Winner

by Harley Slate

  And maybe he was even right, but this wasn't over. There's one thing you can always count on with the criminal element. Enough is never, ever going to be enough. Invite her back, and you could be inviting back even more losses.

  She looked around the conference table. Nobody met her eyes. Even Durrell was on the other side.

  Fine. Lana didn't need their help. Now, hours later, sitting at a martini bar in the Fashion Show Mall, a half-sipped Lemon Drop in front of her, she considered the close-up photo on her screen.

  Lysander had a great face, and she knew how to work it. And maybe she was looking for somebody new to help her celebrate winning all that delicious money.

  I can get to her. I can solve this.

  A martini bar was an expensive place to sit, even at happy hour. The half-price drink was still over ten bucks with the tip.

  Better than going home, though. Especially when home was an empty condo which was emptier than usual because Juliet took the furniture when she went. Talk about adding insult to injury. It was Lana's place, Lana's fucking furniture, but she didn't have the heart to fight about it.

  “I moved out here from Miami for you,” Juliet said. “I have nothing!”

  “Fine. Take it then, take everything.”

  This was a discussion they'd had over the phone. Juliet worked fast. Everything was gone by the time Lana arrived home from work that afternoon.

  Not everything. There was a six-pack of yogurt in the fridge. Dinner. Except she'd taken the silverware as well.

  Hell, Juliet. Can't even leave one fucking spoon?

  Eight months ago. Lana probably needed to make more of an effort. The cheap futon thrown on the floor was still the only item of furniture in the bedroom. At least she'd replaced the spoons.

  The bartender, a slim brunette, looked at Lana's drink and then at Lana's face. No point in offering a second martini when the customer hadn't drunk the first one. Her coral lips parted to say something, but something in Lana's face made her change her mind, and she busied herself at the other end of the counter.

  Eight months was a long time to be lonely.

  Lana held her phone for a long time. Was this really a crime investigation? Or was she just looking for an excuse to cruise the hookup apps?

  The phone vibrated.

  Melody Lysander was returning her message.

  Chapter Four

  Any expensive girl worth her salt would recognize where Lana took the selfie― the Shops at Crystals. Lana stood in front of that place where the artist had captured all those mini tornadoes in clear plastic. So, yeah, a plastic place, a mall, but an upscale, aspirational mall. Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo, Harry Winston, and all the rest of the usual suspects. She had no intention of buying anything.

  Anyhoo, Lysander must have liked what she saw. They arranged to meet at a bar called Ghost Donkey, and probably not just because Ghost Donkey was a fun name to say. The bartender had just delivered Lana's Mexican Firing Squad― all right, she did order that one because it was a fun thing to say― when all heads turned in the direction of the woman walking through the front door.

  The loud Mexican nineties pop-rock stopped. Any talking, any breathing... it all stopped.

  Everybody was looking at the tall, leggy redhead who settled easily on the barstool next to Lana. She was still wearing the jacket, but the dress was gone, exchanged for a pair of perfectly fitted jeans and a black silk shell. Lana felt suddenly dowdy in her own jeans and tee.

  “Hello, Ashton,” she said. “It's me. Mel.”

  She had a seductive voice, the volume set on low as if she was used to people trying to eavesdrop. Lana leaned in close, an automatic response that allowed her to catch a whiff of Mel Lysander's French perfume.

  Of course, she wasn't a Melody. Lana had sensed that from the beginning. Melody was the name of a woman who taught choir.

  Mel was anything but that.

  For a minute, Lana felt guilty about giving the fake name. Hell. She hadn't expected Mel Lysander to offer her a real one. This was a hookup in Vegas. What the fuck kind of scammer shared her real name? Her real nickname, anyway.

  “That's pretty.” Mel dipped her chin in the direction of Lana's drink. “What is it?”

  “Tequila, grenadine, some other stuff.” Suddenly Lana felt goofy about saying the name. It seemed like a tourist name all of a sudden, and Lana was a local. She raised one finger to tell the bartender to bring one for Mel.

  She sipped carefully, then smiled. Her lips left no marks on the glass. That rich, suckable pink must be natural.

