Calling His Bluff (12 page)

Sarah straddled J.D.’s lap. She braced one hand on the cracked vinyl seat cushion
and leaned her weight against his shoulder with the other. His body was hard and strong
beneath hers. Her hair fell down on either side of her face, curtaining off some of
the light and glitter of the Strip.

J.D. looked at her, his eyes heavy-lidded and his hands resting lightly on her hips.

“Hey.” She grinned down at him and circled her hips experimentally against the thigh
that was wedged between her legs.

“Hey.” He grinned up at her and slid a hand down her backside to her bare thigh before
sliding it back up under the dress.

She could see the exact moment he realized his hand was encountering nothing but bare
skin, and then his fingers tangled in the thin satin string of her G-string. Whatever
she might have said was lost when he clamped his other arm across her back, crushing
her to him as he captured her mouth with his own and plunged his tongue inside.

It was a duel, a battle to control the kiss, her angle, his depth, the winner of any
given moment willingly surrendering control seconds later to the next frantic motion
of tongue and teeth and lips. She bit his lip and then sucked on it to soothe. His
tongue surged into her mouth, dancing delicately around hers, teasing her with tiny
flicks until she chased it, thrusting deeply into his mouth.

She ground against him in earnest now, desperate to increase the pressure.

It took more than a few moments for either of them to realize that the scratching
sound they heard was the cab driver clearing his throat.

They both fell motionless at the same time.

“Hmm. Err-hem.”

She lowered her forehead to J.D.’s shoulder.

“Ahem. We’re here.”

J.D. quaked beneath her, and she didn’t dare look into his eyes. If she did, she knew
she’d burst into embarrassed laughter. She bit her lip and felt her shoulders shaking
with silent giggles.

“Right,” J.D. said and sat up, dumping her unceremoniously off his lap. Digging his
wallet out of his pocket, he caught the cabbie’s eye in the rearview mirror before
passing him another twenty. “Have a good evening.”

“Not as good as yours is gonna be.”

She made it all the way out of the cab without laughing. Smoothed her dress back down
over her thighs and kept a casually bright smile locked in place. She hoped her lipstick
wasn’t suffering from that porn star smear. Tossing her hair back over one shoulder,
she prepared to follow J.D. calmly into the hotel as if she hadn’t ten seconds before
been steaming up the backseat of a taxi.

Then she spotted the half-dozen attendants crowded around the valet stand in front
of her, all of whom were studiously staring at the ground or off into space. None
of them were looking at her or J.D., but they were all fighting back smiles.

Discretion was a lost cause. She threw her head back and laughed. God, it was good
to be alive.

J.D. was leading her by the hand again and he looked back over his shoulder with a
quizzical grin. She shook her head as her laughter slowly eased.

Until she heard the first “Whoo-ee!” from behind her, drowned out quickly by male
guffaws and hollers, and she lost it again.

She couldn’t have said which way they walked through the cavernous lobby, but she
found herself standing in front of the correct bank of express elevators, still laughing,
just as a door slid open in front of them. Flashing his room key at the watchful security
guard, J.D. pulled her inside and stabbed the close door button with a staccato beat
until the elevator did just that, cutting off the entrance of what looked like an
entire bachelorette party.

“Did you see those guys?” she giggled, feeling wanton and sexy and very, very desired.

“I don’t want to see anybody.” Hands on her hips, he backed her up until she felt
the chair rail circling the elevator walls press just beneath her butt. “Except you.
And you, I want to see naked.” He nipped at her mouth, a short sharp kiss. “With all
the lights on.” Again. “For a long, long time.” Again. “And then I’m gonna go get
my camera.”

She remembered that cameras were focused on them even now, the feeds wired into a
security suite staffed by dozens, before she gave in to the need to taste him again.

“Okay.”

Besides, half of Vegas had already seen her plastered all over him in that cab.

But she was prepared this time, and her leg was only wrapped partway up his thigh
when the elevator chime announced their arrival at her floor. The doors slid open
with a near-silent
whoosh
and she backed out of the elevator, one hand still holding his, the other beckoning
him with a crooked finger.

