What Happens at Con Read online

  Basically, this con was a big Halloween party with some people fucking. He hadn’t seen anybody he was remotely interested in hooking up with. Jose and Fezza and Dennis were there yukking it up. Jose was dressed as Wolverine, Fezza was dressed as a chauffeur (“I’m Black Mask!” he had protested vehemently), and Dennis… well, Dennis had been a douche and worn a T-shirt that read “I’m a non-playable character,” which made no sense in this venue.

  To say the least, they didn’t quite fit in.

  Well, technically, he sort of fit in. The guys had brought him the whole Gladiator thing — complete with the leather kilt-skirt number — and he’d drawn the line. He wore the mask they’d bought, and he took off his shirt and smeared some blue paint on his chest and his face, so he could look kinda Celtic, going with the scrollwork on their nearly Gladiator mask. He also conceded to wear the leather pants that Kyla Summers had made for him for a costume contest.

  He just wanted to go home and play Call of Duty for a while, drinking beer. Maybe he’d hit up Tinder during the week or something, although that thought made him sigh dejectedly.

  Then he saw her. Safe to say, all thought of Tinder, leaving, or even basic English went right out the window.

  He didn’t know who or what she was supposed to be. She wasn’t being obviously provocative, not like the woman with the skull pasties, for example. (Which was pretty damned funny.) She wasn’t naked. She was impeccable. Her outfit was black lace over blood-red fabric, a sort of corset. She looked like a Daedric goddess or something out of Skyrim, something evil and powerful, something you’d sell your soul to.

  He wondered how he could sign up.

  Her skin gleamed like antique bronze, contrasting with the shining silver filigree of her mask, which looked both delicate and strong. It picked up the iron details on her corset buckles and the buckles of her thigh-high boots. She looked like a steampunk goddess, powerful and untouchable.

  Which, of course, meant he had to touch her.

  Play it cool, play it cool. He didn’t want to show her how much she affected him. He assumed that she’d probably be swarmed by that already, and he wasn’t the type to go begging for a woman. He stood his ground. But as he passed, he couldn’t help but brush against her. It was a move he’d done before, a sort of test. Either there would be a spark of interest, maybe a conversation, or there’d simply be a brush of flesh, and quick as it happened, it’d be forgotten.

  This was… different. This was like touching a live wire.

  He watched her walk away. She wouldn’t go far — not if he had anything to say about it.

  “There’s my target,” Jose said, distracting him. He nodded at the bar. “There she is.”

  Abraham looked at the bar, expecting to see some towering Nordic beauty with big fake boobs or similar. Jose tended to be attracted to the porn-star end of the spectrum, even if he struck out often. But this wasn’t. This was a short, tiny bit stocky girl dressed as Chun Li from Streetfighter, complete with the pink dress and hair poofs. She also wore a thick pair of glasses.

  “That one?” Abraham asked. There wasn’t any other woman there, but he was too surprised and had to clarify.

  “Yeah.” Furthering Abraham’s shock, Jose sounded nervous. “I like that she dressed as an old-school video game.”

  “C’mon, man,” Dennis said, rolling his eyes. “Even you can do better than that.”

  Abraham shot Dennis a look. Fezza shook his head.

  “I think she looks nice,” Fezza said, then smirked. “And I get the sense that Jose here actually likes her.”

  “So, get in there,” Abraham said. Because the sooner you get a piece of that, the sooner I can get back to my woman, he mentally added.

  Jose hesitated. Actually fucking paused. Which was odd, because Jose was generally fearless to the point of stupidity. Even if his batting average was around zero, the guy still swung.

  Jose’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “I think I’m nervous.”

  “Not possible,” Abraham said, hoping to lighten things up. “Because based on the girls you go after, I swear, you must have titanium balls. Small ones, but still, unbreakable.”

  Jose didn’t even crack a smile. “That’s not bravery. That’s math. You ask enough women, you get a statistical probability that at least one of them will say yes. And from that pool, you wind up getting women who are interested in doing the deed. It’s a simple equation.”

  Fezza’s eyebrows raised, momentarily distracted. “You gamed it out?”

