Stiff Competition Read online

  Praise for Micah Persell

  Don’t miss these Micah Persell titles:

  Sin City Gigolos series

  Hard Work

  “Persell (Uncharted Waters) treats an overarching theme of equality with care, just as she plays around with a variety of tropes, all of which pays off.”—Library Journal

  “I loved how the author built the characters and plot without turning things cliché. I particularly loved her clever use of words to nail each and every description.”—Purple Pants

  Operation: Middle of the Garden series

  Of Eternal Life

  Winner of the 2013 Virginia HOLT Award of Merit in the paranormal category.

  Second place in Lyrical Press’s first annual “How Lyrical Is Your Romance?” contest.

  “If you enjoy military suspense and a strong romance try this book. Of Eternal Life is a good page turner to the end.”—Night Owl Reviews

  Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

  Of Consuming Fire

  Of Alliance and Rebellion

  And don’t miss Micah’s stand-alone title:

  Uncharted Waters

  “Science: love or maybe both? See for yourself. You won’t be disappointed. Plus, come on . . . the cover? Dang . . . ”—Harlie’s Books

  Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Guide

  Cover

  Contents

  Start of content

  Stiff Competition

  Sin City Gigolos

  Book 2

  Micah Persell

  Avon, Massachusetts

  For Tara and Julie –

  Two editors who worked tirelessly to make the process of simultaneously birthing a new series and a new human being as easy as possible. Baby boy and I are eternally grateful for you.

  Chapter One

  Cassidy Hastings slammed the door of her apartment, flipped the lights on so hard her fingertips stung, and tossed her keys toward the table.

  “Fuck.”

  Craning her arm behind her back, she unsnapped her bra through her T-shirt and began the process of wiggling out of the torture device.

  “Fuck this day. Fuck Mr. Callahan.” Her strap got tangled in the sleeve of her shirt as she tried to pull her bra through. “Ugh, fuck everything!” With a few ominous pops of thread, the bra was freed. She flung it across the room. It bounced off the floor-to-ceiling window of her small, one-bedroom apartment with a muffled ping and then fell to the floor.

  Her tits were free, and she’d thrown some shit, but she by no means felt better.

  “Wouldn’t know a good story if it bit him right in the dick, which apparently is an organ I need to get someone to pay attention to one of my damn pitches!”

  She stomped over to her leather gaming chair and flopped into its well-worn depths, grabbing one of the many controllers resting beside it on the floor. With a flick of her thumb, she turned one of her consoles on, but when the title of the game they’d released today flickered onto the screen, she scowled. “Forgot you were still in there.”

  Road of Trials was going to earn them mega bucks and put Westward Gaming on the map with competitive gaming companies—right up there with Blizzard and Bethesda. All the gaming blogs and magazines had given it near-perfect scores.

  Cassidy couldn’t even look at the title without getting pissed. Within the first five minutes, the game’s hero watched his girlfriend get killed by his enemies—which, of course, made him want to be a hero. But worse, in the game’s closing sequence, the hero’s new girlfriend sacrificed her life so the hero could win the game. Just freaking Juliets all over the place for a dude still mourning his first dead girlfriend.

  If Cassidy had to play one more game with a woman being used as the plot device in a man’s storyline, she’d switch back to fucking Pong. Which might kill her. Woman could not live on Pong alone. Which is why, amid myriad champagne toasts at the office, she had sneaked over to Mr. Callahan’s side and pitched an idea for a game with a—gasp—girl in the lead.

  She also might have thrown in a little dig about the unoriginal plot of Road of Trials.

  Yeah, that could have been why Mr. Callahan had snapped. Epically.

  As soon as Mr. Callahan’s face had grown unnaturally red, she’d known she had made an error of judgment. She was good at those.

  Spend your on-the-clock time writing the stories you’re supposed to write or you’re fired.

  The word fired had echoed over the suddenly quiet cubicles. And it was only because everyone was staring at them with keen interest that she had bitten her tongue and kept from creating a scene that would have gotten her fired right then and there.

  Sure, she regularly pitched game ideas with a female lead. Sure, she spent time on the clock working on projects she wasn’t being paid for. Sure, she had no tact when she did either of these things, often insulting her co-workers in the process.

  But did that mean her boss had to threaten to fire her? In front of everybody?

  Did it? The answer might not be an emphatic no.

  She winced. “Damn it, it’s too late to think about stuff.” The clock on her cable box read 11:27. She wanted to call her sister-in-law, Victoria, who never failed to make her feel better, but given the hour, Victoria was no doubt sleeping, or very much not sleeping, with her man, Kip, and Cassidy didn’t have enough bleach on hand for her ears if she had to listen one more time to Kip whisper naughty things to her sister as Cassidy tried to have a conversation with her.

