Authors: Mia Grandy
Randa woke up to the blare of her alarm at five thirty in the morning and the starkness of the hotel room greeted her. When they had wrapped up practicing last night, she had insisted that she go back to the hotel room alone so she could get some rest. She did not want to start off at the tournament unable to concentrate, and neither did she want herself to get too attached to Drake. After all, once this tournament was through, chances are he wouldn’t want to continue this little fling with the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
As she swung her feet over the edge of the bed and stumbled to the shower, she considered the fact that she was nothing more to him that a play
toy. The truth was, she’d never had a brief affair. But she knew that the way she felt when she was with Drake, she would take what she could get, regardless of the absence of future potential. However, she was determined to do her best to help him win back the cabin.
The thoughts of the tournament and her desire for Drake were still going around and around in her mind by the time she met him downstairs an hour later. The sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon, bathing the entire parking lot in a soft orange glow.
She smiled as she signed out of the room and heaved her bag over her shoulder. Randa could not believe that she was about to compete for the chance to win ten thousand dollars. It wasn’t a fortune for most people, but with someone who only had a few hundred dollars and a bag of clothes to their name, it was everything.
The ideas about what she could do with that money, the freedom it would buy her. Even if Drake decided that he wanted nothing to do with her once this was over, it wouldn’t matter. She would be guaranteed her own independence for at least a little while.
As she approached the vehicle, Drake got out and took the bag from her, placing it in the rear of the SUV with his own luggage as she climbed into the vehicle.
“Thanks,” she told him when he got back into the car.
“For what?”
“For getting my bag.”
He looked at her, his dark eyes almost glowing with the intensity of his stare. “What kind of person would I be if I didn’t help you with your bags?”
She suddenly felt uneasy, as if she were being judged because politeness was not something she was accustomed to. So, instead she chuckled and turned away from him, “The kind I usually associate with, I guess.”
“Well, in that case, you’re welcome,” he said as he placed his hand under her chin and turned her face toward his. “I didn’t mean any harm.”
Randa nodded and smiled the best she could. Although she knew he hadn’t meant anything personal it still stung a little and highlighted the obvious inequalities in their two worlds.
The car ride was fairly quiet as they sped along the interstate, the grass and trees only intermittently broken up by a town or city. Randa found herself intrigued by the openness of the country landscape. She never really imagined a world with so little concrete and buildings, and the beauty of it all left her in awe. Anytime she’d ever traveled outside of the city it had always been by plane, but she decided there was something majestic about driving.
She had been so caught up in the rolling landscape that at first she almost didn’t see the neon sign that rose out of the wilderness. But when they rounded the corner, there was no denying the very real imposition that this mammoth structure left on the landscape.
Leaning forward against the seatbelt, Randa tried to take it all in. The casino was the largest in the state. The tribe that owned it had put a lot of effort into making it a little oasis in the middle of the country. The outside was decorated with iconic landmarks. Everything from the Empire State Building and the ruins of the Roman Coliseum to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower, were present and accounted for.
Drake watched her reaction with interest before he spoke. “I think there is something to be said for using window dressing to lure in your victims. It’s a giant people trap set up in the middle of nature.”
The odd comment caught Randa off guard and she actually laughed so hard she snorted. When they turned into the parking lot off of the highway she got a full glimpse of the magnitude of the concrete and neon jungle that was only partially visible from the interstate.
While the car was being unloaded at the valet parking stand, she went inside and looked around. She was walking by a bank of slot machines ten minutes later when Drake walked up to her and handed her a room key.
“Our rooms are on the west end of the fourth floor, or the Eiffel Tower section,” he told her, and she found herself leaning forward to try and hear him as he spoke over the bells, whistles, and screams of the machines around them. “You can stay down here if you want, but I’m going to go up and get ready. We need to be down at the main floor to check into the tournament before six.”
Randa glanced up at the walls, searching for a clock, but could not find a clock anywhere. Just as she was about to start turning in circles, Drake gently grabbed her upper arm and stopped her.
“It’s just now one o'clock,” he told her, smiling. You aren’t going to find any clocks in a casino. It’s a trick they use to make sure that people stay longer. Remember, people trap.”
He slid his hand down her arm, and then clasped his hand over hers and pulled her toward him. “Of course, we could make good use of the time.”
She smiled and nodded, her pulse strumming through her entire body until she felt as electrified as the machines around her. They wove their way through the crowd, and by the time they got into the elevator she was sure that the sparks were positively pouring themselves out of her.