  “It is literally a simple equation,” Jose repeated.

  “I want to see the math behind this,” Fezza demanded.

  “I want to go find the chick with the skull pasties,” Dennis said, rolling his eyes. “Come on. Who’s with me? Abraham?”

  Jose ignored him. “And it’s worked — the number game worked. There have been a few glitches. I went for maybe two months without a match, and then I wound up with a weekend where I had five dates in a forty-eight-hour period. That was nightmarish.”

  Abraham snapped his fingers in front of Jose’s face, sensing the man was stalling. “What’s different? What’s the deal with this girl?”

  “I dunno. I figured I’d come to this thing and ogle and hit on chicks, but she seems different.”

  Abraham thought back to the Steampunk Goddess. He knew exactly what Jose meant… probably because he was feeling the same cocktail of fear and adrenaline.

  “You’ve got to go for it,” Abraham said, more sternly than he meant to. Maybe because it wasn’t just for Jose, it was for himself. “You want this girl?”

  “Yeah.” Jose muttered.

  “Then man the fuck up and talk to her. Ask her out. Even if she says no, you’ve got to try, or you’re gonna regret it. Okay?”

  Jose stood up to his full height, looking like he was bracing himself for jumping out of an airplane. “Yeah. Right. Okay, I’m goin’ in.”

  “I can’t watch this,” Fezza said, shaking his head and turning to Dennis. “Let’s go find Skull Pasties.”

  “I hear there’s a bondage room with real fucking, anyway,” Dennis said. He turned to Abraham. “You in?”

  Abraham shook his head. “I’ll be wingman,” he said. “Then I’m doing my own recon.”

  “Right on,” Dennis said, with a smile tinged with a leer. Abraham sighed. Sometimes Abraham felt like Dennis was one of those privates in the army — all balls, no brains, even if he was a decent coder.

  They left. Then Abraham watched as the normally deliberate and over-the-top suave Jose walked to the bar — and promptly tripped over his own feet.

  “Fuck me,” Abraham said, rolling his eyes. Now? Of all fucking times, now Jose got clumsy, rather than just awkwardly horndog?

  But before Abraham could get there, the glasses-wearing Chun Li was at Jose’s side. “Oh! Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Embarrassed as hell, but okay,” Jose admitted, his voice normal, not the deep, “how you doin’?” hit-on voice Abraham had heard him use in the past. “I was going to buy you a drink, but now I’m debating just going off and hiding somewhere.”

  “Um… I have a drink,” she said.

  He watched as his friend’s face fell. “Oh. Well, okay.”

  Her cheeks went pink. “But… um… I think they sell ice cream bars at a little kiosk over there.”

  He brightened immediately. “I really like ice cream.”

  “I like ice cream better than alcohol, actually,” she said, then glanced down at her dress — and her stomach. “As may be evident,” she muttered.

  “You look awesome,” he said. “Street Fighter is one of my favorite video games.”

  “Mine too,” she said, and fidgeted. “I guess I should admit — I’m kind of a video game addict. My friends dragged me here so I wouldn’t keep playing Overwatch.”

  Jose’s smile was wide. “I may love you.”

  She laughed.

  Jose gave the signal to Abraham — he had this — as he and the gir
l went to a food vendor to get the aforementioned ice cream. He heard Jose telling her that he was a game designer, which was not ordinarily a pickup line, or at least it wasn’t one he’d ever used. He agreed with his father on that front: saying you were a game programmer wasn’t quite the equivalent of saying “I live in my parents’ basement,” but it wasn’t really manly, no matter how technically challenging or lucrative it could be.

  Fortunately, in this case, Chun Li quickly said, “Video games? I may love you back!”

  Well, holy shit. It looked like the beginning of something. Good for Jose, Abraham thought.

  He could focus now on what he really wanted. From this moment on, he was here for one thing and one thing only. He was going to find Steampunk Goddess. Want — no, need — coursed through him like a drug. He’d find her. He wanted to find her. And it wasn’t romantic, nothing sweet like what he’d just witnessed. This was bone deep, no pun intended. This was lust, pure and hot as burning magnesium.

