Big Deck

by Blake Wilder

  Big Deck

  Blake Wilder

  Copyright © 2019 by Blake Wilder LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Author

  Also by Blake Wilder

  One

  She was a freaking lying cheat.

  Specifically, she was cheating me out of five hundred dollars.

  And I’d never been so turned on in my life.

  I watched as the gorgeous redhead laid three aces down and gave me and the other two men at the table a smug grin.

  Uh, huh. That ace of spades had come from—well, I didn’t know. The tiny green dress she wore didn’t have a lot of places to hide much of anything except a pair of magnificent breasts and a whole lot of pale, smooth skin. But that ace was not from the deck we were playing with.

  Just like the one I was holding didn’t belong to the deck.

  But she’d played the fake card first, so now I was fucked.

  Unless I turned her in. Then we’d both be fucked.

  The only way I wanted this woman fucked was up against the wall of my hotel room with my cock deep inside her and my name on her lips.

  I shifted on my chair. Damn, that was an intense reaction to a woman who I’d met an hour ago and who had just stolen five hundred dollars from me.

  It wasn’t her gorgeous tits or the big green eyes that matched her dress that was making me think those things though. For better or worse, it was the fact that she was cheating at poker, beating me, and the little smile that I could have sworn meant she knew that I knew.

  It wasn’t the money. Five hundred was nothing. I’d sat down at the game just to kill some time and practice. Practice what? Cheating of course. It was like any skill. It needed to be honed and refined and the more experience you had, both winning and losing, the better you got. Also, like anything, when you went up against a worthy opponent you got better. I just didn’t find opponents who could challenge me very often.

  The other men at the table were clueless. Bill was an insurance salesman from Oregon. It was clear Bill had sat at a table in Vegas more than once, but he was letting off steam after some big corporate meeting or conference or something. He wasn’t really here to win. He just wanted to play. Todd and Wyatt were brothers visiting from somewhere in the Midwest, judging by their accents, and were clearly new to Vegas. They were at the table just because that’s what people presumably did when in Vegas. I had no question about why they’d sat down at this table though. That green dress. Just for starters. But they had no idea that this woman was cheating her gorgeous ass off to take all their vacation money.

  Guess it took a fraud to know a fraud.

  I was currently working for the FBI, but it was specifically because I was a fraud—and a damned good one—that they’d let me out of prison to work with them on high profile cases in the casinos of Vegas. It wasn’t just poker chips that got exchanged in Sin City. For a city that glowed 24/7, a lot of dark shit went on.

  I’d never killed anybody. But I knew people who had. I’d also never stolen anything from anyone who couldn’t afford to part with it. But they didn’t always agree with me on that.

  I was an art thief. It was a natural way to combine the fact that I like the finer things in life and I like a thrill. I’m also very good with my hands. If I can dress in a tux, sip expensive brandy, and make pompous assholes who think they can buy the world cry a little bit, I’m in. I’m like James Bond. Only, kind of a bad guy. Of course, that depends on who you ask. The orphanages and women’s shelters and hospitals and schools that I give the money to think I’m a goddamned hero. Robin Hood, if you will. Yeah, if Robin Hood wore Armani. And couldn’t shoot an arrow. There just isn’t a lot of call for arrow-shooting nowadays. At least, not in Vegas. But otherwise Robin Hood in Armani fits perfectly.

  Hey look, I’m no saint. I keep enough of the money to buy the Armani and the nice cars and the big house. I keep a few of the art pieces once in a while, too. What can I say? I like pretty things.

  Like the woman sitting across from me, who was now leaning over the table to scrape her winnings toward her side. I didn’t miss the chance to look down her dress. Neither did the other men at the table.

  And suddenly I thought that maybe I could kill someone. I knew how even if I’d never been the one to do it.

  Looking at the big burly guy in Levi’s and cowboy boots to my right who was studying the woman like she was a big old ribeye and he hadn’t eaten in days, I knew that I could happily wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze. At least until he was unconscious.

  The woman reclaimed her seat and started stacking her chips. She shot me a glance across the green felt, as if checking to see if I was watching her.

  I was.

  She seemed to be fighting another smile and I realized what she was thinking. Not only had she beat me in a hand of poker. She’d beat me at cheating.

  She didn’t just know that I knew she was cheating. She knew I had been cheating too.

  Fuck, I wanted her.

  I didn’t know how I knew that she knew that I knew…but I did. And it turned me the fuck on.

  She was a knockout. No question. She was a woman that all men would find attractive. She had long, deep red hair that hung to the middle of her back, big green eyes, and truly drool-worthy cleavage. That cleavage had been distracting the other men at the table for the past hour.

  Fortunately, I’d been playing poker since I was thirteen. Hell, I’d been looking at cleavage that long too. Hers was exceptional, but it took more than that to throw me off my game. Something like cheating. Cheating better than I did.

  “I’m out.” Bill, the fifty-something, white-haired executive to my right, pushed back from the table. “Can’t afford you all.”

