Unfiltered & Undressed (The Unfiltered Series)

First there was sex, and then came death…

As it turns out, death came with a better paycheck…

LAUREN

“Fuck. Me.” I looked between the printout in my hand and back up at the broken down shack of a thing in front of me. It certainly wasn’t the “quaint, beachside bungalow” it had been advertised as when I’d signed the lease, sight unseen.

Great, I’d spent ten thousand dollars on a three-month lease for a piece of shit shack.
Not cool
.

“Technically, you mean ‘
fuck us
,’” Emerson piped in, a little too enthusiastically, making the headache behind my eyes pound even harder. “And there are worse things than being fucked, not that you’d know anything about that. Besides, I like it. It’s adorbs.”

“Okay, one, there’s nothing
adorbs
about it. It probably isn’t even up to code. And two, look around you,” I complained. This was
so
not the California of my dreams—the one I’d been imagining since I was a little girl watching re-runs of Baywatch. “The ad said it was on the beach. As in,
we would be stepping off our doorstep onto the sand
. Do you see any beach, Em?”

Emerson squinted, straining her eyes dramatically to try and see across the single-lane blacktop where the sun was just starting to set. She lifted her hand to her forehead and then squealed, “
There!
If you look in just the right place, in between those houses, you can see it!” She clapped her hands together and bounced up and down, thrilled for a quasi-glimpse of an almost-strip of the shore.

I tried to tell myself I should let some of Em’s positive thinking rub off on me. It didn’t matter where we’d be living for the summer, all that mattered was we’d finally left dry and dusty Arizona in our rear-view mirror forever. I’d dreamed of this moment every single day of my childhood when I’d submerged myself in bubble baths and pretended I knew how to swim.

Now, I could make that dream a reality.

“Come on,” Emerson gushed, digging through the jumble of bags crammed in the trunk and plopping one of her suitcases next to mine. “Let’s put on something slutty so we can scope out the local action.”

“Don’t you ever think of anything else?” I bent down and lifted a corner of the doormat, searching for the key the property manager said would be waiting for us.

“Um, no,” Em answered, her tone baffled. “Why? Do you?”

I laughed. Sure, I
thought
about guys plenty, but definitely not as often as Emerson did. Maybe I was jaded from spending the past three years scrimping and saving every penny I could get from men who should’ve been home with their wives and girlfriends, instead of using their credit cards to visit my internet webcam site. I wasn’t necessarily proud of the things I’d done, but I wasn’t exactly ashamed of them either.

My parents wouldn’t have liked the fact that I was getting paid to take off my clothes for money, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t worked my ass off; it just wasn’t the kind of “work” people wanted an ordinary suburban girl from Denver to be doing. I suppose they thought it would be better if I was getting my ass pinched waiting tables at one of the rowdy off-campus bars.

Frankly, my peek-a-boo stripcam paid a helluva lot better.

And the thing that most people didn’t understand was that just because I was willing to peel off my sweater in front of a webcam, that didn’t make me easy. What I did in the privacy of my bedroom was anonymous—no one ever knew it was me. I was a completely hands-off kind of girl.

Emerson understood that. She was the only person in the world who not only knew what I’d done to make money—a secret she swore she’d take to her grave—but also knew I was still a virgin—something she intended to tease me about mercilessly every day until I “remedied” it. Because that’s what virginity was as far as Em was concerned: a disease that needed curing.

Before I got the chance to answer her about going out, we heard someone clearing his throat to get our attention. “Keys aren’t there,” a distinctly male voice said, and I shot upright in response. “Billy has ’em,” he added. “Picked ’em up this afternoon.”

Spinning to face our new mystery guest, and meaning to argue that this
Billy
—whoever he was—had no business taking something that didn’t belong to him, I froze instead. My mouth was still halfway open, and I didn’t have to see Emerson to guess that she was gawking too. Any protests about Billy’s thieving ways had evaporated on my lips, as my eyes—eyes that suddenly had a mind of their own—raked the newcomer over from head to toe.

California had just gotten a whole lot more interesting.

