House of payne max, p.1
House of Payne_Max, page 1
HOUSE OF PAYNE: MAX
(House of Payne #6)
Stacy Gail
House of Payne: Max
TRIGGER WARNING: This book contains flashbacks of violence and drug abuse, and the impact of these factors on family members. If you have issues with these elements, this book is not for you.
Chicago’s premiere tattoo studio, House Of Payne, is across the street from the Mad Cow diner, but it might as well be on another planet as far as waitress Paradise Simone is concerned. She’s a good girl from Waukegan with a past she’d rather forget, and a future that goes only as far as the next day. What does she know about superstars and paparazzi?
But Pari does know danger when she sees it, and tattooist Max Kulagin has it written all over him. A proper Waukegan girl should know to steer well clear, but she can’t resist Max when he leaves beautiful, intimate art sketched out on cheap diner napkins.
Beautiful, intimate art…of her.
Max knows ugliness. He was born in it. Raised in it. Had it shoved down his throat every goddamn day. So when he stumbles across true beauty, he worships it. There’s a deep sensuality in the waitress who likes to suck on her pen whenever he’s around, and he’s just the man to bring that beauty out in her. She might be a lady in the street, but one look at Pari tells him she’s going to be a freak in the bed.
And in the shower.
And while he’s driving with her head going to town in his lap.
The life Max leads might be in the spotlight, but it’s Pari who gets caught in the glare. When her past catches up to her, it’s her life that holds all the excitement, and not in a good way. But there’s no force on earth that can take Max’s beautiful Paradise away now that he’s finally found it.
93,000 Words
***This standalone, mildly erotic contemporary romance contains a woman with an oral fixation and a man who’s happy to encourage it. There are multiple sex scenes that include oral sex. No cheating, no love triangles, no cliffhangers. HEA guaranteed. Due to adult language and sexual content, this book is not intended for people under the age of eighteen***
Discover Other Titles by Stacy Gail
Bitterthorn, Texas Series (Carina Press):
Ugly Ducklings Finish First
Starting From Scratch (novella)
One Hot Second
Where There’s A Will
Earth Angels Series (Carina Press):
Nobody’s Angel (novella)
Savage Angel
Wounded Angel
Dangerous Angel
House Of Payne Series:
House of Payne: Payne
House of Payne: Scout
House of Payne: Twist
House of Payne: Rude
House of Payne: Steele
House of Payne: Max
Scorpio Series:
Year of the Scorpio: Part One
Year of the Scorpio: Part Two
Novellas:
Crime Wave In A Corset (Part of the steampunk holiday anthology, A Clockwork Christmas)
How The Glitch Saved Christmas (Part of the sci-fi holiday anthology, A Galactic Holiday)
Zero Factor (Part of the cyberpunk anthology, Cybershock)
Best Man, Worst Man
Connect with Stacy Gail:
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/RmNxH
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1rU3qmY
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Stacy_Gail_
Instagram: https://instagram.com/stacygailsworld/
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/stacygailauthor/
Blog: http://stacygail.blogspot.com/
Copyright
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Characters and names of real persons who appear in the book are used fictitiously.
Copyright ©2017 by Stacy Gail
Cover image ©2017 FXQuadro. Shutterstock image ID Number: 321655604
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Kristi Metcalf, who totally understands my obsession with Josh Mario John. She and I have drooled and perved over many a pic of that fine fellow, and as many of you know, it’s much more fun to drool and perv with a friend egging you on. :D
On that note, thanks to Josh Mario John, beard and tattoo god of my dreams. Max wouldn’t have existed without this yummy specimen of manhood to inspire me. Thanks for existing, Josh! *fangirl sigh*
Thanks to all my Facebook friends who helped me out with non-swearing alternatives. Pari’s G-rated mouth really stumped me (since I swear like a sailor, heh), so I’m grateful for all the awesome suggestions!
And, as always, thank you, Jade C. Jamison for kicking off the inspiration for House Of Payne in the first place. LYLAS!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Note from the Author
First Chapter from BRANDED
About Stacy Gail
Connect with Stacy Gail
Chapter One
Snow peppered the diner’s night-dark windows, the wind off Lake Michigan so strong it rattled the glass in its frame. The sound drew Pari Simone’s attention away from wiping down the chipped Formica counter that was at least twice as old as she was, and a sigh escaped her. After enduring the coldest January on record, two weeks into February had already proven it was just going to be more of the same old, same old.
Great.
With a shake of her head she resumed her task, no longer missing the swing of her once-long hair. Man, had she been way off-base when she’d thought life would be different in Chicago. Growing up in sleepy Waukegan, a small town less than fifty miles north of where she now stood, life in the big city had always looked so perfect to her. Crappy things like blizzards, bad guys, lame tippers and rundown apartments were expected in Waukegan, but Chicago? Somehow she’d thought life would be better.
