by Blake Wilder
I pushed up off of his lap and tucked my hair behind my ear. He looked like he was gritting his teeth. Had he not meant to say the thing about me stroking him? Or the screaming orgasm part?
Too bad. He’d said it, I’d heard it, and I wanted it.
“I’m happy to wrap anything I’ve got around anything you’ve got,” I told him.
Heat flared in his eyes and the muscle jumped in his jaw.
That’s right. I’ve got the upper hand here, no matter what those cards said.
I like control. It’s not a secret, not something I only discovered with therapy, not something I’m ashamed of. After following my mother from rich guy to rich guy, watching her work to please them so they wouldn’t toss us out and back to our crappy apartment and her assortment of jobs, I craved control over my own situations more than anything else.
The man shoved his chair back and stood. He looked at the dealer. “Have those delivered to the cashier and put on my account.”
“Of course, Mr. Black.”
His last name was Black? Seriously? Come on. But when he focused those dark eyes on me again, I was fine with it. Black. Green. Purple. I didn’t care. As long as I was in his hotel room in the next ten minutes. Or less.
“Then you can wrap your hand around mine,” he said, holding his hand out to me.
I looked from it, up to him. Well, okay, whatever. I felt tiny when he wrapped his huge hand around mine and a little shiver of desire went through me. He could run those big, hot things all over me as much as he wanted.
He started off the casino floor, tugging me along with him. But instead of turning toward the elevators, we headed across the lobby toward the front doors.
Frowning, I pulled on his hand. He stopped and looked down at me.
“You’re not staying here?”
That was going to make slipping out after I was done with him a little more difficult if I had to walk down the strip rather than just take the elevator to another floor.
“I am staying here,” he said.
“Then where are we going?”
“Out.”
I frowned. “That wasn’t the deal.”
He gave me a nod. “That’s true. The deal was for tomorrow, starting with breakfast.”
“Exactly. So what are we doing?”
“Killing time until tomorrow.”
I shook my head. He was incorrigible. I didn’t usually like that. “It’s a long time until six a.m.”
About eight hours as a matter of fact.
“It is,” he agreed.
“That’s when tomorrow starts for us. That’s when I eat breakfast.”
He lifted a brow. “Tomorrow starts at midnight.”
He said it with just a hint of firmness and I felt my nipples tighten. Oh no. No, no, no. I didn’t do bossy. I did arrogant, for sure. I was attracted to men that were in charge and bossed other people around. But I didn’t let men tell me what to do.
“Six a.m.,” I argued. Just to show I would argue. He needed to know that.
He leaned in, his scruff brushing over my jaw, making my nipples just as happy as they’d been with that firm tone of voice. “If you’re not eating pancakes with me by twelve oh one, tomorrow, I’m not going to eat your pussy until twelve oh one. the next day.”
My pussy clenched at being mentioned like that and my brain instantly said “no!” Evidently, my body could tell that this man would be very good at that. Fourteen hours was far too long to wait for it. Damn him. He knew I was wound up and wanted him. I hated that he knew how desperate I was getting to be naked with him…and hated that he’d clearly use it against me. I wasn’t used to men not jumping at the chance for sex. What was with this guy and his willpower? Or maybe it wasn’t that at all.
I shrugged and tried to pull my hand free. “Well, if you’re not interested, I need to head back into the casino and see if I can find a new friend.”
I wasn’t going to do that. I wanted this guy. If I couldn’t have him, I had a jacuzzi tub and a vibrator upstairs that would be fine. I wasn’t here to get laid. That hadn’t been a part of the plan tonight at all. Not until he had sat down at my table.
He didn’t let me pull away though. He tightened his hold and pulled me in close. He ran his other hand down my back to my ass and he pressed me against his cock. “I guess you didn’t realize,” he said, his voice low and husky. “The second that last hand of poker was dealt, you—and your sweet pussy—became mine until our deal is over.”
I sucked in a quick breath, staring up into his eyes. Holy. Crap.
I didn’t like men telling me what to do. I didn’t like possessiveness. I didn’t like needing other people.
All of which I promptly forgot as I slowly nodded and said softly, “Okay.”
He looked very much like he was going to kiss me, but instead he straightened, let go of me—except for the hand he was still holding—and started for the doors again. Just like that.
I followed because…well, really what else was I going to do? For one, he still had a hold of me. But I wanted him, he wanted to feed me pancakes at midnight, and we had just under an hour until then. I might as well see what his plan was here.
I was ninety-seven percent sure it didn’t involve taking me into a dark alley and hacking me up. A guy who wanted to have pancakes with me wouldn’t want to kill me afterward, would he? Let’s just say no, that’s ridiculous.
He stopped outside the main doors and handed the valet a tag. We were driving to wherever we were going? There were a lot of places to bury a body out in the desert. I had no doubt that there were bodies buried out in the desert.
As we waited for his car, I tipped my head back to look up at him. He had about four inches on me even with my heels on and he was big. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, but he was broad and strong and hard.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
I fully intended to lick this man from head to toe—spending lots of time in between—and I didn’t even know his name.
