by Jill Myles
My blazingly blue eyes stared back at me in the rearview mirror. Bad, bad news for me—I had to wait over twelve hours for Noah to get here.
Could I make it that long?
The exciting town of Ponca City, Oklahoma, didn’t have a Ritz or Hilton, like Remy wanted. It did boast a nice Super 8 on the side of the highway, and we got three rooms there.
Drake muttered something about needing some time to himself and disappeared into his room. Worked for me, because he made me uncomfortable anyway. Not just because of his porn-star status, but because he now knew something really weird was going on with me and Remy, and I didn’t have any answers for him.
Remy gave me a hopeful look when we ditched Drake, but I shook my head at her. “I’m not feeling so well. Maybe we should just call it a night.”
“Excuse me? With a casino close by? Free drinks?”
But I felt sick. My legs were weak, my body hot and feverish. “Remy, I can’t go out. Remember that whole ‘curse’ thing?” I put a hand to my forehead. “Noah won’t be here until sometime tomorrow morning, so, the next twelve hours are going to be excruciating. I’d rather not spend them in a casino filled with other people.”
Remy rolled her eyes. “You’re such a martyr. So you have to have sex a little more often for the next few days. Why not spend a little time distracted, rather than watching reruns of COPS or M*A*S*H?” If you’re going to spend the next twelve hours in desperate need for a man, you can at least be drunk.”
She had a very, very good point.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“What do you mean, you don’t serve alcohol?” Remy’s gasp carried across the electronic beeping of the slot machines. “You’re a casino! How can you not serve alcohol?”
The waiter gave her an embarrassed look. “Ma’am—”
“Miss!”
“Miss,” he hastily corrected. “Two Feathers does not serve hard alcohol, but I’d be happy to bring you a beer or a wine cooler.” He gave her a dazzled smile. “Anything you want, miss. You just tell me and I’ll make all your dreams come true.”
Well, that wasn’t obvious. The look on Remy’s face said that she was mollified and flattered by his attention, and she straightened on her stool, leaning back against the slot machine. “Then I’d like a Guinness. A big one.”
“Of course.” The tiny hint of a smile on his lips indicated that it wasn’t the only big one he’d like to give her.
He looked over at me, his eyes suggestive. “And you?” The breathless tone of his voice proved that he wasn’t just asking me for a drink order.
I avoided making eye contact and shoved my card into the slot machine, punching buttons. “Coors Light. Whatever.”
He lingered, and I finally looked up at him. “Is that all I can get for you?” His eyes dropped to my breasts, then back to my face.
Jeez, to think that once upon a time I’d been excited to be transformed into a hot babe. Now I’d trade it all away for an eternity of men that made eye contact with me. “Just the beer,” I snapped. My machine beeped sadly at me. Two cherries and a lemon. Story of my life.
As he walked away, Remy nudged me. “You know, maybe you should try and get a little action here tonight. Feed your Itch ahead of time, so Noah doesn’t have anything to hold against you when he gets here in the morning.”
I shot her a quick look as my machine beeped again. Cherries, bar, lemon. It was getting worse. “You think he’s going to hold something against me?”
Remy grinned and crossed her legs on the stool, an unfailingly elegant gesture. “Let’s think about this one, shall we? You left Noah, the control freak, and didn’t tell him where you were going. You left with his worst enemy—who also happens to be your other boyfriend—and he wants an apology. Oh, I think there’ll be a little something held over your head, at the very least.” She turned back to her machine and jammed her card in, then punched one button. Two bars and a cherry. Her machine whistled happily and made a crunching sound, spitting out a ticket. “Hey, look at that—I won!”
I jerked my card out of my machine. “I don’t know why I’m bothering to gamble tonight. My curse probably extends to machines, as well.”
“All I’m saying”—Remy punched one button on her machine again—“is that when he shows up in the morning, you’re going to have to crawl back to him and beg forgiveness. For sex. And then tell him about your curse. Doesn’t sound like a winning combination to me.”
