by Suzie Nelson
I had a song in my heart and a spring in my step and I’d never felt more alive in my entire life than I did right in that moment. Somewhere in the back of my head, a plan was being formulated by my subconscious mind and I had the feeling things were going to work out just fine. After all; what could go wrong now that Jenny and I had found each other?
JENNY
“So you’re scared of a little girl playing Blackjack against your expert dealers, is that it!?” I shouted at the Pit Boss as he continued to refuse me access to the Blackjack tables.
“I’m sorry, madam, I’m just following instructions from management,” the Pit Boss replied and Francois took me gently by the arm.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said and I walked outside with Francois trying to calm me.
“Fuck these casinos and their thieving management," I shouted once we were outside and for some reason, my words seemed to strike Francois more intensely than I would have expected.
“Just calm down, my little angel,” he said and took me in his arms. I suddenly wished I could just tell him all about the whole incredible burden of getting money together for my mother’s operation, but I feared Francois might just think I was trying to scam him or beg for money so it was out of the question. It felt like time had finally run out for me and I simply didn’t know how I was ever going to win another $100,000 now that the casinos on the Vegas Strip had apparently caught onto my card counting tactics.
“I know you enjoy your Blackjack and I promise you I will find you another casino even if I have to buy it for you myself, ma chérie,” Francois said and when I looked at him and saw the earnest expression on his face. It made me feel better right away.
“I no longer stay at the MGM Grand,” Francois said, “My new hotel is just around the corner, the Golden Nugget where we first met. Let’s go there and just take it easy for the rest of the evening.”
I just nodded my head in agreement. He was finally coming clean with me and, if nothing else, the disaster of the evening had at least convinced Francois to take me to his real hotel room. I thought for a second about making a joke and pretending to guess correctly that Francois stayed on the 17th floor, but then thought the better of it. He would surely realize that I’d been spying on him; not a very cool thing for the lover in your life to do.
“Let’s just go up to my apartment right away,” Francois said after we’d entered the front door, “we can order dinner and ask them to bring it up to my room.”
“That sounds nice, I am feeling quite hungry,” I replied.
When Francois opened the door to his room it was even more splendid than I’d imagined. The lounge area was massive and connected to an open plan kitchen that looked ready to host any three-star Michelin chef. The master bedroom was, again, very spacious and the king size bed was covered in the most beautiful white linen.
“This place is bigger than the gambling area downstairs,” I joked. I’d almost forgotten about the disaster at the Blackjack tables already and sat down on the plush leather couch in the lounge while Francois fixed us each a drink. Then I saw it. In the corner stood a beautiful guitar. It looked like one of those Spanish guitars you always see in movies and I knew right away that this was the guitar Francois had played on the day I’d spied on him and followed him to his room.
My my, a man of many hidden talents,” I said as I walked over to take a closer look at the guitar, “can I touch it?”
“Sure, you can touch it and you can also touch anything else you like in this apartment…anything at all,” Francois replied with a naughty smile.
“You have a dirty mind…I like the way you think,” I said with a smile as I picked up the guitar. It was incredibly light and the wooden top was shiny and flawless.
“Will you play me something?” I asked.
“Of course. Just sit down here and relax,” Francois answered and handed me my drink. It was an apple martini and it tasted delicious and refreshing as I took a large sip. Francois took the guitar from me and there was something incredibly sexy about the way he handled it; almost as if it were a fragile woman. Then he sat down next to me and started playing.
It was the same hauntingly beautiful sound I’d heard the previous time, only now it was much clearer and even more enchanting than before. I felt as if I was in another world and Francois was no longer my French playboy. He was now some kind of heavenly angel playing music that reached all the way into the darkest recesses of my soul and I suddenly knew that I was deeply and irrevocably in love with him. The admission was easier and more natural than I’d ever imagined it would be and I lay back on the couch and surrendered to the magic of the moment with no further reservations.
When Francois took me in his arms after he’d played for a while, I was ready for him. I don’t think I’d ever been so aroused in my entire life. This was more than a physical desire; I was ready to surrender all of my soul to him. I could tell that Francois was feeling the same magnificent sense of surrender as he kissed me softly all over my neck and breasts; savoring each kiss as if he were exploring a magical world he’d never seen before. When he finally made his way to my legs and pulled down my panties I was hot and wet for him…hungry for his touch and longing for the gentle caress of his tongue. He kissed me between my legs and then started licking the tip of my clit slowly and deliberately. I sighed deeply and arched my back to grant him full access to my secret parts. He grew more forceful and his tongue became an instrument of pleasure as he seemed to effortlessly control all of my desire with it.
