Page 79 of Double or Nothing
I don’t believe her for a second. Now that she’s seen my show, it will bug the shit out of her until she figures out how I pull off my illusions. When I was up on stage, I noticed her paying careful attention to everything.
“I trained Elsa to fly to three different seats,” I tell her, enjoying the way her eyes widen in surprise. “A code word command directs her to the right one. I switch it up to keep things interesting for her. Birds bore easily. I try to add lots of enrichment to her life to keep her entertained.”
“What was tonight’s code word?”
“Unemployment line,” I reply with a straight face.
She raises her eyebrows in amusement, her lips curling into a smile. “You threaten to fire your bird and that’s her cue? Unemployment line?”
“I thought it was funny.” I grin at her. “It’s an inside joke with my crew. I threaten them with the same line too sometimes, but they don’t think it’s funny either. You didn’t answer my earlier question. What happened with the box?”
Her eyes cut away from me, and she doesn’t answer.
I gently touch her arm. “Hey, I’m sorry for freaking you out,” I say softly. “If you’ll forgive me, I’ll never make you get into a tiny box again. I swear. Or pull you up on stage. I thought you would get a kick out of it.”
“I’m claustrophobic,” she admits with an embarrassed laugh. “It freaked me out. I have weird phobias. I was expecting you to ask me to do something simple and easy. Pick a card or choose a number between one and ten. Normal magician tricks. Not force me to crawl inside a tiny, dark box that reminded me of a coffin. You could’ve warned me.”
“You’re right and I’m sorry. As for card tricks, I gave them up a long time ago,” I say. “They don’t show up well on stage. I still remember a few good ones if you want me to show them to you sometime. The guys are bored to tears with my tricks. They groan and run away if I pull out a deck of cards.”
“I would love to see them later,” she says. “But there’s only one thing I want to do right now.”
“Are you tired?” I ask. “You’ve had an exhausting day. Do you want to go home? Or to grab a bite to eat or a drink?”
“No, take me back to your place,” she replies. “The whole time you were up there on stage, all I could do was stare at you and drool. And I wasn’t the only one. Every woman in the theater had the hots for you. And then when you took off your shirt…oh baby…the heat shot up in a hurry. All could think was…that’s my man up there. My sexy as fuck man who is all mine.”
“Damn right I’m your man. Is that against the group’s rules, though? To be alone with you at my place? I’m still confused about exactly how everything is supposed to work. You mean I get you all to myself?”
She reaches up to take my face in her hands, her eyes filled with desire. “As I told you before, there’s only one rule. No going outside the group. That’s it. I want to be with you. Now.”
I grab her hand and tug her towards the back exit of the theater. “I won’t take the time to ask Leroy to bring the limo around. Knowing him, he’ll want to come up with us for a nightcap and a snack. My car’s in the garage. I’ll drive us there myself.”
33
JADE
On the drive back to Seven’s penthouse, he keeps one hand on my leg, only moving it to shift gears on his Porsche. When we stop at a traffic light, he leans over and grabs my lips in a deep kiss.
The car behind us blows their horn angrily when the light turns green. “Fuck!” he says, breaking the kiss in frustration. “I can’t wait to get you back to my place. My dick is already so goddamn hard, I’m dying over here.”
He pulls the car into his building’s parking garage, and starts the drive up the massive parking deck, squealing the tires around every tight curve as we climb higher. Finally, we arrive at his reserved parking spot, and he cuts the engine.
Without saying a word, he rushes around to help me out. Taking my hand in his, he tugs me towards the door leading into the building. After sliding in a keycard to unlock the door, he pulls me along the carpeted hallway, past the elevators we rode before up to his penthouse.
“Aren’t we taking the elevators?” I ask, struggling to keep up with him. “You’re in a big hurry. I’m not sure I can run up several flights of stairs in these shoes.”
“Damn right I’m in a hurry,” he replies, grinning at me. “I want to show you something.” We reach the end of the hallway, and he takes me down a stairwell to another level that once again needs a special keycard to access. “We’re taking a different elevator,” he tells me, as he hits the button.
“Thank God,” I reply.
The elevator doors open and Seven pulls me into a small glass elevator running up and down the backside of the building. The lights of Vegas glitter all around us.
“Wow, this is amazing,” I say. “I didn’t know your building had a glass elevator. I can see all of Vegas from here. This is beautiful.”
The elevator starts to move, then suddenly lurches to a stop.
“What happened?” I ask, turning around. “Is the elevator broken?”
He shrugs at me. “Maybe. I haven’t ridden it in a long time. Why? Are you afraid of heights?”
