Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (17 page)

Pilar didn’t know what he was planning to sing or why he’d needed a backpack—or even where it had come from; they’d ridden here together on his Harley, and he hadn’t had it then. She expected him to get up on stage and mutter into the microphone for a few minutes and try to act like he just didn’t give a fuck—she knew what the macho cover for embarrassment looked like. She’d had a few twinges of guilt to be causing that embarrassment.

But then she’d remember what his terms had been for her side of the bet, and the guilt died off.

This was Karaoke Idol, so it wasn’t just random drunks wandering over to the signup sheet. People had had to register ahead of time. A lot of them rehearsed and had little stage shows. The grand prize was only a hundred-dollar gift card to Blue Sky, but some people took this straight-up seriously.

Connor wasn’t first up. Four people went before him, two of whom, both young women, obviously thought they were the shit, because they really belted it out like pop divas—not nearly as well, but they gave it their all. Then there was a singer-songwriter type guy who did an ancient Harry Chapin song. And then a lithe, strikingly beautiful Latina around Pilar’s age got up and did an old Selena song about lost love.

Everybody at their table got quiet. She was great. Like, amazing. The kind of voice that gave you goosebumps. When she was finished, there were a few seconds of heavy silence. And then the audience erupted. Connor’s brothers pounded their fists on the table.

All of them but Trick, who was just sitting there, watching the singer take her bow. Pilar took a second and watched him watch her. She couldn’t really tell if he was entranced or just didn’t want to participate in the riot around him. He was hard to read.

At her other side, barely audible in the din, Moore said, “Damn. Damn.” Pilar turned and saw that he, too, was quietly watching her.

She laughed. It was definitely interest she was reading on Moore. If Trick was interested, too, then her poor friend could possibly end up facing another Horde man in the ring.

Men. She loved ‘em, but they were so predictable.

Speaking of which, it was Connor’s turn. The stage went dark, and then the guitar intro from “Sweet Child O’ Mine” started playing.

“No way.” He was going to do Guns N’ Roses? Connor, with his raspy baritone, was going to sing Axl Rose? Oh, God, this was going to be excruciating.

Moore leaned back and put his hands on the back of his head. “Is this him? Oh, this is going to be
excellent
.”

“Be nice,
pendejo
.”

The stage light came up and…fuck, no. No way.

Connor was wearing a long blond wig with a red bandana wrapped around it. And—and—was he wearing
chaps
? Yes, he was. Pilar put her face in her hands. She couldn’t watch this.

Trick leaned over and grabbed her arm. “Sack up, Cordero. You need to see this.”

Just as she dropped her hands, he started singing. And…damn—he was good. He had a decent low falsetto.

And the best part of the whole deal: he had completely owned the Axl impression. Working the mic, he swiveled and rocked his hips, flipped his fake, blond tresses, bounced and gyrated.

Connor didn’t remotely resemble Axl Rose. He was brawny and bearded. But he could move, and he was working it, and the effect was both hilarious and impressive.

The crowd was eating it up. Even Moore was clapping.

When Slash’s guitar solo started, Connor danced around the stage. Then—spontaneously, as far as Pilar could tell—Trick jumped up and went to the stage. He hopped on and started doing air guitar. Connor turned and grinned at him, and they started working it together.

Sherlock went up next. And then another whom Pilar had only just met: Jesse. Four Horde men. Four scary outlaw bikers, up on a karaoke stage, singing and being a mostly terrible air cover band for Guns N’ Roses.

Connor hit the last note on his knees, leaning back and singing to the ceiling.

It was fucking sublime.

When the song was over, there was no heavy pause in the crowd. People had been cheering while he sang, and they just kept it up. Pilar realized that he could win the thing.

His ‘band mates’ jumped down and came right back to the table, but Connor went behind the stage—for his bag, she assumed. Trick returned to his seat, leaving Connor’s empty between them. “What’d you think?”

“Holy shit! It was good! He was good! You guys sucked, but he was good!”

Connor’s friend laughed. “Yeah, he was. That boy is not shy. He wouldn’t’ve chosen to do it, but he wasn’t going to half-ass it. That’s why I knew it was a great bet. Connor doesn’t do anything half-assed. Or halfway.”

Still grinning stupidly, Pilar nodded. She was learning that that was true.

He came around the stage, looking like himself again—his kutte on, the chaps, bandana, and wig gone. Without planning it or completely knowing it, Pilar jumped up and went to him. There must have been a look on her face, because his expression went from momentarily leery to just plain happy. He dropped his pack and opened his arms, and they hugged right there in front of the stage. He bent down and kissed her hard.

That got anther round of cheers from their friends—and, by the sound of it, the rest of the crowd.

She looked up at his grinning, gorgeous face. “Oh, my fucking God, that was fantastic! I am going to fuck you so hard tonight!”

Shaking his head, he bent to her ear. “No, baby. I’m gonna fuck you.”

Her muscles twitched, and her heart raced. “Can we just get out of here now, then?”

“What? And miss the awards? No, you got me up there, now you gotta wait to see it play all the way out.” He ran his tongue lightly over her ear. “But if you want, I’ll finger you at the table.”

