Gambler's Woman

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  He moved abruptly, straightening and beginning to peel off the soft suede jacket. His eyes never left Alyssa’s wary, tense face as he absently draped the jacket over the back of a nearby chair and began unbuttoning the dark suit.

  Temporarily free, Alyssa sat up on the quilt, curling her legs under her protectively. She could feel the blood racing through her veins and was unable to shake the heady combination of passion and anger that was swirling through her. “Jordan, I won’t let you do this to me. If you think you can casually show up on my doorstep and…and force yourself on me, you’re out of your mind!”

  “Not surprising,” he agreed laconically, tossing the shirt in the general direction of the jacket and beginning to unclasp the leather belt at his waist. “I think I’ve been half out of my mind for a good portion of the week. I even lost money on Thursday night. Money I didn’t intend to lose.”

  Alyssa blinked, aware of the significance of his admission. “I’m…I’m sorry about your concentration,” she began, tentatively, edging carefully away to the opposite side of the bed.

  “Don’t worry, I intend to restore my peace of mind!” He yanked off the expensive calfskin shoes he was wearing and then stepped out of the dark slacks. Along with the slacks went his one remaining garment, a pair of snug cotton briefs.

  Alyssa swallowed as his hard, lean body emerged from the clothing. She knew a primitive urge to run and an equally primitive need to touch the blunt, sleek planes of him. He was aroused, and the soft light of her bedside lamp threw dark, dangerous shadows across his smoothly muscled thighs and the contours of his chest.

  “Jordan, please, wait.” Her right hand lifted in a pleading gesture. “We need to talk. You know that. There are too many misunderstandings. You’re angry, and so am I. This isn’t any way to solve our problems.”

  He fit his strong hands to his waist, and a flash of cool amusement lit his gaze. “I suppose we could try dialing a marriage counselor. Except that we’re not married.”

  “This isn’t a joke!”

  “Well, given the fact that we can’t call in outside arbitration, we’ll just have to solve our problems in the old-fashioned way.” He leaned forward slightly, one hand going to the buttons of her black bow tie.

  Alyssa reacted, realizing that there was nothing she could say now that would stop him. With a violent little twist, she leaped from the far edge of the bed and was on her feet across from him in an instant. Her bow tie dangled from his fingers as he straightened to pin her with his gaze.

  “Are you going to try running?” he asked almost conversationally.

  “Don’t threaten me, Jordan.” Her breath was coming more quickly now as she realized the peril of the situation. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Or perhaps she didn’t care to do so, she told herself silently. He was between her and the door, and the odds of getting safely back out of the room was definitely not in her favor. Jordan was far too good a gambler not to realize that fact, too.

  “I’m not going to threaten you,” he said almost gently, surprising her by sinking down onto the quilt with his back to her. He gazed musingly down at the strip of black silk in his fingers as if it fascinated him in some way. “I’m going to make love to you. There’s a difference, you know.”

  Alyssa moistened her dry lips. “Not as long as you’re going about it in this highhanded fashion!”

  He glanced back over his shoulder, a wry curve to his mouth. “Come here, Alyssa.” His eyes were gleaming, and his voice was exquisitely deep and gentle.

  She blinked, taken aback by the change in his approach. Quite suddenly, he was the infinitely seductive man she had known in Las Vegas, and the knowledge that he could turn the dangerous charm on at will made her deeply wary. “I don’t think so, Jordan. Not until we’ve talked.”

  “Then talk to me,” he invited huskily, threading the black silk through his fingers. Alyssa found herself following the small action, hypnotized. Those hands…“Talk to me and tell me you understand how much I want you.”

  “Do you, Jordan?” she heard herself breathe. “Do you really want me?”

  “So badly that I swallowed my pride to track you down here in Ventura,” he said simply.

  “I thought it might have been your pride which brought you here,” she countered, wondering desperately what was happening to her will to resist. Her eyes still followed the way his sensitive fingers toyed sensually with her bow tie.

