Wages of Sin: Las Vegas Syndicate Book Two

by Michelle St. James

  She was desperate to feel him tunneling inside her, would have accepted even his fingers. He seemed to know it, withholding penetration, letting his mouth do all the work. It only heightened her arousal, the clamoring desperation of her empty channel, wet and swollen and ready for him.

  She lifted her hips, beyond shame as she ground against him, letting herself rush toward orgasm, eager both for release and for the completion of feeling him inside her.

  He seemed to sense her urgency. His movements quickened, and he flattened his tongue against her clit, lapping at her like a thirsty animal. She was stepping toward the edge of the mountain, everything else receding, nothing but the sky and the tightening of her body as it came closer to the cliff.

  She ran toward it, rushing until she stepped off the edge, waiting for gravity to take hold. But it didn’t. Instead she flew, soaring as she let go, her body wracked with contractions as she came against Max’s mouth.

  He clamped down on her clit as the tremors shot through her body, a guttural and unfamiliar cry wrenched from her mouth as she lost herself to the demands of her body, wave after wave of pure pleasure moving through her.

  No time. No space. Just this.

  She opened her eyes to find Max poised between her legs, reaching for the bedside table.

  “Don’t,” she gasped. “Please… I can’t wait.”

  “Are you sure?”

  They’d never talked about protection, had been hit-and-miss with it since she’d been back from Mexico.

  She didn’t care. She wanted his cock.

  “Just fuck me, Max.”

  He groaned, positioning his wide head at her opening and lowering his body over hers, enveloping her lips in a kiss that was almost perverse in its depth, in the thoroughness with which he invaded her mouth.

  He reached for her wrists and stretched them over her head, pinning them to the sheet, then drove into her with a force that made her gasp.

  She was spread out under him, his penetration somehow more acute as he held her hands above her head and drove into her again.

  “Max.” His name was rent from her lips, torn from the depths of her body as he mined her channel.

  “Fuck Abby… you feel so good. So tight. So hot.”

  “It’s all for you,” she said, pulling her knees up around his hips.

  He sank even deeper into her and dropped his head to her collarbone, groaning as he dragged his cock slowly out of her channel, every inch a form of torture until he tunneled into her again.

  He sucked at one of her nipples as he moved, his free hand tracing the side of her body, past her breast, into the dip of her waist, over the swell of her hip.

  He stopped there, wrapping his hand around her ass, lifting her even higher, pressing her against him until they were so close there was hardly any room for movement. He ground his pelvis as he penetrated her. The friction on her clit was perfection, and she moaned, moving with him, another orgasm roaring to life inside her.

  “That’s right, beautiful,” he said against her breast. “You’re going to come with me, aren’t you?”

  “Yes…” It was more breath than word.

  He was holding her ass in his hand, her body an inch off the bed as he pressed her into him. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do but give herself over to the earthquake rumbling at her center.

  He moved faster, driving into her slow and hard, pulling out fast, not giving her any time to recover.

  And she didn’t want to recover.

  She wanted more.

  She moved faster in his hand, using her hips to stroke his cock inside the walls of her channel, relishing the press of his body against her clit as she pulled him in deeper.

  “I’m going to come, Abby. I’m going to give you everything.”

  The words let loose what little control she still possessed. She surrendered to the shifting plates inside her body and let the ground open up as she let go.

  She barely recognized her own voice crying out into the room, the gruff moan let loose from Max’s mouth as he let go too.

  Her body shuddered violently in his hands, clamping down on his thick cock as he spilled into her, wave after wave of pleasure rolling outward from the epicenter of her core.

  She was disintegrating, coming apart in his hands, her body returning to particles of dust, mingling with his until there was no division between them.

  Until they were one.

  One body, one mind, one soul.

  She had only one conscious thought as the tremors began to subside.

  Nothing matters but this.

  Max lowered her to the bed and pulled her into his arms, kissing her forehead over and over.

  Nothing matters but this.

  Twenty-Seven

  Max left the house while Abby was still asleep. She’d been sprawled face down across the bed, moving to take over his space after he got up to take a shower. He’d lingered over the long expanse of her spine, the swell of her ass a silhouette under the sheet that barely covered it. Her hair, golden in the morning light, had been spread out on the pillow, eyelashes dark against her porcelain skin.

  He’d thought about waking her to say goodbye but decided against it. He didn’t want to say goodbye, didn’t want to lend any additional weight to the next few hours.

  He knew what he was stepping into. Jason had specified two people from each group — himself and one of his guards (presumably Frazier), Nico and Max, and DeLuca and one guard. Nico had pressed to allow Farrell and Luca to attend as equal partners in the Syndicate, but Jason had been adamant about the terms.

  Max had expected Farrell to be pissed — and he was — but it was Luca who had put up the most resistance, arguing that it left Nico vulnerable. They had debated the issue using calm but terse language that alluded to their history, but Nico had made it clear he was going, reassuring Luca with a reminder that Max had been in Special Forces, that he’d fought enemies far more dangerous than Jason Draper and Fredo DeLuca.

