Accidentally in Love With the Biker (What Happens in Vegas) (7 page)

Chapter Eight

Well, he’d certainly plopped that divorce bomb out there on the table to smell up the party.

As the emcee rambled a little about how grateful she was that everyone had come to
the party, and how everyone should make sure they picked up their copy of Romance Hero Mystery Date, a remade version of some old game, Quinn waited in agony for Kellie to choose her bachelor so he could escape.

“Bachelor Number Three,” she said, coming around the little divider that had been set up to screen her from him and the other two guys, who shook his hand and went back to their tables.

He stood up, dazed, and he hugged her, and the crowd applauded. Someone handed him a big canvas bag filled with lovely parting gifts.

“Did you think I wasn’t going to choose you?” she asked, as she nudged him into a slow sway to the music that someone had turned on. “You have the weirdest look on your face.”

His body heaved a sigh of pleasure when she plastered her curves against him. “I just… I shouldn’t have said that last stuff. I kind of forgot to play the game. I didn’t mean to sound like Dougie Downer.”

She giggled and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, so he kissed her back. He might be a lunkhead but he wasn’t a complete moron. She tasted like chocolate and spice, and he lost himself in the slide of his lips against hers.

Her arms slid around his waist, and he felt her lean into him. His cock began to harden, straining against the leather. Her belly brushed him, but not quite enough, so he put his hands on her hips and pulled her in even closer. Still not enough, but they were in public.

Besides. There would be talking now.

He let himself enjoy the slight movement of her body against his while he waited. He didn’t have to wait long.

“So. You were married.”

He sighed, but his dick wasn’t giving up, so he continued to hold her. Was it weird that he should be so turned on while talking about this? The way his heart was beating, he suspected he could share his worst
Insidious
/
Saw
nightmares with Kellie and still be hard. So yeah, his marriage. “For about fifteen minutes.”

“And?”

“Before we got married, I told her what I wanted to do—the bikes—but she thought I’d change my mind and get a
real
job after we got married. I didn’t change my mind, so Rachel changed hers.”

“I’m sorry,” Kellie said, and he knew she meant it. She
got
him, which was crazy, after such a short time.

Looking down at the woman in his arms, dancing to Barry Manilow in a conference room of a Las Vegas hotel, while dressed in pants that were about to ensure that he would never, ever have children, Quinn made a mental note to thank Rachel when he next saw her. “I’m not sorry. She’s happier now, and I’m doing what I want to be doing.” Would she get that he meant that literally?

Her lips were curved in a smile, her warm, soft body pressed against his, and he didn’t regret any of the choices that had brought him to this point.

Would Kellie care that he didn’t have big money and respectable social status in his future? If she were living here, that is. It didn’t matter. She was here right now, and right now, she seemed to like him just fine.

Leaning down, slowly, watching her eyes, he moved in. Her pupils flared and her lips parted, meeting his halfway in a kiss that was both soft and significant.

God
. Her lips were smooth and moist, and he licked over the bottom one, inside, over her teeth, as one of her arms slid up his to his neck, holding him steady.

Her breasts pressed against his chest, and she sighed, leaning into him. He pulled her closer, wanting to feel her slide over his skin, grateful for his nearly nonexistent shirt, because it allowed him to feel her nipples through her silky dress.

One hand on each of her hips, he rocked her into him, to show her how badly he needed—

Flash!

Quinn jumped back, startled, nearly pulling Kellie down in the process.

The photographer grinned, took another shot, and said, “Check the website tomorrow!”

“Great,” he grumbled. “I hope they got a clear shot of how fucking uncomfortable these pants are.”

“Oh.” Kellie was looking at him. At his crotch.

He looked down, too. The lights had come up in the room, and it was clear as day that he was rock hard.

“Oh my,” she said. “Do you want to sit down?”

“That would probably be more uncomfortable,” he admitted. His embarrassment did nothing to diminish Mr. Happy’s joy.

