His eyes were open all the way now and they were trying to melt me onto the bathroom floor with their intensity. I saw his broad chest start to rise and fall more rapidly. I felt the way his cock quivered all along my tongue as I hollowed my cheeks and sucked him down as far as I could stand. I felt the muscle I was holding on to flex so hard it felt like stone under my touch and then he swore at me again and it was all over in a hot rush of desire and some more bad words.
We were both breathing heavily as I rocked back and then climbed to my feet. We watched each other like combatants instead of almost-lovers, and I turned around without a word to clean the blood off my face and to get dressed. Caring about this man was hazardous, and if Conner didn’t end up pulling the trigger first, the feelings I had for Titus might very well be the end of me.
I pushed my hair back after I got myself situated and looked at him in the mirror, where I could see him watching me as he zipped up his pants.
“I don’t know, Titus, but if you can’t resist me, maybe you should stop trying so hard. In this place you never know what pile of shit tomorrow is going to hand you, so having something that makes you feel good for even a second needs to be valued.”
He shoved his hands through his hair and then reached down by his hip to twist the door open. There was no hiding what we had been in here doing. It was all over him. I was all over him and he was most definitely stamped all over me. I loved it.
“You shouldn’t be what makes me feel good, Reeve.” There it was. The harsh reality of the way things were between us. Him on one side of the divide and me always on the other.
“But I do, and you’re just going to have to learn how to deal with that.” I swept past him back out into the strip club, hoping he wouldn’t see the way my knees wobbled. I flipped my hair and shoved my hands in my pockets assuming he would guide us to the door. We had definitely made an impression tonight, and if Conner had eyes in the club, there was no missing the way we had just come out of the same bathroom all rumpled and sexed up. Mission accomplished, even if my heart and my ego had taken an equal pounding with Titus’s last harsh words.
I was surprised and a little annoyed when he stopped in front of one of the stages where Nassir was standing with Chuck. I saw both men give me a once-over then smirk at the dark-haired cop. The lights suddenly went down and an old, bluesy jazz song started to blast through the sound system. I shifted my gaze to the stage as a burning-white spotlight suddenly hit it and a girl dressed in a way-sexified, old-timey gangster outfit strutted her stuff onto the stage. She had the fedora. She had the suspenders. She had a gun stuck in her garter belt. She even had a lit cigar clamped between her teeth as she sashayed around the stage in platform Mary Janes. I tried not to bristle as all three of the men stopped what they were talking about to watch her as her white button-up blouse hit the floor, quickly followed by her tiny black skirt. She had a great body and she was really working the crowd, but even with the blinding stage lights it looked like she was staring right at where Titus was standing.
I huffed out a breath and turned my head as a body moved up next to mine. Key had gotten dressed and she was now sporting a puffy eye but she still looked better than anyone had the right to. She grinned at me as I glared at her. “You hit like a girl.”
I snorted a response. “Those shoes of yours are deadly.”
“Why do you think I wear them all the time?” She stuck her leg out and I noticed she did have crazy pointy and tall heels on even though she was now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She tilted her head to where the men appeared engrossed in the erotic scene on the stage. I wanted to kick Titus. “You’re gonna have to brawl with more than just me for him. You’re gonna have to fight Bax, the city . . . hell, you’re even going to have to throw down with him if you want him.”
I lifted an eyebrow as the music picked up and seemed to get louder. The girl was now down to nothing but her G-sting and she wasn’t dancing so much as she was writhing on the stage. She looked like she was making love to an invisible man.
“I’ve been fighting every single day of my life. Sometimes I think all I have left is fight.” If anything was worth the fight it would be any time I had with Titus before things inevitably blew up around us.
She gave me a real smile, not the one she used to con men out of money or get people to think she was just a dumb stripper. It made her look like an entirely different person. She went from a sex goddess to a normal woman, one that just happened to be amazingly beautiful.
“Fighting is all any of us know inside and out. It’s exhausting.” I muttered my agreement and seriously considered reaching out to pinch Titus in the arm as the girl on the stage acrobatically shifted to her feet and slinked to the edge of the stage. She spit the now stubby stogie out of her mouth much to her audience’s delight and pulled the gun she had in her leg band out of the garter. She pointed it out into the crowd. I thought it was a toy, maybe filled with water or those little plastic caps that made cute popping noises.
I was wrong.
Before she pulled the trigger, I was hit by a truck. Not really a truck but getting slammed to the ground with Titus’s full body weight sure felt like it. Gunshots echoed through the club, as did screams of pain from both men and women as the gun continued to go off. I heard Titus scream something at Nassir and then he was gone, his hands flying to where his gun rode on his hip. I went to scramble up after him but bodies were everywhere, running for the door trying to escape the melee. I turned my head to see where Key had ended up and gasped when I saw the bright red bloom of crimson that was decorating her chest.