THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE Page 36

  A pang of embarrassment flashed through her. Darren had just gotten out of the shower and here she was beneath him, getting him all gross.

  As soon as the embarrassment hit her, it left. She had no reason to be ashamed. Besides, it’s not like he hadn’t had worse. And this whole situation was his fault anyway.

  It was interesting to watch the look that flitted across his face, though: Darren’s eyes showed a flash of something she barely recognized as surprise, and then that emotion was quickly replaced by his familiar mask of arrogance. She had to wonder how fake it was.

  She didn’t ask.

  He lifted himself so he was just slightly above her before he got off. She looked at his arms, seeing the muscles in them standing out more prominently as he held himself up over her body. She loved the sight of it, but she knew it had to end.

  It felt like almost no time at all when he was on her, but he was gone too soon. He pushed himself up with his arms, drawing himself back. Then he just pushed himself backwards using the muscles in his legs and his butt, and he sat facing her on the opposite end of the couch.

  “What are you staring at me like that for?” He cocked his head to the side, watching her.

  She wanted to say nothing, but the habit of just letting him walk all over her with his words was too much. So she settled on saying, “Because you took too long to get off of me when I asked you to.”

  “It's not like you didn’t like it.” He winked at her, and she slapped him on the arm. It was true, but it didn’t change the fact that she hated that.

  “Whatever,” she rolled her eyes, trying to subdue the feelings she could sense rising up in her chest. “You dropped those cards.”

  His eyes went to the pile of cards strewn around on the floor, but he didn’t seem to care much. It irritated Victoria that they were there, and it irritated her more that Darren didn’t mind.

  Sullivan“Let me get those for you, Your Highness.”

  Her thought process ended as soon as Darren’s words cut through the fog in her head, and he jumped up off of the couch in a quick act of melodrama. She was almost worried that the way he twirled his body would make him hit the coffee table, but then she wiped away that worry too. She couldn’t keep worrying about this guy, and he didn’t even know she did it. There was no point to it.

  He got over to the pile of cards, kneeling down. He glanced at her as he reached for them. She stayed on the couch and did nothing.

  Darren frowned. “You're just going to let me do this by myself?” The way he said it was almost convincing. His eyes were wide and puppy like, in the saddest expression he could muster; the lines of his mouth were held so that nothing he did could be misread as any kind of smile.

  And it almost worked on her. Almost.

  She nodded, telling him that no, she wouldn’t be helping him pick stuff up. Part of her wanted to, sure. But the rest of her knew that he could do it on his own, and he was a pain in the ass anyway. It wouldn’t hurt him to put in a little effort.

  Another thought came into her head, and she wondered what it’d be like to grab some of those cards from him and tease him. But that would just get her back into the situation they'd just been in a few seconds before, with him on top of her and her pushed back into the couch cushions.

  “Really?” His mouth twitched up in the barest hint of a smirk.

  “Yeah.” She took a second, pretending that she was reconsidering everything that’d just happened. But she knew what she wanted, and she still wondered why he was gone earlier. What had he even been doing while she was sitting here waiting for him? Not that she was waiting. “So.” She paused, rolling her tongue around in her mouth for a second before forcing herself to stop. “Is this the part where you come clean to me about everything you’ve been doing?”

  For a second, Darren really, really considered it. But he didn’t get a chance to say anything. The look on his face must’ve had too much shock in it.

  “What?” Victoria moved, adjusting herself so she was sitting straight up and looking at him. One of her hands went to her left hip, one part comfort and one part sass. “You act like it's too much to handle.”

  She thought she’d caught him off-guard, but she hadn’t. It took him less than a few seconds to recover, and then he was grinning.

  “I can't believe you,” he said, his voice low in his throat.

  He shook his head, rising from his kneeling position on the floor. He had all the fallen cards in his hands now, and he walked with purpose back to the couch. This time when he picked a spot, he set himself down closer beside her. And this time, she didn’t move away.

  He pressed the cards down hard against the table. She could feel the heat of his thigh pressed against hers, but she didn’t push away from him. There was a reason to stay beside him, and that reason just might be that he’d tell her more about what was going on. With Darren, being secretive was an art, or so it seemed.

  She watched him move the cards. After he set them down in one initial pile, he took the time to grab each card and place it flat down in a straight line. Victoria couldn’t see what each card was supposed to be, and Darren couldn’t either. This definitely wasn’t a game of solitaire, though, and Victoria watched him, wondering what exactly he was supposed to be doing.

