All In: A Vegas Reverse Harem Romance

by Cassie Cole

  “It will, and the price for failing the class is getting tortured and killed by the Russian mob. So do your homework.”

  I meant it as a joke, but it turned the mood in the room solemn. None of us really needed a reminder of what was at stake.

  I clapped my hands together and said, “Let’s get to it then.”

  Eddie and Xander made for the door while arguing what the best your momma joke was. Sage took her time rising from her chair and stretching until the others were gone.

  “Getting my shift changed won’t take long,” she said. “What else do you want me doing?”

  “There’s nothing I had in mind, honestly,” I said.

  “I’m gunna feel awfully useless this week while the rest of you are preparing.”

  I gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. It felt forced. “You’ve done your fair share already. We wouldn’t be here without your help gathering info. And it was you who figured out the helicopter delivery. Without that, we would be taking turns camped out in the Volga lobby writing down notes on every guest who enters with large luggage.”

  The compliment put a smile on her face. “Still though. There’s nothing else I can do in the next six days?”

  “Your job is to act as normal as possible,” I said. “Don’t raise any suspicions. That’s how we get caught: by tipping off others that something is going down.”

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  Sage’s lack of self confidence was one of the most charming things about her. She was beautiful, absolutely stunning with her porcelain face framed by her dark hair, little tendrils resting along her cheeks. Yet she still thought she was inadequate. Like she wasn’t good enough to be part of the team.

  She was incredible. Everything I’d ever wanted in a woman.

  And with all the excitement swirling, I had to kiss her now that we were alone.

  She was surprised for a heartbeat, then gave in to my lips and arms. It was a long, warm kiss, the kind you saw in the movies while climactic music played. It felt like the kiss had been building since we’d spent the night together last week, gathering momentum up to this point. The royal flush of kisses, rare and extraordinary.

  It ended naturally, our lips pulling apart gently and our eyes opening again. It wasn’t the prologue to something else—not foreplay or a means to get in bed. Just a wonderful kiss by itself.

  She rested her palm on my hand like it belonged there. “Like I said, you’ve been on my mind too,” she said.

  “That’s good.” I cringed—why couldn’t I think of something more clever to say? A beautiful woman was in my arms looking deep into my eyes. I should have something wittier on my tongue.

  She had a powerful effect on me, that was for sure.

  “When the job is over…” she began.

  I put a finger to her lips. “There are no expectations. We can talk more about it then. For now, let’s just enjoy what we have.” I cleared my throat. “And the job.”

  “Yeah, the job,” she repeated numbly. “That’s what’s really important here.”

  We awkwardly moved apart and then she left, leaving me alone with my tempting thoughts.

  23

  Sage

  I felt numb as I walked down the hall to the elevator. Numb with worry about what would happen when the job was over. Numb with excitement for our newfound plan to steal the money.

  Numb with love.

  Love. It was the only word that could really describe how I felt, the growing tornado of feelings in my mind and throat and chest, threatening to choke me if I ignored it any longer. I was falling in love with Bryce. Every time I was around him I felt that tingle of happiness that only came from one part of the brain.

  The only problem was he wasn’t the only one giving me that tingling feeling.

  Being around Eddie now gave me that feeling too. The nights we’d spent together in that hotel room, feet up against the window while we watched the helicopter. Just now, going over our plan together in the room, sitting next to him was like torture. You could cut the tension with a butter knife it was so thick. We had something there, and that both excited and scared me.

  And then there was Xander. He was special in his own way, someone with whom I could bond over our mutual profession. He’d come to one of my shows and given me a ride home. Then he’d taught me to play the guitar. Was it merely the desire to get singing lessons from me in return, or was there more there?

  All of them were amazing in their own unique way. Three flavors of excitement that intermingled with the larger excitement of the casino heist.

  I took the elevator downstairs and exited into the lobby. It was somewhat busy as people who had taken afternoon flights to Vegas checked-in with the front desk, but I still immediately noticed Xander and Eddie chatting over by the front door. Xander slapped him on the shoulder and then left out the front.

  But Eddie lingered inside, watching Xander through the glass. I thought he was merely buying time to leave separately. Then instead of leaving, he turned and followed the wall around to a private hallway behind the check-in counter. He looked around as if he was being watched.

  What was he doing? If it was anyone else I would have been suspicious.

  I decided to follow him. Not because I was nosy about what he was doing, I told myself. I followed him because I wanted to chat. Maybe steal a few kisses. I could still feel the way he’d held me, strong and possessive. It made me shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the chill coming through the front door.

  I approached the hall from the side, peeking around the corner to make sure nobody was there, before following. The left side of the room was divided into partitions with wood, as if this used to be a bank of pay phones back when that was necessary. I walked on silent feet, my footsteps concealed by the soft carpet. I could hear him talking around the next corner. I came as close to the corner as I dared before stopping to listen.

  “Yeah, just checking in,” he said. I stole a quick glance—he was on the cell phone, pacing the hall. His voice was low and I could barely hear it over the noises from the lobby behind me.

