by V. K. Sykes
He gave a breathless laugh. “There you go with that dirty talk again.” But he quickened the pace of his thrusts, plunging so deep into her that his heavy balls slapped against her bottom. She loved the sound of their bodies coming together, loved that every stroke vibrated through her clit, making her gasp with spiraling pleasure.
Suddenly, Nick slowed, and then stopped. Sadie just about screamed. “Sheriff, what the hell are you doing?”
He pulled out. “I want to look in your eyes when you come.”
She pivoted to face him. Water glistened on his face and his jet black hair was a flat, shiny cap atop his head. She’d never seen those onyx eyes quite so intense. His jaw was rigid with desire, his neck and chest muscles taut with anticipation. His penis, long and slick from the shower and from her, bobbed under the powerful jets of water. Looking at all his hard, male flesh made her even crazier with desire.
“You’re beautiful,” he said in a thick voice as he slid the soaking wet panties down her legs.
Sadie stepped out of them and kicked them away. “Thank you for the compliment. But please get back inside me right now.”
Nick reached his hands under her thighs. Understanding immediately, Sadie gave a little hop until he had her in the air, her legs wrapped around his waist, her back flat against the shower wall. With one strong arm under her bottom, he used the other to guide his cock into her sheath. Her thigh muscles quivered as he impaled her, pinning her hard to the wall. They both groaned as she pulsed around him.
He was right. As erotic as the other position had been, Sadie loved seeing his face as he drove into her, filling her not only physically, but with an intense emotion she couldn’t and didn’t yet want to name. All she wanted was to feel. Feel his magnificent body under her hands, her nipples rubbing with delicious friction against the hair of his chest, his cock driving into her with hot, hungry surges.
Panting and near the edge, she moaned as she trailed kisses over his neck, his ears, his cheeks, his lips—every place she could reach. For once, she couldn’t think of a single coherent thing to say.
Nick pulled her into a shallow arch and lowered his head to her breasts, licking each of her nipples, his breath hot and wet as he sucked the tips until they grew even more rigid with an almost painful arousal. She surrendered completely to his dominance, able to gasp only broken words—shameful things she knew she’d be embarrassed to recall later.
But she didn’t care. Nothing mattered but Nick and the earth-shattering lust or whatever the hell it was that flowed between them. Some dim part of her brain looked on in amazement that a man like him could crave her so much. Crave her—Professor Sadie Bligh, math geek and perpetual wallflower.
“Oh, my. Oh, my, oh, my!” Every thought in her brain imploded like a collapsing star. Pleasure screamed through her, winding tighter and tighter until she convulsed against Nick’s chest with a high, keening wail.
His muscles like iron, Nick ground into her—once, twice—and then he clenched his jaw, his face distorting with the force of his orgasm. His cock pulsed inside and he held her tight until she collapsed, her legs trembling as she began to ease down to the floor of the shower.
Nick shut off the water and followed her down. They subsided onto the tile in a tangled heap of limbs, spent and gasping for breath. Sadie let her head fall onto his chest as her reason slowly returned, the cooling shower beginning to clear the haze from her brain. And as reason returned, with it came the unnerving sense that her little Vegas fling had just morphed into something a whole lot more dangerous to her heart.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Man, we destroyed these steaks,” Nick said after doggedly chewing his way through the first mouthful.
Sadie tentatively poked her dry-looking filet with her fork, then pushed it off to the side. “The salad and grilled vegetables suit me just fine.”
Women, Nick thought, unable to hold back a sigh. What was it with them and salads?
“It’s my fault,” she said apologetically. “I’m the one who started us down the highway to sexual abandon.” She tilted her head and gave him a thoughtful inspection, her damp curls falling softly around her glowing face. “You’re turning me into a wanton woman, Sheriff. And I must say I think I like it.”
He grinned as he refilled her wine glass. “True. But I’m the one who insisted on the shower.”
The memory of what they’d done in the shower would stay with him a very long time. It wasn’t the first time he’d had shower sex, but this one had been in a league of its own. Their slick bodies had meshed in perfect accord. Holding Sadie in his arms had made him feel like he was at the beginning of something new—a fresh start, and a respite from the often grim march of days that his life had become.
As for the sex, well, she’d said she couldn’t get enough of him, and he believed her. He felt exactly the same way.
Despite the ruined steaks, the evening would have been perfect had it not been for the ugly task that lay ahead of him. It hung like an executioner’s blade over his neck, and he knew there were so many ways that the conversation could go off the rails. But the longer he delayed, the tougher it would be. Better to do it now, while the buzz of lovemaking was still strong between them.
Watching her on the monitors today had made him realize he knew precious little about her. She was from Chicago, but what did she do for a living? He was equally in the dark about her family. He’d been so busy answering her questions—and having mind-blowing sex—that he’d neglected to ask many of his own. And he’d made too many assumptions. Had she been distracting him on purpose all along?
“Sadie?”
She looked up from her plate, casting him a smile so sweet it made it hard for him to breathe. “Yes, Nick?”
“I was just thinking that you know a fair bit about me, but I know almost nothing about you.”