“Me, either,” I muttered, picturing Noah’s smug face. Then I pictured him kissing me. And then I pictured his heavy body on top of mine, filling me—
“Your drink, miss,” came a voice at my ear.
I panted, blinking up at the waiter, who held a Coors Light longneck on a tray out to me. He had nice fingers, I noticed as I took the bottle from the tray. Really nice fingers. Long and smooth and well kept. I flicked my gaze back up to his face and studied him for a moment. Nice lips, even if his nose was a little big. His hair was terrible, but he was young and lean and looked good enough to eat.
Oh God, was I really even thinking about this? I still had a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that I—who had been nearly celibate for most of my twenty-some years—was sleeping with two guys. Throw in a one-night stand, and my brain couldn’t handle it.
“What time do you get off, sweetie?” Remy purred up at the waiter as she took the massive mug of Guinness from him.
His eyes got dark in the way only a man in lust could look, and my body responded, my nerve endings tingling. “I get off at five a.m.”
Rats. I sighed. “If I wait that long, I might as well wait for Noah.”
“Uh huh,” Remy said, barely glancing over at me. “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.” She gave the man in question a dazzling smile.
I waved a hand glumly. “You can have him.” I sucked on my beer, feeling rather morose as Remy gave the waiter her room number and set up her date with him later. I wished desperately that I could be like Remy, with the morals of a cat and not a worry in my head. Getting pregnant wasn’t a concern; Sucks don’t breed. We didn’t catch diseases, didn’t die, didn’t get a period. I sure didn’t miss stuff like that.
But I had to have sex, and have it often, and since my normal partners weren’t around, I had to pick a new one. Unfortunately, my subconscious was a Puritan nerd who couldn’t grasp the idea that I needed to have a lot of sex to continue in the Afterlife.
Which was stupid, really.
“All right,” I said impulsively, then swigged the last of my beer. I’d drunk it so fast that I had a bit of a buzz going (lucky for me, succubi could still get drunk). “Get me a few more beers and let’s find me a date.”
“’Kay,” Remy said. She waved her drink boy over and ordered a second round for us. “You sure you don’t want him?” she asked, watching his ass as he walked back to the bar.
I watched it, too. It was a real nice ass. “Nah. You already gave him your number and stuff.” To switch out on him now would be icky, like sleeping with your sister’s boyfriend.
“Drake, then? I know he’s got the hots for you.” She chugged her Guinness, tipping back the glass to drain it. “He told me the other day that you had a great face for porn.”
I flinched. What the heck did that mean? I didn’t want to ask, considering all of Remy’s close-ups involved other men’s anatomy in the shot. “God, no. No Drake.” Not in a million years.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Drake’s kind of . . . well, Drake.” Remy motioned for her cabana boy and held up two fingers, indicating that she needed refills. “Someone new, then?”
I scoped out the crowded room as I took the new longneck and gave it a swig. It was night, and the casino was in full swing. Nearly every machine was full, and the tables across the way were packed as well—with old people and men with mullets. Seriously, what was it with gamblers and mullets? “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind, Remy.”
Remy shrugged and licked the foam from her beer off her lip. “Beggars
can’t be choosers, my dear. And I’m afraid that you definitely fall into the realm of beggar. So chug that beer, grab another, and let’s go rustle us up some men,” she said with a cowboy drawl.
I did as I was told, downing my beer and reaching for the next one brought to me. My head swam with the giddy buzz, and I let Remy grab my hand and drag me across the casino to get some chips.
Once we had our money exchanged, Remy sauntered over to the blackjack table and leaned over one of the men. He looked like a dirty trucker who’d stopped in for a beer, but Remy knew how to pick her prey. Letting her hair fall over his shoulder, she gave him a smile. “What are you playing?”
“Blackjack,” snapped an older woman with overbleached hair at the far end of the table. “Quit looking over his shoulder.”
The man was all smiles for Remy. “You want to learn how to play, darlin’?”
“Oh, we’d love to learn how to play!” Remy cooed in his ear, and just like that, we had two seats at the table. The other women left in disgust.
Remy slid into the seat to her left and I took the other, sandwiched between two men. They both gave me appraising looks.