“Well, should we dance some more, so I can be camouflage?”

“That’s what got me in this situation in the first place,” he pointed out. Although, yes, he did want her body against his again.

“Hmmm. Well, we could make you a kilt out of tablecloth, that might—”

“Maybe we could just stop talking about it?”

Pressing her lips together, eyes sparkling, she nodded.

“Glad you’re amused. I feel like a seventh grader.”

She looked down again. “Really? Those eighth-grade girls must have been willing to date down a grade then, weren’t they?”

He didn’t mind being turned on as fuck by Kellie. He didn’t mind that she knew how hard he was for her. He wasn’t too thrilled with the surreptitious, and not so surreptitious, glances coming his way from the rest of the women in the room. Jesus, he was going to need medical attention soon.

Dick-wilting rescue finally came in the form of one very drunk author stumbling through the crowd toward them.

“Hey, guys, have you seen Toby? He never came back from the bathroom.” Brae swayed on her feet, makeup smudged, wineglass sloshing slightly.

Okay, he hadn’t jumped in during dinner, so was this when he was supposed to do something heroic, like save the heroine’s frenemy from a broken heart with duct tape and baling twine? He wasn’t fucking MacGyver, but he’d do whatever he could, he supposed.

“Maybe he’s in the casino.”

“The casino!” Kellie looked at him as though he’d saved the universe from a giant asteroid, and he really hoped he was Ben Affleck and not Bruce Willis in her mental movie. “I bet you’re right! We should go there.”

“But you don’t gamble,” Brae said, slugging back more wine.

“I do now.”

…

“I don’t know how any of this stuff works,” Kellie said, mesmerized by the lights and noise of the slot machines, the press of humanity, the air of equal parts hope and desperation that wafted through the endles
s rooms.

Of course she’d seen slot machines since she’d gotten here. There were machines in the grocery store where she’d stopped for apple juice, for heaven’s sake. But this—this was insane with a capital Cray-cray.

Brae had wandered off in search of either Toby or a fresh glass of wine, Kellie wasn’t sure which, but her friend seemed to be okay for the moment.

Quinn’s hand on her lower back didn’t help Kellie’s focus any. Her skin felt too tight, still aroused from the simple little slow dance at the end of the party. Seeing him—feeling him so hard against her—made her corresponding regions soften. She was amazed her thighs weren’t making noise as she walked, she was so wet.

“What do you want to try first?” Quinn’s voice rumbled through her ear, straight to her clit.

First I want to try kissing you some more, then I want to try taking off those ridiculous leather pants, then—

“Kellie? You still with me here, babe?”

More than you could know
. “Um, what do you recommend?”

“Depends on how much risk you’re comfortable with. I don’t ever bring any more money than I can afford to lose—so I’m not here often. But…” He dug into the bag of stuff Amber Night had handed them for winning the dating game and pulled out a bag full of coins. “We seem to have been gifted with some play money.”

“We can play with that?”
Can we throw it on the bed and roll around on it, so it sticks to our sweaty bodies, and then—

“It’s real money. Or it can be exchanged for real money. I think they’d like us to lose it here, though.”

Kellie stared at the handful of tokens, forcing her attention back into the casino. Her sensible self said to tell Quinn to cash it and put it toward the repair of his bike.

But it probably wasn’t enough to put a new grip on one handlebar.

“So…what’s our best bet?”

He smiled patiently. “Nothing. But there are some that aren’t as horrible as others. Let’s start with roulette.”

They found a table with a couple of people playing and watched for a few minutes. Quinn put his arm around her, surrounding her with his scent, and explained all the different ways to bet—black or red, even or odd, the groups of numbers.

A young guy wearing a torn Black Sabbath T-shirt and a gray fedora chewed on an unlit cigarette while he won and lost nearly five hundred dollars.

Before Kellie hyperventilated with sympathy for the guy, Quinn took a chip and asked her to choose between red and black.

