“With my life,” she responded immediately.
“Oh, Alyssa!” Then he was pulling her hard against him, finding her mouth with his own in a kiss that swirled her helplessly into a loving, sensual world full of promise and hope and commitment. His mouth moved on hers, draining every vestige of uncertainty from her and replacing it with sureness and spinning wonder. “Alyssa”—he breathed raggedly when he reluctantly lifted his head—“Alyssa, my sweet lady gambler. If you’re willing to take a chance on me, I swear I’ll never let you down. I’ll give you everything I have to give.”
She swallowed and took the final risk. “Your love, Jordan? Could you give me a little of your love?”
He shuddered, his eyes almost tortured. “My God! Don’t you know you’ve had that from the first?”
“Jordan”—she sighed, leaning her head down on his shoulder—“oh, Jordan. Have I really? I love you so very much, you know…”
“I was beginning to hope you might when you talked of quitting your job last night, but I was almost afraid to start counting on it,” he confessed huskily.
“I didn’t think you were afraid to count on anything,” she taunted gently. “After all, you count so well!”
“Some things, unfortunately, are true risks. Real gambles. They’re a bit scary. Alyssa, if you really love me—”
“You know I do.” She lifted glowing eyes to meet his shattering gaze. She could have sworn that he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue, as if he were actually nervous.
“Then as long as you’re proposing to make a respectable man out of me, I’m going to propose that I return the favor.”
“Make a respectable woman out of me?”
“Will you marry me, Alyssa?”
She caught her breath, her heart in her throat. “You…you always said you weren’t good husband material.”
“I am now,” he retorted confidently, even a little arrogantly, as if he were suddenly very sure of himself. “Marry me, Alyssa, and you can bet I’ll make the best damned husband material around!”
“It’s a deal,” she whispered.
JORDAN FLATLY REFUSED TO EVEN consider a Las Vegas wedding. And although Alyssa pointed out that if they got married there they would be able to spend their honeymoon in the bordello-red bedroom suite, he refused to reconsider. If they were going to be respectable, he declared, they were going to start off on the right foot. A quiet wedding with a real minister. He produced both in the small town of Oregon where he had his house on the coast.
“Nice car,” Alyssa observed politely as he drove her home from the minister’s three days after he had swept her out of the casino and off to Oregon.
Jordan winced as he handled the wheel of the silver Porsche. “I forgot you told me that first night you were going to use your gambling winnings on a red Porsche. Well, don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll buy you one.”
She chuckled. “I don’t think we need two in the family. I’ll just use yours. Unless,” she added blandly, “you’re afraid to have a wife at the wheel?”
“I’ll risk it,” he said, grinning back. “After all, if you wreck it, you can always replace it with a few trips to Reno or Vegas.”
“Such an understanding husband,” she drawled lovingly.
He stretched out a hand and found hers, squeezing it tightly for an instant before returning his fingers to the wheel. “My wife. My very own wife.” He sounded dazzled by the notion.
He parked the Porsche in the drive of the house, which was perched high on a coast cliff, and took Alyssa’s hand as they started up the flagstone walk. Just before they stepped through the door into the cedar-walled, modern home with its huge stone fireplace and warm, glowing wood interior, Jordan abruptly swung her off her feet and into his arms.
“What in the world?” she exclaimed, laughing as he carried her over the threshold.
“Bad luck not to carry a wife over the threshold,” he informed her, kicking the door shut behind him.
“I keep telling you that for a mathematician the principle of ‘luck’ doesn’t exist.”
“I’ll always have a touch of the gambler in me.” He grinned unrepentantly, carrying her on into the living room and up the curved wooden staircase that led to the bedrooms.
The laughter went out of Alyssa’s eyes as she looked up at him, her arms around his neck. “You don’t feel as though marrying me was a…a risk, do you? That you’re taking a chance?”
He halted at the top of the stairs and stared hungrily down into her face. “Alyssa, marrying you was the smartest, surest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I love you.”
She touched his shoulder with her lips. “And I love you.”
The tremor that went through him flowed into her, and by the time he had carried her into the wide bedroom and set her down on the fluffy comforter that covered the bed, Alyssa knew both of them were trembling with the force of their stirring passion. It would always be like this between them, she knew with great certainty. Passion and love and trust. With all of that going for them, they could face anything together.
