OGs: Deep Down (4 page)

“Right behind you.” He walked away, following that voluptuous, swaying ass without looking back even once.

Except for that heated exchange after her foster dad’s funeral over six years ago, he hadn’t spoken to her since they broke up. It figured that once he did, disdain would ooze from his words. As if he was the wronged party. Asshole.

She wanted to run out of there, but she was afraid her legs would buckle the second she stood.

She forced her gaze away from him and realized every female in the place had her eyes glued to his ass. Red, Angie, the pair of cocktail waitresses. Hell, even the stripper had seemed to slow down to check him out.

She stared into her lap. No need to ogle him. She’d done enough of that while sitting in front of him for three straight hours, both in their underwear, with nothing else to do. His body had been tense, but his expression had been completely blank. His eyes looked through her, as if she wasn’t there at all. She, on the other hand, had had trouble controlling her breathing and pretending it didn’t faze her that they were so close to each other.

Why did he have to be so unbelievably gorgeous? Why couldn’t he have grown a beer belly, a second chin, and lost all his hair? Nope, Mike looked even better than seven years ago. At twenty-five he had been a drool-worthy guy. The man he’d become was out of this world, all hard-edged and intense. And full of tattoos. His arms, his pecs. Even his lower abdomen, the V of his hips damn sexy framed with intricate tribal ink. He’d had a few before, but now his body was… Well, his body was a work of art. And not only because of the tattoos. All his muscles were ridged, not an ounce of fat anywhere. He was just frigging perfect.

Red fanned herself with a napkin. “I have a cardinal rule—I don’t hook up with clients, never. Anyone crossing that front door is completely off-limits; the fiasco of my second marriage taught me that, but if that panty creamer would give me the smallest hint he’s interested, I would so be all over him. Half the girls are crazy about him, coming on to him like there’s no tomorrow, but he turns them down. He’s been here several times this past week. Always goes to the back with Sinful. Not sure what’s the deal there.”

Kyra stiffened. She was pretty sure what the deal was. Lap dances were always in the back.

And why that was such a big deal to her, she didn’t know.

“You know each other?” Red asked, looking at Kyra. “There was so much tension in the air I could hardly breathe.”

Kyra tried to relax her tense shoulders. Mike wasn’t her man. He hadn’t been for seven years. It was not her business if he frequented a titty bar and was regularly giving it to a stripper named Sinful. “Long story. Not important.”

“Not important?” Angie sounded incredulous. “You dated him forever, Kyra. All through high school and college. He asked you to marry him.”

Red’s eyes opened wide. “That sex god asked you to marry him?”

“Yes, but I turned him down and signed up with a luxury cruise ship as a dancer.” Then she pinned Angie with her stare. “And you know as well as I do that wasn’t a marriage proposal. For all intents and purposes that was blackmail at its finest.” Which, much as it pained her to admit, had worked. She’d come back to Mike not even a month later, ready to give up her dreams and strike any deal he wanted, to find out he had moved on. That wasn’t all. It hadn’t been enough to sink in the dagger; he’d had to twist it a couple of times.

Then she’d run back to the cruise liner, and the rest, as they say, was history.

“I wanted to see the world,” she explained to a dumbstruck Red. “He wanted to keep me chained to the foot of his bed.”

Kyra knew she was being a bit unfair, but whatever. She’s just seen Mike taking off with a stripper to get down to business. She had the right to be a bit unfair.

Red looked like maybe being chained to the foot of Mike’s bed wasn’t such a horrible idea, but she didn’t comment on that. “Well, at least you saw the world, right?”

“Ha. Try enjoying yourself when you’re puking your guts out. I didn’t really get to see any of the countries we visited, but I sure as hell managed to vomit on all of them.”

“Seasick?”

Kyra shook her head. “Pregnant. By the asshole I just divorced. The ship’s head of security.”

And wasn’t that ironic? She’d taken the job because she wanted to dance and see the world, but she had ended up doing neither, because in three months she was pregnant and sick as a dog, and in three more, when she started showing and couldn’t close the skintight dresses, she lost her position as lead dancer and was transferred to deck entertainment duties. She wasn’t vomiting at that point, but she wasn’t seeing the world either, worried as she was about her predicament.

