Page 19 of Conning the Billionaire
Because she’d told him she was a blackjack dealer. Oops. “Or you know, Texas Hold’em. We could play that.”
The blond Italian stepped over to the cashier’s cage a few steps away and flipped his phone over to scan the QR code again.
Damn, he must have special privileges.
The high roller room was hazy with blue cigarette smoke, among other tar-fire smoke fumes, as one of the few places where smoking was still allowed in AC. All of Atlantic City bent over backward for the high rollers. Whales were the lifeblood of casinos. So the high roller room was one of the few places where the gamblers were allowed to smoke inside.
The HVAC system sucked the fumes straight up into the vents, though.
The blond Italian returned with a stack of poker chips pinched between his thumb and first finger.
Lots of chips.
Black ones, and some oversized ones that were purple and orange.
The orange ones were worth a thousand dollars each. She’d heard about them before but had never seen one up close.
Wow, this guy had earned that high roller player’s card.
Also, his hand was huge, holding that many chips with just two fingers.
The blond Italian looked over the crowd because he was head-and-shoulders above most of the other people in the room and then led their way toward a gaming table, holding his empty hand out behind him as he negotiated the crowd to guide her through.
Kylie slipped her hand into his strong, warm one.
She shouldn’t have done that.
Initiating bodily contact with marks was not in her usual game plan. If anything, she played a little hard to get and kept them far enough away that they couldn’t cop a feel.
But as their palms slid against each other and his fingers grasped hers, energy surged up her arm and pooled in her stomach.
The guy stopped walking and turned back to her, still holding her hand in his.
The crowd flowed around them, but as Kylie looked up into his glitter-flecked eyes, the noise and movement seemed to thin and fade away.
He stepped closer, holding her hand clasped in his and the back of her hand against his chest.
The skin on the back of her hand felt the buttons on his suit vest, the heat of his body, and his heart pulsing under his clothes.
Entirely on instinct, she stepped closer to him, their arms folding between their chests.
The blond Italian looked down at her seriously, but he was a serious guy. His demeanor had cracked into a smile only a few times over dinner. He didn’t seem grim to Kylie, though. His straight gaze seemed more like he had an intensity that other guys lacked.
Or, anyway, that other guys lacked now. She’d never noticed that every other guy she’d ever met was a twitchy adolescent until she’d met this man whose name she still didn’t know, dammit.
The frustration was enough to turn a con artist into a pickpocket.
Her hand slid under his jacket and around his trim waist, a move that might be sexy, affectionate, or reaching for his wallet in his back pocket.
Except the guy’s wallet wasn’t in his back pocket, dammit. When he’d taken the titanium player’s card out, he’d removed his wallet from his suit jacket’s breast pocket.
Yeah, that was probably smart of him. Some of Kylie’s best friends were pickpockets. They made a good living in AC.
Besides, she wasn’t wearing long sleeves to tuck her stolen booty in, and her dress didn’t even have pockets to stash anything she took. It was probably better that the temptation wasn’t there.
He reached around her with his other hand, the one still palming a stack of poker chips, and held her closer.
Her legs and pelvis neared his. Warmth from his body radiated through the thin silk of her dress in the cold air-conditioned atmosphere of the casino.