  Max wasn’t sure he believed it. The enemy in Afghanistan had used any number of tactics to undermine the mission of the U.S. — but they’d all been more or less predictable.

  This was something else: meeting with his childhood friend-turned-enemy, a man who had both the intellect to build an empire and the ruthlessness to destroy his closest friends, plus DeLuca, a man who was suspected of being responsible for more than twenty bodies, their feet encased in concrete, at the bottom of Lake Mead.

  It spelled the worst kind of danger.

  The kind you couldn’t define. The kind you couldn’t anticipate.

  Saying goodbye to Abby would give her even more reason to be scared, and she’d been scared enough for ten lifetimes. His job was to make her feel secure. He would do nothing without that goal in mind.

  In the end, he’d left her sleeping and had quietly let himself out of the house. There was no room in his psyche to see her afraid. He wanted to remember her as she’d been last night in his arms — wild and wanting, fiery and uninhibited.

  It was not quite eleven as he headed to the car. The sun was already a flaming disc in the clear blue sky, baking the earth around the house.

  He got into the Porsche and backed out of the driveway, mentally propelling himself into the future, to the moment when he would pick Abby up after the meeting and tell her to pack a bag for the surprise he had planned.

  He’d thought about taking her away to celebrate the end of his partnership with the Syndicate, but it hadn’t felt right.

  This was their town: city of sin, seduction, and sex.

  City of Max and Abby. Of their pain and loss. Of their love.

  He’d booked a suite at the Aria instead, had ordered champagne and strawberries to be waiting for them, plus an assortment of lingerie from La Perla in Abby’s size.

  It would be a new beginning, a beginning they both deserved.

  He focused on the future while he drove toward Nico’s suite, pushing aside Jason and DeLuca, the uncertain
meeting.

  He thought of Abby instead. Saw her face. Felt her in his arms.

  Twenty-Eight

  Abby let herself into the house and started a pot of coffee while she changed into old clothes. She’d taken her time leaving Max’s house, allowing herself soak up his essence — his scent, his books, the sheets where he’d taken her again and again the night before.

  She was glad he hadn’t woken her to say goodbye. It would only have made her sad, something he’d undoubtedly known when he’d opted to leave quietly.

  She would see him tonight. She repeated it as she descended the stairs for a cup of coffee.

  I’ll see you tonight.

  She leaned against the counter while she sipped the hot coffee, her mind turning to the meeting between Max and Jason. She scrolled through her memories, trying to find a hint of what was to come, but no matter how hard she looked, she didn’t see a single thing that would have predicted her two best friends coming to such a dangerous impasse.

  Of course, Jason had always been jealous of Max. That was inevitable, plain for everybody to see — everybody but Max, who back then had always seen the best in everyone, even when they didn’t deserve it.

  But Abby could never have imagined that jealousy turning into the seething rage Jason must have felt to destroy Donald Cartwright, to involve Max in the DarkNet games and then report it to the FBI.

  She should have seen it after Jason staged the hostile takeover of Cartwright Holdings. He’d defended the move by conjuring the lessons Max’s father had taught him — business was business, not to be confused with emotion or attachment.

  It had been a perversion of Donald’s words. His meaning. Abby had been in her early twenties when Max’s father died in a car accident, but by then, she’d known him as an intelligent and compassionate man, a man with an almost uncanny instinct for making money, an instinct that had never been at odds with his impeccable character.

  Donald Cartwright had made a lot of money, but he never lost sight of the human beings on the other side of his deals. She’d seen him offer exit packages to mid-level management that were financially unwise in order to ease their way into new positions, had read articles detailing his quiet philanthropy.

  But she’d wanted to believe Jason, had been unwilling to do the difficult work of sorting out his bullshit, his excuses, from the truth about his motives and integrity.

  Looking back, she was surprised Max had been able to forgive her the betrayal: any normal person would have taken Max’s side — and Donald’s — in the dispute from the beginning.

  She’d taken the easy way out, playing the diplomat, using their mutual friend card as an excuse not to take a stand. Even after Donald died on a lonely desert road in the middle of the night, she’d allowed herself to travel exclusively in the DMZ of her friendship with both Max and Jason.

  Max had been smarter, had seen Jason for what he was. Now she couldn’t help wondering where they would be if she’d done the same, if she’d never gone to work at the Tangier, if she’d severed her friendship with Jason long ago.

  Would Max still have offered to help the Syndicate when her own safety wasn’t at stake? Somehow she didn’t think so.

  She owed Max a long-overdue apology, would offer it to him that night when the whole nightmare with Jason and DeLuca was over.

  She finished the coffee — now cold — in her cup and set it on the counter, then started for the stairs. She was almost glad she’d put off painting the last bedroom. She needed something to keep her mind and hands busy until Max came home after the meeting.

  She’d only briefly considered asking Meredith for help: she didn’t have the mental stamina to keep up a conversation with Meredith — with anyone — while Max was in danger.

  She’d already put the paint and supplies in the unfinished room, and she made a quick detour to her bedroom to get her computer. She would listen to music while she worked, would sing along, try to have fun and forget what was happening at the Tangier.

