
to do this, how badly I want to do something I have never once done before.

I’m standing before Cassius, in a black bra and black panties and nothing more, and I want him to like what he sees. He’s the opposite of me in so many exterior ways, but is it crazy to think that inside, deep down, we aren’t that different?

That’s crazy, right? Cash is this gangster or something, in his Adidas and his gold chain and tattoos. And me in my what? My La Perla bra that cost three hundred dollars, and my trust fund and rich daddy. Me and my untouched skin and my innocent everything. Me, a girl who needs tequila to make good on what she craves, because God knows I’d chicken out if left to my own devices.

Cassius looks me up and down, and I want to look at his body the same way. I want him undressed; I want his skin against mine and I don’t want to wait.

I reach for his shirt, and he pulls it off. With his shirt gone, all that’s left is the chain around his neck, but now with his skin exposed, I see a body etched with a story that’s deeper than I can understand. He says he needs a notepad to write down words, but lyrics are engraved across his skin.

“Cassius,” I say, stepping closer. The window is open; the curtains flutter as a breeze washes through my room, and the sunlight casts a glow across us both. “You are a piece of art.”

He licks his lips, slowly shaking his head as he moves his hands over my chest, running across my belly and over my ass.

He pulls me to him. “No, you’re the masterpiece, Evangeline. You.”

I sink into him, wanting his chest pressed against my body, tight. The fact that he has a history I can’t comprehend draws me to him so quickly. My life is private camps and fancy schools and piano lessons.

So. Many. Lessons.

But what have I learned?

I learned that the first time I take chance on myself, I am nearly naked in the arms of the sexiest man I’ve ever met.

I should have taken a chance a long time ago.

His jeans are slung low on his hips, and a deep V leads down to something I know will be very good, but I don’t have the nerve to make that move. I don’t know how much tequila I’d need for that sort of bravery—the kind that would give me the resolve to unbutton his jeans and slide them off and reach for the hardness that I feel against me, that I want inside me.

He will need to make some of those moves on his own, because even now, with his fingers reaching for my bra clasp, with me sliding it off and my breasts falling from the cups, I can hardly breathe. I’ve forgotten again. But I don’t need to go outside for fresh air.

I just want his oxygen.

I kiss him, deeply, running my hand through his hair, over the shaved sides, and then the longer strands on top. I hold onto his hair, my mouth filled with his warm tongue, his soft lips, his breath. I pull him closer to me.

“Oh, girl,” he moans, his hands on my breasts, his fingers running over my hard nipples. My pussy tightens—because, oh, it feels so good when he caresses me with such devotion. I swear it’s like he only has eyes for me, like he sees me as more than a hook-up—which I know we aren’t. But, as he touches me, it almost feels holy.

“Do what you want with me, Cash. Please.” I’m begging him, because I know being with him is going to be a heck of a lot better than the rabbit vibrator in my dresser drawer.

He doesn’t hesitate; it’s like something has been unleashed when I give him complete control. He picks me up, his hands tight against my ass, and my legs wrap around him. He sets me down on the bed, my legs hanging off the edge, and he kneels down on the floor.

“Aren’t you coming up here?” I ask, patting the mattress.

“Not yet, honey. First I’m going down.”

I
tug down those panties
, revealing a well-trimmed pussy dripping with desire. Spreading her knees apart, I dip my mouth between her thighs, my fingers running across her skin, so soft and smooth.

My tongue presses against her tender clit, rolling in circles over her throbbing bulb. Wanting to make her body tremble in pleasure, I run my tongue up and down the length of her gap, and she moans above me, her knees instinctively drawing together—because this amount of pleasure feels forbidden, feels too good to be true.

But it isn’t.

“Your cunt is perfection,” I tell her.

“Cash.” She laughs softly, and I feel her vibrations as I press my mouth back on her mound. “I can’t believe you used that word.”

That gets me up, moving above her body, and I grab her hands, pin them above her head. Her perfect tits press against my bare chest and I want to press my mouth against them, too, but first I have to clear the fucking air.

“Oh, girl, your cunt
is
perfection. I want to press my fingers in it until you soak these sheets.”

“Not the word
perfection
, the c-word.”

“You don’t like the word cunt?” I ask, smiling above her, watching her cheeks redden as she bites her bottom lip.

“I don’t know. I’ve never actually heard a guy say it.”

