Player: Stone Cold MC (15 page)

It was Saturday, exactly a week since I’d heard from Rip, and I was starting to get really irritated with the whole thing. He couldn’t have left town. He’d worked hard to get onto the Crucifix Six’s radar. No one just left that kind of work behind, and he didn’t seem like the kind to just run.

He had a goal—whatever that was—and I had the idea he would reach it before moving on.

That meant that he was still around here somewhere, and if he was around here, he would be gambling to make money. No doubt using the tricks I’d taught him. What a jerk.

I thought about it logically. He couldn’t really go back to Harlan Gold without Jerrill recognizing him, what with the man being the kingpin around there. He also had a name that he’d made at Lady Luck. His fake name. He had an alias he could slip in without thinking twice.

My guess was that was where he would be if he was anywhere. I’d been there a couple of times, I had contacts. Maybe I could figure something out once I was there.

I didn’t want to make a night of it, but cash was running low so I got dressed in a black cocktail-type dress that had a slit almost up to my hip and put black heels with it. I had to play a bit to get money for the next week or two, just until I could pull my act together again and make bigger money.

I put red lipstick on, left my hair loose, and got in my car. I wasn’t planning on drinking.

The drive to Lady Luck felt longer than it should have, and I couldn’t find a parking space until I’d driven around the parking lot for almost ten minutes. By the time I got one and finally walked to the front doors, my mood was black and I felt dangerous.

Security eyed me when I walked past them. I didn’t make eye contact.

Inside, I sat down at a blackjack table and made a quick couple of hundred. It was too easy. This was why I loved what I did.

All this shit Cass had been talking into my head about how bad gambling was and how it was her fault I did this now… I wasn’t like Mom. I would never be like her, and it wasn’t as if I was going to use all the money and leave kids to starve. I didn’t have kids—and I was going to keep it that way.

I took care of myself, and I wasn’t interested in her opinion of how I did it.

The fact that she was comparing me to Mom hurt though. I didn’t like it when my older sister thought I was going to be an unreliable excuse for a human being. I didn’t like it that she thought I needed her to tell me how to live my life.

I was fine. Besides the assholes for men who kept coming in and out of my life, I really was fine.

The problem was I’d really thought Rip was different. I didn’t know why I’d thought that. Maybe it was because he’d said he wanted to take me out on a date. Maybe it was because he’d stuck around for long enough to make me think he cared about more than my money or my ass.

Maybe it was because I’d
wanted
him to be different.

I lost count and lost some money, which just pissed me off more. Focusing on the game again, I only played until I’d won it back again, and then I got up. Lady Luck was pulsing with people full of hope and wonder and the potential to win. And tonight it just wasn’t my scene. The thronging crowds made me feel claustrophobic, and the laughter and clinking of glasses irritated me. The smell of smoke pinched my nose, and I sneezed.

I traded in my chips for cash and left the casino. Rip hadn’t been inside and that just pissed me off so much more. He was being an idiot. I was willing to bet he was going to be in trouble soon, if he wasn’t already. I’d been a fool to think that I could work with him and trust him.

I flashed on his body again, arching against mine, his breathing in my ear, skin slick on mine. Sex with him was of the mind-blowing variety. And it had been so good to spend time together afterward.

Which was exactly the problem. I’d started thinking about the afterward just as much as the actual deed, and that meant that on some level I’d stopped seeing him as an egotistical male. And that had been exactly what had gotten me to this point.

Now I caught myself thinking about the damn guy, waiting for a text or a call, wanting him to appear out of thin air and give me a good reason why he’d disappeared…one that didn’t have me as the main motivation.

This was Tom all over again, but a crash course.

Tom and I had been together for two years. We’d started out great, the puppy-love phase had made me feel like teenager again, but better. Back then I hadn’t felt good about myself. With Tom I felt pretty and worth it.

I was studying some course at college that I really didn’t like. Tom helped me pay for it, which was sweet of him, but I was thinking of dropping out.

“You can’t just give up every time something gets hard,” he said.

“And what do you know about me and a hard life?” I asked. He didn’t know about my mom, and I didn’t want to tell him. He worked in the admin division of some financial development company, and even though his job didn’t pay a lot, it was money coming in that we could use.

When he lost his job that was just all the more apparent. We were already living together, and suddenly everything we needed was gone. No more income.

So I did the one thing I knew how to do best. I gambled. I’d watched my mom so many times on the tables whenever she took a break from slots that I knew how to bring in cash.

