Pinups and Possibilities (9 page)

“I’m not that girl,” she said vehemently.

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ve never gone home with someone from the bar,” she told me quietly. “For all six years that I’ve been on the run, I’ve been true to the only guy I’ve ever loved.”

I had to hear her say it. “Until?”

“Until I met you.” Her voice was soft and laced with emotion. “And I started breaking every rule I have.”

“Do you regret it now?”

I braced myself for the worst, but she just shook her head slowly, those big, blue eyes never leaving my face.

“Not in the slightest.”

“And before you ran?”

She swallowed. “There was only one other. It ended badly.”

My eyes sought hers and locked on the sincerity in her gaze. She wasn’t lying. What did that mean?

Cohen, of course.

The answer leaped from my mind, unwelcome and unwanted.

“How old were you then?” I could barely keep the fury from my voice.

“Just over eighteen.”

Smart. Careful. Motherfucker.

I didn’t realize my fingers had closed into a fist until Polly’s hand gripped mine and pulled them loose.

“I don’t regret that, either,” she told me. “I was an adult long before I turned eighteen. I’m running from the past because I have to. That doesn’t mean I’m dwelling on it.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

“You have a lot of regret?”

“More than enough for this lifetime,” I admitted. “And probably the next one, too.”

“Because of Cohen?”

“Because of
me,
” I corrected.

Her fingers threaded through mine. Warmth spread between them and up my palms, and then settled in my wrists.

“Just so you know, Polly…I’m not that guy, either.”

“Which guy?”

“The one who picks up a girl in a bar, sleeps with her, then forgets about her.”

“No?”

“No. Polly, you’re the only woman I’ve even looked at in as long as I can remember. And I can promise you this—I couldn’t forget you if I tried.”

Her palm was still wrapped over the back of my hand.

“Goddamned Cohen Blue,” she breathed bitterly.

“What the hell does he want from you?” I asked again.

“What do
you
want from
him
?” she countered.

“I want him to leave me the hell alone.”

“Me, too.”

“Finally. Something we agree on.”

“So if we want the same thing, why are we fighting it?”

I wondered if she sensed the change in the air at the same moment I did. Somehow, her question had become a loaded one. It was no longer just about her and Cohen or about Cohen and me. It was about the here and now. I tried to shift it back, angry at myself for the way I was letting her get to me at every turn.

My chest compressed and my next breath was a ragged one. My body stiffened, too, and the arm that had been draped across her withdrew automatically to my side. Polly wasn’t letting me go that easily. She wriggled closer, thrusting her curves against me. I tried to slide away, but my back hit a large rock, and she pinned me there, her hand pressed to my stomach. Her fingers climbed the length of my chest, then wound around my neck. She traced the sensitive spot along my hairline. She stroked the short strands there, and I shivered involuntarily. Her hand worked up farther. She twined her fingers through my hair, formed a fist, and pulled my head back.

It was painful. And exquisite.

I waited for her to stop, but she kept going, growing more amorous by the second.

Her lips found first my chin, then my neck. Her hands released my hair to rove along my back, kneading the muscles there, drawing attention to each ache before moving on to the next. Then her none-too-gentle attention moved downward, stroking my thighs.

“Sweetheart,” I said in a thick voice, unsure where the endearment came from, but immediately wanting to say it again. “Sweetheart.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured.

I tipped her face up. Her cheeks were flushed, and my resolve was crumbling quickly.

“Look at me.” I needed her to see the sincerity in my eyes. “If you start this…if you really start it…I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop it.”

In reply, she bit down on one of my earlobes.

I groaned and brought my arms around her waist, crushing her to my chest. I used my hands to protect her from the hard ground and rolled her to her back. I traced the side of her neck with my mouth.

Why was I holding back?

I couldn’t remember.

“So beautiful,” I said against her throat.

Did she know that she deserved so much more than Cohen could ever have given her? Did what she had at home compare to this moment, right now? I wanted to show her what she was worth.

When she arched underneath me, I brought my lips to hers. My kiss was fervent, and full of relieved worship. Polly responded with equal enthusiasm. I kept one hand under her head while slipping the other under her dress.

My fingers closed over the edge of her underwear. I drew in a rough breath as I recalled how they looked when she danced across the stage. For a second I was torn. I wanted to see the way they outlined the perfect swell of her rear end again almost as much as I wanted to tear them off.

