Billion Dollar Beast - Olivia Hayle Page 0,24

to get very obvious if I have to take off my now too-tight pants.

“You are allowed to look at me, you know,” she murmurs. “It’s difficult to play otherwise.”

“I know that,” I say testily, but my eyes immediately linger at her invitation. She’s gloriously beautiful in the dim lighting. Everything about her is golden, even her smile, though it’s rare to see it so in my company.

“Why isn’t André here?” I ask. “I doubt he’d approve.”

“And do I need a man’s approval to sit here with you?” She exchanges one of her own cards before dealing out the river. I scarcely notice the cards being revealed.

“Of course you don’t.”

“I could ask you the same, you know. Why isn’t one of your money-grabbing sidekicks here?”

“Sidekicks?”

“I don’t want to call them anything degrading,” she says, though the frown at the edge of her lips says quite the opposite. So she’s noticed the women I’ve spent time with over the years then, not that she’s often had the opportunity to.

Good. I know exactly who she’s dated—a string of millionaires’ sons and heirs. Boys with names like Trip and Archer. Polished sons of bitches with pedigree dripping from their pores. The kind of men Cole Porter should be friends with.

“Why do you care who I’d bring?”

“Why do you care about André?”

I reveal my cards across the table. Somehow, I’d managed to pull a flush out of my ass despite the temptation on display, addling my concentration.

She reveals her own lesser hand. “Whoops.”

And damn if I don’t feel victorious when she stands up and reaches for the zipper in her skirt. She gives a light shake of her hips to wiggle out of it and her breasts bounce and holy hell I’m screwed.

The fabric falls gently to the floor around her ankles. Firelight dances across her body, covered in nothing but a pair of thin, lacy panties the color of her skin. This time, I don’t pretend to avert my eyes. I drink her in instead.

There’s victory in her eyes, too, when she sees my gaze. “I think we’ve changed the motives for this game,” I say thickly.

“Have we?”

“Clearly, this was never about forgiveness for that poker game years ago.” I reach for the cards and try not to focus on the length of her bare legs stretched out on the couch in front of me.

“Perhaps not,” she admits. “Perhaps it was about something else entirely.”

I deal us five cards each. She wants me to admit it, admit to the want she’d seen in me yesterday—that she’s no doubt seeing on my face now. But if she thinks she can break me, she’s just proven how little she knows me.

My hand comes down flat on the table. “I’m not a man who plays games, Blair.”

“Except poker,” she says calmly, as if she’s not practically naked before me. I refuse to believe she’s that unaffected. Let her see it, then—let her see what fire she’s playing with.

Looking at my cards, I have two queens. It’s too good a hand for what I need to happen. Watching her make similar calculations, I exchange one of my queens for a four. When the river has been laid and we reveal our hands, she wins by quite a margin.

“I thought you were good at poker,” she demures.

I rise to my feet and look down at her as I undo the belt and zipper of my pants. How easy it would be to imagine a different scenario. Her dressed just like that, but on her knees in front of me.

Focus, man.

“Perhaps I’m used to less distracting opponents.” I push down my trousers roughly, kicking them off. The relief of more space is nothing compared to the widening of her eyes as she sees the bulge in my boxers.

And fuck if it doesn’t twitch at her gaze.

“Well,” she says, and then says nothing more. I allow myself a crooked smile. She might talk a big game, but in the end, she is nowhere near in control of this.

I take a seat on the couch as if my raging hard-on is nothing more than a nuisance. “Your turn to deal,” I say.

She nods and reaches for the cards. Shuffling in silence, there’s a flush rising on her cheeks that I’d bet good money isn’t from the wine or the heat of the fire.

“We’re matched now,” she says finally.

“Indeed we are.” I turn up two of the cards she’s dealt me. With a one-pair, winning isn’t impossible. The idea of her skimming out