  “Good, good,” he was saying. “Yeah, no, that’s fine. Saturday. Right. Just have the car ready, alright? Don’t leave me with my dick in my hand.”

  The job, I thought. Saturday. Who was he talking to? Someone who shouldn’t know about our job, that was for sure. A ball of ice formed in my stomach.

  “I’ll have the money,” he said. “Yep, it’ll be in cash. Perfect.”

  He hung up and was coming back before I realized what was happening. I didn’t have enough time to flee so I walked around the corner, looking around like I was lost.

  “Sage,” he said, surprised and then happy.

  “There you are,” I said. “Saw you come this way and…” I trailed off.

  A hungry look appeared in his green eyes. He grabbed me and pushed me against he wall, kissing me hard. Everything I’d heard melted away as we made out, bodies pressed together in the close space.

  “I have to have you,” he whispered into my ear.

  “Take me,” I said since I needed him just as much.

  He pushed me around the corner into one of the old pay phone partitions and then looked around. “Camera can’t see us in here.”

  “Good.”

  He kissed me again then whirled me around, hiking up my skirt. His fingers curled underneath my thong and pulled it aside, the cool air hitting my wetness. Within seconds he had his prick out, the head sliding up and down while he coated it. Then he took hold of my waist with both hands and thrust inside, his need overwhelming all other thought.

  “Ohh,” I moaned as he filled me completely.

  “You like that?” he asked in that deep voice.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, yes, yes…”

  The angle was intense but right on the edge of what I could handle, plus I was turned on by how he seized control. I liked a man who knew what he wanted… Especially when that something was me.
r />   Hidden in the back hall with the sounds of the lobby nearby, Eddie fucked me from behind like we were teenagers sneaking away from our parents’ watchful eye and had to get back before anyone noticed. By the end my moans were growing so loud that he clamped a hand over my mouth and let me bite down on his finger as he filled me with his seed and groaned with immense satisfaction into my ear.

  When we were done we tip-toed off to the nearby bathroom for cleanup, then met back in the hall. Neither of us could stop smiling.

  “So,” I said while fixing my hair. “Think it’ll work? The job?”

  “If we can arrange everything,” he said smoothly, taking me in his arms. “Remember, we need to play it cool. Don’t get jumpy in the week leading up to it. No idle comments to friends about coming into a big pile of cash. No subtle hints that something big is going to happen. That’s how we get caught.”

  “Right,” I said, suddenly remembering the phone conversation I’d overheard. “The four of us are the only ones who can know.”

  “Bingo.” He booped me on the nose with his finger. “This was fun, kiddo. We should do it again some time.”

  “I’m game if you are,” I said as he walked away.

  I paused to wait an inconspicuous amount of time before leaving too. No matter what he said to me, he’d been talking to someone on the phone about the job. And that person wasn’t me, Xander, or Bryce.

  “What are you hiding?” I whispered to myself.

  24

  Eddie

  It took two long days to get an interview with the right people at the Volga.

  I had put a bug in my buddy Viktor’s ear about wanting more responsibility at the casino. How simply patrolling the floor and wrestling drunk hooligans was a waste of my skills. Getting him to mention me to the higher-ups was better than me going to them myself. Looking like you desperately wanted something was a good way to get ignored. Or worse, rebuked.

  I thought about Sage a lot while I waited. I had Monday off so I didn’t get to see her at the casino, and as tempting as it was to swing by anyways and say hi I knew it would be a bad idea. Don’t attract attention. Play it cool. That’s how we went unnoticed prior to the big job.

  I wasn’t about to make a rookie mistake this close to the day.

  It was Tuesday evening and I was making my rounds on the casino floor when one of the inner circle guards in a fancy suit came walking up to me. He had the biggest nose I’d ever seen in my life, as if it had just been broken and was swollen with blood.

  “Come with me.”

  It was tough to tell if I was in trouble. I was pretty sure it was related to Viktor vouching for me. But pretty sure wasn’t certainty, and I felt the tingle of danger as I followed the guard with the nose back into the employees section, then deeper into the bowels of the casino until the sound of slot machines faded away behind.

  The room he brought me to was exactly like the kind of rooms where we interrogated perps when I was in the LAPD, but without the two-way mirror on the wall. This room had no windows at all. The concrete floor was so cold I could feel the chill through my shoes. A metal table filled the space, two chairs on one side and one on the other. Another guard with bleached hair stood in the corner, arms crossed like he’d been waiting too long.

  “Have a seat,” said Nose.

  I obeyed, glancing at the security camera in the back left corner. Sometimes these rooms didn’t have cameras. That mine did was a good sign. I doubted they would do anything to me while video was recording.

  Bleach pushed off the wall gently and approached the table without sitting. He had a yellow folder under one arm. “You know why you’re here?” he asked without an accent. American.

  Because I’m planning on robbing your casino. Because I know you guys launder millions of dollars in dirty money every night, and I know how you do it. Because I’ve been caught and you’re going to kill me.

  I kept my face cool and said, “Because I’m a great conversationalist?”