Not in front of her friends and his. Besides, she was wearing jeans, and she didn’t even want to contemplate how he thought he’d get that done. She was getting the impression that his kink was public sex, but she needed to work up to that. Since he hadn’t asked outright, she figured she had some time to do so. She shook her head.

He chuckled and kissed her forehead. “Too bad. You’ll just have to wait until the end. Because I’m gonna win this fucker, and I want to be here for that.”

“Gift card to Blue Sky? You don’t even like Blue Sky.”

“There’s a
trophy
. I’m going to make you keep it at your place. So you can see every day that I still owned you in the end.”

“If you win.”

He cocked his eyebrow at her. Laughing, she grabbed his hand, and they went back to their tables, where Connor got himself a hero’s welcome from bikers and firefighters alike.

~oOo~

It turned out that Connor was disqualified because he’d only signed himself up, and when the other Horde got onstage, that broke some rule of the competition. The Latina with the beautiful voice, Juliana something-or-other, won. Pilar thought she probably would have won anyway, but Connor’s confidence and enthusiasm was…alluring.

When he was in, he was indeed all in.

Now he was in her bedroom, and he had her up against the wall. On the ride back—he’d left the backpack with Trick—she’d felt him up as much as she could, and they’d started tearing at each other’s clothes before she’d had her front door unlocked, then they’d wrestled their way back to her bedroom. He must have been tweaking on the adrenaline from being on stage or something, because he was fiercer and more demanding than ever.

She loved the feeling of his rough body against hers, the way the hair on his chest rasped against her nipples, the way his callused hands left traces of sensation behind as he caressed her, the way his strength dwarfed her own. There was nothing in the world hotter than wrestling around with this guy until he just overwhelmed her and took over.

He’d had to work to get her here, but now had her hands pinned together to the wall, one of his hands holding them firmly, while his other wandered brusquely all over her skin—her breasts, her belly, her hips and ass, between her legs—and his mouth and tongue claimed hers.

She bit his lip and bucked, shoving him off of her. He wasn’t even surprised, not anymore. Now, his reaction was a grunt and a sneer, and then he flipped her to face the wall, and he pinned her again. His huge cock dug into her ass and lower back, rock hard and insistent.

As he pushed a hard hand between her legs, his voice rumbled at her ear, “I want to play with your toys, baby. Do you want that? You want me to tie you up and make you come until you soak the sheets?”

Moaning at the very thought, Pilar nodded. In the week and a half that they’d been a real couple, they’d gotten into her drawer a couple of times. A lot of what she had in there was stuff she used alone, but some of it was couple play. Until Connor, only her cop fuck buddy, Doug, had earned enough trust to play with her. In fact, Doug had been the first one to restrain her, which had been a revelation.

It occurred to her then that she needed to tell Doug that their fucking days were over, but she put that thought out of her head for now.

Though he’d been enthusiastic about the cuffs and other bindings, Connor had been unsettled by some of the things she had in that drawer. The little leather riding crop above all. In the two times that they’d played, he’d stuck to tying her down and having his way.

Which had been fine with Pilar; he paid her lavish attention. If he never wanted to get more adventurous than that, she could be happy forever.

He picked her up and took her to the bed. Then he opened her drawer and rooted around until he came up with her linked cuffs. Before, he’d bound her spread wide on the bed, but if he was going for those, he had something else in mind. She cocked an eyebrow at him and rolled away, but he grabbed her, as she’d known he would.

She made him fight for it; that was among the best parts for her, the struggle, the way that he could move her even when she used her energy against him, and now that he’d finally accepted that the struggle was foreplay, that the display of both of their strength made her even hotter, even wilder for him, and that she would stop him if he was too rough, he was fully, eagerly involved.

He got her cuffed to the headboard, her wrists together above her head. Then he took the loose cuff set that Velcro’d to the bed and tied her legs spread-eagle to her footboard, pausing to press his lips to each ankle, just above the leather band. He slid up her body, between her legs, kissing, licking, and nipping until he’d reached her pussy.

With a brush of his nose through her folds, he murmured, “I love your smell. There’s something about it that just nails me, right in my gut. When you’re wet like this, I just want to drink you.”

She arched up toward him. “Jesus, come on and fuck me.” He liked to talk, do the seduction thing, and she had to admit that it could be cool. His low, rough voice got even lower and rougher, and it was sonic sex. But Pilar had never been one to dally. Once they were naked, what she wanted was a good, hard fuck, not soft words.

Chuckling, he nipped at her clit, and the quick, intense burst of sharp pleasure made her hips twitch. But he didn’t eat her out. Instead, he continued his journey up her body, kissing and licking, nipping lightly at her nipples, his coarse hands smoothing over her skin like fine-grain sandpaper.

When he was face to face with her, he pressed a chaste kiss on the corner of her mouth—and then got off the bed completely.

“Connor, fuck!”

“Hold your horses,” he laughed. “I’m taking my time. And what are you gonna do about it, anyway? Pretty sure you’re at my mercy.”

Bound to the bed, she
was
completely at his mercy. And now she was also curious.