CHAPTER 7 Cassie Fields
Hot Hookup
What the hell am I doing?
I’m leaving my friends behind at a Vegas nightclub while I go to a hotel with a complete and total stranger.
But I remind myself that I’m a big girl, and I want this. I want this night where a hot football player can remind me that life doesn’t always have to be so serious.
He pulls me into the back of an Uber, and the driver confirms his hotel. “Bellagio?”
“Yes,” he says, and the driver sets off in the direction of the hotel.
I’m suddenly interested in what sort of room a pro football player rents out for the weekend in Vegas. I’m also wondering why he has a hotel room if he plays for Vegas. Doesn’t he live here? Maybe not. I’m still not totally sure Vegas has a team at all.
“Bellagio?” I repeat.
“Where are you staying?”
“Aria. Though my cousin wanted to stay at the Luxor since that male dance show is there. She thinks if we’re at the same hotel, we have a better chance of running into one of the dancers outside of show times.” I shrug with a laugh, but he doesn’t laugh back.
Instead, his eyes burn with this new intensity into mine. “Are you interested in running into one of them?”
I shrug. “I was…until I met you.”
His lips curl up at my words, and a warmth seems to hit me square in the chest. He likes that I only have eyes for him tonight. I like that he’s taking me back somewhere private. I don’t know how Vegas hookups work since I’ve never done this before, but it seems to me like a quickie in the bathroom or out back behind a bar would be a little less special than going back to a hotel.
The mere thought makes me suddenly nervous.
And then a text comes through from Jess.
I glance at my phone, trying to be discreet about it.
Jess: Yes! I knew you were getting your hot hookup tonight! Be safe and have all the fun!
“Hot hookup?” His voice is warm and low next to my ear.
I clear my throat, suddenly embarrassed that the driver might overhear what we’re doing and judge me for it.
Not that I care. I shouldn’t care. But for some reason…I do.
“I’ve just…never really done this before.”
“Then let’s get to know each other first,” he suggests.
I wrinkle my nose. “Isn’t that sort of defeating the purpose?”
He shrugs. “Depends what your purpose is.” He says it in a way that gives me the green light to detail said purpose.
“Just some fun.” I practically mouth the words to him as my eyes edge to our driver.
He turns his baseball hat around and leans in. He presses his lips just below my ear. “I can definitely give you that.”
Holy shit.
My insides are quivering, and I shiver at the feel of his breath on my ear, at the feel of his lips on my skin. The scruff on his jawline. The soft, woodsy scent emanating from him at this close proximity.
Oh, yeah. He can definitely give me that.
“Jesus,” he murmurs, drawing out the word. “You taste incredible.” He kisses me again in that same spot, and I have to be sweating out tequila at this point, but if that’s what he’s into, then maybe we’re a good pair.
I want to taste him, too, so I turn my head and catch his lips with mine.
Fireworks.
Freaking fireworks light up the entire sky through my closed eyes. Our lips are barely touching, and this is the first new man I’ve kissed since I was eighteen, and oh my God, thank you for margaritas and impaired judgment because this is the best damn night of my life.
It’s just a kiss, a simple one that isn’t even moving beyond the close-lipped stage yet, but it will. The promise is there as his lips mold to mine, and then his hand comes over to cup my jaw, and I’m freaking done .
My legs feel weak, and I’m thankful I’m sitting because I think they’d give out completely if I wasn’t. I grip onto his bicep as a way to steady myself, and that’s when his mouth opens to mine.
I’m roasted, toasted, whatever. I’m done. How do I move on from this? It’s one kiss in the back of a rideshare, but it doesn’t matter. Nobody has ever kissed me like this. Nobody else has ever made me feel sexy and wanted and like I could do anything I want the way he is right now.
I don’t expect anything to happen after tonight, and that’s fine. It’s what I signed up for when I agreed to go back to his hotel with him .
But he’s giving me something back that I thought I’d signed away forever in my marriage. He’s restoring my self-worth and my confidence as he rebuilds my spirit. And when we part in the morning without each other, at least I’ll be leaving here with all of that.
My heart feels full, and I push everything I’m feeling into this kiss.
His tongue swirls with mine as the kiss moves from slow to a little more urgent, and I’m about to let it get indecent back here as my hand starts to trail down from where it’s gripping onto his arm.
But then the driver slams on the brakes, and I don’t know if he slams on them because we were making out in his backseat like a couple of horny teenagers or because of traffic. Either way, it breaks up the intimate moment between us—not necessarily a bad thing since I was literally about to give him a hand job in the back of someone else’s car.
