Griff didn’t sleep for shit, knowing Sam was a mere armspan away on the other side of that ridiculous wall of pillows, wearing those itty bitty sleep shorts and a tank top that revealed way too much of her breasts. When he finally had dropped off—long after her whispered confession—it had been to dreams of peeling her out of that dress and giving in to every fantasy he’d ever had about her. There’d been a lot of them. He’d woken, hard and aching, to find her sleeping peacefully beside him, one arm draped over the pillow wall to rest on his chest, her hair spilled out like so much silk.
Sweet. Even in her sleep she was so damned sweet.
He’d wanted to roll into that gentle, unconscious touch. To tug her close and take his mouth on a slow, lingering journey over her skin, waking her with pleasure. Because he had no business even touching sweet, he eased out of bed and carted his ass outside for a run along The Strip. Nearly six miles later, he’d burned off the lust and thought he could face his temporary fake girlfriend. Feeling a little guilty for not leaving a note, he grabbed donuts and coffee on the return trip.
Silence greeted him when he opened the door. “Sam? I brought breakfast.”
Was she still sleeping?
He tiptoed inside but the bed and the room were empty. Maybe she’d gone to meet the others for breakfast. Was that on the itinerary? Griff couldn’t remember. They hadn’t thought to swap contact information yesterday, so he had no way of checking in to ask. Setting the coffee caddy on the desk, he spotted the note tucked into the frame of the mirror.
Hope I didn’t run you off. Meeting at the pool at ten for volleyball. Bring your A game! -S
She’d added a post script with her phone number.
So they were just going to carry on as if last night hadn’t happened? As if he hadn’t admitted to wanting her, and she hadn’t said she wished her first kiss—okay second, but did a kiss at thirteen really count?—had been him? Damn it, the run hadn’t been enough. Abandoning breakfast, he headed for the bathroom. There was time for a shower and some relief before he was expected at the pool.
By the time he stepped out into the sun again, he was fed, caffeinated, and reasonably sure he wouldn’t embarrass himself. Now to find the rest of the wedding party.
The giggles led him over to where the group had commandeered a long row of chaise lounges. Had there ever been a more giggly woman the history of the world than the bride-to-be? Skirting around the changing tent at one end of the pool, he scanned for Sam but didn’t find her with the others. Had she bailed? Gone looking for him?
Motion by the stairs at the shallow end drew his attention.
Griff’s mouth went dry as the woman in question emerged from the pool, water cascading off her in sheets that seemed designed to highlight every inch of the body exposed by her little black bikini. She was a walking wet dream. And she was headed his way.
“Morning!”
Griff grunted, grateful for the sunglasses hiding his eyes as he took her in from head to toe. Christ, his little academic had a hell of a body.
Except she wasn’t his. He needed to remember that.
“Good run?”
“How did you know I was running?”
“Saw you leave this morning.”
He grunted again, his hands itching to touch her and bring all that bare, wet skin in contact with his.
Sam’s smile turned mischievous. “See something you like?” The hand she laid on his chest felt like a brand, even through the T-shirt. “I do.”
“Is this payback for last night?” he murmured.
“It’s an expression of appreciation. C ‘mon, Irish, you need sunscreen.”
He followed her over to where she was already squirting some into her hand.
“Your back, Marine.”
He’d look like a douche if he didn’t let her do the honors. Bracing himself for her touch, he tugged the shirt over his head and dropped onto the end of a chaise lounge. There was no missing her hum of approval.
“Very nice.”
The sunscreen was cold, but her hands felt so damned good stroking over his shoulders and back, then over all the dips and curves of his arms. A rumble of pleasure snuck out as she circled around to stand between his legs, trailing those hands down his chest. Her breasts were right at eye level, and all he wanted to do was nudge the edge of that bikini top down to taste her nipples. Were they already tight and hard for him?
Get a grip, Powell. You are outside. In public. No thinking about her nipples.