Jordan stood beside the bed, drinking in the sight of her lying there wearing his ring. “I don’t know how I survived as long as I did in my world waiting for you,” he murmured.
Then he lowered himself slowly beside her, undoing the buttons of the neat champagne-colored jacket she had worn with a matching skirt for her wedding. Alyssa fumbled with his clothing as he undressed her. Her fingers were shaking, she realized in amazement. And so were his. That knowledge made her smile.
“Such good hands,” she whispered dreamily as he slipped off her suit and then reluctantly sat up to remove the rest of his own clothing.
“My hands?” he pushed off his shoes and them came back down beside her, magnificently naked and passionately aroused. “Do you like my hands?” He touched her throat with his fingertips.
“I love your hands.” She caught the tormenting fingers and drew them to her lips to kiss them warmly. He groaned at the delicate caress, leaning over her to kiss the hardening peaks of her breasts. Languidly, she arched against his mouth, and his tongue came out to stab excitingly.
With wonder and longing and deep passion, they built the fires between them. Jordan’s sensitive fingers moved over Alyssa, rediscovering the exquisitely vulnerable places he had learned before and which he delighted in arousing. She felt the taut, waiting hardness of his thighs pressing against her hip and marveled at the fierceness of his desire for her. It made her feel more wanted and needed than she had ever felt in her life. She could give this man as much as he gave her, and the shared knowledge was a fundamental part of their passion.
Lovingly, she drew her fingers down his chest, tangling them briefly in the crisp, curling hair before going on to seek the hard planes of his thigh. There she clenched her nails tantalizingly and was rewarded by Jordan’s low, muttered groan of desire.
“You have a way of teasing and tormenting me that nearly drives me out of my head!”
“Only nearly?” she mocked, and was instantly punished when his own prowling fingers trailed unerringly to the heated, damp place between her legs. “Oh, Jordan!” Under the magic of his touch, she went wild, twisting against him and arching upward with feminine invitation and pleading.
She was so perfect, Jordan thought, gazing down at his new wife in wonder. She was everything he needed in this world, and he would take care of her no matter what. She would never have cause to regret marrying him. So sweet, so perfect and so full of love. How had he existed so long without love?
“You’re so beautiful in my arms,” he said, dropping a moist kiss on her stomach. “So warm and welcoming. You make me feel so loved.”
“Oh, Jordan, that’s exactly how you make me feel. No wonder we couldn’t resist each other!” She feathered her hands along his shoulders and then wound them deeply into his hair, tugging him up and along her writhing body. “Make love to me, darling. I need you so much.”
“I will, sweet
heart, I will,” he vowed. Tantalizingly, he drew his hair-roughened leg along the inside of her smooth one, and Alyssa moaned in response. When he felt her coffee-and cream-colored nails sink into his shoulders, he closed the distance between them a little further.
“Yes, Jordan, yes!”
“In a moment. In a moment.” He buried his lips at her throat, inhaling the scent of her. His senses demanded that he take her completely, but he wanted to savor to the ultimate the delightful struggle she waged when she was urging him to her. He loved having her go wild beneath his hands.
Alyssa knew what he was doing, but she was helpless to react other than exactly as he wished. She arched her hips upward, straining to link her body to his. There! She could feel the heaviness of his manhood just there, only a small distance from her feminine core.
“Come to me, darling,” she whispered in passionate enticement. “Come and make me yours.”
As always, she won the delicious battle. Jordan gathered her to him, moving against her with power and need, taking her fully. And as always, in the process of taking, he was lost. The barriers between them fell completely, trapping them together in a swelling tide of love and desire.
Alyssa reveled in the glory of the claiming, knowing that the feeling was a shared one. She wrapped her smooth legs around the hard, muscled length of him, and her arms were laced tightly around his neck. Over and over again, she whispered his name. The shimmering spiral twisted higher, and they climbed it together, every movement of Jordan’s body sending them to another level.
“Jordan!”
He heard the little crack in her voice, the one he was coming to know and love so well, the one that told him she was nearing her ultimate plateau. “Yes,” he growled against her mouth. “Let it happen. Give yourself to me completely!”
