I reached for it and he gently pushed my hands away. He looped his fingers underneath the waist of the underwear and pulled down, the material silently dropping to the floor.
I stared and forgot, for a single moment, how to breathe.
* * *
DARIO
His attempt to gain the upper hand was going haywire. She was on her knees, in the most subservient position he could envision, and still held all the power. The way she looked at his cock … he groaned and stepped closer, his hand settling on the back of her head and pulling it forward till it met his shaft.
“Just kiss it.”
She obeyed, her eyes meeting his as she planted a line of soft kisses along its length. She opened her mouth and he almost broke in the moment her tongue darted out and flicked against the underside of his shaft.
“How many men have you done this with?”
She only shook her head in response, refusing to answer the question. It didn’t matter. From this point forward, her mouth was only his. That’s what mattered. His to kiss, his to enjoy, his to experience. He couldn’t bear the thought of her on her knees before another man, couldn’t bear the thought of another man witnessing this sight, experiencing the tentative touch of her wet tongue sliding along his length. He threaded his hands through her hair and gripped it, tilting her head back, her mouth open as if waiting for more.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
She was. Too beautiful for a scarred-up thug like him. Too pure for his violence. Too naive for his deception.
She paused at the head of his cock, and he reached down, gripping the base of it and gently running the crown of it over her open lips. She flicked her tongue out, and he grinned. “Tease.”
“You’re the one who’s too bossy to let me do a proper job.”
It wasn’t fair, the combination of assets that this woman possessed. The fearlessness. Sexuality. Wit. She was the most tempting woman he’d ever experienced, and that was dangerous. She closed her eyes and took him down her throat, a wet flex of sensation that had his balls clenching, the pleasure so great that he took a long moment of selfish enjoyment. She bobbed her head, taking him as far as she could, and it was one of the hottest feelings he’d ever had.
The sensation, paired with his long abstinence … he stepped away from that mouth before he got distracted from his purpose—bringing her pleasure. He nodded at her to stand up. “Take off your pants.”
Meeting her eyes, he prayed for forgiveness over the shit-storm he was about to start.
* * *
BELL
“Please…”
I clawed at the sheets and begged, for the third time, for him. I turned my head and bared my teeth, biting at his bicep muscle. He growled and pulled my hair, removing my teeth from his skin. He was above me, his forearm alongside my head and holding his weight, his body light atop mine. Too light. He pressed forward with his hips and his bare erection slid over my mound. I was so wet the motion was audible, the slick meeting of our bodies perfect, had his cock been just an inch lower.
“I need it.” I panted the words, my hands gripping his hips, trying to pull him tighter to me. He shut me up with his mouth, his touch moving from my breast and sliding down to the place where our bodies met. I tightened, already aware, from earlier orgasms, of what his fingers could do. I clawed at his back and yelped when he pushed two digits inside of me.
“One more and I’ll stop,” he promised.
I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted hours of this, assuming this included penetration of more than his fingers and his tongue. Not that I was complaining. God knew that foreplay was a lost art, one this man had mastered. But it wasn’t fair to have such a beautiful dick and torture someone by withholding it.
“Fuck me.” I gritted out the command, lifting my hips off the bed as his fingers hit my g-spot.
“I don’t have a condom.”
Ugh. A piece of sense in this torturous session. I tightened my grip on his back and gasped as another orgasm built—the third so far tonight.
“I—” I stopped as my legs tensed, my back arched, the orgasm swelled. Bold and glorious, it ripped a soundless scream from my throat as he furiously worked his fingers, his eyes tight on mine. Chords of intense pleasure rippled across me and I bucked against his hold, riding out the sensation, then curled in, everything fading into a mess of languid aftershocks. His hand softened and retreated as he lifted off me. I saw, in the haze of pleasure, his large frame settling back on his knees as he jacked off quickly, his fist a blur of rough motion. He held me down with his other hand, keeping me in place.
“Stay still.”
“Just like that.”
“God….”
He tensed, his face tightening, and came on my stomach, some shots hitting my breasts, and he held my gaze the entire time—an intense connection I couldn’t look away from.
We hadn’t even had sex. Just bodies, mouths, fingers. Friction, teases, touching. Whispers, pants, and begs. I’d gone further in the backseat of a car with my second boyfriend.
It should have felt minor. Instead, it felt like the biggest thing I’d ever done.
* * *
I cinched the belt of the thick and fluffy hotel robe and stepped into the bedroom, my feet leaving wet footprints on the floor. Through the open door, I spotted Dario in the kitchen and headed that way. He sat on a kitchen barstool, his phone in hand, head down. At my approach, he turned. “Enjoy the shower?”
I smiled. “It was heavenly.”
He reached out, pulling me against his thigh and planting a soft kiss on my temple. I looked over the plates of food spread out on the counter. “You ordered food?”