Polly took the choice away from me. Swiftly, she lifted her hips and dragged the underwear off. Her palms found my hips, then paused at the bottom of my T-shirt. I tensed involuntarily as her fingertips grazed my lower abdomen.

Am I going to let her keep going?

She drew back slightly and met my gaze with a look in her eyes that told me she was wondering the same thing.

“You don’t have to take it off,” she murmured.

“I know.”

I was tempted, though. I reached to draw it up and at the last second, she slid her hands away from my stomach and smoothed down my shirt tenderly.

Polly opened her mouth, and I waited for a pity-filled question to come out. Instead, she smiled.

“Next time,” she whispered.

My heart thickened in my chest at the promise. I cupped her face with my hands and placed a gentle kiss on her mouth.

“Thank you,” I stated, my voice rough with desire.

“For what?”

“For breaking your rules,”

I didn’t give her a chance to reply. I leaned away and began to undo her dress slowly, deliberately. After each button opened, I dragged my lips across the newly exposed skin. With each kiss, Polly shivered. Four buttons in and I realized she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Oh, God.

I pushed aside the fabric of her dress and her breasts sprung free, taut and inviting in the humid air. My fingers continued their work on the dress, but my mouth was suddenly preoccupied elsewhere.

Using my tongue, I traced a pattern around first one nipple, then the other. She gasped under the attention, spurring me on. I drew one pink point into my mouth as I worked the rest of her dress free. When I had undone it the whole way, my hand slipped between her legs. Her thighs fell apart with no effort at all.

A noise—midway between a moan and a growl—escaped from my throat as I found her wet and waiting. She reached between us to tug on my shorts. I let her pull them down to my knees, enjoying the way she squirmed under me, then I kicked them off the rest of the way.

She called out my name in a desire-filled whisper, and followed it with a command.

“Painter, please. Now.”

I was helpless to do anything but obey. I plunged into her and lost myself in her lavender-scented world.

My head lay comfortably on Painter’s chest, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long I was going to let myself stay there.

Not as long as I’d like to.
My first thought was far nicer than my second one.
Holy hell. I need to get away from this man.

He made it too damned easy to lose focus. All it took was the sound of his deep voice, full of something that sounded an awful lot like genuine caring, and my heart went crazy, my priorities flew out the window, and my panties dropped to the floor.

And I couldn’t even blame Painter. I’d initiated it. Me. Even when he’d practically begged me to stop.

I wasn’t sure exactly what had set me over the edge. The accusation that I was just playing a game? If that was true, I sure as hell wasn’t winning. Or maybe it was his direct, disarming questions. They weren’t easy to dodge. And then there was his admission that he just wanted to be left alone. We were so much the same that it made me ache. I wanted to know more, to find out how deep the invisible connection ran. To say otherwise would’ve been a lie.

But you can’t afford to stay.

Jayme needed me. I needed him.

Thinking of him didn’t just make my heart ache. It made it twist and burn in my chest.

“Polly?”

“Don’t,” I replied softly.

“Don’t what?”

“Talk to me like this changes anything.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No,” I said.

He gripped my chin gently and he tried to tilt my head up, but I refused to meet his eyes.

Painter sighed. “How can you say it doesn’t?”

“How can you think it does?” I retorted. “Are you going to let me go?”

“I can’t do that,” he admitted.

“And I’m not going to stop trying to get away. So we’re at an impasse.”

He ran a hand down my arm and pushed his palm into my own. His fingers, locked with mine, felt good. And right.

“I’ve been at worse impasses before,” Painter teased. “With worse people.”

“I don’t doubt the part about the worse people,” I muttered, but there was no force behind my words.

Painter’s smile widened and he leaned in to give me a soft kiss. Just like the handholding, the gesture felt natural.

Suddenly, I wanted to tell him the truth about my life. About how it felt to raise myself because my mother wasn’t capable of doing it. About how tired I was of feeling alone. And about Jayme and Cohen.

On the surface, my mind argued against it. I knew better than to trust someone who worked so closely with the man who’d held me against my will for such a large part of my childhood. And it wasn’t like Painter was an innocent man. Whatever he’d done in the past was bad enough that working for Cohen seemed like a better option. Not a good sign.

But what about my own past? It wasn’t perfect, either. Far from it. To get away from Cohen, I’d manipulated and lied and broken laws.

And no one would understand that better than Painter.

My heart told me it was true.

