BELL

The kid on Table 4 was newly twenty-one, with a watch on his wrist that cost as much as my car. I took the empty glass he offered and smiled when his unfocused gaze found mine.

“It’s my birthday,” he slurred.

“I heard. Happy Birthday, Conner.”

We’d gotten the story on him an hour ago, around the time that he’d taken out a second marker. Conner Brentwood. His Daddy owned fifty-six McDonalds in Texas. His Daddy sat to his left and had stared at my cleavage through his last three hands. They were down two hundred grand and neither seemed the slightest bit concerned about it. To Conner’s right, a stripper from Saffire moved a diamond-encrusted wrist and pushed one of Conner’s black chips toward the dealer.

“Come sit with us and play.” He nodded to the seat next to the stripper.

I patted his shoulder and lifted his glass. “I’m good with drinks, bad with luck. Trust me, you don’t want me around your cards.”

He scoffed, and when I turned away, I felt his eyes drop to my ass. I gave the stripper a small smile and collected two more empties on my way to the bar.

Fifteen minutes later, when I stepped into the control room, I reached for my phone without thinking, then stopped.

“It’s a bad habit to break,” Lance smirked, watching me drop my hand with a frustrated groan.

Rick turned in his seat. “What? Tempting rich birthday boys?”

“No. Checking her phone.”

I pushed my bag away. “I swear, you guys need a new hobby—something other than watching me.”

Lance kicked his foot up and rested it on the desk, using it to swing his chair from left to right. “You can’t exactly blame us. Your current situation is much more exciting than anything we are up to.”

Rick tossed a handful of cashews into his mouth and nodded in agreement.

“So … why isn’t your phone working?” Lance looked at me as if he was about to analyze my response, and I pulled the fridge door open, grabbing a bottled water.

I twisted the cap off and took my time with a sip, thinking through how much I wanted to share. “I’m changing my number. Trying to ditch a credit card company.”

They exchanged a look at my fib, and I scowled at them as I headed for the door. Joining Britni behind the bar, I pulled glasses out of the dry rack and stacked them on the counter. “Thanks again for this weekend.”

She was covering my shift this Sunday so I could head home for my dad’s birthday. I hadn’t seen my parents in almost a month, and needed, for more reasons than one, a mini-trip away from this town.

“No sweat.” She loaded up a tray and I watched her turn, noted her effortless carry of a dozen drinks. Like me, she’d practically grown up in restaurants, had waited tables since she was a teen. Like me, she took classes during the day, partied as much as she studied, and didn’t have a life plan that extended past next semester.

If she had been the one to greet Dario, would he have gone for her and never known my name?

No. I knew that deep inside. The pull between us…

I hadn’t lived much. Done much. I didn’t know much, but I knew that our connection wasn’t normal. It was two planets colliding. Explosions. A black hole that pulled you in, regardless of the danger.

It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime connection, but everything around us was once-in-a-lifetime levels of fucked up.

I shouldn’t have gotten mad at him and stormed off. I should have acted like an adult and had an intelligent conversation. I regretted it but didn’t have a phone or his number to call him and fix things.

DARIO

He finished his work and stood, stretching. The condo was quiet, Gwen heading to bed a few hours ago. He was exhausted, but couldn’t leave things with Bell as they had. He couldn’t have that giant cliffhanger hanging over their relationship. He should have kept her in the car and forced her to talk, forced them to work it out.

But what was there to work out? He couldn’t accept her being with anyone but him. And he couldn’t leave Gwen—not right now. So, there wasn’t anything for them to really work out. There was only her, needing to accept his demands, even if they weren’t fair, even if he was a hypocrite.

He opened his closet and walked into the room, glancing at his watch. In two hours, Bell would be off work. Thirty minutes after that, he could have her naked and underneath him.

As soon as the thought came, he tried to kill it, to get the image of her, her back arching, eyes closing, skin flushing—out of his head.

Moving to the racks, he began to change.

BELL

Conner Brentwood had had too much to drink. Which, given his birthday and location, was pretty much a rite of passage. I switched his drink for ice water and yielded when he pulled me onto his lap, his clumsy hand trying to slide a green chip into my pocket.