She happened to be staring at his ass in the black leather pants at the time, so she said, “Black.”

They lost that one, but then won three more. Then he convinced her to bet on one of the sets of twelve, and she won a little more than she had on just betting on black. She lost a couple times betting on individual numbers, and they moved on.

“That’s how it works. The steeper the odds, the higher the payout.”

Before she thought, she asked, “Is that what you’re doing with your bike business? Betting on a long shot?”

She could have bitten off her own tongue, but he laughed. That sound also sent shivers through her body. Could she come from his sound vibrations alone?

“Maybe. The odds are mixed, I guess… I’m pretty sure I can stay afloat repairing bikes, but the chances of being the next reality show bike builder might take a little miracle.”

The horror must have shown on her face, because he laughed and said, “Babe. I don’t want to have a reality show. I just want to be good enough to be wanted.”

Oh, he was wanted, all right. She wrapped her arm around his and slid her fingers between his. “I believe you can do it. Those bikes you showed me were pretty neat.”

“You’re pretty neat, too.” He kissed her, a casual, sweet, comfortable kiss that warmed her as much as the sexier one earlier in her room. “But what about you? What about the odds of this writing thing?”

She shook her head. “Too long.”

“But how much risk? You don’t really have to put up much money to get started, right?”

She thought about it. “No. Not much money. Time. Too much time.” And too much heartbreak. “I can’t really afford the assistant I have in the shop. But if I work more, I’d lose writing time… I just can’t win.”

He shrugged. “Depends on what you consider a win.”

She thought about that for a moment, but was distracted when Quinn touched her arm and said, “Hey, we’re here to have fun, not stress about the future. How are your math skills?”

“I can balance my checkbook. Most of the time.”

“Good enough. Come on.”

He held out a chair for her at a blackjack table and explained the rules, then divvied up their remaining tokens.

After a few minutes, she’d amassed a healthy pile of money and was feeling an energy she’d never experienced before. Between the high from winning money and her persistent state of sexual arousal, she thought she might be able to scale the pyramid place down the street. “Can I bet more than five dollars?” She was feeling confident, now that she knew how it worked. She might lose a few hands, but then she’d hit big and win back more than she lost.

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.” She put twenty on the table and was dealt a ten and a seven. The dealer had a ten showing.

“Hit me,” she said. She felt Quinn tense next to her, but knew it was too late.
Oops.

The dealer tossed her a four, and everyone at the table groaned.

“Twenty-one! I win!”

Quinn was smiling at her, an amused, indulgent look.

“Are you humoring me?” she asked.

“Maybe a little. Mostly I’m having a good time watching you break all the rules and kick everyone’s ass.”

“Oh.” She looked around at the other players, most of whom seemed to appreciate her beginner’s luck. “I don’t usually break rules.”

“I know.” His dark eyes held hers and then stroked over her body. Her breasts felt heavy, and she knew she was close to breaking some other rules. Rules about gambling with her feelings and getting naked with someone she would never see again.

“Would you take a look at that,” someone said, breaking the spell.

Everyone stared across the room at a table where several scantily clad women gyrated in G-strings and not much else. They had been joined by a woman wearing clothes, a conference badge, and an engagement ring from Toby Wagner.

“Well, it certainly looks like your friend’s having a good time,” Quinn observed drily.

Chapter Nine

Kellie watched Quinn expertly wrangle the drunken Brae off the bar and into the elevator without once allowing her to stop and wallow in self-pity. His ability to avoid readers and other authors was impressive. Somehow he convinced Brae that Toby was probab
ly in their hotel room waiting for her.

Kellie was afraid Toby was in Joyce Rodgers’s room. Joyce was infamous for dragging cover models into her room and not letting them come up for air for weeks—but they always wound up semi-naked on the front of the biggest historical best-sellers, so Toby was probably going to come out richer and more famous.

