I’d scoff at such an obscene amount of money for a cup of coffee, but the woman is already gone, no doubt hurrying away before he can change his mind, and he’s already pressing the cup into my hand, his hand over mine. And suddenly he has leaned in close, his lips near my ear, and the air has shifted around us, charging and simmering. “Damn, I want to pull you off somewhere and kiss you.” His voice is gravelly, sexy, and when he leans back to look at me, his eyes simmering with heat, I can barely breathe as he promises, “You’ll be my reward for winning this tournament.” And with that, he walks away, leaving me to face Abel, whose lips quirk.
“Don’t worry. I don’t want to pull you anywhere and kiss you.” He chuckles.
My cheeks heat. “I guess you heard that.”
“Yeah, well, I have a knack for hearing things I shouldn’t.” He motions me forward. “Let’s go rearrange some seating and get you away from all those magpies yakking about you and Jason.”
He turns and I join him, my gaze lifting to where I can now see Jason and Daniel standing several feet away. Daniel is animated, while Jason appears pretty calm.
“Nothing rattles him,” Abel comments, chuckling under his breath, seeming to read my mind. “It’s why he’s so damn good at poker.”
But he’s wrong. Something can rattle Jason: blackmail. I’ve seen how much, but it seems no one else ever has. And I want to keep it that way. But more and more, I think about the people around me who I’ve met. The people around him, and they want the opposite. The number of people motivated to hurt Jason are many, and I wonder: Is there more to this strung-out blackmail than meets the eye?
CHAPTER TWELVE
NOT LONG AFTER Abel and I find seats on the opposite side of the event room from Mandy and Sheila, Jason appears and kneels beside me, his hand on my leg, which suddenly feels naked. “I calmed the beast,” he tells me.
“The beast?” I laugh.
“My nickname for Daniel when he gets this ridiculously worked up,” he says. “But at least he’s the one that gets worked up, so I can just focus on playing.” He reaches for my coffee, and using my hand and his to tilt the cup up, takes a swig, the act somehow ridiculously intimate, and his lips, as they curve afterward, ridiculously sexy. “Too much sugar and not enough caffeine.”
“The opposite is true of Red Bull,” I reply, heat radiating from where his hand presses to my leg, going all the way up to more intimate places where I really want this man to touch me. “At least to me.”
“Good thing opposites attract,” he says, mischief and heat in his eyes, both of which assure me we aren’t talking about drinks anymore.
“It seems so,” I reply, “though I’m beginning to think we aren’t so opposite.”
“That makes two of us,” he says softly, reaching up and caressing my cheek with his knuckles, touching me the way I’d touched him, and I can see in his eyes that’s his exact intent. “I can’t get you alone to find out very soon. Which is why I’d better go play these cards.”
I catch his hand, not about to let him escape yet. “Are you sure everything’s okay with Daniel?”
“I’m never halfway about anything, baby. Daniel’s handled.”
I’m skeptical, not quite sure that man’s hate for me can be so easily handled, but now really isn’t the time to question such things. Maybe there will never be a time, and an announcement sounds, dragging my attention rightfully back to the tournament anyway: “The exterior doors are being sealed after the final cycle. If you remain for the final table, you will not be able to enter or exit during the play.”
“It’s almost time for the big finale,” I say, feeling kind of excited now.
“Two more tables,” he says. “Some would say that’s a world from the finals.”
“I’m nervous,” I confess. “Actually nervous for you.” I frown. “Wait. Should I say that? Does it make you nervous?”
“I haven’t been nervous in years.”
“Not even when it’s a massive payout?”
“I don’t allow one game to be different from the rest,” he says. “Winning is winning, and if that’s always my intention then I’m always playing at a hundred percent.”
Abel leans forward. “It’s going to be you and Cowboy,” he says to Jason. “It’s in the air. He’s killing it tonight.”
