Breaking Beauty (Devils Aces MC): Vegas Titans Series (18 page)

On Monday, Romy met with her advisor and requested an
official leave of absence from the University of Nevada. She walked through
campus gamely, hoping not to run into anyone she recognized. Thankfully, it was
a dead week—spring break was just around the corner, and everyone was in the
library.

“We’ll miss you, Ms. Adelaide,” stuttered Mrs. Datsun, one
of the few friendly elders who oversaw the Statistics program. Her concern
seemed genuine. “I hope this isn’t in pursuit of some kind of M-R-S degree.”

Romy snorted,
psuedo-heisting a casino was about as far
from marriage as humanly possible
, she thought to herself. “No, ma’am,” she
said instead. “I just need a bit of time to sort through my personal life. I’m
not leaving the field, and have every intention of finishing the program as
soon as the stars align.”

Mrs. Datsun regarded her warily over horn-rimmed glasses.
“Wouldn’t always wait for the stars, m’dear,” she crowed, stamping a few
documents with a creaky paw. But she smiled on standing. They shook hands. Romy
felt more stranded than ever before; Bryson’s not-quite-a-plan was
materializing in real terms all around her and there was no turning back now.

Also on Monday, in a different part of town, Kellan Vaughn
took Paulette and her two pesky offspring to the Bellagio Conservatory and
Botanical Gardens. He’d spent the rest of the weekend prone in her sewing room,
and figured, what with the heavy heaps of cash he kept finding in his socks,
that it would be nice to pay it forward, for once.

While her children marveled at the mounted ceilings, the
giant plush animal recreations loitering through the greenery, Kellan walked
with Paulette around the cavernous lobby. They spoke no more of his ugly
Saturday evening, or the anonymous girl culprit behind his bingeing. Rather,
Paulette talked about her children, and her dreams away from the Sunset Strip.

“I always wanted to be a dancer. Like a Rockette, something
like this.” She swung her purse to and fro as her children ran amok. “Fell
short, I guess.”

“In this town? It’s never too late.”

“No, I’m physically too short. See?” She drew herself up
besides an enormous raffia ladybug that was milling around the fake-landscape.
“No taller than a lady bug. Try to do a high kick with stubs sometime.”

They laughed together at this. Kellan had the peculiar, warm
sense of being in recovery when he was with Paulette. Her sweetness was so
distant, so anathema to the Strip that he could almost all-the-way escape into
the folds of her life. He felt no romance towards her, and especially none
towards her tow-headed monsters, but he was immeasurably grateful for the new
friend. And in a strange way, she reminded him of Romy. She had the same
empathy, behind her eyes—a perceptiveness that let her see the world just as it
was. She let him exist just as he was, never challenging his secrets, the bits
of him he wished to keep private.

But he tried not to think about Romy.

The days of the week passed like this. He slept in the
sewing room. Rather than honing his game on the Strip, Kellan spent his
evenings in, watching her children when she shuffled off to evenings at work.
Paulette wouldn’t change into her bustier until she was far clear of the house,
and the children seemed to have no clear idea what it was that their mother did
for a living. Something about this made Kellan sad.

He made a single trip back into city limits, to fetch his
guitar and resolve the outstanding bill with the motel. While the mini-fridge
sprawled open on his entrance, he didn’t reach for booze. Paulette had
instilled in him a fresh sense of confidence. Motoring by a block of particular
music clubs, he also resisted temptation. As strong as the pull towards the
stage was, he was determined to meet the challenge to perform again on his own
terms. No sappy, sad odes to the one that got away, unspooled drunkenly before
an audience of mobsters and teenyboppers.

When Lefty came for him again, he’d meet him as an equal. As
a man with replenished self-respect.

Bryson moved his headquarters directly into The Windsor,
proclaiming it prudent to stay closer to his enemies. He hid any evidence of
his card-counting practice, behaving just as he imagined a wealthy playboy on
holiday might. He frequented shows, he danced (
just
danced) with other
women, he rode his bike around the streets. He fed the hotel concierge an
elaborate whopper about the terms of his visit. He paid in cash.

And well aware that he was being watched, he hosted Romy in
the afternoons. She hated to meet him in the cold, prison-semblant place of her
employment, but relished their hours together just as she had the week prior.
Without the additional pressure of practice—which they’d now deemed it too
risky to do together—the pair could simply relax into a kind of coupledom. They
watched movies. They ordered room service. And every few hours, Bryson moved
over her body tenderly. Somewhat conspicuously, there was no more talk of love.

