Designed for Murder (Killer Style)

Some fashion statements can kill...

Mika Ito combines her two favorite things in life—textile design and live-action role-playing (LARP)—by creating costumes for her fellow Magic Battledome gamers. Lately, someone’s been assaulting LARPers and stealing their costumes. Concerned for the safety of her friends, Mika hires Maltese Security...only to discover that the lead investigator is the super-hot stranger she just hooked up with.

Carlos Castillo is all too familiar with Magic Battledome. A former legend in role-playing circles, he was all about gaming, until things went very, very wrong for him. Now he’s forced to return to the game undercover—as Mika’s boyfriend—to find some answers. Only playing “boyfriend” with his gorgeous one-night stand is more temptation than a guy can withstand...

Someone wants the costumes enough to kill for them. And when it comes to murder, nothing is what it seems...

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Avery Flynn. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Ignite is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Alethea Spiridon Hopson

Cover design by Louisa Maggio

Cover art from iStock

ISBN 978-1-63375-434-8

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition November 2015

Prologue

Harbor City

One Year Ago…

A
shot cracked through the air.

“I don’t want to shoot you, Ivy, but I will,” Carlos Castillo called out from the room’s main entrance, swallowing back the bile brought up by seeing the woman he loved in the midst of a real-life murder spree. Or more truthfully, the real-life version of the woman he loved. Ivy was nothing like Scarlett, Ivy’s alter-identity and Carlos’s partner for the past three years in the online game Magic Battledome.

Ivy turned toward him, her eyes wide. “Zephyr?” Her use of his code name was a shiv between the ribs. “What are— You aren’t supposed to be here.”

He adjusted his aim. A red laser dot instantly appeared on her wrist above the gun. He didn’t want to shoot her, but she’d poisoned him and had her gun aimed at two innocent people. Killing Ivy might be his only option.

“Yeah, as I recently learned, some surprises suck.” That was one word for her nearly murdering him. He moved his weapon, shifting the ominous red dot down to her hand, then back up her arm and chest until it slid to rest between her eyes. “I’m even better at this in the real world than in Magic Battledome. Put the gun down, Ivy. Game over.”

Her left eye spasmed and her gun jiggled in her loose grip. “So do it, then.”

Abruptly, she dropped to one knee, escaping Carlos’s aim, and fired off three rapid shots at Tony Falcon and Sylvie Bissette.

Two of the bullets went wild.

One pinged off the chair above Sylvie’s head and ricocheted back toward Ivy, only just missing her.

Carlos didn’t think. He didn’t have time. His pulled the trigger, and the shot exploded through the room.

An
oomph
sounded.

Ivy crumbled to the ground.

Carlos hustled over, kicked the pistol out of her reach, and kneeled down, feeling for a pulse beneath the red hair tangled around her neck.

“Is she dead?” Tony asked, lowering Sylvie gently to the floor.

“Yeah.” Carlos stood.

“The ricochet?”

“No.” Carlos wiped his bloody hands on his pants, but it just smeared the redness across his palm. He rubbed harder, but it wouldn’t come off. “I shot her.”

“I’m sorry you had to do that, ’Los.”

He looked up at the Maltese Security owner who held Sylvie in his arms. The woman Tony loved was alive only because Carlos had killed Ivy.

“I’m not sorry.” And he almost meant it. He’d only known her as Ivy for a matter of days, but he’d loved her alter ego, Scarlett, in Magic Battledome for years. “Scarlett deserved more than to be Ivy in the real world.”

There hadn’t been a choice about pulling that trigger, but that didn’t make the cold void in his chest shrink. He’d killed part of himself with that bullet. Now it was time to bury it forever.

Chapter One

“To be irreplaceable, on
e must always be different.”

—Coco Chanel

Harbor City

Today…

C
arlos Castillo surveyed the Thursday-night crowd at Feeny’s hole-in-the-wall bar. It was a step above a dive bar and several stories below what most people in Harbor City would call a respectable establishment, which made it perfect for Carlos and the other guys from Maltese Security when they needed to blow off a little steam after closing a case. It also happened to be the site of his impending public humiliation at the hands of his fellow investigators who’d come to Feeny’s with him.