“Is he?” Jason asks, his expression unreadable, as is his tone, but his fingers flex ever so slightly against my leg, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he already knew Cowboy was doing well. “I guess we’ll see just how good, now won’t we?” He refocuses on me. “Let me go win these last two tables so I can collect my prize. I won’t be back until this is over.”
He pushes to his feet and starts walking, and something about the way he carries himself leaves no doubt in my mind when this is over, he’ll be the victor. Abel laughs. “Oh man. He’s going to whip some Cowboy ass now, isn’t he?”
I glance over at him. “You did that on purpose?”
“Hell, yeah. I love to put some competition in the air and watch that man get focused and do what he does best: win at poker.”
“I’m kind of loving it too,” I say, while I’m also loving sitting with someone who actually isn’t competing but cheering Jason on. And for the next thirty minutes I watch one table fall to Jason, with the added entertainment of Abel’s hilarious commentary about each player. Observing one man holding a drink, he says, “He can’t play without a Fuzzy Navel in his mouth.”
“He never wins, but he always gets a damn good rubdown trying,” he says of another man getting a massage at the table and making some very strange faces. And the comments go on and on, while the questions about me and Jason are mercifully zero. People don’t approach me now that I’m with Abel.
Jason and Cowboy are still in the game, at different tables for the last round before the finale. So is Ricky D, who has somehow landed at Jason’s table and is now playing him for the win. Abel and I hurry to the divider wall, and when my neck tingles as if I’m being watched, I glance to my right to find Mandy a foot away and staring at me. The instant she realizes I’m watching her in return, she waves. “Good luck,” she calls out, but what she means is “burn in hell,” and I don’t even repeat the fake nicety.
Instead, I face forward and watch Jason play, analyzing him as many people are, considering he’s now up on a huge television screen above the tables. And he is all cool confidence, unfazed by any card he glances at or any move his opponent makes. I love watching him like this, but I have nerves all over again, and I’m actually relieved when he’s replaced on that big screen by Cowboy.
Immediately after that a waitress brings Jason a Red Bull and he pays, but for some odd reason he looks down at his napkin, almost appearing to read something. He studies it one beat, two, then three, unmoving, unreacting, and yet … something is there. Something is off. I think … he’s not pleased. Seeming to confirm this fact, he balls up the napkin, and rather than tossing it, sticks it in his pocket.
“What the hell was that?” Abel murmurs.
“What do you mean?” I ask, trying to confirm he saw the same thing I did.
“There was something on the napkin the waitress handed him,” he says. “And whatever the hell it was, it made him blink. He doesn’t blink.”
He’s right. Whatever I just saw happen was Jason’s version of a blink. But right now, the cards are dealt, and I swear, I can barely breathe. Seconds tick by like hours, until finally, the game is over, Ricky D is out, and Jason wins. The minute Jason’s free, Daniel is by his side, and the two men lower their heads in conversation, but this is no celebration pow wow. And to Daniel’s credit, he’s now as completely unreadable and focused as Jason, perhaps now playing the role of manager, not the asshole I’ve seen to this point. They exchange words for a mere thirty seconds and once it’s over, Daniel goes one direction and Jason strides this way, and while he appears cool and collected, he’s told me he’s not free between games, and yet here he comes, and there is just s
omething different about him. A longer step maybe? A straighter spine? Just … something.
“What the hell is happening?” Abel murmurs, standing as I do the same, and Jason motions us toward a barrier break way down at the other end of the room, beyond the bleachers.
Inhaling, I hurry along beside Abel, concern balling in my chest. I’d really like to think this is as simple as Daniel having issues with me again, but based on the exchange I witnessed, I simply don’t believe that to be the case. Thankfully, walking away from the crowd, we avoid any interruptions, and Jason is waiting on us at the end of our path, his expression still totally unreadable. He steps to me immediately, his arm wrapping my shoulder, and while I’m relieved he hasn’t put distance between us, I have this odd sense he wants me close to protect me. Why would he need to protect me?
