The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) (4 page)

“Ah, I’m sorry, sir, but she got the last one,” Luis told me smilingly. “Could I interest you in a Danish or some cobbler?”

I planted my fist onto the table and everyone’s glasses trembled and clinked. I very consciously relaxed my hand. “What a fucking establishment,” I said sarcastically.

But then my eyes shifted to Sofi and caught the cool judgment there.

“Ahem. Not your fault.” I don’t know why it mattered to me what she thought, but I waved him off and Luis walked away from us. I turned my attention back to Sofi, suddenly kind of self-conscious. “So, Sofi.” I cleared my throat and busied my hands smoothing out the napkin I wasn’t using. “If you spent some degree of time on the third floor, you must remember the Heart of Icarus vividly.”

Sofi’s fork sank into the tip of the cheesecake and she glanced up at me with laughing eyes, forgetting my minor altercation with the waiter. “You’ll have to remind me,” she purred. I didn’t quite believe her, but something in me stirred with excitement at the request. Flirting. She was flirting—and I was famished.

“The jewel is topaz, and takes its name for its size,” I answered. “Roughly the size of a man’s fist…or a man’s heart.”

She shifted in her seat and smiled, raising the bite of cheesecake on her fork. “And the color?”

“The color? It’s like topaz.”

“You’ll have to remind me,” she said.

I searched my imagination for how to explain it. “It’s like…honey on the outside, and it glows softly, while the inside is thick, and dark, and heavy.”

Sofi’s eyes never left me. “Like a man’s heart,” she mused dreamily. “What a closet romantic you are. The Heart was always my favorite.” She tilted her head and peered at me through a curly wisp. “Can’t help but notice where your eyes keep going.”

“I apologize—” I automatically began, eyes fluttering away from the tantalizing mounds of her cleavage.

“If you wanted my cheesecake so badly, all you had to do was ask, Mr. Battista. Here. Try a bite.”

“Oh.” Against my will, a blush creeped up on my cheeks. I could feel it. Did she somehow sense how long it had been since I’d allowed myself to indulge—in anything? I was somehow certain we were not talking about cheesecake…were we? “No, that’s all right.”

“I insist.” She drifted the fork toward me. “Please.”

“Hot,” Madeline murmured.

“I couldn’t,” I lied. The weird truth was that I felt the need to draw a line between us—now. A line she seemed determined to cross. “I’m a major germophobe, and I don’t know where you’ve been.”

“Let’s make a deal.” Her fork idled back and forth in front of me. “Try the cheesecake, and I’ll help you with the Heart of Icarus. If you really need a dancer’s touch.”

I rolled my eyes, exasperated. I didn’t have time for these teenaged games, though one glance at Gabe revealed that he was highly amused. I suppose being respectable and mature could backfire on a person, and make them the object of ridicule when placed into carefree situations. My jaw set. I wasn’t going to let something so inane become the sticking point.

“Very well,” I said, leaning forward. “Let’s have it, then.”

I opened my mouth and gestured toward it. She leaned in with the fork, its wedge of cheesecake balanced on the tines, and my eyes closed by instinct. I felt the light triangle of cake land on my tongue and closed my mouth around it, an explosion of mellow, lemony sweetness dissolving like a cube of sugar. I groaned unconsciously, then opened my eyes and tamped down the surge of blush rising to my cheeks—which only caused more to buffet my face.

I cleared my throat. “S’good,” I murmured around the half-melted cheesecake in my mouth.

Sofi was grinning with that knowing, conspiratorial way she had about herself—a grin as if we were the only two people really here, as if she had been the only one to really see what had happened between us. And maybe she had been.

“That’s all I wanted,” she whispered. Somehow, I could’ve sworn she was talking about much more than a bite of cheesecake, but maybe Gabe was right. Maybe I was just too rusty to deal with women effectively anymore; the thought, both of being incompetent and of Gabe being right, filled me with cold fury. I would need to fuck her immediately if this was going to become a weakness in the campaign.

