Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 41282 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 206(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 138(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41282 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 206(@200wpm)___ 165(@250wpm)___ 138(@300wpm)
I'm already wondering what his voice might sound like. I want to hear him say my name.
Use this desire to get what you want. Be just like him. That’s what I tell myself. I have to think this way, and be ruthless.
This is the only way to save Tommy from an impossible situation with an improbable plan.
Now that I'm actually doing the deal, standing right beside Giancarlo, I’m motivated to feel confident. I let myself get caught up in the moment, and now my thoughts are taking me down a winding road where I can barely see past the headlights of what's coming next on this messy road. I’m already hazy-minded with growing lust. But this sense of being less in control now, urges me to play this game with every drop of resolve that I have.
I have power, and I'm going to use it. I'm not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.
I can do this.
It doesn’t feel so bad to be not as in control. There’s a thrill in me now. Somehow I’m taking the biggest gamble I've ever made in my life, and instead of being sick to my stomach, I’m exhilarated.
But when I'm close enough to smell the fresh, masculine scent of him, I’m downright terrified.
Oh, God, can I actually do this?
3
Gian
The lights and sounds of the Wicked Paradise Casino are the sort of dull roar that doesn’t even penetrate my senses. I shove my fingertips against the green velvet of the game board. Finger the ridges of a chip. Clench my fists so hard. Hold my cold glass, my skin drinking in the condensation. The voices of the people around the table fade away, everything does.
Then one voice cuts through everything and it's like I’m feeling things for the first time.
"I'm Lucy, and I want to make a deal." A feminine voice cuts through the crowd inside my casino and directly into my ears.
I hear the sound of another person wanting something from me.
Another person propositioning me. I get women all the time who think they can get money from me, get something shiny from me, all because I have this reputation. One that I don’t do anything to discredit, but that doesn’t serve me shit because I haven’t been with a woman in a very long time. I choose not to be. I have absolutely zero fucking interest in anything that flits in my direction.
So why does something tug at me in this Lucy’s voice? Why does her request make me interested, when it should do the exact opposite?
The air is thicker with the tension rolling off her, the shake in her voice so minor that a lesser man wouldn’t notice.
But I’m no lesser man. I’m as skilled as they come in the arts of reading people, manipulating people, and getting what I want. My skills help me hear the conflict permeating her voice. The air seems thick with it.
Lucy’s hate toward me emanates like dark curls of smoke…and I'm not interested in that. I don’t need more people around me who want something from me and openly despise me.
“If you have just a moment for me,” Lucy says in a voice that is firm, but has the faintest tremble. Why does that bring life to my dead senses?
I also hear the desperation in her voice and wonder what more there is to her story. That’s the part that interests me, and I don’t know why.
The only needs I serve are my own. I learned a long time ago that the only way to keep myself strong and safe is to ruthlessly look out for only me. That’s served me pretty damn well — I own this casino, the Wicked Paradise, and near countless other holdings in my empire that I let my accountant worry about. I spend most of my days in this casino because it's the perfect coffin for me while I drink through every rotten day and everything seems to pass me by.
It's been a long time since I cared about anything more than my empire, which I only treat as my distraction. It satisfies my urge to own things, control them, and build more power.
So why the hell do I care about some honey-voiced girl who walks up to me and tells me she wants something?
Desperation is everywhere, and normally I pay no attention to it unless I’m actively seeking to take advantage of it. But now? Now I find myself wanting to know why she’s desperate, and I have this creeping suspicion that I actually care beyond my own purposes.
Why?
How?
I thought those parts of me died when I decided to care about nothing but my businesses. The last thing I cared about tried to destroy me. A wife, a woman, something so far in the past for me that I can’t be bothered to even think about them now. But I can’t help but see how I built everything I have by losing something I never had … and now this girl makes me start to want things that the last woman made me give up on.