If she had been worried by his silence on the ride up, she didn’t need to be any longer, the minute the doors closed and it was just the two of them he grabbed her close and kissed her. She could feel every inch of his body in the embrace, and before the door opened again on their floor, she knew that he was just as aroused as she was.
When the door dinged, it opened and the pair stumbled out of the elevator, laughing as they ran down the hall to their rooms. As he fumbled to slide the card key into the slot, she leaned up and lightly nipped his earlobe.
He stopped where he was, the key still lodged halfway into the reader slot, and grabbed her, hoisting her up against the wall, and kissing her
neck. “If you aren’t careful, I’m not sure that we’ll make it to the safety of the room,” she whispered.
“At this point, I could care less,” he told her, pulling back so that she could see the dark passion that now filled his gaze and she knew that he was not playing around. She could hear voices down at the corner of the hall, and she did not want to be caught in the act like some teenager.
Smiling coyly back at him, she reached down and used her free hand to operate the card reader, pulling it out of the slot and activating the door lock. “As kinky as that may sound, I think I’d rather try my luck inside.” She winked, flicked her tongue at his earlobe and ducked into the room.
She was no more than two steps into the room when she felt his arm coil around her and pull her back toward him as he kicked the door shut behind him with the heel of his foot. Just as she was watching it close the people walked by, and
she instantly felt her mouth run dry and her body drop a few degrees. Although he was obviously not dead, she felt as if she had just seen a ghost.
Drake seemed to sense her tension, and using his fingers he pulled her chin back around so that she was staring at him in the face.
“Is everything still okay?” he asked, his face was smiling, but his eyes were a strange mixture of lust and concern.
Randa took a breath and tried to stop the squirming pile of worms she felt building inside of her. After all, she hadn’t gotten that long of a look, it might not be who she thought it was. However, if it was, she would need to warn Drake; but doing so would jeopardize their partnership.
Biting on the inside of her cheek, Randa made her decision and shook her head no. Before she sat down and explained to him every nitty gritty and difficult detail about her past she wanted to be sure that it had been Mike Grayson that she’d seen.
“Sorry, I just had a moment,” she told him. For a moment he studied her, and she worried that he was going to press the issue, so she put her hands around his neck and drew him down to her for a kiss.
When his lips touched hers, she forgot all about the potential problems, the electricity once again strumming through her body. After just a moment, she pulled his shirt up over his head and once again lightly nipped at his earlobe before starting a trail down the side of his chin, then onto his chest and down toward his abdomen, occasionally using her tongue and teeth to elicit moans from him as her hands undid his pants and pushed them down over his throbbing erection.
Taking it into her hands, she massaged the shaft as she looked up at him. His face was completely covered in dark lust now as he looked down at her in astonishment. She smiled, feeling the tension in him increase as she dropped to her knees and took him into her mouth.
As she did this his entire body went rigid and a stark gasp left him. He wove his fingertips through her hair and guided her head as she moved back and forth along the length of him, her tongue making intricate swirling patterns as she moved him back and forth in her mouth.
She took it out of her mouth and flicked her tongue nimbly at the tip. This time he groaned and visibly shook, but instead of letting her continue to give him head, he lifted her up and nearly tossed her on the bed. For a moment it took her by surprise, but as he stepped of out his jeans and underwear to cross the room, she
began to quickly undress herself, the memory of Mike and her past quickly fading as Drake leaned down over her.
For a moment, Drake had been sure that she was having second thoughts about joining him in the room. Randa’s entire body had gone tense and then she had a look of confusion and sadness that crossed her face. He had fully intended to explore the situation and demand to know what was going on, but when she began to kiss him, and then when she’d taken him into her warm mouth and slid up and down his shaft, all resolve had completely went out the window.
Just when he was sure he could not take any more, she pulled out and looked up at him, her tongue flickering across the tip of his penis. Sensations he had never felt before began to curl up through him.
He’d had sex before, but nothing had ever stirred up the level of passion that being in the same room with Randa seemed to. Everything she did was better than he had ever imagined it would be, and he was having trouble containing his passion. When he picked her up and tossed her on the bed, he had nothing on his mind but conquering the fire that was no raging within him.
Climbing onto the bed, he took her in his arms and pulled her on top of him so that she was straddling him on the edge of the bed. Guiding her down, she slid over the top of him, and he saw the pleasure light up her face.
Her mouth came down on top of his, her tongue working its way through his mouth in rhythm to the movement of his member inside her body. It was as if their entire beings were temporarily synchronized, and he could already feel the climax building inside of him. Leaning back a little bit, he placed his hands between them, they slid up over her abdomen and onto her breasts. He began to knead them, taking her nipples in between his thumb and finger and rolling them until he felt her body shudder beneath him.
