Cruising the Strip (29 page)

In that long glance we shared, I thought about a couple of different things. I’d counted on winning more than I had, and private stakes games had also gone badly for me. I was going home with far less than I’d come with, and for the first time in my life, I’d been playing with money I couldn’t afford to lose. It ached, the losing, when it hadn’t before.

And I was thinking about home, and I knew I had to go back. I wasn’t seriously debating that. Every day my mother stayed at the hospice was a larger bill I was going to have trouble paying. My kid brother couldn’t be trusted not to slip a paper in front of Mom to sign, giving him more of her money and some of mine to feed his meth habit. I had a day job waiting for me, unlike most high stakes players, because poker didn’t give a steady enough stream for insurance and taxes and Mom’s medical bills.

Sometimes I wanted to run away from home, and certainly heading out to these tournaments was an escape. Coming home with cash made it a legit way to spend my time. I was fully intending to go back home, back to my responsibilities. So okay, I wasn’t exactly Skipping-to-My-Lou to do so.

And I was thinking that this woman thought I was the Big Time. Thought I must fuck as good as I played cards. I wasn’t a quickie kind of gal, though, never had been. I wasn’t crazy about the players who’d take a break, pick one of the dewy-eyed girls out of the crowd, and disappear for fifteen minutes. I looked at her, and I could tell what she was promising, and I didn’t want to be one of those guys.

But she wanted me to be one of those guys. Part of me wanted to tell her that I was a little insulted by her presuming I’d fuck and walk. The rest of me was thinking this could be the best thing I got out of this trip to Vegas, that I could smell her on my fingers during the flight back to San Antonio.

If we both got what we wanted out of fifteen minutes, did it matter if it was different things?

A housekeeper emerged from a room in between where we stood staring at each other. She moved on to the next room, swiping the lock with a card key and disappearing inside.

She hadn’t made sure the door of the room she’d just left had closed completely…it was slightly ajar. Before a puff of recirculating air blew it fully closed, I quickly pushed it open.

After a glance back at her, I walked into the room. I didn’t have to look to know that she’d followed me.

I made sure the door closed.

My first thought was that she was a little younger than she looked from a distance, not exactly a compliment to her makeup and hair designer. But the difference between forty and fifty didn’t matter to me. I pushed her against the wall. The mink slid to the floor along with her handbag, and she yielded completely to me.

When all the players sit down at the table, it’s a swirl of motion and chatter, posturing and positioning, everyone planting their early bluff. When the cards were dealt, the players quieted. TV cameras became invisible, the drone of announcers was silenced, the cacophony of bells, alarms, wheels clacking, and a thousand voices talking all at once faded into the background.

For me, everything went away except the eyes and hands of my opponents and, of course, the cards. Her hands were warm and pliable on my back. Her eyes were gray and her pupils slightly over-dilated. Lust, I thought, and I kissed her. She wasn’t an opponent and I was going to pay attention to all of her.

“So you watch me every chance you get, huh?” I grazed my teeth over her jaw and down her throat.

“Especially your hands,” she said. “I’m obsessed with them. Lesbians should have to wear gloves.”

“I think right now you’re happy I’m not wearing gloves.” There was no point in being subtle. I squeezed her breasts through the thin fabric of her wrap dress before quickly unfastening the tie that pulled it so alluringly around her body.

“Your hands are as amazing as I thought they’d be. It’s the way you hold the cards. The way your fingers curl and you hold them like you can will them to whatever you want them to be.”

She shivered when I peeled opened the dress. Victoria’s Secret’s finest shaped and molded her breasts and hips, setting off her honey-tanned skin with satiny pink. I pulled the bra straps off her shoulders, then yanked her bra down to her waist.

She gasped.

“I have a plane to catch, so we’re gonna make this quick.”

“Yes, baby, that’s what I want.” She ground against me, her eyes closed. I didn’t know what I was to her. Maybe she did this with all the female players. A raw fire lit in me. She was obsessed with my hands?

I cupped her ass as I bit down on her inviting nipple. A winning hand was what I wanted, and I thought I could get us both there. Her skin was tightening along with her muscles. She was on her tiptoes, head arched back, offering her breast to me.

There was no time to spend on foreplay. We were in somebody’s room and had to get out fast. I needed to get out of town. She didn’t want a relationship, she wanted to get fucked. I shoved my hand between her legs, pulled her panties aside, and cupped the luscious beauty of her.

She thrust down on my hand with a little cry. “Take me, baby. Any way you want.”

I knew what I wanted, but she was moving all over the place. I let her go long enough to pull her into the bathroom, then I pushed her up on the counter and spread her legs.

“My purse,” she gasped. “In my purse there’s lube.”

“You really want this, don’t you? Take your dress the rest of the way off.” I was gone only long enough to find the small bottle, but the dress was on the bathroom floor when I got back. I hooked my thumbs in her panties and yanked them down until I could drop them on top of the dress.

She watched me lube my hand, watched me smear lube up to my wrist, watched me sink into her, two fingers.

There was room, there was plenty of room. She pulled my mouth to hers, kissing me frantically as one hand closed around my forearm.

She showed me how hard she liked it. She showed me how deep, and she wanted more. I grinned against her mouth because I wanted more too, I wanted all of her, and that was exactly what she was giving.

She braced herself when I tucked my thumb and I slipped in with hardly a push. The little incoherent cries were all encouraging as I pressed deeper and rubbed my knuckles all along the ridge of her inner muscles.

“I knew, I knew,” she repeated.

I knocked away her grip on my forearm, curled my fingers inside her and pulled halfway out.

“No,” she moaned. “Stay inside me—”

I pushed in hard. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes.” Her eyes flew open. “Fuck!”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do that.”

