Inside Bet: Vegas Top Guns, Book 2 (13 page)

The waiter nodded and provided menus before turning away.

“Show off,” she said to Jon. “You could’ve just called it Grand Marnier like a normal person.”

“It’s
special
Grand Marnier.” He grinned. “Besides, I’ve resolved to use French whenever possible. One must practice to maintain fluency.”

“I’m convinced you memorized some tourist tape. When you speak to me, you’re reciting how to ask for a doctor or the location of the nearest payphone.”

“
Où se trouve le téléphone public? J’ai besoin d’un médecin.
”

Heather’s thighs tensed. He was teasing her, talking payphones and doctors, but it didn’t matter. The intent behind his eyes was the same as if he’d been discussing plans to duck under the table and eat her out. An easy prospect, considering her secret state of undress.

“What did you wear to work that Monday morning?” His gaze heated her throat.

Another sudden jump in her arousal.

She
had
been able to look in the mirror, luckily—mostly because she’d been the one to initiate so many of their encounters. The enormity of what they’d done together only increased with the passing days…until seeing him on her front porch. Then she’d just wanted more.

“I have a silk blouse with a Mandarin collar.”

His lips tugged into a lopsided smile.

The menus were a welcome distraction. She realized she wasn’t
playing
cool—merely trying to maintain it. Her eyes lurched along the complicated list of ingredients in each dish, the hallmark of a high-end restaurant that still made her smile.

“It’s never simple,” she muttered to herself. “I mean, what’s wrong with a pulled-pork sandwich? I can’t even hazard a guess at what chimichurri is.” Jon began to explain, but she waved him off. “Don’t bother.”

He set his menu aside. “So, what do you consider a luxury?”

“Anything I didn’t have as a child.”

The answer was so automatic that she suffered a fast blush. He was underhanded and sneaky. She should’ve seen it coming.

“Such as?”

“Juice boxes. Pop-Tarts. Velveeta.”

“Velveeta?” Jon shook his head, his smile a touch confused. “You’re going to have to explain.”

“To the alien from Planet Hyannis?”

The waiter returned with their drinks. Heather asked for a filet, rare, while Jon ordered the rack of lamb. Only when the waiter had departed did Jon nod to her milkshake. “What’s in it?”

“Whiskey. Glenlevit twelve-year, actually.”

He borrowed her straw to take a sip. “Damn, that’s not bad. Too bad I’m driving. One-drink limit.”

“And flying tomorrow?”

“That too.” His fingers on his crystal tumbler, he met her eyes. “Now back to the Velveeta.”

“I see how your mind works,” she said. “I grew up just how you’d imagine where brand-name anything was a luxury. My mom would volunteer for the city when they’d get a delivery of government-issue cheese. At the end of distributing it for a day, she’d get to take home a few of the five-pound blocks.”

“I had no idea.”

“It freezes, you know. Cheese. Keeps for a long time that way. You hardly notice the difference in texture if it’s in casseroles. Velveeta was better.” Heather sipped her decadent milkshake, if only to convince herself that those days were behind her.

“What did your parents do?”

“Mom stayed at home. Dad retired a sergeant-major. Army.”

Jon’s eyebrow lifted. “Ah. A sergeant-major’s daughter. That explains a great deal.” Leave it to him to read between the lines, making assumptions about how she spent her wild-child youth. “Then you went to college. Chose a sensible major.”

“With a guaranteed career afterward, yeah. Now I’m angling to be director. Dull, right? But do me a favor?”

“Hm?”

“Don’t turn that into a point of martyrdom,” she said. “I love my job.”

Their food arrived, bearing with it the fragrant aroma of rich living. Heather’s steak was a decadent creation, full-flavored and tender. She let the taste lure her away from difficult memories, basking in the moment. The desert night air, the sound of the waterfall—and Jon across from her, looking for all the world like modern-day royalty.

Except for the buzzed head.

She licked salty juices off her lower lip, enjoying how he watched her. Always. “Why in the world did you join the military?”

“I told you. The planes.”

“But why not…astronaut?”

