The Christmas Gamble

by Sienna Ciles

  Then I started to move, sliding almost all the way out and thrusting all the way back in, feeling her flex around me as she started to match my movements. We fell into a rhythm together, Kayla wrapping her legs around my waist and holding onto my shoulders, pushing her hips down to meet my thrusts. It was like heaven, completely unlike even the last woman I’d thought I’d been in love with.

  I tried to hold back, tried to keep my climax at bay, but Kayla’s body felt too good. I slowed down just enough to keep myself on the edge, and then sped up, until I felt the tension mounting in her and I could feel her getting to the edge, too. I didn’t want all the pleasure for myself; I wanted her to get off at least once before I finished. I reached down between our bodies and found her hotness by touch once again, stroking and rubbing her. Kayla’s moans got more and more desperate as her body tightened around me, heating up, and all at once she cried out—my name, even—and I felt her shuddering as she came, her pussy tightening around me in little spasms that made it impossible for me to not follow her into climax.

  I kept moving, kept stroking her as long as possible, even as the hot tension along my groin, down into my bones, reached its peak and then wave after wave of pleasure washed through me. I groaned into Kayla’s neck and then her lips as I struggled to keep going as long as possible, even as I finished my own orgasm, to keep her climax at its peak. Finally, we were both done, both exhausted, and I collapsed against her, panting for breath.

  “So, you get the room,” I said, as soon as I could speak.

  “I think we could share it, if you’re willing to do that again,” Kayla countered.

  I laughed and kissed the side of her neck lazily. “I am willing to do that until we both drop,” I told her. “Just give me five minutes.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kayla

  The next morning when I woke up on the enormous bed in the master bedroom, Dean was still asleep, and I had a throbbing headache. I hadn’t been drunk or even tipsy by the time we’d started fooling around but apparently, I’d had enough to drink to have a mild hangover.

  The bed was big enough that Dean was a good arm’s length away from me, breathing steadily. At least he doesn’t snore, I thought wryly as the events of the night before filled my head. I resisted the urge to groan, in spite of how good it had been. Maybe because of how good it had been. Better by far that it had ever been with Brandon.

  I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about how it had ended with Brandon. It had only been a little over maybe seven days, and there I was, in bed with someone I barely knew. It was the kind of thing that I knew my friends had done but I’d never been the “rebound” type. I’d always managed to keep my clothes on through that weird period of angst and bitterness when a relationship ended, until I was more or less over everything, and could start dating someone new with the intention of figuring out where it might go. Of course, I’d had my share of one-night stands in college but that had been a totally different thing.

  I glanced at Dean, scrubbing at my face as the headache simmered away at my temples. I needed to get some water in me, and I needed to eat something, and most of all, I needed space. Dean was fast asleep, looking just as gorgeous as he had the night before, when I’d seen him completely naked: dark hair scattered across his chest, ending just below his nipples, and then a dark little dart of fine, almost wispy hair trailing from his navel down to the thick—but trimmed—thatch of pubic hair that framed his cock. He wasn’t skinny, but he wasn’t fat, and I could see where he must have worked out on occasion: Dean had a kind of lean look, and he’d been able to last the whole night.

  I sat up carefully and slipped out of the bed, looking around the room. I needed to get out of there. The bed was so sumptuously comfortable that as soon as I left it I felt my body protesting, telling me to get back in between the impossibly soft sheets and underneath the thick duvet but even though I felt more rested than I had in weeks—in spite of my headache—I knew better. I needed to be away from Dean to make sense of what I’d done the night before and figure out what to do next.

  I went out into the main area of the suite and began picking up my clothes, pulling them on. My suitcase was still there, and I mentally argued back and forth with myself for a minute or two, trying to decide whether to take it with me or not. I don’t even know if I mean to leave the room for good—it’s still another day or longer before I can get a flight out. But worst-case scenario I can just bring it back with me later, if I decide to stay.

