Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Anything less wouldn’t give him the same satisfaction.
Men get bored easily. Monogamy isn’t natural to them. Fact.
Rory would get bored with me too, no matter what he tells himself. It’s only the chase that thrills him. And if I wasn’t fucking him over right now, he’d be fucking me over in only a few short months. No question about it.
Which gives me the fortitude I need to move forward with my lie.
“I want out,” I tell him. “I want to move on. But I just....”
I lay it on thick, turning to look out the window as I rub my hands over my dress.
“There’s just a few loose ends I need to take care of first. And I need your help with that.”
“Sweetheart, you know I’ll always look after ye. All ye ever had to do was say so.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, but the false tears I conjured up don’t feel so false anymore. I don’t recognize what’s happening inside of me right now.
Regardless, it’s what Rory needs to see. His fingers move over my face, gentle and full of worship.
“We’ll sort out the details later,” he promises. “But for now, it looks like ye could use a good dose of some fun.”
Fun? I don’t even know what that is. But I nod anyway. Placating him like I’m a normal girl who can go on normal dates. Or whatever.
Rory tells me to stay put and gets out to walk around the car like some sort of gentleman. He opens my door and helps me out of the car, wrapping an arm around my shoulder as we walk towards the back door.
But before we go into the club, he pauses to lean down and whisper in my ear.
“You will give me a name, sweetheart.”
Rory bypasses the bar and the dance area and takes me directly to the basement.
The space is loud and filled with Irish men and a hodgepodge of other sorts too. Various gambling pursuits abound throughout the room, and there’s a waitress running her ass off to serve drinks while the men drink and smoke.
The noise and the claustrophobic atmosphere stab at my temples and I’m smiling and I really don’t mean it. My senses are in overload. The thing about my brain is that it doesn’t deal well with so much stimuli. But I’ve had a lifetime of practice, so I shut it out and focus on the things that need doing. Like walking and breathing and observing and nodding when Rory introduces me to someone.
He leads me to a poker table with one spare chair and sits down, pulling me into his lap like I’m his trophy for the night. The other men at the table toss me fleeting glances, but don’t dare say anything.
This is a man’s game. And apparently, I’m here for decorative purposes. But after Rory meets each of their gazes, they stop looking at me and find other points of focus. It’s a change of pace if I ever had one and I relax a little as he orders a drink.
He asks what I want, and I tell the waitress myself.
There’s chatter around the table before the game starts, but Rory doesn’t participate. His face is in my neck and he’s breathing me in again and PDA isn’t a problem for him but it’s a problem for me. I tell him so, and his arm wraps around my waist and pulls me back against his chest.
“You play poker?” he asks.
“Don’t know how.”
He shifts beneath me, and he’s hard for me. Uncomfortable, no doubt. With my ass pressing against him and no relief.
There’s a part of me that likes that. That I’m torturing him. I’m feeling like myself again.
“I think you’ll like it,” he says. “The adrenaline rush without fucking up any unsuspecting lad.”
I glare at him and he flashes me his dimples. His signature move.
The dealer sits down and gathers our attention.
The table falls quiet as the cards are dealt and everyone morphs into a human statue. They don’t want to give anything away, Rory whispers in my ear, and I think that maybe I’d be good at this game.
I may not know how to play poker, but I know how to read faces. And some of these guys, quite frankly, suck.
For the first couple of rounds, I just observe. Rory whispers in my ear to explain the moves he makes with the cards and I learn a little as we go. But it’s the people I’m watching. And after about twenty minutes or so, I know that the bald man opposite of us is nervous as all get out.
It’s a gut instinct.
I whisper my theory into Rory’s ear as well. He glances at me, and then without question, trusts my judgment completely.
When he’s forced to show his hand, I’m happy to see that I was correct.