Hot Ticket (26 page)

“Anybody ever tell you that you suck at it?”

“Stop trying to change the subject.”

“
What
subject?”

“Did you see this morning’s paper?”

“Oh, oh.”

“You did give them the headline. I knew it!” She smacked him with the newspaper—his arm, his head, his shoulder, his butt, wherever she could reach.

He laughed and backed away, protecting his important parts. “Ouch, stop it.”

“You think this is funny?”

“I think you’re kinda cute when you’re mad. I always did.”

“Do not point
that
at me when I’m pissed at you.”

Forced to focus on his arousal, Tiago grinned. “Ah, let the big guy have some fun. He got—
No
 . . . he
didn’t
get screwed last night.”

Quinn bit her lip. “How could you?”

“It wasn’t easy. Look, the fingers on my right hand are so tired, I can hardly make a fist. I’ll have to use my mouth next time.”

Quinn screeched in frustration and slammed the adjoining door in his face.

After Tiago knocked for the fourth time, he cracked the door to Quinn’s suite, prepared to duck if necessary, but no need. She didn’t know he was there.

Wearing one of his fresh T-shirts, her feet and long legs bare, and her head in her closet, she randomly tossed scraps of clothing over her shoulders while belting out, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” courtesy of Julio and Willie and a little green iPod Mini.

A mass of ruffles with a metallic sheen hit him in the face. He peeled it off and held it up. “Hmm. Nice. Jewel tones.”

She turned with a yelp. “You scared me!”

“This is a nice skirt.” He held it up for her perusal.

She turned off the iPod. “Yeah, if you want a crotch shot.”

He gave her a look. “You doubt it?”

She shook her head, returned her attention to her closet, and continued pelting him with clothes.

“I’m pretty sure this is what a bomb going off in Victoria’s Secret would look like.”

“Impossible. There isn’t a merry widow or garter belt in the lot.” She tripped on a halter top. “Damned piece of . . .” She picked it up and held it to her chest. “Whaddya think?
Too
slutty?” She tossed it.

He caught it.

“I’ll never be able to show my face outside this door again,” she wailed.

“Geez, it was just some heavy petting, and I didn’t tell
everybody
.”

“Will you stop fixating on that.”

Yep. He
still
loved baiting her. “Last night might not have meant anything to you,” he said, “but it was one of the highlights of
my
life. I never made a girl come a hundred thirty-three times . . . in one night.”

“That’s not the issue.” She crawled across her sofa as if she’d made it through the desert without a camel. “It could be the reason I’m so tired, though.”

“What
is
the issue, or the problem, as you perceive it?”

Quinn sighed in defeat, which worried him. Last time he heard her sigh like that, she threw down a dissecting knife and said, “Fail me.”

“The problem,” she said, “is threefold. One, I have two voicemails and one text message from my father. Two, I have only
wet
underwear. Three, my nipples are so big that without a bra they’ll look like neon flashing, ‘do me, do me, do me.’ ”

I will, I will, I will,
Tiago thought, while his dick agreed and rose to the ready. He winked. “I . . . probably stretched the nips a bit myself last night. Sorry. And, um, I’m really turned on, here.”

“Bite me,” Quinn said, but her eyes widened when he looked ready to take her up on the invitation.

He stepped her way, but Quinn stopped him with a hand to his chest. “Damn,” he said. “Okay, let’s start again. I’m sorry about the headlines and the picture. Last night, before we came up here, I thought it would be funny, but—”

“Funny, how?”

“Funny . . . how I imagined your father looking when he saw the headlines. Did you ever see his balloon-fish face turn that deep burgundy red?”

Quinn clapped a hand to her mouth, nodded, and showed him her cell phone. The text message read, “F---! F---! F---! F---! F---!”

“Every message is the same,” she said. “He won’t use the word, but you have to give him points for sentiment.”

“And accuracy.”

“Not quite,” Quinn said.

Tiago pulled her into his arms. “The point
could
be made.”

“Let’s not and say we did.” She pushed him away. “I’m still furious with you.”

“Could you find it in your heart to forgive me if I let you raid my underwear drawer?”

“A lot of good—your
collection
 . . .”

He bowed and indicated his open door. “Tiago’s Secret, at your service.”

