ACE: Las Vegas Bad Boys (16 page)

I need for her to recover.

“I’m Doctor Matthews, and I was just trying to explain a few things to Emmy here, but she’s pretty resistant to my ideas.”

“And what ideas are those, exactly?” Ace asks, eying him critically.

Okay, I know I’m trying to step back from all things Ace, but what he just did—looked Doctor Matthews over twice, and didn’t act like he’s god because he saves lives—that’s the shit I love. The shit that gets me horny.

I like the fact Ace isn’t getting off because some fancy doctor is talking to him. He’s acting like a man who has nothing to prove.

“Emmy needs to rest, to take a break from the hospital. She has been here every day off she’s had, for months. She sleeps here most nights. She hasn’t been outside in twenty-four hours.”

My body stiffens at the doctor’s words. I don’t want to leave. I want to be here for Janie’s first words—first everything. We’ve spent years apart, and I just want to have a sister again. A family.

“That’s great to hear, Doctor Matthews; I was thinking the same thing,” Ace says. “In fact, as her boss, I’m giving her paid leave so she can take care of herself.”

Jiggawhat? Ace is supposed to have my back. Not be all buddy-buddy with the doc.

“Um, no. I’ve gotta stay. For Janie.” I scowl at both men.

“The odds of your sister recovering to the point of speaking any time soon—this week even—are unrealistic. Her body is going to need plenty of recovery time, and your presence may heighten the stressors she needs to avoid.”

“You’re saying I’m her stressor? I’m her sister.”

“Yes, we’re all very aware of that, Emmy,” Doctor Matthews says. “But she needs to recuperate, and that isn’t going to happen overnight.”

I don’t want to cry. Not here with the doctor and not with Ace. I want to be strong. Be capable.

I also sort of just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for like fourteen days straight.

“The timing is perfect anyways, Doctor Matthews,” Ace says. “I have a getaway planned for Emmy, and I think it’s going to be perfect for her.”

“Get-a-what?” I ask, not knowing Ace’s plans. I’m not going anywhere.

“Great,” Doctor Matthew says. “Then under doctor’s orders, Emmy, I need you to take the next few days off. Come back rested. And we’ll call you if there’s any news.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” I say, raising a brow at him.

“I actually can. This is my floor. These are my patients. I don’t want to ban you, so you need to take time off on your own.”

Doctor Matthews walks away and I feel like kicking him. Kicking something.

I kick Ace’s shin instead, and he immediately reaches down to grab it in pain.

“What the fuck, Emmy Rose?” he asks, rubbing the place I kicked.

I know I couldn’t have hurt him that badly. I’m in ballet flats, for Christ’s sake.

“You’re supposed to have my back with doctors. With everything,” I tell him flippantly. “You know, if you love me?”

Ace smirks. “I thought you broke up with me.”

“I never knew we were together.”

“Well, we are.” And then Ace pulls me in for a kiss. I purse my lips together tightly. “Why are you so stingy with the PDA?”

“I haven’t showered in like eight years.”

“What’s with the hyperbole?”

“I hyperbolize when I’m exhausted. It’s like cheap humor. Usually gets my point across.”

“You’re saying you don’t want me to kiss you?”

I laugh, closing my eyes—realizing I would never have left this hospital unless a doctor threatened to ban me. Realizing I am so glad Ace didn’t listen when I told him to stay away.

Realizing I basically have no fucking clue what I actually need.

But maybe Ace does.

“I’m saying I want to shower first. And then you can do whatever you like with me.”

I
take
her to Spades Royalle.

She falls asleep on the drive over, and I realize this woman is beyond spent. She needs a solid night of rest before we get away anywhere.

We take a back entrance to avoid the casino floor. Emmy is exhausted and doesn’t need to run into anyone she knows.

I take her to the penthouse on the top floor.

My penthouse.

“I thought you don’t take women here?” she asks as we step out of the elevator into my massive apartment.

“I don’t take women here. But you’re not any woman. You’re mine.”

I see her eyes glaze over with desire at my words. Good. I like to see Emmy coming back. Maybe she’s just been in the sterile hospital for too long.