“What do you want me to call your pussy?” I ask, raising my eyebrows as I straddle her, my hands moving over her tits. They’re so perky and round and begging to be sucked. I lean my mouth over one, twirling her hard nipple in my mouth as she squirms in delight.

“Call my pussy anything you want, Cash. I like everything that comes out of your mouth.”

“You like it dirty?” I ask. “Because I don’t know if you can handle how dirty we could make this.” I smile down at her, teasing.

“Do I get to see your cock?” she asks.

I press my mouth against hers. Maybe it’s the way she surprised me with her shots of tequila, or the way the word
cock
comes out of her parted lips with such a sweet inflection, but I need to kiss her.

I swear I could fucking lose my load before I get my cock out of my pants, but I have to kiss her. Again. More. Now, forever. I want this girl. I need this girl.

I pull away and head back to her pussy, to make sure she’s ready to take me. I don’t want to hurt her.

I part her delicate pussy lips; her folds are so tender and soft and wet. Oh,
so
fucking wet. I press a finger against her opening, and hear her gasp slightly at the touch.

Fuck, this girl is tight. So very tight.

Too tight.

I pull away from her, lean back up, looking at her intently.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Are you a virgin, Evangeline?”

She swallows. Her smoky eyes widen. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

Without missing a beat, I ask another very important question: “And how old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

A surge of relief washes over me, but I know my trouble has just begun.

“And you want me, a man you just met, to take your virginity?”

She props herself up on her elbows. “I don’t want you to take anything.”

My jaw tenses. Is this some massive dick tease?

She smiles, shaking her head, reaching for my hand. She laces her fingers through mine. “Cassius, I don’t want you take it; I’m giving it to you.”

I draw in a deep breath. It fucking feels like that’s all I’ve been doing today.

“I can’t take that gift.”

“Why not?” she asks. “You said my pussy—I mean, my cunt—was perfect. Don’t you want it?”

“Oh, girl, I want it. But not like this.”

“Then how?

“You don’t want your first time to be with a guy you don’t know. It should be memorable.”

I run my hands over her smooth skin. She’s flawless. Even her belly button turns me on.

“I’m sure I will remember every single detail of this day. Don’t worry about me.”

I look at her—and the truth is, before Gina there was a string of well-pleased females as I made my way through high school. My performance isn’t the concern. It’s the fact that the last thing I want to do is take something from Evangeline she can’t take back.

“I can’t. You at least deserve a proper date before a guy takes your virginity.”

“A date, huh? We had chips and salsa. That counts as a date.”

I’m not going to budge, no matter how much I want to. Evie is different. She’s more than a hook-up.

Her eyes alone.

“I mean it,” I tell her, leaning over her perfect body, kissing her softly.

“You are such a cunt-tease, Cassius. I’d never have guessed.” She wraps her arms around me.

“What had you guessed?”

“I guessed wrong.”

“But you want to be right?” I whisper into her ear, letting my tongue trail over her neck.

“Mhmm.”

I taste her smile as I press my lips against her mouth. It taste like a promise hinged on hope.

She wants me and I want her, but I want to do the right thing. Maybe for the first time in my motherfucking life.

“Do you have plans tonight?” I ask. “Let me take you on a proper date.”

“And then you’ll sleep with me?” she asks, bringing me back to where we began.

“You’re so singularly focused.”

“I go to Julliard. I’m basically brilliant.”

“Modest, too.” I plant kisses on her neck. My cock is solid between us, and damn, I deserve a medal for my self-control.

“I’m so hot for you, Cassius,” she groans under me. “Are you really going to make me wait?”

“I don’t even have a condom, girl.”

“You aren’t a player than?”

“I’m not a player. I just crush a lot.”

She laughs again. “You really aren’t, if you’re using my lines.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.” She sighs, resigned to the fact that I’m really not going to fuck her right now. “But just so you know, Cassius, I’m not going to wear panties tonight. And if you refuse my cunt a second time, I’ll take it personally.”

“Oh, the refusal is plenty personal this time, too,” I tell her.

“Oh yeah?” She squints her left eye, as if trying to read me more thoroughly.

“Yeah, I
personally
want to take you to bed—but first, I’ll take you to dinner.” I stand, reaching for my shirt. I’m glad I didn’t discard my pants, because I swear to God it would be a challenge to stuff my wood back in.

“Who are you, Cassius?” she asks, sitting up, her naked tits perky and sweet, and in need of much more sucking before the night is through.

