Page 6 of The Alpha's Gamble
He didn’t only have power over me as the owner of this place, someone who could press charges or throw me out on the street, but as a man. That had been my last remaining worthwhile quality: being a real alpha, unlike my liar of a father.
Useless.
He considered me for an endless, agonizing minute, while I seethed and bit my lip and clenched my fists and felt sicker and sicker by the second.
MacKenna’s lip curled. “You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked at last. “I thought you were just bluffing and hoping I didn’t remember, as if I’d forget. But you really don’t fucking remember me.”
That hit me like a thunderbolt, and my vision went sparkly for a second.
The familiarity in his voice…not a cartoon leprechaun after all. I nearly burst out laughing, my impending hysteria seeking any outlet it could find.
“Take your time,” he said, with a dark, cruel edge to his tone. “Don’t strain anything. I’ll even help you out. We met almost ten years ago, at this very casino. In a private poker room. Ringing any bells?”
Ten years ago. I bit my lip hard, blinking to try to clear the spots away. All that got me was a fresh view of his hard, contemptuous, glowing-eyed face and the hint of fang showing where he’d all but bared his teeth at me.
That must have been one of my first trips to Vegas after I turned twenty-one, if not my very first. And that first time…the drinking had been the least of it. I’d been higher than my private jet’s flight path on coke and X before I even took off from Boise. Remember him? I could barely remember my own name that weekend.
Little flashes, filtered through liquor and drugs and shame and denial …a girl I’d slept with, her laughing face as she put a thousand dollars of my money on a spin of the roulette wheel. A club, smoke and blue and pink lights.
The private poker room, and an incredibly hot guy with mesmerizing dark eyes who’d made me want…but he hadn’t wanted me.
“Oh, fucking gods,” I choked out, my knees going weak. “Fuck.Fuck.”
“And there it is.” His grim satisfaction was laced with enough irony to sink a ship. “I’m honored you remember me after all. Out of all the lowly nobodies you’ve offered a wad of cash to suck your cock.”
I stared down at him, chest heaving, extremities numb. Alpha werewolves didn’t have strokes, or I’d have begged for an ambulance.
At this point, I’d have begged for the Las Vegas police.
But I had a feeling that wasn’t on the table anymore.
“Of course, most of them probably took the money,” he went on implacably, cold and hard and in control while I trembled and panted for breath in front of him. “And the ones that didn’t, who knows what happened after that. I only know what happened to me.” His voice dropped to an impossibly deep register, vibrating through me, almost rattling my teeth. “You told your casino host I’d hit on you. Made you uncomfortable. And I was out on my ass by morning. I guess I should be grateful you didn’t accuse me of something worse. Either way, I couldn’t get another job here after that. Blacklisted everywhere.”
That…I’d done that? Little snippets of that night were coming back to me, freeze frames without context. The really hot guy.
MacKenna.
And then—I was angry. Hurt? Probably mostly hurt in my pride, that I’d tried to seduce him and he’d turned me down. Of course I’d offered money. That was only polite, right? Wasn’t it? To make sure the people hanging out with me got something out of it? Like the girl playing my money at the roulette table. She’d been happy to fuck me and spend whatever I had on hand. Had I straight-up offered him cash for sex, or had that been his interpretation?
I didn’t remember complaining to the host. That was gone, swept away in a haze of intoxication and sleep deprivation and distractions.
Besides…
“But you own this place now,” I argued. Or tried to. He still hadn’t moved, his head resting on the back of the sofa and his limbs sprawled. But I couldn’t seem to raise my voice against the pressure in the air, a heavy, gathering tension like an electrical storm. His magic, building with his anger. At least I’d gotten to him the way he’d gotten to me. I refused to quail in the face of it, even though I thought I might throw up. I lifted my chin and stared him down. “You—obviously that was, I mean, embarrassing, but if you have the money to buy a damn casino, what did a stupid job matter to you?”
The kindling fire in his eyes was more than the glow of an alpha. That was rage, and my fists clenched at my sides as I fought the urge to run.
He might chase me.
And I wasn’t any match for him. I might do some damage, but not enough to stop him from whatever he wanted to do to me.
Slowly, he lifted his head and sat up straight—and then he moved more quickly than I could follow, my wrists suddenly clamped in his hands. MacKenna yanked me down, and I stumbled to the floor, falling on one knee with the other leg twisted painfully under me. I bit back a yelp, but my cry died on my tongue anyway as he leaned down, his face only inches from mine, eyes flaring like twin supernovas.
“I earned every penny I have,” he ground out, fangs flashing. “No one handed me a fucking thing. That job was my rent, my utility bills, food on the table. And my path to working my way up to something that was supposed to be mine. My grandparents built this place from the ground up, and my parents fucked it up and screwed the whole family—it doesn’t matter. Fuck you, Castelli. You had everything. It wouldn’t have cost you anything to act like a decent man. Instead, your stunt fucked me over for years. And now you’re here, and I’m not inclined to give you any more leeway than you gave me. But I’m not forcing you. You can say no to paying me off the way I choose, and you get up and walk out that door. Tell your spoiled-brat sob story to Las Vegas’s finest and see if they give a fuck. Last chance.”
My arms shook in his grasp, and he tightened his grip until I could almost feel my bones grinding together. And fuck, but even when I pulled, I couldn’t get loose.
I couldn’t get loose.
