Poughkeepsie (25 page)

Beckett pounded his chest in a heartbeat rhythm, and Kyle countered with a backbreaking, top-testing stretch. Beckett closed the distance and whispered to her as she threw her arms around his neck. “Hey, Fairy Princess, how fucking wasted are you?”

Kyle’s coordination hadn’t suffered, but her speech was slurred. “Enough to be numb.” She used her hips to rock herself to the floor, then climbed sexily back up Beckett’s leg.

Beckett wrapped a huge arm around Kyle’s waist and slammed her body into his. “Sometimes when girls advertise, they get what they’re asking for.”

Kyle twisted so her back was to his chest. “Are you threatening or promising, big daddy?”

Beckett spun her around and held her face to his so their lips almost touched. The crowd went wild with perceived sexual tension.

“If I was threatening you, you’d already be beggin’ for your real daddy,” Beckett whispered.

Beckett felt Kyle shiver as he held her close, forcing her to stay pressed against him. Then she seemed to power through her fear and ran her hands down his face.

“I have things I need to forget tonight,” she told him. “This is how I forget, you big, fucking pimp.”

Kyle fluttered her hands like two swirling birds as she slipped into a deep backbend over Beckett’s arm. He let her sway upside down from one of his hips to the other as he scanned the room. He saw plenty of ladies who’d realized, deep down in their panties, that he’d be an amazing fuck, but he was looking for someone in particular. He found her in the corner, dressed like a man.

Shit. If Eve was a man, I would gay it up. Hardcore
.

He wanted her to see him like this—powerfully sexual and capable. He pulled Kyle up and found Eve over the top of Fairy Princess’s hair. He saw Eve smirk as she watched him move with another woman.

Got her. She’s jealous.

Eve looked away for a moment, then locked her ridiculous baby blues on him. She whipped a knife out of God knows where and held it in front of her face.

Oh, crap. She’s gonna try to kill Cole’s girl.

Eve held his eyes and confidently licked the length of the razor-sharp blade with the tip of her tongue. Red blood beaded up on her tongue, and she licked her lips, giving them a fresh coat of color. Eve used the knife to blow a kiss in Beckett’s direction and disappeared into the crowd. Beckett forgot to keep dancing. He stood stock still with Kyle still twirling around him.

Eve had just fucked his mind so hard, he wanted to smoke a cigarette and cuddle like some soap-watching woman.

18

I Do Not Want This

T
HROUGH
H
ER
W
ILD
M
OVEMENTS
, Kyle saw the sexy blonde in man-drag lick her knife like she was Marilyn Monroe and Freddie Kruger’s love child. She felt an immediate reaction in Beckett’s pants, and for a moment he stopped dancing completely.

Figures. The minute I think I’m the belle of the ball, he only wants someone else.

When Beckett snapped out of it and grabbed her again, Kyle tried to push him away. She stopped rocking her body to the music.

He looked in her eyes. “You feeling okay?”

Kyle nodded, her knowing now complete. She would not get the release she needed from him. “I need to take a piss. I broke the seal.” Kyle pushed harder, and Beckett made his arm a steel barrier around her waist.

He scanned the room again and finally put his mouth close to her ear. “Kyle, I have a lot to do here tonight. I need you to take care of yourself. Don’t make me kill anyone.”

Kyle felt revulsion roll through her, and she took a deep breath. Hairy Buffalo mixed with the knowledge that he would actually off someone almost ended her night.
I need another drink
.

Beckett pulled his phone out and smiled the most villainous smile Kyle had ever seen. “I have to go,” he murmured. “Don’t get your wings wet, Fairy Princess. It will be too hard to fly.”

Beckett dipped her one last time and twirled her to release his hold. Kyle did her favorite stripper toe-drag walk over to the guys bolstering their courage after Beckett’s departure.

Channeling her best Southern belle, Kyle batted her eyelashes and declared, “Holy shit! I feel so thirsty. I wish I had a drink.”

In an instant, Kyle had her choice of three different glasses held by spellbound men. She poured the two shots into the beer and chugged the concoction with as few swallows as possible.

She heard a garbled, “See, I told you Kyle swallows,” but ignored all it implied. She proceeded to give the men a show so arousing they should have had to pay for it.

As she danced along the bar, Kyle craned her neck and caught glimpses of her sister, who sat almost nose to nose with Mr. Blake Perfection. She tried to shake off the familiar look on his face as he traced Livia’s jaw with his finger.
Cole
.

Someone handed Kyle another drink, which she pounded. The liquor in it tasted like gasoline, and she felt the burn in her nose as she handed the glass back.
There. Perfect. Everyone’s blurry. Anyone could be him.
Everyone will be him tonight.

Kyle willed herself to believe she was too numb to feel the liberties her multiple dance partners now took with her body.
I don’t feel it. I won’t feel it.
Over and over she flashed her smile at the nearest guys, letting them grind into her. They were too drunk to be careful, and she knew she’d be bruised in the morning.