“Just some snacks.” He pulled a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries closer to me. “You want something to drink?”
“Water, please.” I bit into a strawberry, cupping my other hand underneath it to catch the bits of chocolate as they fell off it. “Oh my God, this is good.”
His hand tightened around my waist, a soft squeeze of affection, and then he reached around me for a water bottle. I went to stand, to move to the empty stool next to his, and he held me in place, twisting off the cap and passing the water bottle to me. He glanced down at my robe and I caught a whiff of fir trees from his freshly-shampooed head. “The shops are closed until the morning. I can have Vince bring me a change of clothes, but you’re going to be stuck in that robe, or naked, until morning.” The corner of his mouth lifted, and I loved the way it warmed his eyes.
“Hmmm….” I sucked a bit of strawberry juice off my fingertips. “Robe it is.”
He scowled and I laughed. I stood, moving down the plates of food and eyeing their contents.
“So, tell me, Bell Hartley…” He rested his forearms on the counter and studied me. “What would it take to get you to move in here?”
I coughed a little at the abrupt change of subject. “What’s your reason for wanting me to be here, specifically?”
He reached out and grabbed a piece of sushi with his fingers, dipping it into the soy sauce before bringing it to his mouth. As he chewed it, I followed suit, snagging a crab-topped piece, my own attempt a little messier than his had been. His vulnerability faded, and I watched as he shuttered back into dominance. “It’s easier for me if you’re here. I could meet you during the day or at night. Discreetly.”
I made a face at that statement, my stomach still unsettled with the entire situation.
He watched the expression and patted the closest stool, spinning to face it. “You don’t like me being married. So, let’s talk about that.”
I perched on the stool, taking a sip of water as he scratched the back of his head.
“I told you that Gwen and I … we aren’t monogamous. We also aren’t physically involved with each other.”
I held up a hand and stopped him. “At the Gold Room, you said that it wasn’t my business why your marriage is the way it is. I’m not sure it’s my business, now. But while your marriage freaks me out, it�
�s not the only issue I have.”
I took a breath, trying to decide how much of my soul I wanted to bare. “I’ve never been interested in being someone’s girlfriend before. Emotional feelings … my heart doesn’t seem to work that way. Which is a good thing, I think. At least, I’ve always seen it as a good thing.”
I looked at him, my confidence faltering. “But with you, I am worried that I will become emotionally attached. And I want, the first time I fall for someone, for it to be a winnable situation. You…your marriage…”
“It’s a losing situation,” he finished flatly. “Is that why you told me not to contact you?”
I nodded. “Plus, there’s your father-in-law. I’ve heard that he … well, he scares me. What I’ve heard of him scares me.”
He smiled sadly. “I’m sure that what you’d heard of me scared you as well.”
I said nothing, busying myself with a crunchy stick that tasted like apples and cinnamon.
Silence fell and when he finally spoke, the broken edges of his voice caused me to look up and into his eyes. “Gwen and I… we’re both broken. We fit well together because of that. We’ve survived things together that have made us stronger. And we sometimes forget how difficult our world might seem to someone from the outside, looking in.”
He closed the distance between us and tugged gently on my robe, pulling me toward him.
“Don’t worry about Gwen’s father. I’ve spent a decade insulating him from our lives.” His hands tightened around me, his mouth found my neck, and he planted a soft kiss there. “In regards to your heart?”
He pulled away and looked down into my eyes. “I can’t protect that. And I can’t promise you anything. That’s a risk you’re going to have to decide whether to take.” He tugged on the end of my wet hair. “Come on. Let’s move to the dining room.”
Fifteen
I flipped over puzzle pieces quickly, getting them face up and keeping an eye out for edges. Dario stood across the teak table, doing the same. The puzzle had been found on our hunt for a fireplace remote, and I’d given him a thumbs-up when he’d held it up.
I was in a bathrobe, a fresh bottle of Moscato open, a full wine glass beside me, doing a puzzle with one of Vegas’s most elite. Talk about weird. Dario had answered the door a half hour ago, taken a duffel bag of items from Vince, and was now bare-chested, with workout pants hanging low on his hips. I thought the suit had been sexy. Half-dressed Dario was downright edible.
I found an edge piece and passed it to him. “Did you always work in casinos?”
“Pretty much.” He tossed a piece into the pile. “I started in security, worked my way up, moved into hosting, then up from there. But that was back in Biloxi. I ran a casino down there, the Beau Rivage.”
He glanced at me. “Ever been to Biloxi?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t been much of anywhere. But you probably already know that.”
“In fact…” I looked over at him. “What do you know about me?”
He shrugged and sat on the edge of the table. “I know you grew up about eighty miles south of here, in a town about the size of my cock.”
