Tinged (The Electric Tunnel Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Books by Rachel Blaufeld

  Dedication

  Part One

  Prologue

  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

  Part Two

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Bonus Epilogue

  Sneak Peek - Smoldered

  Sneak Peek - Break Point

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright Notice

  “You’re not tinged, babe. Not then, not now, not ever. I love you. And you don’t need the ocean water to cleanse you. Whatever crap you’re spewing is just that—BS. You’re perfect.”

  Lynx fled the Vegas Underground for Miami, desperate to uncover certain secrets of her past when she goes rogue in a dangerous world.

  Michael Anthony Wind shed his pretty-boy upbringing and family legacy for his first job as a bouncer at the Electric Tunnel. Now successful in his own right, he’s only missing his woman.

  When she’s finally found, Lynx is broken, unsure if she can be put back together. Mike may be strong, but is he strong enough for the job?

  Their story isn’t beautiful or safe, but it’s theirs. Two tortured souls colored by their past, looking to paint a different future.

  Stand Alone Titles

  Break Point

  To See You

  Love at Center Court Series

  Vérité

  Dolce

  The Electric Tunnel Series

  Electrified

  Smoldered

  Tinged

  Crossroads Series

  Redemption Lane

  Absolution Road

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  This book is for the few readers who took a risk on me from day one—when I was nothing but a one-book nobody.

  Thank you for continuing to believe in me.

  LYNX PEERED out the window, gathering the long pale pink drape in her hand and pulling it back to reveal a never-ending blue sky with run-down buildings and mosques littering the horizon. Focusing on the bright fireball, she allowed the sun to warm her for a moment. Then she squeezed her eyes tight, blocking the light, her heart a black Arabian stallion galloping in a dusty ring, her eyelids a heavy dam for the tears she wouldn’t allow herself to shed.

  She’d absolutely forbidden herself to cry.

  Turning her hand, she opened her eyes and glanced at the small scabbed-over indentations where she’d dug her own fingernails into her palm to stop the salty flow from escaping. Tiny crescent moons—both faint and recently crusted over—created their own patterns like constellations in the sky. Lynx could get lost in the labyrinth before her, searching for some hidden meaning.

  But she didn’t.

  The heavy curtain fluttered closed behind her as she turned and took in the grandeur of her surroundings. Tapestries woven in rich jewel tones adorned the walls, and soft wool rugs covered the floors. Lynx ran her hand along the sumptuous satin lining of the chaise she lay on and forced her panic to flee with her breath.

  Never in a million years had she dreamed of living in such opulence, and yet here she was in the middle of this palatial room, clothed in designer garments and draped in emeralds and sapphires.

  There was no reason to cry. She was extremely special, and this was her home.

  Or so she was told.

  Miami

  PULLING MY convertible out of the Wave’s lot at two o’clock in the morning, I turned my metallic-white baby toward the beach as the ocean waves slapped in the distance in the dark night. I told myself to go home, but knew I wouldn’t listen. Instead I did the same thing I’d done several nights a week for the last year.

  I headed for a drive.

  As much as I needed to clear my head, unwind, and allow Miami’s humid ocean breeze to wash over me, it wasn’t that type of drive.

  It was a mission. One I shouldn’t be on, definitely a self-appointed assignment I should drop. Immediately. I was a renegade on a journey to hell because my assignment would certainly only end in heartbreak and pain.

  Oh well. Fuck it.

  I drove along Washington Avenue, scanning the sidewalks. Block after block, I noted bar crawlers on a crazy Saturday night, party-goers on a mission, and vacationers out for a good time. But tourists weren’t who I was here to see.

  Narrowing my focus to the locals, I searched for a familiar face. When I saw who I was looking for, I pulled over, shifted into park, and climbed out of the small sports car. After patting my little lady’s door for good measure, I took casual strides down the street, pretending to be out looking for a good time.

  “Hey, Chantilly, how you doing, girl?” I wrapped my arm around the shoulders of a tall, curvy blonde clad in black leather and lace, walking confidently on mega-heels.

  “Heya, Mikey baby. How ya doing, tough guy?” she said, pulling me in for a hug.

  There I was, Michael Wind, Big Mike, the prep-school-educated bad-boy bouncer turned strip-club owner to everyone who knew me, caught in a full-on embrace with a high-end escort in the middle of South Beach. And it was the best I’d felt in months. Fucking months.

  Lingering in Chantilly’s embrace a second or two longer than appropriate, I finally said, “All good, babe. All good,” before releasing the woman from my arms, feeling empty as soon as I did. She was all I had . . . my only true connection to the woman I really wanted, Lynx, was a five-foot-nine-inch bottle blonde with a tube of KY and a box of condoms in her small purse.

  Chantilly hooked her hands on her hips. “Come on, Mikey, don’t play games with me. You good? Business booming at your joint?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, business is always booming. Got good girls who make even better money. You should come work for me. Got a girl who’ll show you the ropes, help you make a decent living.”

