I heard a few gasps from behind me when the tattoo that ran from the base of my neck to the base of my spine was revealed. I didn’t look like the kind of guy that would be sporting a full back piece, but the black-and-gray image of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had a lot of meaning to me, and the endless hours I had spent getting the ink driven into my skin were a sacrifice I was happy to make in order to sport the living tapestry. It was just one more way I tended to shock those that thought they had me all figured out. No one really knew about the horrors that had spawned me.
“You ready to do this, boss?” Chuck folded my shirt over his arm and scowled at an overly eager girl as she tried to grab for my arm while we made our way to the edge of the circle.
“I’m always ready.” It was a cliché, but also achingly accurate. If you weren’t ready for the inevitable shit life was going to throw at you, then you were never going to make it.
The guy across from me had a warrior’s stance and the flinty gaze of a man not just fighting for a win but for his pride and name. There wouldn’t be a hidden blade with this one. There wouldn’t be a drug-fueled advantage that made him slippery and unpredictable. It was going to be a brutal mashing of fists and feet and we were both going to bleed—me by choice, him because he was bound to underestimate his opponent. It was exactly what I needed after my shitty day in Denver.
One defeat today was one too many.
Chapter 3
Keelyn
This boy was good with his mouth . . . and with his hands.
He also seemed to be really sweet and invested in putting far more effort into getting me naked than he needed to. I put it right out there that if he came home with me I was pretty much a sure thing, but he was still doing his best to seduce me with kisses and woo me with kind words. None of it felt right, so I kept focusing on the pleasant way it felt when his lips touched mine and the way his corrugated abs felt as I ran my fingers across them. If I did that I could block out the fact that his hair was shaggy but not long enough, and that it was brown and not raven’s-wing black. I could also ignore that he was as pale as I was, and not a beautiful tawny golden-brown color.
He was too nice, too soft, and too easy. He kept telling me how pretty I was, how nice my body was, and kept saying he couldn’t believe how lucky he was that I had picked him out of all the other hipsters and locals that frequented the Bar.
He was lucky.
I didn’t know his name, couldn’t recall the color of his eyes if I wasn’t looking at him directly, and every time he opened his mouth to give me another compliment I wanted to scream at him to be quiet. He sounded like he was from the Midwest, not like he was from another country that I would never see. He was all wrong, and I hated Nassir even more for making it feel that way.
I liked sex. Liked the way it made me feel, and often the things it could get me. I never shied away from taking what I wanted and fulfilling my own needs and desires, but as this too cute and too simple boy moved his hands up my chest and started to fumble with my very expensive bra, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to block out the wrongness of this anymore. His hesitation annoyed me. His blundering hands frustrated me, and no matter how hot his body was or how fun his kisses were, there was no getting around that he wasn’t who I wanted. Frankly, he couldn’t handle me, even this watered-down version of me, so there was no way he could give the real me anything close to what I really wanted or needed.
That was Nassir’s fault.
Damn him for showing up and reminding me about everything I left behind. I longed to hate him. He tainted everything, and now his stupid handsome face was all I could see while this guy pawed at my boobs like they were a matched set of stress-relieving balls. Granted they were as fake as a three-dollar bill, but they were still sensitive and deserved to be appreciated for the work of art they were. Now that things were heating up, the guy had lost some of his finesse and was getting grabby and anxious. I hated desperation in a man. It reminded me too much of the lonely guys that used to come into Spanky’s looking for a cheap thrill. He wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want him here, so there was no need to rush . . . only now, with gleaming bronze-colored eyes taunting me, I was no longer in the mood.
With a sigh I put both my hands on his chest and felt his muscles tense as I pushed him off of me. I scooted out from under him and scrambled to the other end of the couch. I was glad I hadn’t taken the cop up on her offer to set me up with one of her friends. I was about to kick this guy out with a serious case of blue balls and that wasn’t something most men in my experience easily overlooked. I didn’t need the cop on my case about that like she was on it about the gash I was still sporting in my forehead from the attack in the parking lot. The redhead saw too much.
Instead I went to the bar that her boyfriend owned part of and picked up the first cute guy that seemed like he could give me what I wanted. I thought I was after sex. I thought I needed to take a guy home to prove to myself that I was in Denver to stay, and getting some kind of social life back was part of that. I thought I needed to prove to myself that it didn’t matter if Nassir wanted me, because so did other guys, and other guys were always a better choice than my devil. Any guy was . . . at least that’s what I thought until this very moment.
I shoved my hand through my newly styled and freshly colored hair and looked at the horny guy who was mumbling my name in obvious confusion. I should have known when I gave in to the temptation of the fancy underwear that more of my old self was going to start knocking against the bars I had caged her in. First it was the bra and panties, followed by actually wearing makeup to work. Then it was a totally revamped hairstyle, which I told myself was simply to cover up the nasty scratch that was still above my eyebrow. It was a lie. I cut my boring locks into a drastically short bob that was significantly longer on one side than the other so that my hair partially covered my eye when it hung in my face. I dyed the sharp new do a fire-engine red so that it was bold and bright, totally eye-catching in a different way than my old stripper hair had been, but just as vampy and sexy.