The Player (The Game Maker #3) - Kresley Cole Page 0,20
as if I were catching my breath for the first time tonight. . . .
Still buzzed, I veered toward my bedroom, passing the tiny living area I used as a sewing studio. My mom had taught Karin and me how to make our own clothes because many of our cons required us to look like money; retail couture would eat into profits.
As I passed my dress dummies, garment racks, and my old busted-up Singer, I tried to remember when I’d last had time to use them.
Karin, Pete, and Benji were camped out on my oversize bed, flipping through textbooks from my stint at design school.
“What are you guys doing here?” Hanging out in my lame one-bedroom unit? I had barely any furniture, zero decorations, and no TV. Boxes filled with posters of eighties bands and movie memorabilia lined the walls, unopened since I’d moved from Brett’s last year.
I’d meant to do a POP—pratfall on property—at a better apartment complex, but hadn’t gotten around to it.
Karin sat up against the headboard, beaming. “We could hardly wait for you to divvy what happened!” She wore shorts and a broken-in T-shirt that read: It was me. I let the dogs out. Our grandmother had given that to her. Out of love, Karin wore it constantly.
My pink cellphone had been a present from Gram, which meant I cherished it—no matter how much I hated the color pink. Not to mention that “dialing the pink telephone” was a euphemism for masturbation. I told myself it was better than the Snuggie she’d gotten Pete or Benji’s hobbit-feet socks.
“Holy shit, sis.” Benji’s coffee-brown eyes lit up. “What a difference a day makes, huh?”
To see my brother today, you’d never guess how much he’d suffered on the streets as a little boy. He’d grown up to be lava-hot, tall and built, with a quiet strength that drew people.
Eighteen years ago, he’d been a seven-year-old street urchin trying to hustle my dad. A scrawny thing with huge eyes, he’d had a talent at cards that rivaled mine and little memory of how he got to the States. He’d called himself Benji because he’d probably been born in Bengal, India.
Dad had seen potential. With no parents to be found, he’d brought Benji home, and we’d adopted him.
“Did you really tangle with a billionaire?” he asked.
I hiccupped and grinned.
“You didn’t sleep with the Russian, did you?” Pete asked, seeming to brace himself for my answer.
I made a chopping motion. “Sex—nyet.”
Relieved looks all around.
I tossed my keys and my purse onto my dime-store desk. Lucía’s watch rattled inside that secret compartment. “But we did hook up.” I sat in my fold-up chair and took off my heels, wincing from my aching feet.
“Tell us, hon!” Karin said. “What’s he like?”
“He’s . . . he’s . . .” I tried to put him into words. “With him, it’s . . .” I gave up. “Lemme go take a shower.”
Under the paltry water pressure, I considered and discarded descriptions. How to explain someone like Dmitri Sevastyan?
Once I padded back out in my robe, Benji said, “Well?”
I hopped up on a free corner of my bed. “Dmitri is magnetic and fascinating and . . . unconventional.”
Karin studied my expression. “Then the con won’t be such a chore. Everybody’s so excited, Vice. I’ve been bragging about my boss of a little sister.” She would; she didn’t have a jealous bone in her body. “Pete said he’s never seen a mark respond like this.”
He chuckled. “Not fifteen minutes after I told Vice she needed to practice sexual manipulation, she had the Russian shoving her up against a wall, groaning into her mouth, and hard as rock.”
I blushed. “I wondered if you’d seen that detail.”
“As if I could miss that huge . . . detail.”
Karin laughed. “The student has become the teacher! I tried every trick in the book to get that man’s attention—even a noob move like the toppled tray.”
She’d dropped a tray filled with plastic cups of ice, enabling her to spend lots of time on all fours in a miniskirt hunting for each cube.
The idea of my sister doing that in front of Dmitri . . . Jealousy hit me. Again.
Benji said, “Start from the beginning and tell us everything that happened.”
I did—because this was my first sex con and I needed their input. But I omitted the finer points of each orgasm, and I found myself leaving out details that made Dmitri sound even more . . . eccentric.