by Kris Pearson
But way far from safe.
“Play a lot, do you?” Her fingers moved fast and competently.
“Not for stakes like this. Just for a bit of money. Now and again. Not often. Hardly ever, really.”
I’ll bet it’s more often than that, cherie.
A sudden splash on the side of the boat sent them rocking harder than usual.
“Anchor!” he exclaimed, smacking a hand to his forehead. “We could drift ashore if this goes on for a while.”
“Nope, I’ll have the pants off you in minutes, Alex.”
He moved away and made sure Sylvie was safe. When he rejoined her he asked, “So—are we playing here, or inside out of the wind?”
“What, you don’t want an all-over suntan?” she teased, gathering up the cards and tapping them back together with a couple of competent thumps against the top of the croissant box.
“You’d be the one getting the suntan, cherie. But maybe inside would be easier so the cards don’t blow away?”
He reached for her hand, pulled her up, and swung her into his arms. Kerri let loose a gasp of surprise as he carried her into the timber-paneled cabin.
“Second thoughts, Ms Kerri?” He glanced down at her face and saw her pupils were wide and black, dilated with reciprocal desire. “Too late now. You’ve suggested a sexy game and I’ve accepted your challenge.”
Anticipation prickled along every nerve. If she stopped him now he’d be swamped with the worst frustration of his life. She’d made him hard in seconds, burning to bury himself inside her. But this time he wouldn’t be bringing her off quickly. He’d really wind her up, take things slowly, see how far he could turn her on. Because a woman who orgasmed as easily as she had would be incredible to play with, heaven to have clasping around him, pulling on his cock with her hot smooth insistent muscles.
He lowered her onto the long low blue velour seating that ran down one wall, and seated himself far enough away they could spread the cards between them.
Kerri fizzed and buzzed with lust and questions. What happened if one of them ended up naked and the other didn’t? Would she dare to sit there almost undressed if Alex stayed decently covered? Could she keep her hands off him if he wasn’t?
She gave the cards one last shuffle for luck and dealt them five each.
“Bon chance, pretty girl,” he murmured.
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose up in the most disconcerting way. She reached a hand up and rubbed the skin there, trying to dispel the sensation. It had to be his soft French accent—she found it totally sexy and suggestive, even when he said something perfectly ordinary. Heaven help her if he decided to seriously turn on his potent Gallic charm.
She drew a deep breath for courage and peeked at her cards. Six, nine, queen, jack, queen.
One pair anyway. What a relief.
Alex fanned his cards out and whistled softly.
Damn. Or is he bluffing?
She tossed the six and nine face-down on the seat and took two more cards.
Alex put just one card down. She flipped him a replacement.
Kerri kept her face impassive as she checked her new selection. She now had three queens.
“So we just lay them down and see who has the best hand?” he asked. “No fun, Kerri. No tension at all.”
She pouted at that. Getting him undressed was plenty of fun for her. As for tension, she already quivered like a plucked guitar string. Tight, vibrating, almost ready to snap apart.
“I don’t have the money to outbid you, even if I wanted to,” she said. “Techno-man versus journalist—no contest.” She slapped her cards down so he could see them. And was hugely relieved that the best he had was a pair of tens.
She grinned and leaned back on the seat, waiting for him to remove something boring like a shoe. He crossed his arms, grabbed the hem of his white T-shirt and yanked it up and off.
Most of the air left Kerri’s lungs. He had to know he was utterly gorgeous. He’d done that on purpose to un-nerve her, she was sure. It was certainly working—her heart-rate had speeded up and her skin was warming all over with anticipation.
Her damned clitoris had got the flickers! That hadn’t happened since...well, since Friday lunchtime after she’d left his office, wanting more.
She tried hard to keep her cheeky grin in place. He absolutely mustn’t know how he was affecting her.
“Nice bod,” she acknowledged. “I said at Gaston’s you must go to a gym.”
“Must I? You think I need to?”
