by Tessa Bailey
The bartender arrived just in time to hear that decree. “I’m sorry, I’ll need to see some identification, please.”
She blew her bangs out of her face while rooting through her skirt pocket, producing a beat up passport and sliding it across the bar. “I’m a big girl. You can check.”
Showing no reaction, the bartender scanned the information page and placed the passport back on the bar. Before Roksana could put it back in her pocket, he scoped out the year on her date of birth. 1996.
That made her twenty-one.
For the love of God, they weren’t even born in the same decade.
“She’ll have something that tastes like chocolate. I’ll have a Sam Adams.”
The bartender nodded once and left.
“Caught you looking, officer obvious,” she said smoothly. “Now you must tell me your number.”
That was the second time she’d made him laugh in one night. It had to be some kind of record. But man, he really liked that he couldn’t get away with a damn thing around this girl. “I’m twenty-eight.” He turned toward her in his stool. “Didn’t waste any time getting to Vegas once you were the legal drinking age, did you?”
“The trip wasn’t my idea.” She crossed her killer legs and he harnessed every iota of willpower to keep his eyes locked above her neck. “My best friend, Olga, has a…what is the word here for female erection?” She waved her hands before he could answer that he didn’t have a clue. “She loves Elvis, that one. All her life. This is where she wanted to get married since we were little girls and tomorrow we will make it happen.”
“What was your plan if you got arrested?”
“You saw my boobs, da?” She waggled her eyebrows. “Maybe I would have charmed my way out.”
She probably could.
What was the weird, acidic bite in his chest?
Surely not jealousy. Over a situation they’d already averted.
Elias cleared his throat hard, grateful when the drinks arrived and he could wet his dry throat. Over the rim of his pint, he watched her take a huge gulp of her drink, diving right in without knowing what it tasted like. That told Elias more about her, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted to know every damn thing and he didn’t understand why. Why it felt essential on some higher level that he learn all there was to know about Roksana.
He’d been hard pressed to even pay attention on those blind dates he’d gone on a while back. With Roksana, he was almost afraid to miss something.
For years, he’d carefully kept his teammates at arm’s length. Been indifferent to their interest in his life and kept his nose out of theirs. That’s how he operated. That was the example he’d been given in his household growing up. In the place where he’d been born and raised, there was a sense of community, but a lot of the time, that community rallied around each other after a loss of life due to violence. Nothing had ever gotten better, the cycles always seemed to continue, but Elias learned to avoid the pain everyone put on display by being a loner. Keeping to himself.
Only one friend had slipped through his defenses—and Elias often wished like hell he’d listened to his own philosophy before letting him in.
Relationships made a man vulnerable.
Yet here he sat, more defenseless than he could ever remember being in his life. As if his armor had melted away the second she walked past his poker table. And he couldn’t seem to talk himself out of exposing himself, exposing her.
Diving as deep as he could.
“When did you get to Vegas?” Elias asked, taking a drink of his beer and setting it down.
She settled her martini glass on her knee. “Yesterday.”
“What have you been doing, if not gambling?”
“Dancing,” she replied, as if that should have been obvious. “And eating. We’ve been kicked out of two buffets already for trying to sneak crab legs back to the room in our purses.”
“Really.” He leaned closer, gratified when she did as well. “You didn’t try for lobster?”
“No, but there are still three days left of this trip.”
“Three days.” A heaviness settled in his stomach. “Then back to Russia?”
She nodded slowly, a little bit of her smirk fading. “What about you, Elias? Why are you here?”
The insides of their knees brushed and he couldn’t tell if she’d done it on purpose, but every nerve ending in his body seemed to expand, throb painfully. He was grateful for the low lighting of the bar, because that one little touch made him hard as nails. Christ. She made him feel like he’d spent a lifetime deprived.
Kenny and Latte were always talking about that moment they knew their wives were the one. He’d always been skeptical, but…is that what this was? If so, they’d been underexaggerating. There was a gravity to tonight he couldn’t explain. Like if he didn’t carefully thread the needle of the time they were spending together, he’d rip the fabric.
“Elias?” she prompted him, bumping their knees together, definitely on purpose this time. “Why are you in Vegas?”
“Our team is on mandatory leave for a week. We participated in a large-scale raid a few weeks ago. Most of us discharged our weapons. There were causalities taken on the other side.” Tension crept into his neck and he reached back to massage it away. “Essentially, the department shrink has way too much power and thinks he knows what’s best for us. He decided we needed a break, so a few of us drove up for the weekend.”
She was silent for a beat. “Did you cause any of the casualties?”
Gunshots echoed in the back of his mind and he ground his back teeth together. “Yes.”
Roksana hummed lightly, her attention dancing across his shoulders and back to his face. Taking his measure. “I lied to you before. Temnota moya means my darkness.”
An invisible fist buried in his gut. This girl could see deeper than…anyone. Anyone he’d ever met. She’d called him that name back in the casino, meaning her judgment of him had been immediate. Did he hate that she saw so much? Or was he relieved to finally be seen? To seemingly be understood when some days he barely understood himself? The answer was unclear, but he wanted more. He wanted to get trapped in her awareness. “You’re a quick study.” He curled a hand beneath her knee, using his grip to tug her chair closer, once again, but the skin-to-skin contact elevated the move, made them both breathe a little faster. “You think I’m dark, Roksana?”
