Page 12 of Tempting Little Thief

“You couldn’t meet the minimum,” she quips.

My gaze sharpens.

Interesting choice of words.

“You don’t know me, girl. Don’t play like you do.”

“We do have a single table that’s a short fiveK, but it’s a one-hand walk. Win and walk or win and play again.” She rolls along, believing she’s speaking a language I don’t know or can’t follow.

It’s like I said, the girl knows nothing about me.

“Let me guess.” I cock a brow. “Game two is a tenKhand?”

Her eyes narrow slightly before she has a chance to stop them.

Not as clueless as you thought, huh, Rich Girl?

She covers her suspicion with a prissy press of her lips, smashed tight and puckered as if she tastes something sour. “Get them where you want them, right?”

We study each other for a long, silent minute.

“Why take my phone?”

Picking up her abandoned drink, she brings it to her lips for a slow sip. “You know why.”

“Why do you care if I had your plate number?”

“Why would I tell you the answer to that when I did what was needed to make sure you didn’t?” She uncrosses and recrosses her legs in the opposite direction, flashing the small triangle cloth hiding her pussy for a split second, and leans forward.

When I say nothing, she adds, “Only someone with something to hide would go through the trouble toattemptto retrieve what was stolen.”

“And that right there’s it, ain’t it?” She took my phone because Itookher plate number, but what’s someone like her know about hiding or getting dirt beneath her fake fingernails? If I allowed the first glance to dictate the answer, it’d say not a damn thing.

She hums, her lips twitching, though her stare homes in. “What’s your name?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does if you want it on your headstone.”

“I’d rather burn than be buried.”

“Would you look at that.” She grins, using my words against me as she picks up a third dagger she had tucked beneath her ass. Blindly pressing the sharp tip into her middle finger, she twirls it with her other hand. “Yet another thing we have in common.”

Ever so slowly, her gaze pulls from mine and begins traveling across my face. She pauses on the scar near my left eye and then moves to my lips, swollen and straining against the lip ring—the one shot the fucker I left bleeding got on me tonight when he threw his head back in a last-ditch effort to get free.

Such a bitch move. He knew he had a debt to pay. He should have taken his punishment like a man.Listen to words not meant for you, lose your ability to do so.It’s fair.

He’s lucky I left him with one intact eardrum.

Honestly, he’s lucky I left him with his life, but my bosses aren’t exactly keen on unnecessary bloodshed.

Doubt this girl realizes it, but she’s now drawing with the tip of the blade she holds, re-creating the smooth lines of the tattoos crawling up my neck from under my T-shirt, where her forest eyes are now glued. The blood spilled from tonight’s cleanup job has dried, the large stain turning the thin cotton crisp against my skin, but I didn’t exactly have time for a fuckin’ wardrobe change in my rush to get my shit back from the little thief in front of me.

I don’t have much, so no one gets to take what’s mine. It might be broken now, but that’s all right. So long as she has no use for it, I don’t care. It’s mine, and what’s mine no one else is allowed to touch.

“If you walk out now, I might not send security to hinder your escape,” she says, tipping her head as if to try and spot where the chain hanging at my left side leads.

“They couldn’t stop me from gettin’ in. What makes you think they could stop me from gettin’ out?”

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