Page 56 of All Bets Are Off

“You feel so good,” he growls, and he wraps a fistful of my hair around his hand as he thrusts steadily, like every single stroke is equally as careful and concentrated as the last. Sweat beads along his forehead and his skin feels clammy. He buries his face deep into the crook of my neck with the most vulnerable of moans. “Ah, shit, Hails. I’m going to come already. I’m sorry.”

I push his hair back from his damp forehead, angling his face to look at me. “Don’t fight it,” I tell him, and when he nods and tries to look away again, I grasp his jaw once more. “Can you look at me while you come, Theo?”

Such a demand is what pushes him over the edge. His blue eyes widen as they lock with mine and he clenches his teeth with determination as his thrusts quicken. With a coy smile, I gently stroke his jaw, and suddenly Theo is a trembling mess above me, his cock pulsating with waves of euphoria. His groans fade into breathlessness and he dips his forehead to mine. He kisses my cheek, then pushes off of me and collapses on his back by my side.

We stare at the ceiling together, our heavy pants filling the silence.

It’s like the house lights coming on at the end of a show, and suddenly you’re snapped back to reality. My cheeks heat with mortification and I clutch a handful of the sheets and drape them over my body. “Oh my gosh. I’m so embarrassed. I get, um, weirdly confident . . .”

“I like confident, naked Hailey,” Theo says, reaching out for my hand and intertwining our fingers. I sense his eyes on me, so despite my blushing, I force myself to look at him, too, and it isn’t as scary as I feared it might be. “I mean, I always knew I’d like naked Hailey. But I really fucking love it when naked Hailey tells me to look at her when I come.”

“Theo!” I groan, pulling the sheets up over my face now, because I can’t believe I really did that. “Don’t ever repeat that.”

He tugs on the sheets to reveal me again, and he’s a little bit closer now, a soft smile on his lips. “I really have liked you forever, Hails,” he says sincerely, and maybe that’s enough for me to let him ravish me all over again. He is so reassuring. I love it.

“And I really have liked you . . . Well, since yesterday,” I admit self-consciously, then push myself up onto my elbows and look down at him. “But I do need to get back to my book. I got kind of distracted.”

“Of course,” he says. With a smug grin, he rests his hands on the back of his head and releases a happy sigh. “You go ahead and write. I’m going to lie here and visualize the past ten minutes on repeat in my mind. You’re even better than my dreams, Hails.”

24

Evelyn

Jameson and I walked—no, trekked—all the way back to the Cosmopolitan after leaving Encore Beach Club. We were both at the peak of drunkenness then, neither of us quite walking in a perfectly straight line, and I’m surprised we even made it back to our hotel without detouring headfirst into the Bellagio fountains. Our eyes lit up at the flashing neon lights of the casino and we were drawn in by the hope of winning big, but my ass had barely touched the seat in front of a slot machine when a security guard told me I needed to cover up a little more. Apparently, a sheer sarong over a skimpy bikini doesn’t cut it.

That’s how I’ve ended up wearing one of Jameson’s T-shirts. He ran back to his suite to fetch it for me, and it drapes me like a dress. It smells of his cologne and I wonder if maybe I can keep it after tonight, like a little Vegas souvenir to bring back to Florida with me, rather than some tacky keyring. Considering I have spent most of my time with Jameson this weekend, it makes sense I should have a token to remember him by.

“Can I keep this?” I ask, tugging on the hem where it sits over my thighs.

Jameson glances sideways from the slot machine next to mine. “Sure. Any luck yet?” He squints at my giant LED screen, checking in on my balance, but the severe lack of celebratory jingles coming from my machine over the past thirty minutes should have given him a clue.

“My hundred bucks is now forty,” I mumble. I smack the button for another spin and, like a brat, throw myself back against my chair and cross my arms over my chest. My lower lip juts out sulkily. “I think I might just give up on slots and try something else. Maybe blackjack?”

“Do you even know how to play blackjack?”

“No.”

“How about roulette? No thinking involved,” Jameson says, and I glare at him.

“Do you think I’m just some dumb blonde or something?”

He laughs as he hits his cash-out—of course he is leaving his slot machine with a small profit, because every single person on this planet is luckier than me. “No, Evie. I actually think you’re a seriously hot, seriously interesting blonde. But you need to make some money, and I think you’d have a better shot over at the roulette table.”

“Let’s try it,” I say, and I grab my cash-out voucher too.

It’s Saturday evening now, so the casino floor has the same bustling, vibrant energy as it did last night. Everyone is in good spirits, cocktail waitresses weave from table to table, and there’s the occasional uproar of celebration that makes me seethe with jealousy, because goddamn it—all I want is to win once. Just two grand is all I need, and then I can return to school for the fall semester without living in fear.

All of the roulette tables with a live dealer are pretty packed, but we finally find one with some space for Jameson and me to join. I don’t dare admit I’ve never played roulette, so I simply copy everything Jameson does. We hand over our cash to the dealer in exchange for our chips—mine are yellow, his are green—and then Jameson starts scattering a handful of his randomly across the board. I panic, and throw three chips down. One on my lucky number, one on my birthday, and one on zero. Each chip is worth five dollars, and when neither of my three numbers come in after the first spin, I realize just how quickly fifteen dollars evaporated before my eyes.

“Patience,” Jameson reassures me when he sees the panic on my face. He’s throwing a lot more chips down than me, which means he’s losing a lot more than me, too, because none of his numbers come in, either.

We go again. Jameson picks different numbers this time, whereas I stick to the same three. I’m glaring at the roulette wheel so intensely, manifesting some luck, that my vision starts to blur and it kind of makes me dizzy.

And then the ball circles into the number zero.

Both of us have a chip covering it, and I gasp in delight.

“There we go,” Jameson says coolly, slipping his arm around the small of my back and letting his hand rest on my hip. If I wasn’t so ecstatic about winning, I’d probably focus on that more, but right now all I see are dollar signs.