“Don’t even think about pussying out, ’Los.” Cam Hardy tapped his shot glass against Carlos’s. “You lost the bet, you pay the price.”

Fuck. What human being could eat fifteen pickled eggs that had been sitting in a jar on the bar for God knew how long? Apparently Cam, who’d knocked up his success to the fact that neither he nor his live-in girlfriend, Drea, could cook for shit and his taste buds had gone into hiding.

“What about one of them?” Will Roscoe asked, nodding toward the trio of women in a corner booth.

“The redhead’s hot,” said Alex Lee before taking a long draw from his beer.

Carlos shot back the last of his shot before he said anything he’d regret about redheads. The last redhead he’d dated had nearly killed him—literally—and he’d had to return the favor.

“Not his type,” Cam said.

Unlike Roscoe and Alex, who were relative newbies to the team, Cam knew the real reason behind Carlos’s aversion to redheads. While Cam would shame Carlos into embarrassing himself in a bar full of people, he wouldn’t say anything about the shooting that had changed Carlos’s life forever.

Cam nodded toward the women in the booth. “The girl on the end is more his speed.”

Right at that moment, the woman in question slid out of the booth and stood up. She couldn’t be more than five-five even in the thigh-high leather boots with their wicked high heels. She wore skin-tight jeans that clung to her legs like they were made for her tight body and a top made out of some sort of shimmery material that caught the dim lights when she walked, drawing his attention to the way her tits moved as she strutted across the bar like she owned the joint.

The full-body profile view was enough to make him reach for another shot, but then she pivoted at the bar, turning so she faced their table, and he couldn’t do a damn thing but stare. Almond-shaped brown eyes, full pink lips, and more than a hint of trouble in the way she tossed her long light brown hair and laughed at some undoubtedly lame joke from the bartender.

“Roll your tongue back in your mouth, ’Los.” Cam shook his head and finished his shot. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you still spent all of your free time pretending to be a warlock or some shit on the computer.”

The verbal nudge was more than enough to bring him back to reality. After the shooting, he’d replaced Magic Battledome role-play online gaming with the gym and had spent the past year working to make the team at Maltese realize there was more to him than just amazing computer geek skills. And as tonight’s celebration of a job well done proved, it had worked. He worked cases in real life now, not just at the keyboard.

Carlos settled back in his seat, keeping his gaze locked on the woman as she carried three beers back to her booth. The change in direction gave him an ideal view of her curvy ass. “Like most of the guys in this bar wouldn’t pretend to be a wizard if that’s the game she wanted to play in the bedroom.”

“I would find a cape right fast.” Roscoe raised his shot glass in salute before downing the whiskey.

“Well then, I’d say you found your target.” Cam smirked. “Go get her, ’Los.”

As far as challenges went, it was friendly. But it was still a challenge. And Carlos never backed down from a challenge.

For the past year, there hadn’t been a single one the Maltese team had issued that he hadn’t met head-on—and he always would. This was who he was now; the former geek supreme didn’t exist anymore. He’d pushed that guy and his guilt for pulling the trigger so far into a closet that he would never see the light of day again.

“One dance?” Carlos pushed back his chair and stood, already primed for action—just like any time Scarlett’s ghost came haunting.

“Yep. The longest slow song you can find on the jukebox,” Alex said, barely keeping his laughter in check. “And then
she
has to buy
you
a beer.”

Carlos took one last swig of his beer. “You’re all a bunch of assholes.”

Not bothering to stick around to hear their responses, which no doubt would just be an agreement, he strode across the bar, his sights set on the hot brunette with a body made for the best kinds of trouble.