Wet and wild, she arched into every thrust. There was no restraint in her at all, and I wasn’t finding any either. My hand was clasped inside her where she so badly wanted me, gripping her against me as I pushed inside her, again, and again, and again.

I gave it to her quick, hot, and hard.

She came for me exactly the same way.

*

A few minutes later, she shrugged her bra back into place and pulled on her dress.

I gave her the bottle of lube. “The next tournament is in—”

“Atlantic City.” She tucked the bottle into her handbag, and slung the mink around her shoulders.

Opening the door just a little, I saw no one in the hallway. I stepped back to let her out of the room first. She turned right. I turned left.

In the elevator I surreptitiously examined my still wet hand, then raised it casually to scratch my nose. The scent of sex overwhelmed all my other senses. Home was still a long way away. For just a little while, I had a winning hand.

“Who are you?” Debbie didn’t mean to bark, but her throat was incredibly dry. She swallowed, which caused a tight pain behind her eyes, and she recognized the signs of a champagne hangover.

The red hair spread out on the pillow jerked out of reach as the woman abruptly sat up. “Fuck you, too.”

“Sorry.” Debbie wasn’t even going to try to sit up. “Is this my room or yours?”

“Yours. I’ll leave if you want me to.”

The full, rounded breasts were enough to make Debbie sincerely regret her hangover. “No, it’s okay. Did we…?”

Eyes that were jade, and jaded, gave her a narrow look. “Yes, as a matter of fact. You seemed pretty happy about it.”

“Were you pretty happy about it?” Something in the women’s bad temper was actually grounding and refreshing, as if they’d already moved past all the show and pretense and it was Get Real or Get Out Time. Sort of like her last two relationships without the months of wasted courtship.

She turned her head, eyes slicing. “Are you paying me to be happy about it?”

With a jolt, Debbie remembered meeting the woman in the bar. God, she’d been a total ass. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. I could have gotten us both arrested.”

“Which is why I hustled you up here. You stuffing twenties down my shirt and announcing you’d double it if I’d—how did you put it? Eat you on the back of your Yamaha at eighty miles an hour? Yeah, that was going to get us arrested, and I didn’t need that.”

“I’m sorry, honey. Really. I don’t drink much, but last night…”

Another jolt and Debbie remembered why she’d hit the hotel bar. A slow, hangover-banishing grin spread over her face. A twelve thousand dollar pot was truly a beautiful thing. She thought she’d drink some champagne, pick up some companionship. “Cara.”

“What?”

Relieved she remembered the woman’s name, Debbie managed to sit up. “I’m really sorry. Do you want some breakfast?”

“Maybe I’ll just go.”

“No, please stay.” Hazy details were slowly coming into focus. Cara had half-carried her upstairs and dumped her on the bed. They’d been playful, shucking clothes, shinnying under the covers, kissing…

Trouble was, the memories stopped there. She wasn’t sure what had happened after that.

“Are you sure that we, um, you know?”

Cara rested her arms on her knees. “Maybe we didn’t.”

“I promised and passed out.”

She shrugged. “I’m not on the clock, so it’s irrelevant what did and didn’t happen. I should go.” She swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

“No, really.” Debbie put a hand to her head, rubbing a little to ease the persistent throb between her eyes. “Stay.”

“I’m having a bad convention—okay, a bad year. I’m not much good as company.”

“At least you can have some breakfast.” She pulled the phone onto her lap and punched the speed dial for room service. “What would you like?”

Cara tossed her long hair over her shoulders with a heavy sigh. “Eggs and toast.”

She disappeared into the bathroom while Debbie conveyed their order. Eggs and toast sounded good to her, too, as long as it came with bacon and fried potatoes. Within a minute or two she’d also visited the bathroom, downing a couple of aspirin and quickly brushing her teeth.

The hotel must have had her room tagged as a high roller, because room service had never arrived so quickly before. Cara had pulled on one of Debbie’s button up shirts, and now looked better than anything on the room service menu as she perched on a chair, legs crossed, and plate balanced on her knee.

“So what’s with the bad year?” Debbie chowed down the potatoes as she watched Cara fork up her eggs far more sedately.

“Got dumped. My car was stolen the day after I paid for a new engine. That sort of thing. I came to the convention thinking I’d figure a way to change my life, somehow just get out of the place I was in. I agreed to be eye candy for some writer, and then she dumped me for someone else. Then this attractive dyke picked me out of the crowd to flirt with, but it turned out she was drunk and I didn’t get any action.” Cara gave her a resentful look.

“That’s a crime. That dyke sounds like she owes you.”

“What’s she got besides breakfast?” Cara nibbled toast.

“A red vintage Yamaha and the open road?”

“So you weren’t joking about what you wanted last night, were you?”

Debbie laughed. “Of course I was. I’m a safe biker, and sex on a moving bike is asking for death. Foreplay, on the other hand—”

“I thought the
bike
was foreplay.”

“It can be.” She was feeling much better for having some food in her stomach. Champagne—it always gave her a headache. Twelve grand in her pocket and she didn’t think to get a good Scotch? “Sex on a stationary bike, say one parked in the hotel garage, now that’s foreplay.”

“Sex is foreplay?”

With a crooked smile, Debbie said, “Because after that we get on the bike and go for a long ride in the wind and the sun.”

Cara had a little frown creased between her eyebrows. “Are you telling me that riding your bike is better than sex?”

“Depends on the woman and the sex, don’t you think?”

“And the bike.”

Debbie laughed again. In spite of her bitter overtones, Cara was diverting. She squinted at the clock. “If we hurry, I can prove it before the day gets too hot to ride.”

“Believe it or not, that’s the best offer I’ve had in months.” Cara finished her eggs in two mouthfuls. “Is there time to shower?”