She threw off her anger, her sulks, and her depression over her nice big nipples and ran into his room.

“Sure go ahead, invade my privacy,” he said as she opened and shut his drawers on a mad hunt for lingerie.

“You invited me.” She gasped and held a hand to her heart. “All hail the mother lode.”

She raised a bright yellow underwire like a flag.

Tiago grinned. “I know you graduated from double As, but I think that’s a big D.”

She stuck out her tongue, threw the bra at his head, and then dumped the contents of the drawer on the bed. “Okay,” she said, “bras in this pile, pants in that pile. Merry widows there. Impossibles back in the drawer.”

Tiago dove in up to his elbows. Yesterday this was promo. Today it was Quinn’s underwear. What a turn-on.

“Yum,” she said, stepping into a pair of seafoam lace bikinis.
She slid them up her legs and wiggled modestly into them beneath his shirt.

“Hey, no fair. I was king of that mountain last night. Show me how they look.”

She harrumphed, but she raised her shirt to her navel.

He grinned and kissed his fingers as if she were a culinary masterpiece.

“Guess these are a go,” she said. “I’ll make another stash for the pieces I’m borrowing.”

Tiago almost told her to keep them, but maybe he’d like a memento. He stilled. How weird was that? No, how scary was that? He’d been carrying them around for days, and suddenly they were hot?

For the sake of his sanity, he’d tell her when they got to Orlando that she could keep them.

She netted only two pairs of panties that fit before she tackled the bras, discarding most before trying any on. When she got to a classy taupe underwire, she turned her back on him, took off his T-shirt—still wearing a neat little pair of red bikinis—and tried on the bra.

“Honest to Pete,” he said. “You won’t let me see those puppies when I fed off them for half the night?” He was getting heavy thinking about it.

“It’s different in the daylight,” she said, but he didn’t miss the heat in her gaze when she turned to model the bra for him. “Makes me look busty, right?”

Tiago slipped his hand inside one of the cups. “
Now
it fits you.”

He felt her nipple bud against his palm, as fast as his erection met her leg. He fingered the nubbin and made her moan. “In case you’re interested, your nipples are the perfect size,” he said, and he opened his mouth over hers.

They fell to the bed in a hungry kiss, happy to let it linger. He stroked her through her panties and let her whimper rule him until
she came, and came again. Then she stopped midmoan, pushed him away, and sat up. “Damn it. Now I have only
one
pair of dry panties.”

Tiago rolled to his back, laughing, moved his dick to a more comfortable spot in his slacks, and looked down at himself. “Looks like we’re not getting ours again today, Big Guy. We must be losing our touch.”

When Quinn heard “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” she searched for her cell phone and laughed when Tiago answered his.

“Hello,” he said, then, “I’ll be there,” and he hung up.

“Close friend?” Quinn slid the bikinis down her legs, brought them to her bathroom sink, and rinsed them in soapy water, pleased that Tiago followed.

“I have to make an appearance in the dining car,” he said. “Some group wants to present me with an award. Guess you should get dressed if you want to be my lunch date, which I’d like. I’ll give you that train tour after.”

“I need a quick, quick shower,” she said.

“Want company?” He wiggled his brows.

“Like you wouldn’t believe, but people are waiting for you.”

Tiago sighed. “Right.”

“Since you’re already dressed, either find me an outfit that doesn’t scream slut, or find me one that’ll keep you hard all afternoon. Your choice.”

“The sacrifices I make for my fans,” he said, swatting her backside as he left her.

Tiago had a good eye and picked a rose V-neck lace-trimmed cardigan and a terra-cotta double-flared satin skirt. Shoes were a tough call, but he went with a pair of gold T-strap jeweled sandals. “I could kiss Rouge,” Quinn said as they left her suite. “She was right. I feel like a new me in this.”

“And Rouge is?”

“A savvy psychic fashion buyer. She’s one of the people I live with. Remind me to tell you about them later. Right now, your fans are circling.”

After the garlic and ginger salmon and before the tiramisu, Tiago went up to receive a plaque from his fan club for the most stolen bases last season. Quinn was inordinately proud and thought she should probably chill, until he sat beside her and kissed her, so she kissed him back. “Is fifty-three stolen bases some kind of record?” she asked when they came up for air.