He looked down. “Declan Black. My friends call me Dec.”
I smiled. Then did something I hadn’t done in years. I giggled.
His eyebrows went up. “What’s funny?”
“I have always been drawn to big decks.”
He laughed and put his arm around me, pulling me up against his side. I put my arm around his waist too, because it was a chance to touch him. I slid my hand up under his jacket, splaying my hand over his ribs and the edge of hard abs. To anyone looking on, we had to have looked like a couple out on the town for the evening.
He bent to put his mouth against my ear. “Be prepared. Once you’ve had a really big Dec, you might not ever be able to go back to anything else.”
Again that little shiver of desire went through me and it hit me that maybe drawing this out, spending some time together before going upstairs to fuck our brains out was okay. If he kept saying little dirty, flirty things to me, I’d be wound even tighter and the release would be even sweeter.
“Well, I guess that’s a gamble I’m going to have to take,” I said.
“I like a girl who knows when a risk is worth it.”
Just then the valet returned with a black Jaguar. Declan stepped forward to pull the passenger side door open for me and…yeah, I got in. Did serial killers drive Jags? I was going to say no.
I watched him tip the valet and round the front of the car. He settled in behind the wheel and steered us out of the casino’s front drive.
What the hell was I doing? I’d gone downstairs for a little fun. I couldn’t just sit in my hotel room and think about Warren Maxwell and how much I hated him and how I couldn’t wait to make him cry. I had as much of my plan laid out as I could.
I was going to show up at his office and ask him to lunch. He hadn’t seen me in a few years, but he’d know who I was. He’d be intrigued enough to at least say yes to a meal. It would also give me a chance to check out his office, in case the painting was there. I was praying i
t wasn’t, of course. Because stealing it from his house was going to be far easier. At his house, I had access to his entire security system. All I had to do was shut it off, walk in, grab the painting, walk out, turn it back on.
Piece of cake.
As soon as I knew when he would not be there. Which meant making small talk over lunch and finding out as much as I could about his schedule and plans for the next week or so.
That’s right. One of the richest men in America had purchased a cybersecurity program from my company. Oh, did I mention that I was currently in marketing for a security company. Ironic isn’t it? So is the fact that I was the one who directly contacted Maxwell’s company and sold the system to them.
That’s not true. That’s not ironic at all. That was completely intentional.
When I’d taken the job, my mom hadn’t been sick yet. I hadn’t gotten myself a position as a senior marketing specialist for Surex Security Systems because I’d planned on stealing a painting from Maxwell. I hadn’t even known about the painting. I’d gone after the job because somehow in my mind, working in the area of security, making people and their assets safer from people who wanted to steal from them, somehow made up for some of the stealing I’d done in the past. But once I did know about my mom’s illness and the painting, I was absolutely not above using my position to make things happen. I was working on being a better person. I wasn’t there yet.
Surex is a good system too. I’m not peddling crap here. It’s the best security you can buy. They have systems for all levels of need and income, but we are determined to make Surex the system for people with lots to protect. People like Warren Maxwell.
It’s just a sign of how dedicated to my job I am that I knew everything about the system Maxwell’s VP of something-or-other ended up buying. I even knew about the bug that would let an outsider into the system if they discovered it. The product team was still working on that but it wasn’t enough of a concern to keep us from selling and installing the system. The chances of someone finding the glitch were a million to one and as soon as they fixed it, we’d do an upgrade for everyone and no one would even know there had been an issue. Hell, we had to sell the things to afford to fix them.
All of that meant that I had a small window of time to use it to my benefit.
I was jerked out of my thoughts when Dec parked the car about five miles from the strip in front of Pancakes and Pie. It was a wildly popular local chain and I hadn’t eaten here in years. My stomach grumbled and I was shocked to realize that I wanted to eat pancakes. It was ten thirty at night and I was out with a man I’d just met that I really wanted to see naked and I was about to eat pancakes. I vividly remembered the red velvet. This was the most bizarre night already.
“Let me feed you.”
I turned to Declan. God, he was hot. That thought just kept hitting me.
“You’re going to need your strength.”
I perked up. “For later? In your suite? After this?”
He gave me a slow smile. “For tomorrow. I have a lot planned.”
I narrowed my eyes. What was with this guy? “But tomorrow starts in—” I glanced at his dashboard clock. “Forty-three minutes.”
He nodded. “Yes, it does.”
The little curl of heat in my belly told me that he meant that the way I wanted him to mean it. If needed, I could up my seduction game I supposed. I just wasn’t used to a man playing hard to get. I didn’t date a lot and hadn’t been serious about anyone in a very long time. But I went out and I scratched this particular itch a couple of times and it hadn’t been difficult to find someone willing to help.
This guy better be worth it.
My stomach growled again, louder this time, and his smile said he heard.
“Let’s go.” He got out of the car and came around to my side. There were no valets here. Pancakes and Pie was tucked into a strip mall between a nail salon and a chiropractic office—as were most things in strip malls.