M
ika Ito set down the trio of beer bottles, making sure to
keep her back turned to the hotties sitting at a table in the back of the bar with their chairs angled so each of them had his back to the wall. Not that it made a difference. The testosterone wafting out of that corner was thick enough to knock her flat and leave her begging for more, whether she was looking at them or not.

“I still vote paid assassins,” she told her best friends, Kailer and Layla, who were already sitting at the table ready for girls’ night out to commence.

“You have got to get a new hobby. All that Magic Battledome dress-up shit has twisted your brain,” Layla said as she shoved a stray purple hair back into her topknot.

“It’s not dress up, it’s live-action role-playing.” She sat down. “LARPing if you’re cool.”

“I could go for action of another kind.” Kailer clinked bottles with Layla. “I love working in the fashion world, but damn, the ratio of gay to straight men is killing me.”

“Amen, sister,” she and Layla said at the same time.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had that particular conversation with her jewelry designer and stylist best friends. Between her work as a textile designer and her alternate personality as the Silver Queen in Magic Battledome LARP events, Mika met a lot of people, but none quite as dangerously male as the group who’d been eyeballing them for the past half hour.

Especially not like the one with the wavy dark hair so conservatively styled that she itched to run her fingers through it just to see if he’d look any sexier tousled. Her heartbeat sped up at the mental image. Yeah. He totally would. If she went for dudes with thick biceps and brooding dark eyes, which she normally didn’t—but tonight she could make an exception.

“Looks like at least one of them has a pair of balls,” Layla said while looking over Mika’s shoulder.

“Layla,” Kailer groaned under her breath, an embarrassed pink shading her cheeks.

“What?” Layla shrugged. “They’ve only been staring at us for thirty minutes.”

“Which one?” Mika asked, crossing her fingers for one in particular.

But she didn’t need to hear her friends’ responses; a swift peek at the mirror behind the bar confirmed that for once Lady Luck was smiling in her direction. Awareness made her skin tingle in all the right places. She straightened in the booth, wishing that her family tree had included tall Samurai warriors instead of short accountants. The air moved around her and her heart kicked it up a notch or twenty.

“Hi.” Low, warm, and with a hint of a Spanish accent, Mr. Dark and Brooding stood next to the table, looking at her like there wasn’t another person in the world.

“Hi.” She sounded all breathy, like she’d just run a ten miler, was out of breath, and wholeheartedly grateful to still be alive.

“Hi.” His nearness made her panties evaporate. “I’m Carlos.”

It took her a second to come up with an appropriate response. “Mika.”

“Nice to meet you, Mika. Do you want to dance?” he asked.

She looked around, beginning to wonder if this was some kind of joke. “This is Feeny’s. There’s no dance floor. I don’t think you’re even allowed to dance in here.”

“I’m willing to risk it.” His lips curled in a lazy one-sided smile that sent her pulse into medic-alert speed. “Are you?”

Going with her gut, she decided she was and followed him out to a spot near the bar where the tables weren’t packed so close together near the jukebox. He found a song on the jukebox, something slow and mellow, then put one hand on her hip and held the other one in his. An electric awareness snapped, crackled, and popped along her skin.

“This is nuts,” he mumbled as he shuffled his feet to the beat.

Stiffening in his arms, she glared at him. “You’re the one who asked me. I can just go sit back down and you can go back to your no-neck friends.”

He tightened his grip, pulling her closer. “Whoa, slow down there.”

Too late. Annoyance, embarrassment, and something a little too close to hurt for comfort had put her on the fast track to pissed off. “Why should I?”

“How else would I prove I’m not a total asshole if I don’t finish this dance?” He jerked his chin toward his table in the back. “See the idiots over there?”

Like they could be missed. “Yeah.”

“I lost a bet.”

Heat beat against her cheeks as her feet turned to concrete. “You’re dancing with me because you lost a bet?”

“No.” He pulled her closer and slid the hand on her hip to the small of her back. “I’m dancing with you because I’m the luckiest guy in this bar.”

