In every way with him.
Every. Single. Way.
“Soon,” she whispered in his ear. “Soon. I want to be with you again. I want you in every way. I swear.”
The talking of the past stopped, as it needed to. She’d said all she truly needed to say, and now all she wanted was to feel. Because she felt so much for him. More than she’d wanted to when she’d first agreed to dinner. More than she’d ever expected when he’d walked back into her life. Damn him, damn the heart, damn the body.
“Babe,” he said in a soft but firm voice. “Rock your body against me.”
“How is it we can talk like this and I’m still hot for you?” she murmured in his ear.
“Because I turn you on and because you’re crazy about me, too,” he said, low and sexy, and just for her. She shivered against him, saying nothing, refusing to give voice to the yes that formed on her tongue as she began moving again, her small body riding his big, strong frame.
“Just like that. Keep it up,” he told her, urging her on. “I can feel you getting close.”
“I’m so close,” she said on a quiet gasp.
“Let go. Let go for me,” he said as he thrust his hips up against her, and yanked her down harder on him.
She let the past fall behind her once more as she returned to what they’d been doing before. Coming together. She moved on him, harder, faster. There were no more words, no confessions, and no questions. Just movement. Their need for each other had never been quenched. She didn’t know if it ever would be, even as her belly tightened and she felt the start of that intense rush of pleasure. She pushed onto him, hitting that point where she lost control, and came apart for him, grabbing his back, biting down on his shoulder, falling apart in his arms.
In a broken photo booth in the back of a casino.
Of all the damn places in the world. Yet it felt so right.
But even through the haze of her orgasm, she knew she couldn’t escape the past. She couldn’t hide from it in all this contact with him.
Soon, very soon, she was going to have to tell him that he’d been the father of her child.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The ace of diamonds winked at him, a mate to the ace of clubs that the dealer revealed next on the green felt of the blackjack table at the Luxe.
“I’ll split,” he said to the goateed dealer.
Together, Brent’s two aces were a bust. Torn apart, they gave him a second chance in the game.
“I’ve got a very important question for you,” Mindy said, as the dealer laid a three on top of her eight and Matchbox Twenty played overhead. The band was in concert at the Luxe in two weeks, after the Alvin Ailey troupe departed from its brief stay at the hotel’s new theater.
“Hit me,” Brent said to his friend, and she rolled her eyes at his pun. “What’s the question?”
Mindy adopted a girly, love-struck tone. “Have you thought about what you’re going to wear tonight to Alvin Ailey?” She batted her eyes and squeezed his arm. “It’s such a big decision.”
“Bow tie. Seersucker suit,” Brent said with a straight face, as the dealer slapped two new cards face up for Brent. Only the two of them and a lone bald guy nursing a tropical drink played at that table on a Saturday afternoon. The goateed man dealt Mindy another card, too. A six, giving her seventeen.
“And a panama hat. That’d be a nice touch,” Mindy added, nudging Brent with her elbow as he stared happily at his new cards. Eight and a nine. Didn’t get much better than that.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Or, call me crazy, I could just go with jeans and a nice button-down shirt.”
“I’ll stay,” Mindy said to the dealer, then to Brent, “Fine. Be that way.”
The bald man busted on his turn, then the dealer drew until he reached 17 and had to stand. It was house rules, and Brent beat him with his 18 and 19.
“You lucky bastard,” Mindy said in a low whistle.
Brent simply shrugged, an admission that he’d always had some kind of Midas touch at the tables. But he also had another more important skill, and while it was one he’d told Shannon he was not applying in relationships, it was a rule to live by if he wanted to survive in the casinos with a wallet intact.
Scooping up the chips, he tipped an imaginary hat to Mindy. “And on that note, I’d better quit while I’m ahead.”
“Thanks a lot. You killed me there, taking all the good cards,” she muttered.
“Play another round. I’m out.”
The bald man with the piña colada took off, too.
“Stay with me. Be my lucky charm,” she said, and Brent relaxed in the chair as Mindy went up against the house again, trying to win back some of her losses. “By the way, have I ever told you that Michael Sloan is insanely hot?”
Brent groaned. “Can we not talk about how hot you think her brother is?”
“Oh, they’re all lookers. All three of them,” she said, with a breathy sigh. “All three. I’d take any of them, honestly. Ryan, Colin, Michael.” She counted off on her fingers.
“Okay, you really need to stop now.”
“Hey,” she said, lowering her voice, a sign that she was downshifting to a more serious moment. “Speaking of tonight, does she ever talk about what happened with her family?”
Brent nodded. Mindy had lived in Vegas her whole life. She knew the Paige-Prince saga, since it had been in the local news when they were both in high school.
“It’s weird, don’t you think?” she continued. “The Royal Sinners.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just the whole idea of them. Like the Latin Kings, or the Crips and the Bloods. I hate them,” she said, her voice a harsh seethe as the dealer slapped her cards on the green felt and “Overjoyed” sounded through the casino.
“They’re street gangs. Of course you hate them. That’s like hating cancer.”
“They went kind of quiet for a while there. A few years ago. Did you know that?”
He shook his head. He honestly hadn’t tracked the goings on of the gang culture. But Mindy knew the underbelly of the city of sin better than anyone. “Five or six years ago, it seemed like they’d all kind of fallen apart. But I hear they’re trying to be active again. Recruiting new members. Hitting the streets again with drugs, tagging, fights over territory.”
He clenched his fists. His blood went cold. “Should I be worried? For her? For her family now?”
Mindy shook her head and squeezed his shoulder. “I wasn’t saying that at all. When you started seeing her again, I did a little digging into Stefano with some of the guys I know on the force. A couple of them were active when it all went down. They say Stefano was on the outs when he killed Thomas Paige. He was doing his own thing. Kind of separating from the Sinners.”
Brent’s jaw tightened. A fresh wave of hate surged through him. He hated that Shannon had gone through that, that this kind of canyon of awful had not just touched her life, but had marked it. Had been the line in it. The before and the after. “So, he was, what? The odd man out in the local gang?” he asked, as the dealer tipped his forehead to Mindy, his way of asking her next move.
“Hit me,” she said to him, then dialed down the volume. “Supposedly. They said his girlfriend disappeared, too, around then. They’d wanted to question her to see what she knew, but couldn’t find her. Anyway, those were just the things I heard. That’s all.”
That’s all. That’s all. That’s all. The words reverberated in his head, mingling with the anthemic chorus of the pop song about a love so powerful it consumes you with joy.
Joy. Hate. Love. Death. They were inextricably linked.