I show her to the bathroom, and turn on the faucet in the shower, which is large enough for a motherfucking orgy.

I show her the drawer of toiletries, and step away to make a few calls.

“Hey,” I say when Claire picks up. “This is Ace. Ace Royalle. And I want to surprise Emmy. Can you help me?”

“Oh, thank you, lord,” Claire says into the phone. “That poor girl. She called earlier, so happy about her sister waking up—which I get, it’s a miracle. But then said she was going to stay at the hospital until she started talking.”

“Well, she’s at my place now. I’m guessing she’ll sleep for twelve hours and then I can take her somewhere she’s never been. Get her mind off things. Any suggestions?”

“I thought you were her boyfriend. Aren’t you supposed to know these things?”

I grimace, realizing there are a lot of things about her I don’t know. Favorite food. Favorite movie. Favorite position—at least with that one I can make a few educated guesses.

“She tell you I’m her boyfriend?”

“Ha. No. Emmy isn’t a girly-girl,” Claire says. “She doesn’t kiss and tell. She’s basically just wound up too tight for her own good. What she really needs is to completely turn off for a few days. A chance to stop thinking about everything ... and just remember who she is.”

My mind is already spinning with possibilities. I can turn off her mind all right. I can also take her far away, somewhere exotic and romantic. Palm Springs or Napa or the fucking Caribbean. I can take her away from everything.

“I can do that,” I tell her.

“Good. Because I’ve never even spent time with a non-stressed Emmy. She moved here in crisis-mode, and that hasn’t changed for two months.”

“Well, now she has me.”

“You good with relationships, Ace?”

I pause, knowing I don’t do long-term anything. I do hook-ups and hallways and hope I remember the girl’s name.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I just don’t want you to fuck this up,” Claire says, her tone genuine. “Emmy has been through enough already.”

“I won’t, Claire. I promise.”

I end the call, swearing to myself and to God and to my mother’s grave that I’ll make good on this promise with Emmy.

I won’t ruin this.

* * *

D
ialing Denise
, I tell her the plans I need made.

Get the helicopter ready for a morning takeoff.

Reservations at Bon-Air, the luxury spa resort in the Arizona desert.

I’ll take her away to a relaxing weekend at one of the most exclusive resorts in the world.

I smile, knowing she is going to be blown away with what I can offer her.

* * *

I
check
on Emmy in the bathroom, and I’m glad she’s made it to the shower. I see her silhouette behind fogged glass and realize it’s the first time a woman has ever been in this space.

“Ace?” she asks, rubbing away a circle of fog from the heavy glass door.

Her eyes graze over me, and heat runs through me, all the way to my growing cock, as my eyes meet hers.

I’m in such close proximity to the woman I love. She’s naked and she’s alone and I just want her with me. To be with her.

“You okay?” I ask, for what seems the like the thousandth time today. Have I asked her anything else? And why is it so damn hard for me to say anything more?

“Come in here.”

I blink slowly, feel my chest expand.

Emmy Rose has my fucking heart.

I take off my pants, unbutton my shirt, strip quickly. I don’t want to be standing out here alone on this marble floor; I want to be with her.

I pull open the glass door, and enter the shower built for four. The showerheads pour water down over Emmy, who stands in the center. Her long brown hair covers her breasts, as beads of water soak her, causing her skin to glisten, nice and slick.

I want to run my hands all over her, I want her to wrap her legs around my waist. I want her here, now. I want her forever.

“You are so beautiful,” I tell her. I’m still shocked to be here with her. To have found a woman so unexpectedly. So perfect. Perfect for me.

“Oh, shush, Ace,” she says, raising her face to a softly pouring showerhead. As she does, water pours over her face; her back arches, her tits ready to be devoured.

“You looked so unraveled at the hospital,” I say stepping toward her, my rod growing stiff as I take in more of her body.

“I was. I am.” She turns from me, grabbing a bar of soap. I move behind her, wrap my arms around her waist. Being close to her feels so right, so new.

“Are you always this broken?” I ask her, worried about her ability to keep her shit together if everything weighs so heavy on her. I want to make her life easy. I want to take away her fucking burdens. I just need to know what she needs.

