Breaking Beauty (Devils Aces MC): Vegas Titans Series (11 page)

He kissed her neck, still rocking her slowly. Romy gave in
to the contact fully, feeling her body begin to build towards an impossible
second orgasm. She clenched his ass tighter, and Bryson yelled with a primal
pleasure as his thrusts came quicker and quicker.

“Are you going to come?” Romy managed, though her voice was
hoarse from the moaning.

Bryson couldn't respond, but his eyebrows joined across his
face in a kind of apology. With a pleasing shudder, Romy felt her lover
contract and pulsate inside her. He came for a long moment, dripping hot
against her welcoming thighs. Romy gripped his wilting frame, letting the last
few thrusts of his member against her walls take her to a sapping, sweet second
climax. She let her head fall back against the couch frame, utterly spent.

They lay that way for a while, like exhausted athletes. Long
enough for the sun to dip fully below the horizon, and long enough for tall
shadows to stretch across the parlor walls. Bryson's skin became cooler and
cooler as he gathered his breath. Their chests were still pressed tight against
one another, and she could feel the strong
thump-thump
of his heartbeat.
Romy let an arm and a leg droop off the couch. She felt the cool wood of her
apartment's floor, and was surprised: it seemed impossible that this pedestrian
wood, that pedestrian table, that all of these pedestrian things could exist
just the way they always had—when the important part of the world now seemed
dramatically different.

With a sudden burst of energy, Bryson shook himself off his
lover's body and came to a standing position. She missed his touch immediately.
Instinctually, Romy reached for him.

“I didn't...” Bryson began, as he hunted for his shirt and
pants. “Look, I don't want you to think—”

“Shhh,” Romy said, curling into a ball. She felt the cool
patches along the couch where their combined wetness lingered. “You don't have
to say any of that. I know. And I'm on the pill, if that's what you were
worried about.”

“That's not it,” Bryson said. He was buckling his pants. “I
mean, of course it was, but...see, Romy...”

“You're anxious around a woman after you've near-literally
drilled her brains out?” Romy asked coyly. Another improbability: seeing him
standing there, mere moments after their coitus, she found she wanted him
again.

“If it's a woman I really like, yes. Yes. I guess what I'm
saying's that I really fucking like you.”

“Language!” She mocked.

“I mean it.” And now, he bent low. “You're the most
incredible woman—person—I think I've ever met.”

“Stay with me,” Romy blurted. “Sleep here tonight.”
“Oh, baby. I want to. I just don't think—what if you're being watched, you
know?” The look in Bryson's eyes was all pain and longing. He kissed Romy on
the forehead.

“But I'll be back here tomorrow. Earlier than is polite or
reasonable. And I won't be able to sleep between then and now, for obvious reasons.”
And then came that melting grin, that beloved melting grin. She felt she
owned
this particular face Bryson made. Was responsible for it, whenever it appeared.

“So goodnight, my sweet darling. You will be safe as you
sleep. I promise.”

With that, the man rose. He left the picnic basket on the
table, they'd need it for tomorrow's session, but took the leather jacket he'd
swung over her kitchen chair earlier that day. He unfolded the jacket and
draped it gently across Romy's naked form.

“Collateral?” she asked. Her eyelids were beginning to
flutter. She was drained enough to fall asleep right there on the bare futon.

“A promise,” he said simply. Then Bryson Vaughn stood tall,
and made for the exit. She listened all the way from the sound of the foyer
door closing sharply until she heard the gunning of his bike against the quiet
street. She listened until she couldn't hear the engine anymore. She nestled
below his leather jacket, cocooning herself in the smell of him. And then—not
long after sunset—Romy fell asleep.

When she woke the next morning, with a crick in her neck and
a messy house, Romy was briefly confused. Why was she on the futon? Why were
the pillows
off
the futon? Why was she shivering in the cool blast of
AC? Goofy, on seeing her waking, came to nuzzle his owner immediately.

“Poor little guy,” Romy murmured. “You didn't even go out
last night.”

Rising and blinking to a hot Vegas sunrise, Romy hunted for
her pet's leash through the mess of abandoned card games and clothes which were
strewn about her living room. At a glacial pace, the events of last night were
returning, revealing themselves in clues: the hastily pushed aside furniture.
Her clothes, littered over the floor. Romy reached first for the leather jacket
that had slid to the ground in her sleep, pressing her nose deep into its
aromatic folds:
Bryson.
He'd been here last night. They'd fucked. The
memories this brought back were compelling enough that Romy felt a sudden
lightheadedness—so she fell into a waiting chair.

As her dog lapped at her ankles in anticipation, Romy
clutched her head in her hands. A part of her felt hungover, but sans all
symptoms—she was merely out of joint with the real world. Today was what?
Tuesday? Tuesday meant no class, but lots of studying. But how could she be
expected to study after such a miraculous, non-mundane thing had come to pass?
Bryson Vaughn had laid her across this very couch. He'd looked at her the way
she'd always dreamed of being looked at. He'd looked at her like he understood
her completely, and cared about her. He'd looked at her like he'd never seen
another naked woman, or heard another person string a sentence together before.
She felt tingles moving about her sleepy nerve endings. Though she'd never been
fast to care about someone before, Romy felt the urge to let herself admit that
she cared about Bryson.