Her eyes rounded with surprise, and possibly caution. “You do have a point, but I’m not sure there’s all that much worth knowing. I haven’t led a very interesting life, at least not until the past couple of days.” She turned up the wattage on her smile, which only fed his suspicion.
He stretched out in his chair, trying to look more relaxed than he felt. “I doubt that. Anyway, I don’t even know what you do for a living. And you haven’t mentioned your family at all. I’d like to know more about you, especially since we’re...” He let the words trail away.
“Haven’t we been keeping busy doing other things?” she said, her smile playfully warm.
Answering a question with a question. She was probably just trying to be cute and sexy—not that she had to try—but it still came off like an evasion. She didn’t want to talk about herself or her past. Why?
“True, but fair’s fair,” he said. “I’ve practically told you my life history. What I do, the Iraq stuff, what happened to my dad, what’s going on with my mom. It’s think it’s time for you to open up, at least a little bit.”
She dropped her eyes toward her lap for a moment before raising them again. “You do have a right to demand a degree of reciprocity,” she finally said. “All right, Sheriff. Ask away.”
Shit. Why the hell did she have to keep calling him that, especially now? Resisting the urge to take a deep breath, Nick throttled back. Time for a new strategy.
“I could ask you straight out what you do, but let me try to guess,” he said, hoping to make it sound like a game.
Her eyes narrowed. “Well, okay, but good luck with that.”
“Let’s give it a try. I figure that with all those fancy words that roll off your tongue, you’re some kind of academic. Or maybe a writer. Not a journalist, though. I’m thinking more along the lines of a novelist, or a screenwriter.” Maintaining his easy posture, he watched for her reaction. “Am I getting anywhere close?”
She was working to keep her expression blank, but the little jerk of her body told him his guess had hit close enough to the mark.
“Not bad, Sheriff. Not bad at all. But there’s obvious
ly a big difference between what you call an academic, and some sort of professional scribbler. Which one are you putting your money on?”
Nick had spent all afternoon thinking about little else, putting together the small clues he’d gathered over the last few days. She didn’t look like any professor he’d ever seen, but he went with his gut. “I’ll say an academic.”
Her eyes widened, but then she gave him a disdainful look, pursing her lips. “Oh, come on, Sheriff. You’re a professional. You can be more specific than that, can’t you?”
He paused to sip his wine, making her wait. “With your brain, you’ll have a Ph.D. for sure, so you probably teach at a university or a junior college.”
Her mouth quirked up, reluctantly, he thought. “Good instincts. You might make a decent gumshoe if you ever want to change careers. But keep going.”
What did she teach? That seemed almost a no-brainer, given her manner of speech. “You’re a professor of English. Probably something really inaccessible,” he said with a chuckle. “Like James Joyce.”
“Good Lord, no, Sheriff.” Sadie shook her head as if he’d just said the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. She pointed an index finger at his head and said “bang” before blowing away the pretend smoke from her imaginary gun. “James Joyce, indeed. Sorry, you lose.”
Irrationally, Nick started to get annoyed. What the hell did he expect? He’d started this game. “Okay, philosophy, then. Philosophers like big words.”
She laughed. “A little better, but that’s strike two. Care to go for the strikeout?”
Damn. One more miss and he’d feel like an idiot. “Nah, I give up,” he finally conceded.
“Chicken,” she said, giving her head a sad shake.
Nick put on a wounded look. “Hey, I did get pretty damn close.”
“True enough. You did very well, I have to admit.” She raised her glass in toast to him. “So, I’ll put you out of your misery. I teach mathematics at the University of Chicago.”
Nick couldn’t help jerking upright in his chair. “Holy shit. I mean, that’s amazing.” Math? He could have taken twenty guesses and still not come up with the right answer.
She stiffened. “Why is it so amazing?”
The coolness in her voice warned him to watch his step. He didn’t want to say something stupid, but he just couldn’t envision her as a mathematician, especially at some place as high-powered as the University of Chicago. But why not? He’d seen tons of evidence—including at the blackjack table—that Sadie Bligh had a mighty brain.
“I guess I have a stereotype of a math professor in my head—an older, absent-minded guy in a tweed sports coat. Sure as hell not a smoking hot young woman.”
She visibly relaxed. “Excellent recovery. I like your answer. The smoking hot part, anyway. As for stereotypes, though, they usually exist for good reason. Sadly, math and science were male preserves for a very long time. But it’s changing.”
Now that the basics were out of the way, he wanted to move on to more personal matters. “What about your family, Sadie?”
“The less said the better,” she ground out in so grim a voice his radar switched on again.
“Come on, babe. Don’t leave me hanging here. Are your mom and dad still alive? Any brothers or sisters? Enquiring minds want to know,” he said, trying to keep it light.
She screwed up her face. “God, Sheriff, I feel like I’ve been transported back to the gulag. But I can see that you’re going to keep dogging me about this, aren’t you?”
He gave her what he hoped was a winning smile as he shrugged.
“No surprise there. Fine, then,” she said in a disgruntled tone.
Shit. No doubt about it, the post-sexual buzz had departed the building. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to carry on.
