Page 16 of Prospect’s Curvy Vinyl Girl

I slide the black vinyl from the paper sleeve. I set it on the turntable. I drop the needle.

A sharp pop, a hiss of static, and then a slow bassline fills the small room, vibrating through the floorboards.

I turn to face him. Tyler stands perfectly still in the center of the room. The dim lamplight catches the hard lines of his face, the bruised purple of his knuckles, the unyielding set of his shoulders. He’s watching me with a dark, obsessive intensity that makes the wetness between my thighs slick anew.

"No covers in this room," I say. My voice is steady, stripping away the sass, the defense mechanisms, the armor. Just the raw, terrifying truth. "You leave the lies out there. If you're in here, you're Tyler."

His jaw flexes. A muscle jumps in his neck. He doesn't nod. He doesn't agree with soft words or empty promises.

He acts.

His hand drops to the hem of his flannel shirt. He rips it upward, pulling it over his head in a sharp, violent motion. The fabric lands silently on a stack of cardboard boxes. He isn't wearing an undershirt. My mouth goes dry.

His torso is a map of violence. Thick slabs of muscle layered over a broad chest and a washboard stomach. Faded silver scars cut across his ribs, jagged and brutal, telling stories of a life steeped in danger. Cipher-wire patterns wrap his left pectoral, intersecting like crossed telephone cables, opening into a hand-of-cards motif down his bicep. Five face cards. Five different kings. He’s scarred, lethal, and devastatingly gorgeous.

I cross the small distance between us. I lift my ink-stained fingertips. I drag them along the inked wires across his pec, slow, tracing where the cables knot and split. The yellowed lamp catches the green chips at the edge of his irises—the part of him no cover could ever hide.

I follow the wires down to the cards on his bicep. King of spades. King of hearts. King of diamonds. King of clubs. A joker-king.

Every face is wrong.

Every face is scratched out where the eyes should be. Deliberate. Surgical. A bone-deep deletion under the skin.

The breath punches out of my lungs. I understand without him saying a word. Every cover he ever wore had a face on it. None of those faces were his. The wires bind them all together—the only thing he carries that’s his own.

He lets me trace them. He doesn't speak. His chest rises and falls under my fingertips, slow, controlled, watching me see him.

Then he reaches around to the small of his back. A metallic click sounds in the room. He pulls a black handgun from a concealed holster tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He sets the weapon on the small wooden nightstand beside the mattress with a sharp thud.

The cover is gone. The weapon is laid bare. He’s stripping away every layer of the performance.

His hands move to his belt. He unbuckles it, the metal clinking in the quiet room. The button of his jeans pops. The zipper rasps downward. He kicks his boots off, shoving the denim down his powerful thighs, stepping out of them. He kicks them aside. He stands before me in nothing but dark boxer briefs, the thick bulge of his erection straining against the cotton.

One last layer between us, and he still looks more honest than any man I’ve ever seen. The single lamp catches every faded scar, every line of ink, every knife and bullet history written into his skin. He isn’t the harmless cousin from Portland. He’s a man somebody forged an entire paper trail to hide. Nobody builds a lie that seamless alone. And he’s looking at me like I’m the first thing he’s wanted for himself in longer than he can remember.

He doesn't ask if I'm ready. He doesn't check my boundaries. He stalks toward me, closing the distance in two long strides.

His hands grip my hips. He lifts me off the floor.

A gasp punches out of my throat. My feet dangle in the air. He carries me to the mattress and drops me onto the center of the low frame. I bounce slightly against the worn springs. Before I can scramble backward, he follows me down.

He hooks his fingers into the open waistband of my jeans and strips the denim down my legs, my soaked panties dragged along with it tossing them onto the floor. I’m exposed from the waist down. The cool air of the room hits my wet, aching pussy, and a shudder rolls through me.

He doesn't hover over me. He doesn't pin me on my back.

His hands grip my shoulders, turning me onto my side. He lies down right behind me, his body molding against my back. We’re spooning, but there’s nothing sweet or gentle about this. It’s a tactical alignment. A total capture.

His solid chest presses flush against my spine, his heat radiating through my thin shirt. His thick thigh slots between my legs, separating them wide, holding my knees apart. His left arm bands around my stomach, clamping me against his body, locking me in place.

I’m trapped against him. His hot breath fans across the sensitive skin of my neck, the rough scruff of his beard dragging against my pulse point.

"Mine," Tyler rasps, his voice a gravelly command in my ear. "No covers. No running. You belong to me."

The certainty in his voice annihilates the last four years of my life. I’ve carried this shop, this town, my mother's legacy on my own narrow shoulders for so long. Every day a battle. Every Tuesday a humiliation. I’ve been drowning in independence because I had no other choice. Now, this stranger is wrapping his body around mine, absorbing my weight, taking the burden from my bones. The profound relief is a crushing ache in my chest.

His right hand sweeps down my stomach. His rough fingers bypass my belly button, sliding over naked skin where my jeans used to be, diving straight between my parted thighs. He finds my dripping wetness.

I moan loudly, my head falling back against his solid shoulder. His thick fingers coat themselves in my slick. He doesn't tease. He doesn't circle. He presses his thumb against my swollen clit and drags two thick fingers deep inside my pussy in one calculated thrust.