Controlling Her Pleasure (2 page)

Exactly. So get out of here. Now.

Before this woman ruins your life a second time.

“I don’t know, man. She’s not slum material,” Rafe said, his tone revealing his obvious appreciation for Erin “Angel” Perry. “It’s hard to believe this girl can’t get modeling work anymore. I checked out the site this morning. I’ve never seen real tits like that. No wonder you’re still hung up on—”

Blake silenced Rafe with a look. No one talked about Erin that way, even his best friend. It didn’t matter that she’d betrayed him and broken his heart back when he was a stupid kid. He wouldn’t tolerate anyone treating her like a piece of meat, even if he
were planning to do nearly the same thing himself.

But then, he’d earned the right to teach Erin a thing or two about payback.

“Listen, Blake.” Rafe sobered, his features settling into a serious expression. “I know you’re a big boy and can take care of yourself, but this has bad idea written all over it.”

“Exactly, so get lost already,” Blake said. “Before you get too drunk to drive yourself back to the hotel.”

It was twenty minutes until The Elbow Room closed for the night. He had to get rid of Rafe before then.

Rafe sighed. “Well, if you ask me, you shouldn’t be wasting your time or your money on shit from the past. The future’s golden, brother.”

“I didn’t ask you. For your opinion or your company.” In fact, he’d done his best to ditch his friend, but the other man had insisted on accompanying him to L.A.

“Easy, killer.” Rafe lifted his arms at his sides. “All I’m saying is that we could be in Miami getting pussy right now instead of wasting time in smog city.” His Cuban accent colored the city’s name so it sounded like some exotic mecca. Which it was, in a way. At least for the two of them.

After three years as stars on the reality show
Vegas Ink
, they had quit the entertainment biz to go national with a string of tattoo parlors. The Vegas Ink locations in Reno and Vegas would stay open and be joined by new locations in Memphis, New Orleans, and Miami. Blake and Rafe were going to cash in on their celebrity status and cement their reputations as the best of the best,
the
people to trust when you were looking for more than your average ink, when you wanted certifiable body
art
.

“You’ve got a matching tattoo with the chick, Blake, and she managed to cash in on it. That doesn’t mean she’s got a piece of you.” Rafe barreled on, despite the warning look Blake shot in his direction. “You were young. You made a mistake and got burned. Who cares if—”

“I care.” Blake took another swig of his own drink, the warm, sickeningly sweet Coke as foul as his mood.

If he hadn’t already been determined to go through with his plan, what he’d observed tonight would have done the job. He’d only stepped into the bar for a few minutes, but it had been enough to see everything he needed to see.

Erin still had the tattoo he’d given her the night before his eighteenth birthday, peeking out from beneath her sleeveless white shirt. Not that it came as any surprise. She’d used the tat to make a name for herself and clearly hadn’t been impressed by Blake’s letters asking her to have the piece modified. After all, his work had been as responsible for her nickname as her angelic good looks.

The five-inch figure on her shoulder was the first of the angel tattoos Blake had later become famous for, an exact match to the wide-eyed fallen angel on his own forearm. It was the only one of his tattoos he hadn’t sketched himself and the last remaining example of his father’s work.

Adrian Roberts had never made a living or a name for himself before his death, but he’d been a real talent, a more gifted artist than Blake could ever dream of being. More than anything in the world, Blake wished he could go back to that night when he was ten years old and grab more than one of his father’s sketches before he ran from their burning apartment. Maybe then he’d have more of his dad, the only real family he’d ever had, to hold on to and wouldn’t be so damned obsessed with this one tattoo.

Or with the girl he’d once loved enough to share a piece of his soul with her.

Your soul? It’s just skin. You should know that better than anyone.

Ah, but there was the kicker. He
should
know a lot of things.

But right now, all he knew was that he had to convince Erin to let him cover the tattoo, to rework it into something no longer recognizable as the same angel on his own arm.

It made him sick to know she still sported the profession of his adolescent love on her shoulder. Once the evidence of his foolish belief in soul mates was erased, Blake was certain he’d finally be able to let go of his obsession with his former flame and move on.

Cultures across the world recognized the mystical power of working permanent ink into human flesh. Blake had never been one to believe art was anything more than art, but he couldn’t deny the connection he felt with the only person in the world with whom he shared the exact same ink. A connection that had haunted him for eight long years as he tried to forget about their last night together and the promises they’d made. Promises Erin had broken as easily as she’d broken his heart.

Your broken soul, your broken heart. God. You’re right. You need to do whatever it takes to get this girl out of your system so you can stop being such a fucking pussy.

“Are you laughing?” Rafe asked, obviously as surprised by the phenomenon as Blake himself.

“Yeah.” He smiled and downed the last of his soda. “I was thinking about Delilah and her pussy lecture.”

“The one about the power of the pussy to give life and pleasure and how we shouldn’t use the sacred name of her vajayjay as an insult?” Rafe asked, his contempt for their Vegas office manager’s feminist rants clear in his voice, though his expression softened perceptibly.

No matter how often his partner insisted his decision to transfer Delilah to the new Miami location along with them was purely good business, Blake suspected Rafe had a thing for Dee and would cut off a finger or two to get into her holy vajayjay. Too bad Delilah couldn’t see through Rafe’s macho bullshit to the solid man inside. She actually seemed to have a thing for Blake and had asked him for drinks on more than one occasion, but he’d always declined.

Blake didn’t mix business with pleasure. And even if he did, he didn’t feel anything but friendship for the magenta-haired manager. He’d never felt anything but friendship, or lust, for any woman but one, and it was past time he did whatever it took to get
her
out of his system. He was twenty-six years old, for God’s sake. It was time to get the hell over his high school love and that wasn’t going to happen while they shared the same ink. He’d tried everything he could think of to stop thinking about Erin and their matching tattoos—hell, he’d even gone to see a therapist a few times—but nothing helped.

