Hold 'Em: Vegas Top Guns, Book 3 (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

With her thumb on the intercom button, Leah couldn’t mistake the hot jolt that scrambled under her ribs and flipped her insides. Heat pinged down to warm her guts.

Michael. Not Mike.

“Come up.” She released the downstairs door then cracked her entryway door too.

She waited for him in the living room.

Of course he knew his way around her place. He’d been there enough over the past few weeks. They preferred Michael’s tidy house for noise control and easy access to his collection, but sometimes a girl needed her own territory.

Plus she was dog-tired. She sprawled back on the couch. The book she’d fallen asleep reading flopped to the floor. She’d lost her bookmark. Twisted half under the couch, searching, she realized she was nervous.

Nerves, or maybe anticipation. It was hard to tell the difference with Michael. She thumbed the TV remote to switch from a true-crime show to a music channel. She didn’t want gruesome to get in the way of fun.

When Michael appeared in the arched entryway of her small living room, she packed away a certain range of her expectations. He leaned a shoulder against the wall and teetered. His goofy, slightly boyish grin told her plain as day.

“You’re drunk.”

He held up two fingers a small distance apart. “Lil’ bit.” His eyes narrowed on such a wide, wide smile. She felt that smile all the way down to her lungs. She was so sunk.

“You mad?”

“Nope,” she said. “C’mere.”

He shuffled the long way around her couch. Drunk logistics?

Yet more lurked in the way he watched her. He spun and sat in one move, landing with his head in her lap and his feet on the padded arm of the couch. “Miss me?”

“Tonight?” More than she wanted to admit. “Nope.”

“Wha’d you do?”

“Went for a run once the sun went down. Made some dinner. Read.”

“Boring,” he said, but the way he smiled soothed away any unkindness.

“And you?” She traced his brow and stroked his hair. Gold and brown blended perfectly. “Where have you been that has you so obviously looking for what you can’t have?”

His eyes were mock sad and still muddled by drink. “Can’t have?”

The agreement coiled in her throat felt a little wry. “If I can’t smack on you when I’ve been drinking, you can’t take smacks when you smell like a distillery. Now spill. Where’d you go?”

“Don’t tell my ma’am,” he said in a fake whisper. “I went to a strip club.”

Her laughter was sudden and genuine. “You think she’d be mad?”

“I hope she would be.” His grin was so unbearably cheeky. “She’s fucking hot when she gets mad.”

Her hands kept moving, stroking down his chest, beneath his snug T-shirt. The skin of his stomach was warm and thin over sleek muscles. She slid the tip of her fingernails to the line of ligaments that veed above his jeans.

“Only when she gets mad?”

“Nope. All the time.”

Said with so much sincerity, she thought she might dissolve like the wicked witch under a bucket of water. So much trust was better placed in steadier hands, but Michael sprawled in
her
lap.

“Tell me more about the strip club.”

“There were girls. They were naked. Dash and Eric were there too, but they weren’t naked.” He squeezed one hand between the couch and her back. “Thank God.”

“Any of the girls hot?”

He stretched then and pushed, turning over to bury his face between her legs. His mouth rested where her thighs were bared by pajama shorts, not the ten inches higher where she wanted. He mumbled against her flesh.

“What was that?” She found purchase in his hair and tugged his face up. The Caribbean blue of his eyes… She couldn’t get enough, even when they were hazy on booze.

“Maybe one blonde.”

“Maybe one?” She chuckled. “You don’t have to pretend, pet. I know strippers. It’s their job to be hot. Tits and tight asses. Legs up to their ears.”

His fingers snuck under her thighs. Played with the hem of her cotton shorts. “None of them were as sexy as you. Not even the blonde. She was young and sweet looking. Maybe sort of naive. I wanted to bring her home to you.”

She continued to chuckle, until she realized he was serious.