But poor Brae. Even though he’d seemed pretty self-absorbed, she was clearly in love with the guy. She was going to be devastated. But right now, her friend was annoying and wasted.

As Kellie dug through Brae’s clutch for her key card, Brae pawed Quinn. “You’re a good, good, gooooood boyfren. Kelleeez so lucky. Toby’s really cute and stuff, but you’re fuckin’ hot as fuck.”

“Oh my God,” Kellie muttered, giving Brae a none-too-gentle hip check to get her away from the door so she could scan the card. And to dislodge Brae from Quinn, who was very gently trying to uncurl one hand from his shirt as Brae tangled the other one in his waistband.

Kellie held the door while Quinn supported Brae through and pointed her toward the bed.

Brae flopped onto the mattress, her short skirt hiked up in back far enough to see that she was wearing a thong. A black one.

“Oh, look,” Quinn said, whirling away from the bed. “There’s a message.” He snatched the notepad from the desk and tore a piece of paper from the top and examined it.

“Lemme see it.” Brae lurched upward and tried to reach Quinn, who conveniently dropped the note—right into a cold cup of coffee that had been left on the desk.

“Oh, damn,” he said, snatching the cup before Brae could drag the paper out. “I’m such a clod. It’s a good thing I read it before I ruined it, huh?”

“Whadit say?” She sat back down on the bed and began removing her shoes—by leaning back and sticking one leg in the air and reaching up for the straps of her sandals.

Again, a lovely view.

“Here, let me help you with that,” Kellie said, tipping Brae’s leg back down and working at the buckle.

“Toby said he went to get something at the store and that you should go ahead and get some sleep, and he’ll see you in a bit.”

“Oh.” Brae considered this.

Quinn was a lousy liar, but Brae didn’t know which end was up, so it didn’t matter.

“What did he go get?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Quinn said. “What do you think he went to get?”

Brae smiled, curling over on one side and tucking her hands under her cheek. “Maybe isssa present for me.”

Kellie unzipped Brae’s dress and made a “turn around” gesture to Quinn.

He raised an eyebrow, but complied, reaching into the pink suitcase on the floor by the bed and throwing a big green T-shirt over his shoulder at Kellie. “Maybe it
is
a present. What do you hope it is?”

“Shocklate. Or honey. To rub all over my body.”

He coughed with an exaggerated grimace. “Whoa, okay there, sister. I think you’re ready to go nite-nite.” Hearing it through the walls was one thing, but hearing it in detail was another. Kellie pulled the covers over Brae and put a bottle of water and some ibuprofen on the nightstand next to her.

“I think we should keep this one,” Brae said.

“What should we keep?” Kellie asked, turning off the light next to the bed.

“Keep Quinn. He’s real. Realer than that Mark guy.”

“Yeah, he’s real.” She chose not to consider that concept too closely, at least not right now. “Good night, Brae.”

“G’nite Kell-Bell.”

Quinn held the door for Kellie and they walked into the hallway.

“Where do you think he is?” he asked.

“I think he’s with Joyce, that publisher,” she told him.

Her disappointment in Toby went deep.

“Hey,” Quinn said, putting an arm around Kellie’s shoulder and pulling her against him. “She’ll be okay.”

“Maybe. I guess it’s better that she find out now, than after—”

“After they get married?”

“Yeah, sorry to bring it up—” She wasn’t sorry that he was no longer married, but she did regret bringing up the topic again.

He rubbed her arm. “It’s cool. We were too young, too selfish. I’m over it, Rachel’s
way
over it and has the proper young professional she always wanted.”

“Okay.”

“What about you? Why are you still single?”

Now she really regretted bringing up relationship statuses. “Ugh. There aren’t that many single guys in my little town, and the online long-distance guys…don’t ever seem to work out. My last date told me he was a pharmaceutical sales rep.”

“Oh, no. I see where this is going.”

“Yeah, he got huffy with me when I wouldn’t give him my urine to take in to his probation officer, so we decided to go our separate ways.”

