Her High-Stakes Playboy. Kristin Hardy

desire surging through her with an intensity she couldn’t recall feeling before.

      In the casino a cacophony indicated that someone had won a big jackpot, but neither of them even registered the noise. All that mattered was this moment, this place, this feeling.

      If he’d felt the need to take before, now Del fought the urge to plunder. Up close, her scent wove around his senses, making him imagine her naked, hot and urgent against him. Her mouth was warm and alive. She tasted of Courvoisier and arousal, he thought hazily. Driven by the slide of her tongue over his, the nip of her teeth, he only wanted more.

      And so he took the kiss deeper.

      The teasing swirl of her tongue around his had desire coiling in his belly. She might have been an enigma, but her trembling response didn’t lie. Throughout the night she’d been an odd mix of uncertainty and confidence. There was nothing tentative here now, though, only a heated certainty that sent urgency thudding through his system.

      Finally Del broke away. He sat for a moment, waiting for his system to level. It was going to take a while, he realized. “You pack quite a punch,” he told her.

      “So do you.” It took her two tries to get the words out. Gwen stared back at him, breathing hard. She wanted, oh, she wanted. If he could take her this far with just a kiss, how much more was waiting for her? Her lips still felt as though they were vibrating, she realized. And she wanted more. She leaned toward him again, but he stopped her.

      “Maybe we should go somewhere else,” he said, staring at her. “Someplace less…public.”

      She nodded, not in answer to the words he’d said but to the question in his eyes. “I think you’re right.”

      “Oh, yeah?”

      Gwen leaned forward to press a kiss on him. “Oh, yeah,” she breathed. Del tossed a twenty on the table and rose, catching her hand.

      And a bubble of exhilaration began to swell in her chest.

      It wasn’t her usual style. Gwen dated clean-cut, serious men who took her to a few weeks of movies, concerts and dinners before they segued into decorous sex. That part usually lasted until she was bored mindless with them. She certainly didn’t pick up the kind of men who hung out in casinos. She definitely didn’t kiss them in bars the first night she’d met them, even if they did have perfectly delicious mouths.

      And she absolutely didn’t wind up in bed with them.

      Maybe it was being in Vegas, maybe it was the cosmopolitans, but suddenly it didn’t matter. Suddenly what she wanted was this moment with this man. She could go back to being careful and deliberate Gwen tomorrow.

      Nina was taking over.