“Daniel wants you to find him,” he instructs Abel. “He’s already outside the event room and he has his cell phone with him.”
Abel narrows his eyes on Jason, the two having some sort of silent exchange, to which Abel’s only reply is, “Done,” before he turns and starts walking back toward the bleachers.
Jason immediately puts us in action in the other direction, heading toward a side door not open to the public. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“Wait until we’re someplace private and I’ll explain everything.”
Not good—and I instantly know this is related to the blackmail. We exit the event room into a private hallway and head to the left and then left again, and a million questions punch through my mind. Fortunately our path is short, and we’re already stopping at a VIP lounge. Jason opens the door, releasing me to allow me to enter the lobby. A receptionist behind a high wood and glass desk asks, “Can I help you?”
Jason joins me, his hand covering mine. “She’s with me,” he says, leading me to the right, and then immediately right again to enter a narrow hallway with a good half dozen doors, one of which he opens, motioning me forward.
Entering what turns out to be a private sleep room with a leather recliner, I turn to face Jason as he shuts us inside. He reaches for me and turns me, pressing my back to the wall, his big body crowding mine but not touching me. “I should never have brought you here,” he says, one of his hands settling on the hard surface by my head.
“What?” I breathe out, feeling that abrupt statement like a punch to the chest, embarrassment and something else I can’t name assailing me. “I don’t understand. If you don’t want me here, I said—”
“I do want you here, Skye. Me wanting you isn’t the question here, and I’ve tried to make that crystal clear. But I was a selfish prick for acting on my attraction to you right now, without considering how I might get you attention you don’t need.” He pushes off the wall and removes the napkin from his pocket, offering it to me.
Taking it, I open it and glance down to read: Your bitch is now going down with you. This is getting fun. “You have to be kidding me,” I say, crumpling the napkin in my hand, my anger hitting fast and hard. “I’m being used against you?”
“Which I should have expected,” he replies. “And baby, I play really damn good ‘fuck you’ poker, but our options to get you out of this are limited. I’ve been chasing options in my mind—”
“While winning your table?”
“No. I shut it out until the minute it was over. I could put you under lock and key, but then you’re under lock and key until I find a way out of this. I could go grab some other woman, kiss her and let her hang on me to make it seem like you’re unimportant, but no one would believe that since you came as my guest. There is no answer but ending this. I don’t even know what to say to you.”
“This isn’t your fault, Jason.”
“I knew I had this going on in my life, yet I chose now to get involved with you. So yes. It is my fault.”
“This thing happening in your life is why we met in the first place, and Stephanie could have easily brought me into this herself. I bought her storage unit. And speaking of her, she has to be here. Otherwise she wouldn’t know about me.”
“Unless someone’s helping her,” he says. “And I’d like to think that amounts to nothing more than some hotel staff—not someone on the circuit.”
“The waitress?”
“She’s on my radar, but I couldn’t call attention to her without shutting down the game and implying some sort of security breach.”
“Which she was, and is,” I point out.
“Which would have only made me look more suspicious later, if I were to be accused of stealing.”
“Then I assume going to security is out of the question?”
“I can’t risk them grabbing her, and her rebelling by accusing me of stealing right in the middle of filming this show.” His lips thin. “All reactions that were expected when that napkin was handed to me.”
“You blinked tonight.”
“What?”
“When you read that note on the napkin, there was a subtle telltale sign. It shook you.”
“I don’t blink.”
“You did, Jason.” My mind goes to the place it had earlier tonight. “A lot of people want the king to fall, and you’re the king. What if Stephanie isn’t asking for money because someone is paying her to rattle you? Maybe no one intends to blackmail you at all.”
“I’ve considered that option, but that’s a gamble I can’t take. Not with everything she’s put on the table, which now includes you.”
“Don’t make decisions to keep me calm, because I’m not freaking out.”
He studies me for several beats. “Why aren’t you?”
