ACE:Las Vegas Bad Boys(42)

He stands before me, his hand on my core and I wonder what he imagines as he looks at me. I know what I see when I look at him.

A man who can fill me in all the wrong ways.

He pulls off his briefs, his thickness bulging in plain sight and I can't help myself. I know the differences between sex in the dark and sex in broad daylight.

I want him to see me—like, every inch of my skin, every mark. The parts of me he couldn't see when he fucked me in the dark.

But I don't care. I arch my back and pull off my tank.

Now he can see everything. I watch as he takes me in. I've hinted to him about my backstory. My drug addict parents, striking out on my own, but we haven’t gone into details.

Seeing me like this, naked in the light of the day, he can trace portions of my pain easily. His eyes trail over my stomach, over my abdomen, his fingertips brushing over the faint scars that crisscross my skin.

Some girls cut themselves in the wide-open spaces, across their wrists, over their thighs. But I was never that girl.

I've always kept my pain closer than those kind of cuts would allow. Sure it was years ago, right after my parents were shot after a drug deal gone wrong.

But right now, as Ace looks me over, it doesn't feel like it was very long ago. The rawness of him really looking at those pale pink scars washes over me.

“Baby,” Ace whispers, breaking the silence.

I flinch at the sound of his voice, because it reminds me this isn't a dream. This is real life. A life I am pretending isn't drenched with a sister in coma and a rich man driving a getaway car. A life where I'm working my ass off at a job to keep a girl alive who may not even want me here. A life that really isn't mine, because my life—a life I left two months ago—is back in Washington.

I cover my face with my hands, shake my head. This has been a mistake.

“It's okay, Emmy Rose. I have demons in my past, too,” he says, and he pulls my hands away, our noses nearly touching. He covers me with himself and I let him.

“What sorts of demons?” I ask breathlessly, as he spreads my thighs apart, as he presses himself into me without any foreplay, without any warm-up

But I don't need any and neither does he. I just want to come until I am empty.

His forearms rest on either side of my head as his skin presses against mine, as my pussy wraps around his massive cock. We are one, and in that moment I understand all those cheesy lines about becoming one.

“Demons that have seen murder and death. I have hands that have killed.”

I believe him, and it causes my throat to go dry. He has a ruthless past … does that give me more evidence that he could have callously tossed my sister aside?

“Do they still haunt you?” I ask. “Those demons?” I run my hand over the tattooed bones on his shoulder, his skin etched with memories filled with pain, the same way my skin has been etched with a past I don't want to remember.

He thrusts into me slowly, rhythmically. How can a monster lull me into the sort of calm I need? How can a man who is a player and a womanizer also be the person who makes me feel safe enough to stay?

He pulls my hair from face, looking me straight in the eye.

“Every day, Emmy Rose. They haunt me every motherfucking day.”

“And that's why you put on this act … this show?” I ask in a whisper, not wanting him to pull away from me.

“This isn't a show, baby.”

He pushes harder into me—how can it be both hard and soft? I don't know, but it is. He presses his cock against my g-spot, and I feel a wave building within me.

I close my eyes, letting the sensation fill me; I don't want it to pass too quickly. My pussy is screaming for release, and as he grinds against me the orgasm crashes down.

“Oh, Ace, I need more, I need you.” I claw at his back, grasping for his skin, dragging him closer.

“Don't worry, baby, there will be more, I promise,” Ace says in my ear, still the cocky bastard I know him to be.

“You're so bad.”

“That's not all I am though,” he says.

And I believe him.





ACE


After she came the first time, I came too. Then I pulled out, and pressed my fingers into her.

She looked so at peace. So comfortable there. I've never seen anyone look so at one with the world.

And that was a motherfucking gift, because yeah, I’d only known this woman for a few days, but everything about her screamed that she’d been bruised and broken one too many times.

The scarred skin across her tummy proved that to me. Of course I had missed her marks before; I'd only taken her in the dark—with the only goal fucking.

But now it's different. Sure, the names monster and bad boy and player are all words that have rolled off her lips today—but other words have, too.