She's Got It Bad

He watched her for a moment, the way she propped her hip against the counter, the way she tilted her head back and shook it to draw her hair away from her face. He’d wait until the customers left then go in to talk to her again. Try to keep things calmer this time, not get her back up. He winced every time he remembered asking her what had gone wrong. Zoe had always been proud. No surprise that she’d cut up at him.

But he needed to let her know that if she needed help, he was there to give it. It was the least he owed her and her family.

He smiled humorlessly. Yeah, he was a real freaking saint. Pity he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about that painting, about those shadows between her thighs, about the wealth of breast spilling over the top of her tank top even now as she leaned an elbow on the counter and sketched a design on a piece of paper. Her two potential clients were no doubt copping a decent eyeful. Probably thought all their Christmases had come at once. He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white.

It was nearly eight when the two men exited the parlor. He watched them break into laughter the moment they were outside, slapping each other on the back. One of them looked back over his shoulder at Zoe, and Liam knew without a doubt that they were talking about her, about what they’d like to do to her if they were lucky enough to get her naked.

The car door was open before he could think twice. He crossed the road, hands curled into fists. At close quarters, he could see they were young, barely old enough to drive. He stopped in his tracks and let them walk away, still laughing. He forced his hands to relax.

He’d almost lost it there for a minute. What the hell was wrong with him?

He took a deep, rib-expanding breath, then let it out slowly. He prided himself on the fact that it had been many, many years since he’d thrown a punch in anger. For a bunch of other reasons, sure, but never because impulse urged him to. It was one of the abiding tenets of his life—never lose control. That, and his determination to remain single.

He turned his focus back to the tattoo parlor and strode to the front door. He frowned when the handle refused to give beneath his hand. Shit. She’d shut up for the night while he was wasting time on the sidewalk. His guess was confirmed as the lights were switched off.

Fine. He’d come back tomorrow. He made his way back to his car and was about to pull away from the curb when a seen-better-days Subaru WRX drove past, Zoe behind the wheel.

He fell in behind her automatically. He already knew she had an unlisted telephone number and address. At least if he followed her home, he’d know where she lived.

2

LIAM TRAILED ZOE through the night-dark city for twenty minutes until they were driving through the graffiti-covered streets of North Melbourne. He almost gave himself away by braking sharply when she pulled over to the curb without indicating. He pulled over when he found a parking spot half a block up. He twisted in his seat to watch as she exited her car.

She was carrying a gym bag and walking with purpose, her long legs eating up the sidewalk as she approached the front door to a nightclub.

Not going home, then. He watched the entrance for five minutes, but she didn’t come out. He shrugged and exited his car. He’d talk to her in there. The venue didn’t matter, what he had to say—and offer—did.

He locked the Mustang and walked toward the club. A big guy in a tight black T-shirt blocked the entrance, arms crossed over his chest. Liam glanced at the club name—Thrashed—before eyeing the bouncer in front of him. The guy eyed him back for a long beat before moving aside. Liam passed through into a small foyer. Loud music leaked out from the club proper and he paid a ten-dollar cover charge to the guy behind the counter.

He pushed through double swing doors to find himself in a dimly lit space dotted with tables and chairs, one wall all bar, the opposite wall a stage. It was early and there were only a handful of people at the tables. Zoe wasn’t one of them.

He scanned the bar, but she wasn’t there, either. Where the hell was she? He waited ten minutes to see if she’d gone to the bathroom, then walked outside to make sure her car was still in the street. It was.

He returned to the club and bought a beer. Over the next twenty minutes, the club slowly filled. And still Zoe hadn’t appeared. The loud music was getting on his nerves by then and he decided to call it quits and look Zoe up again tomorrow. After all, she’d survived twelve years without him. She’d survive one more night.

He was shouldering his way to the exit when the lights flashed and the audience began to clap and whistle. The room dimmed and the stage lights came up as a band sauntered onto the stage: a drummer with long stringy hair and too many piercings; a bass guitarist with big biceps and the crookedest nose Liam had ever seen; and a lead guitarist in tight leather with a bare chest. His guitar slung across his shoulder, the lead guitarist leaned in toward the mike stand.