It’s not my first trip to Vegas, and I can see out the window that we’re getting close to his hotel. His fingers slide between mine as we both turn in our seats so we’re facing forward instead of each other, and we arrive at our destination a minute later.
We exit the car, and he grabs my hand again as we walk into the hotel. The casino is to our right, the reception desk is to our left, and straight ahead is the famed conservatory and botanical gardens. Without saying a word, we head that direction, hand-in-hand.
We wander around the conservatory filled with vibrant flowers, trees, and sculptures centered around a whimsical, romantic theme for summer. We stop and look at each display, and succulents the color of avocados will forever remind me of this moment as I take a beat to focus each time I spot my favorite color combined with my favorite types of plants .
It’s cliché, maybe, but it’s also romantic. And romance is something I thought I’d never get the chance to encounter again in my life. It’s yet another thing this night with this man is giving back to me. Who knew a total stranger could be exactly what I needed?
I breathe in the scent of fresh flowers as we meander through the gardens, and the really strange thing is that neither of us is rushing through. It just feels natural to walk around here before whatever comes next.
I’m here in Vegas, holding hands with a pro football player I wouldn’t have recognized if I hadn’t heard the bartender say his name earlier, walking around the gardens at the Bellagio. If someone would’ve told me this is where I’d be a year ago, I never would’ve believed them.
And furthermore, I wouldn’t have believed that the football player would pause in front of a display filled with peach flowers to give me a quick kiss on the lips.
“Peach flowers will always make me think of tonight,” he says as he pulls back but doesn’t let me go.
“Me too,” I say, my lips tipping up into a smile.
I sigh contentedly as we continue our walk, and then I turn to him. “You said your favorite color is green, right?”
He nods, and I point to the green roses at the center of the display I’m studying.
“Green flowers will always remind me of you.”
“Green and peach,” he says. “Like a cantaloupe.”
I’m about to open my mouth to say that Luca’s favorite fruit is cantaloupe, but I stop myself.
I realize I haven’t mentioned my children yet, and it’s not that I don’t want him to know about them, but I have this urge to protect them from whatever this is…to keep them out of it. Just like I’ll keep him out of my conversations with my kids .
I’m not just Mom anymore. Meeting Grayson Nash tonight is giving me a chance to be someone else entirely, and I want to just be Cassie for a night.
We finish our stroll through the gardens and find ourselves heading into the casino.
“Are you a gambler?” he asks.
I lift a shoulder. “I have fun on slots upon occasion. You?”
“Yeah. I like cards, blackjack, roulette, dice. I don’t get to take risky thrills with extreme sports and shit like that because of my profession, but high-stakes risks are still my jam.”
“Really?” I ask, sort of surprised. He doesn’t seem like a risk-taker.
“I need to feel that rush, you know? Especially in the offseason. If I go too long without taking a risk, it fucks with my balance. It’s harder to react in the moment on the field.” He stops in front of a slot machine with a hundred-dollar denomination, and he nods at it. “Want to try?”
My brows shoot up. “Not for a hundred bucks a spin. I’m more of a penny slot player.”
“This one’s on me.” He pulls his wallet out of his pocket and grabs a few bills to slide into the machine. “What are the stakes?”
My brows crash together in confusion. “A hundred dollars a spin.”
He shakes his head a little slyly. “No, I mean between us. If we double our money in the first ten spins, you set the prize. If we lose it all, I set the prize.”
“How is it a prize if we lose?” I ask.
“It will be for me.” He wiggles his eyebrows, and I laugh.
“Okay, hot shot. You go first.”
He nods. “If we lose, you have to do a strip dance for me when I get you upstairs. ”
“I’ve probably had enough tequila that I’d do that for you win or lose, but okay. If we win, then you have to do a strip dance for me when I get you upstairs.”
“Trust me, that’s not something you want to see,” he mutters.
I laugh. “Fine, then. If we lose, you have to give me oral sex first, and if we win, I have to give it to you first.” I choose myself first for the one I think is most likely to happen.
“Jesus Christ,” he moans. “You have yourself a deal. And for the record, it sounds like we’re both going to win.”
“Oh, we’re definitely both going to win. I think we already did the moment you sauntered up to that bar and stood beside me.”
“I think you might be right about that.” He nods toward the slot machine. “You go ahead. Let’s see who’s going down first.”
I hit the button, and on our first spin, three bars line up.
We win twenty times our line bet.
We win two thousand dollars with one spin.
Looks like I’ll be going down first.