“Nah. Some old Scot stole one hundred thirty-eight in one season back in the dark ages.”

But after the kiss, conversation was impossible, because his fans kept spoon-tapping their glasses for more.

“I like kissing you,” Quinn said, “but this feels so much like a wedding reception, I’m about to have an anxiety attack.”

“I’ve got the hives for the same reason.” Tiago rubbed his upper arm. “Think they’ll forgive us if we chew and screw?”

She placed her hand in his.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Okay, but if anybody throws rice, I might need CPR.”

“That base is covered.”

“Good enough,” Quinn said. “Let’s steal home.”

Not rice but a resounding cheer followed them from the dining car.

Tiago began his tour in the Ted Williams Parlor Car, the last car in the train. He sat beside Quinn on a stuffed circular sofa to
watch the tracks spiral to nothingness behind them through the car’s spectacular wrap-around windows.

The entire train was a masterpiece, a return to the opulence and sophistication of another century. Tiago knew every wood. He described the marquetry, the etched glass partitions, the crystal chandeliers, even the baby grand piano in the Yaz Jazz Piano Lounge.

“We’re coming to my favorite car,” he said.

Quinn smiled. “I’m fond of the observation car, myself.”

Tiago put an arm around her waist to pull her close as they entered the Cy Young Club Car. “This used to be a smoking car,” Tiago said, “and before we refurbished it, it only had facilities for ‘Gents.’ ”

“Is that an old barber chair in the middle?”

“I love that,” Tiago said. “I had the seat reupholstered and the ‘barber shop’ encased in glass to preserve it. I kept the two desks, or secretaries, as they were listed, in here as well. The walls are carved vermillion, and the ceiling is painted to simulate claret marble.”

“I believe you had a toy train in your hand the first time you climbed into my sandbox.”

“It was the park’s sandbox. Not everything belonged to the Murdocks, you know.”

“I just meant that I had been there first.”

“Which you made abundantly clear with the black eye you gave me.”

Quinn covered her mouth and giggled, and Tiago pushed her into a baggage locker and copped a butt check, a kiss, and a neck nuzzle.

Quinn loved titillation heightened by the danger of getting caught, until she realized just how turned on she’d gotten. “Damn, damn, damn.”

“Has my poor pecker been thwarted again?”

“That’s three for three,” she said. “Damp panties wins the day. Oh, don’t look so proud.” She hooked a finger in his waistband and pulled him back. “Shut up and kiss me. It’s too late now.”

Unfortunately, she knew she wasn’t the only female to kiss Tiago during the tour. He got kissed, propositioned, and proposed to, and he called every comer “Juguete.”

“You call them all ‘Juguete,’ but what does that mean?”

“It means plaything, and I do it so I won’t have to remember their names.”

“Why don’t you have a Latino nickname for me?”

“Wait, I’ll call my mother and ask her how to say ‘pain in the ass’ in Spanish.”

Their laughter attracted attention, and after that, he fielded invitations to host a fund-raiser, be a best man, invest in a wiener franchise, and spend Christmas in Colorado with strangers. He accepted all of it, especially the lingerie, with grace and charm, but he laughed when Quinn squeaked in delight and stuffed a fresh pair of panties into her purse. “Good thing I brought the big one,” she said.

“You sure did bring the big one.”

She loved that cocky grin of his.

The tour ended outside her door. “Game called on account of business,” he said.

Her suite doors stood perpendicular to his, which made his look like the end of the train. “But you only showed me fourteen cars, and the brochure in the bar says the train has nineteen. What’s on the other side of your suite?”

“The rest isn’t open to the public,” he said, “for safety and insurance reasons.”

“You keep your harem in those cars don’t you?
That’s
where you went last night. I saw the door on the other side of your room.”

“You caught me.” He chuckled but looked at his watch. “I’m on duty for a couple hours, but would you like to meet me for a private dinner upstairs in the observation car around eight?”

Quinn agreed, dipped under his arm, and shut the door to her suite. She was alerted by the difference, the . . . guilt and lack of
eye contact, that accompanied his chuckle at her harem joke. What
did
he keep in those cars?