“Yo! We’re Sugar Cane and you know what you got to do, people. Tell Vixen how much you want her!” he hollered.

The crowd went nuts. Screaming, whistling, stomping their feet. Liam turned toward the exit, glad to be leaving before his eardrums started bleeding.

“Relax, boys and girls. Vixen is more than ready to come out and play,” a sultry female voice said.

Liam turned to the stage, instinct telling him he wasn’t going to like what he was about to see. The crowd took it up a notch, screaming and stomping as a woman strutted onto the stage in black, four-inch stilettos. She wore black fishnet stockings with red satin garters and a pair of tiny black patent leather hot pants. A strip of belly and most of her breasts were bared by a tight black leather vest. Her face was painted white like a geisha and her eyes burned out at the audience from a band of black makeup that striped the upper part of her face like a mask. Her lips jumped out in brilliant red, a match for the single vibrant streak running through her rock-and-roll hair.

He stood stock-still, staring at Zoe as she slowly rotated her hips in a suggestive circle.

“Let’s hit it, lovers!” she howled into the mike, and loud, pumping thrash blew out at him from the speaker stack.

Zoe started to sing, her voice strong and sultry as she strutted across the small stage. She pumped her arm in the air, thrust her hips. She slid a hand over her crotch and threw her head back in feigned ecstasy as she sang about sex and desire and taking what she wanted when she wanted it.

He stood frozen at the exit for almost the entire first song. Finally he shouldered his way back through the crowd to take up a position against the bar, his arms folded across his chest as he watched Zoe perform.

He’d never seen anything like her. Without a doubt, every heterosexual man in the place was hard. Probably half the gay ones, too. She was every man’s darkest fantasy: pure, unbridled sex, strutting, shaking it, daring every man in the audience to want her, to try to satisfy her.

Halfway through the second song, she tugged at the studs on her vest and pulled it open to reveal a black lace bra and a second rose tattoo across her hip and half her belly. The crowd howled its approval. She slid a hand from one breast to the other then down her stomach, all the while singing about liking it hard and fast. She turned her back as she threw the vest to one side. He stared as the rest of her tattoo was revealed.

Etched into her skin in shades of black and gray, the tattoo curved around her hip to climb her spine, a thorny rambling rose that promised as much pleasure as it did pain. It disappeared beneath the tangle of her hair only to reappear again as it twined its way around her throat.

Movement near the front of the stage drew his attention. A bare-chested, burly skinhead was hauling himself over the lip of the stage. Liam started pushing his way through the crowd, seeing the inevitable in his mind’s eye—some drunken idiot pawing at Zoe, security rushing in, fists being thrown, broken faces and bones. He’d barely taken three steps before Zoe walked straight up to the interloper and placed the spike of her heel dead center of his chest. She didn’t drop a note as she pushed him off the stage.

Liam stopped, staring at her for a long moment.

He had no idea who she was, what had made her into the woman onstage whipping four-hundred-odd people into a sweaty, horny frenzy.

Slowly he returned to his station at the bar.

It was going to be a long night.

SWEAT TRICKLED DOWN Zoe’s spine as she worked the stage. For the first time all day, she felt like herself. Seeing Liam Masters again after so long had thrown her, dredged up some of the bad, old stuff from the past. But she’d burned it off by the time she sang the chorus to “Come and Get Me,” and by the time she was on her knees belting out “Release Me,” she felt invincible.

Mikey hammered out the last few chords of the song as she pounded her fists into the stage, thrashing her hair around. She was grinning like a madwoman when she stood and made her way to the drum riser to grab the bottle of water she’d dumped there, the thunder of applause vibrating through the soles of her stilettos.

“You are on fire tonight, babe,” Kane, the drummer, said as she dropped her head back and sucked down water.

“I feel good,” she said. “What’s next?”

“‘Make It Hurt,’” Kane said, checking the play list taped to the floor beside his kit.

