Page 95 of Deadwood
“Call.” Crass added his bet.
Lander slid another two vials to the center, eliciting a grin from Perkins.
“What about you?” Crass asked, turning those drunken eyes on me.
I wouldn’t back out now. My hand had to be good, and I was tired of being weak. I wanted to take chances, and this could be one of them. “I’ll call.”
Lander swallowed audibly. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead, glistening in the light. Why hadn’t he folded if he was worried?
Crass’s smirk turned into a full-blown wicked grin. “What else could you possibly give?”
I schooled my features, needing to act confident in my offering. Iwouldwin. “My corset.”
CHAPTER 31
BOWEN
“Auria,” I warned through gritted teeth, using all my restraint not to lift her off that piece of shit’s lap and cut his leg clean off where she was perched atop it.
“She’s only having fun,” Perkins dismissed, waving a swollen hand in the air.
Crass, the sick fuck that he was, grinned. “Maybe we’ll get a show after all.”
My teeth ground together to the point they might break. “Careful, Crass.” I wouldn’t hesitate to gut him where he sat.
“Raise,” Nemin continued, ignoring my warning as he tossed three vials of magic in the center of the table. The group of them got away with too much as it was, and now he was displaying her on his lap like some sort of spectacle, like he fucking owned her.
No onefucking owned her.
Crass set his cards face-up, followed by Lander and Auria doing the same.
Auria’s confident smile among the tension in the room did nothing to ease the need to get her the fuck out of here. “By the looks of it, I think I’ve won, boys.”
Nemin gave the slightest shake of his head, and my fists clenched. “Sorry, pretty one.” He laid his cards on the table. “Looks like I’ve got a full house, which beats out your flush.” His lips tilted into a heinous grin as his hand tugged roughly at the fabric of Auria’s dress. “Time to strip.”
I shoved off the wall, my restraint hanging on by a fucking thread. “No one’s fucking stripping.”
Perkins, the cocky fuck that he was, took his cigar out from his thin lips. “It’s her bet. She loses, she pays up. Those are the rules.”
I had rules of my own, and I’d enforce them all the same.
“It’s not fucking happening,” I gritted out.
Crass stood, his chair scraping against the floorboards as he faced me. “You her keeper?”
“Auria is not taking a single piece of clothing off.” The promise of death laced itself in my words.
She was a shiny prize in a room full of criminals—did she really think things wouldn’t go south?
“It’s the rules of the game,” Nemin drawled, repeating what Perkins had already said. It only proved how little brain cells that head of his contained.
“What’s her fiancé got to say about it?” Perkins asked, nodding in Lander’s direction.
Lander was the perfect picture of a bundle of nerves. He hadn’t won, and I was well aware he already owed a debt. He ignored Perkins, but Nemin wasn’t going to let it slide as he sat forward in his chair, his chest pressing up against Auria’s shoulder. She tried to lean away, but Nemin’s grip on her dress only tightened. Pure rage coursed through the haze in the air, emanating off me like a perfume.
“Real quiet now, huh, Bular?” Nemin said.
Auria, the confident woman that she was, said, “Leave him alone.” The stern hold she tried to keep on her voice would have made me proud if it wasn’t for the risk she was taking speaking out against them. “This is my loss, not his.”