“I’m your dinner date.” I pull out my phone and tap on the Uber app, ordering a ride back to the hotel.

We exchange numbers, and my phone pings, telling me my car is here.

“I’ll be back here in a few hours—say, five o’clock?” I tell her, leaning over her naked body and giving her a soft kiss on the cheek.

“A little early for dinner, isn’t it?”

“Honey, if we wait to start eating until eight, we’ll only be hurting ourselves. This way, we can be back here by ten.”

“With condoms.”

“Plenty.”

B
ack at the
apartment I check in with Mom. The nurse has left for the day, and Mom is sound asleep in her bed. I sit next to her, and see a drawer in her nightstand open. Inside, there’s a bottle of cheap vodka—God knows, I’ve cleaned the alcohol out of her room enough times to know that she always gets another bottle somehow.

I’m guessing Gina got it for her; she’s the easiest around here to manipulate.

Trying not to stress, I realize I also need to make a plan for what I’m going to do about Chad and Gina, before I see them again.

I pour the bottle out in the kitchen sink, and instead of focusing on those problems, I look over some of the songs that KMG has sent over. The music is what it’s really about right now. While I have control over a few of the songs on the first album, I only get to use half of my original stuff.

They want an LP produced before Elle’s tour starts in three weeks, which means I’m going to be in the studio for fourteen days straight, starting tomorrow.

When I first found out about this two weeks ago, I was pissed, but at least I knew before I came down to LA today and signed the contact. These are the terms KMG is willing to offer, and the truth is, I have zero leverage.

Mom’s health was shitty before the accident, but now it’s only going downhill. She needs my help, and those fucking court fines are piling up. She damaged property at a city park when her car crashed—thank God it was just a city-owned lawnmower, park benches, and a retaining wall. It could have been a person.

But, fuck, it all costs money.

So, I’ll play this shitty pseudo-rap shit, with lyrics that play up my prison time a hell of a lot more than I’d like. It isn’t the worse thing, and I need to buck up and remember the point of this. Maybe one day I’ll be like Jack Harris, able to call my own motherfucking shots.

Until then, I’ll go on stage and deliver. I always deliver.

In the meantime, I’ll keep working on my own shit. I have a notepad and pen in hand as I lay sprawled on the white linens of the hotel bed, thinking about Gentle Evangeline, jotting down everything about our time together.

It looks like I found myself a muse in the least expected place. KMG headquarters is a breeding ground for wannabes—musicians and groupies alike. But Evangeline isn’t like those fame-obsessed people hanging around in slinky clothes, draped on leather couches, hoping to be chosen.

Evangeline is unlike any girl I’ve ever met.

Probably because there were no girls like her in East Heights—privileged girls who never worried about things like lunch money and having shoes that fit, and keeping their younger siblings safe from an alcoholic mother or an abusive father.

The girls I grew up with had to fight for survival. Evangeline avoided all that because she happened to be born in a home where money meant nothing, because there was so much of it. She doesn’t know the sort of heartbreak that jaded girls like Gina were raised on.

And that makes me want to protect Evangeline from anything that might hurt her. That makes me want to wrap her in my arms and carry her somewhere safe, because she has no fucking clue how lucky she is to have lived twenty-one years without any scars. In this world, it’s a gift to have wide eyes and believe in possibility.

I don’t know if it’s her innocence that draws me to her like a moth to a flame, but I can’t deny that I’m counting down the minutes until I can see her again.

Taste her again.

Fill her up for the first time.

The front door opens, and brings me back to reality. Gina and Chad are back with a six-pack of Coke and a bottle of cheap rum. Fantastic.

“Hey, motherfucker,” Chad says. “Wanna drink?”

I shrug. I was all spun up after the morning photo shoot, and it took nearly fucking a virgin to clear my head. I want to keep it on straight.

Gina struts in, then plops on the couch, picking at her long shellacked nails, nails I know she fucking loves. No matter how tight the money is, she always has enough to sit and get her nails done.

Not that I care. Gina grew up in the school of hard knocks. If shiny red nail polish dulls some of her pain, good.

I just wish I had something I could use to coat over the places she cut into my heart. To seal the wounds. Seeing her makes my skin tighten and my jaw tense. She and I still haven’t dealt with any of our shit. She left my bed one night and went to my brother’s the next.

Does that make me a weak-ass motherfucker? I don’t know. I want to believe it makes me strong—because, dammit I don’t want to push her, when I know how far she’s come to the edge, and how many times I’ve had to pull her back up to the land of the living.