The guy in front of us was wearing swim trunks that rested just the right amount of low over his waistline, and revealed what could only be described as the most chiseled set of abs known to man. And I was comparing them to great works of art, like the statue of David by Michelangelo, which had
literally
been chiseled from granite. From the bronze of this guy’s skin, I was convinced he’d never heard the word “sunscreen”—not that I was complaining, since his too-deep tan flawlessly emphasized those sculpted abs of his.

“He’s harmless, really. Just doin’ his job,” Chiseled Abs announced, looking from me to Em.

I turned to Emerson for help since I’d temporarily lost track of what he was talking about, but Em was too busy undressing him with her eyes to even notice me. “Who?” I finally asked, realizing she was as lost as I was.

He leaned casually inside the doorframe of the house right next door—a house that appeared only shades more livable than our own, and I wondered if this guy was our new neighbor. “Billy,” Chiseled Abs answered, his brow dipping ever so slightly in an amused expression, and I got the feeling we weren’t the first girls to lose our shit over him. “Call the landlord and ask him. He asked Billy to pick up the keys when you were late.”

“
Late
,” I repeated absently, realizing he was right. I’d told the landlord we would be there by five, but it was well past seven thanks to Em and her raisin-sized bladder. We’d stopped at just about every rest stop along the way. “Great, so now what are we supposed to do?”

“It’s all good,” Chiseled Abs assured with a wink. “Like I said, Billy’s got ’em.” A grin slipped over his lips then, all slow and lazy-like but perfectly timed and utterly intentional, and I knew—
I knew,
in that very instant—that there was nothing harmless about
this
guy.

Charming, yes. Fuckable, for sure—Emerson would probably bag him by the end of the summer. But harmless,
never
.

“Yeah?” I challenged, suddenly wishing I could slip inside the skin of my online persona, because whenever I was playing the part of Lola Bang, I always felt a million times more badass than when I was just plain old Lauren Taylor. “Well, can you let
Harmless Billy
know that we’re here now, and we’d really like to get our car unpacked so we can call it a night?”

Chiseled Abs’s grin grew wider as his arms crossed over the muscled planes of his exquisitely carved chest, and even though guys like him—the ones who thought way too highly of themselves—had never been my type, my stomach flipped just a little. I couldn’t help wondering if this was the real reason my parents had been trying to talk me out of California and my lifelong dreams of becoming a lifeguard. I wondered if my mom had never actually been afraid I would drown or be swept away by a riptide if I learned how to swim, but rather that she’d somehow known that if I ever did make my way to California, I’d discover the truth—that the boys were made differently here. They were carved from granite, and when they smiled at you they could set your panties on fire.

Frankly, if all the boys were like Chiseled Abs here, I would
definitely
need to invest in some new underwear.

“I have an even better idea,” he announced, his voice a husky enticement. He ran a hand over his chest, and even though the gesture appeared absent, I wondered if it wasn’t a calculated move. “How ’bout you ladies come with me to The Dunes, and I’ll buy you both a burger and a beer?” He nodded toward his small house. “Consider it a welcome-to-the-neighborhood thing.” He sauntered toward us in a way that made it clear he probably didn’t get shot down all that often.

Emerson clapped her hands again, “Ooh, I
love
that idea!” she exclaimed.

I looked at the suitcase at my feet. “I don’t know…I really need to unload some of my stuff…” I hedged.

“They got great microbrews,” he threw in, selling the place
and
his charm as he wiggled his dark brows. “
And an awesome view
…” and suddenly, I was seeing past the ridiculously hot veneer to the cheesy pick-up artist beyond. Maybe Michelangelo’s David was more like a velvet painting of Elvis after all. “Besides,” he added. “Billy’s tending bar tonight. We can get your keys while we’re there.”

And that was pretty much it, I realized. I was going to The Dunes whether I liked it or not.

Besides, Em would be crushed if I let her down now.

“You can stow your bags at my place till we get back,” he offered, reaching for our suitcases.

My stomach tightened as my hand shot out to beat him to the punch. It might be inconvenient to lug my bag along with me, but until I had a safe place to stow it, I had no intention of letting it out of my sight.

‡

“I’ll take one of each, please!” Emerson enthused, squeezing my arm as she scanned the crowd of guys in the busy beachside bar. “
Thankyouandamen
,” she gushed all in one word.