Her pace increased into an almost frenzied state, and then just when he didn’t think he could hold back any longer she leaned back and gave a small yelp, her lower body convulsing. As he felt his own orgasm overtake him, he felt her spasm around him, and together they rode the wave of ecstasy until they collapsed on the bed, completely spent.
Before long he felt her breathing regulate beside him. She was pulled to him, her back to his chest, and he placed his arm around her. He realized that he felt more comfortable and relaxed than he had in a long time, and before he could stop himself, he shut his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
*
Drake’s eyes popped open. He was in the bed alone, and the room was dark. For a moment a panic set over him as he worried that they had somehow managed to sleep through the check in time.
Looking at his bedside clock he realized that he still had more than an hour. He let out a pent up sigh of relief and heard the squeak of the pipes as the shower was shut off. A moment later, Randa opened the bathroom door and stepped out, a cloud of steam following her as she tried to tiptoe across the room.
“There’s no need to be quiet.”
Randa was so taken by surprise that she visibly jumped up into the air at the sound of his voice. For a moment she looked like a cat that had been cornered by a dog, but then she laughed, and the
sound filled up the room and made him chuckle a little as well.
“You almost gave me a heart attack. You looked so peaceful, I thought I would let you sleep for a little bit.”
“That’s fine,” he told her. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to let you know that you didn’t have to worry about keeping the lights off or your voice down.” Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed he climbed out and went toward the bathroom.
A few minutes later he emerged, refreshed and completely cooled off to find that Randa had left the room. There was a note on the bed stating that she had gone downstairs and would meet him at the check in spot for the tournament.
Drake was a little disappointed, but he shrugged his shoulders and decided that she probably just needed time and space alone to herself. Not to mention that this place was definitely worthy of exploration.
Even though she had left without him, he felt a sense of exhilaration at the recent developments. In fact, he could not seem to wipe the smile from his face as he got dressed and headed out the door.
*
The casino was huge, and Randa did not know how exactly she was supposed to scour the entire thing to see if Mike was in fact checked in. She knew that she could just wait and see if he checked into the tournament later, but she was trying to get out ahead of this thing. So, she craned her neck around each bank of machines as she twisted and turned along the maze like path that led from one end of the casino to the other.
Carrying around a Styrofoam cup of soda in one hand, she tried to look as casual as possible as she strolled through the area. Every now and then she would put a dollar into a machine and burn through it only so she didn’t attract too much attention. If Mike hadn’t spotted her yet, the advantage was still on her end.
She sighed as she sat down at some slot machine promising fun games and huge payouts and thought about the life she had lived just a few short years ago. She had ran away from her last foster home, and was holed up with some friends who had started camping out in an old abandoned manufacturing plant downtown.
That was where she had first met Mike. With his dark jet black hair and green eyes, he looked like some kind of model who was just slumming it for a bit. The one thing he had going for him that none of the others did was his ability to literally talk his way into or out of anything.
He was the one that first used her slight inclination at pool to start earning them money. He taught her how to search out her marks, and how to use body language against them. The slight curve of one’s hips or the artful twist of a butt cheek when going in for a shot; these are things that she learned could distract a man just enough to give her the upper edge when she was cutting the game close.
Toward the end of their relationship, though, she realized that he valued her little more than a pimp values his prostitute. She was nothing but a cash cow to him, and although they were sharing their life, their money, and their bed, she came to see that he didn’t really love her like she loved him.
He didn’t love anyone but himself.
When he had joined up with this team of pool hustlers, she thought life would get better. She assumed that he would back off of her if there were more people around to shoulder the burden and carry the weight and status of lead “earner.” Mike played too, but he wasn’t as good, and often this meant that he would help her set up the victims at the beginning of the night and then she would seal the deal.
At first it was great, they went in as a team, and split the earnings at the end of the night. It wasn’t all on her shoulders and she didn’t have to worry that one loss would make them have to live without food for the next few days.
That was before she started noticing Mike’s odd behavior. Whatever respect he had for her had started to fade, and at first she was proud of the fact that he appeared to be doing better at running the table. She did not have to work as much to earn the money and that was fine with her.
However, when she was cut from the team completely, she couldn’t stop the nagging suspicion that something wasn’t right. So, one night when Mike was out with the guys drinking, she went through his duffel and found weighted pool cues, swap balls, cheating sticks, and other items that would help to guarantee a win.