  Lana usually thought she was pretty slick, but she felt a little awkward tonight. The whole point of going undercover would be lost if she confessed to working security for the Dragonhoarde. Ashton wasn't just a fake name but an entire fake identity. She rambled through the getting-to-know-you garbage, mumbling some lame story about working in her brother's law office.

  But Mel was lying too. “I'm originally from Vegas, but I'm based in Chicago now. I'm a commercial banker, we do a lot of business loans. You know.”

  Lana did not know, and she doubted Mel did either. “Cool. So what brings you back to Sin City?”

  She hesitated.

  What, Mel? No easy lie on the tip of your tongue? You disappoint me.

  “It's my great-grandmother. She's starting to let things slide, and I've got to pitch in, help her figure some things out.”

  Was that Delia Grant? Or was the fragile grandmother a complete invention? Mel's green eyes had turned so serious for a moment. A good con artist needed acting skills, and Mel undoubtedly had them in spades.

  Somebody noticed the glitch in the music and turned it up again. Unless Lana leaned in close to let Mel whisper in her ear, she wouldn't hear a thing.

  “My dad's in finance too, and she's his grandmother, but...” Mel's hot breath tickled.

  “I know.” Lana swallowed hard and repressed an urge to nibble Mel's ear. “He's a man. He can't manage.”

  She laughed. “It's more than that with my dad. He's just never been good with anything that isn't numbers. And so he decided it was an opportune time to take a sabbatical from his job, hop on his Harley, and find America on Route 66.”

  “Starting from Chicago?”

  “That's where the road begins.”

  Mel was really selling the story of being a tourist in her old hometown. Surely there were easier ways to tell a hookup you'd rather go to a hotel than to your house. You could cry renovations or being too tipsy from the tequila to drive.

  Lana figured Mel didn't want Ashton to know she even had a house.

  The hell with it. The hookup game was just that. A game. Whoever tells the most lies wins.

  Lana insisted on paying for the drinks, and they left the bar. Mel's room wasn't far off. No surprise there, since this part of the Strip put them within walking distance of tens of thousands of hotel units. The yammering of the slot machines seemed more strident than usual as they walked through the casino. Lana hadn't asked Mel if she'd tried her luck yet, and Mel hadn't confessed to winning a big progressive jackpot. It wasn't a good idea to talk about money too soon. This was supposed to be about sex.

  The design of a casino resort is a special kind of maze meant to keep you trapped until you've dropped every dollar. Locating the well-hidden Ghost Donkey had taken Lana several minutes even when she was sober. Finding the way out after tequila wasn't any easier. Especially since the teeming masses from the Strip all seemed to flow in from the opposite direction, fighting to come in while Lana and Mel were trying to fight their way out. It could be all too easy to lose each other in this crowd. Mel, like it was the most natural thing in the world, reached for Lana's hand.

  A spark of electricity darted down her spine. An actual spark real enough to crackle.

  Mel's long, graceful hand was warm silk, exactly like it looked on the casino monitors. But it was the strength beneath the silk that captured Lana's imagination. Their hands felt good together with their fingers
interlaced.

  Fucking research? Is that the story you were telling yourself?

  What exactly are you really here to research?

  They passed a glossy shop where a woman stood by the open door wearing lavender satin boy shorts, matching bra, and a diamond collar. Her slim yet tireless arm held a silver tray loaded with flutes of champagne and mimosas. The tall window display featured a blonde Valkyrie of a mannequin in matching blonde silk lingerie. A second mannequin, a brunette in chocolate silk, knelt at her feet.

  Without saying a word, Mel and Lana paused. Anybody would. Every inch of all that exposed skin was absolutely flawless.

  Lana remembered Mel's long bare legs back in the casino. She had the same peaches and cream complexion as the Valkyrie. Lana's dirty mind flickered on the image of a woman kneeling in front of Mel's long, bare thighs. Well, not a woman. Lana herself.

  “They're real,” Mel said. “Aren't they? I thought they were mannequins, but they're real people.”

  “Fuck, you're right. I don't know how they do it.”