  This was a woman he’d beg to be with, he realized. Beg, and keep begging.

  He was going to find her. With that in mind, he plunged into the crowd and started searching, a hunter seeking prey. But almost immediately he stopped.

  She’d gone in, following the Jack and Sally characters, checking out the feast. He could go in after her and try to comb the crowd, but odds were good he’d miss her in the throng.

  Better to lie in wait, he thought. Because there was no way he was losing her tonight.

  Chapter 3

  Ani couldn’t focus on the “feast,” more interested in the exit than in the writhing bodies, the delicacies placed around them or on them, the people nibbling and devouring. Tessa and Adam were looking at each other speculatively, and she got the feeling they’d be having a great evening once they got home.

  Now, it was just a matter of getting them there, because if she could find that gladiator/Viking guy, she’d be having a hell of an evening, herself.

  “You two should head on out,” she finally said when the act ended. “I think I’ve got this. There’s a guy I have my eye on.”

  “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” Tessa asked her.

  “Yeah, maybe I should meet this guy or something,” Adam said. “You know. Vet him.”

  Ani forced herself not to roll her eyes. “Because that would go over well,” she said. “Having my one-night stand essentially meet my parents.”

  Tessa bit at her lower lip.

  Ani smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s a hotel. Even though it’s noisy down here, it’s a lot quieter on the upper floors. I checked. You two know where I am. If I don’t call in” — she glanced at her watch —”three hours to let you know I’m okay, you can have the hotel come to check on me, all right?”

  Tessa sighed. “Just be careful.”

  “I will be.” She hugged them both, then sent them home. They were so wonderful, she couldn’t help but love them like family.

  But tonight wasn’t the time for it. Tomorrow, she’d be back in the lab. By Monday, she’d be juggling all her various chores, TA-ing, probably cleaning frickin’ test tubes and running cell samples and doing whatever else her new adviser thought was applicable for his rigorous research team. She wanted this, this one night, just for her.

  She scanned the crowd, looking for that shirtless gladiator Viking guy, the one with the copper hair. Just the featherlight brush of his rough fingertips had made her tingle, and the way he held her hand, like she was fragile… not a tentative, fearful touch, but still one with plenty of space, like someone trying to tame a bird or something.

  Jesus, just write a sonnet to the guy.

  But her heart kept pounding away, and she kept scanning the crowd.

  After nearly fifteen fruitless minutes, Ani let out a sigh. She saw a number of men ogling her, or at least giving her a once-over. They weren’t her man, though. She brushed past them, ignoring the pickup lines, the posturing.

  Where the hell is he?

  She went back out into the lobby, which was blessedly quiet and relatively cool since it was largely empty. There were a few people at the pay bar they’d set up, but most would probably be across the street at a real bar, where the prices were better. There were food kiosks shutting down.

  Had he gone home? Simply up and left?

  She felt a pang. Damn it. That would be romantically tragic and all — maybe someday she’d tell her daughter about “the one who got away,” although in retrospect she probably wouldn’t divulge “so I was at an erotic convention looking to get laid when this gladiator guy brushed my fingertips.” What the hell kind of story was that?

  But her body rebelled. Hell, her heart rebelled. She wanted to ball up her hands into fists and just start wailing at the unfairness of it all.

  That’s when she felt him. Not directly. He didn’t touch her. But she could feel the heat of him behind her.

  When she turned, he was there. He still wore his mask, just like she wore hers. He looked like he’d been deliberately streaked with blue war paint under the stylized Celt mask, some streaks in artistic grams on his chest.

  “You,” she breathed.

  “Looking for me?” he asked, and before she could figure out how to answer it in a way that didn’t make her seem desperate, he kept going. “Because I was looking for you.”

  “Out here?” she said, feeling like an idiot. Good God, that chest. She wanted to bite it. This was not like her. Her eyes started to move lower, and she schooled herself not to check out the package in the Viking leather pants. No matter how badly she wanted to.

  Instead, she stared at those gray eyes. Like glaciers, or diamonds. Oh, God, this man!