All in all, she was lucky she hadn’t gotten fired right away. There was a very strict no-pregnant-workers-aboard policy, but Drake had worked his magic. They’d gotten married, and she had been allowed to stay until she was six months pregnant. Which had worked for Drake too, because that was as long as it took for him to get tired of her and start fooling around with the other dancers who were more fun and hadn’t lost their figures.

“Heads of security are sneaky,” Red said and then fell silent.

Thank God, because she didn’t want to have this discussion now. Or ever. Much less in a strip bar with Mike probably nailing a sex bomb named Sinful to the wall by now. God, she was going to puke.

Besides, what was she supposed to say? That regardless of all the shit Drake had pulled on her, Mike had managed the one thing her ex hadn’t— to smash her soul into so many pieces she was still searching for them?

Angie wrapped her arm over Kyra’s shoulders. “You know what? Fuck the spa. I’m throwing you a breakup party tomorrow.”

“A what?”

Angie smiled mischievously. “You heard. A kicked-your-hubby-to-the-curb breakup party. Let’s have a crazy night out.”

A crazy night out? With her luck, she would end up flying over the Grand Canyon à la Thelma and Louise.

“Angie, I really appreciate this, but I’m not in the mood for a party.” Not that she had that many friends in Alden. Angie was the only one she had left. All the others had been primarily Mike’s. And had remained his friends.

“And that’s exactly why you need one,” Angie insisted and then wiggled her brows. “I’ll get you a breakup cake too.”

She was scared to ask.

The piece of Death by Chocolate was gone, so Kyra reached for the shot of bourbon.

Chapter Three

Hell of a way to spend his Saturday night, standing on the shadowed part of the Shack, sucking beer after beer, and pretending not to be devouring Kyra with his gaze.

Mike needed to get the hell out of there. All he had to do was turn around and put one foot in front of the other again and again until he hit the lake and could drown himself, or found his truck, whichever came first.

Easy, right? Wrong.

Breakup party girl was driving Mike fucking bat-shit crazy.

He’d come down to the popular open bar on the lake to unwind, but from the moment he’d arrived and realized what was going on, he’d known he was in trouble. Kyra had been partying with Angie. They might have started by themselves, but as that insane four-tier cake had made an appearance, the people around them had caught on to what the girls were celebrating and started buying them drinks and joining in. Men especially.

He hadn’t planned on drinking tonight, but that had been before spotting her. Now he couldn’t guzzle booze fast enough. Which was useless, because the more he drank, the sharper his senses got. And the clearer his memory became. Figure that one.

Yet he refused to give up, going with the hypothesis that eventually his vision would have to blur and his body shut down. So far no luck; all he could see was Kyra. Dressed in baggy cargo pants that rode low on her hips and a skintight tank top, all curves and boobs and thick, long, ebony hair swaying to the music. To say his jeans were a bit tight was the understatement of the century. The motherfuckers had shrunk three sizes at the very least and were strangling the hell out of his poor dick. His brain had lost blood supply a while ago and was currently off-line.

She hadn’t seemed to doll herself up, apart from some glossy lipstick he was positive would taste like strawberries, but she was drop-dead gorgeous anyway.

Tonight the place was packed full with half-naked, beautiful women having fun and being rowdy, most of whom had found their way to him at some point or another, flirting and showing their availability. Yet he had eyes for no one but Kyra. And what was new there?

Kyra had appeared in Alden at age nine to live with a foster family after her parents’ death, and Mike, thirteen at the time, had never looked at anybody again. Even now, so many years after she’d dumped him, she still had an invisible yet unbreakable hold on him.

Kyra had been a shy, big-eyed, extremely skinny little girl who hadn’t made friends easily. It hadn’t helped that some of the boys had taken to bullying her. She was the new kid on the block, the only one with a strong Hispanic ancestry, and had kept to herself. The perfect target for morons who, in reality, were enchanted by her and didn’t know how to catch her attention. One day, as several older guys were picking on her, Mike had smashed the leader’s head against a table, breaking his nose and scaring the shit out of everyone, himself included. He’d gotten suspended for three days, but Kyra was never picked on again, and they’d struck up a silent friendship. All through high school, Mike dated girls his age, keeping away from a too-young Kyra, but she was a knockout, so as soon as she’d started developing, Mike had to physically discourage guys from coming on to her. He’d been dying to touch her but had gritted his teeth and kept away. Then she’d hit sixteen, her foster mom had lifted the ban on dating, and the long-assed line of eager guys salivating over her had pissed Mike the hell off and forced him into action. Despite the fact he was twenty and still too old for her, he’d asked her out, staking his claim loud and clear.

