Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(33)

Pocketing the key, he once more slid his arm around Vanessa’s shoulders and steered her toward the lone elevator as she pretended to teeter precariously in her high heels. The women lounging lazily on the settee evaluated his suit and shoes and primped by fluffing their hair and their boobs while simultaneously batting their fake lashes.

“You get tired of her, honey,” one of them called, “you just come back down here. Candy’ll show you a real good time.”

“Back off, bitch,” Vanessa snarled. Rock bit his lip to keep from grinning. “This one’s mine. Go find your own.”

“Who you callin’ a bitch, bitch?” Candy demanded, showing a set of teeth brown and worn down from too many years smoking unfiltered cigarettes.

“I’m callin’ you a bitch, bitch!” Vanessa retorted hotly, making like she was heading toward Candy.

Rock dragged her back and shoved her in the elevator before Candy could push up from the settee. When the creaky silver doors closed them inside and the elevator began its jerky journey upward, he turned to ask if that was really necessary, even as entertaining as it’d been, but she grabbed his face.

“Let’s make it look good for our audience,” she whispered, hooking an ankle behind his knee as she pulled him down for a kiss.

He caught the blinking red eye of the security camera mounted in the corner a second before her lips landed on his and then…rien—absolutely nothing.

His mind came to a full stop, because her breath was sweet, her lips were sweeter, and her tongue was the sweetest of all.

And suddenly he wasn’t playing a part anymore. He grabbed her ass with both hands and spun, pinning her against the elevator wall as he made like Alexander the Great and conquered.

As in, take no prisoners. Full-on tongue action. A real grab and suck.

And just when he was about to remove a hand from her ass in order to palm one of those firm breasts pushed up like an offering in that teensy halter top, the doors opened with a slightly discordant ding-dong, like maybe the elevator was suffering from a cold, and sanity suddenly returned.

Holy shit!

He stepped back, his heart racing like a runaway freight train. When he looked down, her sultry eyes, made more so by all that black eyeliner, blinked up at him with equal measures of shock and awe.

“Sorry,” he whispered, swallowing and trying to still his racing pulse. “Got a bit carried away there, mon petite.”

“It’s, uh…” she raised a shaky hand to wipe a thumb across his lips. No doubt a good amount of her lipstick had made the transfer. “It’s fine. All part of the act.”

Uh-huh. Sure.

Well, if she wanted to paddle down that sad little river otherwise known as denial, who was he to dissuade her?

Together, they swayed down the hall with its stained red carpet and chipped gray paint before stopping outside room 402. Inserting the key, he pushed open the flimsy metal door and was immediately hit by the overwhelming aroma of Pine-sol, pot, and piss.

Oh, goody. The three Ps. What fleabag, pay-by-the-hour rat-trap would be complete without them?

“It’s not so bad,” Vanessa murmured, pushing past him into the room.

“And you’re a terrible liar,” he told her as he took a moment to rearrange the erection he’d sprung in the elevator. Following her across the dingy carpet, he refused to look at the bed. The really big, really obvious bed taking center stage.

He pushed back the curtains on the dirty window and glanced out at the bar across the street. The neon sign for In The Mood Lounge blinked bright blue, and he couldn’t help but think the only people who frequented the bar were either “in the mood” to contract a lethal case of ptomaine from the food served there, or “in the mood” to come down with a chronic case of herpes from the ladies working the joint.

Johnny sure knows how to pick ’em.

He’d seen some shady places in his life, and In The Mood Lounge rated right up there with the best of them. Especially when you combined it with the rare treasure across the street that was The Stardust Hotel.

“How does it look?” Vanessa asked, pulling on the hem of her miniskirt. Rock felt that grab and tug as if it’d happened to his dick.

Merde. Get it together, Babineaux.

“It’s perfect for surveillance,” he told her, refusing to turn in her direction lest she notice the tire iron he was concealing inside his suit pants—Correction: Christian’s suit pants. Oh, and wouldn’t Christian absolutely love that? “Not only can we see the entrances to the hotel and lounge, but also anyone enterin’ or exitin’ the alley behind the bar. Now all we need is our surveillance gear and—”

A hard knock sounded on the door.

“Ask and ye shall receive,” Vanessa drawled as she strolled across the room, now remarkably steady on those towering heels.

When she opened the door, Rock barely refrained from bursting into laughter because Becky stood in the hallway, dressed in a 24-hour delivery service uniform with a short brown wig covering her blond hair. A patchy beard concealed her pretty face, and a pair of Coke-bottle glasses made her soft brown eyes look huge and dull and lazy. She also wore a pair of fake yellow teeth and a monster, hairy mole on her upper lip.

No doubt about it, Rock wasn’t the only one who was good with a disguise.

Moley, moley, moley.