The command seemed to send her over the edge. With a small cry, which Jordan drank from her mouth, Alyssa felt the indescribable release of the coiling tension in the depths of her loins. The primitive pleasure that was unlike anything else in the universe took her, sending rippling shivers through her body. Her nails left small half circles against the bronzed skin of Jordan’s back, and when he felt the delicious sensation, he could no longer hold back his own surging satisfaction.
“Alyssa! My God, Alyssa!”
She clung to him as he crushed her deeply into the quilt, loving the heavy warmth of him as he gave himself up totally to the moment. When it was over, she stroked his back in long, lingering caresses, their legs entwined, his head beside hers on the pillow.
When she opened her eyes, he was watching her through lazily narrowed lids. “Hello, Mrs. Kyle.”
“Hello,” she whispered back, her mouth soft.
“I love you. I love having a wife. Do we get to call ourselves a family when there’s only two of us?”
“I think so,” Alyssa murmured gently. “Do you like the idea of being a family?”
“I love the idea. I love everything that includes you.” He traced the outline of her lips with his forefinger.
“And besides, it sounds so respectable, doesn’t it?” she mocked tenderly.
“Being able to say I have a wife gives me a curiously stable feeling. Like betting when you know exactly who’s holding what at the table. Also,” he went on with a teasing light in his eyes, “it solves the problem of who gets to toss the coin.”
“What coin?”
“The one we were going to toss to see whether Chandler or Kyle came first in the name of our new consulting firm, remember?”
“Oh, that coin?” She frowned at him with mock ferocity. “Is that why you married me? So that there couldn’t be any argument over my last name?”
“Well, if you want a double name now we’ll have to call it Kyle-Kyle, won’t we?” he returned ingenuously.
“I don’t think that has quite the ring to it that Chandler-Kyle had,” she observed dubiously.
“Well, we’ll just settle on Kyle Consulting then, how’s that?”
“Do I detect a note of masculine possessiveness in all this? You have something against me using my own name?”
“How did you guess?” He picked up her hand, the one on which she wore his ring, and kissed the band of gold. “Now that I have you, I intend to spend the rest of my life making sure you never escape.”
“Jordan,” she murmured, spreading her fingers along his jaw. “I have no desire to escape.”
“Oh, my sweet Alyssa,” he murmured, shaking his head once in a gesture of wonder. “Do you realize how lucky we are to have found each other? Do you have any idea of the incredible good fortune it was for me that you wandered into that casino that night in Vegas?”
“I keep telling you that we probability experts don’t believe in luck!” she drawled.
“And how many times do I have to tell you that we professional gamblers have a very healthy respect for it?”
She sighed laughingly. “I can see you’re going to bring a unique perspective to the business world.”
He propped himself up on one elbow and smiled down at her. “We still have that bottle of champagne and the paté to open, remember? We were supposed to come straight home from the minister’s office and celebrate our wedding with a gourmet luncheon, as I recall.”
“How could I forget! It’s not my fault we wound up in bed instead of opening the paté and the champagne,” she reminded him indignantly. “Now that you’ve exercised your privileges as a new husband, are you ready to go eat?”
He considered that for a long moment. “Actually, even though I’m getting hungry for food, I seem to be even hungrier for you.”
She sat up beside him, eyes laughing. “Enough is enough, master! Let’s go eat!” She tried to slide lithely off the side of the bed, but he snagged her wrist in an unshakable grip.
“Wait a second. We’ll toss a coin and see which course of action we ought to follow,” he suggested smoothly, hanging onto her while he leaned over the edge of the bed to rummage in the pocket of his slacks.
“Jordan, you’re impossible,” she informed him, amused.
“Call it,” he ordered, flipping the coin into the air with an expert twist.
“Heads we go eat paté and drink champagne,” she said quickly.
An instant later, the coin landed. Unable to resist, she leaned forward to see which way it had fallen.
“Tails,” he announced grandly, showing her the evidence. “That means we stay here and satisfy this hunger first.” He reached to pull her close, satisfaction and anticipation radiating from him.
“Do you always win?” Alyssa demanded just before his mouth closed over hers.
“Always.”
ISBN: 978-1-55254-670-3
GAMBLER’S WOMAN
Copyright © 1983 by Jayne Ann Krentz
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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