  “There's a place that rents out living statues in Chicago. So it's probably the same in Vegas.”

  Lana chuckled. “Yeah, I get there's a place, but I still don't see how you could stand like that for a whole shift without losing your shit.”

  Mel never let go of Lana's hand. Lana didn't want her to. After a while, they walked on. Sooner or later, they found their way to Las Vegas Boulevard. It was a hot night, but not dangerously hot, the way the day would have been. There was a decent crowd out tonight, and it was getting bigger by the moment. Elvis and Michael Jackson hustled tips to pose for pictures. Nervous people sold bottled water from rolling coolers. This, selling water without a license, was somehow a crime, but it wasn't one that concerned Lana.

  “I'm over there.” Mel pointed to a glittering tower among so many other glittering towers.

  Nobody thought anything about it, two women holding hands in such a crowd. Well, that wasn't exactly true. Nobody thought they were hookups or even girlfriends. They saw two tourists from out of town afraid of getting separated in big bad Sin City. A couple of pickup artists made their approach, offering to show them around. Mel looked right through them like they didn't exist.

  Michael Jackson offered to pose for a picture. She did smile at him, but she also shook her head. Mel was in a hurry now.

  Hell, so was Lana.

  They entered the right resort and then the right tower. The blast of air-conditioning was like ice after the heat of the street. Was this a form of foreplay in Vegas, this endless wandering through the maze to find the one and only room that opened to your key? There were more escalators and finally an elevator. Lana kept thinking ahead to what would happen next. There was time to entertain a thousand doubts, but she pushed them all away.

  This is a hookup. For fun. And maybe I'll learn something too.

  Eventually, they arrived. Mel smacked the electronic button that put up the Do Not Disturb light, then slid the deadbolt into place. It connected with an audible thunk. They were alone. Everything they did and said here was completely private. Hotel security wasn't allowed to install cameras in the guest rooms.

  What Lana felt was dead sober. The tequila had been wicked out of her blood and away from her body thanks to the hot, dry air of an August night in Vegas. She inhaled sharply. It wasn't like her to feel this lost. To wonder where to put her hands or how fast she should move.

  “Hey.” Mel was right up close to trace her long index finger along the seam of Lana's closed lips. It was a light touch, with a lot of heat but no pressure behind it. “It's all right. Whatever you want to do. Because you don't do this all that often, do you?”

  Lana mouthed at the finger, then blew a puff of air on it as she stepped back. “I'm not a regular on the hookup circuit, no. Is that going to be a problem?”

  “Of course not. I phrased that badly.” Mel studied Lana's face as if she was the one doing undercover research. “I'm the one who doesn't do that all that often. I... ah...”

  Lana went over to the mini bar and silently opened the small fridge. Held up a couple of airplane-sized bottles of tequila. It was a good brand in a good hotel. The tumblers were cut glass rather than cheap plastic.

  Mel smiled and nodded.

  They hadn't fetched ice on the way to the room. Fuck it. They didn't need ice.

  Lana poured. They tapped their glasses together. Cheers. The heavy tumblers were really too big for the inch of tequila floating around on the bottom.

  Mel had started to say something but never finished.

  “You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to,” Lana finally said. Of course, she wanted― needed― Mel to feel comfortable enough to talk about herself. She wanted to know everything she could learn about her opponent.

  Still, it wouldn't do to seem too eager. You couldn't force these things.

  “No, it's all right. I want to.” Mel tossed back the rest of the shot, her red hair lifting up, her creamy throat working.

  The sight of that smooth throat swallowing... Damn. Mel Lysander was physical perfection. She made drinking tequila look like a work of art.

  “I was in a relationship for a while,” she finally said. “Five years. It seemed like we had something.”

  “But there's a but.”

  “Yeah. There's always a but.” She put down her empty glass. “She decided to pursue an opportunity in London.”

  “Wow.”

  “I'm over it.” Mel stepped close again, and Lana realized she'd put down her own glass, empty or not, she didn't even know, and it didn't matter, because Mel's warm face was coming in, and her soft velvet lips were planting sweet teases all around Lana's mouth, and then Mel's lips claimed Lana's lips, and they were kissing for real, first a hint of tongues, then more.