She doesn’t say yes, but she also doesn’t say no. All I get is an Emmy Rose sigh. A sound that feels an awful lot like defeat.

“Ace, I told you this was a bad time for me ... but the truth is, there will never be a good time. I’m the sort of girl who will always have issues. A past. A present. And none of it will be clean lines and straight strokes.”

I wrap my arm around her. Reaching for her face, I cup her cheek with my hand. Force her to look over her shoulder and see my eyes.

She drops the soap to the floor.

“I’m not scared of your raw edges, Emmy,” I tell her, turning her body to face mine. As she’s wrapped in my arms under the gentle water, I swear she knows I will never let her go. “I’m not scared of someone with rough patches and stitched-together stories, of someone used to living in the fucking fray.”

“Stop talking like that,” she tells me, her face burrowed in the crevice of my shoulder, resting against the barrels of the guns tattooed on my body.

“Like what?”

“Like you know me. Like you get me.” Emmy’s arms wrap around my neck, holding on for dear life. “Like you won’t leave.”

“Maybe it’s fucking time to let someone stay.”

* * *

H
e told me he loves me yesterday and he shows me he loves tonight.

His cock is amazing, his body a fucking rock. But the thing that brings me to the edge, to the place I wondered if I could ever let myself go, is his words.

Ace might be a lot of things—the son of a mafia boss and the owner of a casino, the most eligible bachelor in Vegas and friends with some of the most famous men in the city—but he isn’t a liar.

I thought he might be, when we first met ... when I thought he might be the Bullet my sister had been texting. But there was a legit reason they had spoke, and he was honest and forthright about all of it. About his relationship with Janie.

And Grotto is the man being questioned by the cops, not Ace.

Ace swore his innocence, and I have no reason to think he’s lied to me.

And the thing is, I want to believe he’s innocent. I want to believe the words he whispers in my ears. I want promises of forever, because they are something no one has ever offered me.

“Where did you come from, Ace?” I ask, as he runs his hand down my back, over my ass, then toward my front.

His hand presses against my opening, and warmth washes over me. I feel myself melting into to him as he glides one finger over the length of my pussy, teasing at the entrance, not going in.

“I came from an ugly place, Rose. A place too dark for you.” He kisses my shoulder, my neck, tickling at my ear as his breath intensifies.

“Try me, Ace,” I say, shifting my legs apart a bit more so he knows I want his fingers in my folds, want him to make me drip like he has done before.

“Baby, I come from the motherfucking place Godfather was invented. None of it was pretty. None of it was good.”

“Okay,” I say, knowing Ace has edges that are rough too, a past that has formed his present. “Anything good about that place? Anything at all?”

His fingers no longer graze my opening; they ease their way in, and I greedily lift my leg and rest it on the tiled bench.

He smiles at this, liking the way I am presenting my pussy to him.

“You really want me to talk about my ma when I’m getting ready to finger fuck the hell out of you?”

I laugh. “You are so filthy. Like, the filthiest.”

“You haven’t been with a bad boy before?”

“Ace, I’ve only ever been with bad boys.” I say, shaking my head, then biting my lip, because he is starting to get me going with his hand. I move my hand to his thick cock, wanting to share the love. “But not your kind of bad boy ... this glamorous, loaded kind. I grew up in a place that is a different kind of dirty than you. You may have had the real Boss as your father ... but you had money and connections. I had welfare checks and CPS calls. I had the kind of dirty that destroys a person.”

“Oh, baby,” Ace says, smacking my ass and pulling me to him. “I think we’re just wrecked in different ways.”

“You swear to God you won’t break me, Ace?” I ask, my eyes searing into his. Needing him to not look away. Needing him to stop with the fucking for just a second and tell me the truth.

“I won’t break you,” he says, the timber of his voice so sure, so solid. “Emmy Rose, I will help pick up your pieces.”

* * *

W
e don’t fuck
in the shower. Instead he washes my hair and washes my back and kisses my lips and cheeks and nose. He kisses my shoulders. My nipples. He gets on his knees and kisses my stomach and holds me at my waist while I run my hands through his dark hair.