Across the room Blake rose and stood behind Livia. Kyle could see him move her hair and plant a kiss on her sister’s neck. Livia’s happiness rose like smoke from within her.

Kyle turned her back on the lovers and swayed her hips into another sweating man. She wished Beckett would come back. He wasn’t sweating and had smelled so good. He would hold her steady. She felt
so
unsteady. Kyle disentangled herself and stumbled on her sharp, elaborate heels. One shoe’s laces had come undone and trailed behind her like a deflated scream.
Bathroom
.

With a worried eye, Beckett watched as Kyle headed for the bathroom, but when his phone buzzed he looked down and lost sight of her. One of Beckett’s douchebags had texted him. As he read the screen, Beckett felt the joy from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.

Boss, we have a bunch of cars and trucks arriving in the lot.

The sender of the Twitter hit on Blake and Livia must finally have received the Beckett-planted tip to come to the Blazing Crotch Cotton. A different douchebag lit up his phone as Beckett went to meet up with Mouse.

Cole side door. Let him in?

Beckett hit a quick reply:
Y

Perfect timing, Cole can sop up the mess Fairy Princess is becoming
. Beckett liked that all his people were in the club now, and the potential problem was outside it. When Beckett found him, Mouse was knitting an elaborate tube, using at least four damn double pointed needles.

“Mouse, quit finger-fucking that porcupine,” Beckett ordered. “I need you on Blake and Whitebread.”

Mouse’s fingers were like a surgeon’s; he brought the piece to a resting point in the pattern with practiced efficiency. He twirled his work of art into a sack and gave his boss a nod. Beckett knew Mouse would be on high alert now. The exemplary planning and foresight that made him a stellar knitter also made him an exquisite bodyguard. Mouse went to make sure Livia and Blake were behind him.

Beckett hit the front doors of the club. His Hummer had caused a ginormous clusterfuck of fake gangstas. Their Volvos, assorted sedans, and pussy little hybrids formed a fateful line behind a ridiculous F-250 truck. Beckett found Eve, whose lips were still stained red with blood. Beckett found it hard to focus as he wondered if he was part vampire—he wanted to taste that blood so badly.

The bathrooms at The Launch Pad were actually locker rooms, complete with showers. They were endlessly large, but deceptively limited in the number of people they could accommodate. There were two toilets in the ladies’ room, side by side with no wall between them. Kyle always felt it was a little taste of prison when she went within arm’s reach of a fellow female pisser. When she arrived this time, the line for the women’s room was atrocious.

It would take extra time Kyle didn’t have to wait in that line. The men’s room taunted her with its empty doorway. She headed straight for it and turned her mind to the next challenge.
These leather pants are like a CapriSun—impossible to open.
Just as she was about to enter, two guys stopped her.

“Hey, sexy lady, where’d ya go?”

Both reached out to touch her. She’d given up all rights to her body on the dancefloor. These men were older than she was used to, and they were rougher as well. She couldn’t actually place them from the dancing, but they breathed down her neck and layered compliments on her.

“Sweetheart, I love you,” the taller one wheedled. “Come on, don’t give me blue balls.”

“Say that again.” Kyle’s voice was slurred and barely above a whisper.

The tall one steadied her. His copious chest hair mesmerized her—wild and curly like an old crotch. He smelled like sweat socks and beer.

He tried to focus on her face and spit with his words. “Don’t give me blue balls.”

Kyle laughed with her eyes almost closed. “No, fool, the other part.”

He was stumped. “Uhhh…” Then he obviously remembered the best way to get in a drunken girl’s pants. “I love you,” he said proudly.

“You keep saying that, and you can do whatever you want to me.” Kyle’s eyes filled with tears, but her drunken suitors looked only at the smile she forced for them.

“Anything?” The tall one took a risk. “How ’bout the both of us?”

“Yeah. That sounds about right.” Kyle let them lead her into the men’s locker room.

The layout was a little different from the ladies’, which turned Kyle’s internal compass around. The men actually had walls around their toilets, of course.

“Let me pee first, for fuck’s sake.”

She locked herself in the stall, wrestled with her pants, and did what she needed to. She readjusted her outfit and stumbled out, narrowly avoiding falling onto the floor. Many drunken men in the past had not put forth the effort to aim. The tiles were dingy and sticky, with yellow urine puddled all around. The outer door was metal with a window like a ship’s porthole. The solid-looking bolt was unlocked but made Kyle wonder what exactly usually happened in this bathroom. She wandered back into the center of the two men’s ardor.

Kyle held still as the tall one mumbled, “I love you I love you I love you,” until it became merely “ofyouofyouofyou.”

He doesn’t even know my name.

His short friend came around to test his luck on her breasts. Her top slid easily down. He added his “I love yous” to the mix like the phrase was the “Abracadabra” of sex. He watched her hands and remained ready to flee as he grabbed handfuls of her. Kyle felt the tears slip from her eyes and looked at her shoes.