I sighed deeply as my entire body contracted with the most intense orgasm I’d ever experienced in my life. It seemed to spur Francois on as he continued licking me without stopping for even a second. Soon I felt myself going over the edge one more time…and then another…
I was Francois’s feast and he was consuming all of me. When he finally moved on top of me and entered me with his fully erect manhood I grabbed his head and pulled it towards me, kissing him over and over on his moist lips as he rocked his hips up and down in an ancient rhythm of unbridled passion. When Francois finally threw his head back and reached his own incredible climax I felt his entire body tensing and then relaxing as all of our passion and desire finally subsided.
“Sing me something beautiful,” I whispered. Francois picked up his guitar and started playing a gentle tune. When he started singing it was in French and, even though I couldn’t understand the words, I knew that my heart understood its meaning perfectly. I lay back on the couch and closed my eyes.
Everything was perfect and perfectly fucked up all at once.
I was in love with this incredible man but, at the same time, I still heard my mother’s pained voice in my mind whenever I thought of the last conversation I’d had with her. Now I had no idea how I was ever going to get enough money to save her life and my only vague hope was the naked French god sitting on the couch next to me, playing and singing like an angel who’d strayed from heaven. For some reason, the promise he’d made to me after they’d refused to let me gamble at the casino had a ring of truth to it and I blindly believed that he was really able to help me in my quest.
I was going to ask Francois to play me his own favorite song, but the stress and passion of the evening must have gotten to me as I fell asleep on the couch while Francois was playing his guitar.
I woke up the following morning in Francois’s king size bed and he was lying right next to me. He must have carried me off to bed as I couldn’t recall how I’d gotten there.
“I’m glad to see you are finally awake,” Francois said with a big grin, “are you hungry?”
“Ravenous,” I replied and climbed on top of my French lover.
“Mon Dieu, it doesn’t look like we’re going to make it out of this room today,” Francois said as he watched me mounting him.
FRANCOIS
I’d just finished a long conversation with Gary Tomlin and he’d revealed to me the information he’d gathered during his surveillance of Jenny B
lake’s mother in Los Angeles.
I sat back on the couch where Jenny and I had made love so intensely just the previous evening and I suddenly saw her in a very different light. I realized that she was far, far more than just a card shark seeking to scam some casinos at the Blackjack tables. She was fighting against the rest of this cold, greedy town to save her mother’s life and it was high time that someone helped her.
Gary had followed Jenny’s mother to an all-night pharmacy and he bribed the cashier afterward to find out what Mrs. Blake had purchased. It turns out she’d bought several Triptan medications, normally indicative of a person suffering from migraines. Gary had the feeling there was more to the whole thing so he bribed the cashier some more and got some further information from her. He finally hit the mother lode as the cashier finally dropped the bombshell.
“You didn’t hear it from me…but word around here is that Mrs. Blake’s got a brain tumor and no money to have an operation.”
It immediately became clear to me what the true reason behind Jenny Blake’s frantic gambling streak in Vegas was. It wasn’t too hard to put two and two together as I realized that she was trying to get enough money together for her mother’s brain operation. I suddenly felt an incredible admiration for my little card counting angel and realized that I was prepared to do whatever it took to make sure that her mother would be able to have the operation she needed to save her life.
I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to work the whole thing though, as I had the feeling Jenny would resent me if I bluntly offered to give her the money. It would be too much - like I was trying to buy her affections or something…and this would leave a sour taste in my own mouth too as I’d quite enjoyed the way we’d both seduced each other, to be perfectly honest.
I decided to give the whole situation a bit more thought and to allow my subconscious mind to work on the problem for a while. I’d found that this approach often produced a sudden insight and enabled me to come up with inventive solutions to whatever problems I was faced with.
I knew that I would not be able to hold off Vivienne’s requests for an update on my progress much longer as she was now beginning to truly pester me with her text messages and, God forbid, I felt one of those hour-long phone calls with Vivienne coming along soon, which would put me in a very difficult spot as I was nowhere nearer finding some way of impressing Vivienne with my casino management skills than when I’d started out on this entire Las Vegas venture. I could still sidestep a straight answer to her inquiries by sending her some enigmatic and surreal text messages, but there would be nowhere left to hide if we had to talk directly and bluntly on the phone.
The greatest challenge now facing me, I realized, was the fact that I would have to act very quickly if I hoped to continue my relationship with Jenny. If she couldn’t do any more gambling on the Vegas Strip, as now appeared to be the case, she was sure to leave Vegas and go look for some other place to get the money together for her mother’s operation. I knew she had the hots for me, but I was not so arrogant as to believe that she would choose to stay with me in Vegas rather than going somewhere else to try and save her mother’s life. The six month period allotted to me to prove my management skills to Vivienne now seemed totally irrelevant, as the true deadline I was facing was no more than a day or two away.