“Are you winding me up, Alex? No—I don’t think you need to. I think you’ve been going there already. Right?”
He made no comment. Simply sat a little straighter and allowed her to inspect him with a faint teasing smile on his lips. Kerri cleared her throat and tried to find something else to say. She was faced with a terrible choice; continue to admire his beautiful arms (smooth and not at all hairy above the elbows) and his strong shoulders and deep chest and long taut torso, or deal another hand and try to expose more of him.
A light mat of dark springy hair covered his chest, and a fine stripe ran down his flat spicy-brown belly to the waistband of his jeans. She longed to lick his half-hidden rosy-tan nipples.
Reluctantly she dragged her eyes away. All his delicious details stayed imprinted on her brain as she pushed the cards back together and shuffled the pack a second time—now with hands that were less than steady.
She dealt—praying she’d have more good luck with this hand. Another five cards each floated down.
“Your turn to undress,” he said as Kerri picked hers up to inspect them.
“No, your turn again,” she insisted. Her eyes ran rapidly over two fives, the jack of spades, and the eight and ten of diamonds.
Right—keep the fives, keep the diamonds, ditch the jack and hope like mad for the missing nine of diamonds. Or another five of course.
She watched as Alex’s dark blue eyes checked his cards, as one corner of his mouth twitched, and as he squashed the giveaway expression of pleasure. What the hell had she dealt him?
She got the two of clubs in return for her jack—useless—so that left her with just the pair of fives.
Oh God, nothing at all, I’m dead.
She laid her cards down with a flourish.
Alex smiled as he exposed a pair of sixes.
“So—your turn Kerri. What do you choose?”
She fingered her earrings. No, an earring wouldn’t have the same effect on him as his lack of T-shirt was having on her.
Her top in return for his? Her low-cut bra would undoubtedly distract the hell out of him. But did she have the nerve to do it? He was a total stranger really. Just a business contact. Someone she’d been sent to interview.
Not strictly true, Kerri. Things have happened since then. And you’re hoping even more is going to happen today.
Her shorts, maybe? But that would leave her sitting there in a skin-colored lace and satin thong, specially chosen to disappear under white shorts.
Why hadn’t she planned ahead? Dressed for this eventuality? In lots of layers, with heaps of pieces of jewelry, and much bigger underwear?
But she really hadn’t expected to be doing this. If she was honest with herself, she’d dressed for quick removal.
“What do you choose, Kerri?” his softly accented voice asked again, breaking into her frantic review.
She glared at him and removed her watch.
CHAPTER NINE
“Not so brave after all?” he taunted.
“Why show it off when I don’t need to?”
“Show it off? You think I want to look?”
“You’re a man. Men always want to look.”
“You’re forgetting the world I grew up in. It was full of near-naked Parisian showgirls. I have perhaps looked my fill?”
Not from the way you kept checking out my ‘crème caramels’ on Monday night, Alex.
“You deal this time,” she invited, passing him the deck
and sitting back to wait for her cards.
She was a little alarmed at how deftly he shuffled, and her face surely must have shown it.
“You’re pretty darn sharp with those, for a non-gambler, aren’t you?” she asked.
He continued to cut and combine with lightning speed, to shuffle and shift, to fan them into amazing shapes.
“Old stage-tricks,” he said, separating the ace of spades from the deck and tossing it from hand to hand, flicking it between two fingers, back between two others, twisting the card so it danced and turned and suddenly disappeared.
He held up two empty hands. Given that his long muscular arms were entirely bare, Kerri knew it hadn’t gone up his shirt-cuff.
“How did you—?” she demanded, just as he made it appear out of thin air again.
“How did I do that, or how did I get into stage-tricks?” He raised a dark eyebrow. “I had to live somehow, Kerri. I’d been around performers my whole life. It was the world I knew. So I worked at whatever I could…whatever came along.”
“To get enough to eat?” she asked in a small voice.
