Page 12 of Casino King

“Whiskey?” I ask when he hands it to me, and he gives me a curt nod. “Thanks.”

Taking a sip, it goes down smooth, spreading through me with a warmth that pools in my stomach. I’ve never had expensive whiskey before, and so I take another sip, savoring the sweet burn on my tongue before swallowing.

When the front door opens, I know who it is immediately by how the frayed nerve endings in me spark alive and I jump where I sit, the liquid in my glass almost spilling over before I steady my hand again.

My God, he’s beautiful. Beautiful in the way lightning is when it cracks across the sky during a summer thunder storm – powerful, dangerous, electric, uncontrollable, a force of nature. You want to get closer, you want to dance in the warm rain, but you know if you do, then you risk getting struck. You risk getting burned. You risk everything. Including your life.

But if you survive, you cheat death, and that’s a euphoric rush straight to the soul, making you feel more alive than ever before.

He’s a force of nature with a direct line straight to my core, heightening everything I’m feeling.

He’s probably somewhere around thirty, but every trace of youth has been wiped from him. Every inch of him is all man.

I can’t help the slight shaking in my hand as I bring the crystal tumbler to my lips again and take a larger sip than before, needing the whiskey to calm my nerves.

He watches my every movement, his eyes darkening when my tongue peeks out to lick the drop of liquid left behind on my upper lip.

“How are you feeling?” His voice is as smooth as the whiskey sliding down my throat, and pools just as warmly in my stomach, loosening the knot that formed the moment he walked out the door earlier. I knew he was going to pay the man who attacked me a visit. I felt his anger rolling off of him when he saw my bruised face. And while taking comfort in knowing he hurt him right back for me should make me feel like a bad person, it doesn’t.

If he’s not taught a lesson now, what’s to stop him from going after another girl the next night he’s drunk? And that woman most definitely won’t have a secret bodyguard like I did to rescue her from the fate I narrowly escaped from.

“What’s your name?” I ask him for the second time, needing to know that more than anything right now. I want to call him something other than my mystery man. I need something to grab onto right now when everything about him is so carefully veiled.

Draping his suit jacket over the chair beside me, he walks over to the bar and pours himself his own glass of whiskey before taking the seat beside me. The sleeves of his crisp white dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows, exposing his tanned muscular forearms that I’m having visions of seeing flexing on either side of my head as he thrusts into me.

Looking away, I clear my throat and shift where I sit. He’s a lot to take in. He has too much of a presence for me to relax.

“Alec Carfano,” he says, and I repeat the name in my head, letting it roll around in there, and loving the way it feels. It’s sexy. It’s strong.

I look back up at him, his dark eyes pulling mine to his. “Alec Carfano. It suits you,” I tell him, and immediately wonder why I said that. But his lip twitches, almost like he wants to smile but doesn’t remember how.

“You think so?” Leaning back in his chair, he eyes me speculatively over the rim of his glass as he takes a long drink, my eyes drawn to his throat as he swallows.

“Yes,” I whisper, my eyes meeting his again. “Why am I here?”

“Because I want you to be.”

“Why did you have me followed?”

“Because you needed protection.”

“From what?”

“I think tonight speaks for itself.”

“And I’m grateful, but it still doesn’t answer my question.”

He stares at me for a long, silent moment. Using it, I’m sure, to contemplate whether or not to answer me honestly.

“I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“Why? From what?”

“Just accept the answer, Tessa. That’s all you’re getting tonight.”

Well, then. Placing my half-full glass on the coffee table, I stand. “Fine, then I want to go home. Enzo?” I look over to him by the door, but he just looks at Alec.

“You’re not leaving,” Alec says in a matter-of-fact tone, his voice dropping just a little lower. Enough to send a shiver down my spine and make my legs give out so I’m sitting again.

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