“—please use the dressing room over there in the corner. And put on a robe until we’re ready for you.” She bats her eyelashes at me, then steals a glance down.
“Sure thing,” I say as I wink and shoot. “Where do you want me, Miss Aberdeen?”
Veronica blushes the entire f**king class. Her face is this sexy shade of flush for ninety minutes. And every one of those ninety minutes, she thinks about nothing but me. She traces every line and curve of my body onto the paper in front of her. She licks her lips seventeen times. She sighs twenty-two times. She groans and whimpers when she makes five mistakes, and she even has a pouty frown on her face for the splittest of seconds when Aberdeen announces that class is over.
I wait for her as she cleans up. I’m wearing clothes again and all the girls, and a few dudes as well, are coming over to introduce themselves and ask who I am and where I came from.
I have that effect on people. I’m blessed in the body department. Ronin has his charm, Ford has his brain and I’ve got this beautiful body. Plus charm and brains. I’m the total package. Almost six foot three—I’m taller than both Ronin and Ford, and that’s all muscle. I played a little football in high school and got two scholarship offers. But I stayed in town with Ronin and we both went to University of Denver.
The team comes before everything else—and DU is a great school anyway.
Ford was already in Boulder studying film, he’s two years older. So Ronin and I started college together. He continued to model with Antoine, his sister’s lover who runs Chaput Studios out of a remodeled six-story building near Lower Downtown. I continued to build bikes and learn how to run the business so I could take over Shrike Bikes from my old man. My mom was desperate to get him to retire after a heart attack a few years ago.
We roped Mardee into doing some cons with us. Some basic shit. Little bit of hands-on stealing from scumbags. Then she overdosed on heroin and died.
We didn’t take it well, it was a huge blame game. Ford blamed Ronin, Ronin blamed me, I blamed—fuck. I blamed all of us. We were all at fault. We took it out on the local drug dealers using every skill we had in our arsenal. Namely Ford’s savant hacking abilities. And all that ended abruptly after the Boulder job. The job that would change our lives, send me to Colorado State in Fort Collins and Ronin to University of Colorado in Boulder after we were kicked out of DU.
Of course, DU never said we were kicked out. But there’s no way an institution of that caliber would allow us to stay. We saw the writing on the wall and Ronin and I don’t come from the big shots around town. We have money, but not that kind of money. Not Ford money. We can’t just donate enough money to purchase entire academic buildings to erase our mistakes.
We f**ked up. Bad. And the only reason we’re not sitting in prison right now is because the cops in Boulder f**ked up worse. They accessed one of Ford’s computers illegally and obtained evidence that would put us away for a long time.
Luckily the grand jury was honest. They refused to allow that evidence and all the charges were dropped.
I let out a long breath at that. I hate thinking about it. It makes me sick. I close my eyes for a second to make those thoughts go away, and then continue playing nice with the art students. I love the art people. I’m a business major because my father was not about to pay exorbitant private university prices for an art degree. So we compromised. I’d take business—which I’m actually f**king stellar at—and he’d pay for a summer internship in France with a famous trompe l’oeil artist. That was two years ago. She taught me how to paint three dimensions in 2D and I used that to start my body art hobby.
I paint naked girls.
And that bombshell I’m waiting for, she’s about to become my new canvas.
Chapter Six
Veronica ditches me the second she leaves the art building. I let her go. I have a date with her at four anyway. Plus, she’s done for the day. She only has one class, but I have three and mine are all across campus, so I have no time to stalk her ass or chase her down.
I walk out of finance class at three forty-five and smile all the way to my truck. Bomb’s tattoo shop is just down the street, and technically I could probably walk to her shop faster than it takes me to get back to the parking lot over near the art building where my truck is. But that girl’s coming home with me tonight. I’d hate for her little feet to become weary after hoofing it all the way across town to get to my truck.
I pull up in a space in front of Sick Boyz at three fifty-nine.
Her brother is waiting for me when I walk in, giving me a not-so-nice look. “Hey, man,” I say casually. “What’s up? I have an appointment with Veronica.”
He gives me the once-over. Maybe the twice-over. He’s a big guy. Bigger than me, and that’s saying something. He might not be much taller, but his muscles say he works out daily. Possibly several times a day. He’s wearing a white t-shirt with the shop logo on it—which is a rockabilly guy and a pin-up girl who could be a redhead version of his sister or a biker version of Jessica Rabbit. And both figures are tatted up and sitting on a badass bike. There’s a few custom bikes out front, so I’m getting the feeling these guys are into the rides.
I make my befriend-the-brother move and stick out my hand to shake. He accepts it. “Spencer Shrike. That your chopper out there?”