“That and to cover school expenses...” He dealt the cards again. “I was tall. Very young, but tall. It was a help.”
“And this was when your mother was gambling?”
“Sometimes then, but mostly later, after she died.”
She nodded slowly and tried to imagine the kind of life he must have endured in his teens.
After a few seconds of quiet reflection, Alex picked up his cards. Kerri did the same. Hers were useless—nine of spades, king of spades and three assorted diamonds. Should she throw in the whole hand or keep the two spades and hope for the miracle of the ten, jack and queen? She went for three, drew rubbish, and silently thanked Sarah for the loan of her jokey nautical earrings.
Alex gazed down at his cards. He tossed three and took three, then laid his final five on the blue velour-covered squab and looked at her expectantly.
Kerri heaved out a huge breath and kept him waiting a little longer.
“Yes?” he asked.
“No,” she groaned, seeing his trio of sevens. She pulled an earring off.
“Cherie, you’re a disappointment. You give me no thrills at all yet.” He smiled, and reached across to run a finger down the side of her face... down her neck...down her arm until he captured her hand. His long fingers enclosed hers. “Feel,” he said. “Feel what you do to me.” He drew her hand across to his chest and held it flat against his heart so she felt the rhythmic thudding, strong and insistent.
“You’re definitely alive,” she joked, overwhelmed by so much man, so much chest, so much tanned skin and curling dark hair. Helpless to resist his invitation, she knelt up beside him and laid her other hand on his broad shoulder. She slid her fingers down over his chest, stroking with appreciation.
Alex grabbed a fast breath. Kerri felt his ribs rise, his muscles flex. He was so ferociously masculine she craved to lick and nip and taste him. Instead, she contented herself with his clean warm scent. It spiraled off him with every breath he took. There was no cologne today. But might there be brown sugar if she got closer?
Somehow she tore her hands away, rocked back to sit on her heels, gathered up the cards, shuffled and dealt them each another hand. “Very alive and very nice,” she added.
“I’ll hold,” he said after a brief inspection.
She threw him a quick glance. His cards were that good?
She swapped two. She still had nothing. It was time to be a big brave girl. She took a deep breath, stood as slowly as she could, and felt her cheeks getting hotter by the second under Alex’s interested scrutiny. Finally, she couldn’t put it off any longer, so she stepped far enough away to wriggle her white shorts down to her ankles, and off.
“Come back here. Why do you think I’ve beaten you?”
“Because you kept all your cards, of course.”
“And?” he asked, his eyes wide and wicked.
“You’re only bluffing?”
He motioned her closer and slipped an arm around her waist to pull her in the last little distance. The warm smoothness of his arm against her skin felt electric. She peered down at the five unrelated cards he held.
“Cheat! Take something off as well!”
“What would you like me to take off?”
Your jeans, of course.
“Your... shoes,” she suggested.
Looking as though he was trying not to grin, he obediently toed off a shoe, kicked it aside, and spread his legs so he could pull her in between his long denim-clad thighs. He slouched forward on the seat so her knees pressed against his groin. Her tiny lace and satin panties were now clearly visible below her red top. Would he think she was pretty? Did he really want her?
Alex slid his hands over the soft cheeks of her bottom to the narrow elastic sides of her thong. Spots of hectic color flamed high on his cheekbones and his eyes were riveted to her groin.
“How I’d like to rip this right off,” he murmured, tweaking the elastic and letting it snap softly back against her skin. “But I need to show you I am not the animal I must have appeared in the office.”
Sudden courage flooded over her, and Kerri flexed her knee against the seam of his well-packed jeans. She had the answers to her questions in his husky growl.
“I quite liked that animal,” she admitted, nudging him again when he didn’t object.
Alex smiled at her admission, and smoothed her red top up so he could lean forward and run a string of soft kisses from her navel to the lower edge of her bra. He let it drop into place again.
“My turn to deal?” he asked.