Follow me.

She turned and strode noiselessly down the thickly carpeted hall, already snagging
her room key from her tiny purse. Suddenly she regretted her corner room with its
gorgeous views of the Bellagio lake and the Paris Hotel to the east and one colorfully
illuminated hotel after another to the south. The Monte Carlo, the MGM Grand, New
York-New York and beyond.

It was a very long walk from the elevators to her room.

When they got there, she couldn’t get her key into the door. J.D. was crowding her,
distracting her with testing bites on the bare skin of her shoulder, and she was surprised
to find that her hands were shaking a little.

Sudden nerves bloomed in her stomach and she closed her eyes for a second. Her palm
was flat against the door in front of her. She had to ask.

“J.D., are you sure we—”

“Yes.” His voice was low and hard, but then he wrapped his arms around her from behind,
surrounding her with his strength. And she felt, oddly enough, comforted. This was
J.D. with her. No matter how surreal the circumstances or how either of them felt
when the sun rose, she knew he would be kind. Deep down, he always had been.

She fit the key into the lock.

“I beg your pardon.”

There was someone in the hall with them.

“You’re excused,” J.D. growled and reached past her to turn the knob and push the
door open.

“I really
am
terribly sorry.”

Sarah was horrified to realize that she recognized the man’s voice.

She attempted to squirm around, but she was caught between J.D. and the door. She
finally had to hiss at him to back up before she was able to turn and face Mr. Fiorentino.

Calming her raging blush was a lost cause. She plastered a bright smile on her face
and relied on Mr. Fiorentino’s professional tact. Surely, he was accustomed to ignoring
awkward situations. Mr. Fiorentino did not fail her.

Without betraying by so much as a twitch of his lips that he found anything unusual
about the situation, the floor manager of the casino handed her an envelope.

“I was going to slip this under your door. I hoped you might see it tonight,” he said.
“One of the entrants in the WPT preliminary round the Bellagio is hosting on Saturday
has dropped out due to illness. The event promoters are here already, and your name
came up in conversation as a player who would be a valuable asset to their program.”

She raised an eyebrow at him as J.D. said, “WPT?”

“World Poker Tour,” she explained before quizzing Mr. Fiorentino. “My name came up?”

His microscopic shrug and lifted hands seemed to say that he wasn’t sure if he should
take the credit for that or apologize to her.

“They were mentioning how inconvenient it was to start one of the tables short a player.
The competitors would not appreciate the fact that one qualifier would be required
to eliminate fewer opponents than the others. I said the Bellagio had a guest who
could play at that level.” And then he broke into a smile. “A guest whose recent play
might have enabled her to afford the entrance fee for the tournament?”

“Only just,” she said, knowing the buy-in for the preliminary round of one of these
things could go as high as $25,000.

“The only difficulty,” he continued, gesturing to the envelope she held, “is that
they are on a very tight schedule. If they do not approve a new entrant this evening,
they will simply do without. I had hoped my note would arrive in time for you to come
downstairs and meet with them. I apologize again for interrupting.” He bowed his head
briefly and kept any humor he found in the situation to himself. “I understand congratulations
are in order. My dealer informed me that you were just married.”

“Thank you,” Sarah skipped past the comment and glanced at J.D., who was now standing
beside her, close but no longer touching. Before he could even indicate an opinion,
she shook her head and turned back to Mr. Fiorentino. The idea was flattering but
crazy, and although the mood had cooled somewhat in light of this recent development,
she had not forgotten that she’d been thirty seconds away from what had promised to
be some truly mind-blowing sex.

“I am sorry. It’s lovely of you to think of me, but it’s just not poss—”

“Wait a minute,” J.D. interrupted. “Wait. You should go.”

All the warmth was sucked out of her body at in an instant.

Excuse me?

Her mouth and eyes widened with surprise, and not the nice kind of surprise like getting
a birthday present a week early, as she craned her neck around to stare at the man
who’d just told her that he wanted to see her naked.

She stared at him or a long,
long
time.

