The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet 2)

What was it Blue said? All the men around the table are armed. Oh God.

“We’re here to play cards,” Damon says, gently chiding. He runs the Den and makes plenty of money off these games. I suppose it wouldn’t help to have bloodshed. He tosses his cards in. “And I’m out.”

“That’s probably for the best,” I tell him in my innocent voice. I glance at Sutton’s hand again. “His cards are really good. I mean really good.”

Damon only smirks back at me, probably seeing right through the act. Because Sutton’s hand really is good, but it’s not the one pair that I implied when I first sat down. No, he’s got a flush with a queen high. And I’m playing this clueless act to get someone to stay in, thinking they can beat him when they can’t.

Victor the Asshole Prince, that’s what I’m going to call him. He winks at me before tossing in a thousand-dollar marker. “Raise,” he says pleasantly.

Christopher’s eyes sear me from across the table. I know for sure he sees through my ruse, which means he knows that Sutton’s cards must be actually good. Then he narrows his gaze on my hip, where I feel the warmth of a large hand, where the calluses must surely catch on the silk of my dress. My whole body seems to turn inside out, as if I’m naked for the table. He tosses his cards into the pile. “Fold.”

The last of the players hem and haw over the increased amount, but in the end they stack up hundred-dollar chips and push them into the pile, where they topple over.

I clap my hands. “Your turn.”

Sutton’s breath is warm against my cheek. “Dangerous,” he murmurs.

Maybe he means the Asshole Prince, who’s bound to be angry that he’s just lost a thousand dollars—more counting his ante and earlier bids. Or maybe he means the dance that’s happening between our bodies, the push and pull, the sensual conversation that doesn’t need a word.

I’m the one who picks up two chips that say $500 on them and tosses them on the pile. Then I flip over his cards and point at them idly, letting my fingers trail over the diamonds that match the ones faceup on the table. “This is called something, right?”

Damon gives a low laugh. “It’s called playing poker, darling. And you do it well.”

Asshole Prince swears rather creatively, which is the most interesting thing he’s said since I got here. He tosses his cards onto the table, revealing three of a kind. Not bad. The other players throw their cards on the table. A pair of kings—lame. And a low straight which isn’t bad but still isn’t enough to win.

Christopher doesn’t crack a smile, but I feel his amusement. It burns as hot as Sutton’s body beneath me, behind me, around me—making me feel like I’m being embraced from all sides.

I clap and bounce on Sutton’s lap, making him grunt. “Oooh, you won all these chips?”

As I stand up to pull the chips toward me, I dip low enough to show my cleavage. There are many nice cleavages in the world, but this one is mine. And I don’t mind showing Asshole Prince what he’s missing. Except it isn’t the wild, reckless eyes I meet, but Christopher’s calculating ones. He saw right through my little ruse. And as I pull back the chips, I have the strange sensation that he’s seeing right through me.

I sit back down with a sudden thump, and Sutton’s hands grasp my hips hard enough to make me gasp. There’s something else hard down there; an erection that presses against my dress. Oh God, I’d shoved my ass into his face when I gathered the chips. I make neat little piles with them, focusing hard so that I don’t have to look at Christopher or acknowledge the arousal of the man holding me.

Asshole Prince stands and places his hands flat on the table, and it feels like he’s looming over me even though there’s a table between us and three armed bodyguards around us. “You must think you’re clever, little girl?”

“I think she’s clever,” Damon Scott says, sounding amused.

“She does like to watch,” Asshole Prince says, mischief entering his dark eyes. “She lines up the little matchstick men and then lights us on fire.”

“That’s poetic,” I say archly. “If a little gruesome.”

“I’m sure we’ll meet again,” he says, giving me a real bow this time. “For now I’m afraid I must take my chips and my bruised ego and live to play another day.”

His departure seems to signal the end of the game. The other players leave, including Damon, who says in a drawl that we can use the room for as long as we like. It makes me wonder how many dirty things have happened in this velvet-curtained space.

Then it’s only Christopher and Sutton. And me.

This is the part where I’m supposed to stand up and walk away. This is the part where I prove to these men—and to myself—that I can be the girl I was before. That I didn’t shatter into a million pieces, suspended in the air, about to fall.

Instead I whisper, “I don’t want to go home.”

It’s an admission. A confession to the two men who can most use it against me. There is no home for me anymore. There’s only hospice and Death Plan and the longest goodbye.

Sutton knows what the problem is immediately. I can sense it in the way he embraces me, the way it turns from seductive to comforting, the way he seems to almost let me go. “Harper,” he says gently. “You’re so strong. It’s okay to need a break.”

“I want more than a break,” I say, full of grim, self-recriminating guilt.

It takes me twenty minutes with my eyes squeezed tight, building myself to act normal, act natural, before I can even walk into a room with her. And another twenty minutes muffling my tears into a pillow after I leave. I need one night with these men, because I know they can distract me. Even if they break my heart afterward.