Hold 'Em: Vegas Top Guns, Book 3 (6 page)

Mike banked the hard shudder brought on by her satisfied words. “Keep it down, will ya?”

“Says the man on the Harley.” She eyed the little single-car garage as if she’d never seen one before. “Really? Like, a real house?”

“Why not?”

“Your secret isn’t whips and chains, Michael. It’s a wife and three kids.”

“You keep hedging like this and I’ll assume I was right.”

She went toe-to-toe with him, chin up. Although she wasn’t a short woman, she barely came up to his collarbones—more to do with his height rather than her lack of stature. “Right about what?”

“About you being scared.”

Daring her was like cutting a line for an addict. She seemed unable to resist. Her baby-doll eyes took on that heavy-lidded condescension, telling him he wasn’t worth noticing. He stifled the urge to back down and apologize. After all, he stood a better chance of getting what he wanted if she were slightly…pissed off.

Just a little.

“I don’t get scared, Templeton. You should know that about me.”

“Everyone has limits. Secrets. Dark places.”

“Well, that is why we’re here, isn’t it? C’mon then, dungeon master.”

She led the way up to his front door.
She
led
him
. Mike hid a grin behind his fist.

He flipped on the overhead light in the entryway, groping around in the unfamiliar space.

“So why the full-on house? Most single guys go for the bachelor pad deluxe.”

“Complete with locker-room-stank smell? Not my style.” He hung his helmet and jacket on a couple of pegs and nodded for Leah to do the same. “You want something to drink?”

This was a test, even if she didn’t know it. If Leah ordered a double Jack and Coke, he’d give up on the idea of anything too elaborate. Rules were important. Rules like no drinking. Both parties needed to know the boundaries and when to stop. He wouldn’t hand his keys to a girl drenched in alcohol, and he wouldn’t hand over his body either.

Leah slipped out of her flight jacket with a shrug. The scent of warm leather clung to her. “Just a soda. Whatever.”

“Cool,” he said on an exhalation. “Come on in.”

She followed him through the near-empty rooms, looking everything over. He didn’t have curtains yet. No blinds. The best he’d managed in the bedroom was a heavy blanket over the curtain rod. Their footsteps echoed on the hardwood. The nearly empty house was fit for ghosts to haunt.

Mike grabbed two cans of Coke Zero out of the fridge, which didn’t contain much else. Half-and-half for his morning coffee. A jug of milk for cereal. Lunch meat and condiments. His cabinets didn’t look much better. “I’d offer you a glass but I can’t remember where I put them.”

“No problem.”

She tabbed it open and took a swallow. Mike found himself staring at the flex of muscles along her throat. He wanted his mouth right there, sucking.

“But no, seriously,” she said. “Why a house?”

He leaned against the countertop, stretching his legs. “Maybe how I was brought up. You know, the rhythm of seasonal chores.”

“No mowing here.”

“You have no imagination. I bet I can get some grass going.” He swigged a few gulps of Coke, glad for a moment to regain his composure. If he could breathe, he could do this right. “Owning is out of the question, obviously, but I like something that sort of pretends to be normal.”

“A man’s bungalow is his castle?”

“Sure. Why not.”

And he waited. No way was the first move going to be his. Her frustration and slight edge of confusion showed in her nervous energy. She was an active, buzzing sort of woman anyway, but without purpose she turned downright fidgety. “So?”

“So?” he echoed.

“You got me here.”

“True.”

She took a deep breath that showed off her rack. Nipples still tight. Goddamn.

“So why haven’t you tried to kiss me yet?”

Mike pinched his fingers around the lip of the countertop. “Because you haven’t told me I could.”

The hauteur was gone. So was any obvious frustration. She narrowed her eyes, using her gaze as a pickax to dig into his brain. He opened up to her inspection. He had nothing to hide. Not anymore.

“What is this about?” she asked carefully. The tone of her voice was soft, slightly awed, as if she perched on the edge of understanding.

Mike’s throbbing dick was begging for her to make that leap.

“Come on. Let me show you something.” He pushed away from the counter and walked with stiff legs to his bedroom. Sitting on the bed, he forced his body to unclench.
Breathe.

She stood in the doorway, casually leaning against the frame. But she teased the ends of her hair—a nervous tell. “Mike, talk to me.”

He resisted her command, instead nodding to his bedside table. When he’d unpacked his gear that morning, he certainly hadn’t thought he would be using it so soon. “Open it.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she sauntered forward. “Ah. Your proof, I suppose?”

“Sure.”

Leah slid open the drawer. Her mouth opened on a quiet noise. Eyes wide, she flashed him a questioning glance. He only shrugged.

She reached in, hands unsteady, and removed a length of leather studded with decorative rivets. A tiny padlock dangled from one end.

His wrist restraints.

Mike swallowed. Hard. He could barely hear past the rushing whirl of blood in his ears. That pulse matched the throb in his cock. For what he hoped would be the last time that night, he took the lead. When Leah turned to him once more, her expression a mess of questions, he lifted his arms and presented her with his wrists.

Chapter Seven

Leah had been to the Grand Canyon twice. She’d scooted right to the edge, letting the yawing depth reach up to suck at her limbs. She’d gotten tingly both times, her head splashing gray on the danger. Such a tiny guardrail had kept her from falling into disaster.

Standing in front of Mike while he quietly held out his wrists was like watching that guardrail fall and splinter. The rush to end all rushes.

The past twenty minutes had been nothing but one long tease. She’d ricocheted up and down, pinging around like a gone-wild piece of shrapnel. Even the zing of riding her bike hadn’t been enough to calm her down. An intense ride usually cleared her mind. Not this time.

Mike was serious.

He wasn’t.