  Blank faces stared back at me. Mental note: jokes were a bad idea.

  Bleach opened the folder and pretended like he was reading. I knew he was pretending because his eyes didn’t move. “You do your job well. You’ve had good performance reviews in the first month, enough to hire you on past the probationary period. You never complain about your shift assignment, always on time, never complain. You stop disturbances swiftly and without a scene. And you fill out your paperwork.”

  “Paperwork’s part of the job,” I said. I had to file incident reports at the end of each shift, something which took 15-20 minutes. “Doesn’t everyone do it?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Here at the Volga we have another level of security,” Nose cut in. “A group tasked with guarding more sensitive parts of the casino. More responsibility. Yegorovich is careful about who he hires.”

  I’m in. Viktor’s recommendation had worked. They wanted to promote me to the major leagues. This was a job interview.

  “Makes sense,” was all I said. Time to play it cool.

  “This position comes with extra hours,” Bleach said in a bored voice. “Often you are called in at a moment’s notice. You may work long hours. You do whatever we say, when we say it, and you don’t complain.”

  “I’m real good at following directions,” I said.

  “This casino business can be tricky,” Nose said. “If we find someone counting cards at the blackjack tables, or pick-pocketing customers, we may… push the boundaries of what is legal. Do you understand what I mean?”

  I did know what he meant. Customers arguing over slot machines got escorted to the front door and added to the Volga’s list of banned customers. Facial recognition software tied to the cameras meant security knew the moment someone on that list returned, and they could be intercepted and escorted out again.

  But bigger offenders like card counters? Those guys got escorted to the back. To rooms like this one with no windows and a concrete floor that could be cleaned quickly with a hose. People like that were given a special kind of Vegas justice to make sure they didn’t come back.

  It wasn’t just about deterrence. It was about sending a message.

  “I’m cool with whatever,” I said. “It’s my business to follow orders, not to care about what happens to some bozo trying to rip off the casino.”

  Nose pointed. “I like this answer. If only every guard thought this way.”

  “If only,” Bleach said. “There is also secrecy which is important. Very important. Things which are seen but must not be remembered. The boss has celebrities brought in. Some visit his room directly. Occasionally special supplies must be brought to the rooms of our guests.” He touched the side of his nose with one finger. Cocaine. “These tasks must not only be completed, they must be done without discussion or gossip.”

  “I know when to keep my head down and my mouth shut.”

  “Another good answer,” Nose said. “I like this man.”

  I felt my confidence rising. This job was as good as mine. I would find my way to the money escort shift, completing the toughest part of our plan. This couldn’t have gone any smoother.

  Which is probably why their next statement caught me off guard.

  “You are LAPD.”

  I tried not to wince but my face had a mind of its own. Fuck. How did they know? I took on a fake name when I moved to Vegas but clearly they’d figured that out. I guess that’s what they had been doing for the last two days. Their homework.

  Their demeanor was totally different now. Hostile but wary, like I might do something unpredictable. I wasn’t just interviewing for a job anymore. I was interviewing for my life.

  “I was in the LAPD,” I said as if it was totally normal.

  Bleach pulled out a sheet of paper from the folder and slid it on the table. I touched it with my fingers and pulled it toward me—I could feel the cold metal from the table through the paper. Cold metal that might soon have my blood on it. The sheet of paper wa
s from a scanner, with two driver’s licenses side by side. On the left was a grainy California driver’s license with my face and the name Edward Callahan. On the right was a Las Vegas license with a newer photo and the name Edward O’Neil.

  Nose put both palms on the table to lean down toward me. “If you used a fake name to apply at the Volga, what else are you lying about?”

  “I can explain…”

  “Maybe we don’t want an explanation,” Bleach said. “Maybe we only want to watch you squirm before you die.”

  I let my brain’s fight-or-flight instinct evaluate my options. There was no chance to make a run for it—the door was probably locked from the outside, and even if I got through it I wouldn’t get far. Both of these guys had guns and it was a long hallway. They would put a few rounds into my center mass without flinching.

  That left fighting. I might be able to take them. Nose was buff but I could throw a quick haymaker and knock him out. With luck I could vault over the desk and tackle Bleach before he got his pistol out of the holster. Best case scenario I incapacitated him in time for new men with guns to storm into the room and kill me.

  Hooray.

  Even if fighting was my only option, I didn’t want to have to hurt anyone. Not even these goons. I was going to have to talk my way out of this.

  I leaned back in my chair until it teetered on two legs and crossed my arms. I hoped I looked bored.

  “If you don’t want an explanation, then get it over with,” I said. “No need wasting everyone’s time.”

  They hesitated. That was all the signal I needed to know they didn’t want to kill me. Not yet, at least. My heart relaxed a little bit.

  Nose drilled his finger into the table. “Talk,” he said through gritted yellow teeth. “While you still have a tongue.”

  I needed an excuse. One that was both believable and would earn their trust for the job itself. Because I didn’t just want to get out of here alive: I wanted to get this damn promotion so we had a chance at the heist.

  There’s an easy way.