“My mother and father are both math professors,” she said. “They met when they taught at MIT, and divorced when I was ten. No other children. Mother remarried and moved to France with her husband, who’s a professor at the University of Lyon. She made it crystal clear that I’d be better off staying in the States with my father.”
Jesus. What kind of mother did that? “I’m sorry. That must have sucked.”
“To be rejected by your own mother? Yes, you could say that,” she said in a carefully neutral tone. “Shortly after she decamped, Dad moved us to Chicago so he could take the chair of the math department.”
“He raised you by himself?”
Her mouth pulled downward in a cynical curve. It looked horribly wrong on that sweet, pretty face. “Actually, I was mostly raised by a series of live-in nannies. My father didn’t have very much time for me. Not even when I started winning math competitions.”
Nick frowned. “Still, you ended up following in his footsteps.”
“Of course. All I ever wanted to do was emulate him.”
“So you became a math professor, just like your dad,” he said gently. He understood the psychology behind that one. Nick had wanted to be exactly like his father, too. But his dad, unlike Sadie’s, had never been anything but a supportive and proud parent.
She let out a bitter laugh. “No, not just like him. I became a mathematician, all right, but I was always just daddy’s little girl. The precocious kid of a famous father. Really good, but never good enough to measure up to the brilliant and illustrious Professor Anthony Bligh.”
His chest ached with sympathy for her. “Why are you so down on yourself? You’re young, Sadie. You’ve got lots of time to make your mark.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t know what it’s like in my world.” She put her hands together in the universal time out signal and gave him a weak smile. “Look, can we change the subject? I didn’t come to Vegas to rehash all my angst. Exactly the opposite, in fact.”
“Sure.” He figured he’d gotten everything out of her that she was willing to share. It had assuaged his concerns, but that didn’t mean he could avoid dealing with her situation at the Desert Oasis. Carson would to see to that, and she would probably take it better from Nick than she would from his boss. Besides, he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to keep his job.
“So, speaking of Vegas, you’re clearly enjoying yourself in the casino. At least after that first night—the one we’d both just as soon forget.”
She brightened a little, obviously relieved at the change in subject. “I am. And I’m glad I didn’t let you scare me off with your police state tactics.”
He scoffed. “Hell, I treated you with kid gloves, sweetheart.”
“You abused me horribly,” she said with a pout. “I thought about suing, or maybe filing a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union.”
He couldn’t help laughing. “Okay, if I did cross the line a bit—and I’m not admitting anything—I think I’ve made amends for it, haven’t I?”
She unleashed a sexy smile that spiked his blood pressure. “Maybe, but you’re going to have to keep working at it. Let’s just say you’ve made a reasonable start.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I do pride myself on my work.”
“I’ve very aware of that, and very grateful.”
Now, with the mood lightened, it was time to get down to business. Sadie had relaxed since they stopped talking about her family. “So,” he said casually, “is your luck at the tables still holding?”
Sadie gazed at him from across the old oak kitchen table, the one he’d been sitting at since he was a kid. He should be feeling comfortable and in control, but the wary expression on her face sent a wave of guilt washing through him.
“It seems to be holding up fine,” she said. “I’m sure my streak will come to a tragic end soon, though. It’s extremely difficult to defeat the house for any length of time, from what I read in a book I picked up.”
He got the distinct feeling she was trying to pretend she was a novice. “That’s right. Everybody loses eventually. It makes sense to walk away when you’re ahead. But most people can’t bring themselves to do it, and they leav
e town with their pockets empty.”
Sadie shook her head vigorously, and her auburn curls bounced. “I understand, but I didn’t come to Vegas to do what makes sense. I’m supposed to be doing everything but what makes sense. That’s the whole point of my trip.”
She fell silent for a moment, gazing pensively at her wine as she swirled it around in the balloon goblet. “I don’t really understand it, but playing blackjack has been energizing—like getting a shot of adrenaline when I most needed it.” She glanced up at him but then quickly shifted her gaze to the living room. Nick’s heart sank at the revealing gesture.
“So, I’m just going to let it ride,” she continued, “and if I lose my stake, then it’ll be just what I expected. Whatever happens, I’ll go home with no regrets.” She finally brought her gaze back to meet his, as if daring him to challenge her.
Nick was pretty sure Sadie was lying, and if he was interrogating anybody else, he’d pounce on him. But not on her. Not after everything she’d told him. She wasn’t in it for the money, he was confident of that. Something else was going on, and he needed to see her in action to figure it out, especially since she obviously had no intention of sharing her motives. Still, it would be better to warn her off now, before she got into more trouble. Before Carson made him throw her ass out onto the street.
“But you’re already ahead by a lot of money,” he said in a reasonable voice. “Maybe you should just quit now and enjoy your winnings.”
Her expression blanked for a few seconds, and then she slowly sat up very straight. “I never mentioned that I was ahead by a lot of money.”
Oh, shit. Bad slip-up. He gave her a rueful smile, realizing it was time to come clean, at least about knowing how much she’d won. “Sadie, it’s not exactly a secret that casinos know everything that goes on at their tables and slots. Players who win consistently get their totals monitored. Not to the penny, but the pit bosses keep their eyes open and report. So do the operations room staff, who see it all on the cameras.”