  “If I’d listened to my pride,” he said carefully, “I’d still be in Vegas. I had to come and find you tonight, Alyssa. I couldn’t bear the thought of your being out with some other man.”

  The desire and longing was clearly visible in the depths of his eyes, and they drew Alyssa like a magnet. She might have been able to go on resisting him if he had stuck to the macho approach, but this sensual, captivating honesty tugged at all her senses. If she had gone to Las Vegas tonight on schedule, they would by now have been lying in each other’s arms. How could it be any different having him here? This man could weave magic around her, and realizing that didn’t seem to make it any easier to fight it.

  “There isn’t any other man, Jordan,” she stated quietly.

  “Davis?” he prompted softly.

  “He and I are after the same promotion at work. We know each other strictly on a business basis. That’s all there is to it,” she whispered.

  He continued to gaze at her over his shoulder for a moment longer, and then his head inclined faintly in acceptance of her explanation. “There wasn’t any other woman during the week, honey.”

  Her fingers curled into the palm of her hand as she stood very still. “I…I wondered. When you didn’t call.”

  “It was my pride that kept me from calling. Not another woman.”

  “Oh, Jordan,” she sighed.

  The hand with the strip of silk laced between the fingers was held out to her. “Now will you come here, Alyssa?”

  “Are you…” she broke off and tried again. “Are you still angry with me for not going to Vegas tonight?”

  “Do I look angry?” he countered softly, his hand still extended across the bed. “Come here, Alyssa, and let me show you how I really feel tonight.”

  The last of her wariness dissolved in the face of his gentle seduction. Slowly, Alyssa knelt down on the bed and put out her hand to touch his. He touched her palm lightly, drawing her toward him with such a gossamer pressure that she was almost unaware of what was happening until she found herself kneeling less than two inches away from him. Then the lure of his broad shoulder overcame her, and she trailed her fingertips down the curve of his arm.

  “I’m not angry, Alyssa. Not any longer. I need you too much.” He turned her palm upward, moving his lips across it in a warm caress. “I’ve been needing you all week.”

  “Did you really lose last night?” she whispered, loving the touch of his mouth on her vulnerable palm. The thought of being capable of wrecking his concentration sufficiently to cause him to gamble badly was intoxicating. It gave her a heady sense of power and an equally pervasive feeling of tenderness.

  “I lost. But I won’t lose tonight, will I, sweetheart?” He moved his lips to the inside of her wrist holding her hand with the lightest of touches. The silk bow tie dropped unheeded to the quilt as Jordan shifted his weight in a subtle manner.

  The next thing she knew, Alyssa felt herself being lowered slowly until she was lying on her back and he was ranged alongside her. The warmth of his naked body was like a fire on a cold night, infinitely inviting and full of promise. She could feel the blatant thrust of his manhood against her leg, and she shivered.

  “Oh, Jordan, I thought about you all week,” she confessed softly, her arms going up around his neck in a gesture of acceptance. Or was it one of surrender? Alyssa didn’t want to think about the nuances of the action just then.

  “And you’ve been on my mind ever since I had to put you on that damn plane back to California,” he muttered. Slowly, he undid the buttons of her pleate
d tuxedo blouse, working with care and anticipation. He wasn’t going to hurry this, she realized. As if he had read her mind, his mouth crooked slightly as he pushed aside one edge of the blouse and bent to kiss the swell of her breast above the neat white bra. “I’m in a mood to make it last the rest of the night. I want to compensate myself for all the long, lonely evenings this past week.”

  Alyssa trembled a little beneath the feather-light kiss, and her fingers flexed, catlike, in the darkness of his hair. “You’re sure you’re not still angry?” she questioned one last time. There had been a real threat in him when he’d arrived on her doorstep this evening and then again when he’d watched her with Hugh. It was hard to believe all that male vengeance had truly disappeared.

  “I want you too much to be angry tonight.” He lifted his head, his fingers slipping along the high waistband of her black trousers. “But this time I’m going to make very, very sure of you, sweetheart,” he added huskily.