I opened my mouth, but his phone buzzed from somewhere on the ground beside us, stopping me. Painter made no move to answer it. Instead, he took a strand of my hair and wrapped it around his finger.

His phone buzzed again

“Are you going to get that?” I asked.

“No.”

“You should at least check who it is.”

“I’d rather not.”

When it buzzed a third time, I reached over him and fumbled to find it myself. The screen lit up with Cohen’s name. My stomach lurched. I turned back to Painter, and his face said he’d known it before he even saw the caller ID.

“Get it over with, Painter,” I said bitterly. “Talk to him. Tell him you’ve got Jayme.”

He took the phone from my hand and put it face down on the ground, but it was too late. The moment was already lost. I yanked myself from his arms and stood up. I got dressed in a jerky motion, then turned back to him. He hadn’t moved.

“Let’s just go,” I said.

“Polly—” The phone cut off his protest.

I used it as my cue to turn on my heel and head back in the direction of the gas station.

I gritted my teeth at my weakness and refused to turn around and see if he was talking to Cohen.

I didn’t let the pain of traipsing across the near desert in the increasing heat with my feet burning inside my heels slow me down. I didn’t let the matching pain in my chest show on my face, either.

When I stumbled at little over a rock, a strong hand gripped my elbow and righted me, and I realized he’d caught up to me. I shook off his grip and waited for him to comment, but he said nothing. I picked up my pace. The crunch of rock under his feet and the scent of him—sweat and dust and raw masculinity—made me acutely aware that Painter was right behind me, keeping pace but not overtaking me and not walking beside me. Which made me feel even worse.

I brushed off the misplaced guilt and used my anger at myself to feed my renewed resentment of Cohen Blue.

I hated him with a fury like no other. I hated the way he pervaded every bit of my life, the way he made me question my self-worth and the way after even six years away from him, he still managed to destroy any good thing I might have a chance at.

A chance.

Was that what I wanted Painter to be?

Without meaning to, I glanced in his direction.

His eyes were fixed on me, too, and they were full of hurt. I turned away quickly. Because for once, it was easier to dwell on the past than it was to think about the future.

I could remember the moment I realized my true loathing of Cohen Blue as clearly as if had happened last week instead of eight years earlier.

I woke up knowing that it was the fourth anniversary of having no parents. A lot of kids my age—sixteen going on seventeen—would’ve been thrilled with the luxury of not having to answer to someone at every step. But I wished my mom was alive, and I wished I knew if my father was. My life lacked closure and structure and any semblance of normalcy.

I had registered
myself
for school, not because anyone made me, but because it was one of the only things that kept me in touch with reality. I signed all my own permission slips and forged every note. Anything to keep Cohen Blue from acting as a father figure in my life.

But my independence was an illusion.

Four years of faking it.

And I craved something more.

My feet slapped down on Cohen’s hardwood floor as I slipped out of bed to get dressed. I kept my room deliberately impersonal, and not a trace of myself marked the walls or lined the shelves. No rock star posters. No mementos or trinkets. I even kept my books hidden under the desk instead of on top of it, and my clothes were tucked away in a nondescript chest at the foot of the bed.

I took a glance around, finding solace in the blankness of the room, and took a breath before making my way to Cohen’s office, just a few doors down the hall. I didn’t bother to check the time. The man never slept.

I knocked politely, and his cool voice called out from behind the door.

“Come.”

I swung the door open, then closed it quietly behind me, and fought off a shiver. He kept this room unbearably cold.

“I want a job,” I stated without preamble.

“McWhatever is hiring,” he replied with typical indifference.

“You’d let me work outside of the business?” I asked, unable to hide my surprise.

“I let you go to school, don’t I?”

“You give me an armed escort there and back.”

“For your own protection.”

Right,
I thought, but I kept my sarcasm in check.

“You wouldn’t be able to have your guards sit out in the parking lot while I worked. Someone would call the cops,” I pointed out. “I’d get fired on the first day.”

Cohen sighed. “So what are you suggesting?”

“I’ll work for you.”

It pained me to say it. But I’d thought it through carefully.

“You want to work for
me
?” Surprise was evident in his voice.

I forced a nod. “I hadn’t considered that I might have another option.”

“You don’t have one,” he said coldly. “But I can’t imagine you have a skill set that’s valuable to me.”

I took a breath. Cohen had two kinds of business—money, and girls. And there was no way he was letting me in on the first.