“Excuse me?” She repeated her mental exclamation out loud.

“Would you give us just a minute?” J.D. didn’t wait for an answer as he unlocked her
door, propelled her into the room and closed the door behind him. “Listen, I think
you should go meet these guys.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, shook her head and then reopened them.

Yup. Same guy. Nice suit, loosened tie. Incredibly broad, thick shoulders. Not nearly
as on top of her as he’d been a couple of minutes ago.

“Am I crazy or were we just about to engage in some wild, roll around on the floor,
wake up the next day and wonder how you got those bruises in interesting places sex?”

She just wanted to be clear.

Then he grimaced.

Grimaced? Well, what else could you call it when a man looked like he was torn between
pain and regret?

“Yeah,” he said. Still with the grimacing. “That sounds about right.”

“And now?” She’d make him say it.

“Now—”

He thrust his hands in his pants pockets and stared at the ceiling. Stared at the
walls. Stared at the floor. Stared anywhere but directly at her. She couldn’t take
it.

“You changed your mind!” she accused, whacking him across the shoulder with her little
purse. “Two minutes of talking in the hall and you don’t want to do it anymore? Are
you kidding me?”

J.D. caught her wrists and shackled them tight at her sides.

“I didn’t change my mind, believe me.” A dark heat flashed in his eyes and his hands
tightened almost painfully on her arms. Then she saw him shut it down and take a mental
step back. “But it has occurred to me that there might be…ramifications that we should
consider. And maybe this poker thing gives us a moment to think.”

“Ramifications?” She tugged out of his hands. Clearly he didn’t understand that she
had a flat pack of scalpels in her med bag. “If you are for one second thinking of
my brother, I’m—”

“I won’t say the idea of Tyler didn’t cross my mind, but no, that’s not the—”

“—a grown woman, and if I want to hop in the sack with the entire Pacific Fleet, he
has nothing to say—”

“—only reason I think you should check this out.” He was pacing back and forth across
the carpeted entryway in front of her, and it was irritating her just to look at him.
So she stepped into the bathroom and flipped the switch. Might as well check on the
state of her makeup while he weaved his flimsy excuses. She leaned over the padded
vanity stool to get closer to the mirror that ran the length of the wall over the
double sinks.

J.D.’s voice carried to her from the abbreviated hall. He had moved on to how this
tournament would be the culmination of a lifetime of dreams for her and she shouldn’t
deprive herself of such a chance.

Blah, blah, blah.

Never mind that she’d never thought once, much less twice, about tournament play.
If the man had changed his mind, he should just say so. He’d been caught up in the
moment, and now he wasn’t.

Simple enough.

Her lipstick, however, was a lost cause. She wiped her mouth with a tissue and slicked
on a new coat of deep red gloss. Then she left the bathroom.

“Look,” J.D. seemed relieved to have her back in his line of sight. “I am
not
saying we shouldn’t do this. But an hour one way or another won’t change anything.
And there’s one thing I want to do. An errand. So you go meet these guys. I’ll find
you downstairs in an hour or so, and we can see if we’re still…” He stepped closer
to her. Trailed a finger lightly down her arm. “On the same page.”

She let the surge of desire rise in her like a slow wave in a calm ocean. Then, like
a wave, it moved past her without leaving any trace of itself behind.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” She reached up and patted his cheek before turning around
and leaving the room. She spoke over her shoulder. “That ship has sailed.”

Outside her room, she found Mr. Fiorentino a little ways down the hall, talking into
a cell phone. He finished his conversation at once and smiled at her.

“Thank you for waiting,” she said and took him by the arm. They headed for the elevator
bank. “How’s your baby, by the way?”

“Winston? He lost three pounds thanks to you. Fit as a fiddle. Your husband isn’t
joining us?”

“Indeed, he is not.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t congratulate you on your marriage earlier. I was misled by the
fact that you checked in alone,” the manager said when they arrived at the elevators
and pressed the call button.

“Yes, well, when I arrived in Vegas, I didn’t have a husband,” she said after a moment.
It was simpler than explaining. Elevator doors opened.