Cynthia and Ralf hadn’t been too pleased, but they hadn’t interfered.

Two years later, as soon as she turned eighteen, she was moving in with him, and he was buying an engagement ring. He hadn’t given it to her then, deciding he’d wait for her to finish college, but there hadn’t been a doubt in his mind he was marrying that girl, giving her babies, and growing old with her.

Yeah, right.

Biting back a humorless laugh, he downed the last of his beer and signaled for another, watching as Angie said something and Kyra laughed. His cock jerked, growing even bigger. He didn’t want to want her, but his body hadn’t gotten the memo yet. Seven years and he was still pining for her. Still getting hard at the sound of her voice.

She was so damn beautiful, from her almond-shaped eyes to her soft lips to her gorgeous, curvy body. She had always been his wet dream made true; there wasn’t a single part of her that didn’t do it for him. His own cheeky Inca queen with midnight-black hair and smoky eyes.

Fuck, he was beyond pathetic.

Here was the only woman he’d ever loved, the same one who had turned him and the life he was offering down when he proposed. She hadn’t wanted a husband and children; she’d had a career as a dancer to build. She wanted to see the world. Live wild and free. And surprise, surprise, just a little over a year later, when she came back to Alden for her foster father’s funeral, she’d had a newborn in her arms and a husband by her side. An arrogant rat’s ass to boot.

She had wanted those things; she just hadn’t wanted them with him.

That realization had almost killed Mike.

He remembered everything from that day, down to the last details. It was etched in his mind, and no matter how hard he’d tried to erase it, he hadn’t been able to.

At that point he hadn’t seen her in a year. Exactly twelve months and two weeks. He’d been going crazy trying to contact her for the past two months. He’d known her contract on that damn fucking cruise ship was for ten months, so when the year passed and she wasn’t back in Alden, he’d started getting frantic.

And then suddenly she was there, more beautiful than ever. Rounder. Softer. With that asshole and a beautiful newborn. If it hadn’t been for James stopping him, he would have lunged at the guy and made a mess of things. Well, a bigger mess of things. As her husband was talking to Cynthia, Kyra had wandered to the back, and Mike had gone after her.

“How old is the baby?”
he’d asked, grabbing her by the forearms.
“How. Fucking. Old?”
he’d repeated, as she hadn’t answered fast enough.

“One and a half months,”
she’d whispered.

His heart broke.

There were many things in the world that could be bent to suit one’s whims. Sadly, numbers were not one of those. How he had wished the baby was his, that women were pregnant for eleven months, not nine. But the math didn’t add up. That beautiful baby girl with jet-black hair and those big, big gray eyes was Kyra’s but wasn’t his. She was the asshole’s.

He’d closed his lids, released her, turned around, and left. That had been the last time he’d spoken to her. Or touched her.

That night he’d headed for Boston, gotten trashed, and the straitlaced fighter he’d always been took a huge hit as he got involved in underground illegal fights. And women. He’d drowned himself in dirty fighting and easy pussy for the next two years, which was how long it took for all the ire he had inside to go back to manageable proportions.

“Here you are,” Max said as he approached him, taking him out of his reveries. “You okay, my man?”

He let out a grunt as response. He should have left the second he saw her there. But his limbs hadn’t obeyed him. They still weren’t. Not his limbs, not his cock, not his brain. He was hard as a pole and fucking pissed.

Every time he saw her, memories flooded him, the mixed emotions making him feel fucking restless. Mike wasn’t the mixed-emotions, shades-of-gray type of guy. He either liked something or disliked it. Or didn’t care. He was strongly opinionated, especially in the things that mattered to him, and rarely changed his views. Yet one glance at Kyra and he couldn’t find his own ass with both hands.