“Would you, really?” That didn’t seem like a fair question to expect answered when he was all but pickled. Didn’t mean she could contain her curiosity. “I don’t know about that one, Michael. Girls aren’t really my thing.”

“Not even to boss her around? Order us both around?” His voice dropped. Something way sexy was getting to him. “Together?”

The idea of another woman…not so much. Leah hadn’t ever swung that way. But the idea of having both Michael and some fresh-faced innocent kneeling in front of her sent a sizzling coil of want through her chest. Her pussy responded with a flash of heat and dampness.

“What would you want to do to her, pet?”

His answer was immediate. Instant. “Whatever you told me to.”

“And that’s it? Even if I never let you lay a finger on her flesh?”

“Even then.” He nuzzled between her legs, then nudged them apart and licked the inside of her knee. “Especially then.”

“What if I told you to fuck her? However you wanted, whatever you wanted to do.” She scratched over his scalp and down his back.

“I mean it, ma’am. Whatever you told me to.”

Aroused in an instant, she tugged his shirt and he sat up, letting her strip it off. It took only the smallest want on her part—and he fulfilled it. Obedience was a gift she hadn’t known she craved.

Maybe they couldn’t play with pain. That didn’t meant she had to behave herself.

She stretched her arms along the back of the couch, shifting to center her ass on the cushions. Spreading her knees, she invited him with more room to play.

“Kneel.”

He didn’t even stop to say yes. Just moved.

His jeans dipped low on his hips. Masculine hands rested on her knees. Softly. Waiting.

“Show me.”

The boyish, foolish grin never changed. “Ma’am?”

“Show me exactly what you’d do to her. Pretend I’m sitting over there, on that chair in the corner. I’m watching you both. I want to know how you’d touch her, how you’d make her feel. She’d be so young and innocent and good, until you got hold of her with that giant cock.”

His shoulders shuddered. Dark, hot desire strained his features. Though he moved slowly at first, he framed her face the way he used to, so long ago, when everything between them had been frustrating tenderness. She was swallowed up, reminded that she really was so much smaller than him.

The heat of his mouth burned everything away. Sharp whiskey was a taste she remembered well, but underneath was Michael. Her Michael, all the way through.

She sank into the couch—more like he drove her against the cushions. Absolutely overwhelming. Just this once. He took her mouth, bit her bottom lip, palmed her breast through the thin material of her tank top. Unleashed sexuality.

She writhed beneath his rough touch, focusing on their game rather than the control he seemed to be stealing. Michael was still hers to command, even when he stripped her panties with ruthless precision, belying his drunken state. Still kneeling, he hitched her knee over his shoulder and ducked. His mouth surged against her wet pussy. He licked. He feasted.

“Oh, fuck. Right there.” She couldn’t help but pull his hair, although she knew some tiny stripper wouldn’t know shit about what her pet needed.

Not like she knew, either—totally making it all up as she went along. Someday all the threads would unravel. She’d lose her career and perfect roses and lovely, mean sex. Either Michael would realize what a fool he was for putting so much in her fallible hands, or their cover would be busted. She’d be forced to choose between being disastrously public or losing him.

No. Not now.

“Did you see her tits, Michael? Or her cunt?”

“Tits, yes.” He smeared his mouth over her stomach and sucked his fingers clean. His low voice was slurred, adding to his boyish sex appeal. “Not her snatch. Well, not all of it.”

“Did you want to?”

“Fuck yes.” He dug a condom out of his back pocket and rolled it down without asking. Perhaps out of habit, he held the blunt head of his dick at her entrance. “Still like I would that girl?”

“Yes,” she hissed. “Fuck me like you would her. The anonymous stripper you brought me as a present.”

Michael let go.

His cock stretched her. The slight burn reminded Leah of his delicious size and the way they fit together. He wedged his wrist under her knee, wrenching her open.

He fucked her so hard that white stars bloomed behind her eyes. She crossed her forearms behind his head and joined their mouths. It was no kiss, but a hard clash of lips and teeth. He scraped his teeth across her bottom lip, heralding a shock of pain. Normally she’d pull away. He didn’t get to hurt her.