Tom never liked it, but it was something that needed to be done. We had bills to pay. I had college fees. Gas. Groceries. It all took cash. And as long as I was bringing it in, Tom looked for a job so that he could be the man of the house again.

He finally found something, and we were going to be okay again. But I didn’t want to give up the gambling. I didn’t want to stop and hand him back the authority and power of being the sole breadwinner. I liked the idea that there could be more than the bare necessities. I liked that I was making a contribution.

Most of all, I liked the glamorous life. Dressing up, going out in style, being someone else for a night. I think that was what got me more than the money, although it was almost a tie for first.

We started going out to casinos after work. Tom came with me because he believed that you supported your partner’s hobbies. He believed in equality, bless him.

Those were the best nights of our relationship. The man I loved, the life that I’d always wanted, an outlet. We started off good.

But then Tom didn’t want it anymore. He wanted to stay in. He wanted to stop the gambling because we had money again. I just didn’t want to give it up. I wanted the financial freedom, the fact that I made a difference in my own life and didn’t have to rely on someone else.

We fought about it all the time. “This is consuming you,” he used to say.

“I’m not wasting money. I’m not placing us in danger by doing it. There’s nothing wrong.”

We had the same fights, going in circles over and over again. At some point it felt like that was all we did.

Then one night, after I’d gone out alone, I came home and he was all packed, two bags standing at the door. I tripped over them when I walked into the house because I’d had some wine. I was still buzzing with the win, but it all drained when I saw the bags, and then him leaning in the doorway with his arms folded over his chest.

Blocking me out.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m leaving, Alex,” he said. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t compete.”

I pleaded with him to stay. I said I could change. But we both knew what was true.

“Let’s face it, Alex, this just isn’t working.”

I knew it wasn’t, but I didn’t want to let him go.

“I love you, goddammit!” I shouted after him when he walked through the door.

He turned and his eyes were sad. “Love alone isn’t enough,” he said. And then he left, and I was alone in that giant house, wearing glamourous clothes, feeling like my heart had been ripped out.

At least this time he hadn’t left me because of my gambling problems. It just felt the same. Maybe it was because I knew what it felt like to be crushed by a man that I recognized it so much quicker now.

Or maybe it was because there was a gentleness about Rip that reminded me of the reasons I’d loved Tom. Either way, I was being completely stupid, and I had to get over the idea that Rip could be in my life as all. He would never be more than just a partner, but even that was a problem now because I couldn’t trust him.

I drove home. My headlights cut to shafts into the night when I drove into the residential area. I thought for a moment I saw Rip on the sidewalk, but I shook my head. He wouldn’t be heading toward the house. I was being stupid; it was a hallucination born from my pathetic obsessions.

I stopped in front of the house and allowed myself no more than three seconds to pull things together again. I opened the car door and slid out, my heels clacking as they hit the driveway. I took out my purse and walked to the front door, unlocking it. Tomorrow I could go to the shop and grab a couple of things.

I walked into the house and started closing the front door when someone called my name. I put down my purse and opened the door wider again, hiding behind it.

A dark figure came down my driveway, and I was suddenly nervous. What was I going to do if someone was after me? But then his face came into the porch light’s range and it lit up Rip’s features.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. He stopped in front of the front door, looking tired, like he’d been running. “I haven’t heard from you for a week, and now you’re in front of my door. Did you think I was going to let you in?”

I was furious. Not just with him, but with the fact that my stomach had erupted in butterflies the moment I’d seen him, and I was sick and tired of my body not listening to my rational mind. I didn’t like Rip. I couldn’t like Rip.

I shouldn’t like Rip.

“Can I come in?” he asked, and his piercing blue eyes pleaded with me. And God help me, I let him in.

I didn’t even know why I let him in. I was pissed at him for being a jerk and leaving me hanging to think the worst.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” I said after he was inside my house. I folded my arms over my chest and shifted my weight from one leg to the other.

“You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing,” Rip said. His blue eyes sparkled. He had something special to tell me, but all I could think of when he said “what I’ve been doing” was that I hoped to God that “it” wasn’t other girls.

Which was ridiculous, because it didn’t matter what—or whom—he did. I’d established that he wasn’t anything of mine. I didn’t want to be involved.

“I sure as hell hope so,” I said, and my voice was sharper than I meant it. He narrowed his eyes at me.

“You don’t honestly think I’m like that, do you?” he asked.

And by “like that” he meant the playing kind. And honestly, I wasn’t sure what I thought of him anymore. I just raised my eyebrows, hoping whatever was on my face spoke instead of the words I was supposed to pull together in a sentence. Rip rolled his eyes like a woman and shook his head.