I think of the past manipulators in my life, some high profile and powerful. “She wins then,” I say. “She can’t win, and the reality is that she didn’t think this through. She and whoever else is behind this have gone too far. You’re in a corner now and ignoring her is no longer an option. You can fight back, or you can roll over and start losing tournaments. And I haven’t known you long, but I know you aren’t someone who rolls over.”
“Or they think they have me just desperate enough to hand me a ransom demand that I will pay.”
“Or that,” I concede, shaking my head. “I hate the idea of being used against you.”
His hands settle at my waist. “Skye—” His cell phone rings, and his expression tightens. “I have to—”
“Yes. Take it. Please.”
He releases me, removing his cell from his pocket, glancing at the screen and then me long enough to say, “Daniel,” before he answers the call and listens a minute, exchanging a few undecipherable comments before he ends the connection.
“The waitress disappeared,” he tells me. “Abel and Daniel are looking for Stephanie, but the PI we’re using has absolutely no lead on her being here.”
“Maybe she’s not,” I say. “Maybe she just paid someone to pull this off today.”
“She has no money, which would mean she promised them something in exchange.”
“Or someone else did,” I say, returning to the place we both know this could lead. “Someone who wants you to start losing.”
“So if I lose, I end this. For you and me.”
“No,” I say. “Don’t do that.”
“It’s the obvious solution.”
“If you do that, what keeps them from doing this to someone else? I mean if they can do this to you and win, why not others? If you pay a blackmail fee that never ends, then you encourage whoever this is to do that to others as well. Is that how you want this to go? Is that what you really want to do?”
He presses his hands on the wall next to me, his arms caging me although I don’t want to escape. “What I want to do is play ‘fuck them’ poker, and erase that blink you saw.”
“How?”
“By kissing you the way I want to kiss you right here and now, then going outside into the public, and doing it again before winning the tournament.”
“Do it. All of it.”
His fingers tangle in my ha
ir. “When this night is over—”
“Don’t say we need to talk—because there are other promises you’ve made me that I think I’ve earned.”
“You’ve known me only days, Skye. I can’t ask you to do this.”
“It’s already done. Fate served me this helping of life, and you with it.”
“Fate,” he repeats. “Is that what you think this is?”
I think of Ella bidding on this unit, not me, and I say, “Yes. I do. I know you don’t believe in luck, but fate—”
“Is different,” he supplies. “Like you.” And then his mouth is on mine, and he’s kissing me—a deep, drugging slide of tongue, a “claim me” kind of kiss that tastes of anger, hunger, and the kind of defiance no one can take from you. The kind of defiance that wins poker games and wars. And when he pulls back, I am breathless and tingling all over. “I have to get back to the tournament.”
“We have to get back,” I say. “And no pressure, but you really need to win.”
His fingers ease from my hair, settling on my cheeks. “I will, baby. You just watch and see.” He kisses me again, hard and fast this time. “I’m going to end this,” he promises. “And no one will hurt you.”
He allows me no chance to reply and promise to help him do it. Already he’s released me long enough to open the door, guide me into the hallway, and lace the fingers of one of his hands with mine, folding our elbows between us. And we stay that way as we exit the VIP lounge, and the instant we’re in the hallway, I feel him slide into his zone. His steps are controlled, his energy the same, and when we reach the door to the event he doesn’t pause or ask if I have second thoughts.
Inside, the room is buzzing with new energy, the finale in the air, an announcement about the doors sealing coming over the intercom. Jason leads me forward and I walk with him to the opening where he’ll pass the barrier, and I’ll stay on this side. And the next thing I know, he’s pulled me to him, kissed me hard and fast, but oh so deliciously, with a deep slide of tongue.
Then he grins and says, “ ‘Fuck them’ poker—and then I’m going to fuck you every which way you’ll let me, baby.” He releases me and starts walking.
Inside Out: Behind Closed Doors Page 14