Yet she took it all. She reveled in the game, fascinated as she watched him through narrowed eyes. His were nearly shut. His flawless rhythm faltered once or twice, probably because of the booze. Didn’t matter. She ratcheted up so high, so damn fast.

His cruel strokes sparked pleasure through her bones and loosened her muscles. She stretched up to graze his earlobe with her teeth.

“Fuck me, stud. That woman you brought me home to? She’s watching us. Her eyes are on your ass. She keeps clutching the arms of the chair.” Her words broke off on a grunt when he hit a sweet spot, a place that made her cunt clench on his solid length.

“You little blonde bitch. Do you think she’ll make me pay for fucking you?” His voice was a rumble that rolled from his chest to hers. Leah’s nipples tingled.

“Depends. Do you enjoy that crop in her hand?”

He wedged her knee up so high she could have kissed it. He rammed into her like a desperate man. Short, hot jolts took over her brain. His eyes rolled when he came on a long, tense groan. Beneath the pleasure was so much emotion. She wanted to shy away, without any faith she could handle it.

She snatched one of his hands and joined their fingers against her pussy. His cock was just hard enough to ride.

“Your duties aren’t over yet. Now you’re
my
fuck toy.”

A full-body shiver said he liked that. She did too. Pleasure fizzed through her blood as she came. The explosion was as powerful as any they’d shared. Round and round they went. There was no such thing as being
less
together.

If she didn’t know better, she’d think she was completely lost in the magic they made.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Mike ducked out of the BX on a mission. He had about ten minutes before his carefully constructed timetable would go to shit. Tin Tin had mentioned grabbing a quick lunch before his thirteen hundred safety briefing. Leah was still in a meeting with the major. No telling how long that would last. Eric and Dash would spot Mike soon enough, both of them sniffing around for grub. For either of them to find him talking to Jon Carlisle would raise eyebrows.

If Tin Tin really meant a quick lunch, he’d be in the food court.

As Mike scanned the cavernous array of tables and purveyors of fine junk food, he smiled. He never would’ve imagined as a teenager how much the military felt like high school. Same cliques. Same petty shit. An even more rigid hierarchy. That meant the food-court tables were invisibly reserved at different times. Desk jockeys sat with desk jockeys, and on down the line.

Perhaps because Leah and Major Haverty were still in that meeting, Tin Tin sat by himself. It looked really odd, probably because the arrogant kid was usually the center of attention—good or bad. Silence and solitude didn’t seem his style.

Neither did Cheetos, a Slim Jim and a Slurpee.

“That’s quite the lunch, Tin Tin.”

Dark, quirking eyebrows lifted, as if charting the way for the rest of his face. “To fuel the temple that is my body. We can do tradesies if you have Twinkies. But I don’t do generic.”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

The kid had really unnerving eyes. Dark on dark. Narrowed almost perpetually. Like some sort of magician, he had this…
way
about him. He sure as hell recognized that Mike’s friendly bit of banter had a purpose.

“Take a seat, Strap.” He nudged a chair out with his toe.

Mike glanced at the phone in Jon’s palm. “How’s your imaginary girlfriend?”

“Think what you will, hater.” He set the phone facedown on the plastic table and leaned back. The pose was all business—until he noshed a Cheeto. “What’s up?”

Shit, this was going to be tricky. The timing had been hard enough to fudge. Now Mike didn’t know what to say. Jon meant a lot to Leah. Although he didn’t harbor any sexual jealousy, Mike really would’ve liked the insight two years of friendship gave Jon.

“I’m asking you to be discreet. For Leah’s sake.”

Jon didn’t reply with some snarky remark. No salacious gleam appeared in his eyes. He still tried to pry inside Mike’s brain, even harder now, but that seemed to be his default mode. “Done,” he said simply.