The Bet (Winslow Brothers 1)

Ten of Spades. Two of Hearts. And the Ace of Clubs hit the table.

A guy in a Hawaiian shirt makes the bet a thousand to play.

A man with a big ole white beard and crinkles around his eyes shakes his head, but then, he ends up matching the grand and staying in.

The play is on Sophie again, and she looks around the table, glances at the flop, takes one more peek at her cards, and once she does some kind of visible mental count in her mind, she shoves a thousand bucks worth of chips to the center.

Well, shit. I guess she’s going for it.

A Jack of Clubs hits the turn.

Hawaiian shirt guy makes the wager two grand to stay in this time, apparently a real fan of whatever cards are in his possession.

The old dude with the beard folds straightaway, but I’ll be damned if Sophie doesn’t shove another bunch of chips toward the center to stay in the hand.

Once the dealer is satisfied that everyone is all set, he flips one last card to make the river.

Another Ace. But this time, it’s a Spade.

Hawaiian guy wagers five grand this time, but Sophie? Well, my girl just silently shoves all her damn chips toward the center of the table.

“Wait… Are you all in?” her opponent asks, and Sophie nods.

“I’m all in.”

“Looks like the little lady came to play!” the old guy with the white beard exclaims through a chuckle.

The other men at the table are a combination of amused and outright shocked, and I can’t deny I’m feeling both of those things myself.

But when I step to the side a little to look at Sophie’s face, I can see there’s a change. A certainty lying behind her eyes. A confidence that is undeniable. It reminds me of that night she told that douchebag she was an ex-convict from Bedford Hills.

Wait…she hasn’t been doing what I think she’s been doing, has she?

I furrow my brow and try to make sense of it, but when her opponent eventually calls, everything moves at rapid-fire pace.

He shows his cards—a pair of Queens.

“Queens and Aces. Two pair for the gentleman,” the dealer announces.

“Good hand,” Sophie says, but when she flips over her hand, she adds, “But it looks like mine is better.”

I look down at the spot in front of her, and there sits a pair of Aces.

Did she really just slow-roll these old dudes with a pair of fucking Aces in her hand?

When I check her cards again, a stunned laugh barrels out of my chest.

Holy fucking shit. She just played these men like a fiddle.

My eyes laser in on Sophie again. She just sits there, all fucking smug, and it might be the sexiest thing I’ve ever witnessed.

“Four of a kind for the lady,” the dealer states, and it takes a lot of effort for him to keep his amusement to just a tiny quirk of his mouth. “The lady wins this round.”

The dude in the Hawaiian shirt just sits there, his mouth gawked open wide.

But the old guy with the beard busts a fucking gut, slapping his leg with each hearty laugh. “Well, hell. Looks like we have a hustler in our midst!”

The three other guys join in on the laughter, but considering he just lost twenty grand in one hand, all the man in the flowery shirt can do is shake his head and mutter, “Fuck me. I just got snowed.”

“Dude, your girlfriend is nothing but trouble,” a guy with a moustache says directly to me, but his voice is purely amused. “She’s been cheating us for the past two hours. Making us think she didn’t know jack shit about cards, but it looks like she knows a hell of a lot more than she was letting on.”

I don’t even bother correcting him on the girlfriend comment because, fuck, I’m too turned on to make sense of anything right now but the fact that I need to get Sophie up to our room to earn another goddamn badge.

Sophie just rakes in all her winnings and flashes a little wink at everyone at the table. “It’s possible that I might know a thing or two.”

The confidence vibrating off her body might as well be a fucking siren’s call for my dick, and the instant she has all her chips stacked up and in order and tells the men goodbye, I practically drag her toward the elevators.

“W-what are you doing?” she asks as I hurriedly shove us inside one of the empty carts. “Jude? Are you okay?”

“Are you kidding me?” I retort just as the doors close shut. “I’m more than okay. That was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Hell, I’m surprised I didn’t try to fuck you right there on the table.”

Her eyes go wide, but then, something changes inside her. Like a flip of a switch, that confidence of hers is back and flaming, and she’s moving toward me. One shove of her free hand into my chest, she pushes me up against the wall and kisses me with the kind of fierceness that makes my dick twitch beneath my zipper.