5. Knight
Watching Trixie ‘Dragon O’Hara doing a pole routine in that blue dress was a whole new level of torture.
I needed to kill every single person in the club watching perfection throw herself into a new low.
Why was she so good at something she’d never done before?
Why didn’t she just punch me out and be done with it?
The last time we’d been in a bar together, she kicked my face. She was on top of the bar, but she was boxing some idiot, not this…
Power. Grace. Flexibility. Like a volcano spilling out of that ridiculous satin piece of nothing.
Where was her leather? I didn’t like her being careless with her image.
Pushing the masculine was easy for her, comfortable considering how she’d been raised, but this…
sex appeal like this was absolutely not okay to display to the predators who frequented this particular establishment.
I’d been sitting in the back with the owner, trying not to punch Connie’s smug smirk off his face, trying to get him to see reason and let me buy him out and close this place down, maybe turn it into a bowling alley, something that would suit a place across the street from a hospital and the elementary school down the road.
And then Trixie Dragon O’Hara walked in and ordered a martini, wearing the dress. The blue satin did nothing to camouflage her perfect proportions, muscles and curves that put every other woman in the entire universe to shame. She was incomparable.
The waitresses weren’t sure how to treat the woman in the strip club, whether they should try to get tips by flirting, or if she was there to assault some guy who had bothered one of her friends. Her reputation was a mess, and she didn’t do a thing about it. No, she made it worse.
And then she got drunk, bumped into someone whose family was linked to mine, so I knew he was no good, and then took all her drunken lack of inhibition to the stage.
I should have kept my distance, but I wasn’t about to let the vile creatures running this establishment think that she didn’t have friends.
And then I started talking. Suddenly my brain wasn’t connected to my mouth, and all I knew was that she needed to see me, and see herself, and stop taking risks with her happiness and well-being.
She belonged in her room, wrapped in something cozy while she did whatever she did that I specifically didn’t know about behind her closed door. By herself. And way too much bleach. If that meant infuriating her…but then she fell and I caught her. Why did she feel so good?
And then I was talking about engines. Even though I specifically knew that the more she wanted me, the more stupid she’d be, and I did not want her to be stupid.
Unless she was stupid with me. But of course I didn’t actually want that, and I wasn’t drunk off martinis, so I had no excuse to completely lose my mind.
At any rate, that’s what I thought as I stood outside the club, staring at the space where my bike had been.
I had no bowling alley, no bike, and no Trixie in a blue dress. Someone else had Trixie in a blue dress, and he thought she was a stripper. Because she told him she was a stripper. Trixie didn’t lie, but when she was drunk, truth became negotiable.
“Wasn’t your bike parked there?” Minx asked, batting her lashes at me. She looked as innocent as she always did, but she wasn’t part of Jezebel’s girl’s night for her cupcakes.
“She’s an excellent driver. My bike’s in good hands.” Trixie’s hands had felt so good when she ran them up my chest and around my neck, letting me hold her. She’d never stayed so close to me before. I was going to spiral about this night for a very long time.
Minx bit her bottom lip, looking innocent and sweet. “That’s true. She’ll only crash it on purpose!” She turned and waved at the driver who pulled up at the curb. “You’re my ride! Thanks for coming so quickly.” She climbed into the car, leaving me alone with my messy thoughts.
A sudden realization had me following her into the car, bumping her over to the other seat while I handed a large bill to the driver. “We’re in the same direction.”
“No, we aren’t,” Minx said, frowning at me. “I have a condo on Crescent, and you live in Providence.”
“What’s going on with you?” I asked, frowning at her, studying the way she flushed and didn’t meet my eyes.
“Why did you put Trixie in a blue dress? What did you do before that sent her to a strip club? Were you at the hospital for Girl’s Night?
You were. Why? She’s been to enough hospitals.
Unless she’s sick. Is she sick?” Cancer? Diabetes? Heart failure?