  Cassidy needed to be asleep herself. However, the potent cocktail of recent embarrassment mixed with impotent rage was going to keep sleep elusive for a while.

  “I need to get laid.”

  A good, screaming orgasm would do the trick for sure. Unfortunately, the last guy she’d gone to for an orgasm had been a co-worker, and now every day was awkward as he hinted they would be good together in a relationship.

  Hell, we hadn’t even been good together during the one-night stand. She was definitely not up for a repeat. And she’d learned her lesson regarding the company ink.

  There was no help for it: she was going to have to handle it herself.

  Okay. She rolled her shoulders. Just get it done, and then she could relax.

  Holding down the glowing X on the controller, she shut down the console, but as she rubbed her palms down her thighs, the title Road of Trials kept appearing behind her eyelids every time she blinked, despite the screen now being black.

  Ugh. Le
ast sexy thing I could be picturing right now.

  With a sigh, she swiveled her gaming chair until she faced the window, the TV now at her shoulder. Outside the window, the city was completely dark. Quiet. The hateful game title finally began to fade.

  Much better.

  Planting her feet on the floor, she lifted her pelvis and shoved her shirt up. A quick unbuttoning and unzipping later, she was shimmying her skinny jeans and panties down her hips and thighs. She kicked them in the general direction of her discarded bra and settled back into her chair, the leather beneath her ass quickly warming against her skin.

  Spreading her knees, she stroked down her pubic bone without fanfare and pressed two fingers to her clit, giving a quick, tight circle.

  Nothing. No zing. No pleasure. Hell, she was already bored.

  “When at first you don’t succeed . . . ” She stroked again, but the result was no different.

  “Okay.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She was going to have to get serious. She didn’t have book or movie boyfriends—oh, no. She had game boyfriends. An entire catalogue of them. This situation called for the best. She pictured the chiseled, devastating features of Joel, the forty-something zombie slayer with a heart of gold from The Last of Us, and stroked herself a couple more times.

  Nothing.

  “Well, shit.” She flopped her hands over the sides of the chair as she opened her eyes. Sprawling her knees wide in surrender, she huffed and lowered her chin, glaring out the window into the dark night.

  Only, it wasn’t dark anymore.

  She sucked in a breath. Directly across the alley from her apartment, her most intriguing neighbor stood in front of his window. The lights in his apartment were on behind him, making his dark hair and drool-worthy build clearly visible. She had no trouble seeing him holding a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. His eyes were a bit wide, but other than that, his expression didn’t betray that he had just caught her attempting to masturbate half naked in her apartment.

  Don’t panic yet. Maybe he can’t see me, even though I can see him. That was a possibility, right?

  His expression unfroze. A wide grin spread his lips, and he lifted his spoon in a jaunty wave.

  “Balls!” She launched to her feet, tugging her T-shirt down as far as she could in the process—which turned out to be not nearly far enough. Her lady parts remained fully on display as she tangled with the vertical blinds cord for far too many seconds before it finally cooperated. She jerked the blinds closed as she heaved that small cord with all the gusto of a sailor on board a ship in the middle of a hurricane.

  The blinds swayed for several moments afterward as her breaths echoed through the apartment, and her heart tried to beat its way up her throat.

  Masturbating with the lights on in front of the window, Cassidy? “Well, that was dumb.” Another error in judgment.

  Damn it, peeking at her lickable neighbor every now and then had been one of the highlights of her new apartment. How was she ever going to be able to spy on him now without being mortally embarrassed?

  There went her second-biggest form of entertainment.

  She covered her face with her hand and blew out a breath. “Worst day ever.”

  Chapter Two

  Before he could stop himself, Gage Adams squinted, trying to catch glimpses of his naughty neighbor through her still-swinging blinds. “Don’t hide on my account, Gamer Girl.”

  The image of her lunging at the blinds, nude from the waist down, was going to remain with him for a long time. Too bad her lights had been dim. He hadn’t caught a good enough glance to quench the sudden curiosity that had cropped up in his gut from the quick flash of her sleek thighs and the shadowed area between them.

  The bowl of Corn Pops he held in his hand was certainly not going to cut it anymore. He’d poured a helping of his favorite cereal as a little pick-me-up between the demands of the difficult client he’d just had and the moment he could finally crawl into bed.

  But when he’d seen Gamer Girl’s lights on, he’d headed over to the window, looking forward to catching another glimpse of her leaning over a controller, limned by the glow of whichever video game she was currently playing.

  He hadn’t expected to find her, instead, spread-eagled with her fingers between her thighs.

  He’d nearly dropped his Corn Pops.