“Yuck.”

“I know, right? The guy I saw before that—Mark—had a real job—he told me he was a history teacher and dealt in antiquities. Which I found out later meant he had a booth at a flea market selling other people’s garage sale rejects—his specialty was history textbooks.”

The disappointment on Quinn’s face brought Kellie’s little self-pity party to an end.

…

He was an idiot for thinking that he could have met—even briefly—a woman who wasn’t interested in his earning potential. Why did it even matter? This was a one-night hookup without sex that had gone on for two nights already—it was time to cut and run.

But before Quinn could extract his arm from a
round Kellie’s shoulder, she turned and took his face in her smooth hands.

“I wouldn’t have cared if he was the guy who gathers up stray shopping carts if he’d told me who he was to begin with. I’m done with guys who tell me they’re something that they aren’t. That’s all.”

Staring into her seafoam eyes, he believed her. At least, he believed that she believed it. And it didn’t matter, did it? After this weekend, he wouldn’t see her again anyway.

His mission was to show her a good time and see if he could encourage her to follow her own dreams—not to worry if anyone would hang around to see if his turned into nightmares.

“So,” she said. “I’ve got some beer and chips in my room. Want to come in and see if
Jeopardy
’s on or something?” Her eyes gave the phrase “come hither” a new meaning.

Quinn’s body sent him “go” signals. He cleared his throat. “Or something? Is that a metaphor?”

“Well.” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m also kind of interested to see what’s in your goody bag there, besides casino tokens.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Darlin,’ my goodies defy description.” And at the moment, his goodies were in rare form, even for a man who’d been hard and aching most of the night.

Her laugh filled the silent hallway, and they both cracked up when someone stuck their head around the corner near the elevator nook.

“But if you need me to describe them for you…” He poked around in the tote bag he’d been given. “Nice bottle of Blue Mountain Bourbon,” he said. “Some other stuff down here, but it’s wrapped up. Oh—here’s a fancy set of playing cards.”

“Then maybe we can play strip poker.”

Oh, yes, please.
His hands longed to unwrap her from that dress, to see what was underneath.

She pointed at the bag he carried. “Any chocolate or honey in there?”

He pictured her, naked, while he licked sticky sweet stuff from her—to the sweeter stuff beneath.

He wasn’t sure why he hesitated. Maybe he needed things to be spelled out. “Brae’s passed out. Even if Toby comes back with his virtue intact, there’s no reason to have loud fake sex,” he said.

“I know.” She started to put her thumb to her luscious lips, then stopped herself and held his gaze. “I don’t want loud
fake
sex.”

She slid her key card in the slot. She held the door, staring at him, until he got his wits back from his dick—which was still in a stranglehold from the borrowed pants. It took a few seconds, but then he moved, following her into the room.

He stopped, watching her walk across the room, tossing her key card on the nightstand, kicking off her shoes with a sigh, tugging at something in her hair, which brought the whole mess tumbling down around her shoulders. She was taking a chance here, he realized. Letting herself do things that she wouldn’t normally do. Including him.

But so was he, wasn’t he? He was playing with fire—taking a chance that this nice girl might mean more to him than he could let go of at the end of the weekend.

She smiled at him, quizzically. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. We can play rummy. I’m not a total letch.”

“I am.” He moved then, reaching her in three steps, taking her in his arms, kissing those amazing lips.

She moaned, stroking his hair, his arms, touching him everywhere, at once, it seemed—and it felt great.

So he touched her back. He put his hands in her silky hair, ran his fingers through it, watched the colors flow in the light.

Kellie stroked her fingers over his shoulders, tracing the lines of his collarbones and tugging at the fabric of his nearly nonexistent undershirt, pulling it from his waistband and then running her hands underneath and up, stroking over his stomach and ribs, across his chest, teasing his nipples and drawing a gasp from him.