  “The ballroom doesn’t have another exit, except for fire and emergency exits,” he said. “I didn’t want to take the risk of going inside, only to miss you and have you leave. I knew it would be better if I waited for you to come out.”

  “You set a trap for me.” Her voice was husky. She barely recognized it.

  “I wanted to catch you.” He took a step closer. She could smell him. Some kind of cologne, woodsy. And maybe something like the sea.

  Jesus, he probably smelled like Norway and testosterone and she was there for it.

  You are insane, she chastised herself.

  “Now that you have me, what will you do with me?” She knew she was teasing, but part of her really, really wanted to know.

  “How much of you can I have?”

  “I haven’t decided.” Was that really her? She’d liked sex, but this… She felt like some kind of diva. She felt like a frickin’ queen.

  She felt like Beyoncé.

  “How can I convince you?”

  She smiled, and out of nerves and thirst, she licked her lips. Nothing broad and obvious, just a quick flick on the inside rim because she was so suddenly parched.

  She watched as his muscles tightened, and the thirst increased. He took her hand. “Come with me.”

  Oh, baby, I’d love to.

  Her brain was quickly leaving the station and her body was taking over in a bloodless coup. Feeling like raw nerves and sexual awareness, she let him lead her to a corner. There were the remnants of a few scenes, and a few people were talking in scattered knots here and there. It was empty, except for a photo booth with a curtain.

  “A photo booth?” she said. “More whimsical than I would’ve…”

  He shut the curtain, plunging them into darkness. The booth was unplugged, she realized.

  Their masks clinked, and she heard and felt rather than saw his frustration. She felt her mask get pulled up out of the way, then she heard his mask scrape against his hair. She felt his face with her fingertips. He had a neatly trimmed beard and chiseled cheekbones. Long eyelashes tickled her, and she felt strong eyebrows under her fingertips. She felt his mask pushed up on his forehead.

  He pulled her across his lap, and she felt the length of hardness beneath her, between the layers of leather and lace. He was… sizeable didn’t even cove
r it.

  She knew it was impulsive, probably insane, possibly even dangerous. But she didn’t care.

  Feeling her way, kissing her way, she pressed her lips against his, pressed her body against his chest, and her thighs clenched him. She captured his groan in her mouth and her tongue flicked forward before twining with his in a full-body, full-contact, soul-devouring kiss that left her shaking.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “You… God, woman. You are amazing.”

  She didn’t say anything. Because she couldn’t say anything.

  “Let me have you,” he said.

  “Here?”

  “Anywhere,” he said, and she knew he meant it. “I’ll take you anywhere you’ll let me.”

  She got the feeling that he’d have sex with her in the main ballroom if she asked for it. This man was pure sex and temptation and her body was throwing more than caution to the wind.

  She needed to get away, quickly. She needed to get it together.

  She needed to get them together.

  You are unreasonably smitten, she scolded herself. He was just a guy, not a god. If she let herself get attached to him, she’d be distracted. She could have him, but she had to make sure that boundaries were maintained. She got the feeling he was the sort of man she could get addicted to.

  She couldn’t afford addiction. She could only afford one night.

  “Upstairs,” she said.

  He nuzzled her neck. “What?”

  She took a deep breath. “Upstairs,” she repeated, pulling her mask down and tugging his down, as well. “I have a room. And I want to use it with you.”

  Abraham held her as close as possible as they made their way out of the ballroom, through the lobby, past the concierge and the wait staff and guests in various states of drunkenness. His intent had to be clear, based on the leers, smiles, snickers, occasional sneers of judgment.

  He gave absolutely zero fucks.

  Not that he’d ordinarily give a fuck, he tried to tell himself, but he’d usually be a bit more combative about it. Even he could acknowledge that. If somebody wanted to judge him, he usually gave them something bigger to judge him for. If they thought he was uncultured, he’d break out his redneck and go to town. If they thought he was stupid, he’d act like a brute. And if they then thought he was a thug, he’d usually kick some ass and “put the fear of Abe into ‘em,” as his father would say.