“What’s your name, doll?” said one. He smiled and displayed a mouth full of bad teeth behind a leathery face. “I can show you how to play, if ya like.”
I smiled brightly, determined to make the best of this. After all, I didn’t have to sleep with him. There was bound to be a hot man in the casino somewhere; I just had to find him. “I’m Jackie.” I smiled at the dealer—not bad looking. “And I already know how to play, thanks.” Like it was that hard to figure out how to add up twenty-one. I fiddled with my chips. The two men sandwiching me were leaning awfully close, and the Itch was throbbing from my groin straight to a headache behind my eyes.
Farther on, a man smiled. He seemed nice enough and I smiled back. Youngish—maybe early thirties. Tanned but not icky. Maybe he was tanned all over. Nice eyes, with the sexiest damn crinkles around them—
I shook myself and concentrated on my chips.
Must concentrate on game. Must not think about sex. Must not think about being sandwiched between two men in any way except having to deal with poker. Two bodies pressing on mine, hot skin sliding over my body. Must not hit on the men next to me. The Itch would make them seem like princes, even if they were nasty. Must not let them hit on me. Must not—
“Miss?”
I looked up at the dealer, flushed and breathing hard. “What?”
“Hit, or stay?”
“What?” Had he heard my thoughts?
“Your cards?”
Oh. “Hit,” I blurted automatically.
“On a twenty?” The younger man next to me chuckled, and that raspy sound made my insides quiver. I shifted on my seat, trying to will away the Itch. Like that had ever worked before.
I looked down at my cards, barely seeing the two jacks that stared at me through the haze. Blood rushed in my ears, the beer made my head spin, and all I heard was the roar of the casino around me.
“Thirty. Bust,” the dealer said. I nodded, though to be honest, I couldn’t tell what I was nodding about.
All I could think about was the liquid heat that swam through my body, desperate for release.
“Need another drink,” I mumbled.
The younger man at my side pushed a drink my way. “Here. I ordered this for you, darlin’.”
I knew I shouldn’t take a drink from a stranger, but I was overheated and horny and it looked frosty and delicious. Screw it. I picked up the glass and sucked the soda down greedily, not caring that it was icy cold or that people were giving me odd looks. The drink helped alleviate some of the unnatural heat that radiated from my skin, though it didn’t do much for my level of drunkenness. The room swam in front of my eyes. I glanced over at Remy, who had managed to plant herself in some big fat guy’s lap and was enjoying the heck out of herself, but I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. Young, old, ugly, poor—Remy loved them all, as long as they loved her.
Why couldn’t I be like that?
A hand touched my arm and my nipples immediately hardened, and I had to bite back the moan of pleasure that rose in my throat.
“You okay, honey?” It was Young and Moderately Handsome, the one who’d given me the drink. He smiled at me, the look inviting.
I made up my mind as his finger grazed the bare flesh of my upper arm in an agonizingly slow motion. I winced, expecting him to fall flat at my feet, snoring and brainless like the others.
Nothing. He even smiled suggestively at me.
He’d do.
“I need air.” I set down my empty glass and stood. “Wanna come with me?”
He rose so fast that my drunken head spun a little. Well, okay, it spun a lot. I must have wobbled, because the next thing I knew, he had his hands around my waist and was leading me toward the casino entrance. God, those hands felt good. I whimpered at the touch—it burned right through my clothing and pulled against my skin, and I had to fight the urge to rip my clothes off right then and there.
I glanced back at Remy, but all she did was wiggle her fingers and made a phone gesture with her hand. “Call me later,” she mouthed, then gave me a thumbs-up.
I let the guy drag me out of the casino and into the cool night air. The doors shut behind us, and the sounds of people talking dimmed as the world got quieter, the noisy bustle of the casino exchanging for the relative quiet of the parking lot. A breeze touched my arms, helping me wake up a little. I couldn’t concentrate—the Itch was throbbing too hard, and my head was spinning.
Then those hands twitched, resting a little lower on my body until they were almost on my ass, and the world turned toward a red fog again.