Leaning back from the table, his lamb half devoured, he affected the casual air that insisted all was well. He may not admit to lying with his mouth, but every calculated movement created an alternate version of the real Jon—whoever that was. Heather had to remind herself that she preferred him this way. The hedonistic young prince. Her heart would trip on any more honesty.

“I’ll admit to a certain degree of youthful rebellion,” he said.

“You did it to spite your parents?”

He shrugged. “They could brag me up joining NASA.”

“Not serving your country?”

“Not so much.” Elbows on the table, he pitched his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “But do me a favor?”

Hearing the echo of her words, she smiled. “Hm?”

“Don’t turn that into a point of heroism. Someday maybe I’ll fly commercial liners, or even design new aircraft. For now it’s the speed.”

“How did you manage to keep access to your bank account, what with pissing off Mummy and Daddy?”

“My grandfather. He flew fighters in WWII, over Sicily and Italy.” He skewered a bite of lamb. “Back when rich men’s sons still thought it their duty to go to war. He lost his leg.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jon grinned. “Don’t be. He parlayed his father’s industrial fortune into scads more and made the most out of his injury. Even there at the end, he had the sympathy of lovely young women.”

“So you take after him, then?”

“All I know is that I’ll still be irresistible at eighty.”

He pushed the plate away with a slight groan. Heather felt the same way, stuffed full of indescribable fare.

Jon’s attention went somewhere far away, looking out over the shadowed golf course. “I went home on leave between tours. He wanted to see me. There he was, in the medical suite in his mansion, surrounded by a cadre of gorgeous nurses he’d personally chosen. He told me three things…the first being that he was proud of me.”

His voice choked off. Heather couldn’t look away, no matter how his sudden emotion messed with her respiration. She’d felt the same aching pang upon learning that he’d lost his older sister. Puzzle pieces were aligning to make him into a rational whole, not the enigma she’d assumed. That made him even more vulnerable. Human. Dangerous.

“I didn’t join up to make anyone proud,” he said after clearing his throat. He was Jon again, wearing a cocky grin. “Second, he told me I was set for life, and that I’d become an irredeemable punk because of it. His words.”

“Nice.”

“But his last point was that the choice was mine. I could make something of myself or…coast.” He looked out toward the waterfall. “My old man had the last laugh, though. I finished my second tour and found out I’d been transferred here to the 64
^th
. Mom was tired of me in harm’s way. They’d made a few calls to secure the transfer then appealed to my ego.” He threw back the last of his Grand Marnier, rather than sip. “So here I am. The best of the best. Like you said.”

Mommy and Daddy pulling strings. It didn’t sit well on him, no matter his obvious pride in his job. The casual calm he’d maintained so well throughout dinner all but disappeared. He fidgeted with the tines of an unused salad fork.

“You’ll have to show me your fighter sometime,” she said.

His lips pressed together. Heather realized what she’d done. Plans. A future. She’d invited that possibility, when even hazarding a guess about the next evening was a bad idea.

“We’ll see.”

His words should have been a relief. He was letting her mistake slide. But Heather didn’t like being cast adrift by his locked-down expression.

“Come on,” he said, standing unexpectedly. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Sixteen

Jon had not told Heather about his grandfather in order to garner some twisted sympathy.

But that’s what it had felt like when she suggested seeing his jet. Her voice had been soft and her eyes dark with compassion. He’d been on the receiving end of plenty of that bullshit his freshman year when kids told him how sorry they were while whispering behind his back about Sara’s car accident. Reaching out to his parents had only revealed cold automatons. At least he’d found a measure of quiet in the air—peace, while the speed screamed through his mind.

For fuck’s sake, he wanted Heather to ask to see his jet because it got her hot. Because she wanted to know more about him. Not because it was a bone to throw him when he was being maudlin.

Yet even as his steps quickened, weaving through the lower levels of the Wynn, he realized what a prize Heather was on his arm. Smart, beautiful and incredibly astute. Any man would be proud to keep her attention.

If only she didn’t have that way of prying inside him.

They approached his car in the nearly empty ranks of the parking garage. Heather tugged on his suit coat. “Where are we going?”

Shit. He hadn’t planned anything, meaning to get her talking. He wanted any clue about her, to make sure this was a birthday she wouldn’t forget. Instead she’d gotten
him
to talk.

