From somewhere behind him, a blast of raucous laughter caused him to start, distracting him from the blazing machines inside the casino.

Julian turned his head slightly to the side, toward the noise and eyed the overweight, bleached blonde who couldn’t have been from anywhere other than Texas. The machine screeched and winnings poured out the lip in a waterfall of coins.

“Lookie, Patrick! I dun won four hundred smackeroos!” she chortled in a voice which fit her obnoxious appearance perfectly. Naturally, it was wrought with a deep Texan drawl.

Patrick, who apparently stood at her side, nodded approvingly and grinned a toothless smile.

“Ya sure did, Colleen! I knew you’d make our rent this time!”

Even as he thought it, a voice echoed his sentiments perfectly.

“Charming,” someone muttered from his left, her low, sultry tone laced with contempt. Julian’s eyes traveled toward the woman at his side who watched the scene with a full mouth twisted in a fusion of disdain and something he couldn’t quite decipher.

Wistfulness?

Longing?

It was difficult to read, especially since she had such a classically beautiful face, almost as if she had descended from royalty with high cheekbones and large, guarded eyes. It wasn’t as if she was suspicious per se but shadowed by the woes of life. It was hard to say what she might see in the scene which made her sad—the fact that they had won or that they were a couple.

“You’re not a fan of the machines?” he asked and she cast him a look of surprise. For a moment, Julian felt that he was invisible and she was staring directly through him with her golden-brown eyes.

Am I here? He asked himself and he idly wondered if he had spoken the question aloud. The ecstasy he had taken in his suite was causing his body to tingle in a peculiar way and if he looked at the girl a certain way, he saw her split in two.

I’d like to split her in two, he thought, a wide grin forming on his generous mouth, the abrasive woman at the slots all but forgotten.

Taking drugs was not really his scene but the impromptu vacation to Vegas had brought back some old college boy in him and he reasoned that without supervision, he was entitled to let loose once in a while.

“I really haven’t had much experience in casinos,” the raven-haired girl replied and Julian’s eyes moved along the slender lines of her neck toward the swelling breasts threatening to spill out of her too-small t-shirt.

He wondered if she had done that by design or if she just desperately needed a new wardrobe.

Julian suddenly had the irresistible urge to take her shopping.

“Casinos are overrated,” he told her, extending his hand toward her. “I know a much better way to see Vegas.”

She eyed his extended hand and for a moment, Julian thought she was going to slap him. The heady feeling of the drug made him laugh at the image and he almost welcomed the feel of her palm on his cheek. He was feeling much more brazen, not to say he was ever shy. But at the same time, he felt as if he might shatter into a million pieces if she didn’t accept his hand. In the end, she took it, raising her head back slightly to look up at him with an almost childlike wonder.

“Show me,” she told him.

* * *

He didn’t catch her name—or perhaps he never asked. It didn’t seem important as the hours flew past, her throaty laughter bringing him higher. Every second he spent with her brought him closer to the need to possess her.

Julian found himself calling her “Kitten” because she reminded him so much as a sexy little beast but there was something inherently wicked about her, a mischievous undertone beneath those serious eyes which he was dying to unleash. He knew she would be a wildcat in bed…if they got that far.

Something primitive inside him told Julian they would.

He fulfilled his desire to take her shopping, insisting that the extravagant wardrobe be sent to his suite and the afternoon flittered into night, Julian losing himself inside her golden eyes.

“Are you real?” he asked her at one point and she cocked her head to the side, a long strand of hair dripping over the luscious curve of her breasts. It was a pressing question, one which echoed over and over in his mind like a chant. Julian licked his lips, the desire to taste the cream of her skin overwhelming him.

“Are you?” she replied, spinning to fan him in a strand of black tresses.

There were champagne and lobster at the Chart House and drinks at Caesar’s. Slowly, his memory began to fade and all that remained was the haunting glow of her strange eyes which tantalized him lured him back to his rooms at the Palazzo.

When he finally gathered her in his arms, it was everything he had envisioned from the moment he had heard her voice.

“Kiss me,” she ordered him. “Hard.”

He didn’t need to be told a second time and when their lips crushed together, it was as if she had cast a spell on him. The bulge in his pants poked dangerously through the material of his crotch. He could feel her heat through the worn material of her denim jeans.

She tasted sweet and liquored but when their tongues met and Julian’s hands cupped the breasts which had been taunting him all night, the feeling that he was floating consumed him entirely and he was spun toward the ceiling, watching their clothes falling to the floor, among the packages he had purchased for her.

Why didn’t she change into one of the dresses I bought her? He wondered irrelevantly but there was no time to consider her reasoning, not when her mouth moved along his ripped, naked pecs and toward the belt of his pants. She paused to tease his taut nipples with a lashing tongue.

Julian’s palms reluctantly fell away from the full Cs and atop her silken crown of hair, sighing heavily as her hot breath touched the skin of his waistline. His organ was rigid, ready and waiting for her to take.

A warm, soft hand cupped his sack, moving his shaft into her mouth and down her throat with a fluid, easy motion. She was hot and wet, her mouth hoovering around him in a vortex of desire.

Julian groaned, closing his eyes, meaning to relish the sensation but suddenly, it was over.

When he opened his eyes, the black-haired vixen was gone and he lay sprawled against the still-made king bed of his hotel room.

He was fully dressed in a tuxedo he had not been wearing the previous night. Sitting up, he gazed about, blinking gritty eyes. The ecstasy had depleted the water supply to his body and he desperately needed hydration.

Did I dream that woman in a drug-induced haze? He asked himself, half-crawling, half-stumbling toward the bar. But when he arrived in the sunken living room, he saw the thousands of dollars in women’s clothing sitting untouched in piles.

“Kitten?” he called out weakly but as he said the word, he felt foolish and clamped his mouth together.

Warily, he searched for his wallet to see if he had been robbed but neither his watch nor almost two thousand dollars in cash he carried had been touched.

Confused, Julian sat on the sofa and tried to piece together what had happened but the more he prodded his memory, the more fleeting it became.

It was not until Eloise began to call his phone an hour later that Julian was forced to accept that he had probably made up the black-haired girl in some ecstasy-induced illusion. Even so, Julian couldn’t help but feel a bizarre sense of loss as if he had let someone get away even though he had no real way of knowing if she existed.