“Are you serious?” she yelped. She burned for him, and he intended continuing the game?
His sizzling grin confirmed that indeed he did.
Alex lost his watch in the next round, then Kerri forfeited her other earring.
The slop and slap of the sea receded to nothing. A huge airliner roared over unheard. Seabirds had no voices, and a jet-ski tore by a hundred yards away with its screaming engine the merest whisper.
There was only him—peeling off his jeans when she fluked a nice run of spades; smiling ruefully at the up-thrust tent in his boxers; helping her slide off her top when his aces beat her nines; cupping her lace-covered breasts in his hands and placing a reverent kiss between them before unclipping the centre catch of her bra and pushing it slowly aside.
“So—final hand, Kerri. I lose my boxers or you lose your panties.”
Thicker air now filled the small distance between them. Movements were slow and unhurried. She had never been so turned on in her life.
He reached across to brush his thumbs in a lazy circle around each tight nipple.
Touch them, touch them. Please Alex, touch them.
He drew back, eating her up with his hungry brown eyes. “Were you thinking—this—when you accepted my invitation?”
She shook her head. “No idea,” she said shakily. “You grabbed me fast enough on Friday and then didn’t contact me that night, so no—not really.”
His eyes swept down to her panties…up to her burning face. “Yet you challenged me to cards?”
“A silly bet. I make a few of those.”
He sighed and shook his head. “I was very determined this wouldn’t happen,” he murmured. “I have to go back to France. I’m not looking for a lover, and all the complications she would bring.”
Kerri’s heart bounced and fell back into place with a thud of disappointment. She’d known that, but still…
“Why would there be complications?” She hoped she sounded casual and unconcerned. “We both know where we stand.”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and Kerri wished she knew what he was really thinking.
“I had no great example of domestic harmony the way I grew up,” he said, opening his eyes and seeking hers. “My mother’s men-friends came and went. There were disagreements...heated arguments and passionate reconciliations. None of th
em brought her happiness. None of them lasted very long. It didn’t give me faith.”
“You’re not her. You’re a different person,” Kerri objected. “You seem to have your life totally sorted.”
“My business life, yes. My personal life?” He shrugged. “The one has taken over the other.”
“You’re alone, like me. But not lonely?”
He shook his head. “Surrounded by people.”
Yes, but are any of them special? Does anyone in France thrill you the way you thrill me?
“So no complications,” she replied, although it almost killed her to say the words. “That’s the deal with us?”
“Only today. It’s all I can offer. But if you ask me to stop now...if you expect me to take the boat back to the marina and say goodbye...I doubt I could do that with good grace.”
“I won’t be asking.”
He drew a long slow breath and nodded. Kerri watched his belly tighten, his chest rise, his eyes close with pleasure. A tiny smile tugged at his lips.
“My turn to deal?” he asked.
“I bet I win.”
Alex shook his head in mock despair. “What am I to do with you, Kerri?”
“Just deal,” she implored. “We’re going for naked. I can’t wait much longer for you.”
He arranged his five neat rectangles in a deliberate fan, and glanced up from the cards to Kerri’s creamy breasts, only an arm’s length away. His cock gave a huge lurching flex.
She picked up her cards and fanned them out in turn. He knew the game had no further significance. It was now something to prolong their slow seduction and ramp the tension up even higher.
Merde! This might have started as a joke, but he was in deeply now. More deeply than he expected or cared to be. It wasn’t just the thrill of the chase—the fun of the card-game—it was Kerri herself. So vulnerable, so strangely unloved. So careless about her personal safety, her finances, her future. When he left tomorrow, as he had to, he would worry about her a great deal more than she would apparently worry about herself. He didn’t need that.
He glanced down at his final hand. Ace of hearts, queen of hearts, four of hearts, seven of hearts, nine of spades. What a crock. He threw out the spade and took another. King of hearts. Yeah, right...just so appropriate for a man who was about to make love and then run. His mouth twisted at the thought.