  I extended my hand and he shook it. “Nice to meet you, Bill.”

  “You too, Dec. Good luck.” He shot a glance at the woman across the table. The one who had declined to give us her name. “I think you’re gonna need it.”

  I looked over and met her eyes. She lifted a brow. A challenge? Accepted.

  “You might be right, Bill,” I told the other man, not looking away from her. I hoped she could read my thoughts just then. Bring it on.

  “You boys in again?” she asked Todd and Wyatt, passing the cards to the dealer.

  “Maybe one more hand,” Todd said.

  I almost wanted to intervene. Unless these boys had won the lottery from some scratch-off tickets or something, they probably didn’t have enough money to keep losing. They’d both just given her five hundred dollars. There was no doubt in my mind that they were going to keep losing here. If not because she was cheating, because I was.

  But that gave me an idea.

  “I’m in too,” I told her, sitting forward in my chair.

  She looked at me. “I figured.”

  Oh, did she? Why? Because she thought I was the type of guy who didn’t like to lose and would stay in the game until I won? Or because she knew I wanted her and planned on sticking around until she was ready to go up to my hotel room and let me fuck her over the back of the sofa in my suite?

  Either way, she was right.

  The dealer dealt, we all looked over our hands, we took more cards, studying them, studied each other, and then bet.<
br />
  I had a full house. I could assume that the redhead had three of a kind or so, but lord only knew what she might pull out of…wherever she was stashing cards. She wouldn’t do the ace thing again. You couldn’t cheat the same way every time. It’s not like having the ace of spades was going to save you every time either. Of course, Todd and Wyatt might not even notice. Not if she wet her lips like she was doing right now. Or if she rolled her head like she did next. The move arched her long, pretty neck, making me think of how much I’d love to mark that fair skin with my teeth. It also arched her upper back, thrusting her tits against the front of her dress and making me think about pulling it down just enough to free her nipples so I could suck them as we rode the elevator to my room.

  “Are you in, man?”

  I jerked to attention, dragged my eyes away from all that smooth, pale skin that I wanted to see flushed pink with arousal, and focused on Todd. Or maybe it was Wyatt. I wasn’t clear which was which.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You in or you folding?” the guy asked.

  I focused on the game. Holy shit, I’d been completely distracted. I had no idea what the other bets were. I’d even lost track of how many cards she’d asked for. Fuck. I looked up at her and met her gaze.

  Her knowing gaze.

  I was screwed. And totally impressed. No one had distracted me from a con in…ever.

  I looked down at my hand. I had a pair of jacks. I had another in my right sock, but I decided to play this straight. I sighed and laid my cards down. “Fold.”

  “Me too.” Wyatt—or Todd—laid his cards out too.

  Then it was just…the other one…and the woman who, if there was a God in heaven, was going to be screaming my name as I ate her pussy on the huge mahogany desk in my suite upstairs within the next two hours.

  Hey, if I was going to lose this game big, I was going to enjoy my night off in my other favorite way. Between a gorgeous woman’s legs.

  That gorgeous woman.

  “Okay, whatcha got?” the guy asked her. He was grinning and kept looking down at his cards.

  Yeah, great poker face. He, apparently, thought he finally had a winning hand.

  I settled back in my chair and wrapped my hand around my glass of brandy, watching her. Where the hell was she pulling her extra cards from? I had to know.

  She looked at her hand, chewed on her bottom lip—and I, of course, imagined those lips around my cock as I eased in and out, with my hand wrapped in those long, flame-red strands. Because I could now. I wasn’t playing at the moment. I could study her and catalog all of the places I wanted to lick and suck to my heart’s content. There were lots of places I wanted to lick and suck.

  Finally, she sighed and laid her cards down. I leaned in to look. She had…nothing. She literally had nothing in her hand at all. I looked up at her quickly. She met my gaze and holy shit. I realized what she’d done. She’d just cheated to lose. She’d given the kid the win.

  The guy shot up from his chair, throwing his arms over his head. “Whoo hoo!” he shouted. “Yes!”

  His brother stood quickly and they hugged, thunking each other on the back, then the kid whirled toward the table and leaned in, pulling the chips in. “Wow, that’s amazing,” he said.

  His grin was huge and I actually found myself grinning along with him.

  See, I’m not a total bad guy. Sure, I steal stuff. Sorry, I’ve stolen stuff. Past tense. Since I started working for the FBI on a “consultative basis,” or as my buddy and handler, Jordan, calls it the “new and improved chain gang.” He’s hilarious. Clearly. Of course, I’m not chained to anything—or anyone—except by the law. He’s in charge. He tells me where I go, when I go, and how long I stay. But over the past year and a half we’ve forged a sort-of friendship. He doesn’t trust me, but he likes me. And I’ve made him look good. He’s solved more white-collar cases than anyone in the bureau since I came along. He was doing okay before me—hell, he caught me—but as a team, we’re pretty formidable.

