Page 22 of Below Deck Billionaire
Putting in the plug, she flicked on the hot water, excruciatingly conscious of his gaze boring a hole in her back. Heat flared between her shoulder blades, along the ridges of her hip bones and around the base of her spine, each entry point burning all the way through to her front, licking at her nipples and undulating fiery fingers along muscles fibres that stirred a dull throb between her legs.
Her bowtie cinched a little tighter.
‘You can do that in the morning if you like? You haven’t even had a restroom break since we started and you are off the clock.’
‘It’s fine.’ Tiffany shook her head. ‘I don’t mind.’ It gave her something to think about other than the six feet two inches of pure man mere metres away.
Once the sink was half full, she turned off the tap and dropped the glasses in before heading back to the tables. ‘Was tonight what you hoped?’
She clocked him turning in her peripheral vision, lounging back against the bar, his arms spread wide, his bent elbows resting along the top, the glass dangling from his fingers.
Even in shorts and a T-shirt it was commanding, and she was hyperaware of his attention as he tracked her progress across the room, the air between them sizzling.
‘I think the guys had a blast.’
‘And you?’ she asked, deliberately not looking at him in case he saw something in her gaze she didn’t mean to give away. Like how much she wanted him to have had a blast. This man who wrestled bag snatchers to the ground for little old ladies.
Reaching under the table, she removed the chip containers from the ledge, and started to sort the messy piles into towers according to their monetary value.
‘Are you kidding? I could watch you rob my friends blind every night.’ He chuckled and it was all low and sexy and felt conspiratorial. Intimate.
Like they were sharing a secret.
Tiffany glanced up from her sorting and met his gaze, which lingered on her mouth. ‘You want me to take it a little easier on them?’
Tiffany played the way she would have played had she been on theHellenic Princess– conceding some hands, getting them comfortable, getting them hooked then reeling them in.
Because the house always won.
But this wasn’t a massive cruise ship with high rollers and even higher stakes. It was a superyacht with five fun, drunk Englishmen.
Pushing off the bar, he ambled towards her and Tiffany’s breath drew shorter with every footfall. Halting when he reached the opposite side of the table, Theo placed his glass on the table edge. ‘On the contrary,’ he murmured as he raked over a pile of chips. ‘It’s probably the only payback I’m going to get for their endless embellished stories over the next six nights, so go for it.’
Despite the tension from his proximity tightening every muscle in Tiffany’s body, she laughed. ‘In that case, sir, I will be merciless.’
Tiffany didn’t mean for it to be flirty – not consciously, anyway – but the flicker of blue flame in Theo’s eyes told her it had been. His gaze drifted to the knot of her tie before returning to her eyes. ‘Appreciated,’ he murmured, a sexy tilt to his full mouth.
Swallowing against the slight constriction of the collar, Tiffany lowered her gaze to the table and the job at hand, and for long moments, there was only the quiet click of chips as they stacked and sorted.
Externally anyway. Internally, the throb of her body was a drum beat through her ears as blood washed thick and hot through her system.
‘I can do this,’ she said, dismissing him as her trembling hands accidentally knocked over a tower of chips. ‘You don’t need to help.’ If anything, the man was a walking, talking – or not, as the case might be – hinderance.
‘I know.’
But he didn’t stop. He just kept clicking and stacking, the growing silence shredding Tiffany’s last nerve until finally he cleared his throat and said, ‘I didn’t realise you would be wearing a uniform tonight.’
Her fingers stilled as she glanced his way. ‘Oh, sorry… I just assumed you wanted the whole casino vibe? You’d prefer I didn’t?’
A half laugh rumbled from his lips. ‘It’s just very…’
His eyes lifted, taking a slow inspection of her vest from the straps on her shoulders to the row of buttons ending just under her breasts. To what felt like each and every pinstripe on her blouse to the knot of her tie. Goosebumps erupted in its wake, almost as if he’d reached across and trailed his fingers over her skin.
When their eyes met again, he said, ‘Distracting.’
Tiffany swallowed, the hammer of her pulse just above the constriction of her collar pronounced, and she itched to pull the knot loose, undo the button, so she could breathe. But she didn’t seem to be able to move and she was aware all over again that it was just the two of them in the saloon. Her brain was sending frantic signals to her mouth to say something, to diffuse the situation, but sadly, she wanted to do other things with her mouth right now.
Her body was back in that hotel room where his eyes had raked over her just as thoroughly as they were now.