She smelled of chlorine and sun and woman. When he dragged his gaze to her face, he found her smiling.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
She tipped up his sunglasses and gently smoothed sunscreen along his cheeks and his brow, pausing to cradle his face. “Immensely.”
So was he.
“Done.”
When she started to step back, Griff snagged her around the waist, holding her in place. Just the barest of slides and he’d have the delectable curve of her ass in his hand. “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t return the favor?”
With a noticeably feline smirk, Sam handed over the tube of sunscreen. Turnabout was fair play. Griff took his time, rubbing every exposed inch, paying close attention to each flicker of reaction. The path along her collarbone had her eyes falling to half-mast. The tender spot on the inside of her wrist elicited a shiver and an eruption of goose bumps along her arms. And when he drew his finger along the swell of each breast where they rose above her swimsuit, her breath hitched with a low moan of pleasure, her hand reaching for him as she lifted huge dilated eyes to his.
“If you two are done using sunscreen as foreplay, we have a game to play!” Cody announced.
Right. The game. The wedding. He was not here to talk Samantha out of that teeny bikini. But the scorching look she gave him as she stepped back told him talking was not at all what she had in mind. Griff reached deep, searching for some control.
It was one thing to know that she had a crush on him in high school. There had been plenty of other factors to keep him in line back then. But now, seeing her like this, no longer a girl, but a woman, aware and apparently very willing, he didn’t know how he was going to stick to his good intentions of keeping his hands off her.
“This is the least traditional wedding weekend I’ve ever heard of.”
Despite Griff’s sotto voce tone, Sam heard him clear enough. She linked her arm through his and surveyed the casino floor. Lights. Music. Opulence. She half expected Danny Ocean to be working his way through the crowd. “Been to a lot of them?”
“No. But even I know gambling isn’t a standard substitute for the rehearsal dinner.”
The muscles beneath her hand were tense, but not in that trying-to-resist-her way she’d come to recognize. Something about this had him legitimately on edge. Concerned, she held him back as the others took their chips and headed cheerfully into the fray.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” The muscle jumping in his jaw belied the dismissal.
Because she couldn’t quite resist, she cupped that jaw, feeling the faint rasp of stubble beneath her fingers as she tipped his head toward hers. “I know you better than that. Talk to me.”
His chest rose and fell but he said nothing.
Stubborn man. “Is it the crowd? The noise?” He’d been fine everywhere else so far, but she knew from her brother that all kinds of things could be triggers for military veterans.
Still nothing.
“Griffin.” She slid her hand from his jaw down to stroke his nape, wanting to comfort.
He gripped her hip, fingers kneading as he exhaled a slow breath. “What do you see when you look at this place?”
She considered the question. “Excess… in everything. People who probably want to be someone else for the night. Who want to pretend their lives are more glamorous. People who want to try their hand against Lady Luck.”
“I see suckers. Risk.” The total condemnation in his tone surprised her.
“I always thought you liked taking risks.” He’d been impulsive in high school.
“I did a lot of dumb shit when I was a kid, but I was never reckless.”
Sam could think of half a dozen instances where he’d absolutely risked his neck pulling some fool prank with his buddies, but now definitely wasn’t the time to bring it up. There was something deeper going on here, so she considered her words carefully.
“I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with risk, so long as you establish the parameters going in. That makes it a calculated risk, not reckless.” Did he realize she was talking about more than gambling? She wanted him to take a risk with her. To let him know that they could pursue this pull between them without the strings and expectations he no doubt associated with her as a “good girl”.
Griff definitely wasn’t focused on the subtext. “Too many people don’t make those calculations. The deck is always stacked in the house’s favor in a place like this. The booze flows freely to encourage bad decisions. Everything about the design of it is meant to get you to lower your guard and risk it all. Too many people end up betting what they don’t have to lose.”