Jenny Blake, in my estimation, would not be in Vegas for more than another night; for two at the very most.
It was time to call upon all of my previous experience and I started racking my brains for any possible solution to the predicament I found myself in. I remembered everything Vivienne had taught me through the years and also recalled some of the incidents that had taught me the most about the estate business, which was Vivienne’s field of expertise. She always looked out for the quickest way to turn around properties in the most profitable way and one of the earliest lessons I’d learned with her was when she took me out to Greenhaven, New York to show me some of the expensive properties on offer there.
“Don’t just look at the houses, try to see what is right there in front of your eyes. This might just give you a clue as to which properties would be the most profitable for us to market.”
I looked at all the marvelous houses as we drove through the rich neighborhood but all of the million dollar properties looked similar to me and none of them even had ‘For Sale’ signs on the front lawn.
We stopped in front of one especially imposing looking house and Vivienne looked at me from the driver seat of her Cadillac.
“Tell me what you see,” she demanded.
“I see a beautiful house and the garden looks like it could win a prize at a show,” I replied.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, I don’t see anything else.”
“What about the car in the driveway? Vivienne asked.
I took a closer look at the car standing in the driveway and then it struck me. It was a banged up old Ford and it looked way out of place in front of the exquisite property.
“The car looks like it doesn’t measure up to the kind of class I see in the house and surroundings,” I said.
“Now, was that really so hard to spot?” Vivienne asked.
“Not really, I was just looking at the wrong things, I guess.”
“Now tell me what you make of that cheap old car standing in front of a million dollar property?” Vivienne asked.
I thought about it for a second. I didn’t want to disappoint Vivienne any further by missing another obvious fact; having already missed out on spotting the old car which looked so badly out of place in front of the mansion. Then it struck me.
“Is it possible that the owner of this house is going through some kind of financial trouble and that all of his expensive cars have been dispossessed?”
Vivienne looked at me with a strange expression on her face and I thought for a second that I had disappointed her again by making some very stupid remark.
“You truly are the heir I’ve been looking for all my life,” Vivienne said and gave me a big hug right there in her Cadillac, “well done!”
We’d gone straight to Vivienne’s office after that and she did a search to find out who the house belonged to. Within half an hour she had the phone number of the owner and had set up a meeting with him under the pretext of introducing herself as a real estate agent who wanted to get to know the owners in the area. We’d driven off to meet the owner and, sure enough, he was in deep financial trouble and his Porsche and other expensive cars had already been dispossessed. He was very open to Vivienne’s offer of introducing him to a keen buyer for his house at a price much better than any it would fetch if it had to be sold at a bankrupt auction.
“But we don’t have a prospective buyer yet!” I protested when I was alone with Vivienne after our meeting with the owner.
“Not yet, my little real estate genius, not yet,” Vivienne smiled, “but it's time you start learning that the best things in this business happen when you are running at speed.”
“What does that mean; running at speed?” I’d asked.
“It simply means that you don’t wait for everything to be in place before you strike. You simply believe that all the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place as you move along. In this instance, it means that we are going to believe that the right buyer will be found even as we start moving on the deal.”
Vivienne was right, of course. After she’d obtained the sole mandate to sell the Greenhaven property she soon had several buyers lined up and we ended up making an absolute killing and $500,000 profit on the deal.
I realized that I was now in a situation where I would also have to run at speed. There was no time to set everything up and I would simply have to trust that everything would work itself out as I put some kind of plan in motion to help Jenny.
I felt like I was making some progress now in my planning. I’d decided on a general approach; to move as fast as I could without trying to work out all of the details up front. Now I only had to come up wit
h some kind of physical plan of action.
As I sat there thinking about everything I realized I was actually enjoying the whole process.
My ultimate objective was more than just making money; it was to help the woman of my fancy and to make it possible for us to stay together. Jenny was out there fighting an incredible battle against all of the world, it seemed, and I felt like it was time that someone leveled the playing fields for her. I believed that if Jenny Blake were given a fair opportunity she was certain to win enough money at the Blackjack tables to pay for her mother’s operation; the only problem was that she was now faced with a ban at all of the gambling houses on the Strip with no further opportunities whatsoever to play Blackjack at any casino in Las Vegas.
There was one obvious exception, of course. The Golden Nugget casino. I was in charge of the Golden Nugget, until further notice, and if I so decided, Jenny would be free to gamble at its Blackjack tables. This would, of course, open me up to the most vicious kind of attacks from the other shareholders and it might even be possible for them to have me removed legally as the controlling shareholder of the Golden Nugget on the basis that I’d not discharged my ‘duty of care’ towards the other shareholders, as Peter Parkin had so eloquently put it.