“So, you’re in,” I said, nodding firmly toward her. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me lick my lips. Instead, I leaned over the table and snagged her hot coffee, enjoying a gulp. Her eyes followed me with a brightness. I wished she’d stop looking at me like that—as if she liked me.

“We’ll talk more tonight,” she promised me, standing from the table. I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting that. I was in the driver’s seat—not her. I’d always been in the driver’s seat. “Nine o’clock, at Rainbow Disco.”

“You already fucking said—”

“First of all,” she whispered warmly, drifting across the table to touch my hand, “don’t take that tone with me.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry,” I breathed. It just came out. My eyes ticked to Gabe and saw that his jaw had, yes, dropped. I couldn’t help it—my brain went all soft and fuzzy when she touched my hand. Her fingers were ungodly soft!

“Secondly, I am in,” she reassured me, never raising her voice. She quelled me without even using a curse word or shrieking. I swallowed. No woman had been able to calm me like that since my own damn mother. “But you don’t know my number.” She winked and plucked her hand away from mine, whisking her straw hat off the tabletop. “See you tonight.”

“Thanks for the lemons, boys,” Madeline muttered, slouching to a stand. She hadn’t touched her salad.

After they left, Gabe’s burger arrived and he laughed.

“Where are the ladies?” Luis asked. “Will the red-haired one be needing more coffee, do you know?”

“Oh, they were no ladies,” I assured him irritably, unclipping a pen from the pocket of my jacket. My eyes lingered on the door where Sofi had just exited. “And all we’ll be needing is the check, Luis.”

* * *

I
f I had
to put a face on the fifth circle of hell, Rainbow Disco would probably come closest. Stupid neon green lasers randomly flaring across a bog of manufactured cloud. Throbbing bass, synth drums, whining vocals, something about sex. Shadows—grasping, gyrating. I could see it all through the windows, and cringed away, blinking rapidly. Argh. What an assault on the senses. What ever happened to the art of conversation? A well-placed hand on the cheek, then driving deeper, into the hair? Now people were willing to settle for an elevated blood alcohol level and a big backseat. Not that I would stop them from getting alcohol into my bloodstream. I wasn’t too good for that. But I grimaced and glanced down at my attire. The constant crisp, button-down collared shirt in white. It was going to be ruined. There was that. Gabe had warned me—too late—that they had something called “paint drums” in there.

“I should’ve sent you as my emissary,” I grumbled. He looked as content and comfortable as a pet lounging in its family home: his jeans delightfully low, a navy t-shirt with several pairs of aviator shades portrayed on it—God only knows why—and hair back in one of those hipster buns for men. “They might flag me as a goddamn narc and have me expelled.”

“No,” Gabe whispered, clapping me on the shoulder, “this’ll be fun. I haven’t seen you dance since we were kids. I think your joints might flake a little bit.”

We reached the front of the line into Rainbow Disco just as a nondescript Sedan came careening into the same dirt lot where we had parked, and I pretended like I didn’t notice. Cyrus. Cyrus de Silva. Two minutes late; right on time. Good man. A more adept thief would have easily lost the tail, been harder to track, laid false leads in wait, and been gone already, hours ago, to somewhere Cyrus had no hope of finding—but this campaign was not about skill and professionalism. My job here was to be as sloppy and stickily fingered as a man possibly could be—and then, to leave Sofi, wide-eyed, clutching the bag.

“Sup, guys,” a bald girl with a diamond nose stud greeted us. I glared at her without conscious awareness of it.

“Hello,” I said stiffly. “What do you need from me?”

The bald girl smirked. “The back of your right hand, good sir.”

I showed it to her, ignoring her amusement with me, and she pressed a stamp there.

“Don’t you need to see identification?” I asked, appalled.

“I trust you,” she said, holding back a laugh without much success. “Gabe! Hey, boy, where you been?”

“This madman’s keeping me busy,” Gabe said, lounging over her shoulder. I wondered if they’d slept together, but then dismissed it as something I didn’t care about. I went ahead and passed onto the top of the stairwell overlooking the club. It was only nine o’clock, and the club wasn’t too full. The current song faded out, and there was a brief moment of semi-quiet as it transitioned into another. I spotted Madeline in a retro silver two piece dress, banging hypnotically on a pink and green paint drum.

