Sinning in Vegas (Vegas Morellis 2)

Trent leaves, but he grumbles all the way. Amuses the fuck out of me. Sorry bastard.

Leaning close as if to tell her a secret, I loudly whisper, “He wants to bang you.”

She doesn’t bother playing coy. “Yeah. But he wants to bang every decent-looking woman who comes through here, so it’s nothing to write home about.”

Since I’m already this close, I lean a little closer. I can’t tell what she smells like, and suddenly I need to know. She’s been working all day long and her dark hair is pulled back in a severe pony tail. Without thought, I reach behind her head and tug it free. She jerks in surprise, her eyes darting to my hand as I offer her the elastic that was just holding her hair in place.

“Was my ponytail offending you?”

Hardly paying attention to her response, I push my hand into her hair and shake it out. The part of her hair where her ponytail was tied is somehow still damp, so she must have tied it back straight out of the shower and come directly to work. What a fucking drag.

“Your hair is too pretty to be tied back in a ponytail 12 hours a day,” I inform her.

I hear her swallow, but then I remember the reason I took her ponytail out in the first place. I wanted to smell her hair. I want to know what she smells like when she steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around her bare breasts.

My hand automatically moves to her chest as I think about her breasts, wondering what they look like. She gasps, stunned, and a breath shudders out of her, but still she doesn’t speak. I definitely shouldn’t touch her, but since she lets me, I palm the soft globe through the fabric.

God, it has been a long time. Way too long. Since Laurel left, since Cassandra died—too much happened all at once, and I started to wonder if the man looking back at me in the mirror each morning was the man I wanted to be. The man who had wrought such destruction. I needed to be alone for a little while to get my own head straight. Given I am currently drunk off my ass, groping the only woman I have ever been able to maintain a non-sexual relationship with in my adult life, I’m not sure I managed to get my head on straight in these few months alone, after all.

Finally, Virginia clears her throat. “Why don’t I get you home?”

“Come with me,” I murmur, my lips grazing the shell of her ear.

“Oh, my God.” Her voice is more tortured than it should be. “Rafe, come on.”

I cup her jaw in my hand and draw her close to me. “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”

“That is not a good idea,” she says, looking anywhere but at me.

“It feels like one,” I assure her.

“Because you’re drunk,” she says, far too soberly. “You’re drunk, and you’re feeling sad tonight. You just watched the mother of your unborn child go home to live her happily ever after with someone else. I get it, I would be sad, too. But I’m not a tumbler full of alcohol. You can’t consume me and then go about your life casually as can be like it didn’t happen. And even if you can, I can’t. I want to stay in your life, and that means I need to stay out of your bed. We both know that.”

“I won’t fuck you,” I promise. Her eyes narrow skeptically, but she doesn’t outright shoot me down, so I go on. “I won’t. I just don’t want to sleep alone. That’s all.”

Now her shoulders sag, and I know I have her. I don’t even know if she believes me, but she has a soft heart underneath it all, and an even softer spot for me. If she makes me go to sleep alone tonight, she’ll feel worse about it than I will.

Swallowing, she says, “Why don’t I think about it on the way to your house?”

“Why don’t you say yes now and save us both the suspense?” I suggest.

Rolling her eyes, she says, “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

“I know what I bring to the table.”

“Commitment issues and a dreamy smile? Yeah, we all know what you bring to the table.”

As I drag my ass out of the booth, I mutter, “I don’t have commitment issues.”

“Fine, a deeply-seated certainty that everyone is unreliable,” she offers, watching me grab onto the back of the booth to get my bearings. “Is that a more palatable summary?”

“Now that’s more like it. That’s just the truth, not me having commitment issues.”

“Like I said,” she murmurs, walking ahead, preparing to hit the light switch once I’m out the door.

“You don’t think people are unreliable?” I ask her.

Rocking her head back and forth, she says, “It’s complex. If you mean disappointing, then yes. People are consistently disappointing, but that’s usually because we trick ourselves. We use hope to set our expectations, thereby setting ourselves up for inevitable disappointment. People show us exactly who they are, and we ignore that reality in favor of who we want them to be. For instance, you and Laurel. I could have told you the first night she came in here with Sin that you were wasting your time trying with her. You’re wasting your time with most of the women you bring in here. Without even being present for more than snippets of conversations, I can tell they’re terrible matches for you. I think that’s why you pick them. I don’t know what your love life was like before Cassandra, but since her, you have consistently chosen women who would prove what you wanted to believe—that they will always let you down.”