“I’m serious. Actually, I’m a bouncer at a strip club, and I see women all the time ... gorgeous women, and none of them compare to you.”
This time, she didn’t laugh or play-punch me. She blushed. A faint pink hue rushed across her bronze cheeks and neck, and my dick stirred in my jeans as warm blood pumped heavily through my veins. I took off my basketball warm-up jacket, leaving me feeling exposed in my black T-shirt, the tattoo running up my forearm on display. She peeked but didn’t say anything.
Turning the tables on me, she said, “Tell me about you, Mike, other than that you spend your days and nights with gorgeous women.”
I leaned against the wall behind me, pulling Lynx back against my chest, our legs tangled together, and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder. “Let’s see. My name is Michael. Michael Anthony Wind, but everyone calls me Big Mike.”
“I think I prefer Michael,” she said confidently.
“You may be the first. Anyway, I was born and bred here in Vegas, raised with money and nannies, and I hated every second of it. I know ... real first-world problems. My parents divorced a while back, and my mom never really bounced back. My dad keeps trading up for younger makes and models. And me, I skipped out on college and went to work as a bouncer. I guess you could say, I cashed out of their lifestyle a long time ago.”
Lynx smiled, her lips turning up on both sides, her white teeth shining through. “Well, Big Mike, sounds to me like you got it all figured out. You didn’t like where you came from, and you made a change.”
There was no reason to mention my trust fund and the millions I had sitting in the bank, waiting for me to actually do something with my life. That knowledge always changed people’s perception of me, and I liked being just a bouncer.
Her hand went to my arm and traced the letters inked there. “Now I know what this means.”
CASH OUTwas inked in cursive along my forearm. I decided a long time ago that all my family had was too much. Wanting for nothing made a person not give a fuck.
“God, LA. What a cesspool that place is, right?” I said, changing the subject.
“Yep. It’s so crowded and full of smog, and we didn’t live in the best neighborhood. My mom was white, but the whiter neighborhoods never really accepted me. I didn’t get asked on play dates or sleepovers or any of that shit since I had a black dad, even though he was way out of the picture, so Mom moved us to a more ethnic area. Still, I couldn’t wait to get the hell out. There was so much crime, and I hated going to sleep at night.”
The flashing lights of the Strip flickered in the background, but weren’t the least bit distracting from the honest beauty in front of me. My heart pounded, and my brain worked overtime trying to think of what to say. What would be substantial and meaningful enough for this woman?
“Is your mom buried there?” I didn’t know where that question came from. It bothered me that they were geographically separated, even though her mom was dead.
She shook her head. “That’s the only reason I didn’t want to leave. My mom was a good person at heart, but she was dealt a bad hand. Over and over again.”
I pulled Lynx even closer. “I’m sure she was a beauty inside and out to be your mother.”
Lynx tilted her head—giving me an opening—and I kissed her. Our mouths came together like the Paris Hotel’s hot-air balloon floating in the nighttime sky. It was if our mouths were meant to be together, one dark and the other light, and I didn’t mean pigment. For the first time ever, I was the light, the yin to someone’s yang.
My tongue explored the soft cavern of her mouth as she turned and leaned her small tits into my hard chest. Her body was half pressed into mine, but I craved more, so I nudged Lynx to roll over. She turned around and we were front to front. With her smaller frame resting on mine, the blanket pulled up over us, a tiny moan escaped her throat as I pressed my hardness against her.
I ran my hand up and down her back. She was wearing a tiny little triangle bikini top and low-rise jeans, making it easy for my already burning hand to further sear as it made its way up and down her smooth skin. As my hand continued to take laps up and down her spine, feeling her tiny hard nipples rub up against my chest, my fingers drifted into the waistband of her jeans, feeling her ass.
Fuck, it was tight and perfect. Like I said, I watched strippers all day and night. I’d certainly know.
We stayed like that until the sun came up. Me—Mike Wind—a beacon floating in the middle of her rough waters.
That is, until she got a text from her neighbor asking her to run over and pick up her kid.
As it turned out, the other way Lynx earned her money—as a nanny—was for Natalie and her kid we’d never met. Natalie stripped at the Tunnel, and had an on-again, off-again thing with our boss, Asher, but kept her personal life on tight lockdown from all of us at the club.
I had been fucking blown away when I learned all this after dropping Lynx off and meeting the kid that morning. Now I knew why Natalie kept her cards close to her chest. It only took one look to see he was Asher’s. No denying our boss had fathered that fucking kid.
And just like that, I’d been destined to almost drown in a barrel of whiskey while trying to be a refuge for both Lynx and Asher.
Turned out, I had only able to provide shelter for my boss—not for my woman.
IHOISTEDmy head from my desk, locked my memories down tight, then stood on my own two feet and trekked out of my office. I made my way back through the club to check on my other business before the Wave opened for the night.
Winking at Marta, I slipped out the back door into the oppressive Miami heat. But it was nowhere near as stifling as my own guilt.
