Page 21 of His Dark Vendetta

I laughed. Hard. “All right, all right. Consider me schooled!”

“Oh, the schooling’s just begun.”

Absolutely perfect.

She lined up her second shot, and with a lift of her hip to get the right angle, sank the number nine in the near-side corner pocket. She spun her head to look at me, tongue between her teeth and nose scrunched in that adorable expression of hers that drove me wild.

I shook my head and chuckled. “There has to be a story here.”

“Not a very thrilling one,” she said dryly. “I worked my way through college at a pub in Cork.” She stood across the table from me on a diagonal, holding the cue upright in front of her, and examined the felt playing field. “Number ten. Side pocket.” With swift efficiency, she sank the ball.

She walked over to where she’d left her martini waiting on the high top next to my scotch, leaned against one of the stools, and sipped it delicately. “Depending on the shift, I had a lot of time on my hands.” She shrugged. “Started playing with some of the regulars. They gave me tips.” She placed her drink back on the table. “I got better”—her wicked smile returned—“and then I was the one giving tips.”

I snorted. “I have no doubt.”

She stepped up to the pool table and frowned. “Hmm.” She shifted her weight and tilted her head. “Thirteen. Near corner.”

She bent over the table, and my body reacted on impulse. I stepped behind her on the opposite side of her cue, placed a hand on the side rail, and leaned in.

She sucked in a quick breath and looked over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to learn from a master. I want to see how you line up a shot.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to distract me, would you?”

I wiped the smile from my face and covered my heart with my free hand. “Never. That would be cheating.”

The corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smirk, and she turned back to her shot. I lowered my hand from my heart to her hip and gave it a gentle squeeze. The ball ricocheted off the far rail and rolled toward the near-corner pocket. It tapped the edge and bounced slightly to the left before coming to a stop along the rail on the short end of the table.

She spun around and glared at me even as her lips twisted, fighting a smile.

“My turn,” I said.

She threw her head back, and her throaty laugh filled the club.

I scoped out my shot and tried to focus on sinking the ball. Not easy with a semi-hard from standing behind Siobhán with her ass in the air.

“Why don’t we make this interesting,” she said and brought the martini glass to her lips. Her eyes glinted over the rim.

“Yeah?” I refocused my attention and sank the number two. I walked around to the far side of the table and lined up my next shot.

“Loser has to give the winner a lap dance.”

I scratched; the cue slipped out from between my fingers and brushed the side of the cue ball.

She chuckled, and a wicked smile danced across her sinfully red lips. She looked past me. “I felt inspired.”

I followed her gaze to the stripper pole on the far side of the room. I turned back to face her, grinning at the challenge. “Oh, you’re on.”

“I’ve never seen a man your size give a lap dance. You sure you want to take this bet?”

I strode back to her side of the table, and she eyed me like a rival predator tracking an alpha it knows it can’t defeat. I’d seen the way she looked at me over the past year. The heat in her blue eyes when I smiled. The hope that sparked in them when I finally asked her to dinner. The way her lips parted whenever we touched. We’d teetered on the precipice of inevitable since the moment our eyes first locked across the Terme di Boston lobby. Anticipation had built into a frenzy, and with only a couple days until our date, any motion was bound to send us tumbling over the edge.

I closed the distance, not stopping until I hovered over her. A few strands of hair fell out of place and caught in her lashes. I swept them away, more slowly than necessary, and her lips parted at the brush of my fingertips across her forehead. “I’m feeling lucky tonight,” I said and lowered my head enough for her to feel every degree my blood heated from our closeness. “I have my little shamrock, don’t I?”

She sucked in a breath. Pink tinted her porcelain cheeks, and her heart sped up, its beat thumping over the sudden rush of her blood. Her chest rose and fell more swiftly. So did mine.

“Want another drink?” I asked and backed away, needing to douse the flames with another round of scotch.

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