One thing Randa had always counted on in her life was that she played fair and therefore won fair. This way she didn’t feel bad about taking their money, and it had been a source of pride for her that she was good at what she did. This was why when she found out they were cheating, it severely bothered her.
It had bothered her enough that she’d thrown out all the items in the duffel and left with all of the spare money they had built up.
That was why the thought of finding him here, at this tournament, meant bad business. Not only did it mean that the group of cheaters had entered, it also meant that the long postponed confrontation was not going to be put off any longer. The thought of talking to Mike made her skin crawl, but she didn’t want to be caught off guard.
Plus, she would have to come clean about her past, all of it, to Drake. It was one thing for him to assume that she was down on her luck and living on the streets, but it was a whole other to have to admit that for awhile she was a street rat who was running from an abusive family because she’d been stripped from her abusive mother.
It had been a long line of people who had done nothing to help her, and she had done everything in her power to rise above the situation. When she was with Drake she could almost forget that other life existed, but even that small break from reality was about to get pulled away from her and she found herself reluctant to give it up.
Flicking her hand, she absentmindedly pushed down on the button which indicated she could repeat the bet but nothing happened. She realized that while she had been sitting there lamenting on the past regrets, she had managed to burn through ten dollars on the penny slot machine. No wonder people lost so much money in the casino; you just sat there dumbfounded and kept hitting the button until your money was all burned up.
A hand landed on her shoulder and she jumped out of her chair, spinning around as she rose. A strangled cry tangled in her throat, but she managed to choke it back down when she saw that it was only Drake.
“You sure are jumpy,” he said as she sank back down into the chair, her entire body trembling. The instant she had felt the hand on her shoulder she had been sure that she had been spotted by Mike while she was daydreaming and that this was the unavoidable moment of conflict. It felt as if her entire body had been perched on the edge of something major and now the energy that had propelled her upwards drained from her entire being and left her nothing more than an empty sack of flesh.
She took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm herself before she answered him, but when she looked up she saw the concern that was now very plainly visible over his face and knew that there would be no distractions this time.
Glancing over to the side, she went to pick up her cup and saw Mike two machines over. He wasn’t playing though, instead he was intently focused
on her every move. She found herself wondering how long he had been sitting there, watching her. When she looked back up at Drake she saw that he had noticed as well.
“Randa, what is going on?” he asked, the concern on his face morphing into something else. It looked as if he might just march over to Mike and ask him in person, but then when she looked back over she saw that he was gone, melted back into the crowd.
Just as she opened her mouth to speak, she heard the announcement over the loudspeaker that the registration for the tournament was about to begin in fifteen minutes.
“We don’t have enough time right now, but I need you to trust me. There are some things about my past that I’m not proud of and today one of them is apparently showing up to bite me right about now,” she told him, taking a deep breath as she
stood up and faced the registration table. “I just want you to know that I never cheated anyone. However, there are people here that have. I used to know people who were on a hustling team that used methods that were not orthodox to win. They are here now.”
He stopped, grabbing her arm to keep her from walking forward. “Which ones? That guy that was eying you back there?”
Randa nodded and sighed. “He’s one of them, but he’s not the only one. I doubt that they came in just one team. In fact, I would bet that there were five more on the crew split into three teams of two.”
“Okay, which other ones are in on it? We’ll just go and report them to the authorities and have them disqualified.”
“It’s not that easy. See, I know him, but I don’t know any of the others. I seriously doubt that they will rat each other out, after all, they share in the pay.” She looked away nervously and then back toward the line that was developing at the check in. “Look, we need to go now. I don’t want you to miss out on the tournament.”
“But if we…” he began and she shook her head vigorously to stop him.
“No, we don’t have to know who they are. We just have to be extra vigilant about who we are playing and what they are doing. We can report the team that Mike is on later, but chances are that if he saw me he’s not going to risk playing dirty and losing the money. I would go so far as to bet that he won’t even register his team.”
Drake looked at her, his hand still around her arm while he weighed everything she had told him. She knew that he was deciding whether or not to
trust her. She thought of just a few short hours ago when she had been encircled in his embrace and he had been so confident in her. Now she was sure that he could see her for the worthless street vagabond she was.
She bowed her head and looked at the brightly patterned carpet on the floor, certain that she would never again feel as completely at peace and accepted as she had been before. Because even if he decided to believe her, he was still going to have the lingering moments of doubt at the back of his mind about her and her past.
It was the same old story she had been living since she was twelve, but this time it stung a little deeper than before. Maybe because she had let herself believe in the possibility of happy endings with prince charming. Maybe because for a moment she had not guarded her feelings and her hope as diligently as she should.