  Then, once he’d carefully arranged all of the cards he’d just placed down, he picked them all back up again. He flipped the cards through his hands, shuffling them. What he’d been doing by laying the cards down must have been some kind of weird shuffle, and maybe now he was going to pass them to her.

  He placed a card down flat in front of her. Then he did the same for himself. He continued doing this until they both had seven cards laid out in front of them, and then he put the stack of remaining cards in the center between the two of them.

  So it was a game.

  He turned to her, holding his stack of cards in his hand with a smile. “I have a proposition for you.”

  This was going to be good. She was in the middle of reaching for her own cards when she froze, wondering.

  He gestured with his head, encouraging her to take the cards.

  She waited.

  And waited.

  And waited for an explanation.

  When none was forthcoming, she decided to just take the bait and ask, “What?” She hated that she did it, because it was obviously what he wanted. As soon as that word was out in the air, he reached over.

  She didn’t even have time to freeze in surprise. He gripped her by the shoulder, his touch light and shocking and firm. And then he ran his hand down her arm, moving it in closer to her torso. His hand grazed her side, moving closer to her stomach.

  She thought that maybe he’d go so far as to touch her between her thighs, and she wasn’t sure if she should tell him to stop. She didn’t want him to stop. But, much to her dismay, he did. He pulled his fingers down to her stomach, past the skin there, and grabbed the fabric. Then he gave it a small tug, smiling at her, and his fingers fell away from her body.

  She felt her breath catch in her throat. She was going to make some kind of joke about him wanting something sexual from her, but maybe it wasn’t a joke after all.

  She looked at him, biting her lower lip without thinking about it. She felt her legs start to shake again, and she imagined his fingers digging into her hips. His hands should’ve gone so much lower when they’d touched her, but they hadn’t. She tried to quit thinking about what it would be like to have his fingernails drag across her skin, but she couldn’t.

  She looked at his hands. His fingernails were short and orderly. She couldn’t let herself imagine them sliding into her. That wouldn’t be good. Sure, she was in a bad situation and he might be a bad boy, and she might’ve been seen as a bad girl for working at a bar. Being a slutty bartender and all that. But really…

  She finally broke the silence. “Earlier. In the bathroom…”

  Darren didn’t look at her. He was focused on the cards in his hands. She could tell
that he was still focusing on her, though, even though he was trying to pretend to be disinterested.

  He shuffled them a little more, saying: “You didn’t take offense to it.”

  All the shuffling he was doing was unnecessary. But she just let what he said hang there before he started saying some more. Darren liked to try to press her into asking about things, but she wasn’t going to put herself through that embarrassment. But why was it embarrassment?

  “It sounds like it might be fun to play a little game,” he paused. “Doesn't it?”

  She nodded, unsure of what to say. What was making her so shy? She turned her head so she was looking him in the eyes. She didn’t know when it had happened, but she’d been looking just under his chin, trying everything she could to avoid his stare.

  “Say it.”

  “It does.”

  “That wasn't as full of emotion as I was looking for,” he teased, but then he looked at her, and actually saw her.

  Victoria's face was flushing, and she kept biting her mouth. She refused to look at him full on. The few times she did, her eyes darted away from his after just a moment. She was aroused. She had to be. And so this was going to be much easier.

  “Have you ever heard of a game called Snap?” He picked up a couple more of the cards from the big stack between them, giving them each an equal handful to add to their own piles. “Here. Take these. It’ll be more fun if the game goes on longer.”

  He wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t know what it was. At the same time, though, part of him wondered how she couldn’t know. She was the type of a girl to work in that bar, after all. And even so young. Just being a bartender and a woman meant nothing, but it usually implied something. And it implied even more things when the bar she worked at was frequented by a club, especially one as big as his.

  Victoria took a second to think. “Is it kind of like poker?” It had to be. A lot of games were based off of it, anyway, but she hadn’t really heard of anything called Snap.

  “Sort of.” He laughed, making his voice go a little bit lower before he spoke again. “Except for there's stripping.”

  “So it's just strip poker.”

  “Well...” She wasn't reacting the way he thought she might: a little offended, irritated, mildly aroused. “Yeah. Basically.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “And here I thought this was going to be a big deal.”

  He laughed. His hands went down to his ankles, pulling away the socks he had on. He said that they didn’t count, but he didn’t even get to finish his sentence before she broke away in giggles.

  She raised a foot at him, and then the other. “I don't have any socks. I don't have any clothes other than this, actually. I don’t have anything here, in case you hadn’t noticed. Including any food I want to eat.” Harsh, maybe, but she needed to get the point across. It had already been long enough.