My own heart beat faster and faster while she stared at me and then sighed and shook her head.
“I took her to meet a guy. I thought she’d like him.
Actually, I think she did like him, but she was almost as bad with him as with you.
She always sabotages her own happiness. I don’t know.
It’s been so long since she had a bender, so I thought maybe she was over it. ” Her adorable nose wrinkled.
My heart wasn’t sure if it should panic at the thought of Trixie wanting someone else, or fly because she wasn’t dying.
I nodded like that made complete sense. Kidnapping Trixie and protecting her from Minx’s machinations was the only sensible solution to this mess. Except that I knew that wasn’t the right reaction, so I’d choose another one. “The dress was for him. Did he like it?”
She rolled her eyes. “What do you think? Of course he liked it. Dr. Williams loves blue. Sky-blue is his favorite color, and she looked so good, didn’t she?
I mean, the boots were not a match for the classic silhouette of the spaghetti-strap princess-line mini-dress, but who was looking at her boots? ”
A memory of her swinging around that pole with her back arched and the spaghetti-strap princess-line mini-dress showing way too much of her perfect everything hit me squarely in the chest. Maybe I was the one with heart failure.
I tamped down all my feelings and gave her a cool smile. “Certainly not Dr. Williams.”
She studied me for a second before she shrugged and went through her purse, looking for lipstick.
Trix would never hurt a beautiful machine, would she?
No. Except that maybe a drunk Trixie would be careless with herself, and while she might protect the machine, she wouldn’t protect herself the way she deserved to be loved and protected.
I wanted so much to be the one who protected her from herself.
But she’d never want me. Not the real me, and not the fake me.
Which meant that I needed to not let myself spiral about the way she felt in my arms. I had to somehow not fixate on her even after I’d smelled her, felt her, practically tasted her.
Minx reapplied the red lipstick that perfectly matched her hair. It was amazing that she could find anything in her bottomless bag. She was avoiding looking at me again. What was she up to?
She put the lipstick away and finally met my eyes. “You should tell her that you like her.”
I studied her, calculating her words, her motives, balancing what I knew about her against what I knew about Trixie. And myself.
The lobby. Minx had stopped in the lobby when she’d seen me and started talking about her vacation plans for spring break when her siblings would be out of school, so did I think that would be okay if she took some extra time off?
She never talked to me like I was her boss out in public.
It wasn’t common knowledge that I owned Dove’s Rest, the safest strip club in the city, but of course Felicia would know who signed their stubs, and of course she’d tell Minx, and of course Jezebel would know before anyone else.
But Trixie didn’t. She didn’t know I owned the hotel either.
She’d move out the second she realized, because she hated me, probably because the first time I told her I liked her, she hesitated before stapling my heart to the floor and dancing on it with her steel-toed boots.
She wouldn’t admit to wanting anything other than another ridiculous set of tires, at least not sober, and I’d never take her drunk.
I had an entire wall of tires in my garage that I’d started collecting years ago, but she never came to my garage, drunk or sober.
At any rate, Minx came to my hotel and started talking shop when Trixie was bound to show at any second.
She’d intentionally wanted her to see us together.
How was setting Trixie off with me going to play into her introduction to Dr. Williams?
It just made people in the lobby think that Trix was more interested in Minx than in me.
And she was, of course, in a completely platonic way. Probably.
I smiled at her. “That’s a great idea. Let’s do parts. I’ll be Horse, and you’ll be Trix. ‘Trixie, I like you. Let’s be girlfriend and boyfriend.’ Your turn.”
She leaned closer to me, peering into my eyes in a way most women didn’t do.
Minx hadn’t found me attractive since the first time she’d seen me with the Dragon.
That happened. I couldn’t help but forget about every other creature in the world when my personal goddess of tread invaded my space.
In Minx’s mind, I already belonged to Trixie.
In my mind, I also belonged to her. More disturbingly, she belonged to me.