“Why are you women all the same?” he asked. As if he knew it must have come out offensive somehow, he lifted ups his hands, palms toward me. “No offense,” he added.

I sighed and dropped my arms, feeling defeated—even though it hadn’t really ever been a battle. “What have you been up to?” I asked.

He smiled. “I’ve been stealing Jerrill’s drugs and selling them back to him.”

I frowned, trying to make sense of his words.

“What?”

“I’ve been stealing—”

“I heard you,” I said, cutting him off from a repeat. “I was just trying to figure out how the hell you’re still alive.”

If he was messing with Jerrill, he was a walking dead man.

He smiled and sat down on my couch, making himself at home even though I hadn’t intended for him to stay. I wanted an answer, and then I wanted him out the door.

“So I haven’t heard from you in a week because you were stealing someone else’s shit and selling it back to them? Do you have any idea how dangerous this game is that you’re playing?”

He shrugged, which made me think he had no idea at all what he was getting himself into.

“I wanted to be able to pay you your cash back. With interest. And make enough to take you somewhere fancy on that date of ours.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize the date was still on,” I answered sarcastically.

“Come on, babe, don’t be like that.”

I held up my hand. “Don’t call me ‘babe.’ Don’t you dare.”

He closed his mouth, but he stared at me, challenging me with his eyes. And it was a turn on. When he sat there, arrogant, full of himself, I wanted to be full of him, too. And that was the last thing I had in mind when I invited him in. He was a pathetic excuse for a man, definitely not boyfriend material, and here I was thinking that I really wanted to get in his pants.

“You couldn’t have at least let me know that you’re not dead?” I asked.

“I didn’t realize you cared so much,” he said and smiled at me, which just made him sexier—and consequently irritated me more.

“I don’t,” I said and started walking away from him, down the passage toward my bedroom. “I care about the money,” I called over my shoulder just to add injury to insult.

He came after me. That hadn’t been the plan either. I had wanted to get away from him, not get him to follow me. I should have kicked him out of the house instead.

“Come on, Alex,” he said, not calling me “babe” again. He was a fast learner. “I made you a lot of money.”

He took out an envelope and handed it to me. My name was written on the front in scratchy handwriting. My full name, not just the shortened version. When I opened it up there was a note with an amount on it.

I gasped.

“Are you being serious?” I asked. Rip nodded.

“And the best part is that I didn’t do that through any of the games I played, which means that we don’t owe the Crucifix Six any of that. Zero percent.”

“Where’s the actual money?” I asked, looking at him.

“It’s at the motel where I’m staying. I came straight from the casino, I didn’t have time to pick it up.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say to that. It felt like more empty promises. Rip looked at me with eyes that suggested his thoughts weren’t on money anymore, and I was suddenly very aware that we were in the bedroom. The bed was just behind me, the curtains were drawn, and only one bedside lamp was on, making the room dim and romantic.

Not what I was going for.

“You look really nice,” Rip said, and his eyes slid down my body. I knew the dress I wore was sexy. The little black dress always worked—and this one accentuated my curves.

Rip’s comment made me feel beautiful and sexy. Or maybe it was the way he was looking at me. It made me focus on his body, too. He wore black pants, and a shirt that was almost the color of his eyes. Maybe that was why they stood out so much. His pupils were dilated, and he took a step closer to me.

My breath caught in my throat and heat pooled between my legs as if he’d flipped an “on” switch. I wasn’t supposed to be attracted to him. I wasn’t supposed to think that he was so attractive. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about sex at all.

He pulled into me, putting one hand behind my neck and kissing me hard. Every bit of resolve I had not to fall into this situation dissipated like it had never been.

I let him kiss me. I didn’t stop him when he pulled my body against his until every part of me was pressed up against him. His stomach was hard under his shirt, his chest pushed up against my breasts and my thighs touched his.

Which meant that my hips were also pressed against his, and I had a very good idea about what was going on in his pants.

He was hard, the length of him pressing up against me, straining through his pants and my dress to reach me.

When he licked my lips, I opened my mouth so that he could enter me. It was a good start, having a part of him inside of me like this.

He brought up his other hand and pushed it into my hair, running his fingers through the strands. It made me feel sensual. He ground his hips against mine and I moaned.

His hands slid down my back and down onto my hips, and he held them in place as he moved his own hips against mine. He moved in circles, pushing and then pulling with me against him, rubbing himself against me. It was like a sensual dance to music only he and I could hear, and it was hot as hell.