All too soon, it was Saturday again. After whiling away a
few hours at her apartment (and giving the same instructions to the neighbor
boy about Goofy’s care, in-the-event-of-an-emergency), Romy donned her
newly-repaired leotard and prepared for what had now become a sickening
routine. She scraped her hair into the requisite ponytail. She pearled her lips
with the fire-engine red gloss. She pressed her dog to her chest in a final,
desperate gesture, and then drove to The Windsor.

That night, they fell against one another in the hall beyond
the bedroom. As planned, Bryson had won the final tournament with Kellan coming
in second, after a prolonged and testy battle with a mid-level executive who’d
won big at the Sands the night prior. Romy had flicked her hair and sifted
imaginary gold all to a tee. Their routine had the easy quality of a
well-rehearsed play by now. It had almost been fun.

Fresh from another week spent in Bryson’s bed, it had been
easier to fend off images of Kellan. So far, the two of them hadn’t even had
cause to speak alone. As per Bryson’s implied request, Romy had made no move to
contact the other Vaughn brother over the past few days. The brief thrill of
remembered longing, the memory of his sweet baby-face, even the lyrics of her
song were falling away. So what if he’d looked especially clean-cut this
evening, in a new tailored suit, his hair slicked back? She’d given her time to
Bryson. She was preparing, really, to give Bryson her heart completely.

“You were wonderful out there,” the older brother murmured
now, breath hot against her ear. His hands shivered as he groped about her
middle, as if unable to find a resting place. His fingers resolved in the
crotch of her leotard, where they pressed up. She felt like she might spin away
down the hall.

“I’d be nowhere without you, Clyde.”

“Well then, Bonnie,” he murmured. They’d made a
not-so-secret language together this week; also,
Bonnie and Clyde
had
been playing on the hotel network, and it’s prescience to the current situation
tickled them both. “Then let me show you
my
appreciation.” Bryson turned
Romy around firmly, pressing her pelvis against the flat of his hotel room
door. She felt him behind her, as he rubbed himself between the crevice made by
taut fabric. Her ass quivered in anticipation. He reached up and slowly pulled
her hair back, by the ponytail—there, he began to carve a trail of kisses down
her exposed neck. He sucked harder and harder.

“Bryson, the door.”

“I don’t care who sees.”

Despite his fervent protests, Romy fumbled for the door
handle. Her palm was sweaty. It was amazing; they’d been having consistent sex
for two weeks now, and she still wanted this man with an unparalleled hunger.
Her body craved him, like food.

Barreling past the foyer, they fell short of the bed. He
grasped her breasts through her leotard, peeling the fabric away like petals of
a flower. Falling to the floor, they felt victorious. For the first time, Romy
could imagine fucking Bryson with the fresh abandon of a free person. In hours,
they’d be whizzing by her apartment, picking up her dog, and high-tailing for
Northern California. They’d engineer a whole new life.

Shimmying frantically out of the foul leotard—and balling it
with fury, certain she wouldn’t need to wear it again—Romy gave herself to
Bryson. She lay stripped on the carpet. He gathered her tiny body in rough
hands, positioning her on all fours. Then, he unbuckled his pants and slid into
her slowly, from behind. Romy gasped suddenly and exhaled with a deep groan as
his hugeness filled her; she felt the top of her body bearing down on the tip
of his cock. She felt every contour, every piece of him.

“
Give it to me
,” she commanded, through gritted
teeth. They’d never made love—no,
fucked
—quite like this before. His
power thrilled her. With groping palms, he massaged her ass as he moved swiftly
in and out, in and out, pumping his way towards an epic climax…

At the crest of their simultaneous orgasm, the hotel room suddenly
filled with a strange sound: feedback. Bryson, oblivious, shuddered with
finality against her ass. Romy felt him trickle against the insides of her hot
thighs. Her lover gasped for breath.

“Did you hear that?” she croaked, voice hoarse from screaming.
Bryson reached a lazy hand down, fondling her breasts loosely.

“Hear what, Bonnie?”

“I’m serious, Bryson. I heard a noise.”

“What kind of noise?”

“A microphone kind.”

Instantly, her lover sprang to attention. Bryson scanned the
walls of the hotel room with his familiar spy-catching span. And then, as if in
response, the sound arrived again. The muffled sounds of voices, perhaps. The
conferring of a small congress.