  She set up the computer and started her favorite playlist before kneeling on the floor to open the first can of color. It was a soft, pretty green, and it occurred to her that the room would work well not only as an office, but as a nursery.

  She laughed and shook her head as she poured paint into the tray and dipped the trim brush into the color.

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Abby,” she said softly. “He hasn’t asked you to marry him yet.”

  But she knew he would. Knew in her bones that they would be together forever.

  She felt surprisingly upbeat as she ran the brush along the edges of the wall, careful not to get it on the molding. By now she was a pro, able to work almost exclusively without painter’s tape, using a damp paper towel to clean up any mistakes along the way.

  She sang along to the music as she moved down the wall, feeling surprisingly upbeat.

  After today, everything would be resolved. She and Max could go back to focusing on each other — on their future — and put the past behind them once and for all.

  Twenty-Nine

  Max and Nico entered the casino and walked past the front desk. Jason had offered them access to the back entrance — it was closer to the meeting room at the rear of the casino — but the suggestion had wrung alarm bells for both Nico and Max.

  A room at the back of the facility was bad enough. All the noise in a casino was concentrated at the front of the building: slot machines ringing, cheering crowds watching the big game at one of the bars, the murmur of thousands of people spread like ether throughout the cavernous space.

  Almost anything could happen in one of the Tangier’s meeting rooms without patrons at the front of the facility hearing a thing. A few gunshots weren’t going to make their way down the long halls leading to the conference rooms and out into the casino itself.

  And the back entrance presented another problem: namely, the ease with which Jason could tamper with the security cameras.

  Which was why Nico and Max made a point of making their entrance at the front of the casino, looking up at the security cameras for good measure. Jason or DeLuca might entertain the idea of killing them, but making them disappear would be a lot more complicated with so many witnesses watching them step onto the grounds.

  They navigated through the gaming tables and machines, continued past the all-you-can-eat buffet and the convenience store that offered snacks, toiletries, and an assortment of useless gifts, and entered the hall that led to the meeting rooms.

  The noise level dropped a few decibels, the crowd thinning as they made their way deeper into the casino. Crowds of people were leaving the area, presumably breaking for lunch from whatever business conference they were attending.

  “It’s lunch time,” Max said.

  “I thought about that, too,” Nico said.

  It didn’t give Jason and DeLuca a free pass; there would still be stragglers around the meeting rooms, people who decided to work through lunch or those just looking for some peace and quiet.

  But Jason didn’t do anything without a reason. Every move he made was calculated, and Max didn’t doubt that went for every detail of the meeting whose terms had been set by him.

  They exited the long stretch of hallway and entered a maze of meeting and presentation rooms almost identical to the one at the Bellagio where he’d met Nico and the other Syndicate leaders.

  A central hall intersected the meeting rooms on either side, some of those broken up by smaller halls. They followed the signs, turning down one of the hallways and stopping outside a set of closed doors with a gold tag identifying it as the Casablanca Room.

  “You good?” Nico asked.

  Max didn’t look at him. “I’m good.”

  Nico opened the door.

  * * *

  Abby finished cutting in the edges of the room and stopped to put more paint in the tray. She’d brushed on a strip of color around the door and the moldings, the windows and the closet. The next part was her favor
ite, the moment she got to roll on big swatches of color and see the room change before her eyes.

  She was singing along to “Rock the Casbah” at full volume when she thought she heard a thump downstairs. She froze, then straightened and bent to her computer to pause the music.

  The sudden silence was deafening. She held still, listening for the noise.

  There was nothing, just the sound of her neighbor Bob mowing his lawn, and a plane passing overhead on its way to McCarran airport.

  Still, she felt uneasy, the events of the previous weeks playing like a bad movie in her mind.

  The man in leather who’d followed her for almost two weeks before he’d disappeared.

  Jason and his attack dogs, Bruce and Dean, not to mention the other guards who followed Jason when he moved from one place to another.

  Fredo DeLuca, his smirk as he’d passed her in the hall at work.

  She took a deep breath and made her way downstairs. She was thirsty anyway, and she wasn’t going to rest easy until she knew she’d imagined the sound on the first floor.

  She stepped into the hall, forcing herself to move with confidence. This was her house. She wasn’t going to let Jason or anyone else make her afraid here.

  She descended the stairs quickly, just like she always did, and stepped into the living room, scanning the area as she made her way into the kitchen. Both rooms were empty. She pulled a glass from the cupboard and poured water from the filtered pitcher.

  She looked around as she drank, lingering on the objects and furniture she knew so well, on alert for anything that might be out of place.

  Nothing was, and she set her glass in the sink and stepped into the hall. She used the bathroom, hesitating for a split second before she pulled back the shower curtain to reveal the empty tub.

  By the time she checked the downstairs linen closet she was starting to feel foolish.

  She chided herself as she climbed the stairs. No one was there. She’d been listening to the music too loud, that’s all, had mistaken an unusual drum beat for a thump.