  Which is how now, a year and nine months after starting my new job, I’ve finally been moved back to Vegas. This is my old stomping grounds. This is where I first learned to hustle money from tourists with card games. This is where I studied body language and tells. This is where I first realized that men would do almost anything to get rich. This is also where I realized that the law was not always the great balancer of good and evil that it should be and sometimes to teach people who played dirty a lesson, you had to get a little dirty yourself.

  I was here as a part of a security detail for Warren Maxwell, one of the richest men in Vegas and definitely one of the dirtiest. I was very willing to get dirty to teach Maxwell a lesson or two. But now I was here because of the FBI. Maxwell didn’t know that, of course. He thought I’d been special ops with the Marines and was now part of the team in charge of security for his big annual poker game. In truth, I wasn’t Marine material. I didn’t take out drug cartels and wade into civil wars. I stole expensive pieces of art from rich douchebags, sold them on the black market to other rich douchebags, and gave the money to nuns and stuff. I also drove a Jag. Definitely not Marine material. But I kind of felt like I was doing some good in the world.

  But that was neither here nor there. I guess I looked enough like a possible past-Marine, especially when I glowered that I’d been hired. Of course, the doctored-up resume the FBI had provided had helped too. In any case, I was now in charge of looking after Maxwell and his possessions while some of the slickest bastards in the world came to pretend to play poker.

  The card game was a cover for all kinds of shit. Some drug running, some prostitution, probably even arranging some hits. All of that was going to get taken care of by the FBI too, but the main reason we were there was because of a supposed arms deal that was going to go down. Some rich son-of-a-bitch was selling stolen guns and shit to some other rich son-of-a-bitch. I didn’t know the details and I didn’t care. They were all horrible people and I’d do whatever I could to take them all down. But the how was Jordan’s job. My job was to be someone Maxwell trusted, be in that house on the night of the big game, overhear certain conversations, and give whoever else needed to be in that house access.

  I was also supposed to keep my hands off of all of Maxwell’s art. But that might fall into the category of “what Jordan doesn’t know won’t hurt me.” There was one particularly valuable statue that sat in Maxwell’s bedroom that a high roller from Egypt was very interested in. There was also a bunch of free health clinics in several inner cities that were going to be shut down if they didn’t come up with funds by the end of the month.

  I didn’t have one ounce of conscience about stealing that damned statue and selling it. Jordan would never know. That house would be filled with assholes who would steal from their own mothers if it would give them more money and power. Jordan would never be able to prove it was me. I’d make sure of that.

  “So we’re just gonna quit while we’re ahead,” Todd, or Wyatt, said as the two brothers worked to gather their chips to take to the cashier.

  The woman smiled. “I understand. It was nice playing with you boys.”

  “Hey, some advice,” I said, rising and extending a hand to each of the guys. “Go buy yourselves a big dinner, order something expensive to drink, have dessert. Maybe see a show. Splurge. But then put the rest of that money away and take it home. I know what it’s like to win big and go crazy.”

  The boys shook my hand but then the winner said, “No offense, man, but I haven’t seen a lot of proof that you know about winning big.”

  They laughed and moved off and I shook my head. They were going to be broke by morning.

  I reclaimed my seat. The woman was watching me, spinning one of her poker chips on the table in front of her.

  “I know the truth, you know,” she said with a smile.

  “The truth?” I sat back, crossing an ankle over my opposite knee. “What truth is that?”

  “That you’re very u
sed to winning big.”

  I gave her a half smile. “Big is my middle name.”

  She gave a soft laugh and I felt my dick harden. Wow. It had been a long time since a woman had affected me like this. I liked it. I’d been on a leash for a year and a half now. I’m not saying I hadn’t dabbled in a few things behind Jordan’s back, but I hadn’t really felt a rush in a long time. It had been the same with women. My bed was rarely empty, but I hadn’t found one that really gave me any kind of thrill. Not the way I suddenly was with this one. I was pretty sure it had something to do with her being clearly smart and obviously sneaky. Being turned on by sneakiness probably said something unflattering about me but the heart—and cock—wants what the heart/ cock wants.

  “You let that kid win,” I decided to point out. I wanted to know how she would react to being called out.

  She nodded, still spinning the poker chip. “He needed one win, right? This is Vegas. He needs to be able to go home and tell them that he won and had a great time.”

  “That was nice.” Huh. I didn’t describe the people I hung out with regularly as “nice.”

  She shrugged. “It also got rid of them.”

  “You knew they’d take the money and run?” I asked, intrigued.

  She nodded. “Had a pretty good idea. I would have encouraged it if he hadn’t decided on his own.”

  “You’re good at reading people.”

  She inclined her head. “I am. You too.”

  I nodded. You didn’t get to be a good con if you didn’t get good at reading people and situations. And keeping them from reading you. Or letting them read what you wanted them to read about you.

  “So what are you reading about me right now?” she asked.

  “I’m reading a woman who would really like to play me again. For bigger stakes this time.”

  Her eyes darkened and I knew I’d hit it directly on the head. She’d wanted to clear the table until it was just the two of us. And she was willing to bet big here.