  Then, just as he’d realized he needed to look the fuck away, she’d opened her eyes, her gaze connecting with his. There really had been no choice but to acknowledge the situation with a friendly wave.

  He bit his bottom lip as he fought back another grin, his spoon clanging against stoneware as he dropped it into his soggy bowl of cereal.

  “I thought you were fascinating before, but now?” He shook his head as he walked over to his kitchen to deposit his bowl in the sink. That she gamed more than she ate, had riotous hair of indeterminate color, and smiled every time their gazes connected across the alleyway amounted to beans in the interest department after what he’d just witnessed.

  Gamer Girl was quickly becoming one of his favorite people.

  He’d been meaning to head over and introduce himself anyway in the month since she’d moved in. Their apartments were mere feet apart, and they looked at each other enough in passing, sending little waves here and there when they both happened to be home at the same time, that remaining strangers had not really been an option for much longer without it becoming awkward.

  Looks like it just got awkward.

  What to do, what to do. He could pretend this had never happened. Pour another bowl of cereal. Head to bed. Try to sleep while visions of what her shadowed pussy could look like under full light danced in his head.

  Or, he could do what he should have done a long time ago. Introduce himself. Try to smooth over this situation so she didn’t feel like she couldn’t relax in her apartment anymore. Find a way to get them both to the laughing-about-it-someday part.

  Well, this is a no-brainer.

  He strode over to the closet by the door, grabbing his favorite leather jacket so the desert night air wouldn’t chill him out. The next second saw him locking his door behind him and walking down the sidewalk to his neighbor’s adjacent building.

  A friendly tenant held the door to Gamer Girl’s apartment building open for Gage, which only made him want to shake the man until his teeth clacked together. Letting just anyone into his building. Vegas could be a dangerous city. Didn’t this fool know that?

  Both he and Gamer Girl lived on the bottom floors of their respective buildings, so Gage bypassed the staircase and ducked his head to fit beneath a door frame.

  As soon as he entered her hallway, he spotted her door, and not just because it was in the right spot to be directly across from his.

  Her door was littered with colorful stickers.

  His lips twitched as he picked up his pace a bit. He paused in front apartment 7G.

  Video games. Every sticker on her door was from a video game. There were some classics, like Link smashing a clay pot, but she also had current games represented, like the blond smiling dude from the Fallout franchise. Her devotion even extended toward some obvious international games, if the foreign languages were any indication.

  A breath that sounded like a laugh tickled his nose. The landlord’s gotta love this.

  He raised his fist to knock on Master Chief’s helmet, but paused.

  Some imbecilic neighbor had blithely let Gage into the building.

  Would she freak out if someone knocked on the door? Or would she know immediately it was him and not some stranger who’d wandered down her hall?

  He pressed the tip of his tongue to the corner of his mouth and lowered his fist back to his side. Can’t have her getting scared.

  Leaning back, he looked at the doors lining the hallway, then moved one to the left: apartment 9G. Maybe it would help if Gamer Girl knew a neighbor had seen Gage in the hall. People didn’t typically show their faces to someone and then commit a c
rime.

  Unless they’re stupid. She could just think you’re stupid.

  Right. So . . . head home now?

  He knocked on the surface of the completely ordinary, boring door. Well, too late to pull out now.

  Oh, yes, brilliant maneuver. He rolled his eyes at himself.

  A shadow passed over the peephole from the other side, and Gage smiled brilliantly. Less than a second later, the door opened.

  An elderly woman on the short side of four-foot-eleven peered up at him through thick glasses. She observed him in silence for a few long seconds, but then she straightened her glasses and smiled at him. He relaxed. He didn’t have much going for him, but he did have his looks. Luckily, they’d worked for him in his favor this time, beating out his height, which he knew from past experiences could be intimidating.

  The woman gripped the doorframe with one gnarled hand. “Can I help you, young man?”

  Now what do you tell her, genius? Well, it’s like this, sweet little old lady. I saw your neighbor’s pussy and followed it over here like a goddamn idiot, and now I’m knocking on your door because she’ll most likely mace me when I knock on hers, and I’m hoping, somehow, that us talking will make this all okay.

  God, this plan sucked ass.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” He looked at the number on her door and frowned. “I was looking for apartment 7G.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Just missed it, dear.” She leaned out into the hallway and pointed at Gamer Girl’s door. “There’s Cassidy’s apartment.”

  Cassidy. This woman before him had offered up her neighbor’s name to a stranger she didn’t know from Adam without the slightest provocation. He stiffened his neck to keep his head from shaking. Would it be completely out of line for him to suggest Gamer Girl, aka Cassidy, find a safer apartment building?

  Yes, it would be, psycho.

  “Ah, my mistake.” He stepped back. “Thank you, Mrs.—?”