  He just smiled at her, though, and she couldn’t get in his head to figure out what he was thinking. “We'll deal with that after the game,” he said.

  “And you’re going to tell me about what you’ve been up to,” she countered.

  He winked.

  She winked back.

  The stakes weren’t high, really. They didn’t have much going for them. And...

  “There's not any chips,” Victoria said.

  They were only maybe two rounds into the game before Victoria said something about it. They weren’t playing for money, just for information. Still, though, Victoria didn’t like that they had no chips. It wasn’t right.

  “We don't really have anything we can do about it.”

  “Yes, we do. Wait here.” Victoria stood up and went back to the bookshelves. This was going to be a mess, but at least it’d be something.

  She grabbed the small journal she’d seen earlier. Flipping the book open, she grabbed a page from it and then returned to the couch she was sitting on earlier. Darren was looking at her quizzically, but she didn’t even bother turning to him. It was imperative that she do this, that things be made better by this.

  But she couldn’t let it all fall to the floor. She held up the paper as best she could, and then ripped it clean in half. And then she did it again, and again, until there were a bunch of little pieces scattering the table. Hitting them with the flat of her hand, she pushed them so the majority were in the center of the table, by the stack of cards, and then gave some to Darren. She was sure to leave a reserve for herself as well.

  “You're supposed to bet,” she said.

  He raised his eyes at her. “These are scraps of paper.”

  “They can represent what we're actually betting.”

  The game progressed fast. The rules of it weren’t exactly what Victoria was expecting. While she knew about strip poker, she’d never actually played it, and Darren seemed to want to play it with a twist. Some of it was normal poker. Every third hand or so, though, each of them pulled a card out. Whoever had the lower denomination had to give up a piece of their clothing.

  The game progressed fast, but not very far. Victoria was more than aware of how much clothing she had: just four pieces. She had on her bottoms, her top, her bra, and her underwear. That was it. Even if she’d worn socks, Darren had already said they didn’t count; she wondered if she should wish for a sweater, but she loved the temptation of it, of everything she was doing with Darren.

  And Darren, she knew, had even less clothing. He was just wearing jeans and a shirt. He might not even be wearing boxers, but it wasn’t like she could ask.

  She put down two cards, waiting for him to call out what he was going to do. He’d put down his cards first, and she was in the habit of watching his eyes to try to figure out exactly he was thinking.

  They continued their game, each throwing down cards and watching the other. They folded, they bet. Victoria drew two cards and misread them. Her misplaced confidence was revealed as soon as she threw them down, and Darren’s perfectly blank expression rose up into a smirk.

  “Royal flush,” he proclaimed.

  They both looked at the cards together.

  “You know the rules.”

  She sighed. She wanted to argue with him, but she also wanted to show him her skills, and her skin. Her hands went to the bottom of her shirt, by her hips. Kind of like where he’d started to touch her earlier, before they’d both pulled away from the other. She stopped her hands at the fabric, looking up for a second before deciding what needed to be done.

  Then, taking in a quick breath and ignoring the speed of her heart beat, she took off her shirt. She felt his eyes roam over her, and then they stopped where she expected. But she kept her hands up over her head for a second, letting him look.

  Then her arms fell back to her side and she resumed the game. She was just playing in a bra. That was all. Never mind the fact that Darren was staring at her. But it was working to her advantage. She drew two more cards, and looked towards Darren just in time to see a tell.

  His arms looked like they were getting more tense, and she watched that tension move from his arms to his shoulders to his neck. There it rose up from his neck to his face, and she saw the barest twitch of his lips. He had a bad hand.

  So she didn’t fold.

  And when they checked their cards against what they’d originally drawn, it had the outcome Victoria was expecting – she was the victor.

  “Are you expecting me to take my shirt off?”

  She laughed at him, giggling out an “obviously,” before adding, “You owe my some other things too.”

  It took him less time to get his shirt off than it had taken for her to do it, but it took her more time to get back to normal after seeing his skin. She thought that maybe Darren was still staring at her, but she couldn’t get over the chiseled muscles of his chest. And she’d even seen it before. Her skin had been new to him; why couldn’t she get over this?

  She coughed to try to avoid what she was thinking. “And?”

  “And? What more do you want from me
, woman?” He laughed, and she struggled not to laugh too. Another small giggle fell out, though, and that just got an even bigger smile from the man.

  “I want to know what you were doing when you left me here by myself.” She fisted her hands at her sides, trying not to touch him. It was so hard not to. She could easily put her hand on his shoulder, or drag it down to poke him in the thigh. Or worse.

  She could tell by the look on his face that he was thinking about not telling her. He finally did.