  I got dressed and by the time I had all of my clothes back on, I’d decided that it would be easiest just to be ready to leave the hotel, if it came to that. I would go downstairs, get something to eat and drink, and figure out what the hell had come over me the night before. And then I’d do whatever I needed to do next. I made sure I had my key card in my pocket, grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchenette, and checked to make sure that Dean was still asleep before leaving the room as quietly as possible.

  I made my way to the elevator, my mind buzzing with everything that weighed on it. I’d actually hooked up with a billionaire, who I’d only met maybe a handful of hours before. You have to admit the sex was amazing, and kind of worth whatever walk-of-shame thing you’ve got going on right now. I felt my cheeks heating up as I remembered how good it had actually been.

  It was more than that, though. It was also the fact that something in me was certain that Dean was a guy I could actually enjoy getting to know. He wasn’t a pushover but he wasn’t an asshole. The brusque way he’d come across at first was not enough to cover up the fact that he was actually a genuinely good guy. I was still pretty sure that in the first little tournament we’d had, if it had come down to it, Dean would have found a way to offer me a place to stay for the night. I was just as sure that he hadn’t expected me to put out—that it had been just as much a pleasant surprise for him as it had been for me.

  I stepped onto the elevator and closed my eyes, leaning forward until my forehead pressed against the wall. He was good-looking, and he had a kind of rough charm. He was kind, and great in bed, and he was rich. He was everything that any woman in her right mind would want in a man, and I had to think that he wasn’t just looking at me as another notch on his bedpost. I might have been wrong about Brandon, I might have let him totally mislead me—cheating on me with at least one other woman while playing jealous of me going out of town for blackjack competitions—but I couldn’t be that far off-base, could I?

  The elevator arrived on the ground floor and I gave myself a shake, cracking the seal on the water bottle and heading out into the main area of the hotel-casino. It was still pretty early in the morning, but I thought that if nothing else, I could find something to eat, get something hot to drink, and think about what I was going to do with myself. I looked around; there was a huge window, and the gray, morning light showed a slate-colored sky and heavy clouds. It was definitely cold outside, and I didn’t want to go out into it just yet. I headed in the direction of the lobby to find somewhere to sit, and to check on what kind of options the hotel had to offer me to kill some time while I thought about life and rebounding and whether or not I was a complete and total idiot.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dean

  It took me all of two minutes after I woke up to realize that Kayla wasn’t in the bed with me. I dragged myself out of bed and looked around, thinking that maybe she’d curled up in the main area of the suite with some of the leftover coffee, or decided to look over the room service menu, but she was nowhere to be found in the room, and then I saw that all of her things were gone. She’d left.

  I sat down heavily in front of the fireplace and tried not to feel like a gnat crushed under a brick. I’d had one-night stands before. It wasn’t like I was some naive fool thinking that sex on its own—even great sex—was some kind of contract to be emotionally involved. But most of the time I’d known ahead of time that it was going to be a one-off situation, and I’d made sure not to really engage w
ith the woman in question.

  It was different this time, and it bothered me at first that I had no real idea of why. I’d met Kayla in the bar, we’d flirted over a little competitive game of cards, and ended up in bed together. What was the problem? Neither of us had done anything against our will, neither of us had made fools of ourselves. It had been fun. But more than that: I’d actually felt a kind of connection to Kayla that I hadn’t felt in years.

  I hadn’t even felt it with the woman I’d almost ended up marrying, about a year before. I closed my eyes and shuddered at the memory of my ex-almost-fiancée. I’d been so interested in her, I’d gone so far as to create more of a personality than she’d actually had, and I’d ignored all the warning signs that she was only into me for what I could give her. I rubbed at my temples and shook my head. Kayla wasn’t like that—even as hurt as I felt about her sudden departure, I knew she wasn’t as bad as Natalie had been.