Something had to be done. Now. He was on the fast track to having everything he’d ever wanted and he wasn’t going to waste another eight years of his life fixated on the one who got away.

“Speaking of the power of the pussy, I think it’s time for me to head back to the hotel,” Rafe said. “See if I can snag a starlet or two at the bar.”

The two men got out of the car, slamming the doors behind them.

Rafe glanced up at him in the dim light of the parking lot’s street lamp. “You sure you won’t come back with me?”

Blake shook his head. “Nope. See you in a few days.”

“Or a few minutes, if she turns you down.” Rafe paused at the door to his BMW roadster. “You know what, I think I’ll come in. See what she—”

“No. I’m doing this alone,” Blake insisted. “I don’t want to be recognized.”

Rafe laughed. “Are you kidding me? You’re Giant Blake Roberts. People are going to recognize you. With or without me.”

“You think people at a bar like this watch Brava?” Blake asked, happier than ever that their reality show hadn’t been on one of the major networks. A certain degree of celebrity he could contend with, but being recognized everywhere he went would have driven him insane. “Besides, I’m undercover.” He pulled his hat lower on his face and tugged down the arms of his black sweater, concealing his full-sleeve tattoos.

Without them, he was a fairly average-looking guy with short brown hair, dark brown eyes, and unremarkable features. Not ugly by any means, but his wasn’t the face that had kept female viewers glued to the screen for three seasons of
Vegas Ink.
Rafe was the pretty boy. If anyone were going to be recognized, it would be him. Blake doubted even Erin would be able to guess his own identity, at least not right away. He’d shot up three more inches and gained about eighty pounds of pure muscle since the last time she’d seen him.

Unless, of course, she watched the show.

Blake hadn’t allowed himself to think much about that, to imagine she might be sufficiently interested to follow his life. Thinking like that was a great way to let this situation get out of hand. He wasn’t here to reconnect with her; he was here to right a wrong and move on with his life. End of story.

“I’ll have my cell if you need me,” Blake said, a grim smile on his face as he shoved his wallet in his pocket.

“I’ll be in Miami by tomorrow afternoon. I won’t need anything.” Rafe slid into his roadster and slammed the door. But it was only a second before he rolled down the window. “Call me if you come to your senses and want to be on the flight tomorrow morning, man. Okay?”

Blake nodded, but it was too late to come to his senses. He was committed to this plan and to a life without memories of Erin haunting him and the sooner he got what he’d come for and put this behind him, the better.

CHAPTER TWO

Blake

Blake waited until Rafe’s car was out of sight before walking around to the front entrance to The Elbow Room. There was no longer a doorman on duty at this hour and the crowd inside had thinned considerably since ten o’clock.

As Blake strode across the worn plank floors, the bartender, with her long black hair pulled back in a braid, announced last call. But the clutch of men surrounding the bar looked far from ready to call it a night.

Why would they¸ when Erin was holding court on top of the bar and growing increasingly daring with her dancing?

Her shirt was hiked up high enough to reveal the bottom of her bra and her thumbs tugged her skirt lower as her hips swiveled, revealing her hip bones and the pale skin below. State regulations expressly forbid the bartenders from stripping, but Blake expected clothes to start coming off any second. An expectation obviously shared by the men surrounding her like a pack of dogs.

His hands tightened into fists, his body itching to defend Erin the way he had when they were kids. Back then, she’d been an innocent fourteen-year-old kid attracting the wrong kind of attention from the senior boys at school. They’d known she was a foster kid and had no one to look out for her. She’d been cornered behind the gym within three days of transferring to Carson City High. By the time Blake came around the corner of the building, her three attackers had stripped her down to her bra and panties and were pinning her to the gum-pocked concrete.

Blake had earned himself two weeks of detention for beating the shit out of the football players who had decided it would be fun to pass around the new girl, but it had been worth it. No one had messed with his foster sister again. He wouldn’t even allow himself to touch her until she turned sixteen, though she’d made her interest clear long before then.

“Kiss me, Blake,” she whispered, tilting her head back to look up at him as they watched the sun sink behind the horizon outside of Carson City. “I want you to be my first kiss.”

“Not tonight,” he said, even though he was already so hard his jeans felt like they were cutting him in half. But they’d been passing a forty of Budweiser back and forth for the better part of an hour and Erin’s eyes were glassy. He didn’t want their first kiss to be like this—something she might not even fully remember.

Besides, she was only fifteen and so innocent, no matter how tough she tried to play it. Until she’d been placed with Phil, she’d had it relatively easy for a foster kid. She still remembered what it felt like to be loved, to be important to someone who cared about her with no strings attached.

But those memories were fading fast. He could see it in the way her shoulders curved as she slunk past the lockers of the boys who had nearly raped her. He saw it in the tears she refused to let fall after Phil slapped her for talking back one time too many.

She needed Blake to be her no strings attached person more than she needed a boyfriend. He knew that.

He also knew that once he kissed Erin it would be hard as hell to keep from doing more. He hadn’t been innocent for a long time and he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to control himself with this girl who’d won his heart without even trying. He wanted to touch every inch of her soft skin. He wanted to know what sounds she made when she came.

He wanted to get his mouth between her legs and show her all the things he’d learned how to do during months of making out behind the bleachers with the biology substitute last year.

“Then when?” she asked, leaning into him, not realizing the sweet torture she was inflicting as her breast brushed his arm. “I want to kiss you so much. I just…love you, Blake. You’re the best person I ever met.”