Page 215 of Sweet Temptation

And fucking hell, he was handsome.

Mine.

I’d licked him—thoroughly—and he was totally mine. I had dibs all over the man, and I was keeping him.

My drunk mind made the decision, just like that.

“Okay,” I said, trying to focus. “Blackball is kinda-sorta like a modified version of Whist,” I explained, though clearly that meant nothing to Ronan. I ripped off three sheets of paper and wrote a line of numerals on each paper, starting at 10 and counting down to 1, in a vertical line. Then I gave each of us one of the papers and a pen. “There are ten rounds. The first round corresponds to the ten on your paper, then the second round is nine, and so on. For the first round, we each get ten cards. Then next round we get nine, and so forth. The goal is to win ‘tricks,’ by playing the highest card. Aces are high, by the way, twos are low. You look at your hand and for this round, you decide how many tricks you think you’ll win out of ten. You can say anything from zero to ten. You write that down on your paper. That’s called your bet.”

“This sounds like Oh Hell,” Andre said. “I used to play that with my cousins.”

“Could be,” I said. “There’s probably a million variations. Oh, and the total number of tricks bid between all of us can’t equal the number available. So for example, when we’re playing the first round, if you guys both bid five, five plus five equals ten, so I can’t then bid zero. I’d have to bid at least one. Follow?”

“I’m with you,” Andre said solemnly.

Ronan looked utterly lost.

I kinda liked that look on him. It was pretty adorable.

“We all try to win the exact number of tricks we bet,” I went on. “That’s the goal. If we do, we get to write down a one before the number we bet, and we get that many points. So a bet of one becomes eleven points. A bet of zero becomes ten points. If we don’t win our tricks, we get a blackball. You don’t want those.”

“What’s a blackball?” Ronan asked.

“It’s worth zero points. You literally draw a little black ball on your paper instead of points for that round.”

“So how do we get the tricks?”

“Well, I’m the dealer,” I said, “and play starts to the dealer’s left. So, Ronan, you go first. You play a card. You want to play a high card. Then we go clockwise and each play a card. The highest card played in the suit that Ronan played wins the trick. But if a trump card is played, it wins. There’s a trump suit for each round. The order goes spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds, then no trump, then it starts over again. So this round is spades.”

“You expect me to follow this?” Ronan said. “I don’t think I could follow this sober.” He was definitely looking drunker by the minute. Those last couple of shots were really sinking in.

I wondered if my giant alpha bodyguard was a lightweight.

Doesn’t drink often and gets wasted easily. Noted.

“I think you’re missing the point,” I said.

“You’re not supposed to follow,” Andre supplied. “You’re supposed to get naked.” He looked at me pretty soberly for a drunk person. Definitely had a higher tolerance than his boss. “When do we take off our clothes?”

“Anytime we get a blackball, baby.”

I put on Etta James, “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” and we got down to business.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Ronan muttered.

And as it turned out, he was the first—and only—one of us to get a blackball in the first round.

Andre and I put back another shot and watched with amusement as Ronan drew his little black ball on his paper. “Kinda looks like a blue ball to me,” Andre quipped, referring to the sparkly blue ink of Ronan’s pen.

“Good one,” Ronan muttered.

Then he slipped off his watch, really slowly, like he was performing a watch strip-fetish show.

“Bold move, brother,” Andre said, having his back.

“Very risqué,” I teased. “You know, in some countries it’s illegal for a man to show that much wrist in public.”

The next round, Andre got his first blackball and lost his shirt. He was wearing no watch and no jewelry, so he’d probably be getting naked pretty damn fast.

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