  It was the day before Christmas Eve and I was in a hotel room, feeling sorry for myself because some woman I’d hooked up with the night before hadn’t decided to stick around. If that’s the worst of your problems then your life is pretty damn good, I thought, hearing the voice of one of my best friends saying it in my head. James was good for that kind of advice, and I was pretty sure if I called him that he’d point out that I’d come out of the deal ahead: I’d gotten free entertainment for the night, in the form of a willing woman. The cost of drinks and food was next to nothing, comparatively speaking, and I hadn’t lost out on any of my money from the casino.

  It was the day before Christmas Eve and I had no one to call, no one to talk to, and that part hurt even more than just realizing that Kayla had apparently used me for a room for the night and a decent lay to go with it. My friends who’d backed out on the trip had families to be with, or they were busy with other things. I wasn’t about to call my assistant just to have someone to talk to.

  I looked around the suite again, hoping against hope that Kayla had left some note something that would give me an indication that she’d wanted more than what we’d already had together. She might have at least have left me her phone number. Then I started to wonder about why she’d left. She was traveling commercial, and she was going to have another night that she would be stuck in Omaha before she was able to go on to her parents’ place. The hotel wasn’t likely to have any other rooms open in her budget, and we’d originally planned to spend both nights together, since I’d been pretty sure I was stuck for the same amount of time.

  There just had to be more going on in the situation than Kayla being someone looking to use a handy rich guy for a place to stay for the night and some sex. It just didn’t add up with any of the impressions I’d had of her. I could have been wrong about the kind of woman she was but I didn’t think I could possibly be that mistaken. She had to have gone somewhere, and I wanted to find out where.

  She might have gone back to the airport, hoping she could get bumped up to the next flight leaving Omaha going anywhere. It would be a lot harder to track her down at an airport, short of going there myself, but it was possible. But if I were Kayla, I wouldn’t have wanted to spend twenty-four hours or more at an airport if I didn’t have to. I would have hoped to find another place to stay, maybe a little farther away from the airport if needed.

  But then, I would have thought that she wouldn’t have left at all. Had I done something wrong? Had she just not been as into it as I’d thought? I could have sworn that she had climaxed easily three or four times, maybe even five. Either she was a phenomenal actress or something else was bothering her.

  Ever since Natalie, I’d been gun shy about going out with anyone, and I’d thought that I’d found someone I could at least have a level conversation with about maybe pursuing a relationship. Of course, I didn’t know where she actually lived—that hadn’t come up, in all our chatting back and forth—but there were ways around any obstacle, when you had the kind of money I did.

  “This is getting you nowhere,” I told myself, out loud, to get out of my own head. “Order breakfast sent up to you and think about whether or not you actually want to find her. Maybe you should just leave it as one of those memories you have.” I picked up the room service menu and opened it, flipping through until I found the breakfast options. Just doing that reminded me of Kayla, of watching her scan through it the night before to look for what might be good to go with our Hold’em games.

  I shook the mental image out of my mind and settled in to figure out what to have for breakfast. I picked up the room phone and dialed downstairs to the front desk to place my order. “I’ll have the crab cake benedict, a carafe of coffee, a side of home fries and the fruit salad,” I told the woman who answered the phone. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if Kayla had dropped off her room card, if she had formally checked out, but I decided I didn’t want to know, not yet.

  “Anything else for you Mr. Pearson?”

  I pressed my lips together and considered. “I’ll also have some pancakes and syrup,” I replied. It was way too much to eat—it was more than I thought even Kayla and I together would be able to eat—but I didn’t care. I’d pick at everything I wanted and enjoy a few mouthfuls of each thing until I was full, and then leave the rest.

  “Very good. That should be up to you in about fifteen minutes,” the woman at the front desk told me.

  I thanked her and checked to make sure that I had enough cash to tip whoever would come to deliver the food. I made myself busy, gathering up the mess from the night before and piling it onto the cart that it had come on, so that it could be cleared away by the housekeeping staff.

