“You’ve done all the dealing until now. I can share some of the load.”
She pursed her lips. “About time you did something useful.”
“I’ll see if I can’t improve my value to you.”
On his next winning hand, he chose a touch, payback for her caress when she’d unbuttoned his jeans. He slid a knuckle down her sternum, the pleasurable valley between those generous breasts. He watched them heave on a quick, shuddering breath. If she’d still worn the bra, one that was front-closing, he would have flicked that fastener, watched the cups ease their hold, the breasts swell outward. He traced the curve, but didn’t touch the nipple, no matter how much a temptation the stimulated jut of it was.
“Still want to keep playing?” he asked in a low tone. “Want to quit?”
“Not on your life,” she said, though she had to clear her throat first. “I think you’re taking more liberties with your touch than I did.”
“Damn right.”
She sniffed, but a tiny smile bloomed, something almost girlish. He’d like to see that one more often. Though he put 110 percent into every effort, because that was how to be effective, this was immersion for the sake of the moment, instead of the end goal, and that was unique for him.
As he sat back and began to deal again, he was already anticipating having her fully tied, fully helpless. Hearing her scream out multiple climaxes. When he finally thrust into her, he was going to explode. He’d never been so hard in his life.
10
PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL. THE BIBLICAL REMINDER should have been tattooed across her ass. He hadn’t gotten on a winning streak since that last, tempting touch.
She was an expert card hustler, giving her opponent the idea he was winning, giving him confidence—before she basically cleaned his clock. What was more, he knew she wasn’t cheating. She was just that damn good. Obviously, she’d played games of chance for quite a while. On her very first winning hand, she chose to have her hand freed.
He was carrying two knives on his person. To underscore how soundly she was beating him, she counted each one as an additional item of clothing, removing those and still leaving the jeans in place. Then she chose the option of winning back her clothing, one frustrating piece at a time, though seeing her don it was almost as provocative as seeing her take it off. Watching her put on the bra in the same order she’d taken it off, working it under the thin shirt, could make a man’s mouth water, that lift of curves, the adjustment, the slide of her fingers over herself, visible through the fabric.
Once she got the cups in place, she rose from the chair, presented her back to him, holding the straps in place. “Hook it for me, would you? Third tier.”
He slid his hands under the cashmere, noticing how large his hands were, spanning her rib cage, his darker, tanned pigment against her pale, soft flesh. She had a small mole below the bra strap that he caressed. She’d drawn the thick tail of her hair over her shoulder so it was out of his way, exposing her delicate nape. As he rose, he followed the curve of her rib cage, and then moved his palms forward, under the cups. She tsked at him, though she leaned back, giving him that access.
“You didn’t win the hand. Touching is cheating.”
“As you wish.” He made sure his fingers teased her nipples before he relocated to her back, and was rewarded by a quick jerk of her hips, a rub against his pelvis. Her chuckle had that sexy breathiness to it.
He hooked the bra and was treated to the sight of her adjusting the cups once more, hands sliding over her curves. When she slipped away from him and turned, she’d left the top two buttons of the sweater open, a feast of lace and swelling flesh to drive him to distraction.
She had an endgame in mind as well, and it was obvious she was just as single-minded about it. “Would you like some more whiskey while I’m up?”
“If you’re serving me, yes.”
Her eyes could glow like emeralds and gold found in a pharaoh’s tomb. He took a seat as she moved to the side table, poured a couple fingers of the quality liquor, and then returned, her body a dance of sex.
She leaned over his shoulder, put the drink on the table by the hand he had resting in a deceptively relaxed pose. She paused long enough that he could get a close-up of her cleavage. When she started to straighten, he caught her open collar in two firm fingers. “Raina, you’re not playing with one of your trained house cats.”
“I surely hope not.” She slipped from his grasp. Before she circled back to her side of the table, she indulged herself. That slipped button and few teeth down on his zipper meant his jeans were low on his hips, so her long nails caressed the upper rise of his ass between that and the waistband. It made him think of being between her legs, her gripping him there as he thrust inside her.