“You take such good care of me.” He sang the final words, and I smiled at him, the thousand-dollar chip warm in my pocket.

“I’m trying to take care of you. You keep drinking and you’ll be hating me in the morning.”

He scowled and scraped his cards against the table, asking for another hit. Another hit … on two nines. A five came up and he tossed the hand away, another five grand lost.

A guy at the end tapped on his empty glass and I untangled myself from Conner’s grip. “Good luck.”

He caught my hand and pulled it, not letting go.

I leaned over and put my mouth against his ear. “That big guy in the corner is just itching to throw you out. Let go of my hand or he’s going to.”

Conner’s bleary eyes moved to Lloyd, who glowered in the sort of way that intimidated anyone with enough sense to breathe. Conner’s grip loosened and I squeezed his shoulder and straightened.

I turned toward the bar, my eyes automatically skimming my other tables, looking for needs, for eye contact, for empty glasses. I was moving and thinking, a to-do list of orders building in my mind, and almost ran into Britni, who uncharacteristically stopped, right in front of me, in the middle of the aisle.

I moved to her left, and she blocked me. My eyes met hers and I raised one brow.

“Can you switch tables with me? Cover the top table?”

The top table was where the elite of our high rollers sat—the sort of men who made Conner and his daddy look like used car salesmen. It was the coveted table and one that Britni typically latched onto with the intensity of a honey badger.

Her offering it up could only mean that a major asshole was sitting there. I turned to glance over my shoulder, to see who the culprit was, but she stopped me.

“Lance told me to tell you that your guy is there.”

My guy. At that table, it could only be Dario. I made the decision in less time than it took Conner to let go of my hand. “Let me get this round to my tables, then I’ll turn them over to you.”

She nodded, stepped to the side, and I walked toward the bar. With each step along the way, as I bent over the ice and grabbed bottles and mixed liquor, I felt his eyes. How long had he been here? I thought of Conner, the way he’d pulled me onto his lap—something that, given the timing, Dario had to have seen. I thought of leaving Dario’s car, how I’d felt walking away. I had expected, with every step I’d taken, for him to call out, to stop me. And yet, he hadn’t. We both had too much pride for our own good, yet he was here.

I delivered drinks, gave myself a stern warning to be strong, then climbed the short bank of steps to the top table. I stepped onto the level and locked eyes with him.

DARIO

It’d been seven hours since she’d knelt before him in the car, her hands on his thighs, her hands on his cock. She’d looked at him in a playful way that tugged at his heart and had eyed his cock in a devious way that lit fire to his arousal. Seven hours since she’d looked into his eyes with finality, then turned and left him stunned and alone in his car. Now, she met his gaze in the frustrated manner of a woman pushed too far.

But she couldn’t give up. Not when, even as her mouth tightened, and her eyes moved away, the energy between them sizzled. Not when, as she rounded the table, and he followed her with his eyes, her cheeks flushed. Whatever it was between them, it wasn’t a spark. It was a crackle of lightning, one that lit new wildfires whenever they came in contact. She might hate him right now, but she wouldn’t stay away. Bell smiled at a man on the end, patted the shoulder of his companion, and finally, rounding the table’s final curve, came to his seat.

Her eyes dropped to his glass, the bottle of water still half-full beside the tumbler. She reached for it, unscrewed the lid, and topped off his glass. She glanced down at his cards, then met his eyes. “I thought you didn’t play.”

Her knowledge of his reputation warmed him. He reached over, wrapping his hand around her slender wrist, and pulled her toward him. She stumbled forward and stopped. He released her. “It’s a night for vices.”

She moved closer, and God, he wanted to clear this room. To stand up and tell all of these assholes to go home. He wanted to grab her, to kiss her, to brand her as his own and lift her onto this felt table. He wanted to…

He forced himself to stop before his thoughts went carnal, before he had her shorts ripped open and loose around her ankles, before he was in between those thighs, first with his mouth, then with his cock.

It was too late. He shifted in his seat in an attempt to give his dick more room, to ease the throb of it between his legs.

She leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice, and he watched the pale pink of her lips and tried not to think about how they felt. “What are you doing here?”