Chapter 4 #2
Logan surveyed the other players. Harper looked a bit shell-shocked. Understandable. This had definitely not been her scene. She was the pampered princess. Not the psychotic playboy—her brother should have been at that game.
Logan would face off with him, later. He fully intended to win a few hotels off that man.
For now, he waved toward Sebastian. “Get her back to her hotel room, would you?” He’d noted the careful way Sebastian watched Harper and caught the covert way she stared back at him. There was something going on between those two.
“Oh, I would be delighted.” Sebastian gallantly offered Harper his arm.
After a brief hesitation, and a very heavy swallow, she took it.
They left.
Carmichael saluted him. “Until next time.”
Yeah. Next time. Carmichael Lennon might seem friendly and charming, but the man was far too good at dealing death.
Carmichael had been an enforcer for the mob once upon a time.
Rumor said that he’d left the biz because he’d gotten tired of taking orders from other people.
Not gotten tired of the bloody work. Nope, not that.
Just tired of following orders. He’d left to be his own boss.
From all appearances, the career changed had brought him plenty of cash.
Carmichael exited without a backwards glance.
Logan chatted with his guards—briefly—and they made sure that Ares and Pierre headed to sign their proper paperwork, and when they all departed, it was finally just…
Logan and Charlotte.
A Charlotte who stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “He attacked you,” Charlotte recapped. “And you’re letting him go?”
He shut the door. Not like he wanted any witnesses for this conversation. And, speaking of witnesses…
He scooped up her broken glasses. She’d left them on the table. He lifted those glasses, studying them ever-so-carefully.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
Logan let the glasses fall. Deliberately. Then, just as deliberately, he smashed the glasses with his gleaming, thousand-dollar pair of shoes. Over and over again.
“Logan! Are you crazy?”
“Quite possibly.” He smiled at her. “I’m also not in the mood for your CIA friends to overhear this conversation.”
Her eyes widened.
“You thought I didn’t know?” Was that cute or insulting? Both? “Sweetheart, the new glasses were a dead giveaway. So was the manner in which you swept the room over and over again.” Gritted words as he closed in on her. She still gripped her knife.
Like he cared.
His hands circled around her waist as he lifted her up.
She gave a fast yelp.
He carried her back to the big poker table. Sat her on top of that table and deliberately stepped between her legs.
“What is happening right now?” she asked, shaking her head and sending her hair flying over her cheeks.
“I’m fucking pissed. That’s what is happening.”
Her hands flew up. She pressed the knife to his throat.
Logan stilled. His hands were tight on her waist. His body positioned between her spread legs. The skirt of her black dress had hiked way up. “Gonna use that on me?” he asked. “If so, do it now. Slice my throat wide open if you think I am a physical threat to you.”
“You bet me! You risked me in a game of cards!”
“I won you. I would have always won you. I knew my hand. I put it face down on the table long before the bet for you was ever placed.”
“You—you—”
“If I’m a threat, slice my throat open right now.”
Instead of slicing him, she tossed the knife. It flew, end over end, and he heard the thang when it embedded in the wall behind him.
“Glad that’s out of the way,” Logan noted. “Really sucks when your personal assistant puts a blade to your throat.”
“I protected you!”
“Just as I protected you.” His grip tightened on her waist. “I warned you that coming into this back room would be a mistake. Lines would be crossed. You don’t get to toy with the people who were at my table.
You don’t get to just film and record and make me out to be a rat in a world I poured blood and pain into creating.
” Each word was bitten off from between clenched teeth.
“You think you get to control me because of some CIA blackmail? Well, screw the blackmail from here on out. I don’t dance to anyone’s tune but my own. ”
“You’re ending the arrangement?” Worry flashed on her pretty face. “No! You can’t!”
“The deal has changed.” He was changing it. “Either I get every detail on the mission or it’s over. And I don’t care what big, bad threats the CIA makes.”
“I…I have to check with my boss.”
Nope. “You’re the one making decisions in this room. You’re the one who is working with me.” He was done walking in the dark. If she wanted his help, she’d tell him everything. He waited, still holding her waist, far too aware of her scent and her warmth and the way she felt beneath his hands.
“You kissed me.”
Okay, not what he’d expected her to say. And as far as that kiss was concerned,“That was damn well not a real kiss.”
“It was. You put your mouth on mine. Kinda a textbook definition of a kiss.”
For barely a breath. A real kiss would involve him plunging his tongue past her plump lips and feasting. Taking. Driving them both wild with desire. If she kept pushing him, that was exactly the kind of kiss he’d be giving her.
“You can’t tell them that I’m your PA and then kiss me!”
“Charlotte.” Long. Drawn out. Said with extra syllables.
“Logan?”
“I wouldn’t let my PA into this room. They knew that.
I’ve never let a PA into this room for a private game.
The only civilians who come in? They are the people that the players are fucking.
So when you came in, at my side, looking sexy as hell in your tight dress and the high heels and the fuck-me glasses—”
“They were not—”
“You stood behind me. They thought I was fucking you. To test me, Ares deliberately made that bet about you. He has always wanted to take the things that belong to me.” Take and destroy.
A swallow. “You…didn’t mention that point to me before. That, uh, they’d think I was your lover.”
“I warned you that the situation would change if you came to this particular game. You were adamant about attending.” Now, as predicted, the situation had seriously altered. Ares would be out for blood.
Only fair. Logan certainly wanted the Greek’s blood.
“You bet me.”
“Are we back to that? No one else was going to win you. I had the game well in hand.”
“Did you cheat?” Low. Whispered.
Tension poured through his body. Too much tension. The violence from the fight still heated his blood. Adrenaline poured through him. And…
Jealousy twisted in his gut. Writhed. Like he’d swallowed a damn snake. A very, very new feeling. Something that he definitely did not enjoy. When Ares and Pierre had looked at Charlotte, there had been lust in their eyes. Ares had fully intended to take Charlotte.
Only that hadn’t been an option.
Voice low and lethal, Logan told her, “You don’t accuse a man of cheating, not in his own casino.”
“I, um, think I remember you saying that very thing to Ares. But it’s still not an answer.” Her chin notched higher. “Did you cheat in order to win me?”
“I don’t play to lose.”
“Did you cheat?”
One hand rose and curled under her chin. “I won you.” Done. Pushed too far. Emotions out of control. I hate this seething jealousy. “So I think I should get to enjoy you.”
With that, his mouth claimed hers.