He grabbed her arms. “Are you sure you want to do this? I don’t want you to regret this—what happens in Vegas…”

She smiled. “I think my biggest regret would be going home with
out
doing this. As long as you want…” Her eyes grew round and she backed away. “Do you want—?”

Great. Now he was coming across as an idiot. “I don’t know. I’m feeling awfully sweet and heroic,” he told her. “Maybe we should just snuggle.”

She snorted, and the awkward moment was broken. Putting one pink-tipped finger to her lips, she pondered this, then said, “Well, okay, but I think we need to get Toby’s pants off of you. In case, you know, he needs them back soon.”

Okay. Yeah. He was practically trembling with need. His fingers were about three hundred feet in diameter, fumbling with his pants.

She reached out and slid her fingers between his belly and the waistband, working at the button. The damned pants were getting more uncomfortable by the second.

“Gosh,” she said. “This is kind of
hard
. I think I need a closer look.”

Quinn groaned when she dropped to her knees and bent forward to kiss his stomach. Her lips were too much—and not enough. When the button finally popped free, she slid her fingers in deeper, between the zipper and his boxer briefs.

Her fingers brushed his aching cock when she pulled the tab of the zipper down. As the leather loosened, she stroked, and had him free of the pants in seconds. He didn’t think being surrounded by her hand and his underwear could feel better, until she pulled the fabric away and surrounded him with her lips. Okay. Now it was too much. He needed more.

Oh, fuck
. His head fell back.

The power and wet heat of her mouth was doubled by the look in her eyes as she took him in. She licked around the head at first, then pulled him in farther, surrounding the shaft with her hand, tugging his jeans down with her other hand before coming back up to stroke his balls, which were already growing tight.

He took a long, selfish minute to feel the slick movement of her mouth over him, listen to the little sounds she made, and to stroke that gorgeous hair some more, but then couldn’t stand the thought of not touching—and tasting—the rest of her.

“Okay, whoa.” He moved back, reluctantly, and took her hands. “I gotta get you naked, sugar.”

Mouth red and wet, eyes huge and shiny, pupils enormous, Kellie just nodded.

After allowing him to help her to her feet, she stepped back and pulled her dress up and over her head.

He didn’t think he could have been any more aroused, but when he saw what was under that white dress, Quinn nearly passed out from the blood that rushed from his brain to his dick.

…

Maybe Kellie should have let Quinn take off her dress slowly. In the dark and under the covers.

Because after she whipped off her dress, he just stood there, expressionless, for the longest moment of her life.

She looked down, self-consciously exposed. But she’d been too into what she’d been doing, enjoying the taste and textures of pleasing Qu
inn, the rasp of his breath. She’d been so turned on that when he said he wanted her naked, she hadn’t thought about it, she’d just yanked off the dress. Was he shocked? “It’s a white dress. Everything I have shows through white.”

“You’re really, really naked.” He came toward her.

As he reached her and put a hand on each side of her waist, his penis brushed her tummy. When he drew her against him, she felt his thighs against hers, her breasts pressed against his rib cage, and his testicles nestle against her, that hard cock imprinting her skin.

She felt it all, because she hadn’t worn any underwear.

He bent his head toward her, and just before he kissed her, said, “You’re so fucking hot, I could come just looking at you.”

It wasn’t the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her, but it turned her on more than anything ever had because it was real, basic. She met his kiss with her lips and tongue and tried everything short of superglue to get her skin closer to his.

They found their way to the bed and Quinn fell back, pulling her down on top of him, then rolling her over. He ran a hand along her side, up and down, from her hip to her rib cage, not going any higher.

She squirmed, her breast aching for his touch. Her nipples were swollen, begging for his attention. Finally, finally, he swept his hand forward and cupped her, thumbing her nipple, then bending his head to take it into his mouth and sucking. Hard.

For the first time in her life, Kellie was glad she wasn’t skinny, because Quinn couldn’t seem to stop touching her, squeezing her, stroking her everywhere. Except where she needed him most.