  She shifted with a trace of unease. “I don’t understand.”

  “You will by morning.” His mouth closed over hers in a slow, drugging kiss that seared away the last of her uncertainty.

  Alyssa sighed into his throat and gave herself up to the embrace. This was what she had been dreaming of all week. This man of math and magic was the lover she had never quite dared to believe existed. How could she resist him tonight?

  His teasing, gently arousing fingers traced erotic patterns across the skin of her stomach before unfastening the black trousers and slipping them down to her feet. Alyssa stirred restlessly as the fires within her began to build. She stroked him again and again, unable to get enough of him. Her hands moved over his shoulders and along his lean hips to the hard, muscled planes of his buttocks. There her nails sank lovingly, enticingly into him, and his groan of response was as satisfying as the finest wine.

  “Tonight was not a fantasy night, was it?” Jordan murmured on a hoarse thread of humor as he touched the fabric of her plain white underwear. “No black lace and satin?”

  “And no bordello-red bedroom, either,” she countered. “Miss them?”

  “I shall remember that night with the greatest pleasure, but no, I don’t miss the trappings of the fantasy. The only thing I’m concerned with is the part that’s real. You.”

  He kissed her again as his palm slid up along her inner thigh and closed over the heart of her desire. Alyssa gasped as the warmth of his hand penetrated through the thin white cotton that still shielded her. With her mouth still trapped beneath his, she arched her hips instinctively.

  “Wildfire,” he whispered throatily. “You’re like wildfire under my hands.”

  She couldn’t answer. She was too conscious of those incredible hands, and her body was too caught up in the web they were spinning around her. When he drew small circles with a bold finger against the white cotton, she moaned far back in her throat and clung to him.

  Reaching up, he captured one of her wrists and lowered her hand to the heat of his thighs. “I’ve been dreaming of your touch all week. Make my dreams come true.”

  The full strength of his masculinity slipped into her palm, and she heard him suck in his breath. With trembling fingers, she explored the heavy, probing hardness of him, and a tremor went through his body. Uttering a groan of mounting need, he buried his lips against her throat while his finger slid under the edge of her cotton panties.

  “Jordan!” The word was a plea as he deliberately teased the sensitized softness between her legs.

  He muttered something dark and sensual, and then he lowered his head to take the taut peak of one breast in his mouth. The tender tug of his caress there sent wave after wave of longing through her system. When she was a writhing flame beneath him, he began to work his way down her body, his tongue moving over her damply.

  “Only for me,” he rasped. “I want you like this only for me. My God, woman, you’re driving me out of my head!” He nipped a little savagely at the delicate silk of her inner thigh, and the small punishment sang excitingly through her senses.

  “Now, Jordan. Please. I need you so.”

  But he held off a little longer, kissing her so intimately, she cried out with wonder.

  “Tell me,” he muttered thickly as he tracked searing kisses back up to her breasts and her throat. “Tell me you’re mine. Tell me you belong to me, sweetheart.”

  She trembled at the unmistakable element of command in his words. Tonight he intended to be sure of her, he’d said. Was this what he meant? Was he going to force an acknowledgment of her own surrender from her? But she couldn’t seem to think of any way around the truth in that moment.

  “Jordan…?”

  “Tell me!”

  “Oh, yes, Jordan. Yes!” She clutched at his shoulders, urging him to cover her fully and let her absorb his hardness into her softness. It was all that mattered just then. “I want you so!”

  Jordan looked down at the woman lying so passionately in his arms, begging for him, and he knew he could wait no longer. All week he had been remembering the way she came alive beneath him, the satisfaction and the glory he took in first driving her wild and then taming her completely. A part of him had wanted to tease her and torment her for hours tonight before allowing either one of them the satisfaction they craved. But he had been a week without her, and the uncertainty during that time had made him too hungry. His need of her was too great to postpone the inevitable any longer.