Four months after transplanting herself into the urban heart of Chicago, she still had to laugh at how naïve she’d been.
The blare of a car horn made her glance once more at the heavily-trafficked street beyond the windows. That was one difference between Waukegan and Chicago—the big city didn’t give a damn about what time it was. Eight o’clock at night and her hometown was ready to roll up its sidewalks, but not Chicago. Oh, no. Like New York, it was a city that never slept.
That was fine by her. She didn’t sleep much, either. After all, when she slept she dreamed, and when she dreamed, more often than not it was about her hair falling to a oil-stained garage floor.
When she woke from dreams like that, she was flooded with the fear she’d awakened the entire apartment complex with her screams.
So, yeah. Sleep wasn’t high on her list of priorities.
Pari began to turn away when a sudden movement caught her eye. A man pushed through the black-framed, frosted-glass doors of the upscale tattoo parlor across the street. Her steady pulse stumbled suddenly as she spotted the edgy, dark blonde faux hawk haircut, the broad shoulders on an otherwise lean and wiry frame, and hands darkened by tattoos. As he flipped the hood of his jacket up to shield his bearded face against the harsh winter wind, she hustled toward the kitchen while her stomach filled with a weird mix of butterflies and ice.
Him again.
The napkin artist.
He was running behind schedule.
Maybe he wasn’t coming to the diner, Pari tried telling herself in an effort to calm her suddenly off-the-charts nerves. After all, there were plenty of eateries more appealing than the Mad Cow, a diner that had been shackled with the dreadful name decades before it had become the common moniker for a deadly disease. He was probably headed to The Blue Pig, an uber-trendy Japanese-Hawaiian fusion place a few doors down. Or maybe Rubs, renowned for its international collection of unusual barbecue sauces—
Behind her, the bell over the diner’s door jingled. In an instant, she hoofed it double-time into the kitchen, her heart thudding so hard she could feel the shift of her scratchy waitress’s uniform against her skin. Trendy food and a gimmicky collection of stupid sauces weren’t this guy’s thing. Oh, no. Shallow posers cared about trends and gimmicks, because they cared about what the world thought of them.
The guy who’d just walked in was no shallow poser.
He was a straight-up, legitimate bad boy.
Not that she knew him. She didn’t. She’d barely spoken a dozen words to him, and most of those words were alo
She didn’t even know his name.
But…
She knew him.
Everything about him screamed anti-establishment, from his full-on lumberjack beard, to the zipper-laden Harley-Davidson black jacket he wore over his never-ending collection of hoodies.
He was an anarchist.
A nonconformist.
A danger.
She’d had enough of danger to last her at least two lifetimes.
Funny thing, though. The artwork he often left for her to find didn’t fit the image she had of a dangerous man.
In fact, nothing really fit when it came to her napkin artist.
She’d never forget the first time she’d stumbled across the tattooed man’s art. She’d still been new to her job at the Mad Cow, with every day bringing some kind of spill, or rude customer, or broken glass, or some other tear-inducing catastrophe valiant servers the world over knew all too well. The tattooed man hadn’t talked much that first time, as far as she could remember. But boy howdy, had he ever stared at her, as though he was trying to hypnotize her with the weight of his gaze alone.
That had definitely not been her idea of fun. For a while she’d thought he might have recognized her. Maybe he’d been passing through Waukegan over the summer when her life had hit the skids, and he’d seen the local news stories. But he’d left without mentioning Waukegan, Harvey Nelson or her so-called sister Vana, so she’d scooped up the generous tip he’d left and worked on clearing the table.
That was when she’d found it—the first piece of napkin art he’d left hidden under his plate.
All too vividly she recalled how the world had faded away as she stared at it. At first she hadn’t even recognized it as one of the Mad Cow’s cheap paper napkins; from edge to edge, it had been covered in something that was far too beautiful to ever be referred to as a doodle. She did doodles—stick figures and hearts, or whatever. Dumb stuff.
What the tattooed man had left behind was worthy of being hung in an art museum.
It was a detailed black ink sketch of a woman’s elegant, long neck with the rounded line of a chin and a soft, pursed mouth with a single dimple at its side. It was the mouth and dimple that told her the sketch was of her. She’d never really liked the shape of her mouth, with her upper lip equal in size to her lower one, like a little kid’s. It made her appear not as serious or studious as she was; if anything, it gave the world the impression that she was exactly the opposite. Heaven knew she’d never forget the day her first-ever boyfriend had said she had a “blowjob” mouth. She hadn’t even known what that was at the time. When she’d looked it up…
Ahem.
Pari had always been the straitlaced one in her family. The good girl.