My body was ready for him. I wanted everything he had to offer. I wanted to be everything he wanted. I wanted out of my clothes. Now.

I stretched my arms over his shoulders and wrapped them around his neck, pulling my breasts harder against his chest. I wanted him to feel every inch of my body, and I wanted to feel every part of his.

He fiddled with the zip behind my back and then slid it down. The sound harmonizing with our breathy moans and desperate grunts. The dress parted, loosening around my body. He slid it off my shoulders with both hands and pushed it over my hips so it fell on the floor. I knew the underwear I was wearing was risqué. I didn’t wear sexy underwear for men, I wore it for myself because when I pranced around knowing that I looked like a wet dream I was more confident. I thought I was sexy, and I acted like it.

But it didn’t hurt that Rip saw me in this boudoir set. It didn’t hurt at all.

I stood in front of him, wearing red lace underwear and high heels, stripper style, and I loved the feel of his eyes on my body when he moved me just a couple of inches away to look at me. My skin looked tanner in the dim yellow lighting, my hair was darker, my eyes more sensual. I couldn’t see myself, but I could see it in his eyes. I was his goddess—even if it was just for tonight.

My bra was only lace, so he could see my already erect nipples through the material. My panties also left very little to the imagination, showing how naked I was down there, how willing I was to bare every inch of myself.

“God, Alex,” he said. His tongue darted out of his mouth, licking his lips, and his eyes rested on my breasts as if he hadn’t seen a good pair in a while. His lips remained parted even after he’d licked them, and he breathed through his mouth and his nose at the same time, giving him the comical sense of desperation that I knew was on my face, too.

He started unbuttoning his own shirt. He let it fall on the floor to join my dress. I reached for his belt and undid it, tugging his pants over his hips. He kicked the pants off and then guided me backward until my legs touched the bed. He pressed against my shoulders, but I shook my head. I wasn’t going to get on my back just yet.

I pushed against him, mimicking what he’d just done, asking him for space. Then I kneeled in front of him and curled my fingers around the elastic band of his underwear, flipping it down over his hard cock. He sprang free and the tip glistened with lust. I took just a second to marvel in the erotic image that was in front of me. Rip. Muscles. Hard and eager. Ready for me.

I wrapped my fingers around his base and a gasp escaped his lips. I took him in my mouth. He was big and hard, smooth, and his pre-cum tasted salty. I closed my lips around him, creating a light suction in my mouth, and I started moving up and down along his shaft. He groaned and pushed his hands into my hair again, guiding my head up and down his cock. I sucked him, pumping my head backward and forward, imitating the sex we were going to have later.

He moaned and curled his fingers so that he didn’t just guide me but gripped my hair as well. It was sexy. A little demanding, but not enough that it turned me off, and never in a way that made me feel like I was doing something against my will. I liked it when he took a bit of control. I liked it that the sense of sex took over enough that he wanted in, even if it was my mouth.

I gave him a blowjob until he was smooth and slippery and oozing pre-cum, ready to go further and deeper than my mouth could allow. Then I let go of the suction, and he slid out of it. I got up.

His eyes were wild, pupils large and wild. His lips were parted, and he didn’t wait for an invitation. He pushed me down on the bed and crawled over me. He yanked my panties down and I felt the wet material against my thigh, my own body betraying how badly I wanted this.

Rip went for my breast, pulling the material down to expose a nipple. I was the one who arched up my back and unclasped it. Rip pulled it off and threw it to the side. I was naked in front of him now, and somewhere along the line he’d lost his boxers as well.

I opened my legs for him. He positioned himself and pressed against my entrance. I gasped. He was hard and urgent, and I felt it spill over into me, too, desperation to have him inside of me.

His head was in my neck, lips fumbling over the skin, when he pushed into me. I gasped again, my body yielding and stretching to accommodate him. He pushed in slowly so that I could adjust to his size. When he was in all the way to the hilt, he paused and we both breathed hard, anticipating what was going to come. A shudder traveled through his body and into mine, making me shudder too.

Then he started moving. My body rocked under his, as he pushed into me and pulled out again. The friction was fantastic, making my body melt. I wrapped my legs around his thighs so that I could pull him deeper into me, and he complied with deeper thrusts of his own.

The sex was fucking amazing. Every time we slept together it was the best sex I’d ever had.

He pounded into me, and the heat he was working on built up inside me and kindled into a flame. I opened my mouth and moaned into Rip’s ear, closing my eyes and letting the sensation take over. My head rolled back and forth as he pushed into me, hammering into my body and making my breasts jiggle.