Collecting her disparate thoughts and feelings as if in a
bucket, Romy prepared for the day. She took her dog on a walk. She righted the
living room. She showered and dressed. Then, she began to study the charts her
bad boy lover had left behind. Despite her humming blood, she wouldn't let
herself forget the stakes of Saturday's mission. It was, after all, the whole
reason they'd been forced to forestall their relationship. Romy fought away the
dark, flickering hypothetical of being made to sleep with another man. She
wouldn't be able to do it, she decided simply—not after last night. She'd
rather take whatever punishment Zaida or Lefty could cook up. There was but one
man for her now, one knight in shining armor. Only one.

Around the same time that morning, at a road stop diner out
near city limits, Kellan Vaughn glared out a picture window at the swallowing
Western light on the plains. He'd left his parent's house before the sun came
up, in the grand tradition of Devils Aces-men. He didn't care for the ghosts
that haunted his childhood bedroom. He was simply too eager to see their bona
fide counterpoints—namely, the Romy of his memory in real life. His obsession
with her memory was getting stronger and stronger, harder to contain. He
couldn't articulate why her safety had become so important to him now.

Bryson was supposed to meet his brother at the road stop
diner and had also risen early with the sun. As he drove across the flatland
towards their meeting spot, practicing ways to keep the guilt from his
expression, anxious thoughts tore through his mind: What if Lefty DiMartino had
found out about the affair, and was at just-this-moment sending muscle to Bryson's
apartment in order to break his knees? As it always does, sex had complicated
everything. But Bryson grinned, in spite. Come hell or high-water, he wouldn't
trade a moment from last night for
anything
.

He was nearing the meeting place and could even discern a
shape in the window directly facing the road which might have been a Vaughn
man. And sure enough: there was Kellan, waving indolently at his brother from
behind a familiar pair of Aviators. Those glasses, Bryson knew, had very
clearly been swiped from the bedside table of a likely-sleeping Hughie V.

“Glad you could meet me,” Bryson said as he rolled into the
cafe. “We've got a lot of planning to do. I know the last time I checked, you
were a good card shark. Still true?”

“Jesus, brother. Sit down! Take a load off first, eh? You
want pancakes? On me?”

Bryson glanced at his watch. “I should actually be going
kind of soon, Kelly. Just wanted to go over this Saturday with you, so we can
kick off prepping. First things first: you'll need to check out the Windsor,
get the lay of the land. Their style is pretty Strip-typical—”

“I'm not saying anything until you get a coffee.” His kid
brother pouted a little, jutting out that famous lip inherited from their
perpetually-snarling father. “Oh, and Mom and Dad say hi.”
“Kelly, I don't have the time to just sit and shoot the shit with you.”

“Why?”

“I've got to get back to Romy. We've got to work on her tell
today.”

“Let me come with you! I'd like to see her again.”
Again?
Bryson sputtered on his glass of tap-water. Slowly, he pushed the glasses
up the bridge of his face.
Again?
Kellan seemed to realize he'd chosen the wrong words. “I mean...you know. Just
to get an idea of ...”

“Again? What do you mean again? You know her? You know Romy
Adelaide?”
Now it was Kellan's turn to take off his protective shield. He stared his older
brother down, and then took a slow sip of his steaming coffee. Bryson racked
his brain—and then, of course, it all clicked. High school. Same grade.

“No need to get all macho-protective, Ace,” Kellan said,
through a slurp. He was still sizing his brother up, in the cold, clear manner
of a practiced gangster. He was willing him to remember more. Bryson tried.

He remembered Romy in the library, naturally—but much of the
rest of his secondary education was cloudy at best. As much as he'd loved his
brother, they'd never been close as friends; Kellan had all but married his
guitar as soon as he'd mastered a basic chord progression. And his brother—he'd
certainly been vague about women, and infrequently circled by his own buddies.

But hadn't there been one girl, one apple of his brother's
eye? Yes. He knew that for a fact. One pretty, young thing who'd been the
subject of many painstaking adolescent emo-songs, at least a few of which
Kellan had made him listen to. A few strands of lyric worked their way through
the fog of memory:

Don't tell me you can't feel it/ with your body next to
mine...
something something...
think that you should be my homie, now and
always, sweet, sweet...

Jesus.

Bryson steeled off against his brother, trying to read all
the folds of his face. It had been Romy. Romy had been his younger brother's
high school sweetheart, the object of his single-minded affection. And while
they were all some six years out of Reno, the look on Kellan's face now told
the whole, miserable story: he still had a thing for her. At the very least.

“Wow. You know, I completely forgot you guys'
whole...history.”

“I thought you might've. Well. It wasn't really such a big
deal.”
“No, Kelly—I mean, it's just that we've never really talked about women
before.”

“Not particular women, no.”

A waitress sailed by with a mug of coffee, sloshing this
down in front of Bryson. He stared at the spot on the table where a small pool
of spilled contents now formed. This was awkward; awkwardness was ringing down
around this breakfast.

“Look. I'm an adult. And I know high school was a long time
ago.” Bryson started.

“Forever ago.”

“Ages.”

“So, bygones. Of course.”

“Of course.”

“Great.” Kellan wanted the conversation ended.

They took labored sips of their drinks.

“And this doesn't affect the plan,” Bryson ventured. “We'll
get to the table together, and...”

“No. Of course not. Look, I'm just invested for, like—old
time's sake. That's all.”

“Well, great. Goddamn. I'm amazed I didn't remember.”

“I'm not,” said Kellan, with a wry smile. Bryson searched
his kid brother's face for tells; just how hurt would Kellan be if he knew
about the previous evening's “study session”? But the younger Vaughn was
playing with a poker face. He downed the remains of his coffee, stood up, and
offered a hand.

“See you Saturday, then. Mr. High-Roller.” And with a cool
incline of his shaggy head, kid brother flew the coop.