Happily, my mind wasn’t a place I visited very often.
She sat back and crossed her arms, frowning at me. “You really do act like you’re in middle school. I substitute teach sometimes, and the ones who really like a girl act like they like someone else, the same way you always have women hanging on you.”
My bodyguards were hand-picked to give that impression.
I had twelve on rotation that didn’t mind extra pay for playing my escorts.
Ever since Nix got married, taken off the market, I’d become the WMMR’s most eligible bachelor.
If I was already surrounded by women, particularly bodyguards who knew how to gently body check someone, I didn’t have to personally try to extricate myself from the grasp of a delicate blossom.
A rabid, disrespectful, objectifying, delicate blossom.
If Trixie actually dated me, no other female would dare touch me.
I smiled at Minx. “Or I just like women hanging on me. I don’t like that you took her to meet another man after you set her up to be jealous about me.
If you’d like to set her up with a man, he should look the opposite of me.
He should also be short. If he smelled like garlic and socks, that would help.
The more she actually wants someone, the less likely she is to take him. You should know that.”
She stared at me for a second before she gave me a sweet smile. “Wow. You really don’t know Trixie if you think garlic is a turn-off. Her apartment always smells like garlic. She cooks this amazing…”
I raised my hand, cutting her off. “No. You can’t tell me any details about Trixie’s personal life.
Particularly her cooking.” It was too late.
I had a whole set in my head: Trixie in that blue dress with an apron over it, barefoot in her kitchen, smiling at me the way she smiled at her trucks. Soft. Open. Inviting.
I put my hand on the driver’s shoulder, making him scream and gurgle before he got it together.
“I’ll get out here,” I told him before refocusing on Minx while he found a place to pull over. My voice was hard. “Don’t use me to set her off. If you have to set her up with men in hospitals, don’t involve me.”
She raised her brows, eyes large and wounded before narrowing. “You said that like a threat.”
“It’s a promise. The next time you put her in a dress and she lands in my arms, I’m going to keep her there. My self-control isn’t perfect. And you are playing a game with someone who trusts you.”
The car came to a stop, and I got out, leaving Minx staring after me like that last bit had landed too hard.
Minx did have delicate feelings, but they weren’t any of my business.
If she didn’t want to feel like she was betraying her friend, then she shouldn’t betray her.
Setting Trixie up to date would feel like a betrayal to Trixie, but she’d swallow it down until it came out in a bender.
With the reptile from my circle who was too rich for her blood.
I walked down the street and let rage swallow me.
She’d stolen my bike. And my heart. I couldn’t just ignore the theft because I was playing a person who didn’t have unlimited resources.
And I liked that bike. I’d put a lot of customization into it so it fit my frame.
It was customized for me, and she’d stolen it.
That at face value felt like flirtation, but taking someone else on my bike, particularly that blonde money bag, felt more like an insult. The kind that actually hurt.
I ducked into a back alley that service people used. It wasn’t the bright, glimmering scene Las Vegas showed the public. Which suited me just fine.
“Hey, Horse,” a man crouching in the shadows said, sounding rough.
I squinted until I made out his features. “Paulo? What happened to you?”
Paulo worked as a lights guy on some of our shows.
He laughed as I pulled him upright and got to see his bruises, torn clothing, and split lip.
“It’s a good night to die,” he said merrily, with an underlying tone of desperation.
He’d gotten addicted to gambling and lost his family to it.
Looks like some of his creditors caught up to him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, letting him slump against the brick wall and following suit.
“You don’t think it’s a good day to die?”
“First of all, it’s not day. Second of all, it’s not about what I think. If we’re talking about me, I’d say it’s a good day to kill.”
That broke through his glaze of drunken desolation. “Who you gonna kill? Nix? Bulldog?”
I took a deep breath and let the anger settle in my bones. “We’re going to kill your demons. Drag them out into the night so we can vanquish them. You look pretty rock-bottomed out. That’s a great place to build.”