  She laughed. “Nah, baby. I got a good gig. Heading over to the upscale joint on Seventeenth now for a big-money job. Don’t you worry about me, honey.”

  I tilted my head toward the sidewalk. “Come on, I’ll walk you.”

  She hooked her arm in mine as we walked slowly.

  “Did you have some extra free time and decide to take a walk on the wild side tonight, Mikey, or you here for your regular?” Chantilly asked as we made our way to her destination.

  “The usual.”

  The call girl stopped and turned to face me. “Michael, honey, I haven’t seen her. She’s gone. Haven’t seen
her in thirteen months. Told you she was cagey the last time I laid eyes on her, was up to something she knew I wouldn’t like. A gig even I wouldn’t be down with, so she clammed up. I’m worried just like you, but there’s nothing we can do.” Placing a hand on my arm, she said, “This isn’t something we can involve the authorities in, honey. We gotta let it go.”

  Michael.

  God, it’s been so long since a woman called me by my full name.

  One woman specifically.

  Arriving at the entrance to the Fritz Hotel, I lied when I said, “I know,” before letting her go do her thing. I might not have approved of what she was about to do, but Chantilly was her own woman. And I knew better than anyone, when a woman was an escort, there was little to nothing anyone could do to change her mind.

  I figured it was a mindset so deeply ingrained, a facade any self-respecting girl immersed herself into in order to degrade herself enough to hook, it took nothing short of a military de-conditioning like in the Special Forces.

  Watching the last person known to have seen Lynx on the Florida Coast walk away from me, resigned to let the whole situation drop, I knew what I had to do. Call Carson. It was something I’d been avoiding, but the problem was too big for me. I needed his help, and quick. Women didn’t just up and disappear without a trace.

  I walked back with a full-blown knot in my stomach and slipped into my white BMW. Before I sped out, I flicked my finger against the green dice hanging from the rearview mirror, watching them rock back and forth in limbo, just like my life. I brought those dice all the way from Sin City with me. Funny, my life had been hanging by a thread since I left there two years ago.

  Palm trees fluttered in the breeze along Collins Avenue as I cruised along, hoping for a glimpse of long, lush pale brown limbs, and not really seeing anything else. I tried to appreciate some of the beauty surrounding me, but I couldn’t, because the most beautiful gem I’d ever known was gone.

  Gone.

  SCRUBBING A hand over my face, I rolled over and picked up my phone to look at the time. It was early, just seven in the morning on Monday, my day off.

  Lying back down, I dragged the small, lithe figure still snuggled next to me even closer. My dick rubbed against her ass as I ran my hand along her side and moved her hair out of the way so I could kiss her neck. She moaned softly, a small, yet eager sound floating from her lips. It drifted along all my senses, brightening my day, making my entire body pop awake at the promise she was making without a word.

  The woman made good on it throughout the day, following through with her unspoken promises from the morning. After all, it was supposed to be my day of relaxation, and lately, the only way I relaxed was with a good fucking.

  I was certain that would catch up with me eventually—like the bottle of JD cradled in my hand. I’d turned into someone I barely recognized.

  Oh, wait. I did a little. I was becoming an even more despicable version of my manwhore dick of a father.

  SLIGHTLY HUNG over from my pity party for one, I brushed one hand over my fresh buzz cut and yanked open the side door to the Wave with the other, allowing the bright Miami sunlight to blare inside the cool, light purple ambience of the club. It was Tuesday, and the girls were having a planning meeting backstage with Petal, now back to her birth name, Staci. She was another girl in a long line of Asher’s rescue projects.

  Now I was tasked with turning Staci into a legitimate businesswoman, if that was what you called a woman with nothing more than a GED who’d started out lap dancing at Sin City’s finest adult establishment and was currently training to take over the Wave, Miami’s steamiest adults-only nightspot. It wasn’t exactly what one would label as success—until you took into account where the girl came from and where she was headed now.

  If not for the Electric Tunnel, Staci might be whoring herself out to some fat, sweaty fuck with a small dick—like Lynx did, does, or whatever—so I’d say it was a big fucking whopper of a success.

  And just like that, my mind was no longer focused on my business day, but tortured again with worry about the girl I couldn’t forget or let go of. Motherfucker.

  “Hey, Big Mikey,” Marta called out to me with a smile, drawing me out of my fog and dragging me unwillingly back to the present.

  “Hey, darling,” I said, giving her a chin lift. She’d left my bed less than twenty hours ago. I owed her a decent hello, at the very least.

  The beautiful specimen in front of me was the first girl I discovered in Florida. I met her at the hotel pool when I was here scouting locations for the Wave, and decided to bring her in to dance when she solicited me to hire her as an escort.