I don’t want to destroy her just so I can say my piece. That isn’t what it means to be a man.

At some point, what she and I had was love. Maybe it was childish, love borne from desperate fools clinging to whatever they could find, but we found one another.

That counts for something.

* * *

C
had’s pouring
rum and Cokes. Gina’s pursing her lips.

The air is thick and I want out.

Gina’s next to me on the couch, in stilettos and skintight pants. Her blazer from this morning is gone, and she’s left with a sheer top with a black bra, hair knotted and tight. Nothing left to the imagination.

I can’t help but compare her to Evie, who wore a dress and flats, who had loose hair and an open heart.

“So what do you guys want?” I ask them, cutting to the chase. Chad hands me a drink, and I know it isn’t a peace offering—but it’s liquor, and that counts for something.

“Gina and I are having drinks tonight with the KMG people, but we have a few hours so we thought the three of us should have a business conversation, bro. Before we meet with the big guy. Make sure we’re all on the same page.”

I scowl. “Who are you meeting with, exactly?”

“Actually, we’re having drinks with the head fucking honcho: Marshal Kendrick himself, at his pad. We were invited, personally.” He looks over at Gina, smiling like they have big plans for tonight.

I fucking want them out of my business.

“He’s the CEO. What do you have to do with him?”

“I’m considering finding more talent. Becoming a scout. Meeting with Marshal Kendrick is a step in the process. I want his endorsement.”

“You want to be a talent scout?” I scoff, shaking my head. Sure, Chad was able to mold me into something profitable, but that doesn’t mean he can replicate it.

Or is that my gut instinct, to cut him down, because of the shit I’m holding against him?

“He’d be good at it,” Gina says, scooting closer to me. Too close for comfort. She smells like my childhood, like memories I want to lay to rest.

Maybe now is my chance to break ties with Chad. Maybe he’s looking for a way to let me go without hurting my fucking feelings.

Though he’s never seemed to consider them before.

Two can play that game.

I look at Gina. “This what you want, Gina? To be with fucking Chad?”

I don’t know why I say it like that. It’s not like I want to be with her, not at all. It just kills me that she’d pick a fucker like him over me. Like, what does that shithead have that I don’t?

She sighs, like she knew this was coming. “You really wanna do this now, Cash?” she asks.

“How do you wanna do it?” I look at both of them, my voice even—but I’m not calm. Not at all. Inside, my blood is boiling because the three of us have been tiptoeing around things that matter way too much.

It’s like we’ve been holding it all together long enough for me to sign the fucking contract—but now it’s signed, and our hearts have space to finally explode.

And, right now, I could burst. I hold a lot of shit against the two of them. They turned on me when I needed them most. Maybe I’m holding it against them because people have been turning their backs on me for a long time before that.

Chad never went to prison. I did. I took the fucking fall for all of us.

And, sure, I got out after thirteen months, but being incarcerated changed my life. I’m not the man I was, and I lost more than a year of my life. I lost my boys, my hood. My identity.

And I’m no closer to finding it, two years later.

“Cash, this can’t be a surprise,” Gina says.

“Not a surprise?” I give a sharp laugh. “I promised you everything.”

“And what was that?” she asks, plainly.

And, God damn it, that slays me. Because, sure, I never had much to offer, but I was willing to give her all I had.

It’s so fucking clear. Why Chad, and why not me.

I don’t know who is the bigger fool.

“You think Chad will end up with more than me in the end, is that it? That he’ll rise in ways I won’t? That he’ll give you a life I can’t.” I down my drink. “Gina, I’m the talent he’s scouting. I’m the product. I’m the reason we have money in the bank.”

Her eyebrows raise; she’s not convinced.

“I made you what you’re going to be, little bro,” Chad says, walking toward Gina, and pulling her to stand. “And I am going to make a dozen more just like you. You may have the chops, but I have the vision. Visionaries always win in the end.”

“Fuck you.” I walk to the front door, throw it open. I want to fire him right here, on the spot, but I don’t trust my gut anymore.

I can’t fuck this up—ruin my chance—because Mom needs me. And I have no clue how Chad might react to getting the boot.

I can’t give in to the heat of the moment, because that would only confirm my fear: that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

The only thing that has felt real, true—good and honest—in a long fucking time is Evangeline.

I need to see her. Maybe I can look in her gray eyes and see the truth I seek.

Maybe my muse will set me free.