  Not a hookup app kiss, fuck no, this kiss was slow and seductive and teasing, a step forward and a step back, a long flirtation that let you know this woman intended to take her own sweet time.

  The follow-up kiss went on even longer and left them both even more breathless. Lana's hands were everywhere, wandering blind because her eyes were shut tight to focus on the incoming sensations. The black shell Mel wore didn't seem to have any buttons or any hidden zippers. It must be stretchable somehow. Either that, or it had been painted on.

  Should they have talked a little longer? No, Lana decided. They'd been able to talk in the bar and on the long wandering path back to the room. At some point, if you talk too much, you talk away all the feeling.

  Besides, Lana wasn't much in the mood to share her own sad story about Juliet taking off with Lana's furniture.

  Also, as far as Mel was concerned, there wasn't any Lana.

  You're Ashton now. Don't break character.

  Mel's sultry chuckle was a seduction all its own. Dancing a step or two away from Lana, she grasped the hem of the black shell and began to lift it inch by sexy inch to expose the taut cream of her smooth belly. There was lycra or another stretch fabric in the silk, maybe a five or ten percent blend. Mel had to wiggle here and there, turn this way and shrug that, as she ever-so-slowly walked the garment off over her head.

  “How the hell did you ever get into that thing in the first place?” Lana asked.

  “Trade secret. Anyway, I had to slow you down a little. Make you thirst.”

  Any slower, and Lana might lose what little toehold on sanity she still had. Her own fingers were still flying blind. She couldn't look down at what her hands were doing when her gaze was fixed on the delicious sight of Mel peeling out of her clothes. They were both kicking off shoes, unzipping zippers, sliding out of tight jeans. Lana had her own strip-dance technique, but she couldn't look very smooth stumbling at the way her own pants tangled around her ankles.

  Fuck. She's beautiful. An Italian marble goddess.

  And then they were both naked, embracing face to face and belly to belly. Amazing how a simple standing hug could feel like so much more.

 
; Chapter Five

  Music began to play, an electronica piece by an artist Lana didn't recognize. The barely audible pulse-beat smoothly swelled in volume, as if someone was slowly turning an old-fashioned dial. After a minute or two, the swell reached its crest and then smoothly dropped again to remain a steady but not-too-noisy thump repeating in the background.

  It was a driving beat without being obvious about its drive― the rhythm of twin heartbeats learning to beat as one.

  They were pressing into each other more passionately now. Their hearts were in time to the music. Their mouths were hungry.

  Where did the music come from? Mel never gave a voice command. Never touched her phone. Somehow, the app must have been set up in advance to pick up on the increase in her heartbeat as a cue to start sending the music to the suite's hidden speakers.

  Clever. Also premeditated.

  Lana shivered. Mel wanted her. She'd thought ahead about how it might go, about the best way to set a mood.

  She wanted Lana.

  No.

  Mel wanted Ashton. A fake girl met on a hookup site.

  Should Lana go? She was here under false pretenses. Her body was naked, but the rest of her was in disguise.

  Although Mel's slenderness could give the impression she was smaller, the two of them were of a similar height. Their mouths fell naturally at the same level. The directness of their warm kisses, the curious sweep of their exploring tongues... there was a natural give and take between them. Sometimes it was Mel who gave, who asserted, who pressed forward. Then she ducked back, her shoulders gone smaller, her face uptilted somehow, and it was Lana leaning in, Lana who was pressing forward.

  A thigh slipped between two legs. A knee lifted to rub. But it wasn't always Mel's thigh or Lana's knee. The music wasn't needed to set the easy rhythm of their slow standing kiss.

  Their hands were everywhere. Stroking, massaging, squeezing. Mel, a natural redhead, flushed easily, and her creamy breasts were tinted a light shade of pink, a delicious contrast with the frank strawberry ripeness of her swollen nipples. When Lana cupped those smooth globes from underneath, she could feel the silk of hot skin and the soft slick damp of her perfumed cleavage.