Zoe lifted the hair off the back of her neck.

“Okay, let’s go.”

She strode to the front of the stage to grab the mike. Faces screamed up at her out of the audience. She loved these gigs. Becoming Vixen for the night was about the most fun she could have without being naked or partaking of prohibited substances. The opening riff of “Make It Hurt” roared out of the speakers. She planted her feet wide and pushed her hips forward as she ground out the lyrics. She stared out into the darkness of the club. All she could see was a sea of black, but occasionally individual faces were picked out by the roaming spot. Dancing women dressed like herself, in as little as possible. Built men shaking their fists in the air. Bright-pink hair, neon blue.

Her stomach flipped when the spotlight roamed across the bar and she caught a flash of a tall man standing there, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze drilling into her. Just a flash, but her body told her who it was.

Liam, here.

Watching her.

Her first reaction was anger that he’d invaded yet more of her territory. Then she remembered the way he’d eyed her this morning, as though he couldn’t quite believe his eyes, and her sense of humor came to the rescue. If he hadn’t approved of the tattoo parlor and her tight jeans, she could only imagine what he was thinking right now.

The thought was so delicious she had trouble not laughing into the mike.

Knowing he was watching added new spice to every move she made, every word she sang. When she slid a hand from breast to breast and arched her back, she made sure he got an uninterrupted full-frontal view. When she offered her backside to the audience and slowly swiveled her hips, she imagined him watching, grinding his teeth over how wrong it all was.

She felt high, all powerful, dizzy with the danger of it. She could feel him brooding out in the audience, could sense his heavy disapproval beating at her from across the room. And she didn’t care. She so didn’t care.

By the time she belted out the last song, she was buzzing with adrenaline. She took her bow with the rest of the band, but her eyes sought Liam in the darkness. She could just make out his silhouette and she threw him a cocky, knowing smile before turning on her heel and striding offstage, working her hips and ass for all they were worth.

Take that, asshole.

“Man, what a gig! Best night in ages!” Derek, Sugar Cane’s bass player, said as they made their way down the stairs to the change rooms.

“Zoe, baby, you rocked hard tonight,” her lead guitarist, Mikey, said. “I thought we were gonna have to beat the audience off with a stick.”

“You guys were great,” Zoe told them. “I had a good time.”

Kane grabbed a six-pack of beer from the fridge in the band room and offered them around. Zoe shook her head, reaching instead for the bottle of bourbon she’d opened before the show.

“We heard anything more about those gigs up in Sydney?” she asked as she took a pull straight from the bottle.

“Nah. I’ll get onto the promoter tomorrow, chase him down. You know what those guys are like,” Derek said.

The guys collapsed onto the saggy, stained couch in the corner. Zoe propped her butt on a table and lifted her hair off the back of her neck.

“Man, I am steaming,” she said. She could feel sweat rolling down between her breasts.

“You said it, baby.” Mikey’s gaze was fixed on her legs.

No prizes for guessing what he wanted. But Zoe wasn’t in the mood for Mikey tonight. He got way too possessive after sex and it messed with the band dynamic too much. She wasn’t any man’s property.

“I’m going to go clean up,” she said.

She hooked the neck of the bourbon bottle between two fingers and made her way down the cinder-block corridor to the pokey change room. Inside, her work clothes were draped over the back of a chair, and her makeup kit was folded open on the counter in front of the mirror. She took another pull from the bottle and eyed herself in the mirror. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she again imagined Liam Masters’s reaction to Vixen’s performance.

Hilarious. Way, way too funny.

Then she heard the scuff of footsteps and turned her head to see him filling the doorway—tall and dark and intense.

Her smile widened into a grin and she raised the bourbon bottle in salute to him.

“How’d you like the show?” She held up a finger before he had a chance to speak. “No, no, let me guess. You thought it was all wrong.”

He didn’t say a word, just walked into the room and pushed the door shut behind him.

Suddenly the small space seemed even smaller. Zoe took another mouthful of bourbon.

“We need to talk,” Liam said.