I didn’t see Sofi—

“Hey, there,” her velvety voice, immediately familiar to me, wrapped around me from behind. My hair stood up on the back of my neck and I turned slowly, recalling the same advice I’d been given about my blood pressure. Just breathe. Try to relax. I hated how on edge this woman was making me. It was stupid. Inexplicable. She was nothing. Just another woman in a low-cut dress. “You made it, and it’s—” She checked her watch, and I blinked. She was wearing a real watch, just like I did. Hers was thin and gold, feminine. Classy. “8:59.” She looked at me with the gleam of amusement. “Right on time.”

“I like your watch,” I blurted.

She grinned. “You’re cute.” I clenched my jaw to keep it from dropping. Cute. Now that was a word I never thought would be used on me. The next song kicked on. It was, in a word, terrible. It sounded like computers fighting. “Let’s dance!” Sofi yelled, pressing closer to me.

“Oh, I’d really rather not,” I yelled back. “Gabe would probably—” Before I could finish shoving my brother to the forefront, she gripped my hand and dragged me down the stairs and onto the smoky and colorful dance floor. Her hand went to the back of my neck, warm and oddly gentle for such a violent song. The beat of the music coerced us to leap up and down, but she swayed from side to side as if a different song altogether played.

I folded my arms dutifully around her—because that was what you were supposed to do, and not at all because I wanted to—and she gazed up at me as if this wasn’t a business meeting at all.

Too playful. Too free. I didn’t like it. This wouldn’t do. This didn’t feel like business. This felt too close to pleasure. I imagined her lips slightly parted in a moan, her head falling back onto the pillow in my bed. Then I shook the reverie loose and it fragmented like smoke.

“Tell me something, Leo,” she called up to me, swaying hard to one side and arching her back, forcing me to catch her in a low dip, bringing me face-to-face with the rounded tops of her breasts. They were lightly beaded in sweat. My tongue darted out and collected the beads as if they were nectar, forgetting all protocol, as impulsive and instinctive as any slave to nature. God, her sweat tasted like vanilla and coconut—like she could melt on my tongue as readily as that cheesecake had. I brought her back up, her hair falling back onto her shoulders with a slowness, and then felt the distinct rush of her hip skating across my traitorous cock. Damn it.
Fuck it, let’s get out of here.
“And be honest,” she insisted, thrusting her chin upward. “My career in dance can’t be what attracted you to me.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it.
What is attracting me to you is how loose your neckline is—like it could snag on anything and rip in half and leave you so vulnerable to the horrible men of the world. To me.

I swallowed. “What do you mean?”

She crowded up next to my ear and hollered into it, “You know about my parents!”

I followed her lead, ducking my head low to speak directly into her ear, and immediately regretted it. Her hair was thick and rich and a primal instinct to bury my face into her neck surged up out of nowhere.

There was no way she couldn’t feel the steeliness of my shaft just now, but there was also nothing I could do about it, short of holding her at arm’s length and insisting on ballroom dancing in the middle of this club. Even then, she still might be able to feel it, and she’d probably be able to see it.

“Who doesn’t?” I forced myself to say, trying to focus.

She tilted her head and my eyes were drawn to the curve of her neck. I wet my lips. “And yet, you want me,” she went on.
God, yes.

“It would be silly to assume some family curse, wouldn’t it? Besides, your history with dance isn’t to be totally dismissed.” I whipped her in a tight circle to demonstrate. “You’re graceful,” I called to her, whipping her back into my arms. She slammed too suddenly and tightly into my chest. I lost my breath—for reasons not entirely related to her momentum. Every part of her was so soft. I could bury myself in her. “Quick,” I breathed. “Can take direction.”

“What?” she asked loudly.

“All important things in a thief,” I yelled—just as the music died and flowed into a new song. “And I know that you won’t be afraid.”