“What did you say your name was again?” my new friend asked.
I shut him up with a kiss. It was better if he didn’t talk at all, really. My mouth planted on his, my tongue diving into his mouth, and I pressed my body against his in an obvious invitation that he accepted. His hands slid lower, grasping my ass through my shorts and pulling me against his body. His mouth broke free of mine and he laughed again, that wonderfully delicious rasp. “You’re one hot piece of ass, bitch.” He pinched my butt, painfully.
Well, that was starting to kill the mood for me. Maybe I could live with the Itch for a little bit longer. “No talk,” I mumbled. I tried to plant my mouth over his again in an obvious hint. Perhaps if I pretended he was Zane . . .
He wasn’t so keen on the hint; he laughed again. “You’re pretty hot for the cock, slut.”
Okay, Itch or no Itch, I still had standards. I slithered out of his arms, wiping my mouth with my hand and staring up at him through the red fog. Damn, he still looked delicious, but there was a hard tilt to his mouth that I didn’t like, now that I took a second look at him.
But God, I was throbbing painfully bad. So badly that I knew I wouldn’t last until dawn, when Noah would arrive to lecture me. I hesitated. “What’s your name?”
It came out all slurred and drunk. More like, “Whazzername?” The ground seemed to wobble and I flung my arms around him again, feeling strange and heavy.
He told me his name, but it didn’t register. All I watched was that hard curve of his mouth as he smiled down at me. There was something I didn’t like about it, and I finally realized what it was. “You don’t have lipsh like my Zane,” I said aloud, trying to focus. “His lipsh are wonnerful.” So nice and full and soft against mine. “I mish him,” I added sadly.
“Baby, I don’t care who you miss, as long as you end up with me tonight.” He leered at me and reached for me again. I slapped at his hand, but I missed and ended up slapping air, and his arms snaked around me again. The breath whistled from my lungs. “So tell me, sugar, does the carpet match the drapes?”
“You’re gross,” I slurred and planted my hand on his face, blocking his mouth when he dove down for another kiss. “Leaveme ’lone.”
His hands dug into my flesh. “You were askin’ for it, b
aby. So don’t go blaming me when I give it to you.”
“I don’t think la femme wants to be with you,” a cool voice interrupted, and the hard, hot hands were pried off my ass, leaving me to stumble backward. I smacked against the brick wall, scraping my oversensitive skin and sending shock waves through my body. I collapsed to the ground in a heap, too loopy to do more than sit and stare.
What was wrong with me?
Through the red haze of desire, I saw two men. The jerkwad who’d been pawing me confronted a much taller man that I didn’t recognize. I could see only the back of his head, but he was dressed in dark clothing, and they kept moving so fast it was making my head spin. Had Zane come to rescue me?
I pushed myself off the wall, trying to stand upright once more. The world spun around me, and as I tried to take a step forward, my shoe slipped out from underneath me. I crashed to the pavement and smacked my chin, but that wasn’t the part that bothered me the most. My legs began to cramp and clench, and the throbbing in my body was getting worse.
I couldn’t focus. Something was horribly wrong—more than just the curse.
Moaning, I curled up around myself, hugging my legs close in a fetal position. I couldn’t think or function—I was burning up inside. Somewhere in the back of my drunken, agonized mind, I heard the two men arguing and the quick shuffle of running sneakers on the pavement as someone left. I didn’t bother to look, though. Nothing was as important as the heat sweeping through me and getting rid of it.
Gentle hands touched my shoulders, turning me over. A hand slid under my thighs, and I felt the cool breeze rush around me as I was lifted into the air. The crisp, starchy shirt my cheek pressed against was so cool in the night air that I snuggled up against it. The sensation was almost refreshing, and my body began to unclench a little.
“I’ve got you, ma belle. Relax.”
I didn’t recognize the voice, but the smooth, languid hint of an accent tore at my already frayed nerves. My fingers dug into his shirt collar, clenched, and I huddled against his chest, willing for the Itch to go away and leave me alone. My flesh burned where he touched me, and everything hurt.