He was yanking her chain. Trying to be something he wasn’t.

Then she’d slid open the drawer. Lengths of leather and circlets of silver were perfectly arranged. Padlocks graded from smallest to largest lined the front wall of the drawer, each mated with its keys. There was a leather-handled flogger and a damn ball gag, as well as a few toys she couldn’t identify, some of which were spiky and intimidating.

He hadn’t known where his drinking glasses were, but she didn’t have a single fucking doubt that he could recite the entire contents of this drawer.

Leah’s knees had gone weak. Wet heat spilled down to her pussy. For a long, charged moment, the only sounds in his little house were inhalations and exhalations. They were breathing almost in tandem, both of their chests rising and falling.

The single lamp in the room was on his nightstand. Light draped across the open drawer, making the contents gleam, but not enough reached Mike. His eyes were more shadowy than ever and even more difficult to read. She gripped the leather so that the dull metal rivets bit into her palm.

A single step brought her to stand within his outstretched legs. Her other hand rose slowly, shaking now, to touch his hair. She twisted the thicker mass at his crown. His eyes drifted nearly shut. His out-held hands folded shut, fingers tucking into his palms. At the casino she’d constrained herself to teasing the ends of his hair. She’d wanted more.

If Mike had already opened up this much, how far was he willing to go?

She couldn’t help but yank harder, much more covetously than she’d risked while sitting at the poker table. Already she was walking a fine line of temptation. He shuddered again, feeding whatever it was waking up inside her.

“Exactly what are you offering me, Michael?”

His eyes flashed open. The grin that slipped across his mouth looked a little faked. A little forced. As if he were way more nervous than he seemed. His eyes were that deep, deep blue again. “What do you want to take?”

Holy Christ, the possibilities. The trust he was placing in her hands—her shaking, tingly hands. If she fucked this up… She didn’t think she’d ever forgive herself.

“Take the cuff off,” she said abruptly.

No sweet talking. No pleases. Just a harsh order that came from the heat twining through her body. She wanted to wrap the leather and metal around his wrist, but she wanted the other cuff gone first—the one someone else had given him. The one he’d still worn, even when he knew the odds were high he’d see Leah that night.

Fuck if he didn’t immediately obey. There was a rough-hewn clasp on the tender inside of his wrist that flicked open with a deft, practiced move. Still, he set it carefully on the nightstand, shutting it up so that it rested in a perfect circle. The metal was dull but managed to gleam in the low light.

Without the circlet, his wrist looked both stronger and more naked. Bared.

Until she curled the black leather around it.

God, her hands knew what to do all on their own. She didn’t have to think it through. The small silver padlock slipped back through the hasp and shut with a tiny click that sounded ridiculously loud in the quiet room.

Sealed.

Blowing out a tensely held breath, she needed to look away from him as she set the key on the nightstand. Steady blasts of power had her tingling all over, not just in her soaking panties, but in her lungs, her head, her stomach. She was fully involved in a way that had been out of reach for so long. She’d been so damned good lately.

Apparently Mike would be her reward.

When she looked back at him, she found his gaze focused on her mouth like a laser beam. His tiny smile still quirked, until he licked his bottom lip.

They were all mixed up. They hadn’t even kissed yet, and she’d closed a leather cuff around his wrist. But then, he’d already revealed his keystone.

She only needed to give her permission.

Delving both hands into his hair, she tugged until his face was tipped up. Another step brought her so near that her breasts brushed his collarbones and his skin-warmed T-shirt.

“Did you know? Back then?” She didn’t want to ask but she did anyway. If he’d known about all this, about all they’d been missing, and never told her…

She’d make it very bad for him. In a damn good way, of course.

His thick throat worked over a swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “No. I didn’t figure it out until three years ago.”

That still gave him three years on her. Three years of knowing exactly what he wanted and what he was looking for. The fear of failure had never been her friend. And this was too important to screw up.

She felt suddenly, strangely alone—disconnected from the depths he had probably explored for years. “Touch me.”

Immediately his hands looped loosely around her hips. Rough thumbs dipped under the waistband of her cargo pants, stroking over her hipbones. That naughty grin of his spread across his mouth.

“What is it?” She scraped her nails lightly under his hair, across his scalp.

He shook his head, but she only tugged tighter. She was really coming to like the slightly shaggy length of it. It would be a damn shame when he cut it before Tuesday.

That realization trickled ice water down her spine. What the hell would she do once they were back at work?

She pushed away the dose of reality just as fast as it popped up. This time was for them. For experimenting. Any consequences would wait—hopefully until much later.

“Spill it,” she said. Her voice had taken on a crisp, warning tone she’d only ever used on unruly airmen who thought they could do a half-assed maintenance job on her plane just because she was a chick.

Mike’s smile only grew wider. “You’re taking to this rather well.”

“I am, aren’t I?” She traced two fingers down the sharp lines of his cheekbones, then back over his ears. This scenario fit so well, as if she’d cracked open a part of her psyche that had always been there. Waiting. Lurking. “I take it you like orders? Being told what to do?”

“To an extent,” he hedged. “I’ve got limits. Hard limits. Things I won’t do.”

“Tell me.” She didn’t want to break this tension before they even got started. The slow burn was threatening to send her up in flames.

“No marks that show when I’m in uniform.”

Fuck if that didn’t send another pulse of heat through her bones. The converse of it—what he wasn’t saying. That he’d allow her to mark him in other ways.

His thumbs kept up small strokes over her hipbones, delving deeper. Her stomach sucked concave on a particularly tempting shiver.

“No permanent damage, of course. I don’t enjoy blood play, so no breaking the skin.” His gaze dropped from hers. “The rest…we could probably discuss later. Most of them involve third parties.”