“I just wondered if you’d seen her since she’s in town.”
“Who?” Axel mentally sorted through the possibilities. Callie had returned from her honeymoon with Sean and Thorpe recently. Gia Denning was still away with her husband, Jason, probably beaching somewhere exotic. None of the female club members he could think of had recently been away. Who the hell else would Sweet Pea be talking about? “Since I haven’t seen any of my female friends today, I’ll go with no.”
Sweet Pea sighed with a hint of annoyance. The woman had a huge heart, even if she was a bit naïve. And she usually had almost unlimited patience . . . unless orgasm depravation was involved. Other than that, he could think of very few subjects that pushed her beyond her usual placid smile. “Okay, what pop culture reference am I missing?”
“It’s all over TMZ. Mystery Mullins arrived in Dallas last night.”
Axel dismissed the gossip at first. She’d been a beautiful girl when he’d rescued her, and he was glad that he’d been able to prevent someone from snuffing out her bright light. They hadn’t spoken more than a few words after their awkward night in Cerro Gordo. So it wasn’t as if he expected her to look him up for a meal or a drink just because she’d jetted to the city.
A drink. Hold up there . . . Mentally, he tripped over the thought again. Then his world tilted.
A beauty with fake hair, hiding her real eye color, and masking her face behind a shit ton of cosmetics had picked him up in a bar, seeming as if she couldn’t wait to be with him. Why would someone go out of their way to proposition him, yet hide everything about herself?
Suddenly, Axel thought he had the answer.
“Did TMZ post any pictures of her?” he barked.
“Yeah, and video, too.”
Axel raced back to his bedroom and shoved the door open. Fuck, the place still smelled like the sex he’d had with her, and that made him hard all over again. He hadn’t been done with the woman. Once more wouldn’t have been enough. Probably not even a hundred times more. He’d been dying to restrain her, spank her, explore every inch of her skin, clamp her nipples, and hear her scream for him again.
If she’d been Mystery Mullins, then his desire for more didn’t surprise him at all.
He grabbed his tablet off his nightstand and quickly surfed to TMZ. Tapping his toe while the site took its sweet time loading, he let out a mental string of curses that would have made a sailor blush.
“She looks great. I’d love to have her boobs. And her hips,” Sweet Pea lamented. “She looks like a woman, not a girl still waiting for puberty.”
“You’re small but mighty. Don’t demean yourself, Misty. We’ve had this conversation.”
“And you’ve given me the spanking to go with it. I know . . .” She sighed. “But when you see her, you’ll know what I mean. I almost didn’t recognize her, but she looks stunning.”
About that time, the website popped up. Front and center, he caught a still photo of Mystery wearing the same wig and clothes she had when he’d first seen her at the bar. In this picture, she held the hand of an older man who hovered protectively. The caption snagged Axel’s attention. It sent his temper—and his desire to get his hands on her again—soaring.
MULLINS IN DALLAS FOR MYSTERY LOVER?
He scanned the accompanying “story.” Blah, blah, blah . . . Staying at the Hotel Crescent Court.
Bingo!
Had she really run from his bed as if her ass was on fire so she could crawl into this man’s? The thought chilled him to the core. No way. No fucking way. Axel didn’t question why he felt possessive. He hadn’t thought of Mystery except fleetingly in years. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. Days might be more accurate. She was never too far from his thoughts, but he hadn’t succumbed to the urge to look her up and reminisce about old times, even if he’d wondered more than once what would have happened if he’d taken her up on her unspoken offer in the desert. Right now, he’d love to remind her exactly who had given her the pleasure that had urged her to leave half-moon marks from her nails deep in his back as he fucked her again.
“Is that her boyfriend?” he growled at Sweet Pea.
“I don’t think so. Let me . . .” His friend and submissive tapped away on the keyboard he heard in the background. “Nothing on Google about a boyfriend since she briefly dated one of those British boy-band dudes, but that was a good year ago, according to what I can find.”
If she’d finally returned to the U.S. to see this other man she posed with in the photos tonight, why would she have picked him up in a bar earlier today? Curiosity? Had she hoped to scratch the itch lurking under her skin since that night in the ghost town? Axel wasn’t sure what rolled around in the seductive Hollywood princess’s head, but he vowed to get to the bottom of it—and get another taste of her. He’d turned her down at nineteen, despite how badly he’d wanted her, because she’d been young, traumatized, and out of her element. Now that he knew she was all woman who could take every inch of the hard dick he had for her?
It was so on.
He went in search of his shoes. “I have to go.”
“What? Now? I’d hoped we could . . . you know, hang out tonight.”
In other words, she wanted him to scene with her. Their schedules hadn’t matched up since Thorpe’s birthday weeks ago. It had been far longer than that since she’d asked for sex. Lately, he’d sensed the pressure cooker of her emotions churning, building. It wouldn’t be much longer now until she caved to her turmoil and asked him to unravel her.
“When was the last time you cried, Misty?”
She hesitated. “I tried.”
“Good to hear it. Answer the question.”
Sighing, she hemmed and hawed, then gave in. “It’s been a while.”
Exactly as he suspected. With a grim press of his lips, Axel shoved on his shoes and went in search of his keys, then stormed into the garage, pressing the button to lift the door.
“We’ll have to talk about this tomorrow. Because, yes, I’ve seen Mystery. And I need to go ask her some pointed questions right now. Will you be all right?”
“I will.” But she sounded disappointed. “Callie has been having morning sickness, so she’s laying low. She invited me over for some movies tonight.”
Axel would feel better if Sweet Pea stayed with the other woman—and under Thorpe’s and Sean’s watchful eyes. “Do that. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
The second he hung up, he scrolled through the other contacts on his phone, wondering who the hell could help him with this last hurdle . . . He knew in which hotel he’d find Mystery but that information would only take him so far.
Finally, he found just the number he was looking for. The man answered on the first ring. “Your dime. Shoot.”
“Hey, Stone,” he greeted Jack Cole’s new super-hacker, particularly glad the man was one of few words. “I need a favor. Can you dig through a specific hotel’s guest records and give me a room number?”
“Technically, it’s illegal.” Stone sounded as if that amused him, too.
“It’s also pretty damn important.” Because there was zero way Axel intended to let Mystery slide out of his life again without finding out just why the hell she’d fucked him and run off. He had his suspicions, but he wanted to make her say them aloud, to his face—while he was buried deep inside her.
“What’s it worth to you?”
So they were bartering today, huh? It made sense. He and Stone were hardly bosom buddies. In fact, he’d only met the guy a handful of times while trying to help Kata’s brother, Joaquin, save his bride-to-be, Bailey.
“What do you want?”
“You have something exclusive with that hot little thing everyone calls Sweet Pea?”