Page 10 of One Night Gamble
“How?”
“Well…I want to see you naked,” he said.
“Good. I want to see you naked.”
He shook his head. “If you keep saying stuff like that, I’ll last about thirty seconds. I want this to last all night.”
She chewed her lower lip between her teeth, tipping her head to the side until a strand of her hair fell forward and brushed against the side of her face. When she tucked the strand behind her ear, he noticed the multicolored stud in her ear.
“I’m intrigued. How is playing a game going to make this last?”
“We can let the cards decide,” he said.
“How?” she asked again, smiling. Good. She knew that this was just a bit of fun.
“We will each draw a card. Whoever has the highest one gets to demand a piece of clothing or a caress from the other player. Each hand will bring us closer to where we want to be.”
She arched one eyebrow at him. “And if we’re playing for touches as well as clothing, how will we determine the winner?”
“If we play it right, we’ll both win,” he said.
She turned and walked back to where he’d put the champagne glasses. Then she picked them up and carried them to the large table in the foyer. His apartment had curving staircases that led up to the second floor and his bedroom. In the middle of the foyer was a large walnut table that had been inlaid with the four suits of cards in a deck. She put her glass on the large spade and set his on the heart.
“Game on,” she said.
He walked over to her and shuffled the deck he was holding, then placed it in the middle of the table.
…
He held the deck out to her and she slipped off her stiletto heels to be more comfortable, then leaned forward to take a card from the middle of the deck. The hardwood floor was smooth and cool against her bare feet, but she felt the heat in every glance that Casey gave her. He watched her in a way that no man had before.
He didn’t even glance at the deck as he drew a card from it. She had grown up watching her Gran and her dad play Pokeno in restaurants, and had learned from an early age that some people would bet on anything. But she’d never played high card. She’d never felt that randomness should define any of her actions.
She glanced at her card. It was the seven of clubs. Not a great card, she thought, but out of fifty-two cards, there were only sixteen royal cards. So it wasn’t a bad draw, either.
Casey gave nothing away as he looked at his card and then back over at her. “What do you have?”
She wasn’t a gambler, but she knew that simply showing her card wasn’t going to be much fun. “You’ll have to give me something if you want to see it.”
He threw his head back and laughed, and she realized that in a different life, she might have genuinely liked him and wanted something more than one night with him.
“Fair enough. I’ll give you…my shoes,” he said.
She shook her head. “That’s not going to get you anything except me taking a sexy sip of my drink.”
“A sexy sip?” he asked.
She had no idea how to drink sexy but he brought out something in her that made her feel like she was more than her normal self. And she liked it. It was as if, for this one night with him, she didn’t have to be the serious one.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m intrigued,” he said, toeing off his leather loafers and then arching his eyebrow at her.
She tried to remember the last sexy movie she’d seen, but she hadn’t been to the theatre in more than a year. Still, Gran was fond of watching old black-and-white movies and they had a subtle way of showing flirting between men and women that she thought she could mimic.
She lifted the champagne glass and instead of taking a sip, she ran her tongue around the edge of it, keeping eye contact with him, wishing it was the surface of his lips she was touching. They’d felt firm against hers when he’d kissed her. Their embrace had been way too short.
She saw his pupils dilate and his nostrils flare slightly as he watched her slowly tip the glass back and take a sip. The bubbles of the sparkling wine exploded on her tongue and she closed her eyes as she swallowed. When she looked up, Casey’s gaze was focused on her. She had the feeling this game wasn’t going to last very long.