“Do we?”

“I want to help you out. If you need money, a fresh start. Whatever. I’ll get you whatever you need,” he said.

She slowly put down the bottle. He was offering her charity. Like she was some down-and-out junkie or streetwalker.

“Gee, thanks, Lord Liam. How good of you to come down amongst the peasants and offer your bounty. I feel so privileged, I hardly know what to say.”

His gaze swept her from head to toe.

“Do your parents know you do this kind of thing? Your brother?”

She was a little sick of the judgment in his tone.

“This kind of thing? What exactly are you referring to, Liam? My singing? My career?”

“I’m talking about putting yourself on display for anyone to look at,” he said. “Letting every man and his dog stare at you and imagine what it would be like to screw you stupid.”

She shrugged, knowing somehow that it was the one reaction that would really piss him off.

“Men can look and imagine all they want. I’m the one who decides when and what they can touch.”

She raised her chin, daring him to say more. The silence stretched between them for what felt like a long time.

“What happened to you, Zoe?” he finally asked, his voice low.

She blinked, caught off guard by the pain in his face, the sincerity in his tone.

“You left and I grew up,” she said, turning her back on him. She didn’t trust herself to look him in the eye.

She could feel him watching her as she stowed her cosmetics in her kit.

“Let me help you. For old times’ sake.”

She closed her eyes, despising herself for the way he could still make her feel. Tears threatened for the second time that day and the emptiness inside her yawned wide.

God, she had to get him out of her change room and out of her life.

It had taken her years to find a place and a persona that made it all bearable, doable, survivable. She would not let him strip her of her armor.

She let her eyelids drop over her eyes as she turned to face him, at the same time hooking one thumb into the waistband of her hot pants.

“I don’t need any help from you, Liam,” she said. “The only thing I need from any man is the one thing I don’t have myself. If you get my drift.”

She watched as her meaning dawned on him and his expression grew even grimmer.

If that didn’t get rid of her self-appointed Sir Galahad, she didn’t know what would. After all, it had worked a treat twelve years ago.

“Don’t play games,” he said. “There must be something you need.”

“Definitely,” she said. “Especially after performing. It always makes me hot.”

She fanned a hand in front of her face. At the same time, she used the thumb in her waistband to pop the stud on her hot pants. The small sound brought Liam’s gaze to her waist.

“Not interested?” she asked, finding the tab of her zipper with her fingertips.

She had a sudden flash of how it had been all those years ago, the way he’d slid his hand under the waistband of her jeans at first rather than undo her fly, how she’d had to beg him to touch her properly.

The memory urged her on as she slid her zipper down.

“Don’t.” His voice sounded too loud in the small space.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

Good. She wanted him to sweat. She wanted him gone. And she was enjoying being the one with the power for a change. Once, she’d begged him to love her and he’d pushed her out the door, then abandoned her without a word. Tonight, she was the one in charge.

She snagged her thumbs into the belt loops of her hot pants and pushed down. She had to wriggle her hips a little to get the leather over them.

“Tight,” she said, wrinkling her nose. She pushed the hot pants down her legs and stepped out of them, standing in front of him wearing only her black lace thong and bra and her red garters and stockings.

“So what’s it going to be, Liam? Are you going to give me what I need, or are you going to make me take care of things myself?”

She touched the tip of her middle finger to her tongue then slid her finger down her chest until she found her left nipple through the lace of her bra. She brushed it lightly, then caught it between thumb and forefinger and squeezed. Heat shot down her belly to her thighs and her nipple hardened into a tight, needy peak.

She could hear him breathing.

“I just want to make things right for you,” he said.

“And I told you how you could do that.”

She’d meant to drive him away, but the way he was watching her so intently was having its own effect on her. Suddenly it wasn’t a game anymore.

She’d always imagined what it would be like to be with him. She’d held him in her hands, stroked him, found the single bead of desire that had glistened on the head of his penis. She’d had his fingers between her legs, inside her. She’d been so desperate for him that she’d begged him to take her virginity. But he’d pushed her away and left her wanting.