  Asher warned me not to sleep with her, but I couldn’t fucking listen to my friend, mentor, former boss, and current partner. As if he really knew shit about relationships. The dude had messed up the first decade of his own kid’s life while hitting up every easy lay in Vegas, stringing along a good woman who loved him.

  But this girl Marta was incredibly hot, all curvy and exotic with dark Mediterranean tanned skin, more like rich, black Mexican coffee than café au lait, contrasting with light blue eyes and long, flowing red-highlighted hair. She was soft and caring in a way I wasn’t used to. None of the women in my life so far had treated me that way. Not my pill-popping mom, nor my bitch of an ex, Rochelle, who cheated on me with my dad. Or Lynx, the one woman who left me high and dry, holding my dick in her purse while she stomped my heart on the floor.

  That’s not being entirely fair. Lynx was gentle when she forgot she was supposed to be hard.

  There was no way I could resist Marta’s charms. I was so hard up, constantly worked up from seeing new and mysterious girls onstage, and she was so easygoing about the whole thing. The girl took what I gave her—a dinner here, a sleepover there, a day spent in bed once every week—and never asked for a damn thing more.

  It was fun, sexy, easy, and absolutely nothing more. Zero emotions involved. After a lifetime as Mr. Relationship, I’m that guy. Mr. Cold and Removed.

  Eh, I wasn’t as tough as I made myself out to be. I cared for Marta. She just wasn’t who I loved or obsessed over.

  The outer club was mostly quiet as I headed toward the back. A slow R&B vibe floated through the main floor as I scanned the sparkly, scantily clad group gathered for the meeting.

  “Hello, ladies. Y’all good?”

  Yes, I’d adopted a little bit of a Southern twang in the last couple of years since ditching the desert.

  Staci spoke for the whole gang of iridescent beauties. “All good, Mike. We have seventeen bachelor parties prebooked for this week, all of them complete with limo, booze service, and VIP treatment. I’m giving the ladies their assignments and working the dance rotations, so everything is fully covered and leaves flexibility in the schedule for walk-ins and other groups.”

  “Good. You got this, honey,” I said before I slipped back to my office.

  It wasn’t upstairs like Asher’s at the Tunnel, but it was just as tricked out. Private bathroom with shower, wet bar, leather couches, and a video feed of the entire the club were just a few of the features I’d had installed. I spent a lot of time there, mostly because I ran a tight fucking ship when it came to the club, and there was nothing I didn’t have eyes on.

  Or at least one eye, while the other scanned the window facing the streets of South Beach.

  With my feet propped on my desk, my thoughts drifted to how the hell I ended up here permanently. Not here in Miami, but pining for a woman who clearly didn’t give two shits about me.

  In reality, it all started four years ago when Asher finally settled down with Natalie, and I started making monthly pilgrimages to muggy Florida. Between helping Asher’s pseudo-sister and best friend, Lila, build a new strip club in California while still running the bouncers and security at the Tunnel in Vegas, I spent wads of money and all my patience chasing after Lynx down here.

  Of course, every goddamn trip ended with me on my knees, pleading with Lynx to com
e back to Vegas with me. I’d begged her to leave Bruno, her pimp. I’d tried to bargain with her to allow me to erase her debt. It was an endless, fruitless, vicious cycle in which I refused to give up and Lynx refused to surrender. There was some unknown grip Bruno had on her, and I needed to be closer to understand.

  My gaze swept the room, taking in my office, looking around the four walls where I’d worked and sometimes slept for the better part of the last twenty-four months. It was more a home than my actual home.

  Years back, when it had finally fucking dawned on me that I needed to be closer to the source to get what the hell Lynx was doing, I’d planted the seed for a Miami club in Asher’s head. The Electric Cove in Los Angeles had been open for close to two years, and it was the hottest place on the West Coast. With Lila at the helm and Asher’s Electric brand behind her, the Cove was the bomb.

  So I did what any cock-blocked, warm-blooded man would do. I preyed on Asher’s weakness—his ever-growing need to provide for his family, to create a legacy. He wanted to build an adults-only empire, and my personal plans jibed with that. He and I built the Electric Wave from the ground up, and I moved my sorry ass from the desert to the thumping streets of South Beach.

  To be near her. To save her, or whatever the hell I thought I could do.

  But things didn’t go as planned.

  Lynx was making crazy bank putting her goods on sale. So much so, she’d quit school entirely and was a hundred ten percent loyal to Bruno. Actually, more faithful to the greasy glorified pimp than me. That alone should have discouraged me, but like the lovesick fool I was, I didn’t let it. I continued to hold out hope that her dream of getting a degree and her feelings for me would conquer all.

  And then she left. Something I’d never expected to happen.

  With that memory churning in my gut, I leaned my heavy head on my desk and swallowed back memories like bad tequila on an empty stomach . . .

  BACK IN Vegas when I’d first met her as Lincoln, Lynx was still a jack-of-all-trades at least trying to be a student.