  “Tell me once more,” he whispered urgently as he held himself less than an inch away. “Tell me you know you’re mine. That you belong to me!” God! After what he had been through this past week, waiting and wondering and berating himself for having fallen for such an elusive creature, he needed to hear the words a thousand times before morning. When she moaned beneath him and closed her eyes in anticipation, he told himself he would take the words again and again from her that night. He would be absolutely certain that by the time dawn came, she knew she was his. He would not be a weekend fantasy for her!

  “Yes, Jordan,” Alyssa whispered passionately, her hands flowing over him as she begged him to come to her. “I’m yours. Please be mine.”

  “Alyssa!” Jordan surged against her body. How could he refuse that last request? All he wanted to do in that moment was make them one.

  At the moment of complete possession, Alyssa felt the breath stop in her throat. Her body reacted to the sweet invasion on a thousand different levels, acknowledging its need and longing for this man who, by all rights, should have been a stranger.

  But he wasn’t a stranger. Here in her arms, he was the other half of herself, Alyssa realized vaguely. The thought came and went, driven out by the lightning that was flashing through her. Jordan was stamping the imprint of his body on hers in no uncertain terms. As he drove her powerfully toward the final brink, a part of her wondered at the intensity of his lovemaking. When he mastered her softness with his overwhelming passion he knew he would force her to give herself up to it completely. He would brook no halfhearted surrender.

  Clinging helplessly to the strength of him, Alyssa found herself skyrocketing toward the ultimate conclusion, and the extent of Jordan’s power over her senses was almost frightening, even in that tumultuous, primitive moment. Recognition of that power made her cry out unconsciously in a husky protest.

  “No! Jordan, no…”

  He must have heard and understood the strange note of fear and defiance in the broken words because his mouth moved to hers, silencing the small sound forcefully. Not savagely, she reflected later when she remembered the incident, but with absolute determination. He would allow her no escape from the complete possession he was claiming.

  With whatever protest she might have made sealed forever, Alyssa gave herself up to the pounding conclusion of his lovemaking. She knew he felt the first delicate tremors within her almost as soon as she herself was aware of them, for he locked her close and whispered heated words of encouragement as he pushed her over the edge.

 
Jordan clearly savored the evidence of her satisfaction for as long as possible before he let himself be swept over the same precipice. Alyssa, still lost in the world of sensation, heard his exultant shout and knew the roughness of his teeth against her bare shoulder. Instinctively, she clung to him.

  Long moments later, she slowly surfaced to hear the sound of her name being repeated in a rhythmic, crooning fashion, as if it were a litany.

  “Alyssa, Alyssa, Alyssa.”

  She opened her eyes slowly to find Jordan watching her, his head nestled beside hers on the pillow. His body was still connected to her own, and there was a sheen of perspiration on his forehead. She was damp, too, Alyssa thought vaguely. Damp and beautifully lethargic, wonderfully satiated. The golden eyes burned into her own.

  “I frightened you,” Jordan stated.

  “Perhaps. A little.” She didn’t have the energy just then to argue the point.

  “Why?” The question was almost stark.

  “I feel…” She hesitated, honestly searching for the right words. “Out of control when you’re around.” Her head moved restlessly on the pillow, auburn tresses fanning out on the white fabric. “I don’t understand how it is you can seduce me so easily. I just don’t understand.”

  His fingers closed over hers, entangling. “It works both ways, you know.”

  “It’s different for a man.”

  “No,” he countered. “I won’t buy that. I’ll admit that sex can be more varied, perhaps, carry a lot of different meanings with different women. But when it happens the way it does between you and me, it’s just as shattering for the male as it is for the female.”

  “Shattering?” She looked at him uncomprehendingly. “You feel shattered? What a strange way to put it. You’re so perfectly seductive. It must be cool and calculated and deliberate. This is the second time you’ve set out to seduce me, and both times I felt as if you were spinning a web around me. I felt lured and drawn and…and helpless. Tonight, just before”—she paused awkwardly, glancing away from the intensity in him—” just before the end, I suddenly realized what was happening and how powerless I was. How out of control. It frightened me.”