Bare Knuckle: Vegas Top Guns, Book 5 (7 page)

She shook her head. “No. I’m in. Let’s do this.”

She meant it. She was stark naked in a near-stranger’s bed. What the hell was the point of backing out now? Like that moment walking down the corridor toward the boxing arena, she found the part of her that loved to be watched. She arched her back, tilted her chin toward the ceiling.

Another flash.

That’s more like it.

“We’ll pose you until it’s not fake anymore,” he said.

“We?”

“You picked a pose, right? Now my turn. Hands and knees, head down. Let me see the back of your neck.”

Trish obeyed. A shiver crossed her bowed shoulders. Her skin sizzled, knowing he was back there behind the camera, utterly absorbed, setting up for the next shot.

Flash.

She tossed her head, hair flying up.

Flash.

“Back up. Drag your hand between your legs.”

Flash.

Eric didn’t take a lot of pictures. He wasn’t some shutter-happy guy who’d sort the good from the bad later. Each one was as deliberate as the last. Neither did he stop. Mere seconds separated the shutter’s click.

The poses they traded conveyed shifts of mood. Playful. Sensual. Outright dirty. Trish laughed and shook her head until she was dizzy. Free and eager and completely turned on.

Flash.

“I like that one,” he said quietly.

She stopped. The air between them thickened quickly. It wasn’t anonymous anymore. It was long past fake.

“Hand clamping your breast.”

She tossed her head back, not just because she was touching herself. He was ramping up the intensity. Soon it was her turn. His. Back to her. Each shot slid away from play, down toward mindless, dark places. She thrust two fingers in her pussy and gasped.

“Lick them, showgirl.”

She tasted herself and heard him groan. The shutter clicked, bathing her in light. He stood like a shadow behind that bright barrier. Black on black. She couldn’t see his eyes anymore. Not that it mattered. The camera lens was his gaze now. Never, not ever, had she been watched so intently. Hair prickled on her forearms—the dazzling thrill of being the center of his world.

“Are you touching yourself yet, Eric?”

“Not yet.”

Another snap of those empowering lights. “But you will. Like I’m touching myself.”

“Yes,” he rasped.

“You’ll come for me too—after I come for you and you’ve captured every moment.”

“Fuck, Trish. Shut up.”

The flash blazed despite his growled warning. He was keeping that memory too.

She blew a kiss toward the camera’s silvery lens and smiled—another of the real ones, because she was smack in the middle of the most erotic night of her life.

Chapter Six

Thank God they’d already had sex.

If Eric hadn’t been allowed that release, he’d be more looking-over-a-cliff lightheaded. Trish wasn’t simply beautiful. She was giving him something he hadn’t had in so goddamned long. Not since before his crash. He thought he’d recovered along with the scars that barely inhibited his range of movement. A month in the hospital. Six months of intensive rehab. He’d only been cleared to fly in June—right around the time the legal system got around to handing down Carey’s sentence for aggravated assault. Prison, or four months getting clean.

The kid was smart enough to give it one last try, because it was his last. Another fuckup meant Carey would go to prison.

Returning to boxing a year after his crash had probably been dumb, except it was what he knew. Need a quick spot of cash? Just go a few rounds with an arrogant wannabe. More than that, boxing was proof that Eric was better. Stronger.

Fixed.

The night was proving him wrong. He felt like he was running to catch up. He hadn’t gone hunting for the rush of photography in so long. The crass way, the easier way, had been his life for too long. Static and numb.

Fly. Fuck. Fight.

When had he forgotten there were bigger thrills to be had?

Although Trish was naked, freshly fucked and completely open, she was the epitome of secrets.

His skin pulled and tingled with anticipation. She’d been artificial at first, more
Hustler
than herself, but she was slowly shedding the tips and tricks she’d absorbed while drinking infant’s formula. Girls like her—like his slightly older neighbor Tiffany Juno, back in working-class Detroit—were probably why he’d taken a turn toward voyeurism. Tiffany had been a lot like Trish, appearing as perfect as could be. Only, one night when Eric had been too damn young, he’d seen her undress through open shades. She’d worn a padded bra over small but beautifully formed breasts. False lashes had actually detracted from wide, luminous eyes. She glowed with sweat after working out, her blonde hair limp and sticky against her temples.

She was someone different when no one was watching. He’d wanted more of that.

Trish’s turn to pose. She shifted up, her ass off the sheets, until she was kneeling. Her slender thighs squeezed together while she fondled her pussy, fingers sliding between her lips. He let her play. Let her stroke herself until her head fell back and that pale blonde hair draped over her upper back. Her breasts plumped together into tempting mounds. He could drag his tongue across that skin. Taste her.

Instead, he adjusted the camera’s focus, narrowing in to capture her shoulders and the long, slim column of her throat. He’d know what she was doing down below, out of the shot. He would know by memory and because her tendons were tense beneath delicate skin.

He hesitated, enjoying the secret. Once he snapped the button, the moment shifted because of the intrusion of the camera and flash—a reminder that he was watching. He liked that. She wasn’t alone. And God, she seemed to love it.

Her hand worked between her legs. The bow of her shoulders hitched. She’d found a sweet spot. Either that, or she liked the flash, liked knowing he’d saved the picture.

“Tell me, Trish. All this.” He waved at the cameras and the equipment. At the space between them, which made her seem inaccessible, like a trophy rather than a woman he’d fucked. “Do you like it?”

Her smile curved as she stroked between her legs. The softness of her expression was a contrast to the sharpness of the air.

“I do. A lot.” She laughed then, bright and silvery laughter that bounced around his loft, up to the high ceilings. “I’m probably supposed to say no, right? Give some token protests. I barely tried modesty. Truth is, I’m really digging this.”