A wrinkle formed between her light brows and she seemed to be peering inside of him. “I’ve been raised to recognize darkness. Yours is more complicated than most.” She settled her martini glass on the bar. “There is some light in you, too.”
This was the craziest conversation he’d ever had, especially with someone he’d just met, but somehow, it made more sense than any discussion in his memory. As if some barrier that always existed between most people…had dropped between them. This was real. “What about you, havoc wreaker? Are you made up of darkness or light?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to find out, so I run.”
His muscles tightened, ready to defend. “From what?”
Instead of giving him a straight answer, she smiled softly, picking up a straw full of her drink and dropping it into her mouth. “I bet you run from nothing.”
“Not anymore,” he found himself saying. “But I have.”
“How so?”
“I could have easily been one of those causalities in the raid. I ran from the life that would have put me there.” He hadn’t spoken about his life growing up on the streets of Los Angeles in more than a decade. Yet Roksana’s very presence seemed to pull the honesty straight out of his deepest recesses. “People say running is an easy way out, but it can be the hardest, depending on the situation.”
Roksana’s eyes widened. “Yes.”
“If you’re in danger, Roksana, I want to know about it.”
Only a slight hesitation on her end, but he didn’t like it. “I’m not. You can relax.” She reached out, flattening a hand in the ce
nter of his chest—and a jolt went through him, like a sensual electrocution. “Nichego sebe,” she breathed. “Is all that thunder for me?”
The pressure in his dick grew unbearable. “Yes.”
A twinkle jumped in her blue eyes and she started to say something, but the color drained from her face and she went very still.
Elias nearly had a heart attack on the spot, the organ leaping into his mouth. “Roksana.” He searched the immediate area, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m getting a tingle.”
He raised an eyebrow.
Spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “Okay, I’m getting two tingles, but one of them is bad.” She slipped off her stool and wedged herself between his thighs, wringing her hands against his chest. “Something is here, but I can’t see it.”
A sense of purpose swooped into Elias and hardened into cement, so quickly the breath was knocked out of him. Roksana was literally leaning into him for protection, her blonde head tucking beneath his chin, and he’d never experienced a more overwhelming sense of duty. Not even at his job. Never. His arms moved without an order from his brain. They wrapped around her and hauled her close, an urge rising up within him to shout at everyone nearby to back off.
What the hell was going on here?
This wasn’t just mental or sexual. It was chemical.
And he couldn’t stop it. Didn’t want to.
“Oh.” Her breath fanned his neck, her body relaxing. “It’s okay. I know where the bad tingle was coming from.”
“Where?” he nearly growled.
She went up on her toes and whispered against his ear. “Vampire.”
A shiver laced through his spine. Surely he’d heard her wrong. “What?”
Roksana nodded. “Don’t look now, but he’s sitting at the very corner of the bar. There’s a white feather in his hat.” Chewing on her bottom lip, she played with the collar of his shirt. “Okay, now you look.”
Positive she was making a joke, or trying to distract him from what really bothered her, Elias turned his head slightly and spotted the man in question. He looked normal enough—whatever passed for normal in Vegas. He’d ordered a whiskey, but didn’t touch it. Just sat there, unnaturally still, the bar in a continuous state of movement around him.
His head ticked quickly in an odd blur, his eyes landing on Elias.
Cold snapped in his blood.
Stop being ridiculous. He was just off kilter because this whole night felt dreamlike.
Feeling as if he’d been sucker punched, Elias faced a curious Roksana and forced himself to laugh off the ominous sensation in his middle. “Very funny, havoc wreaker.”
After a moment, she smiled and continued to play with his collar. “You think it was just an excuse to get close to you, da?”
Her low purr made his jeans feel tight. “You don’t need an excuse for that.”
“Elias?”
“Yes.”
She tilted her head. “Did you choose to bring me here to this casino because you are staying upstairs?”
His brows drew together. “How did you know that?”
Without breaking eye contact, she lifted his room key up between them, pinched between her thumb and index finger. “Lucky guess.”
Caught off-guard, he barked a laugh. She must have pilfered the room key from his pocket when he wasn’t looking. And he should be outraged, but instead, he was really, painfully turned on. “Vampire, huh?” He wrapped his forearm around the small of her back, easing her closer, little by little, unable to hide his interest in the way her breasts swelled in the opening of her sweater. “You wanted to distract me.”
“Or…” She scrubbed her palms over his pecs, whipping up lust inside him like a smoke cloud. “Maybe he was an incidental vampire distraction.”
He tucked his tongue into his cheek to hide his smile. “Right.”
“Yes. So I could find out your true intentions, temnota moya. Not merely to admire me and buy me chocolate drinks, but bring me back to your fancy room.”
“This is the closest place to Circus Circus that’s worthy of you even setting foot inside it, Roksana.” Taking a chance, he leaned in and grazed their lips together, the friction burning him head to toe. “But I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t need you underneath me tonight.”