It was completely commercial, and the type of place tourists frequented. They could have breakfast, stop at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and be back to their Hampton Inn in time for a dip in the indoor pool before heading to the strip.
I shook my head as he opened the door. This was not where I would have imagined a guy like Declan Black to bring a date. Not that this was really a date. It was…hell, I didn’t know. Foreplay? I could think of a few things I’d like to do to him with maple syrup.
But maybe Dec wasn’t who he appeared to be. Maybe this suit was the single suit he owned and he dressed up as a high roller to play cards and pick up women in casinos. I knew all about pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I couldn’t blame him. But I would be disappointed.
Still, as we walked into the restaurant, there was something about him that didn’t make that feel right. He was too comfortable in the suit. And in his own skin. He exuded a confidence that wasn’t manufactured or forced. I’d been in casinos enough to know what the guys who were trying to be big shots looked like.
Declan Black was the real deal. Somehow I knew that.
We ordered at the counter. The red velvet was still on the menu, and when the aroma of bacon, pancakes, and coffee hit me, I was suddenly a lot more into this idea. Dec ordered bananas Foster pancakes and we headed for a back booth to wait, stopping at the coffee station on our way.
Once we both had cups, mine doctored with cream and sugar, his straight-up black, we slid into a booth. I lifted my cup to sip but felt his gaze on me. I met his eyes. We were sitting across each other at a much smaller table than the table in the casino and his attention seemed even more intense now.
“What?” I asked after I’d swallowed that first hot mouthful.
“What’s your name?”
I grinned. He’d just realized he didn’t know. I considered, for about two seconds, giving him a fake name. I knew I should. I didn’t know him and, no matter how hot he was, I didn’t intend to see him after our deal was over. A little sliver of heat slid through me remembering what he’d said about me being his until that time. But I quickly focused back on the moment. Real name or fake?
“Olivia Steele.”
There, he could have half my real name. Because I wanted to hear him calling me Olivia as I dragged my tongue all over his hard body. That sliver of desire in my gut widened.
“It’s nice to meet you, Olivia.”
Yep, giving him my real first name was the right call. Hearing him say it with that husky note of promise underneath was worth it.
Three
That wasn’t her real name.
I lifted my cup as I studied her.
Damn, she was beautiful. The list of dirty things I wanted to do to her kept growing. But she’d lied to me.
The waitress arrived at our table with our meals. I watched as Olivia’s eyes widened, taking in the size of the pancakes they’d just set in front of her. But she didn’t say a word about it. She picked up her knife and started spreading the cream cheese topping over the surface of the pancakes, then grabbed a fork.
I grinned. I didn’t take women out for pancakes. Not for breakfast and certainly not after a night of poker. I took them to nice restaurants with white tablecloths and expensive wine. If I took them out at all. I’m not too proud to say that plenty of the time I spent with women was between silk sheets with maybe some room service before I made my exit. Yes, my exit. I don’t take women to my hotel room. I like being able to control the situation and how long it lasts.
But, tonight, I was going to take Olivia back to my room and fuck her on every single surface available.
Lust shot through me, tightening my cock, and I shifted on the booth.
Olivia looked up at me. “You’re not hungry now?”
“I’m just enjoying watching you,” I told her honestly. “I think watching the fork sliding between your lips and your tongue licking that frosting off your finger is the hottest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
All true.
Her eyes wen
t round though. Was she not aware that every fucking thing she did turned me on? When she’d slid her arm around me, I’d wanted to back her up against the side of the Bellagio.
I was trying to make this into more than a one-night stand. Why? I had no idea. Except that this woman intrigued me more than any had in a very long time.
Also maybe I was taking her out for pancakes, because she didn’t want me to. She didn’t want this to be anything more than one hot night and, what can I say? I’m a competitor. If I can push a little and get a little more than expected out of a situation, I’m going to.
I had a week to kill before Warren Maxwell’s big poker game and I could think of worse ways and places to spend it than between this woman’s legs.
“What’s your real name?” I asked, cutting into my pancakes.
Olivia gave a little gasp and then started coughing. I watched as she grabbed her coffee and took a swig. When she’d cleared her airway of red velvet pancake she stared at me. “What?”
“You aren’t giving me your real name.” I took a bite of pancakes, chewed, and swallowed. God, I wanted to kiss her. “Why not?”
She pressed her lips together and took a deep breath. “Olivia is my real name. I never give my real last name to people I don’t know.”
I nodded. “Okay, first name is enough.” For now. I didn’t add that. But see, she’d just given me yet another challenge—get her to trust me enough to give me her full name. Why? Maybe because I was bored. Maybe I just couldn’t resist a contest of any kind. Or maybe this woman was special somehow and I was willing to give her more time and energy than usual. That was possible even if I couldn’t put my finger directly on what it was about her specifically. Yet.
Olivia continued eating though she seemed a little wary now. I smiled. I liked that she’d realized that I wasn’t easy. I was sure other men would have taken what she said and not questioned it further. They probably would have believed her. Even if not, they probably just didn’t care. But they also wouldn’t have brought her out for pancakes knowing that she was willing to go straight to the hotel room and get naked.