He tightened his free hand into a fist as he snapped off another shot.

“Hey now,” she said on a near laugh. “That was two in a row on me. It’s your turn.”

“Lie down. Legs up and together.”

She obeyed instantly. He hadn’t specified, but she angled her head toward the top of the bed. His view was of her ass and her legs pointing toward the ceiling, her body toned and in control.

She kept her fingers between her legs. She was gleaming wet. The soft cleft of her ass was lush against the dark and tangled sheets. Picture taken, saved. Kept forever.

Jesus, these shots would drive him crazy for months. Maybe years.

She wanted to be on his wall, but Christ, that might not happen. Every time he saw these pictures, he’d be as high-wire crazy as he was at this moment. He was torn. He wanted to touch, wanted to watch. Touching would change the tone of their play when he wasn’t ready for that yet. So he held back.

A measure of control, at least.

“Knees toward your chest.”

She curled into a knot of vulnerability. The pose accentuated her lower lips. Two fingers in her sheath. She worked herself slowly.

Another picture. Another secret. All his.

“I bet girls do this for you a lot, don’t they?” Her voice was husky and raw. The molasses of the South stuck every word together. “They look at that body of yours and fall all over themselves to make you happy.”

She shifted, lowering her knees and slowly lifting her shoulders off the bed as if she were drunk. He could sympathize. Jack Daniels didn’t hold a candle to all this crazy. He ground the heel of his hand over his cock. That hard pressure helped ease the insistence of his need.

Without an order this time, she lifted her fingers from her pussy and licked them. Slowly. She watched him the whole time. He could have taken a picture then, a dozen more, but he was half-smacked, lost in his own head.

“Well?” she asked. “How many women have taken one look at you and stripped? You’re one sexy piece of man meat, you know?”

Shit.

His body jerked until his bones locked solid. Apparently he was more uncomfortable regarding his post-crash scars than he’d been willing to admit. The trip to Canada was supposed to have been a routine training exercise. He’d only been there to fill his buddy’s slot. Liam “Dash” Christiansen had requested leave to stay home and patch up his crumbling marriage. Eric had been lucky to survive after the way he’d punched through the F-16’s canopy, out of a cockpit filled with fire. His parachute had caught on a stand of pines then slammed him into a rock pile.

Leaving him completely marked.

“You want me to ask you how many sugar daddies you’ve had?”

Her shoulders snapped into hard blades. “Who says I have?”

The line of her jaw could turn fierce and square. Good to know. He snapped the shot, then another quick, rude flurry for good measure. This was Trish. No games. Pissed and turned on at the same time. He liked the mix.

Her eyes narrowed. “You take
that
picture. Not when I lick girl come off my fingers.”

“That picture was
you
.”

“I haven’t had sugar daddies.”

“No matter to me.”

“I haven’t.” She sat. Her knees fell open naturally, crossed with one pale sole of her foot up on her knee. She played idly with her cunt. Her fingers were gracefully long, like those of a pianist. Although seemingly artless, her expression had turned cloudy. “I’ve never taken cash from a man. Only…presents. I know it probably seems like semantics—I’ve been told that before—but it matters. To me.”

He snapped off another picture, to save and examine more closely later. “I tell you what. Tell me your biggest present, and I’ll tell you the number of women.”

Her gaze snapped back to the camera lens and took control of the moment.

“A car.” She grinned, as if to downplay the importance. “But it was used, an old beater. Hardly counts to some girls I know. I sold it to pay for my first semester of tuition. Your turn.”

Three pictures in a row. He was getting impatient. Couldn’t help it. He liked it when she was tuned in to him, into the pressure that built between them. “Three.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Bull crap.”

“Truth.”

“You’ve had more girls than that.”

“Sure. Photographed some and fucked more.” He snapped off one more shot. The flash blared white. “But not the two together. That’s only happened with three women.”

“Huh. I like that.”

“And I like it when you’re surprised.”

“But you
love
this. You’re probably three seconds from throwing me down on this bed. Your prick’s so hard I’m amazed you can talk. I can hear it, you know. In your voice. You’ve got an amazing voice, especially when you’re turned on.”

She crawled forward on the bed, sat on the edge and tucked her heels against the bottom frame. Her knees were elevated, her whole pussy bare to his gaze. She dipped inside. A little more. Then out, circling, pinching her clit. Her ribs hitched high on a gasping moan. He snapped picture after picture.

“You should talk more,” she said between moans. “I like your voice.”

He smiled. “Talk about what? How I want to bone the hell out of you? How your pretty snatch turns my brain inside out?”

“Yes. That.”

Her fingers stroked. She caught a nipple between her fingers and pinched. A little mean with the pleasure. He could give her rough. He was skilled at that, after all. All the sweet shit that was supposed to come afterwards—not so much. Commitment? With what free time? With what stores of energy?

Trish was lost in her own head. Her eyes had drifted closed. Head back. She was pouring pleasure over herself, with shudders and jerks. She moaned. Her eyes snapped open. She looked dead at him, in the moment with him. The skin over her cheeks flushed. This was a window into what she must do all alone in her bed, when she was bored by men offering gilded versions of the world.

“Jesus,” she moaned. “I’m going to come. There. Now. Take the fucking picture…” Her words dissolved into a groan that rocked down his spine and took hold of his balls.

She could be faking. He wouldn’t put it past a girl in her situation.

He snapped off a picture, but after quickly flipping a ten-second timer, he strode forward.

Into the shot.

He’d never been in a shot.

Eric dropped to his knees, pulled her hand away and shoved two fingers in her cunt, which still clenched with her orgasm. Juices poured over his palm.