“Smooth.” Mika rolled her eyes but began to sway to the music again. For a muscle-bound guy who made stupid bets, he moved well on the dance floor, which boded well for how he moved elsewhere—like the bedroom. “So what else do you have to do to settle this bet?”

“You have to buy me a beer.”

If he’d looked away when he’d said it or tried to be all flirty, she would have said thank you and good night. Instead, he looked her straight in the eye—unabashed honesty got her every single time. Her stomach did a fluttery shimmy and she almost lost a step.

Pull it together, girl.

“I don’t know, it’s supposed to be an early night for me.” And maybe for him, too, if he played his cards right.

He put her hand on his hard chest and dropped his to her other hip, bringing them into perfect alignment. “Big meeting tomorrow?”

“Sort of.” The police weren’t going to do anything about the attacks, so she would do something herself, which was why she had an early appointment at one of the best investigative firms in Harbor City.

“I’ll take you home later, if your friends are skipping out soon,” he said.

Temptation, thy name is Carlos.

He had a hard body, hot moves on the dance floor, and an underlying, panty-melting confidence that promised he knew what to do with both in other more private locations.

“Who said I wanted to go home?” She looked up at him through her lashes.

His lips curled in a slow smile as his gaze dropped to her mouth. “Who said it would be
your
home?”

The song ended, leaving them standing with their arms wrapped around each other in the middle of the nonexistent dance floor. She’d come to Feeny’s to forget for a few hours and pretend that her world hadn’t gone crazy. What better way to do that than with Carlos?

“So…” She stepped out of his embrace. “Can I get you that beer now?”

T
wo hours—and the longest six-block cab ride ever—later, Carlos fumbled to unlock the front door of
his apartment. It wasn’t normally a difficult task, but right now he was more focused on Mika’s lips and filling his hand with her ass than putting the key in the deadbolt, literally speaking. Finally, the metal slid home and the door swung inward, propelling them forward as they stumbled into his apartment.

He wrapped his arm around her middle and held her close, righting them both. He wished he could blame the alcohol for the bumbling entrance, but he hadn’t had a drink since she agreed to join him on Feeny’s nonexistent dance floor. She’d bought him that beer, but he’d never had a sip. If he was drunk on anything, it was the taste of Mika’s lips.

“My hero.” She steadied herself before stepping back out of his embrace.

He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, but Mika looked around his utilitarian space—couch, TV, table with two chairs, neither of which got used often, since most of the time he ate standing up in the kitchen. Thank God the cleaning crew had been here this morning, otherwise she’d probably run screaming just from the recycling bin proof of his Mountain Dew habit, one of the few keepers from his past gamer habits.

She turned on one of those super-high heels, spinning back into his orbit, and tugged the hem of his black T-shirt from his jeans. “Is this when I tell you that I’m not usually this kind of girl?”

Her small hands snuck under the cotton and across his stomach, raising the material. It had been a while, but he knew where this was going and he was done dancing around it. He reached behind his head, grabbed his shirt collar, and yanked it over his head. Her quick intake of breath as she bit down on her bottom lip had his dick twitching to be let free.

“What kind of girl is that?” He lowered his mouth to her jaw as his fingers went to work on freeing her shirt from her waistband.

She buried her fingers in his hair and tilted her head back, exposing more of her neck to his touch. “The kind who goes home with a guy she just met.”

Taking full advantage of her position, he kissed his way down the long, smooth column of her throat, licking the pulse point and grazing his teeth across the sensitive spot where her shoulder met her neck. She shivered against him, letting out the softest of moans. Even though it killed him a little, he paused in his downward trajectory.

He twisted the shimmery material of her shirt around his fingers just enough so that the slightest of pulls would free it, giving him access to more of her soft skin. “So do you want me to call a cab for you?”

She tightened her grip on his head and pushed him back so he had no choice but to look at her. The sight of her kiss-swollen mouth mesmerized him, so full and wet and pink; they were the kind of lips that gave him all sorts of ideas.

She yanked his hair, and he shot his gaze up to hers. “You call a cab and I’ll kick you in the shins.”