He could end it, just clear the table with one sweep of his arm, take her as hard and rough as he wanted, and she’d love it. Hell, he knew he would. But the way she wove sexual energy into everything she did and said, the way she played the game, it was like watching a master artist. He wanted to keep watching, to see what she did next, to see what straw would make him take her down.
Picking up her cards, she met his gaze. She was as stirred up as he was, and what increased the potency were their competing abilities to channel it, hold back. She was a witch who ran a house of erotic promises, while he loved the challenge of taking a woman up higher than she ever thought she could soar. He wanted to take her to the moon and beyond. What was more, he wanted to go with her.
So he made his decision. She might win the next hand, but she’d already won seven consecutive hands. The odds of poker said, no matter how good the player, she would lose a hand eventually, and he didn’t want to arrest her forward motion. To get her to trust him, he was going to give her his trust.
He didn’t drop any cards, didn’t add any. As a result, he lost the next hand with nothing against her pair of twos. He laid his hand down faceup, so she saw. Raina’s lips pressed together. That curl that teased the corner of her mouth shadowed her gaze as she considered. Then she gathered the cards, pushed them to the side.
“Will you put your hands on the chair arms?” she said quietly.
He complied, curving his fingers over the ornate carved ends. It was a good-sized chair. When he first sat in it, he’d gotten a brief glimpse of its history. Men, perhaps a century or so ago, sitting in it to smoke cigars, swallow the fiery burn of bourbon as they wore dinner-party finery and talked about what Southern gentlemen liked to discuss. She liked things that carried the grace of different times, the civilized veneer. She didn’t deny the barbaric side of human nature, but she celebrated those moments when they set that aside and embraced rituals of order and beauty.
She didn’t get restraints from the cabinet. Instead, he felt the wave of energy, the conjuring of heat, and glanced down to see a barbed, fiery, twisting rope of power curl around his wrist, wrap from his forearm all the way to the elbow. Then it snaked down to his thigh, winding under it and down to his ankle, securing it to the chair leg.
Another serpentine length appeared on the left side. As it followed the same track, nipping his skin with licks of heat, tiny pricks as it tightened, he looked back up at her. “I can get out of this, if I choose to do so.”
“They would burn, and cut.”
“I’m not afraid of pain.”
“No, I don’t expect that you are.” She nodded to the deck of cards. “You lost that last hand deliberately, but the other hands…I won those.”
“Yes, you did.” He gave her that due. “I haven’t ever played cards that badly, except for one night when I was in the Underworld academy with Derek.”
“He beat you?”
“Of course not.” He was offended even by the thought. “We were both soundly trounced by a pencil-necked, Bill Gates/Harry Potter Asian wizard who looked barely out of grade school, though he was in his sixth century. On every losing hand, you had to take a shot of homemade brew one of us had made out of sulfur and grain alcohol. We were completely shitfaced. So I had an excuse.”
“Except you had to drink so much because you were losing.” That sexy slip of a brow arched. “How did you stick to the vow of silence if you were drunk?”
“We were very clever. We put a silence spell on each other. We didn’t count on an unfortunate side effect. We were also unable to throw up. Having a hangover that severe, no ability to vomit? I would not advise.”
She laughed as he exaggerated the Russian accent. Truly laughed, which was as intoxicating as everything else about her. “Maybe that’s the real reason Derek doesn’t like you. I’ll bet it was you who came up with the silence spell.”
“No. It’s the wings. He envies them. He had to settle for his John Wayne meets Merlin gimmick to attract women.”
“As much as his dragonskin boots turn me on, the wings are a real chick magnet. Or they would be, if they weren’t attached to you.”
He snorted at that, but then considered her. “Did it make you feel uncomfortable, Raina, when I bound your one hand?”
“Yes.” She gave him a truthful answer, though it took some obvious effort. “Not the binding. But how I felt about you doing it. I wanted you to do it. And much more.”