Page 22 of Double or Nothing

I also want to know what’s under the navy dress she’s wearing, and how her pretty blue eyes look while she’s moaning my name. I want to hitch her dress up and trail my fingers up her thigh. I hope she’d be wet for me. I’m pretty sure she’d be dripping, especially when I lay my royal flush on the table.

“I’ll take them,” I tell her. “All three.”

Her mouth drops open. It takes her a moment to comprehend my words.

“You’ll buy my paintings?!”

“Yeah.” I step back like it’s casual. “I love them.”

In that moment her façade comes tumbling down, and the true Alice shines – way more stunningly than the hot woman I scouted in a posh navy dress earlier. I see the artist inside her in all her glory. The paint on the canvas isn’t bullshit to her. It’s her whole fucking world.

And I’ve just validated it with sixty grand. Slick move.

“Oh my God,” she says. “I can’t even… All three?!”

“Yeah, all three. I could never choose between them. They all sing a different tune.”

Her fingers are shaking as she reaches for some paperwork from a table to the side. She’s practically panting as she hands me a pen.

“Your details, please. If you’re certain.”

“Deadly certain.” I fill in the form. Name, address, contact number, method of payment. And all the while she studies my pen moving.

Eli would give me one hell of a fucking shake if he was here. He’d probably slap me around the head for spending sixty grand on crappy canvas splashes and blame it on my dick.

He’d be right. My dick was the start of it, but it isn’t the end of it.

Alice Rose Parker.

A woman who sold me gold foil and black lines.

The buzz of her excitement is electric as she marks her paintings as SOLD. She can hardly contain herself, and her glances across the room start up again, as though she’s trying to get someone’s attention.

Hopefully not her partner’s. One of the guys over there could be her boyfriend for all I know.

Ouch, the thought comes in unforeseen.

She doesn’t have a wedding ring on, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t already taken…

The corner she’s glancing at is the corner where Bryce is standing, of course, still consumed by his business meeting. I study her eye movements.

Interesting.

He’s amongst the people she’s scanning, and her eyes linger on the spot he’s standing in, so visibly on the edge of the crowd.

“I’m here with Bryce, you know?” I say, and holy fuck does she tense up. Her eyes are saucers as they lock back on mine.

“Bryce? You know Bryce?”

“He was the one who told me about the event tonight. We share an interest in art, as you’ve probably realised.”

I give her every scrap of my focus, trying to find a tell. How well does she know him? Are they close? How close? Has he fucked her?

Would she let him fuck her as I was fucking him?

My heart is thumping like I’m high, and hell knows why.

“I know he’s into art, yes,” she says. “Are you two friends?”