“Need?” she whispered, unevenly.
His fingers twisted in the hem of her skirt, pulling, rocking her against his distended cock. “Yes.”
Her eyelids drooped, her tits shuddering up, down, up, and he could make out the rough, little patch of her areolas, the hard bud at their center. “Is it a cliché here in America, too, if I say I don’t do things like this?”
“Things like what?” Elias rasped, starved for the taste of her tits. For any part of her he could reach. “This is like nothing else.”
Their eyes met. “I know,” she whispered. “Why is that?”
Elias pressed their foreheads together. “Come upstairs with me and let’s figure it out.”
She started to nod, he was already reaching for his wallet—but that’s when hell broke loose. In the form of four Russian girls in Circus Circus T-shirts.
“Oooh, look at Roks. She’s such a fancy bitch now!”
A chorus of laughter kicked up near the entrance and Roksana groaned, her head falling back. A smile formed on her mouth, however, as her friends drew closer.
Elias sat there in total denial, his cock full to bursting behind his fly.
This girl that had fucking enchanted him had been about to say yes, she would come back to his room, and now his sanity was in jeopardy. Because if he didn’t consume her, if she didn’t consume him, he wasn’t sure what came next. She was essential somehow. His.
“We’ve come to bring our friend back to the Circus Circus,” announced a brunette girl, her speech slurred slightly, accent thick, as she wrapped her hands around Roksana’s bicep. “We have hair appointments early in the morning. Olga will rain hell down on this town if you are off playing with this man. Are you crazy?”
Another friend joined in the effort to usurp Roksana from her stool. “Come. I am seconds from passing out. No time for bullshit.”
“They’re right,” Roksana murmured to Elias. “I’m here for my friend. It’s her wedding and I can’t…I can’t.” She cast a bright laugh up at the ceiling. “And I don’t do this!”
“Roksana,” he said, squeezing her hip, dropping his mouth down near her ear. “I can make sure you’re where you need to be in the morning. Just as easily as I can get you where you need to go tonight. As many times as possible.”
“Oh boy.” Her body swayed, falling against him for a too-brief second before her friends hauled her away. Elias watched in total disbelief as they hustled her toward the door, away from him, never to be seen again unless he found her in the wilds of Vegas.
“Wait,” he growled, through his teeth, vaulting off the stool and following the group.
To his surprise, at the same time, Roksana shouted, “Wait,” digging in her heels before they could spirit her through the exit. Rolling her eyes at the clipped Russian admonishments being leveled in her direction, she turned and cut a path back toward Elias. She was like something out of another world, coming toward him in slow motion, hips swaying, eyes on fire. He expected her to stop in front of him, to pass on her phone number, but even after their short acquaintance, he should have known better than predict this girl’s behavior.
Because she simply kept coming closer, closer until he realized she wouldn’t be slowing down. Fuck yes. Come to me, baby. Elias caught her up against his body, plastered her tight to his frame several inches above the ground, breathing against her mouth for a bracing moment, before diving into a kiss that rocked the very foundation of his existence.
Jesus. Jesus.
She tasted like chocolate, like sin, like salvation. There was a lack of experience that made him protective and triumphant at the same time. Mine. The tongue pressi
ng to his and stroking it hesitantly, then with more confidence, belonged to him. The arms twining around his neck, the tremble skittering through her, the hair in his fists—his, his, his.
This was insane. It was fucking insane.
He needed to breathe, but he would rather die than break the kiss.
It was like he’d been starved for it his entire life.
She whimpered into his mouth and he countered with a soothing noise, running his thumb along her cheekbone, never quitting the incredible pace, the friction, of the kiss.
Roksana broke away, gasping, her eyes a brighter blue than they’d been before.
His heart was doing something crazy, his hands still moving in her hair. Memorizing her.
“I still have your key.” Her laugh was breathless. “Which room?”
“Nine fifty-six.”
“I’ll meet you there.” She wet her lips, her eyelids fluttering as if she was savoring the taste of his mouth. “This time tomorrow, temnota moya.”
He’d take it. He’d take anything. “This time tomorrow, Roksana.”
And then she was gone, but her impact on him?
That remained.
He could barely feel his limbs as he took his seat again at the bar, her sweet scent still clinging to his clothes. After a moment of recovery, which didn’t recover him at all, frankly, his gaze was drawn to the spot where the man she’d called a vampire had been sitting.
The chair was now empty.
A layer of ice formed on his skin, but he determinedly shook it off.
Vampires didn’t exist.
Tomorrow night? That was real.
Elias paid the tab, anticipation crackling in his fingertips. Kenny and Latte had mentioned meeting back up with Jenks and their commander later at the Encore, but Elias couldn’t bring himself to go back out. To go chasing excitement when he’d already experienced the headiest rush of his life. The night would only be downhill from there, so might as well head up to his room and work through this hard-on solo style.
God knew he’d be thinking of her the whole time. Before, during, after. Her hair spread out on his pillow, her sexy mouth open and gasping beneath his, her naked thighs squeezing his hips, even if she was only in his imagination.