Not this time. Not if she had any say in the matter. She took a step backward until she felt the cool ridge of the counter against the backs of her thighs. She propped her butt against it and lifted her leg up onto the seat of the chair beside it.

She held his eye all the while, watching him watching her.

He wanted her. The tension in his body would have betrayed him even if there hadn’t been a bigger, longer giveaway bulging the front of his well-worn jeans.

“What’s wrong, Liam? I’m not Tom’s innocent little sister anymore. No parents are going to come barging in. It’s just you and me. No excuses, nothing.”

She kept her left hand on her breast and slid her right down her belly until she felt the lace of her thong beneath her fingers. She slid her fingers beneath the elastic and between her thighs.

Between taunting him so publicly onstage and this far more private, provocative session, she was aching for fulfillment.

She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath as she circled her finger.

“Feels so good, Liam. Want to try?”

LIAM SWORE. He was so hard it hurt and he was about out of reasons for keeping his hands off her. She was touching herself, her hips circling as she pleasured herself right in front of him. He couldn’t remember ever being so confronted, turned-on and conflicted all at the same time.

But this was Zoe. Zoe of the big trusting eyes and the silken, untouched skin and the breathless, utterly guileless sexuality. He couldn’t screw her in the back room of some shitty club.

“Better hurry up, Liam, or the show will be over.” She pushed down the cup of her bra and exposed one full, creamy breast.

All night he’d watched her, wondering, remembering. He wasn’t made of stone, and he wasn’t a saint.

He crossed the space between them in two strides. Her eyes widened as he grabbed her shoulders.

Then he was kissing her, forcing her head back as he thrust his tongue into her mouth. Her hands found his shoulders as his whole body crashed into hers, his chest meeting her breasts, his hips pressing into her widespread thighs.

He was so hungry for her he didn’t know where to start. He shoved her bra straps off her shoulders and pushed the cups down to bare both her breasts. She sucked in a shuddering breath as he slid his hands over her. He kissed her neck, tasting the salt of sweat and the tang of her perfume. He stuck his tongue in her ear and pinched her nipples firmly, making her squirm against him.

She was panting, her eyes closed, her hands clutching his backside as she dragged him closer. He rubbed himself against her as he slid a hand down her belly. His fingers found her through the thin lace of her thong, gliding into damp heat. He pushed the lace to one side and felt the smooth slide of his fingers on slick, hairless skin.

Zoe waxed.

Of course she did.

She felt swollen and juicy against his fingers, so slippery and hot he couldn’t wait another second. She was ahead of him, her hands dragging at the stud on his jeans, pulling his fly down. He groaned low in the back of his throat as she stroked a knowing hand up and down his shaft. He pressed forward, wanting inside her. His whole body tensed as the sensitive head of his erection encountered her slick heat.

“Wait,” she said, her voice a low husk.

He heard the crinkle of foil, then she was sliding protection onto him with expert hands. No sooner had she smoothed the latex to the base of his shaft than he was thrusting forward. Tight heat engulfed him. She let out a surprised moan as he gave her his all. Then he lost all sense of place and time as he pounded into her.

Her legs came up to lock around his waist. Her head dropped back on her neck. Her body shuddered with the impact of each stroke and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth to stifle a cry. He leaned forward and pulled a nipple into his mouth, stroking her with his tongue even as he stroked her with his cock. He bit her, savoring the jerk of her hips and the tight throb of her inner muscles around him.

Again and again he drove into her until he had to slide his hands onto her butt so he could go deeper, harder. Her back arched and her fingernails dug into his backside. Her mouth fell open as she shuddered around him, a look of pleasurable pain contorting her face as she came and came. Then his own orgasm hit him like a fist, driving the air from his lungs as he ground himself into her. For long seconds he shuddered out his release, every muscle hard as steel.

Then he was still inside her but the urgency was gone. He could feel her breath against his neck, her hands gripping his butt. A trickle of sweat ran down his side. He registered the distant, muffled sound of music from the club.