He jerked his chin toward the floor. “See that old man in the sweater at the slot machines? He’s probably a retiree on a fixed income. Could be he comes in here and gambles away his pension every month. Or that blonde in the silver dress who’s apparently on a hot streak down at the roulette table. She’ll keep pushing, keep betting, until she takes a step too far and loses it all. And I guaran-damn-tee you there are high-stakes poker games somewhere around here where people are laying down titles and deeds and other collateral they can’t possibly afford to lose… because they keep thinking this time will be the time they win.”
“Intermittent schedules of reinforcement,” Sam murmured. “I remember that from my psych class in college. It’s the hardest conditioning to break.” She fingered the fine hair at his nape. “Who was it?”
He loosed another of those bone deep sighs, and she could see the retreat in his eyes, though he didn’t release her. “My dad. His tastes didn’t run so fancy as this. Mostly because he didn’t have easy access. But I drove his drunk ass home from North Carolina more times than I could count.”
Sam frowned. The Native American casinos were a couple hours over the state line. “I thought you were fifteen when you went into foster care.”
“Didn’t say it was legal.”
Growing up, Burt Powell had been a known alcoholic. It was part of what had led to Griff being put into foster care, part of what was behind his hellion reputation. But she hadn’t known this. It added another layer to an already intriguing package.
“You know you’re not the only one with a shit father, right?”
Griff’s brows drew together. “I thought your dad wasn’t in the picture.”
“He’s not. My mom took Jonah and me and left him years ago. But he’s still in Eden’s Ridge.”
“How did I not know that?”
“Probably because she changed our last name when she divorced him. She wanted to put as much separation between us and The Right Attitude and its less-than-reputable clientele as possible.”
“Wait… are you saying your dad is Lonnie Barker?”
“Yep. The unreasonably proud owner of the dingiest drinking establishment in the county. How he manages to keep the bar solvent is a total mystery. Jonah thinks he’s using it as a front for something illegal. Mama does, too. She’s never gone after him for back child support because she’s too afraid of what it might stir up. And I think she was proud to be able to support us on her own.”
Griff shook his head. “I had some run-ins with Lonnie when I went to scrape my dad off the floor at the bar. I can’t fathom your mama being with someone like that.”
“That’s the twenty-four-thousand-dollar question. She says he wasn’t always what he is now. He fell in with the wrong crowd in pursuit of what he thought would be easier money than shift work at the factory, and when she gave him the ultimatum of them or us, he chose them.” Sam jerked her shoulders. “I don’t bring any of this up to diminish whatever your father put you through, and I’m not trying to start a whose-dad-is-worse contest. It just seems like you’re telling me this as another attempt to push me away, and I want you to have a little context so maybe you could let me down from this good girl pedestal you have me up on and just look at me as me. Because I’m not judging you on where you came from. I’ve only ever judged you for you. And I’ve always liked the guy I saw.”
Griff lifted a hand to her cheek, his mouth twisted into a rueful smile tinged with regret. “I’m not a good guy, Samantha.”
She tipped her face into the touch, keeping her eyes on his. “Newsflash, Griffin: A bad one wouldn’t keep trying to convince me otherwise. A bad one wouldn’t have agreed to be my plus one in the first place. You can argue all you want, but I know what I know, and I’m not going to stop working to make you see yourself like I do.” She skimmed her hand across his shoulder, down his arm to lace her fingers with his. “We can go. There’s plenty more to do in Vegas besides gambling.”
He shook his head. “I promised I’d stick with you through all this.”
“Seriously, I don’t care about getting the casino experience. We can go do something else.”
Those blue eyes darkened. “Does that include you inventing new ways to torture me?”
Wanting to lighten the mood, she shot him a grin and purred. “Only if you ask nicely.”
They’d definitely crossed a line this morning. The entire day had been full of innuendo and lingering touches. And his stubborn resistance to acting on any of it because he didn’t think he was worthy. But she was wearing down his good intentions and didn’t intend to stop.
The hand on her hip gave a warning squeeze. “Behave, Samantha.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”