The King(17)

Setting her back down on her feet, he immediately had to catch her, because her knees buckled.
“Oh … God … you’re amazing … you’re…”
Uh-huh, thanks, honey. The only thing he cared about was how long it would take to get her clothes back on. “You, too, baby.”
Trez leaned to the side and picked up her—was it that bra thing she thought was a shirt? Or her thong? Or—
“Oh, I don’t need my leggings yet … do I?”
These were for her legs? he thought as he held the black strip up. Hard to imagine it covering more than a hand or maybe one of those serving-bowl-size breasts.
Who had taken the pseudo-stockings off? Not him, he didn’t think, but he couldn’t remember, and not because he was drunk. This whole session, just like the last however many years of his love life, was not just utterly, but rather, purposely, forgettable.
Then why did he insist on pulling this shit again and again—
Right, no reason to channel iAm. His brother was more than capable of running through that rhetorical Every. Single. Fucking. Time. they were together.
“Daddy, I love you,” the girl said as she gripped his biceps and hung off him like he was a stripper pole. “I love this.”
“Me, too.”
“You love me, right?”
“Always.” He eyed the door and wished he’d scheduled a preemptive knock. “Lemme have your number, ’kay? ’Cause I gotta go back to work.”
Cue the pouting—and didn’t that make him want to bare his fangs and chew his way out of the bathroom wall.
“We could do it again,” she drawled, getting up on her tiptoes to try to nuzzle against his neck.
Girlie, I could hardly get through it once, he thought. A repeat is not anatomically possible.
“Pleeeeeeeeeeeease, daddy…” More nuzzling. Then she eased back. “Please?”
Trez opened his mouth, frustration sharpening his temper and his tongue—
Except as he met her eyes, he saw an honest emotion in them and nearly recoiled. Talk about mirrors … he felt like he was looking at himself: sad. Hollow. Rootless.
She was half a woman.
He was half a male.
On that basis alone, they were Match.com time, two broken SOBs thrashing around the sex pool, trying to connect in ways that guaranteed their isolation would only continue.
“Please …?” she begged, like she was getting ready for another loss in a string of them.
Staring down at her, he realized he’d common-denominatored her to her externals, but as with all strangers, there was a story behind how she’d ended up in a bathroom throwing around the L-word with a man who wasn’t a man at all.
Hell, he wasn’t even a normal vampire.
Trez brushed her cheek with his knuckles, and when she turned her head into his hand, he whispered, “Close your eyes—”
The knock was a one-and-doner, and considering how loud and to the point it was? Not like there needed to be a second.
“Boss? We got issues,” came through the panels.
Big Rob’s voice. So it was a security problem—and given that the guy hadn’t gone to Xhex with it? She was either out for some reason … or, more likely, had sent for Trez herself.
The blonde’s fake eyelashes lifted, but he didn’t want that. “Gimme a minute, B.R.”
“Roger that, boss.”
“Close your eyes,” he said again. As the blonde complied, he quieted himself, the muffled thunder of the club’s bass beat drifting off, the smell of her too-heavy perfume abating, the pain in the center of his chest … well, that stayed right where it was, but the rest of everything went on the dimmer switch.
Reaching into her mind, he did what his brother had called him out on: As opposed to so many of these women, he took the time to erase the blonde’s memories of them being together, from the inane conversation that she’d started up by the bar, to his taking her back here, to the religious experience she’d just had.
iAm was right. If Trez had been tidying up after himself like this all along? He wouldn’t have gotten into the trouble he had with that other chick. And he and his brother wouldn’t have ended up having to move into the Brotherhood’s mansion. And that female Selena wouldn’t have entranced him even more …
Refocusing on the blonde, he decided not to just stop at the Wite-Out routine. Instead of leaving the twenty or so minutes as a blank zone, he gave her the fantasy she was after—that she’d met a guy who was googly-eyed over her and they’d had the sex of their lives five times in this bathroom before she’d decided she was too good for him.
Which in her new mind-set was going to be something she did frequently.