  I thought that I’d eat breakfast and then leave the room after, while housekeeping came to clean things up and turn down the bed. I’d make a few phone calls, and see if I could find anything out about Kayla, and hope that I could track her down and at least talk to her again. Even if I couldn’t convince her to stay with me another night, I wanted to make sure that she was okay. I wanted to make sure she had somewhere to be. I wanted to know—if I could make myself ask it—why she’d left without even saying goodbye.

  I got the main area of the suite straightened up and got a pair of pajama pants on just in time for my room service to arrive. “I don’t know if you want to go ahead and take this,” I said, gesturing to the cart from the night before.

  “I can take it down to the kitchens, for sure,” the man said, even as he unloaded my plates and platters and carafe onto the coffee table where I’d sent him. “That looks like it was a hell of a lot of food.”

  “I had someone else here last night,” I admitted. “Trust me: I couldn’t have accomplished this much eating on my own. I’m probably not even going to finish this great breakfast.”

  The guy nodded. “Where’d your friend go, then?”

  “Out and about, while she could,” I said, covering up the real issue. I didn’t want to admit that I’d been left high and dry. “Hopefully she’ll be back in time to at least enjoy the pancakes and the fruit.”

  That was a total lie but I couldn’t let the guy leave thinking I was going to stuff my face with a ton of food on my own. I gave him a twenty for a tip as he left with the other cart and settled in to enjoy my breakfast. I’d drifted off to sleep the night before thinking of what it might be like to have breakfast with a woman again but I guessed that was just not going to happen. Not today, anyway. I poured myself some coffee and took the cover off of the eggs benedict on crab cakes, and tried not to be disappointed at the fact that there was no green-eyed, red-haired vixen sitting cross-legged on the floor across the table from me, sipping coffee and picking at cut fruit. It was almost impossible not to feel that way, and after a few minutes, I stopped trying.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kayla

  I felt better after getting some breakfast and coffee in me, along with half of the bottle of water I’d filched from Dean’s room but my head was still spinning. I’d even managed to find a little hotel gift shop that had
travel-sized packets of aspirin, and took a couple of them, so the throbbing in my temples had gone away but I was still trying to figure out just what kind of woman I was, and why I’d gone to bed with Dean the night before.

  I hadn’t come up with any real answers, apart from the fact that Dean had been attractive, interesting, and fun. I hadn’t been drunk or even tipsy when we’d had sex—I couldn’t blame it on that. I’d been as close to sober as I could have been. And Dean had been hot, and willing, and I’d liked him. It actually hurt to know that I had; it hurt in a weird way, knowing that there was someone out there who had been a better lay than my ex, and had seemed at least to be more interesting and more like me than Brandon was but that there would never be any way for it to come to anything.

  I tucked myself away in a corner of the lobby and tried to figure out what my options were. I could go back to the room but I was fairly certain that Dean would have already gotten up. He would have seen that I’d left. I could explain that I hadn’t known what I wanted to do with myself, or where I wanted to go, but I wanted to just have a clean break. After all: if all went to plan, in another twenty-four hours or so, I would be heading onward to my old hometown, and my parents’ house, just in time to barely have Christmas.

  Just as I was starting to really focus on what my options might be, my phone buzzed. As if my thoughts had been some kind of spell—gone horribly wrong—I saw that it was Brandon calling me. Well, apparently you don’t have to even speak of the devil for him to show up, I thought bitterly.

  “What do you want, Brandon?”

  “I just wanted to talk,” Brandon said. “Don’t hang up on me, Kay-kay.”

  “Don’t call me that. You gave up the right to call me that when you decided to hop in bed with someone else,” I told him firmly. A hot flash of grief and shame jolted through me. “Oh, good Christ, you aren’t calling to tell me you caught something off of her and that I need to get tested, did you?” The thought of tracking down Dean and telling him that I might have inadvertently infected him with an STD was mortifying.