“I can dance.”

“You’re a kid.”

“I’ve seen the girls in your club. I can dance circles around them. Before I came here, I had five years of tap and jazz, and a year of hip hop.”

“Those
girls
in my club are women,” he pointed out.

“I’ll be seventeen next week.”

“Seventeen isn’t eighteen.”

Cohen made a dismissive gesture with his hand, and I pushed down a very un-grown-up urge to stomp my foot.

“Give me a chance,” I said instead.

“Forget it. Go back to your books.”

I took a breath and said the words I’d been hoping to avoid. “I watched my mother every day for the first ten years of my life. None of those
women
out there can do what she did.”

He finally looked at me. I mean
really
looked at me. Did he see all the things others—the few who knew her—had commented on so many times? My eyes, framed by dark lashes, were just like hers. My skin, fair like snow, was all my mother. Slowly, I untied my hair from its ever-present ponytail and shook out the dark tresses.

Cohen bit down on the pen in his hand. “Take off your clothes.”

“No.”

I regretted the automatic answer as soon as it was out of my mouth. Cohen put his finger to his lips and his eyes hardened. Now it was going to be about control.

“Off. Everything but the underwear,” he commanded.

I wasn’t going to win the fight.

With trembling hands, I undid the top button on my jeans and forced them down my hips and legs. I kicked them off my ankles. Tears formed in my eyes as I slipped my T-shirt over my head, but they didn’t spill out. The cold air made every hair on my body stand on end.

“Now smile,” Cohen said. “And come here.”

I plastered a smile onto my face and scurried closer. He chuckled. Even when I closed my eyes, I could feel his assessing gaze travel from my head to my toes. My skin crawled.

“Pick up that tray,” he ordered.

My lids flew open and I saw that he was pointing at a platter full of empty glasses.

“Quickly,” Cohen snapped.

I grabbed the tray and balanced it awkwardly on one hand while gripping my balled-up T-shirt in the other.

“Across the room and back,” he said.

I obeyed without speaking. The glasses rattled once, but none fell. I stopped in front of him and met his eyes.

“Can you do that for four hours?” Cohen asked.

“Yes.”

“Dressed like that?”

“Yes.”

If he didn’t believe me, he didn’t say.

“Friday and Saturday nights,” he told me. “Ten until two a.m. You can serve. But you work for tips, under the table.”

I nodded my assent. He made it sound like he was doing me a favour.

“Thank you,” I replied, nearly choking on the words.

I spun to go, and his voice stopped me in my tracks.

“You’ll never be her,” he said. “Not when you’re eighteen. Not when you’re twenty-eight.”

And that’s when I knew I loathed the man.

Painter’s hand found my arm once more, and I realized I was about to walk right past the Mustang.

“We’re here,” he said in a toneless voice that belied both the fact that we’d just slept together and the fact that he was going to turn me in to the man who destroyed me.

Without a word, I climbed into the car and did up my own seat belt.

* * *

We made it two more hours before the adrenaline from my trek across the desert fully wore off and I slumped down in the seat, half-asleep. I’d blown the best chance I’d had to get back to Jayme. And for what?

Painter turned down the radio again and glanced over at me. He’d been staring straight ahead since Cohen’s number turned up on his call display, his expression getting more pinched with each passing minute. At that moment, it was so tight I thought if I touched it, his face might crack.

That doesn’t stop me from wanting to, though.

I looked away forcefully.

A few moments later, a dimly blinking motel sign appeared in the horizon, and Painter slowed down as we approached it.

“We’re stopping?” I asked, surprised.

“I need to sleep.”

“Sleep?” I repeated.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I
am
human, you know. And I’m assuming you’re not interested in sleeping in the car in broad daylight. Not a lot of room for two grown people in here unless you wanna get creative.”

I had an incredibly distracting vision of me in his lap with my dress hiked up around my thighs and my rear end pressed against the steering wheel. I tried to shove aside the image and the physical response that went along with it, and I couldn’t.

Painter came to a stop a few metres from the motel, parked the car and grabbed the handcuffs from the centre console.

“Again?” I said.

“Are you going to run off if I don’t?”

“Probably,” I admitted, and held out my hand, palm up.

He grasped it carefully. If he noticed me shiver at his touch, he didn’t react. He fastened the cuffs, tested them to make sure they were secure, and attached them to the steering wheel.