I laughed. “I’ve seen your cock. Mohave is a wee bit bigger.” I threw a puzzle piece toward his head, and he caught it mid-air. “But hey, I like the visual.”
He smirked, a cocky smile that curled past the expensive bathrobe and found its way to my inner core.
“What else do you know?”
“Hmmm…” He tapped a piece against the table, then connected it to another. “Your mom is a waitress. So were you, before Cheech and Chong brought you to Vegas.”
I nodded and thought of my mom. She always smells like the diner—fried food and cigarettes. When I was little, I would burrow into her body, and search for the scent of sugar. It was always there, hidden in the folds of her apron or the collar of her shirt.
“And your dad liked to drink.” He didn’t look at me when he said the words, yet I felt them sneak across the table and poke me.
“He did.”
Dad had been a drunk. Dario could say it as nicely as he wanted to, but that was the truth of the matter, and everyone in town knew it, had told me it every day of my life. The cops had called him it, that night, when he had brought me in to file a report. When they’d sneered at the story of my rape, Dad had all but deflated. He’d stumbled to the side, the alcohol still strong in his system, then sank against a dingy wall in that Mohave police substation. He’d looked at me as if he wanted to die.
“He did,” I repeated the words with more strength. “But he stopped.” I moved to the head of the table, where a corner piece caught my eye. “He stopped drinking a few years ago.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Dario spoke quietly, as if I was a spooked horse he needed to soothe. “My dad was the same way. Only he didn’t stop. Not when he killed my mom with his driving, and not when his liver gave out two years later. He drank right up until the day he died, damn whatever the doctors said.”
He looked up, and there was a bitter sadness in his eyes. I put down the puzzle piece and moved around the corner of the table. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I pulled him to me, resting my head against his chest and squeezing him against me. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He ran his hand softly over the top of my head, following my hair down my back and tugging softly on the ends. “Nothing to be sorry about. It was a long time ago. And my mom knew what she was risking, getting in the car with him.” He pulled away from me enough to look down into my face. He ran his fingers over my cheekbones as if dusting them off, then leaned down and pressed his lips—for just the briefest of seconds—against mine. “But, thank you.”
He pulled away from me, and I watched him circle the table, his eyes back down on the pieces, a long tumble of a sigh coming out of him.
I waited for a moment, then twisted my hair into a knot and tucked it under the neck of the robe, searching for a change of subject. “When’d you move to Vegas?”
“About thirteen years ago. Gwen and her father came to Biloxi to scope out our operations. I took them to dinner, turned on the charm.” He winced, and I noticed the dark turn of his features, the quick change of his eyes, a tensing of his build. “The charm didn’t work on Gwen’s father.”
“I heard he’s crazy.”
Dario didn’t react, he only flipped a five-sided piece over on its back. “Most people in this town are. But yes, if you run into him on the street, you should turn the other way.”
“I was a little more concerned about running into him in this hotel.” I gestured to the suite. “Or in here.”
He looked at me, and there was a real moment, one where he dropped any act, and I let him see my fear. “I’d never put you in danger. I wouldn’t bring you here, move you here, if there was any danger.”
They were words meant to reassure me. They didn’t. “So you agree—an encounter with her father would put me in danger?”
“That’s not what I said. But yes. I’m not going to bullshit you on that. Hawk won’t ever know about or understand my relationship with Gwen. He doesn’t know anything about what I do in my spare time, and he doesn’t know that she’s at our ranch right now because she likes the way our lead cowboy fucks her.” He rested his hands on the table and held my gaze.
“Doesn’t that … bother you?” It seemed crazy, for him to sit here with me, messing with a pile of puzzle pieces, while his wife was with another man. It seemed crazy that she would be okay with some sort of arrangement that lets him have mistresses. If he was my husband, I’d have a chastity belt around that man’s waist. I’d chop off one of his appendages in the middle of the night if he so much as kissed another woman. If he was my husband, it would break my heart for him to be here, right now, looking at a woman in this way.
“Does it bother you that Rick fucks Britni after work some nights?”
I threw up my hands and a piece of blue cardboard flew through the air, a laugh shaking out of me as
I tried to hold the unexpected outburst in. “What the fu—What does that have to do with anything? How do you even know that?”
“Answer the question.” The words were an order, an edge to their corners, and a part of me swooned at the dominating tone. “Does it bother you?”
My response was half of a strangled laugh, half a snort of derision. “No.”
Not that I had even known about Rick and Britni. But … thinking back, there had been plenty of signs, all which had gone right over my head.
“Why doesn’t it bother you?” he asked.
“I don’t know … I—”
I scratched an itch on my arm and blew out an exasperated puff of air instead. I knew what he was getting at. “Because I don’t like him like that. Besides, he’s my friend. It isn’t the same. She’s your wife.”
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