Lauren Dane - What Happens In Vegas...

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Jodi Lynn Copeland

My thanks to:

P. G. Forte and Katie Bryan, who encouraged my muse on her first-person flight of fancy; Val Dorr, Denise Pattison, Jenn Wilkins, Devyn Quinn and, again, to P. G. Forte—dear friends who are always there and always care; and my family, without whom life would be tragically mundane.

As much time as I spend at The Liege, between working in the casino’s Taboo Tequila Bar as a cocktail waitress and visiting the progressive bingo room on Sundays with my grandmother, I’d never had the desire to play cards there until tonight. I can only guess that what propelled me through the door of the twenty-four-hour poker room and to the last available seat at a table filled with men and reeking of testosterone and cigar smoke was Hank’s deception.

The bastard had lied.

We’d agreed the first time we hooked up that we were in it for two things: sex and more sex.

So what the hell was he doing proposing?

I liked Hank, but—Christ—proposing?

If he’d gotten to know me at all the past three months, he’d know I didn’t do relationships, documented ones or otherwise. He clearly didn’t know me. Not beyond the way I liked my martinis and men—both dirty as a girl could get ’em. Not beyond the fact that, unlike many women, I didn’t have a problem sucking a cock bone-dry. In fact, I loved it.

The taste of hot, salty fluid sliding down my throat. The feel of a man’s stiff shaft thrusting between my lips. The knowledge he was under my complete and total control. There was no better feeling in the world.

Or so I was telling myself when I eased my chair up to the poker table with a little hip-scoot shuffle, and discovered Jack Dempsey sitting three chairs away.

From the thick, wavy black hair that matched his mustache, to the graceful slide of his long fingers across the table’s green felt as he pushed a stack of nickel chips into a fast growing pot, to the rasp in his voice as he confirmed the bet, Jack was de-fucking-licious. That I could say the same about the body beneath his clothes, and that being laid by him beat any mouth job I’d ever given, amounted to the biggest mistake of my life.

Four months ago, following the death of my father and one martini too many, I’d given in to the lust I’d felt for Jack since puberty and jumped his bones. He’d put up a marginal fight, saying it would ruin our friendship, and then jumped mine right back.

The way nearly every guy at the table stopped what he was doing to check me out said I could end tonight on a bone-jumping note, as well.

I’d changed out of the tit-popping top and barely crotch-covering miniskirt the tequila bar called a uniform, but—along with my Latina appearance—I’d inherited the body of a centerfold from my mother, and my snug black jeans and midriff-baring white tank top weren’t hiding that fact. Having 34 Cs, a trim waistline and thirty-three-inch-long legs was a blessing when it came to pulling in tips at the bar. It was a bitch the rest of the time.

I couldn’t make the trek from my apartment five blocks from the Vegas strip to The Liege without hearing speculation I was either a showgirl or a hooker. I gave total props to those who worked in either profession, but I didn’t and I got sick to hell of the assumptions—and the lewd looks that were often accompanied by propositions of the open-legged variety.

The balding guy next to me—who was obviously going through a midlife crisis, from his orange rapper-style jacket and enough bling around his neck and on his fingers to get him taken out in the seedier sections of Vegas—pulled his gaze from the football game playing on the jumbo flatscreen television on the wall behind the dealer to send me one of those lewd looks. Since I wasn’t about to make a scene in my place of employment by telling him I’d rather screw the seventy-year-old dealer than do his slimy ass, I feigned an oblivious smile, slid my bills to the dealer to cash in for chips and glanced down the table.

Jack’s gaze met mine and I swear his blue-green eyes flashed a look as predatory as the one he’d given me four months ago, when he’d been buried cock-deep and screwing me to nirvana. Then again, since Jack and I had barely talked since that night, it was probably the cigar smoke messing with my head. That didn’t stop moisture from gathering in my panties and my heartbeat from kicking up.

Hank had never been able to stir either reaction with a mere look. For all our deal had been based on sex alone, Hank had hardly known the right places to touch to make me climax. Chalk it up to over two decades of friendship and, up until four months ago, frankness on our sex lives, but Jack knew all the right spots. Knew I liked my loving fast and hard, then slow and easy. Knew I was greedy enough to expect to climax twice before my lover came. The lone night we’d been together, he’d doubled that rate by delivering four of the most stunning orgasms of my life.

Jack nodded at me. “Carinna.”

Stacking my chips on the table in front of me, I shivered with the deep timbre of his voice. So cool. So classy. That was Jack. Till he got his hands on your body and then he was hotter than a four-alarm fire. Fitting, since he put out fires for a living.

Was there anything sexier than a man in a uniform? Given, a man out of a uniform, but other than that? Hank for damned sure wasn’t as sexy as Jack, and he had a history of modeling. Mostly sock commercials, but even Jack’s feet were hotter than Hank’s.

For Jack, I might just walk down the aisle.

I bit my tongue over the thought as I slid the big blind chip into the center of the table. If I walked down the aisle with any man, it would be under the influence of something narcotic and illegal.

Ignoring the thunder of my hormones and the hungry pulsing of my pussy, I smiled. “Jack. Good to see you.”

I might have imagined the predatory look, but there was no mistaking the surprise that flickered in his eyes. I’d been convinced he blamed me for propositioning him with sex that, just as he’d forewarned, had led to the decline of our friendship. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe he still thought I was pissed at him. So he’d ditched my bed in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye note. I knew he had a job to do and he did it with pride. He’d waited three days to call and explain it was indeed a fire that had pulled him away, but so what? I’d never wanted anything more from him that night than a comforting shoulder and a good, long fuck. I’d gotten both.

Now, all I wanted was our friendship back.

After checking my hold cards, a deuce of spades and a seven of hearts, I folded with a silent snicker. I did want our friendship back, but with the addition of fringe benefits of the sexual kind.

Hank was history. Looking at Jack, registering the heart-slamming, panty-wetting way he got to me, I knew no other man would do for my next lover. Before this night was over, I was going to erase the biggest mistake of my life, by regaining my friendship with Jack and, in the meantime, getting laid by a guy who understood no-strings sex as completely as I did.