They turned to face one another. Jon leaned her against the passenger-side door. “It’s your night. Why don’t you tell me?”

Her hands slid around the back of his jacket, flirting with the bottom hem of his vest. She looked perfectly at home lounging against such a wild beast of a car—like she could tame it.

“Don’t tell me wicked Jon Carlisle is out of ideas.” She stretched up on her toes to whisper in his ear. The soft wash of her breath tingled over his neck. “I think you’ve forgotten one important fact.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m still not wearing panties.”

His body dropped into overdrive, like when his F-16 screamed off the runway. “Trust me, Heather love. There hasn’t been an instant I’ve forgotten. Your beautiful pussy bare under your dress—and how easily I could slide my hand up your leg. Touch you.”

She flicked her tongue across his earlobe. “But you haven’t done it. I thought even you didn’t have that much restraint.”

He had restraint. Buckets of it. Enough to turn her inside out with want, even in the yellow-lit cave of the parking garage.

Stroking gently, he traced up her sides until he grazed the full swell of her breasts. Just a glancing touch, enough to make her think of potential.

“You like to play with fire, don’t you, Ms. Morris?”

“I used to. And then I got burned.”

Tilting his head, he touched his mouth to the bend where her chin met her throat—the exact place he’d clamped while fucking her. “But here you are. Again. You couldn’t have been
too
singed.”

Her eyes went dark as her irises widened. “I thought I got over it.”

“Over what?”

“The recklessness.” She laced her fingers behind his neck and pressed her chest against his. “But you’re right. Here I am.”

Too many layers of cloth between them. He loved dressing finely. There was a certain skill in putting forth the impression he wanted others to see. He would quickly come to regret his hubris if it meant restricting contact between him and Heather.

“We’re not being that bad,” he said, keeping his voice low. “This is barely a hug. This is what kids do after dates at the movies.”

“I don’t feel like a kid.” She’d hit that husky tone again—a promise of delights to come.

Jon dipped low to stroke her hips in a languid caress. “No. No, you don’t.”

“Anyway, I don’t think you’d have liked me when I was young. No challenge.”

“You certainly are a challenge, Ms. Morris.” He wove his fingers into her hair and tilted her head back. “Luckily I’m the kind of man who rises to the occasion.”

He kissed her, intending it to stay slow. Tempting. But fuck if he wasn’t quickly losing the reins. Again. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed up on her toes. Their mouths slid together hard. Fast.

He drew her tongue into his mouth and sucked. Sharp fingernails dug into the back of his neck.

And then he lost the next sortie too. With his hands under her skirt, he found the long expanse of her thigh—and the moisture that dampened the crease of her sweet pussy. He cupped her smooth mound, gratified when her arms tightened.

She pressed up into his touch, until he slid a single finger between her lips. Slick wetness was his reward. Her clit was already swollen and hot.

The moan started in her chest and released into his mouth, barely more than a breath.

“You’re already wet for me, Ms. Morris,” he said silkily. The tender line of her throat was practically begging for his teeth. So he indulged, locking tight over the cord that stood out in stark relief. Then he soothed the area with long, deliberate licks. “Tell me what you want and it’s yours.”

Heather bent her head to the side, allowing him all the space he needed to nibble her sugar-sweet skin. “I want your cock,” she whispered. “Fucking me so deep that I feel it all the way through me.”

He bit her neck—hard enough to leave a red mark. When had he come to enjoy seeing his brand on her skin?

“
Here
, Ms. Morris?” He kept circling her clit. “You’re even braver than I thought.”

She drew back to look in his eyes. The parking garage was almost empty of cars, and he’d chosen a space at the far end of the row. But that didn’t completely ameliorate the possibility of discovery.

“Maybe I just want this more.” Her hands worked at his belt then slid down his zipper. “Do you have any idea how reckless you make me feel?”

It couldn’t be half as insane as she made him. He kissed her hard, taking that anxiety from her, letting it ride him to a fine edge of control.

He dug a condom out of his inside coat pocket. Their hands fumbled together as they both tried to roll it down his cock. The touch of her soft fingers on his shaft made his balls draw up with anticipation.