I take a seat where I can see her and also watch the door. A man gets up from the table. Drops a few chips for the dealer and scowls at Mia as he makes a sullen exit. Nobody else is smiling for the next deal.
It’s tough on the dealer. She’s working mostly for tips. But she’s cute, and she’s good. I intend to be generous, and I expect Mia will be, too.
She has a cool, professional attitude about the game. like I do. Not like the over-serious tourists and the excitable kids at the table. We recognize that. So we have a secret already.
Two out of five players drop straight out. Another folds after the first round.
That leaves me, Mia, and one other guy in. He turns out to be a tight player. Counting the odds, playing a percentage. He gets a lucky draw and he should be in for the showdown. Mia shrewdly bluffs him off the pot, though.
My hand looks okay, and I want to see what she’s got. She makes a huge raise, so I’m sure she’s trying to bluff me too and not have to show her cards. Good strategy.
But I have straight, a seven up to a jack. So I call her.
Her eyes flash and my heart thumps. We’ve got a decent pile of money in the piles of chips on the table.
And her eyes narrow like a satisfied Persian cat as she shows me her full house.
Damn.
We play three more hands. I win two; she wins one. Her win is way bigger, though, because she suckers all the other marks into shoving big bets in the pot. She’s a demon poker player.
All the way through the play, she’s throwing eyes around the room. That’s her gamesmanship. And she’s red hot. When her gaze glows at me, I feel it directly. I give her a look back.
Mia plays with her chips, adjusts her cards. She works her lip. Cocks a nostril. It’s a short time before I realize I’m doing it, too.
Doing it when our eyes lock makes my cock thicken and uncoil.
When she bets, checks, raises, peeks under the corners at her cards, she’s either watching me in the corner of her eye, or she’s sensing if I’m watching her.
We’re plugged into a kind of synch. No words, no nods. Nothing direct. A secret dance, where the moves are shines in the eye or a flex in the brow.
First, I think I’m imagining it. But the next time I’m certain. Even the dealer caught it. I saw her eyes widen and her cheeks flush.
One by one, all the other players get up to leave. They’re grumpy. Not only because they’re all losing. But more because they each get a sense that they’ve been shut out.
The next deal, I’m down half my stack. Losing to this woman with the eyes of a sex witch. I am determined to pull back up. Starting from this hand. The deal is good. I have two jacks to build on.
Then, passing the doorway in a pack of heavies, I get a glimpse of her brother, Giovani Moretti. What the fuck? What would he be doing in an O’Malley casino? I look up and she’s seen him, too. I beckon to the dealer and whisper, “Let us out the staff door. Quick.”
“I can’t.”
“This says you can.” I show her a wad, fat enough to change her mind.
“No, really, I…”
“Really. Don’t make me show you my other way to persuade you.”
Her mouth tightens, and she frowns as she takes the money. As she ushers us out at the back of the room, she pleads, “Don’t give me up, okay?”
Showing Mia through first, she says, “Sock me. So I can say you overpowered me.”
I shake my head and tell her, “I can’t do that.”
Mia grins and leans back. “I can.” She cracks the dealer on the chin and knocks her down. Her grin as she dusts her knuckles sends a hard pulse into my cock.
I follow her down a dark passageway. After all the glitter and sparkle of the public room, it feels cold and hard. And it echoes.
We slip into an elevator, and she presses a down button. Down to a parking level. I smile. That simplifies the job for me.
In the enclosed car, she presses up against me.
Her voice is low. It rubs inside me. “You know who I am, then.” She sets me on fire. This is going to be harder than I thought.
She drags a finger down the front of my shirt. I’m stiffening from head to toe. But most of all, about halfway between the two.
She says, “And you know more than that. Otherwise, how would you know that I’d want to get away from Giovani?”
I don’t answer her straightaway. I’m too focussed on the scrape of her hard nipples through her clothes and against my abs, and the grind of her hips against mine. Her finger traces my lip.