Chiseled Abs, who it turned out had a real name he expected us to use, Lucas Harper, had left us alone while he went to grab some menus. He’d also chosen to put on a shirt, which Emerson considered a “serious buzz kill,” although, clearly, she was finding ways to console herself.

“Lo,” she said, elbowing me to make sure I was paying attention. “Check out that one.” She wiggled her manicured nails in the direction of a hot surfer-looking guy who looked suspiciously like every other hot surfer-looking guy packed into the place.

He lifted his eyebrows at her, letting her know he’d noticed her too.

I slapped Emerson’s hand down. “Don’t encourage them. It’s bad enough it’s like a meat market in here.”

“I know,” she babbled. “Isn’t it great?”

Yeah, great
. Except all I wanted to do was to get my keys and get the hell out of here so I could unpack my things and throw on my favorite pair of sweatpants.

I was a little surprised by how busy the place was, especially for a Tuesday night. The girl to guy ratio was somewhere in the three to one range, with girls crowding the small space wearing everything from cropped tops and mini skirts to bikini tops and supershort cutoff jeans—the more skin the better seemed to be the name of the game. The guys here were no different from the ones I had seen at every Rio Verde campus bar we’d ever been to—hungry wolves, waiting for one of the lambs to wander away from the flock.

I spotted Lucas’s dark hair as he pushed his way through the crowd. He smiled just as wolfishly as the rest of them as he clutched the menus under one arm and balanced three beer bottles in his hands. When he got to our table he set a bottle down in front of each of us and waited.

I glanced up at him and lifted a brow. “Um, thank you…” I drawled, giving him the ego stroke I knew he was looking for. I waited a second longer and then asked, “And my keys?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t get Billy’s attention,” he told me, taking the seat right next to Emerson’s, and throwing the full weight of his attention—and his charisma—on her. “So tell me about yourselves. What’s your story?” he asked, ignoring me altogether.

Em fiddled with the label on her bottle, eyeballing him coyly—as if she’d ever had a coy bone in her body—and I felt like I was suddenly watching a complete stranger. “What do you wanna know?” she asked.

“Well, since you have a carload of suitcases and a serious accent, why don’t you start with where you’re from.” Lucas stated.

She wrinkled her brow and gave her standard: “I don’t have an accent, silly.” Which came out so full of drawl she may as well have been wearing chaps and swinging a lasso. She actually had the nerve to giggle then, making me glare as I impatiently waited for either of them to even notice I was still siting at the table, or for Lucas to stop flirting for a second so he could elaborate on the whole key thing.

He didn’t. Instead, he chuckled at Emerson while he took a long pull from his beer and eyed her hungrily. “Oh yeah, you totally do. Besides, even if you didn’t—
which you do
—your car has Arizona plates. So? Where you from? And I mean originally, because you definitely aren’t from Arizona, either.” I wondered how many hours he’d spent in front of the mirror perfecting that
fuck-me
stare of his because Em was totally buying into it.

“You caught us.” She shrugged, flashing me the same
it’s not my fault
look I had seen from her a hundred times before, like she couldn’t help that guys were drawn to her like moths to a flame. “
I’m
from Dallas.
Originally
. Or just outside it—a little place called Highland Village. Lo here is from the suburbs of Denver, but we met at ASU Rio Verde.”

“So, you decided to, what…beach-bum it for the summer?”

Em shrugged, looking to me to see if she should elaborate. “Something like that…”

Uncomfortable with the way this conversation was headed, I reached out and tapped the table in front of Lucas until he stopped ogling Emerson long enough to notice me. “About this Billy guy…”

“Uh, yeah…like I said, I couldn’t get his attention.” He pointed to the bar, where a thick cluster of scantily clad blondes flocked like there was a blowout sale on Prada bags. “Busy night,” he told me dismissively, taking another drink to let me know he’d given it his best shot.

“Yet, somehow you managed to get our drinks,” I persisted, ticked that he wasn’t taking this seriously.

He sighed. “Different bartender.”

I looked again, and saw what he meant. At the other end of the bar, where it was far less crowded, a dark-haired girl was working behind the counter.