That was why she’d die before she’d admit it, but that might have been the day her secret oral fixation had been born.
She might not like her mouth, but she loved the way the tattooed man depicted it. As time went on, other works of napkin art began to appear, and she loved them, too. Before she knew it, she began looking forward to seeing what he’d come up with next. Another portion of her face had appeared, this time her eyes, and she knew they were hers thanks to the C-shaped scar near the outer corner of her left eye. Unfortunately, the look he’d given those eyes didn’t sit well with her. He’d depicted her as wary, mistrustful, even jaded.
And sad.
So unbearably sad.
On that score, her napkin artist had struck out, big-time. Sad? As if. For almost a year she’d refused to allow herself to feel anything, much less sadness. Who was he to claim she was freaking sad?
The nerve.
There were a few works of napkin art that had nothing to do with her. One time he’d left a breathtaking pen and ink street scene sketch of the L platform down the street where she took the Red Line to her shabby apartment in Chinatown. Another time he’d left a quick rendering of two kindergarten-aged brothers trying to kill each other over crayons while their mother, oblivious and indifferent, sat glued to her phone. Still another napkin was covered in a picture of a monkey wearing sunglasses, masturbating as it sat on a motorcycle.
She had no clue what that was about.
But mostly her napkin artist left images of her. Her profile. Her face. Her smile. Her body in its plain, retro blue and white uniform. Her hands that she kept self-manicured in varying shades of purple.
And her booty.
At least a third of the napkins he’d left had something to do with her butt. It was by far his favorite theme. Again and again he’d captured its upside-down heart shape while she stood with her back to him while taking someone’s order, or bent over to pick something up, or leaning over the counter with her bum arched out provocatively. Other times he’d imagined her wearing something altogether different from her uniform, like tight-fitting Daisy Dukes, or a string bikini with a beach for a background.
Or, nothing at all.
Three times now he had left behind drawings of her in the nude, and while this freaked her out no end, it was clear the poses he’d left her in were the kind an artist’s model would use. The first one she’d been depicted as curled up in a way where nothing intimate was shown. The second was of her standing at a table taking someone’s order while wearing a uniform that must have been made of Saran Wrap.
The message that he’d sat there imagining her naked came through loud and clear.
The third one had her standing with only her back showing as she stretched up to pluck what was probably an apple from a tree. Again and again she’d told herself it was merely an artistic rendition of the Temptation of Eve, but Eve hadn’t had pixie-short hair dyed such a dark violet it appeared almost black.
Pari did.
That was why she was running back into the kitchen like a child afraid of the Bogeyman, instead of being the calmly detached adult she usually she was. This man messed with her emotional numbness with his hard-staring eyes, maniacal smile and shockingly intimate artwork. She couldn’t have that. Feeling nothing was how she made it from one day to the next. She had to shut down whatever it was he was trying to do to her.
Trying…
And succeeding.
“Hey, Bosko.” Hoping for a casual look, Pari sidled up to the diner’s owner and chief cook, Lenny Bosko. He was edging into middle age, had a massive barrel-like chest and a resting-bitch face that had scared the hell out of her when she’d first landed at the Mad Cow. As time went on, she discovered Bosko had an unrelenting love for all things sci-fi, could do the Vulcan hand sign with both hands and made his own cosplay costumes whenever Chicago held their version of Comic-Con. Come to find out, it was hard to be intimidated by a man who took pride in going out in public dressed as Optimus Prime. “It’s pretty dead out there, and we probably won’t get a lot of traffic with that storm kicking up. Is it all right if I take my break now?”
Instead of answering right away, Bosko shot a glance up at the clock above the grill that sizzled with a lone burger patty and two halves of a toasting burger bun. “It’s only eight o’clock. You feeling all right, kiddo?”
Ugh. She had a quarter of a century already under her belt, yet he dared to call her kiddo when she knew very well he collected Funko Pop! Dragon Ball Z figurines. “Absolutely. I just thought that it might be smart to take advantage of how quiet it is right now.”
“Pari, babe, you got a customer.” Edie Pittman, approximately ten years older than Pari and light years ahead her in waitressing prowess, came along behind her to smack her order tablet playfully against Pari’s butt cheek. “It’s Mr. Tats again. I’ll bet if you unbutton your front a little and lean over to flash some cleavage while you pour his coffee, he’ll leave you another fifty-dollar tip.”
“My cleavage is worth so much more than fifty bucks.” Tension sang through her while she kept her smile screwed firmly in place. Dang it. The guy who looked like he bathed in danger and rinsed off in testosterone was not going to go away, and all she could think about was whether or not he was picturing her naked… “Mr. Tats is a good tipper, though. I wouldn’t mind sharing some of that goodness, Edie, so if you want to take that table—”
